Through the smoke, Guilhem saw something that turned his blood to ice. A red cloak, embroidered with flowers, a deep green dress, the colour of moss. He pushed his way to the front.
He couldn’t — didn’t want to — believe his eyes.
The years fell away and he saw himself, the man he had been, a young chevalier, arrogant, proud, confident, kneeling in the capèla Santa-Maria. Alaïs was at his side. A Michaelmas wedding, lucky some said. Flowering hawthorn on the altar and the red candles flickering as they exchanged their vows.
Guilhem ran along the back of the stands, desperate to get closer, desperate to prove to himself that it was not her. The fire was hungry. The sickly smell of burning human flesh, surprisingly sweet, was floating over the spectators. The soldiers stood back. Even the clergy were forced to retreat as the furnace burned.
Blood hissed as the soles of feet split open and the bones slid out into the fire, like animals roasting on a spit. The prayers turned to screams.
Guilhem was choking, but he didn’t stop. Holding his cloak across his mouth and nose to keep out the foul, pungent, smoke, he tried to get close to the palisade walls, but the swirling cloud of smoke obscured everything.
Suddenly a voice rang out, clear and precise, from within the fire.
‘Oriane!’
Was it Alaïs’ voice? Guilhem couldn’t tell. Shielding his face with his hands, he stumbled towards the noise.
‘Oriane!’
This time, there was a shout from the stands. Guilhem spun round and, through a gap in the smoke, saw Oriane’s face contorted with anger. She was on her feet and gesturing wildly to the guards.
Guilhem imagined he was shouting Alaïs’ name too, but he couldn’t risk drawing attention to himself. He had come to save her. He had come to help her escape from Oriane, he had helped her once before.
Those three months he had spent with Alaïs after fleeing the Inquisitors in Toulouse had been, quite simply, the happiest time of his life. Alaïs would not stay longer and he could not persuade her to change her mind, nor even to tell him why she had to go. But she had said — and Guilhem had believed it to be true - that one day, when the horror was over, they would once more be together.
‘Mon cor,’ he whispered, almost a sob.
That promise, and the memory of days together, were what had sustained him through the ten long, empty years. Like a light in the dark.
Guilhem felt his heart crack. ‘Alaïs!’
Against the red cloak, the small white sheepskin package, the size of a book, was burning. The hands that held it were no longer there. They had been reduced to bone and spitting fat and blackened flesh.
There was nothing left, he knew it.
For Guilhem, everything was silent now. There was no more noise, no more pain, nothing but a clear white expanse. The mountain had gone, the sky and the smoke and the screaming had gone. Hope had gone.
Now, his legs could no longer hold him. Guilhem fell to his knees as despair claimed him.
CHAPTER 73
Sabarthès Mountains
FRIDAY 8 JULY 2005
The stench brought him to his senses. A mixture of ammonia, goat droppings, unwashed bedding and cold, cooked meat. It stuck in his throat and made the inside of his nose burn, like smelling salts held too close.
Will was lying on a rough cot, not much more than a bench, fixed to the wall of the hut. He manoeuvred himself into a sitting position and leaned back against the stone wall. The sharp edges stuck into his arms, which were still tied behind his back.
He felt he’d done four rounds in the boxing ring. He was bruised from head to toe where he’d been thrown against the side of the boot on the journey. His temple was throbbing where François-Baptiste had struck him with the gun. He could feel the bruise beneath the skin, hard and angry, and the blood around the wound.
He didn’t know what time it was or what day it was. Friday still?
It had been dawn when they left Chartres, maybe as early as five o’clock. When they had got him out of the car it had been afternoon, hot and the sun still bright. He twisted his neck to try to see his watch, but the movement made him feel sick.
Will waited until the nausea had passed. Then he opened his eyes and tried to get his bearings. He appeared to be in some sort of shepherd’s hut. There were bars on the small window, no bigger than the size of a book. In the far corner there was a built-in shelf, like some sort of table, and a stool. In the grate alongside there were the remains of a long-dead fire, grey ash and black shavings of wood or paper. A heavy metal cooking pot hung on a stick across the fireplace. Will could see cold fat coagulated around the rim.
