The Sixth Key (20 page)

Rahn was woken by a sudden jolt and opened his eyes. He was in
the Tourster with Eva driving along a narrow road, perilously close to a low
stone wall, the only thing between them and the gorges below.

‘Something is happening to the car!’ Eva said.

Rahn turned around and tried to focus his
eyes. There was nothing behind them, nothing beside them. Ahead, the narrow
road seemed to wind its way around one bend after the other. He felt another
great thump then, which sent the Tourster rumbling towards the precipice. Eva
pushed down on the brakes with all her might but the car had a mind of its own.

‘I’ve got no brakes. Do something!’ she
shouted at Rahn. As she finished her words, however, a sharp corner sent the
car skating over the gravel. Rahn braced himself, certain the car was going to
mount that low stone wall, or break through it. Either way, they would be
finished. But the wall held them and there was a crunching and scraping and
tearing at the body and tyres of the car before the curve reversed and the
Tourster left the wall and careered towards the mountainside.

‘Change to a lower gear, for God’s sake,’ he
told Eva.

‘Can’t you see I’ve been trying to. It’s
stuck!’

The collision with the wall had caused the
Tourster to wobble for a time on its wheels like a drunk running out of steam.
Eva seemed to have regained some control until another jolt sent them hurtling
towards an approaching bend. She put her foot down on the brakes again as hard
as she could but they remained useless.

Rahn had an idea.

‘Steer along the rock wall – stay away
from the edge.’ He grabbed hold of the hand brake and pulled on it with all his
might. The back wheels locked up and the car began to slide, scraping along the
hillside with a terrible screech until the engine stalled, bringing the
Tourster to a noisy and unhealthy-sounding stop.

Eva got out of the car with an air of calm
annoyance. She had a bruise on her forehead and scratches here and there but
she was essentially unhurt. She helped Rahn climb out. His many aches and pains
seemed to have cancelled each other out and he stood beside Eva, who seemed to
be looking at the mangled Tourster in disbelief.

‘Something took hold of that auto-car!’ Eva
said. ‘I had no control! Someone or something was driving us straight into
those walls. Black magic perhaps?’ she said sarcastically, but Rahn thought
there might be an element of truth in it.

‘Well?’ She was staring at him from under that
straight-cut fringe with a look of expectation.

Rahn liked her for not being hysterical; at
this point he couldn’t have coped with a panic-stricken woman since he was
feeling rather frenetic himself. But there was something singularly annoying
about her unruffled attitude and her calculated audacity.

‘If Sancho Panza were here,’ Rahn gave back,
‘he would say: “whether the pitcher hits the stone or the stone hits the
pitcher, it’s bad luck for the pitcher . . . ” and it was bad luck for the
Tourster, I’m afraid.’

‘And are you going to take a look at it?’

He straightened his aching shoulders and,
feeling put on the spot, walked to the car. It looked as if some great beast
had clawed it. He resolved that it was irreparably damaged, at least for the
time being. He opened the hood and peered inside. Everything seemed to be in order,
as far as he could see, but in truth he knew almost nothing about cars and the
gesture was in the spirit of creating the illusion that he was in control of
things, as any man should be. He closed the hood again and wiped the grease
from his hands with an air of authority. He was about to deliver his diagnosis
when she cut through the entire charade with her sharp, sarcastic tone; hands
on waist, eyebrows raised.

‘You don’t know anything about auto-cars, do
you?’

‘As a matter of fact . . .’ he began, and was
saved from a complete loss of face by the sound of a horse and cart coming
around the hairpin bend. He brightened and said, ‘As a matter of fact I can
hear our taxi now!’

He waved the man down and asked if he could
take them to Saint-Paul-de-Fenouillet.

‘Are you just going to leave the car here?’
the girl interjected.

‘What else shall we do with it, Mademoiselle
Cros? Perhaps you feel like getting behind the wheel again?’

She huffed, defeated, and Rahn repressed a
smile, feeling he’d redressed the imbalance.

