Labyrinth (25 page)

Bewildered, Alice ran her hands over the stone. She turned to the left and right, seeking an explanation, but the space was completely empty. At last, panic took over. She ran toward the exit to the street, expecting to see the black robed men behind her, chasing her, swooping down on her.

Outside, everything was as it had been before.

It’s okay. You’re okay.
Breathing heavily, Alice slumped back against the wall. As she got herself under control, she realized the emotion she was feeling was not terror any more, but grief. She had no need of a history book to tell her something terrible had happened in this place. There was an atmosphere of suffering, scars that could not be hidden by concrete or stone. The ghosts told their own story. When she put a hand up to her face, she found she was crying.

As soon as her legs were strong enough to carry her, she headed back toward the center of town. She was determined to put as much space between herself and Saint-Etienne as she could. She couldn’t account for what was happening to her, but she wasn’t going to give in.

Reassured by the normal, everyday life going on all around her, Alice found herself in a small, pedestrian square. In the top right-hand corner there was a brasserie with a cyclamen-pink awning and rows of gleaming silver chairs and round tables laid out on the pavement.

Alice got the only remaining table and ordered straight away, making a concerted effort to relax. She knocked back a couple of glasses of water, then leaned back in her chair and tried to enjoy the touch of the sun on her face. She poured herself a glass of rose, added a few ice cubes, and took a mouthful. It wasn’t like her to be so easily freaked out.

But then you’re not in such great emotional shape.

All year she’d been living fiat out. She’d split up with her long-term boyfriend. The relationship had been dying on its feet for years and it was a relief to be on her own, but it was no less painful for that. Her pride was battered and her heart was bruised. To forget about him, she’d worked too hard and played too hard, anything to not brood about where things had gone wrong. Two weeks in the south of France was supposed to recharge her batteries. Get her back on an even keel.

Alice pulled a face.
Some holiday
.

The arrival of the waiter put paid to any further self-analysis. The omelet was perfect, yellow and runny on the inside, with generous chunks of mushroom and plenty of parsley. Alice ate with a fierce concentration. Only when she was mopping up the last threads of olive oil with her bread, did she start to turn her mind to how she was going to spend the rest of the afternoon.

By the time the coffee came, Alice knew.

The Bibliotheque de Toulouse was a large, square stone building. Alice flashed her British Library Readers’ Room pass at a bored and inattentive assistant at the desk, which got her in. After getting lost on the stairs a few times, she found herself in the extensive general history section. On either side of the central aisle were long, polished wooden desks with a spine of reading lamps running along the center of the tables. Few of the seats were occupied at this time on a hot, July afternoon.

At the far end, spanning the width of the room, was what Alice was looking for: a row of computer terminals. Alice registered at the reception desk, was given a password and allocated a workstation.

As soon as she was connected, Alice typed the word “labyrinth” in the box on the search engine. The green loading bar at the bottom of the screen filled up quickly. Rather than relying on her own memory, she was confident she’d find a match for her labyrinth somewhere among all the hundreds of sites. It was so obvious she couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of it earlier.

Straight away, the differences between a traditional labyrinth and her memory of the image carved on the cave wall and ring were obvious. A classical labyrinth was made up of intricately connected concentric circles leading in ever-decreasing circles to the center, whereas she was pretty sure the one in the Pic de Soularac had been a combination of dead ends and straight lines which doubled back on themselves, leading nowhere. It was more like a maze.

The true ancient origins of the labyrinth symbol and mythologies associated with it were complex and difficult to trace. The earliest designs were thought to be more than three thousand years old. Labyrinth symbols had been discovered carved in wood, rock, tile or stone, as well as in woven designs or constructed into the natural environment as turf or garden labyrinths.

The first labyrinths in Europe dated from the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age, from 1200 to 500 B.C., and were discovered around the early trading centers of the Mediterranean. Carvings dated between 900 and 500 B.C. had been found at Val Camonica in northern Italy and Pontevedra in Galicia, and in the top northwestern corner of Spain at Cabo Fisterra Finisterre. Alice looked hard at the illustration. It was more reminiscent of what she’d seen in the cave than anything else so far. She tilted her head to one side. Close, but not a match.

