Labyrinth

  Alaïs pressed her left hand on the rough stone labyrinth. Pain shot up her damaged arm. She needed no candle to see the outline of the Egyptian symbol of life, the ankh as Harif had taught her to call it. Then, shielding her actions from Oriane with her back, she inserted the ring into a small opening at the base of the central circle of the labyrinth, directly in front of her face. For Bertrande’s sake, she prayed it would work. Nothing had been spoken; nothing had been prepared as it should have been. The circumstances could not be more different from the only other time she had stood as a supplicant before the labyrinth of stone.

  ‘Di ankh djet,’ she murmured. The ancient words felt as ashes in her mouth. There was a sharp click, like a key in a lock. For a moment, nothing seemed to happen. Then, from deep in the wall, there was the noise of something shifting, stone against stone. Then Alaïs moved and, in the half-light, Guilhem saw that a compartment had been revealed at the very centre of the labyrinth. A book lay inside.

  ‘Pass it to me,’ ordered Oriane. ‘Put it there, on the altar.’

  Alaïs did as she was told, never taking her eyes from her sister’s face.

  ‘Let her go now. You don’t need her any more.’

  ‘Open it,’ shouted Oriane. ‘I want to make sure you’re not deceiving me.’

  Guilhem edged closer. Shimmering in gold on the first page was a symbol he had never seen before. An oval, more like a tear in shape, set atop a kind of cross, like a shepherd’s crook.

  ‘Keep going,’ said Oriane. ‘I want to see it all.’

  Alaïs’ hands were shaking as she turned the pages. Guilhem could see a mixture of strange drawings and lines, row after row of tightly drawn symbols covering the entire sheet.

  ‘Take it, Oriane,’ said Alaïs, struggling to keep her voice steady. ‘Take the book and give me back my daughter.’

  Guilhem saw the blade glint. He realised what was going to happen the instant before it did, that Oriane’s jealousy and bitterness would lead her to destroy everything Alaïs loved or valued.

  He threw himself at Oriane, knocking her sideways. He felt his cracked ribs give and he nearly passed out with the pain, but he’d done enough to force her to loosen her hold on Bertrande.

  The knife dropped from her hand and skidded away out of sight, in the shadows behind the altar. Bertrande was thrown forward in the collision. She screamed, and banged her head on the corner of the altar. Then, she was still.

  ‘Guilhem, take Bertrande,’ Alaïs screamed at him. ‘She’s hurt, Sajhë’s hurt. Help them. There’s a man called Harif waiting in the village. He will help you.’

  Guilhem hesitated.

  ‘Please, Guilhem. Save her!’

  Her last words were lost as Oriane staggered to her feet, the knife in her hand, and launched herself at Alaïs. The blade sliced into her already damaged arm.

  Guilhem felt as if his heart was being ripped in two. He didn’t want to leave Alaïs to face Oriane alone, but he could see Bertrande lying white and still on the ground.

  ‘Please, Guilhem. Go!’

  With a last backward glance at Alaïs, he picked up their daughter in his wounded arms, and ran, trying not to see the blood pouring from the cut. He realised it was what Alaïs wanted him to do.

  As he staggered clumsily across the chamber, Guilhem heard a rumbling sound, like thunder trapped in the hills. He stumbled, assumed it was his legs unable to hold him. He moved forward again, clearing the top of the steps and going back into the tunnel. He slipped on the loose stones, his legs and arms burning with pain. Then he realised the ground was moving, shaking. The earth beneath his feet was trembling.

  His strength was almost gone. Bertrande was motionless in his arms and seemed heavier with every step he took. The noise was getting louder as he plunged on. Chunks of rock and dust began to fall from the roof, plummeting down around him.

  Now he could feel the cold air coming to meet him. A few more steps and he had emerged into the grey dusk.

  Guilhem ran to where Sajhë lay unconscious, but breathing steadily.

  Bertrande was deathly white, but she was starting to whimper and stir in his arms. He laid her down on the ground beside Sajhë, then ran to each of the dead soldiers in turn and ripped their cloaks from their backs to make a covering. Then he tore his own cloak from his neck, sending his silver and copper buckle flying into the dirt. He folded it beneath Bertrande’s head for a pillow.