Will let himself fall back on the hard mattress, feeling the rough blanket on his battered skin, and wondered where Alice was now.
Outside, there was the sound of footsteps, then a key in a padlock. Will heard the metallic chink of chain being dropped on the ground, then the arthritic creak of the door being pulled open and a voice he half-recognised.
‘C’est l‘heure.’ Time to go.
Shelagh was conscious of the air on her bare arms and legs and the sensation of being moved from one place to another.
She identified Paul Authié’s voice somewhere in the murmur of sound as she was transported from the farmhouse. Then the distinctive feeling of underground air on her skin, chill and slightly damp, the ground sloping down. Both the men who had held her captive were there. She’d got accustomed to the smell of them. Aftershave, cheap cigarettes, a threatening maleness that made her muscles contract.
They had tied her legs again and her arms behind her back, pulling at the bones in her shoulders. One eye was swollen shut. The combination of lack of food and light and the drugs they gave her to keep her quiet meant that her head was spinning, but she knew where she was.
Authié had brought her back to the cave. She felt the change in atmosphere as they emerged from the tunnel into the chamber, felt the tension in his legs as he carried her down the steps to the sunken area where she’d found Alice unconscious on the ground.
Shelagh registered that there was a light burning somewhere, on the altar perhaps. The man carrying her stopped. They had walked right to the back of the chamber, past the limits she’d gone before. He swung her down off his shoulders, a dead weight, and dropped her. She sensed pain in her side as she hit the ground, but could no longer feel anything.
She didn’t understand why he hadn’t killed her already.
He had his hands under her arms now and was dragging her along the ground. Grit, stones, sharp fragments of rock, cut into the soles of her feet and her exposed ankles. She was aware of the sensation of her bound hands being tied to something metal and cold, a ring or hoop sunk into the ground.
Assuming she was still unconscious, the men were talking in low voices.
‘How many charges have you set?’
‘Four.’
‘To go off at what time?’
‘Just after ten. He’s going to do it himself.’ Shelagh could hear the smile in the man’s voice. ‘Get his hands dirty for once. One press of the button and boom! The whole lot will go.’
‘I still can’t see why we had to drag her all the way up here,’ he complained. ‘Much easier to leave the bitch at the farm.’
‘He doesn’t want her identified. In a few hours’ time, half this mountain’s going to come down. She’ll be buried under half a tonne of rock.’
Finally, fear gave Shelagh the strength to fight. She pulled against her bonds and tried to stand, but she was too weak and her legs wouldn’t hold her. She thought she heard a laugh as she sank back down to the ground, but she couldn’t be sure. She wasn’t certain now what was real and what was only happening inside her head.
‘Aren’t we supposed to stay with her?’
The other man laughed. ‘What’s she going to do? Get up and walk out of here? I mean, Christ! Look at her!’
The light started to fade.
Shelagh heard the men’s footste
ps getting fainter and fainter, until there was nothing but silence and darkness.
CHAPTER 74
‘I want to know the truth,’ Alice repeated. ‘I want to know how the labyrinth and the Grail are connected. If they are connected.’
‘The truth of the Grail,’ he said. He fixed her with a look. ‘Tell me, Madomaisèla, what do you know about the Grail?’
‘The usual sort of stuff, I suppose,’ she said, assuming he didn’t really want her to answer seriously.
‘No, truly. I am interested to hear what you have discovered.’
Alice shifted awkwardly in her chair. ‘I suppose I held to the standard idea that it was a chalice which contained within it an elixir that gave the gift of everlasting life.’
Alice broke off and looked self-consciously at Baillard.
‘A gift?’ he asked, shaking his head. ‘No, not a gift.’ He sighed. ‘And where do you think these stories come from in the first place?’
‘The Bible, I suppose. Or possibly the Dead Sea Scrolls. Perhaps from some other early Christian writing, I’m not sure. I’ve never really thought about it in those terms before.’