It made sense that the symbol would have traveled from the east with the merchants and traders from Egypt and the outer reaches of the Roman Empire, adapted and changed by its interaction with other cultures. It also made sense that the labyrinth, evidently a pre-Christian symbol, should have been hijacked by the Christian church. Both the Byzantine and the Roman Church were guilty of absorbing much older symbols and myths into their religious orthodoxy.

Several sites were dedicated to the most famous labyrinth of them all: Knossos, on the island of Crete where, according to legend, the mythical Minotaur, half-man, half-bull, had been imprisoned. Alice skipped them, instinct telling her that line of research would take her nowhere. The only point worth noting was that Minoan labyrinthine designs had been excavated at the site of the ancient city of Avaris in Egypt, dating back to 1550 B.C., as well as found in temples at Kom Ombo in Egypt and Seville.

Alice filed the information at the back of her mind.

From the twelfth and thirteenth centuries onward, the labyrinth symbol was appearing regularly in hand-copied medieval manuscripts that circulated around the monasteries and courts of Europe, with scribes embellishing and developing illustrations, creating their own trademark designs.

By the early medieval period, a mathematically perfect eleven-circuit, twelve-wall, four-axis labyrinth had become the most popular form of all. She looked at a reproduction of the carving of a labyrinth on the wall of the thirteenth-century church of St. Pantaleon in Arcera, northern Spain and another, slightly earlier, from the cathedral of Lucca in Tuscany. She clicked on a map showing the occurrence of labyrinths in European churches, chapels and cathedrals.

That’s extraordinary.

Alice could hardly believe her eyes. There were more labyrinths in France than in the whole of Italy, Belgium, Germany, Spain, England and Ireland put together: Amiens, St. Quentin, Arras, St. Omer, Caen and Bayeux in northern France; Poitiers, Orleans, Sens and Auxerre in the center; Toulouse and Mirepoix in the southwest; the list went on and on.

The most famous pavement labyrinth of all was in northern France, set in the center of the nave of the first—and most impressive—of the Gothic medieval cathedrals, Chartres.

Alice smacked her hand on the table, causing several disapproving heads to pop up around her. Of course. How stupid could she be? Chartres was twinned with her hometown of Chichester, on the English south coast. In fact, her first visit abroad had been on a school trip to Chartres when she was eleven. She had vague memories of it raining all the time and standing huddled in a raincoat, cold and damp, beneath imposing stone pillars and vaults. But she had no recollection of the labyrinth.

There was no labyrinth in Chichester Cathedral, but the city was also twinned with Ravenna in Italy. Alice ran her finger across the screen until she’d found what she was looking for. Laid into the marble floor of the church of San Vitale in Ravenna was a labyrinth. According to the caption it was only a quarter of the size of the labyrinth in Chartres and dated to a much earlier period in history, perhaps as far back as the fifth century a.d., but was there all the same.

Alice finished cutting and pasting the text she wanted into a text document and hit Print. Once it was going, she typed “Cathedral Chartres France” into the search box.

Although there had been some sort of structure on the site as far back as the eighth century, she discovered the current cathedral in Chartres dated from the thirteenth century. Ever since then, esoteric beliefs and theories had attached themselves to the building. There were rumors that within its vaulting roof and elaborate stone pillars was concealed a secret of great significance. Despite the strenuous efforts of the Catholic Church, these legends and myths endured.

No one knew on whose orders the labyrinth had been built or for what purpose.

Alice selected the paragraphs she needed, and then exited.

The last page finished printing and the machine fell silent. All around people were beginning to pack up. The sour-faced receptionist caught her eye and tapped her watch.

Alice nodded and gathered her papers, then joined the line at the counter waiting to check out. The queue moved slowly. Shafts of late-afternoon sunlight fell through the high windows in Jacob’s ladders, making the particles of dust dance in the beams.