  He paused to kiss his daughter on the forehead.

  ‘Filha,’ he murmured. It was the first, and the last, kiss he would ever give her.

  There was an enormous crack from within the cave, like lightning after thunder. Guilhem ran back into the tunnel. The noise was overwhelming in the confined space.

  He realised there was something hurtling out of the darkness towards him.

  ‘A spirit . . . a face,’ Oriane was gibbering, her eyes crazed with fear. ‘A face in the centre of the labyrinth.’

  Where is she?’ he shouted, grabbing her arm. What have you done to Alaïs?’

  Oriane was covered in blood, her hands, her clothes.

  ‘Faces in the . . . the labyrinth.’

  Oriane screamed again. Guilhem spun round to see what was behind him, but could see nothing. In that moment, Oriane plunged the knife into his chest.

  He knew she had dealt him a mortal blow. Instantly, he felt death taking possession of his limbs. He watched her running from him through clouds, his eyes darkening. He felt revenge die in him too. It no longer mattered.

  Oriane ran out into the grey light of the passing day, while Guilhem stumbled blind down into the chamber, desperate to find Alaïs in the chaos of rock and stone and dust.

  He found her lying in a small depression in the ground, her fingers wound round the bag that had held the Book of Words, the ring clutched in her hand.

  ‘Mon cor,’ he whispered.

  Her eyes flickered open at the sound of his voice. She smiled and Guilhem felt his heart turn over.

  ‘Bertrande?’

  ‘She’s safe.’

  ‘Sajhë?’

  ‘He will live too.’

  She caught her breath. ‘Oriane . . .’

  ‘I let her go. She’s badly hurt. She will not get far.’

  The final flame in the lamp, still burning on the altar, guttered and died. Alaïs and Guilhem did not notice as they lay in one another’s arms. They were not aware of the darkness or the peace that descended over the chamber. They knew nothing but each other.

  CHAPTER 82

  Pic de Soularac

  FRIDAY 8 JULY 2005

  The thin robe provided little protection from the damp chill of the chamber. Alice shivered as she slowly turned her head.

  To her right was the altar. The only light came from an old-fashioned oil lamp, standing in its centre, sending shadows running up the sloping walls. It was enough to see the symbol of the labyrinth on the rock behind, large and imposing in the confined space.

  She sensed there were other people nearby. Alice looked down to her right and nearly cried out loud as she caught her first sight of Shelagh. She was lying curled up on the stone floor like an animal, thin, lifeless, defeated, the evidence of her mistreatment on her skin. Alice couldn’t see whether or not she was breathing.

  Please God let her still be alive.

  Alice slowly became accustomed to the flickering light. She turned her head slightly and saw Audric in the same place as before. He was still tethered by the rope to a ring set in the floor. His white hair formed a kind of halo around his head. He was as still as a statue carved on a tomb.

  As if he could sense her eyes on him, he caught her eye, and smiled.

  Forgetting for a moment that he must be angry with her for charging in when she’d promised to stay outside, she gave a weak smile.

  Just like Shelagh said.

  Then she realised something was different about him. She lowered her eyes to Audric’s hands, fanned out against the white of the robe.

 
The ring is missing.

  ‘Shelagh’s here,’ she whispered under her breath. ‘You were right.’

  He nodded.

  We have to do something,’ she hissed.

  He gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head and glanced to the far side of the chamber. She followed his gaze.

  ‘Will!’ she whispered in disbelief. Relief rushed through her, and something else, followed by pity for the state of him. His hair was matted with dried blood, one of his eyes was swollen and she could see cuts on his face, his hands.

  But he’s here. With me.

  At the sound of her voice, Will opened his eyes. He peered into the darkness. Then, as he saw her, recognised her, a half-smile came to his battered lips.

  For a moment, they stared at each other, holding one another’s gaze.

  Mon cor. My love. The realisation gave her courage.

