‘You were there?’ she said, her voice sharp with surprise.
Baillard smiled. ‘There are conflicts within the Noublesso Véritable,’ he said, avoiding her question. ‘The leader of the organisation is a woman called Marie-Cécile de l’Oradore. She believes in the Grail and would regain it. She believes in the Quest.’ He paused. ‘However, there is another within the organisation.’ His face grew sombre. ‘His motives are different.’
‘You must speak to Inspector Noubel,’ she said fiercely.
‘But what if, as I said, he is working for them also? It is too great a risk.’
The shrill blast of the horn split the quiet of the station. They both turned towards the train drawing into the station with a screech of brakes. The conversation was over.
‘I don’t want to leave you here alone, Audric.’
‘I know,’ he said, taking her hand to help her up into the train. ‘But this is how it is supposed to end.’
‘End?’
She slid open the window and reached for his hand. ‘Please take care. Do not gamble too much of yourself.’
All along the platform the heavy doors slammed shut and the train pulled away, slowly at first, then picking up speed until it had disappeared into the folds of the mountains.
CHAPTER 53
Shelagh could sense there was someone in the room with her.
She struggled to lift her head. She felt sick. Her mouth was dry and there was a dull thudding in her head, like the monotonous hum of an air-conditioning unit. She couldn’t move. It took a few seconds for her to identify the fact she was sitting on a chair now, her arms pulled tight behind her back and her ankles strapped to the wooden legs.
There was a slight movement, a creak of the bare floor-boards as someone shifted position.
Who’s there?’
Her palms were slippery with fear. A trickle of sweat ran down the small of her back. Shelagh forced her eyes open, but she still couldn’t see. She panicked, shaking her head, blinking, trying to bring back the light until she realised the hood was back on her head. It smelled of earth and mould.
Was she still in the farmhouse? She remembered the needle, the surprise of the sharp injection. The same man who brought her food. Surely someone would come and save her? Wouldn’t they?
Who’s there?’ No one answered, although she could feel them close. The air was greasy with the smell of aftershave and cigarettes. What do you want?’
The door opened. Footsteps. Shelagh felt the change in atmosphere. An instinct for self-preservation kicked in and she struggled wildly for a moment to get free. The rope only tightened, putting more pressure on her shoulders, making them ache.
The door shut with an ominous, heavy thud.
She fell still. For a moment, there was silence, then the sound of someone walking towards her, closer and closer. Shelagh shrank back in her chair. He stopped right in front of her. She felt her entire body contract, as if there were thousands of tiny wires pulling at her skin. Like an animal circling his prey, he walked round the chair a couple of times, and then dropped his hands on her shoulders.
Who are you? Please, take this blindfold off at least.’
We need to have another talk, Dr O‘Donnell.’
A voice she knew, cold and precise, cut through her like a knife. She realised it was him she had been expecting. Him she feared.
He suddenly jerked the chair back.
Shelagh screamed, plummeting backwards, powerless to stop herself falling. She never hit the ground. He stopped her, inches above the floor, so she was lying almost flat, her head tipped back and her feet suspended in the air.
‘You’re not in a position to ask for anything, Dr O’Donnell.’
He held her in that position for what seemed like hours. Then, without warning, he suddenly righted the chair. Shelagh’s neck snapped forward with the force of it. She was becoming disorientated, like a child in a game of blind man’s bluff.
Who are you working for, O‘Donnell?’
‘I can’t breathe,’ she whispered.
He ignored her. She heard him click his fingers and the sound of a second chair being placed in front of her. He sat down and pulled her towards him so his knees were pressing against her thighs.
‘Let’s take it back to Monday afternoon. Why did you let your friend go to that part of the site?’
‘Alice has got nothing to do with this,’ she cried. ‘I didn’t let her work there, she just went of her own accord. I didn’t even know. It was just a mistake. She doesn’t know anything.’
‘So tell me what you know, Shelagh.’ Her name in his mouth sounded like a threat.
