The Sixth Key (28 page)

‘Do you believe in the Devil?’ Eva said to
him.

‘The Devil . . . you mean Lucifer, the one
that was cast out of Heaven? Well . . . yes, I do believe in him.’

‘Lucifer,’ she said sleepily. ‘Isn’t he the
one who absconded with Isis, the keeper of God’s wisdom?’

‘Yes, you see it in fables and fairy tales
– the damsel in distress who is eventually rescued from the dragon by a
hero; the damsel is a symbol, she represents a man’s soul.’

‘Really? And the dragon?’

‘The Cathars told a story to their children
– would you like to hear it?’

‘Mmm.’ She drew near to him, he could feel her
warm breath on his cheek.

‘It went like this,’ he said, softly. ‘The
good gods of light created human beings and sent them to Earth, where lived the
dark dragon of matter. When the dragon swallowed mankind whole, a seed was planted
in it for its redemption because inside it now there was not merely darkness,
but light as well.’

‘I see, so, to redeem the dragon you have to
get inside it, you have to enter into its belly . . . is that what the story
means?’ She yawned.

‘Yes, before you can find Heaven you have to
go through Hell, because Hell tests the nature of a man.’

Eva said, almost inaudibly, drifting off, ‘And
if you were to save me from the dragon, you’d be saving yourself, because I am
really your soul . . .’

‘I would be saving all that was holy and
beautiful and virginal in me, do you see?’

But no answer came, Eva was asleep.

He waited for her
breathing to become regular and more rhythmic before allowing fatigue to
overtake him. Soon he was dreaming that Etienne was in his arms, thin and
angular and beautiful. It was once more their last night together. She moved
away from him and lit a Russian cigarette and looked at him through the velvet
darkness and her face melted away a moment, revealing the deformed grimace of a
devil whose mouth opened wide in a terrible screech – Viva Angelina!

Rahn woke with a start. Eva was not in the bed
but he had no time to think on this particular strangeness because there was a
clanging of the church bells that tore through the birthing day like a
cataclysm. With his nerves still raw and on alert from his dream, he jumped out
of bed and changed into his only dry clothes. Soon he was out in the streets
meeting the confused faces of others, who, like him, had come to see what the
noise was about. Something was wrong, terribly wrong. Where was Eva? He pushed
his way to the church just in time to see the young priest stepping out,
looking pale and out of sorts.

The sun was rising now and a faint light came
through the windblown trees.

‘What is it?’ Rahn said to the stunned abbé.

‘In the church,’ he managed to say. ‘It is
horrible!’

Rahn hurried through the door, past the
devil’s stoup and, with the confessional and the grand relief of the Sermon on
the Mount behind him, he paused to look down the central nave. Breathless,
cold, anxious, exhausted, he tried to see but it took a moment to adjust his
eyes. His fear of churches momentarily forgotten, he hurried over the chequered
tiles to the enclosure, seeing a little more and then a little more, until he
paused.

What he saw made the old woman’s words return
to his mind.

Beware
of that raven
!

A man approached, announcing in a tedious and
perfunctory manner that he was the mayor and wanted to know what was going on.

When he saw what Rahn could see he cried, ‘Mon
Dieu! Wicked priests! Wicked priests are born again as ravens! Saunière!’ He
sank to his knees, crossing himself.

Rahn ignored him and concentrated on the scene
before him. A black raven had been sliced open and its carcass was hanging from
the crucifix by a cord tied around its neck. Below, on the altar, someone had
placed a white cloth on which a symbol, a circle and a cross, had been drawn in
blood. In each quadrant letters were drawn that when read clockwise formed the
word AGLA.

Beside
him, the mayor awoke to his civic duty and sent all the townspeople to their
homes, commandeering two men to take down the bird and the white sheet and its
contents and to burn them outside the town gates.

In the meantime Rahn looked for Abbé Lucien
and found him at his presbytery, keeping company with the last person Rahn
would have expected. It was Eva, looking spritely and, for all intents and
purposes, not at all touched by their shared nocturnal ordeal.

‘Hello Otto, I woke earlier and went for a
walk. I returned immediately when I heard the bells. What a terrible upset!’
she said, taking the kettle off the hob to make tea.

The abbé looked distraught and gestured for
Rahn to sit at the table with him, perhaps the same table at which Saunière had
once sat before his fire. Rahn acquiesced and, pushing aside his suspicions,
tried to formulate his thoughts into questions.

‘She went too far this time! To desecrate a
church on All Saints’ Day! Pure evil,’ the abbé said, shaking his head, his
blond eyelashes batting nervously.

‘Who do you mean?’ Rahn said to him.