  The mournful howl of the wind in the tunnel intensified, mixed now with the murmur of a voice. A monotonous chant, not quite singing. Alice couldn’t work out where it was coming from. Fragments of oddly familiar words and phrases echoed through the cave until the air was saturated with the sound: montanhas, mountains; Noblesa, nobility; libres, books; graal, grail. Alice started to feel dizzy, intoxicated by the words that clamoured like the bells of a cathedral in her head.

  Just as she thought she could take no more, the chanting stopped. Quickly, quietly, the melody faded away, leaving nothing but a memory.

  A single voice floated into the watchful silence. A woman’s voice, clear and precise.

  In the beginning of time,

  In the land of Egypt,

  The master of secrets,

  Gave words and scripts.

  Alice tore her eyes from Will’s face and turned towards the sound. Marie-Cécile appeared from the shadows behind the altar like an apparition. As she stood before the labyrinth, her green eyes, painted with black and gold, sparkled like emeralds in the flickering lamp. Her hair, held back from her face by a golden band with a diamond motif on the forehead, shone like jet. Her elegant arms were bare, except for matching amulets of twisted metal.

  She was carrying the three books, one on top of the other, in her hands. She placed them in a row on the altar, beside a plain, earthenware bowl. As she reached out to adjust the position of the oil lamp on the altar, Alice registered, almost without realising it, that Marie-Cécile was wearing Audric’s ring on her left thumb.

  It looks wrong on her hand.

  Alice found herself immersed deep in a past she did not remember. The vellum should be dry and brittle to the touch, like dying leaves on the tree in autumn. But she could almost feel the leather ties between her own fingers, soft and flexible, even though they ought to be stiff through the long years of disuse, as if the memory was written in her bones and blood. She remembered how the covers shimmered, shifted colour under the light.

  She could see the image of a tiny gold chalice, no bigger than a ten-pence piece, shining like a jewel on the heavy cream parchment. On the following pages, lines of ornate script. She heard Marie-Cécile speaking into the gloom and, at the same time, behind her eyes she saw the red and blue and yellow and gold letters. The Book of Potions.

  Images of two-dimensional figures, animals and birds flooded into her head. She could picture a sheet of parchment, thicker than the other pages but different – translucent, yellow. It was papyrus, the weave of the leaves apparent. It was covered with identical symbols as at the beginning of the book, except this time tiny drawings of plants, numbers and measurements were interspersed between them.

  She was thinking of the second book now, the Book of Numbers. On the first page was a picture of the labyrinth itself, rather than a chalice. Without realising she was doing so, Alice looked around the chamber once more, this time seeing the space through different eyes, unconsciously verifying its shape and proportions.

  She looked back to the altar. Her memory of the third book was the strongest. Shimmering in gold on the first page was the ankh, the ancient Egyptian symbol of life, familiar now the world over. Between the leather-covered wooden boards of the Book of Words were blank pages, like a white guard surrounding the papyrus buried in the centre of the book. The hieroglyphs were dense and unyielding. Row after row of tightly drawn symbols covered the entire sheet. There were no splashes of colour, no indication of where one word ended and the next began.

  Concealed within this was the incantation.

  Alice opened her eyes and sensed Audric looking at her.

  A look of understanding flashed between them. The words were coming back to her, slipping quietly from the dusty corners of her mind. She was momentarily transported out of herself, for a fraction of a second, looking down on the scene from above.

  Eight hundred years ago Alaïs had said these words. And Audric had heard them.

  The truth will make us free.

  Nothing had changed, yet she was suddenly no longer afraid.

  A sound from the altar drew her attention. The stillness passed and the world of the present came rushing back. And, with it, fear.

  Marie-Cécile took up the earthenware bowl, small enough to cup between her hands. From beside it she took a small knife with a dull worn blade. She raised her long, white arms above her head.

  ‘Dintrar,’ she called. Enter.

  François-Baptiste stepped from the darkness of the tunnel. His eyes swept around his surroundings like a searchlight, skimming over Audric, then Alice, then coming to rest on Will. Alice saw the triumph on the boy’s face and knew that Francois-Baptiste had inflicted the injuries on Will.

  I’ll not let you hurt him this time.