Audric nodded. ‘It is a common misconception. In fact, the first versions of the story you talk about originate from the twelfth century, although there are obvious similarities with themes in classical and Celtic literature. And in medieval France in particular.’
The memory of the map she’d found at the library in Toulouse suddenly came into her mind.
‘Like the labyrinth.’
He smiled, but said nothing. ‘In the last quarter of the twelfth century lived a poet called Chrétien de Troyes. His first patron was Marie, one of the daughters of Eleanor of Aquitaine, who was married to the Count of Champagne. After she died in 1181, one of Marie’s cousins, Philip of Alsace, Count of Flanders, became his patron.
‘Chrétien was immensely popular in his day. He’d made his reputation translating classic stories from Latin and Greek, before he turned his skill to composing a sequence of chivalric stories about the knights you will know as Lancelot, Gawain and Perceval. These allegorical writings gave birth to a tide of stories of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table.’ He paused. ‘The Perceval story - Li contes delgraal-is the earliest extant narrative of the Holy Grail.’
‘But . . .’ Alice started to protest. She frowned. ‘Surely he can’t have made the story up? Not something like that. It can’t have appeared out of thin air.’
Again, the same half-smile appeared on Audric’s face.
When challenged to name his source, Chrétien claimed that he had acquired the story of the Grail from a book given to him by his patron, Philip. Indeed, it is to Philip that the story of the Grail is dedicated. Sadly, Philip died at the siege of Acre in 1191 during the Third Crusade. As a result, the poem was never finished.’
What happened to Chrétien?’
‘There is no record of him after Philip’s death. He just disappeared.’
‘Isn’t that odd, if he was so famous?’
‘It is possible his death went unrecorded,’ said Baillard slowly.
Alice looked sharply at him. ‘But you don’t think so?’
Audric did not answer. ‘Despite Chrétien’s decision not to complete his story, all the same, the story of the Holy Grail took on a life of its own. There were direct adaptations from Old French into Middle Dutch and Old Welsh. A few years later, another poet, Wolfram von Eschenbach, wrote a rather burlesque version, Parzival, around the year 1200. He claimed he was not following Chrétien’s version but another story by an unknown author.’
Alice was thinking hard. ‘How does Chrétien actually describe the Grail?’
‘He is vague. He presents it as some sort of dish, rather than a chalice, like the medieval Latin gradalis, from which comes the Old French gradal or graal. Eschenbach is more explicit. His Grail — grâl — is a stone.’
‘So where does the idea come from that the Holy Grail is the cup used by Christ at the Last Supper?’
Audric pressed his fingers together. ‘Another writer, a man called Robert de Boron. He wrote a verse poem, Joseph d’Arimathie,some time between Chrétien’s Perceval and 1199. De Boron not only has the Grail as a vessel - the chalice of the Last Supper, which he refers to as the san greal — but he also fills it with the blood taken from the Cross. In modern French the sang réal, the “true” or “royal” blood.’
He stopped and looked up at Alice.
‘For the guardians of the Labyrinth Trilogy, this linguistic confusion — san greal and sang réal — was a convenient concealment.’
‘But the Holy Grail is a myth,’ she said stubbornly. ‘It cannot be true.’
‘The Holy Grail is a myth, certainly,’ he said, holding her gaze. ‘An attractive fable. If you look closely, you will see that all these stories are embellishments of the same theme. The medieval Christian concept of sacrifice and quest, leading to redemption and salvation. The Holy Grail, in Christian terms, was spiritual, a symbolic representation of eternal life rather than something to be taken as a literal truth. That through the sacrifice of Christ and the grace of God, humankind would live forever.’ He smiled. ‘But that such a thing as the Grail exists is beyond doubt. That is the truth contained within the pages of the Labyrinth Trilogy. It is this that the Grail guardians, the Noublesso de los Seres, gave their lives for to keep secret.’
Alice was shaking her head in disbelief. ‘You’re saying that the Grail is not a Christian concept at all. That all these myths and legends are built on a . . . a misunderstanding.’
