The Priest's Madonna (15 page)

“You heard me?” she said.

“I wasn’t far away.”

She didn’t know how to respond. He stood before her, the cavity at his throat gently swelling and caving with his breath. The span of his shoulders seemed vast, and she imagined herself encircled in his sinuous arms, his callused, dry palms warming her back. She wanted him to tell her she was special, to say out loud that he loved her more than all the rest. But how could she ask him to make such a statement? His eyes—large, dark, heavy-lidded— made her think of the enervating eyes of the crowd, and she saw that her desire for him was no less desperate and despicable than the desire of the multitudes. She was just another hen pecking at his feet. She turned and ran into the dark.

“Miryam!” he called, and followed her. She ran faster, feeling the strap of her sandals digging into her heels.

“Don’t run, Miryam!” he shouted. “You’re always running!” She felt a breeze at her elbow from his hand as he tried to catch her, but she pulled her arm out of reach and kept on. The well was up ahead—she’d made the trip often enough that day that she could find it even in the dark. It would be a long fall and the water would be cold, but it would be no darker than the night.

She reached the well and gripped the stone, then threw one leg over the side. A cold wind rose from the hole, and she balanced for a moment, feeling the contrast in temperature between the warm night and the frigid depth of the well. In that moment, he grabbed her around the waist and dragged her off the edge, scraping the inside of her thigh against the stone. He threw her to the ground and stood over her, panting.

She curled into a ball.

“Stand up,” he said. When she did not move, he shouted it: “Stand up, Miryam!” He grabbed her wrist and pulled her to her feet, but she fell again to her knees, her face in the dirt, and covered her head with her arms. He could beat her if he chose; she would not look him in the eye again.

“Miryam!” he shouted again, a lament. Then she felt him kneel before her, felt his hands cover her own. He whispered, still out of breath, “Don’t you know, Miryam? Don’t you know how I need you?”

She began to weep, her tears falling on the dusty ground. He took her by the elbows and gently lifted her until she was facing him. He smoothed her hair, brushed the dust from her face, cupped her chin in his hand, and then kissed her lightly on the mouth. His lips were dry. She kept her eyes closed, wanting only to feel, not to see. His breath warmed her face. Then it was gone. She opened her eyes. He knelt in the dust facing her, his hands open, palms upturned, as if waiting for her to place a gift into them.

“Let me heal you, Miryam,” he said. “I need you with me. Let me heal you.”

“Oh, Rabbi,” she said. She bowed her head and folded her hands at her chest, as she’d seen others do.

And as the seven devils left her, one after the next, keening like petulant gulls, racking her body with convulsions, he held her, and when the last one was gone—its wailing becoming thunderous, and then dissipating into the night until there was no sound but the clicking and whirring of the insects and the sure beat of his heart, so close, as if inside her head—he lifted her in his arms and carried her through the field, back to the fire, where he laid her on a bed of grass, pulled his cloak over her, and sat with her, his hand on her head, warming her scalp, until she fell asleep.

I
T HAPPENED EARLYone spring morning, before Mass. I was sweeping the sanctuary floor when M. Lébadou cleared his throat behind me. “Excuse me, Marie, but I want to show you something.”

I followed him to the base of the bell tower stairs. He pointed to the old oak baluster that usually stood in the corner of the hall. It was lying on its side as if it had been kicked over. Chunks of plaster littered the floor beside it. “I was just coming in to ring the bell,” said M. Lébadou, “when I saw this.” His lips quivered with rage. “That baluster is hundreds of years old. It’s been here since the church was built. There’s no cause for these fellows from Limoux to tear the place up so. The Lord’s house isn’t some wood shop.”

I bent near the baluster to lift it, and noticed a strange glint inside the capital. A section of it had been cut away, leaving a hollow shaft. On the floor was the missing piece. When the baluster fell, the piece had been knocked from its slot, revealing this narrow hiding place, where something glinted.

I righted the baluster, then stood in front of it, blocking M. Lébadou’s view. “Yes, monsieur, you’re right. I’ll have a word with Monsieur
le curé.
”

“The whole job’s a disaster,” he muttered as he plodded up the spiral staircase to the bell tower.