  Then his gaze moved on. He paused a moment at the sight of the three books laid out in a row on the altar, surprised or relieved, Alice couldn’t tell, then his eyes came to rest on the face of his mother.

  Despite the distance, Alice could feel the tension between them.

  A flicker of a smile played across Marie-Cécile’s face as she stepped down from the altar, the knife and the bowl in her hands. Her robe shimmered like spun moonshine in the flickering light of the candles as she moved through the chamber. Alice could smell the subtle trace of her perfume in the air, light beneath the heavy aroma of burning oil in the lamp.

  François-Baptiste too started to move. He came down the steps until he was standing behind Will.

  Marie-Cécile stopped in front of him and whispered something to Will, too quiet for Alice to hear. Although François-Baptiste’s smile stayed in place, she saw the anger in his face as he leaned forward, lifted Will’s bound hands and offered his arm to Marie-Cécile.

  Alice flinched as Marie-Cécile made a single incision between Will’s wrist and elbow. He winced and she could see the shock in his eyes, but he made no sound.

  Marie-Cécile held the bowl to catch five drops of blood.

  She repeated the process with Audric, then came to a halt in front of Alice. She could see the excitement in Marie-Cécile’s face as she traced the point of the blade along the white underside of Alice’s arm, along the line of the old wound. Then with the precision of a surgeon with a scalpel, she inserted the knife into the skin and pressed the tip down, slowly, until her scar split open again.

  The pain took her by surprise, an ache, not a sharp sensation. Alice felt warm at first, then quickly cold and numb. She stared mesmerised by the drops of blood falling, one by one, into the oddly pale mixture in the bowl.

  Then it was over. François-Baptiste released her and followed his mother towards the altar. Marie-Cécile repeated the procedure with her son, then positioned herself between the altar and the labyrinth.

  She placed the bowl in the centre and drew the knife across her own skin, watching as her own blood trickled down her arm.

  The mingling of bloods.

  A flash of understanding went through Alice. The Grail belonged to all faiths and none. Christian, Jew, Moslem. Five guardians, chosen for their character, their deeds, not their bloodline. A
ll were equal.

  Alice watched Marie-Cécile reach forward and slip something out from between the pages of each of the books in turn. She held up the third one. A sheet of paper. No, not paper, papyrus. As Marie-Cécile held it up to the light, the weave of the reeds was clear. The symbol was clear.

  The ankh, the symbol of life.

  Marie-Cécile lifted the bowl to her lips and drank. When it was empty, she replaced the bowl with both hands and looked out over the chamber until she had fixed Audric with her gaze. It seemed to Alice she was challenging him to make her stop.

  Now she pulled the ring from her thumb and turned to the stone labyrinth, disturbing the hushed air. As the lamplight flickered behind her, sending shadows leaping up the walls, Alice saw, in the shadows in the carved rock, two shapes that she had never before noticed.

  Hidden within the outline of the labyrinth, the shadow of the shape of the ankh and the outline of a cup were clearly identifiable.

  Alice heard a sharp click, as if a key was being inserted into a lock. For a moment, nothing seemed to happen. Then, from deep in the wall, there was the noise of something shifting, stone against stone.

  Marie-Cécile stepped back. Alice saw that a small opening a little bigger than the books had been revealed at the centre of the labyrinth. A compartment.

  Words and phrases sprang into her mind, Audric’s explanation and her own investigations all mixed up together.

  At the centre of the labyrinth is enlightenment, at the centre lies understanding. Alice thought about the Christian pilgrims walking the Chemin de Jérusalem in the nave of Chartres Cathedral, walking the ever-decreasing spirals of the labyrinth in search of illumination.

  Here, in the Grail labyrinth, the light — literally — was at the heart of things.

  Alice watched as Marie-Cécile took the lantern from the altar and hung it in the alcove. It was a perfect fit. Straight away it brightened and the chamber was flooded with light.

  Marie-Cécile lifted a papyrus from one of the books on the altar and slid it into a slot at the front of the alcove. A little of the lamplight was lost and the cave darkened.

  She spun round and stared at Audric, her words breaking the spell.