: CHAPTER 7 ::

When Muriel came downstairs the next morning, Charles Fouchet was seated in the hotel’s cramped lobby, studying papers. When he saw her, he stuffed the papers back in the file and rose to his feet. “Good morning, Mademoiselle. Senator Bryan asks me to say he has been unavoidably detained. He will meet us at the cathedral. He asked the minister if I might serve as your escort this morning.”

“I apologize for troubling you, Monsieur.”

“It is my sincerest pleasure. Might I please ask you to call me by my given name?”

“Very well, Charles. And I am Muriel.”

“An excellent beginning to what might become an exceptional day.” He reached out. “Shall I assist you with your equipment?”

“Thank you.” She refused to release her new Graflex camera but gladly handed over the tripod and the leather case holding the light meter and the negative plates.

Charles frowned. “What has happened to your hands?”

“The new tripod pinched me before I got the hang of it.”

“May I see?” He had a remarkably gentle touch. He inspected the point on her palm where the tripod had bitten deep. Then he noticed the blister on her forefinger and gave her a knowing look. “You practiced shooting photographs?”

“Most of the night,” she confessed. “I wanted to become accustomed to this new equipment. It is much more complex than I imagined.”

“I have seen similar injuries before. On the trigger fingers of soldiers growing accustomed to new weapons.” He seemed reluctant to release her hand. “They were the ones most likely to survive.”

She liked that so much she was able to confess, “I’m so frightened.”

“What of?”

“I have no idea.” She pointed at the front door. “Whatever waits for me out there.”

He showed the rare ability to sympathize without condescending. “I would ask a favor, Miss Muriel. For this day, allow me to play the role of your humble servant. Whatever you require in the task ahead, turn to me, and I will see it is done. Anything. Even to simply offering you my confidence. For I know you will do well. I know this.”

“Thank you,” She whispered. “I accept.”

He hesitated one instant, then added, “The senator asked me to convey one further message.”

“You had best tell me, then.”

“He expressed a keen desire that you wear one of the new frocks.”

“No,” she said. But the simple denial was not enough, given his offer of kindness. “It makes me feel like a fraud. I am not that woman.”

“What woman is that?”

“A sophisticated lady of the Rue Cambon. I am Muriel Ross, late of Alexandria.”

He revealed another of his rare smiles. “I shall have to apologize to the senator for having forgotten to mention his request.”

The ministerial car stood almost as high as a carriage and was far more comfortable than the hansom cabs. The driver sat in a separate cabin exposed to the elements, while they were seated in leather-bound comfort encased by glass. Muriel wished she could set aside her anxieties and enjoy the view. But she knew that was impossible. Perhaps conversation would help quell her fears, at least for a moment. So she asked, “Do you know what has delayed Senator Bryan?”

“I do.”

“Can you tell me what it is?”

“There are two matters. The senator represents your government in urgent negotiations over war reparations. You know what this is?”

She had followed the story with her father. “The debt Germany owes the nations upon whom it declared war.”

“Germany’s new postwar government has refused to pay. France needs the money desperately to rebuild the areas to the north that were destroyed by the trench warfare. Prime Minister Poincaré has decided to send troops into Germany to occupy the region across the border near Strasbourg until the funds have been repaid.”

“But that is terrible!”

“Your government certainly thinks so. But as I said, Germany refuses to pay, and we must have the funds. We must.”

She saw there was nothing to be gained from further protests. Charles’s features had become stony, as though to repel any assault. She changed the subject, “And the second matter?”

“It has become increasingly evident that the Ottoman Empire is crumbling.”

She had studied this issue as well. The empire was ruled from what once had been the world’s first Christian capital city. She said, “The Ottoman Empire has stood on the brink of destruction longer than I have been alive. And the nations have worried over the fate of the Dardanelles for a century.”

He examined her. “You are a most remarkable young lady. I doubt there are a handful of people in France who could find the Dardanelles on a map.”

“I have been fascinated by the news since I was a child. What makes things different this time?”

“This time there is a young general by the name of Atatürk. He has managed to unite the various rebel factions and is marching upon Constantinople.”

She was about to ask him what he was not saying, when he pointed ahead and said, “We have arrived.”

• • •

The bishop’s entrance to the Cathedral of Notre Dame was on the riverside, down a tight cul-de-sac tucked behind the nave. Muriel smelled the fragrance of springtime blossoms as she was ushered through a narrow iron gate and entered a small secret garden. From beyond the walls, she heard the barges chug along the languid Seine River. A bird hidden among the roses that climbed the side wall sang her a welcome.