‘Madame Dénarnaud of course, who else?’ He
blushed with anger. ‘I saw her last night. I was coming back from the mayor’s
house on my way to the presbytery and I saw her at the church.’

‘What time was that?’ Eva sat down, her
good-natured domesticity disappearing in the wake of a cool detached curiosity
that made her brown eyes brilliant, like two burning coals.

‘Quite late; you see I ate at the mayor’s
house, as I do every week. We usually play cards, a bit of harmless fun. It
must have been well past midnight. It was raining and the wind was wild, as you
know, and the woman looked wet through and I thought she might be sleepwalking
because she is known for it. She told me she had been praying in the church but
I doubted it. I offered to help her to the villa but she told me to go to
Hell!’ He shrugged. ‘I would have locked the church, as I usually do before
going to bed but I realised I didn’t have the keys, so I decided to leave it.
The mayor is trying to call the police but the telephone lines came down in the
storm.’

Rahn sat forward. ‘I doubt if Madame Dénarnaud
could reach as high as the crucifix to hang the raven without help.’ But Rahn
remembered the madame’s words: Beware of that raven. And he couldn’t deny that
it all sounded suspicious. He rubbed his sore head. ‘Do you know why the
mayor’s first impression on seeing the bird was to say that it was Saunière?’

The young abbé shrugged. ‘Why don’t you ask
him?’

‘Abbé, what did Saunière find in that church?’

He looked up. ‘What has that to do with
anything?’

‘All I know is, two men are dead in as many
days and now this sign in the church—’

‘Two men?’

‘The Abbé Cros and another man.’

‘What connection could there be between the
death of the Abbé Cros at Bugarach and this horrible desecration?’ He frowned
then and something must have occurred to him, because he looked at both of them
and said, ‘Who are you?

Why are you here?’

‘We want to know what
Saunière found,’ Eva said.

‘Treasure hunters! I should have known.’

‘Listen,’ Rahn said, ‘some years ago Cros was
investigating Saunière and a number of priests here in the Roussillon. He left
a list of names. We think the investigation had something to do with what
Saunière found here.’

‘I’ll tell you nothing at all!’ The abbé
crossed his arms, as stubborn as a child.

‘But Abbé, if you don’t help us, a third man
may die. A good friend of mine, the magistrate of Arques, and it will be on
your head.’

The abbé put a shaking hand to his brow and
seemed on the verge of tears. ‘Can I see the list?’

‘In a moment, but first you must tell us what
you know.’

‘All I know is what everybody knows, that
Saunière found something when the workers moved the Visigoth pillar to replace
the altar during the church renovations—’

‘Not the wooden baluster?’ Rahn asked.

‘Look, whatever he found, it made him rich.
Pillar, baluster, it makes no difference! I told you before, the villa, the
tower, the church – he built all of it and also renovated the presbytery
and the gardens. How could a priest afford to do all this with what he earned
from selling masses for the dead, which is what he was accused of doing? How
much can one make in a village this size, with no more than a hundred people?
He couldn’t have made so much money – unless he had made a pact with the
Devil.’

Rahn raised his brow.

‘You might think this unbelievable, but I
think it is true.’ The abbé looked down into his cooling tea. ‘In fact, this
rumour has saved me from boredom, God forgive me! You can imagine, this is not
a stimulating place to live, even for a priest, and so when I first arrived
here I passed the time sorting through the files left behind by previous abbés,
looking for clues. I came across a diary belonging to Abbé Saunière. When I
asked Madame Dénarnaud about it, she turned wild. She demanded that I give it
to her immediately but I refused and she has behaved rather abominably towards
me ever since. The old hag thinks everything that once belonged to Saunière is
hers for the taking, just because she inherited everything else. I told her,
the diary belongs to the church archives and I refused to part with it. Do you
know what she said? She said she would put a curse on me! Some say she and
Saunière were lovers but I don’t believe it; I think there was a far more
sinister union, which I dare not mention for staining my soul.’

‘Where’s the diary?’ Rahn said, leaning
forward slightly.

‘If I show you that, will you show me the
list?’

Rahn nodded, wary.

When he was gone, Rahn looked at Eva,
expecting to see some shared warmth, some conspiratorial acknowledgement of
their intimacy, but there seemed to be no trace of that vulnerable girl of the
night before. Her eyes betrayed nothing at all, as if the memory of it had been
erased from her mind.

She said, ‘You don’t honestly think it was the
madame who did that to the church. The old woman can hardly walk!’