When he was out of sight, I reached inside the slot and pulled out a small silver flask, corked with a handcut plug and engraved with the initials
A. B.
I brought the flask to my nose, expecting the scent of liquor, but I smelled only dust. When I tried to remove the cork, it turned to powder in my fingers.

The bell clanged brilliantly, deafeningly, four, five, six times. With one of my hairpins, I scraped away about a third of the cork still lodged in the neck of the flask; most of the rest of it fell into the bottle. Inside I saw a tiny rolled piece of paper.

By this time, I heard M. Lébadou making his slow way down again, so I quickly slipped the flask into my pocket and then fitted the dislodged piece of the capital back into place. As he came into view, I was sweeping up the plaster debris. He stopped on the final step and leaned against the railing, catching his breath. He was spry, but the climb up and down the stairs had winded him. “Pardon me, Marie,” he said, “but I wonder if you know what else Monsieur
le curé
intends to restore around here.” His voice was ac cusatory, as if the whole renovation project were my idea.

“No,” I said. “He doesn’t share his plans with me.”

M. Lébadou raised his eyebrows. “He acts as if all that’s old is rotten. But there’s virtue in age, too, Marie. You can tell him.” Taking the final step down to the floor, he ambled proudly outside.

Quickly, I sat on the bottom step and tried to shake the paper into my hand. A stubborn piece of cork blocked it, so I pierced the corner of the paper with my hairpin and extracted it. It was brittle; I unrolled it gingerly. At the top of the page was a small sketch of what appeared to be the interior of our sanctuary. The artist had paid the most attention to the secondary altar—the small one, recessed into the north wall, dedicated to the Virgin—and the area surrounding it, outlining the stones in a darker tone. Beneath the sketch were a few lines of text, apparently Latin, composed in small and shaky lettering.

I walked back to the nave. Mme Flèche, the baker’s wife, had arrived and was kneeling in her pew, her head bent over her rosary. I rolled the paper tightly and held it against the flat of my palm, then went to examine the Virgin’s altar. I counted the number of stones before it, noticing the largest stone directly in front. It seemed abnormally large, in fact—larger than any other stone on the floor. Then I left, glancing once again at Mme Flèche. Her eyes were closed, her lips silently enunciating the words of the prayer.

Outside, I saw no one about, and so I unrolled the paper once more. The drawing was a near-perfect replication of the altar, down to the dimensions of each of the stones on the floor. I noticed a new mark: a faint dot in the right-hand corner of the largest stone.

I felt vulnerable standing in the daylight, holding the crumbling piece of paper. Already one of the corners had flaked into my palm. I could not carry it around with me, even in my pocket, without inflicting further damage, nor did I know of a proper hiding place. I decided to bring it to Bérenger, as he would be able to translate the Latin, and would certainly be able to keep it for me.

He opened the presbytery door at my knock, a piece of bread in hand. “Come in, Marie, come in,” he said, pulling out a chair at the small kitchen table. He offered me the seat, then halted when he saw my face, which must have appeared disturbed. “Is something wrong?”

Nervously, I presented him with the paper and flask and described to him where I had found them. I pointed out the details I had noticed, including the faint dot on the largest stone before the altar. Bérenger peered at the paper with interest.

“What does it say? The Latin.”

He paused a moment before answering. “It’s a fragment from scripture. Job. ‘Have the gates of death been revealed to you? Have you seen the gates of deep darkness?’ ”

“Strange,” I said.

He examined the paper again for some time. Then, popping his last morsel of bread in his mouth, he said, “Show me where you found this, Marie.”

At the base of the bell tower stairs, I showed him the wooden baluster and slid the section of the capital away to reveal the hollow compartment. He knelt before it as I had and peered into the slot, then slipped his hand in and felt around. When he found nothing more, he fitted the piece of the capital into the slot, then removed it and slid it in once again. “Remarkable,” he whispered.

“Whoever hid it went to a lot of trouble,” I said.

“Yes.”

“What do you think it means?” I asked.

“I really couldn’t say,” he said, thoughtfully rubbing the flask with his thumb.