‘I don’t know anything,’ she cried. ‘I told you everything I knew on Monday, I swear it.’
The blow came out of nowhere, striking her right cheek and slamming her head back. Shelagh could taste blood in her mouth, sliding over her tongue and down the back of her throat.
‘Did your friend take the ring?’ he said in a level voice.
‘No, no, I swear she didn’t.’
He squeezed harder. ‘Then who? You? You were on your own with the skeletons for long enough. Dr Tanner told me that.’
‘Why would I take it? It’s worth nothing to me.’
‘Why are you so sure Dr Tanner didn’t take it?’
‘She wouldn’t. She just wouldn’t,’ she cried. ‘Lots of other people went in. Any of them could have taken it. Dr Brayling, the police — .’ Shelagh abruptly stopped.
‘As you say, the police,’ he said. She held her breath. ‘Any one of them could have taken the ring. Yves Biau, for example.’
Shelagh froze. She could hear the rise and fall of his breathing, calm and unhurried. He knew.
‘The ring wasn’t there.’
He sighed. ‘Did Biau give the ring to you? To give to your friend?’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she managed to say.
He hit her again, this time with his fist, not the flat of his hand. Blood spurted from her nose and poured down her chin.
‘What I don’t understand,’ he was saying, as if nothing had happened, ‘is why he didn’t give you the book as well, Dr O’Donnell.’
‘He gave me nothing,’ she choked.
‘Dr Brayling says you left the site house on Monday night carrying a bag.’
‘He’s lying.’
Who are you working for?’ he said softly, gently. ‘This will stop. If your friend isn’t involved, there’s no reason for her to be harmed.’
‘She’s not,’ she whimpered. ‘Alice doesn’t know . . .’
Shelagh flinched as he placed his hand on her throat, stroking her at first in a parody of affection. Then he started to squeeze, harder and harder, until it felt like an iron collar tightening around her neck. She thrashed from side to side, trying to get some air, but he was too strong.
‘Were you and Biau both working for her?’ he said.
Just as she could feel herself starting to lose consciousness, he released her. She felt him fumbling with the buttons on her shirt, undoing them one by one.
What are you doing?’ she whispered, then flinched at his cold, clinical touch on her skin.
‘No one’s looking for you.’ There was a click, then Shelagh smelled lighter fuel. ‘No one’s going to come.’
‘Please don’t hurt me . . .’
‘You and Biau were working together?’
She nodded.
‘For Madame de l’Oradore?’
She nodded again. ‘Her son,’ she managed to say. ‘François-Baptiste. I only talked to him . . .’
She could feel the flame close to her skin.
‘And what about the book?’
‘I couldn’t find it. Yves neither.’
She sensed him react, then he pulled his hand back.
‘So why did Biau go to Foix? You know he went to Dr Tanner’s hotel?’
Shelagh tried to shake her head, but it sent a new wave of pain shuddering through her body.
/> ‘He passed something to her.’
‘It wasn’t the book,’ she managed to say.
Before she could choke out the rest of the sentence, the door opened and she heard muffled voices in the corridor, then the combination of the smell of aftershave and sweat.
‘How were you supposed to get the book to Madame de l’Oradore?’
‘François-Baptiste.’ It hurt to speak. ‘Meet him at the Pic de — I had a number to ring.’ She recoiled at the touch of his hand on her breast.
‘Please don’t — ’
‘You see how much easier it is when you cooperate? Now, in a moment, you’re going to make that call for me.’
Shelagh tried to shake her head in terror. ‘If they find out I’ve told you, they’ll kill me.’
‘And I will kill you and Mademoiselle Tanner if you don’t,’ he said calmly. ‘It’s your choice.’
Shelagh had no way of knowing if he had Alice. If she was safe or here too.
‘He is expecting you to call when you have the book, yes?’
She no longer had the courage to lie. She nodded. ‘They are more concerned with a small disc, the size of the ring, than the ring itself.’
With horror, Shelagh realised she’d told him the one thing he hadn’t known.
What’s the disc for?’ he demanded.
