The Tenth Chamber (33 page)

Barthomieu was not allowed to touch his dead brother until the soldiers were gone. He sat beside him, lifted his head onto his lap and stroked his grey fringe of hair. Through his tears he whispered, ‘Goodbye my brother, my friend. We have been brothers for two hundred and twelve years. How many brothers can say that? I fear I will join you soon. I pray I will meet you in Heaven.’

In the weeks that followed, the occasional visitor to Ruac Abbey reported the same stories. All over France, Templars were being tortured and burned at the stake. There was an orgy of violence throughout the land. Templar buildings and lands were being seized. No one suspected of keeping ties to the order was spared.

In his two hundred and twenty years of life Barthomieu never prayed harder. To the outside world, he looked like a man in his sixth decade, perhaps seventh. He looked as if there was plenty of life within his veins. But he knew this would be his last year. The Pope had set up an Inquisition chamber in Bordeaux and tales of human torches were spreading throughout the countryside. Word came that their abbot had been broken and burned.

What should he do? If Ruac abbey were seized, if the monks were martyred for their allegiance to Bernard, what would become of their secret? Should it die with them? Should it be protected for the ages? There was no one left with more wisdom than he. Jean was long dead. Nivard was dead. His abbot was dead. He had to rely on his own counsel.

Over scores of decades, he had acquired a good many skills, none better than scribe and bookbinder, and he emerged from a fitful bout of prayer with the firm resolution to put these skills to work. It was not for him to decide the disposition of their great secret. It was for God to decide. He would be God’s humble scribe. He would write down the story of the cave and the Enlightenment Tea for others to find. Or not. It would be up to God.

Lest it fell into the hands of the Inquisitors, he would cloak the text in a fiendishly clever code that Jean the infirmarer had produced years earlier to hide his herbalist recipes from prying eyes. If his manuscript were found by men whom God wished to discover its meaning, then
He
would enlighten them and lift its coded veil from their eyes. Barthomieu would be dead and buried, his work done.

So he began his work.

By the light of the sun and the flicker of the candle, he wrote his manuscript.

He wrote of Bernard.

He wrote of Nivard.

He wrote of Abélard and Héloïse.

He wrote of the cave, of Jean, of Enlightenment Tea, of Templars, of a long, long life in the service of God.

And when he was done, his true words concealed by Jean’s cipher, he used his skills as artist and illuminator to illustrate the manuscript with the plants that were important to the tale and the paintings that first caught the attention, so many years before, of two frail monks taking their recuperative exercise along the cliffs of Ruac.

And to refresh his fading memory, Barthomieu took one last visit to the cave. He went alone early one morning with a good torch in his hand and a heart full of emotion. He had not been there for well on a hundred years but the path was clear in his mind and the yawning mouth of the cave seemed to welcome him like an old friend.

He spent an hour inside and when he emerged, he rested on the ledge and feasted his eyes for the final time on the green, limitless expanse of the river valley. Then he slowly began his journey back to the abbey.

Back at his writing table, Barthomieu drew the images of the wondrous cave paintings from memory and finished the illustrations with a simple map showing a pilgrim how he might find the hidden cave. The book was ready for binding and he did so with love in his heart for his brothers, and especially Bernard. There was a special piece of red leather stored on a shelf in the scriptorium. He had never found a high-enough purpose for it; its moment had come. Over several days, he painstakingly bound the book and on its cover, he used his awls to carve the figure of Saint Bernard, his dear brother, complete with a heavenly halo floating above his fine head.

The book looked fine. Barthomieu was pleased but not completely so. It lacked a final touch which would make it truly a work befitting its subject. Under his mattress was a small silver box, a family heirloom, one of the few pretty objects not looted on that recent October day.

He melted it down over a hot fire and summoned Brother Michel to assist him.

At a small abbey like Ruac, out of necessity the monks often learned more than one skill. Over his long tutelage to the infirmarer, Jean, he also acquired a metal-working facility from the blacksmith and became reasonably adept at silversmithing. Barthomieu presented him the red-leather manuscript and asked him to embellish it with his precious bit of silver as best he could and left it in Michel’s curious hands, unaware that in earlier years old Jean had taught his assistant his method of cipher. Untroubled, Barthomieu had written the key words, NIVARD, HELOISE, and TEMPLARS in a parchment slipped between the pages on a bookmark.

A few days later, Michel handed the book back with shiny silver corners and endbands, five bosses on each cover and twin clasps holding the covers shut. Barthomieu was well pleased and hugged Michel and kissed him warmly for his splendid work. Aware that Michel was perennially inquisitive about the affairs of other monks, he asked him why he had not inquired about the nature of the manuscript. Michel mumbled he had other matters to occupy his mind and scuttled back to the infirmary.

There was word that a nearby Templar vineyard had been emptied, all the workers turned out and the nobles arrested. It was only a matter of time before the King’s men returned, Barthomieu was sure of that. One night, when the monastery was quiet and all were asleep, he chipped away at a wattle and daub wall inside the Chapter House and opened a hole large enough to hide his precious manuscript. Before he inserted it, he looked at the last page, and though it was ciphered, he recalled the words he had written.

When he was finished putting fresh plaster upon the wall he heard dogs barking and horses whinnying in the stables.

Men were coming.

They were coming for him. They were coming for all of them.

He hurried to the chapel to say one more hurried prayer before being carried off to a certain fate.

As the soldiers barged through the abbey gates, one monk was running as fast as he could through the moonlit meadow of tall grass behind the abbey. He had shed his habit and his crucifix and was dressed as a simple blacksmith in shirt, leggings and smock. He would hide by the river and in the morning light he would present himself to the good people of Ruac village as a hard worker and God-fearing man.