‘A subterfuge rather than a misunderstanding.’
‘But for two thousand years the debate has been about the existence of the Holy Grail. If now it is revealed not only that such a thing as the Grail legends are true but . . .’ Alice broke off. She found it hard to believe what she was saying. ‘It is not a Christian relic at all, I can’t even begin to imagine . . .’
‘The Grail is an elixir that has the power both to heal and significantly prolong life. But for a purpose. It was discovered some four thousand years ago in Ancient Egypt. And those who developed it and became aware of its power realised that the secret had to be kept safe from those who would use it for their own benefit as opposed to the benefit of others. The sacred knowledge was recorded in hieroglyphs on three separate sheets of papyrus. One gave the precise layout of the Grail chamber, the labyrinth itself; one listed the ingredients required for the elixir to be prepared; the third the incantation to effect the transformation of the elixir into the Grail. They buried them in the caves outside the ancient city of Avaris.’
‘Egypt,’ she said quickly. ‘When I was doing some research, trying to understand what I had seen here, I noticed how often Egypt came up.’
Audric nodded. ‘The papyri are written in classical hieroglyphs - the word itself means “God’s words” or “divine speech”. As the great civilisation of Egypt fell into dust and decay, the ability to read the hieroglyphs was lost. The knowledge contained in the papyri was preserved, handed down from guardian to guardian, over the generations. The ability to speak the incantation or summon the Grail was lost.
‘This turn of events was without design, but it, in turn, added an additional layer of secrecy,’ he continued. ‘In the ninth century of the Christian era, an Arab alchemist, Abu Bakr Ahmad Ibn Wahshiyah, decoded the secret of the hieroglyphs. Fortunately, Harif, the Navigatairé, became aware of the danger and was able to confound his attempts to share his knowledge. In those days, centres of learning were few and communication between peoples slow and unreliable. After that, the papyri were smuggled to Jerusalem and concealed there within underground chambers on the Plains of Sepal.
‘From the 800s to the 1800s, no one made significant progress in deciphering hieroglyphs. No one. Their meaning was only elucidated when Napoleon’s scientific and military expedition to North Africa in 1799 uncovered a detailed inscription in the sacred language of hieroglyphs, in everyday demotic Egyp
tian of the time and Ancient Greek. You have heard of the Rosetta Stone?’
Alice nodded.
‘From that point, we feared it was only a matter of time. A Frenchman, Jean-François Champollion, became obsessed with breaking the code. In 1822, he succeeded. The wonders of the ancients, their magic, their spells, everything from funerary inscriptions to the Book of the Dead, all suddenly could be read.’ He paused. ‘Now, the fact that two books of the Labyrinth Trilogy were in the hands of those who would misuse it became a cause for fear and concern.’
His words fell like a warning. Alice shivered. She suddenly realised the day had faded. Outside, the rays of the setting sun had painted the mountains red and gold and orange.
‘If the knowledge was so devastating, if used for ill rather than good, then why did Alaïs or the other guardians not destroy the books when they had the chance?’ she asked.
She felt Audric grow still. Alice realised she had hit to the heart of his experience, of the story he was telling, even though she didn’t understand how.
‘If they had not been needed, then yes. Perhaps that might have been a solution.’
‘Needed? Needed in what way?’
‘That the Grail bestows life, the guardians have always known. You called it a gift and,’ he caught his breath, ‘I understand that some might see it so. Others might see it with different eyes.’ Audric stopped. He reached for his glass and took several mouthfuls of wine, before putting it back on the table with a heavy hand. ‘But it is life given for a purpose.’
‘What purpose?’ she said quickly, fearful he would stop.
‘Many times in the past four thousand years, when the need to bear witness has been strong, the power of the Grail has been summoned. The great, long-lived patriarchs of the Christian Bible, the Talmud, the Koran are familiar to us. Adam, Jacob, Moses, Mohammad, Methuselah. Prophets whose work could not be accomplished in the usual span allotted to men. They each lived for hundreds of years.’