‘I don’t know.’
Shelagh heard herself screaming as the flame licked her skin.
‘What — is — it — for?’ he said. There was no emotion in his voice. She was freezing cold. There was a dreadful smell of burning flesh, sweet and sickly.
She could no longer distinguish one word from another as the pain started to carry her away. She was drifting, falling. She felt her neck giving way.
We’re losing her. Get the hood off.’
The material was dragged off, catching on the cuts and split skin.
‘Fits inside the ring . . .’
Her voice sounded as if it was coming from underwater. ‘Like a key. To the labyrinth . . .’
Who else knows about this?’ he was shouting at her, but she knew he couldn’t reach her now. Her chin dropped down on to her chest. He jerked her head back. One of her eyes was swollen shut, but the other flickered open. All she could see was a mass of blurred faces, moving in and out of her line of vision. ‘She doesn’t realise . . .’
‘Who?’ he said. ‘Madame de l’Oradore? Jeanne Giraud?’
‘Alice,’ she whispered.
CHAPTER 54
Alice arrived in Chartres late in the afternoon. She found a hotel, then bought a map and went straight to the address she’d been given by directory enquiries. Alice looked up in surprise at the elegant town house, with its gleaming brass knocker and letter box and elegant plants in the window boxes, and the tubs framing the steps. Alice couldn’t imagine Shelagh staying here.
What the hell are you going to say if someone answers?
Alice took a deep breath, then walked up the steps and rang the bell. There was no answer. She waited, took a pace back and looked up at the windows, then tried again. She dialled the number. Seconds later, she could hear a phone ringing inside.
At least it was the right place.
It was an anticlimax but, if she was honest, a relief also. The confrontation, if that’s what was coming, could wait.
The square in front of the cathedral was thronging with tourists, all clutching cameras, and tour guides holding flags or colourful umbrellas held high. Orderly Germans, self-conscious English, glamorous Italians, quiet Japanese, enthusiastic Americans. All the children looked bored.
At some point during the long drive north, she’d stopped thinking she would learn anything from the labyrinth in Chartres. It seemed so obviously connected — the cave at the Pic de Soularac, to Grace, to her personally - too obvious. Part of her felt like she’d been set up to follow a false trail.
Still, Alice bought a ticket and joined an English-language tour, scheduled to start outside in five minutes. Their guide was an efficient, middle-aged woman with a superior manner and clipped voice.
‘To the modern eye, cathedrals are grey, soaring structures of devotion and faith. However, in medieval times, they were very colourful, rather like Hindu shrines in India or Thailand. The statues and tympana that adorned the great portals, in Chartres as elsewhere, were tricked out in polychrome.’ The guide pointed up at the outside with her umbrella. ‘Look closely and you can still see fragments of pink, blue and yellow clinging to the cracks in the statues.’
All around Alice, people were nodding obediently.
‘In 1194,’ the woman continued, ‘a fire destroyed most of the city of Chartres as well as the cathedral itself. At first it was believed that the cathedral’s holiest relic, the sancta camisia — the robe supposedly worn by Mary at the birth of Christ — had been destroyed. But after three days the relic was discovered, having been hidden by the monks in the crypt. This was seen as a miracle, a sign that the cathedral should be rebuilt. The current edifice was finished in 1223 and in 1260 consecrated as the Cathedral Church of the Assumption of Our Lady, the first cathedral in France to be dedicated to the Virgin Mary.’
Alice listened with half an ear, until they arrived at the northern side of the cathedral. The guide pointed at the eerie stone procession of Old Testament kings and queens carved above the north portal.
Alice felt a flutter of nervous excitement.