Rahn shook his head and whispered: ‘She’s not
as feeble, nor as stupid, as she looks. Yesterday, when you went to fetch her a
blanket, while the abbé was out of earshot, she said to me, “Beware of that
raven” – referring to the abbé. What happens next? We find a raven
hanging on the altar, with its bowels cut out!’

He could say nothing more because the young
abbé returned, carrying a small book in his hands and a blush over his cheeks.

‘All is made clear,’ he said, ‘once you know
the chronology in this diary. Saunière spent an incredible sum and wrote a
timeline for all his renovations from the start, which was 1886, until the
finish, 1891. It all begins when he visits Abbé Boudet. Here he says, “
The abbé encouraged my desire to commence
renovations as soon as possible
.”

‘After that he finds something hidden in the
church and then removes the altar, whereupon a short time later he begins to
work on the foundations of the church. He writes: “Discovered a tomb in the
evening. Rain.”

‘He then makes a number of entries. He travels
to Carcassonne, to Rennes-les-Bains and to Coustassa. Here, he says, he met
with some priests: “
Saw the curé of
Névian, Gélis and Carrière: saw Cros and Secret—
”

‘See? He mentions a priest from Névian, though
I don’t know who he was, as well as Abbé Gélis of Coustassa and a certain
Carrière. At this time, Abbé Cros was the vicar-general of this diocese. It
wasn’t until later, in his near retirement, that he became the abbé of
Bugarach.’

‘From vicar-general to just an abbé, do you
mean he was demoted?’ Rahn asked.

The other man smiled, weakly. ‘Who can say? At
any rate, a certain Pierre Pradel was the secretary-general, I believe the word
secret was no doubt an abbreviation for secrétaire.’

‘Unless it means secret,’ Eva pointed out.

‘Yes,’ he said, perhaps surprised that this
had not occurred to him. ‘Saunière goes to Paris in 1892 to Saint Sulpice,’ he
continued, ‘where he visits with a certain Abbé Bieil and Abbé Hoffat. Then he
goes to Lyon, where he meets with Abbé Boulle.

The
penitents
!

‘When he comes back, he digs about in the
graveyard like a fox looking for a carcass and the mayor at the time complains
to the Bishop of Carcassonne – who is now one Monsignor Beauséjour
– that he is moving the graves about. This is a rumour, but it is
substantiated by the fact that soon Saunière erects a fence around the
graveyard with an iron gate, to which he alone holds the key. Now, some time
afterwards, Abbé Gélis is murdered and the police find a fortune secreted in
his house, thirteen thousand gold francs! Where did it come from? Who knows? In
the meantime, Saunière travels more and more, only returning to keep an eye on
his restoration works: the tower, the belvedere, the Villa Bethany. Next,
Monsignor Beauséjour suspends him, because he can’t explain where he got his
money but that doesn’t prevent him from celebrating the mass at the Villa Bethany.
Did you see the chapel in the annex yesterday?’

‘Yes, when we brought the madame in out of the
storm,’ Rahn said.

‘The parishioners were so mesmerised by
Saunière that they continued to go to him for mass even after the Bishop of
Carcassonne sent another priest to this town. At any rate, getting back to the
diary: after his suspension, Saunière continued his renovation work, as if
nothing had happened. He constructed his conservatory and here, you see, there
is a map of the church and his relocation of tombs, including the cavalry
cross. He was a wealthy man until the day he died.’

‘When did he die?’ Eva asked.

‘He had a stroke on the seventeenth of January
1915. The feast day of Saint Sulpice.’

Rahn sat stock-still. ‘He died of a stroke?’

‘Yes.’

‘On that date?’

‘Yes.’

Rahn was thinking that the Countess P, the
Abbé Cros and now Saunière had all suffered strokes. A coincidence? He didn’t
think so, but that date – the seventeenth of January – again! First
he finds that date in Monti’s notebook; then he discovers Verger had been
sentenced to death on that date; and now he learns that Saunière had also died
on that same date.

‘In the church register,’ the priest
continued, showing him the page whose topmost part was torn away, ‘Abbé Bigou,
Saunière’s predecessor, writes the following line twelve times.’ He showed
them.

Jesus of Galilee is not here.

Rahn paused. Bigou was the only priest they
knew nothing about on the list.

‘Jesus of Galilee is not here . . . in
Rennes-le-Château?’ Rahn asked.

‘Why would he write that?’ Eva leant in to
look.

‘Perhaps it means the Devil lives here,
because of whatever Marie Blanchefort gave him. You see, the page has been torn
out and interpolated in the register on the date of her death.’

‘Which was?’ Rahn said with expectation.

‘The seventeenth of January,’ the priest
announced.

Rahn was dumbfounded.

‘Do you know what she gave Abbé Bigou?’ Eva
asked.