“Do you think something’s been hidden? That dot seems intentional.”

“Such as what?” He turned to me from his squat.

“I don’t know. Something valuable.”

“A treasure, you mean?” His eyes flashed, as if he’d uttered something scandalous.

I shrugged self-consciously. “Maybe.”

“Could be,” he said. “Or it could be the dot is just a drop of ink that fell on the page.”

We had no time to discuss the paper further. Bérenger had to prepare for Mass, and I had my chores to attend to. But I spent the hours away from him thinking of nothing but the little flask, the parchment, and its possible meaning. It had to have been a priest who composed the message. Even now, most of the adults in our village could neither read nor write—they got their news at the tavern or the market, memorized scripture at Mass, and learned fairy stories and folktales from their grandparents. Ours was one of the few literate families in town. It might have been possible that the writer had copied the text from a Latin Vulgate Bible, which he or she would have gotten from the priest. But even so, to have carved the slot so carefully from the baluster—it would have taken time, and could only have been done by someone with regular access to the church.

So, likely it was a priest who had written the message and hidden the flask. But what would he have hidden beneath the stone? And why had he included the grim passage from Job?

The conversation at dinner that afternoon was strained and fueled almost entirely by my mother. Bérenger and I were too distracted to talk. I kept glancing in his direction, only to meet his impenetrable stare, at which point I’d look away. Moments later, we’d play the game again. I could not understand his gaze; I thought he might be angry with me, though I could not figure out why. Exasperated, my mother finally set her spoon down and scolded me. “Stop playing the coquette, Marie! You’re driving us both batty!”

When the meal was finished, I declared I had to do some dusting in the presbytery, and I followed Bérenger, practically tripping on his heels. Closing the front door behind us, I said in a triumphant voice, “He was a priest!”

But he was not interested in my hypothesis. “Listen, Marie. You haven’t told anyone about that letter I received last year, have you?”

“No,” I replied, surprised by the question.

“Not Michelle? Not even your mother?”

“No, no,” I assured him. “I haven’t told a soul, monsieur. Just as you requested.”

He breathed an audible sigh of relief. “Thank the Lord.”

“Why?” I asked.

He studied me. “You must have guessed the identity of our generous donor, Marie,” he said finally.

“I had a suspicion, yes,” I said.

“It was he who got me reinstated here. I owe him a great debt of gratitude.” And he proceeded to tell me the following story.

Late one night, a man had arrived on Bérenger’s doorstep in Narbonne, carrying an envelope with a letter from the archduke. The letter instructed him to open an account at a certain bank in Perpignan. The archduke would then transfer three thousand francs to Bérenger’s account within a week. It also informed him that he would be hearing from the bishop about his reinstatement in Rennes-le-Château. The only caveat was that Bérenger would be expected to report to the Austrian from time to time on the progress of the restoration and to inform him if he found anything out of the ordinary.

Bérenger took the train to Perpignan the following morning, opened the account, and then returned to Narbonne to await further news. As promised, a few days later he received a letter from Carcassonne informing him that his services were once again needed here, in Rennes-le-Château.

“Evidently, the man wields a great influence with the Church, Marie. He must be powerful indeed.”

“Yes,” I agreed, amazed. “So the flask, the message—do you think he knows of it?”

“I’m not sure. But I have promised to tell him what I find.”

“Yes,” I said, gloomily. I was reluctant to relinquish the discovery just then, to hand it over to a strange man in a foreign land who, for all I knew, might send another messenger to take the flask, lift the stone, and remove whatever was underneath it.

Bérenger, perhaps sensing my reluctance, added, “I would be grateful, Marie, if you would help me draft the letter.”

And so we spent the next hour together in his new office on the second floor, which consisted of a handsome rolltop desk, a kerosene lamp, and two chairs. A gnarled oak branch stood in the corner of the room—something he’d picked up on one of his walks—and on the wall across from the desk was a terra-cotta crucifix supporting the body of Christ. Bérenger dictated the first few sentences, but once he began to tell the story of finding the flask, he faltered. “How exactly did it happen, Marie?”

I began to narrate the story aloud once more, but he interrupted me.