The man asked them what business they had in
Saint-Paulde-Fenouillet and Rahn told him they were on their way to see the
priest.

‘No, you’re not,’ the man said. ‘At this time
of the year, Abbé Grassaud is not at his presbytery but at the hermitage. I am
more than glad to take you there—’ he paused, ‘—for a fee.’

It was with a whistle then that he set off
with Rahn and Eva in the back, bouncing among baskets full of produce. But it
was only a short ride before the road widened and they saw a small sign and a
level area. The man let them down and told Rahn to ring the bell. He said
someone from the hermitage would hear it and come to greet them.

The bell’s clang resonated over the gorges and
it seemed a long moment before they saw a monk in a coarse grey cassock making
his way along the overgrown path to them. When he arrived, puffing for his
efforts, he revealed himself to be young and friendly and when Rahn told him
whom they had come to see, he smiled.

‘Ah yes, the abbé is here. But it will soon be
time for the service, and if you want to talk to him we had better hurry.’ He
looked at the girl fleetingly, fearfully, and bent his eyes to his sandals.
‘I’m afraid it isn’t possible for a woman to enter. I’m sorry, but women are
welcome during Easter and the time of pilgrimage only.’

Rahn looked at the young man gravely. ‘It is a
delicate matter – the mademoiselle is Abbé Cros’s niece. Unfortunately,
he died yesterday and she has come to tell Abbé Grassaud the news. You see,
they were good friends.’

The monk looked a little embarrassed. ‘How
sad. I’m sorry for your loss, but it does not change things – we must
abide by our rules.’

‘Go on, I’ll be all right,’ Eva said,
emphatically. ‘I’ll just wait here.’

Rahn hesitated. ‘You’d better stay out of
sight then, mademoiselle. I won’t be long.’ He didn’t like leaving her; so many
strange things had happened these last hours and no matter how annoying she
was, she was still only a woman and therefore vulnerable. Seeing no other way
around it he relented, following the monk over the narrow rocky path while
looking over his shoulder now and again until they reached a series of
buildings that seemed to be built into the mountain, penetrating deep into the
natural caves behind them. Rahn needed a brandy, his head hurt and the bee was
resting, but he thought that now and again he could hear the occasional buzzing
through the novice’s commentary on the history of the hermitage.

‘We believe that a hermit found these caves in
the seventh century,’ the man was saying, ‘he saw that they had everything he
needed to survive: shelter, water from a spring, vegetation, roots and herbs
and quiet from the world. Eventually others joined him. The original grotto is
dedicated to Mary Magdalene, who was also a hermit. We Franciscans only came
here in the fifteenth century. A long time later, in the eighteenth century, an
epidemic struck the town of Saint-Paul-de-Fenouillet, so the townsfolk placed
themselves under the protection of Saint Anthony, the patron saint of hermits,
and there was a miracle.

The epidemic was cut short. The townspeople,
full of gratitude, built the chapel inside the large cave.’

‘So that’s why a hermit leads the procession
during Ash Wednesday at Bugarach?’

‘Yes,’ the man said. ‘Saint Anthony is revered
in these parts.’

They descended further until they entered a
building in which a large vaulted grotto had been converted into a chapel
formed out of the existing rock. It was cool, and sparsely lit by votive and
altar candles. The monk gestured for Rahn to take off his hat, which he did,
reluctantly. The chapel was essentially a cave and so when Rahn made his way
down the nave to the altar he felt no anxiety at all; in fact, the fog was
lifting and behind it his instincts were becoming sharper. On the left near the
steps that led upwards to the sacred space there was a sculpture of Saint
Anthony but when Rahn looked to the right he was stopped in his tracks. A stone
tablet like a large grave marker stood against the grotto wall. Inscribed into
the stone he was surprised to see the Sator Square. Above it the sculpted head
of a man screamed in terrible pain, his jaws open wide.

