The Lady Agnes Mystery, Volume 1 (24 page)

The Knight Eustache de Rioux had spent the last seven years of his life regretting by turns having not followed his two brothers and believing that the notebook was destined to be saved, and that some mysterious divine intervention had meant him to take possession of it. He was to suffer until the very end, like some ordeal, the burden of his life being spared at Acre.

When finally Rioux died in the Cypriot citadel, Leone had vowed to him that he would continue their quest to find the Light and would keep it secret until at last the Light burst forth.

Despite Leone’s tireless efforts, at times he felt he had barely made any progress since his godfather’s death. Except perhaps in the matter of the runes, which a Viking he ran into in Constantinople had explained to him.

Eustache and he had mistakenly thought they were Aramaic. They were not. The alphabet was known as futhark, and the Scandinavians had almost certainly adapted it from the Etruscan. These ancient letters gradually transcended their own meaning to become symbols, divinations. One evening, many years before, at a stall serving refreshing drinks made from the leaves of the chai tree, Leone had placed the strange cross upon a table before a merchant seafarer. The smile had vanished from the Viking’s face. He had shaken his head and pursed his lips. Leone had urged him to speak and offered him money. The man had refused, muttering:

‘No good. Witchcraft. Forbidden.’

‘I need to understand the meaning of these symbols, pray, help me.’

‘I not know all. That one Freya’s cross.’

‘Freya?’

‘Freya twin sister Frey. Woman-god.’

‘A goddess?’

The man had nodded and continued:

‘She woman-god beauty and love … love of flesh. She woman-god of war, like Tyr, he man-god. She lead warriors. Twin brother Frey. Other man-god, riches, fertility, land. Freya’s cross to know if we win war.’

The sailor had but one desire: to leave the stall as quickly as possible. Leone had held him back by his sleeve and insisted:

‘But what do the other symbols mean?’

‘Not know. All forbidden.’

He had pulled away brusquely and disappeared into the colourful maze of the grand bazaar.

It had taken Leone more than a year to unravel the mystery of the almonds. He had had to wait for another of those unlikely coincidences, those improbable encounters the Knight Templar had evoked in the tunnel under Acre.

That morning, Francesco de Leone had been leaving on a mission to see Henri II of Lusignan. The hopes they had entertained of forcing the King of Cyprus to permit them to reinforce their numbers on the island had once again been dashed. He was approached by a small young girl dressed in rags, with long curly brown hair so tangled it resembled a clump of straw. Her head bowed, she silently held out a small grubby palm. Smiling, he placed a few small coins there – nothing much, enough to buy a little bread and cheese. Finally, when she looked up at him with
her pale amber, almost yellow, eyes, Leone was astonished. The expression in them was so profound, so old for one of her years that he wondered whether she might not indeed be older than she looked. In a strikingly deep voice, she said to him:

‘You are a good man. That is as it should be. I have been looking for you. I am told you possess a paper cross whose meaning you do not understand. I can help you.’

For a brief moment the Knight imagined he must be dreaming. How could this little beggar girl, one of many on the island, know about the mystery and address him as though she were a thousand-year-old woman? How could a Cypriot child decipher symbols belonging to an ancient alphabet known only to a handful of Vikings?

She led him, or, more precisely, he followed her, a few alleyways further along. She sat cross-legged on the floor behind a hut made of mud and straw. He did likewise.

Once again she held out her hand in silence. He took from his surcoat the piece of folded parchment he carried with him always. The small girl had spread it out on the ground and, hunched over, studied it.

A long moment passed before she looked up at him with her yellow eyes:

‘Everything is written in this cross, brother. It is Freya’s cross, but you already knew this. It is used to predict the outcome of a battle. And this is a battle. The left-hand branch signifies what is, what you inherit. It is Lagu, water. Water is inert yet sensitive and intuitive. Lagu is upright on your cross. You are lost, reality seems insurmountable to you. Listen to your soul and to your dreams. Long journeys are imminent. Keep in mind that you have been chosen, that you are a mere tool.’

Leone had taken a breath but the little girl had stopped him in a firm voice:

‘Do not speak. It is pointless to ask me any questions. I am telling you what you must know. The rest will come from you. The right-hand branch signifies the obstacles you must overcome. It is negative. This sign is Thorn. Thorn is the warrior god of thunder and rain. He is strong and free of all immorality. But the rune is reversed. Beware of anger and revenge – they would spell doom for you. Do not trust advice, it will mostly mislead you. Your enemies are powerful and hidden. They hide behind the beauty of angels and have been hatching their plot for a long time, for a very long time. The top branch symbolises the help that will be given to you and which you must accept.’ She paused for a moment before continuing, ‘Are you aware, brother, that this is not one man’s quest. It is an unbreakable chain. The rune Eolh is upright …’

The young girl’s face broke into a beautiful smile and she said in a soft voice:

‘I am glad. Eolh offers the most powerful protection you could enjoy. It is magical and so unpredictable that you will not recognise it when it appears. Do not fear being swayed by influences you do not understand. The lowest branch signifies what will happen in the near future. It is Ing and is reversed. Ing
is the god of fertility and all its cycles. A task is nearing its end … yet the outcome is not favourable to you. You have failed. You have made a mistake and must go back to the beginning …’ She had stared at him with her cat-like eyes before asking:

‘What mistake have you made, brother? When? Where? You must find out very soon, time is running short. It has been running short for centuries.’ She lifted her hand to silence the questions the Knight was burning to ask. ‘Be quiet. I know nothing of the nature of the mistake, only that if you do not correct it very soon, the quest will reach an impasse. Nor do I know anything about the nature of the quest. I am, like you, a mere tool and my work will soon be done. Yours might never be. Ing reversed, then, means the period is unfavourable. Step back a little. Allow yourself time to repair the errors of judgement, whether yours or your predecessor’s. The rune at the middle of the cross signifies the future outcome. Tyr upright. Tyr is the sacred lance, the just war. It stands for courage, honour and sacrifice. As a guarantee, Tyr left his hand in the mouth of the wolf Fenrir who threatened the world with destruction. The struggle will be long and fierce but crowned with victory. You will need to be loyal, just and, at times, merciless. Keep in mind that pity, like all else, must be merited. Do not waste it on those who show none. I do not know whether you will be present at this victory or whether it is reserved for the one who comes after you. The struggle is already more than a thousand years old. It has been hiding in the shadows for over twelve hundred years.’

For the past few minutes, Leone had by turns been reassured by this reading of the runes and worried that he understood even less than he had before his meeting with the little beggar girl. He had stammered:

‘I implore you, speak to me of this struggle!’

‘Did you not hear what I said? I know nothing. I have revealed all I know. My task was to interpret this cross.’

‘Who entrusted you with it?’ Leone had roared, his panic gaining the upper hand.

All of a sudden, the young girl’s yellow gaze had fixed on a point behind him and he had turned his head. There had been nothing but a hill planted with olive groves, no menacing shadow. When he had turned back she had vanished, and only the imprint of her ragged dress on the dusty earth and the few coins he had given her proved he had not been dreaming.

He spent a whole week vainly searching for the girl in alleyways, peering inside stalls or churches, without ever glimpsing her frail figure.

Through a dogged effort Francesco de Leone had gradually understood the mistake they had all made from the very initiation of the chain, as the Cypriot beggar girl had referred to it. The two birth charts in the Templar Knight’s notebook were false. The equatoire used to interpret them was an aberration derived from an obsolete astronomical theory.

The mathematician monk from an Italian monastery – the Vallombroso Monastery
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– had discovered this truth and, fearing the consequences, hastened to conceal it. He had died soon afterwards in a crypt, having mysteriously fallen and cracked his skull open against a pillar. His notebook was never found. Until the day that the thief, Humeau, catering to the demands of his purchasers, had drawn up a small inventory of books in the Pope’s private library. Leone had approached him as a buyer, bidding against another anonymous customer. Gachelin Humeau played the two off against each other, coaxing, using delaying tactics and, above all, pushing up the price. Which one should he
sell to? He procrastinated. He wanted to please everybody, but after all business was business. With a movement so swift as to barely give the man time to blink, Leone had pulled his dagger, grabbed the scoundrel by the throat and, pressing the sharp blade against his neck, had announced in a clear, calm voice:

‘How much for your life? Quick, name a price and then add it to the offer I just made. Is the other bid still higher?’

These were not empty threats and Humeau knew it. He had begrudgingly handed over the stolen work – for an exorbitant sum nonetheless.

Do not waste your pity on those who show none, the little girl had warned.

Leone was stupefied upon reading the treatise. There were other distant and invisible planets, whose existence had been proven by these calculations. Two giant stars,
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named by their discoverer
GE1
and
GE2
, and an asteroid that was certainly smaller than the Moon but massive
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nonetheless, which he had denominated As. A further shocking revelation affirmed that the Earth was not fixed at the centre of the firmament but turned around the Sun.

For weeks on end the Knight had busied himself with painstaking and complex calculations. He had been obliged to go back to the positions of the planets in the signs and houses of the zodiac in order to discover the dates of birth of two people, or two events, whose star charts were almost identical. His deductions were still incomplete, for he lacked the necessary data to calculate GE2’s revolutions. However, he had reached a new stage in his clarifications that had allowed him to discover one date: the first decan of Capricorn, 25 December. Christmas Day. Agnès de Souarcy’s birthday.

Ing, the rune indicating error, had been overcome. Leone was
waiting for a sign that would allow him to complete his astral charts, and, more importantly, to understand their vital meaning. He was also waiting for his ‘powerful, hidden’ enemies to show themselves. He could sense them unseen in the shadows, ready to strike. They had already dealt one deadly blow, and Benoît XI had been felled by it, of that Leone was certain.

He walked over to one of the book cabinets and gave it a sharp push. The high shelves slid along invisible rails, revealing a flagstone that was wider and lighter than the others. A niche had been hollowed out below. There was the Vallombroso manuscript, carefully wrapped in a piece of linen coated in beeswax to protect it from damp and insects. Underneath was a second volume he had glanced through only once, the acid saliva of nausea rising up his gorge. He had purchased it from Humeau with the intention of destroying it, and then something had dissuaded him. It was a work of necromancy written by a certain Justus and filled with loathsome instructions whose aim was not to communicate with the dead, but to torment them, to enslave them, turning them into servants of the living. Leone felt a ripple of disgust each time he saw the cover, and yet he kept putting off the moment when he would consign it to the flames, reducing it to mere ashes.

He re-read the Vallombroso treatise on astronomy for the thousandth time, and for the thousandth time studied the annotations Eustache and he had written in the large notebook. It was then that a tiny detail caught his attention. He walked over to the wall where the high arrow slits afforded a little more light and took a closer look.

What was the faint smudge of ink that resembled a finger mark?

Behind him a rustling sound, elegant and feminine, made his heart skip a beat. No, it was not the unknown woman in the church from his dream, it was his aunt. He swivelled round.

‘You made me jump, aunt. Have you consulted this notebook in my absence?’