‘This is the only significant representation of the Old Testament in the cathedral,’ said the guide, beckoning them closer. ‘On this pillar is a carving which many people believe shows the Ark of the Covenant being carried away from Jerusalem by Menelik, son of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, despite the fact that historians claim the story of Menelik was not known in Europe until the fifteenth century. And here’ — she lowered her arm a little — ‘is another mystery. Those of you with good eyesight might just be able to make out the Latin — HIC AMITITUR ARCHA CEDERIS.’ She looked round the group and smiled smugly. ‘The Latin scholars among you will realise that the inscription does not make sense. Some guidebooks translate ARCHA CEDERIS as: “You are to work through the Ark”; and translate the entire inscription as: “Here things take their course: you are to work through the Ark.” However, if you take CEDERIS to be a corruption of FOEDERIS, as some commentators have suggested, then the inscription might be translated as: “Here it is let go, the Ark of the Covenant”.’
She looked around the group. ‘This door, among other things, is one of the reasons for the number of myths and legends that have grown up around the cathedral. Unusually, the names of the master builders of Chartres Cathedral are not known. It is likely that, for some reason, no records were kept and the names were simply forgotten. However, those with more, shall we say, lurid imaginations have interpreted the absence of information differently. The most persistent of the rumours has it that the cathedral was built by descendants of the Poor Knights of Solomon, the Knights Templar, as a codified book in stone, a gigantic puzzle decipherable only by the initiated. Many believed the bones of Mary Magdalene had once been buried beneath the labyrinth. Or even the Holy Grail itself.’
‘Has anybody looked?’ Alice said, regretting the words the second they were out of her mouth. Disapproving eyes swivelled to her like a spotlight.
The guide raised her eyebrows. ‘Certainly. On more than one occasion. But most of you will not be surprised to hear they found nothing. Another myth.’ She paused. ‘Shall we move inside?’
Feeling awkward, Alice followed the group to the West Door and joined the queue to enter the cathedral. Straight away, everybody dropped their voices as the distinctive smell of stone and incense worked their magic. In the side chapels and by the main entrance, flickering rows of devotional candles sparkled in the gloom.
She braced herself for some sort of reaction, visions of the past, as she’d experienced in Toulouse and Carcassonne. She felt nothing and after a while, she relaxed and began to enjoy herself. From her research, she kn
ew Chartres Cathedral was said to have the finest collection of stained glass anywhere in the world, but she was unprepared for the dazzling brilliance of the windows. A kaleidoscope of shimmering colour flooded the cathedral, depicting scenes of everyday and biblical life. The Rose Window and the Blue Virgin Window, the Noah Window showing the Flood and the animals marching two by two into the ark. As she wandered around, Alice tried to imagine what it must have been like when the walls were covered with frescos and decked with richly woven tapestries, the Eastern fabrics and silken banners all embroidered with gold. To medieval eyes, the contrast between the splendours of God’s temple and the world outside the cloister must have been overwhelming. Proof positive, perhaps, of God’s glory on earth.
‘And, finally,’ the guide said, ‘we come to the famous eleven-circuit pavement labyrinth. Completed in 1200, it is the largest in Europe. The original centrepiece is long gone, but the rest is intact. For medieval Christians, the labyrinth provided an opportunity to undertake a spiritual pilgrimage, in place of an actual journey to Jerusalem. Hence the fact that pavement labyrinths — as opposed to those found on the walls of churches and cathedrals — were often known as the chemin de Jérusalem, that is, the road or path to Jerusalem. Pilgrims would walk the circuit towards the centre, sometimes many times, symbolic of a growing understanding or closeness to God. Penitents often completed the journey on their knees, sometimes taking many days over it.’
Alice edged to the front, her heart racing, only now realising subconsciously she’d been putting this moment off.
This is the moment.
She took a deep breath. The symmetry was destroyed by the rows of chairs on either side of the nave facing the altar for evensong. Even so, and despite knowing its dimensions from her research, Alice was taken aback by the size of it. It entirely dominated the cathedral.
Slowly, like everyone else, Alice began to walk the labyrinth, round and round in ever-decreasing circles, like a halting game of follow-my-leader, until she arrived at the centre.
She felt nothing. No shiver up her spine, no moment of enlightenment or transformation. Nothing. She crouched down and touched the ground. The stone was smooth and cool, but it did not speak to her.