‘Oh!’ the novice said. ‘Do you like it? No one
knows how old it is. We think it may even be older than the original hermit who
lived here. Some say it is older than a thousand years. The inscription, Sator
Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas, means the Great Sower holds in His hand all works
– and all works the Great Sower holds in His hand. In other words, God is
the sower and He inspires all the creative work of man. Man should not think
himself greater than God. In fact even here in this hermitage we have an
example of how small we are in the presence of God’s designs. The cavities in
this mountain go deep into the Earth and there is another gallery even larger
than this whose access, in the grotto of Mary Magdalene, is now forbidden.
There was a priest who decided to explore these cavities—’

‘That’s right.’ An old monk entered the chapel
now. Rahn guessed he must be somewhere in the vicinity of eighty years. His
face was a landscape of wrinkles whose folds had overcome what had once been a
cleft chin and nearly buried those squinting eyes whose gaze was suspicious and
wary. ‘It was Albert Fonçay,’ he said. ‘He ventured into our network of tunnels
. . . they say he was accompanied by a nun, Marie-Bernard Brauge. No one knows
what happened to the nun but Albert Fonçay was discovered coming out of the
grotto three days later, gravely injured. He had no recall of the events. He
lapsed in and out of consciousness and when he woke he could only manage to
utter incoherent phrases. He died three weeks after his ordeal, delirious and
in terror for his soul. Since then the entrance has been closed. The
sub-earthly ethers,’ he said, ‘are dangerous. In the Earth lies the potential
for the greatest evil and this tablet is placed here to remind us of this. Now,
who are you and what do you want?’

‘I’ve come about Abbé Cros . . .’

‘Eugene?’ he said.

‘I’m afraid he is dead,’ Rahn said.

‘What?’ The old man frowned, squinting.

‘Yes, unfortunately.’

‘Cros is dead?’ The news having sunk in, he
took himself to a pew to sit down. ‘But how?’

‘He drowned yesterday, in the small pond in
his garden.’

The old man paused. He told the other monk to
leave them alone and when he was sure the young man had gone, he stared upwards
at Rahn with unreserved distrust. ‘What was he doing in the pond?’

‘I think he was trying to find something
– a key he had hidden there,’ Rahn told him.

‘The key was in the pond?’ The man looked
down; many thoughts were apparently crossing his venerable mind.

‘So, you know what it was for?’

‘What?’ he said, coming out of his
contemplation.

‘The key?’

‘No . . . I . . . well . . .’ The abbé seemed
at a loss.

‘The key opened the tabernacle at Bugarach
– in it we found a list of names,’ Rahn said.

‘You have the list? Let me see it!’ Grassaud
ordered.

‘Do you know what it’s for, Abbé Grassaud?’

‘How should I know?’

‘Because your name is on it.’

The old man started to wheeze. ‘My name . . .
on the list?’

‘Yes, and so is your church, along with a
number of other churches and their priests.’

‘A number – how many?’

‘You saw Abbé Cros a week ago, is that so?’

‘Well, yes . . .’

‘After you left he was somewhat upset,’ Rahn
said.

The old man faltered. ‘I don’t know what you
are getting at with these questions—’

‘What did you want with him, Abbé?’

‘It was just a visit to an old friend.’ He
shrugged it off, but Rahn could see an underlying anxiety.

‘Did he tell you anything about the list?’

‘Go away and leave me alone! I don’t know
anything! My advice to you is to go, throw that list out and forget you ever
saw it!’

‘But I’m afraid it’s too late for that,’ Rahn
said.

‘Too late?’

‘The magistrate of Arques has disappeared,
there are two men dead and a policeman involved – an inspector from
Paris.’

This must have made an impression on the abbé
because he sat back with a look of defeat on his face. ‘An inspector from
Paris? What does he want?’

‘He happened to be at Carcassonne when the
call came in about the abbé’s unfortunate accident, and now he’s investigating
it in connection to a group called La Cagoule. Have you heard of them?’