And if they were reluctant to take him in, he would reveal to them a secret that would surely interest them. Of that, Michel de Bonnet, formerly Brother Michel of Ruac Abbey, could be quite sure.

Isaak finished reading the last words of the manuscript and when he was done there was silence on the line. ‘You still there, Luc?’

Luc was in his taxi, a few blocks from the hotel. The sidewalks were full of people with a purpose, heading home, heading out.

‘Yeah, I’m here.’

His mind was spitting out fragments.

The bison of Ruac
.

Sara’s long neck
.

A car hurtling towards them on a dark Cambridge street
.

Pierre lying face down on the cave floor
.

Two hundred and twenty years
.

Templars
.

Saint Bernard embossed on a red-leather cover
.

An explosive concussion and a plume in the distance
.

Picratol
.

Hugo, laughing
.

Hugo, dead
.

Zvi’s body broken on the rocks
.

Bonnet’s sneering face
.

The tenth chamber
.

Sara
.

Suddenly, it all came together. It was the moment a mathematician solves a theorem and writes on his pad with a flourish: QED.
Quod erat demonstrandum
.

It has been proved.

‘Do you have a car?’ Luc asked.

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Can I borrow it?’

Luc’s phone vibrated in his hand. Another call was coming in. He took it away from his ear for a moment to look at the caller ID.

Sara Mallory
.

His heart pounded. He hit
answer
without warning Isaak he was dropping off.

‘Sara!’

There was silence. Then a man’s voice. An old voice.

‘We have her.’

Luc knew who it was. ‘What do you want?’

‘To talk. Nothing more. Then she can go. And you too. There are things you need to understand.’

‘Let me speak to her.’

There were muffled sounds. He waited.

‘Luc?’ It was Sara.

‘Are you all right?’

She was frightened. ‘Please help me.’

The man was back on the line. ‘There. You spoke to her.’

‘If you hurt her I’ll kill you. I
will
kill you.’

The taxi driver shot a look at Luc in the rear-view mirror but seemed determined to mind his own business.

The man on the phone had a mocking tone. ‘I’m sure you will. Will you come and talk?’

‘Has she been hurt?’

‘No, only inconvenienced. We’ve been gentlemen.’

‘I swear. You’d better be telling me the truth.’

The man ignored him. ‘I’ll tell you where to go.’

‘I know where you are.’

‘Good. That’s not a problem for us. But here’s the thing. You’ve got to come alone. Be here at midnight. Not a moment later. If you bring the gendarmes, the police, anybody, she’ll die unpleasantly, you’ll die, your cave will be destroyed. There won’t be anything left. Don’t tell anyone about this. Please believe me, this is no idle threat.’

Isaak left Luc alone in his study for a half hour while he helped one of his children with a homework assignment. Isaak’s wife poked her head in to offer coffee but Luc was writing so furiously he hardly had time to say no. It wasn’t a polished letter, more of a rough sprawl with partial sentences and abbreviations. He would have liked to consolidate his thoughts into a well-reasoned piece but he was frantic for time as it was. It would have to do.

He used Isaak’s printer/copier to run a duplicate and also made duplicates of the Isaak’s colour copy of the Ruac Manuscript. He stuffed his letter and manuscript into the two blank envelopes Isaak had given him. On the first he wrote, C
OLONEL
T
OUCAS,
G
ROUP
G
ENDARMERIE OF
D
ORDOGNE,
P
ÉRIGUEUX,
and the other M. G
ÉRARD
G
IROT,
L
E
M
ONDE
.

He pressed the sealed envelopes into Isaak’s hand and told him if he didn’t hear from him within twenty-four hours to see to it that the letters were delivered.

Isaak rubbed his forehead in worry but wordlessly agreed.

Isaak had a good car, a Mercedes coupé. Once Luc was free of the Périphérique Intérieur and onto the A20, he began to gun it and eat up the kilometres. The car had a GPS with radar. It told him he had 470 kilometres to go and gave his arrival time at 1:08 a.m. He’d have to make up more than an hour.

Every time the radar detector chirped he let up on the accelerator and took it down from break-neck to legal. He didn’t have time for a chat with the gendarmes. A half hour of road-side nonsense could mean the difference between life and death. These people in Ruac were operating with a kind of ruthlessness he’d never experienced.

He’d never been in the military. He’d never even been in the boy scouts. He didn’t know how to box or flip a man over his hip. He had no weapons, not even a pocket knife. What good would they do? The last time he’d been in a fight was in a schoolyard and both boys wound up with equally bloody noses, he recalled.

All he had to fight with were his wits.

He was in the Périgord again. Familiar ground. He’d made up most of the time he needed but not all of it. He’d have to push it on the smaller roads, but it was late and the traffic was sparse.

He still had time to make a call to Colonel Toucas. Maybe that was the smarter play, to leave it to the professionals. It was the countryside but an RAID team could probably muster in an hour. He’d seen these guys in action on TV programmes. Hard young men. What was a middle-aged archaeologist doing storming the ramparts?

He shook off this line of thought. He’d got Sara into this. It was up to him to get her out of it. He gritted his teeth, pushed the accelerator and the car responded to his emotional tone.

He arrived at the outskirts of Ruac at 11:55. For better or worse, he wouldn’t be late. He instinctively slowed at the curving hill where Hugo met his end, then guided the Mercedes into the deserted main street of the village.

It was a cloudy night, with a whipping wind. The village had no street lights and every house was dark. The only illumination came from the bluish halogen of the car’s headlamps.