The woman in front of Alice had an armful of books to check out and seemed to have a query about each one. She let her mind focus on the worry that had been bugging her all afternoon. Was it likely that in all the hundreds of images she’d looked at, in all the hundreds and thousands of words, there hadn’t been a single exact match for the stone labyrinth at the Re de Soularac?

Possible, but not likely.

The man behind her was standing too close, like someone on a tube train trying to read the newspaper over her shoulder. Alice turned and glared at him. He took a step back. His face was vaguely familiar.

“Oui, merci,
” she said, as she got to the desk and paid for the printing she’d done. Nearly thirty sheets in all.

As she emerged on to the steps of the library the bells of Saint-Etienne were striking seven. She’d been in there longer than she realized.

Keen to be on her way now, Alice hurried back to where she’d parked the car on the far side of the river. She was so caught up in her thoughts that she didn’t notice the man from the queue following her along the river walkway, keeping a safe distance. And she didn’t notice him take a phone from his pocket and make a call as she pulled out into the slow-moving traffic.

THE GUARDIANS OF THE BOOKS

CHAPTER 26

Besiers

JULHET 1209

Dusk was falling as Alais reached the plains outside the town of Coursan.

She had made good speed, following the old Roman road through the Minervois toward Capestang, across the sweeping hemp fields, the
canabieres,
and the emerald seas of barley.

Each day since setting out from Carcassonne, Alai’s had ridden until the sun became too fierce. Then she and Tatou took shelter and rested, before traveling on until dusk when the air was filled with biting insects and the cries of night jays, owls and bats.

The first night she’d found lodgings in the fortified town of Azille with friends of Esclarmonde. As she traveled farther east, she saw fewer people in the fields and villages and those that she did see were suspicious, wariness showing in their dark eyes. She heard rumors of atrocities committed by renegade bands of French soldiers or by
routiers,
mercenaries, bandits. Each tale was more bloody, more wicked than the last.

Alai’s pulled Tatou to a walk, not sure if she should press on to Coursan or look for shelter close by. The clouds were marching fast across an increasingly angry gray sky and the air was very still. In the distance, there was the occasional rumble of thunder, growling like a bear waking from a winter sleep. Alai’s did not want to risk being caught in the open when the storm hit.

Tatou was nervous. Alai’s could feel her tendons bristling beneath her coat and twice she shied away from sudden movements of hare or fox in hedgerows at the roadside.

Ahead Alai’s could see there was a small copse of oak and ash. It wasn’t dense enough to be the natural summer habitat of larger animals, such as wild boar or lynx. But the trees were tall and generous and the tops of their branches looked to be woven tightly together, like entwined fingers, which would provide good cover. The fact there was a clear path, a winding ribbon of dry earth worn away by countless feet, suggested the wood was a popular local shortcut to the town.

Tatou shifted uneasily beneath her as a flicker of lightning momentarily lit the darkening sky. It helped her make up her mind. She would wait until the storm had passed over.

Whispering encouragement, Alai’s persuaded the mare forward into the dark green embrace of the wood.

The men had lost their quarry some time earlier. Only the threat of a storm prevented them doubling back and returning to camp.

After several weeks of riding, their pale French skin was tanned dark by the fierce southern sun. Their traveling armor and surcoats, bearing the arms of their master, lay hidden in the thicket. They hoped yet to retrieve something from their abortive mission.

A sound. The crack of a dried branch, the rolling gait of a bridled horse, the iron of its hooves striking occasional pieces of stone.

A man with a mouthful of jagged, blackened teeth crawled forward to get a better look. Some way off he could see a figure on a small, chestnut Arab threading its way through the woods. He leered. Perhaps their
sortie
was not going to be a waste of time after all. The rider’s clothes were plain and worth little, but a horse of that calibre would fetch a good price.

He threw a stone at his companion hidden on the other side of the track.

“
Leve-toi
!” “he said, jerking his head toward Alai’s. ”
Regarde
.“