She entered through a peaked door and walked a hallway adorned with religious paintings and a statue so old the kneeling woman’s face had been washed away. Muriel then entered a parlor to find Father Ricard standing beside the unlit fireplace, his face ruddy with the ire that he silently directed at her. But Senator Bryan remained unscathed by the priest’s irritation, and Bishop Suget seemed even more amused than the previous day.

The bishop walked over and enveloped her hands in both of his, then introduced the three other men in the room: the abbot and the prior and the priest assigned to the cathedral. Muriel was the only woman present. It happened often enough. She was one of only three female researchers on the Smithsonian’s staff. But today it only added to her nervousness. Charles Fouchet must have noticed, for he stepped in close behind her, close enough that she could smell his cologne, a fragrance of lemon oil and something vaguely exotic. She found herself steadied by his presence.

The bishop wasted no time. He led her through a rear entry and into a room lined by hooks holding the priests’ regalia. As they passed down a second bare hallway, the bishop said, “There are those among us who feel I am making a serious mistake.”

“This is a French moment,” the priest of Saint Denis declared hotly. “A Catholic moment.”

“But I, on the other hand, do not agree. I have prayed upon this much of the night. And I feel that it is a moment for all who appreciate freedom and have sacrificed to maintain it, a moment when all these should unite in joy and a hope for tomorrow.” He paused with his hand upon the door at the hallway’s end and smiled down at her. From the other side, Muriel heard the quiet sound of people’s hushed voices. Many people. The bishop went on, “I feel this is a moment when all believers throughout the world, regardless of their denomination, should unite together beneath the banner of our one Lord.”

He pushed open the door and ushered her through with a smile. “And my voice, I am happy to say, carries the determining vote.”

The Cathedral of Notre Dame was filled to overflowing. The crowd stretched back to the open rear doors. They crammed the aisles and the courtyard beyond the portals.

“This way, mademoiselle.”

The bishop led her across the nave and through the smallest door of all, set into the side alcove by the empty choir stall. He started down a narrow circular stairway. “Watch your step.”

Notre Dame was so old its beginnings had been lost in the vague mists of legend. The earliest known church had been dedicated to the apostles and had been completed before the year 300. Five centuries later, Emperor Charlemagne stopped here to give thanks for his victory in unifying France. Muriel knew that recent excavations had found stones from the Merovingian Cathedral completed in the late 500s.

The Notre Dame Cathedral had been started in 1163 and completed by 1250, though extra features were added over the next hundred years. As she descended into the vaulted crypts, Muriel felt as though the present day had been peeled away, revealing the epochs that had come before. She passed the former burial chambers of knights and nobles. These vaulted chambers were now so filled with treasure and artifacts that the doors could not be sealed shut, and the wealth of centuries spilled into the main gallery.

Finally, they arrived at a massive door held open by a wrought iron chain. “This is the royal treasure room, home to some of France’s most valued artifacts,” the bishop said.

Muriel entered and heaved a sigh of relief, for the cellar’s flickering lamps had been replaced by three lights on tall metal stands. The bishop smiled at her response and said, “I could not have my fellows laboring away in the dark, preparing for the moment when our treasure reemerges. They needed to see what they were doing.” The bishop turned and asked a priest, “How much time do we have?”

“Forty minutes, Monsieur Bishop.”

Suget told her, “I must ask you to hurry, Mademoiselle. In less than an hour, the service begins to commemorate the reliquary returning to public view for the first time in six years.”

“Of course.”

At the center of the light was a table, and on it was a tall artifact of some sort, hidden beneath a mantle of black velvet. She found her heart racing as the bishop walked over and pulled away the coverlet.

The reliquary of the True Cross stood almost three feet high. She had seen numerous drawings and even handled several replicas, one dating from the fourteenth century. Even so, the article took her breath away. It was fashioned from solid gold, the arms of the cross ending in the cloverleaf pattern of the Eastern church. At its heart was a clear crystal casing, as broad as her hand and standing eleven inches high. Inside was the piece of wood.

She of course knew its history. The majority of the cross found by Helena had been left at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. But one segment, perhaps a meter in length, had returned to Europe with her.

Once Helena’s son had been named the first Christian emperor of the Roman Empire, Helena had sent fragments to each of the major church centers throughout the kingdom, marking the empire’s coming transformation to a Christian nation, uniting them beneath the banner of the cross. This particular reliquary had been fashioned in the late twelfth century.

The bishop slipped on a pair of cotton gloves. “The key.”

The priest of Saint Denis whined, “I must protest. This is…”

The bishop turned and silenced him with a single look. He then accepted the key from the prior and fitted it into a tiny hole in the reliquary’s side. He opened a side panel and withdrew what at first glance appeared to be a small silver box. “This is what you came for.”

The senator appeared at her side. She wanted to step over, grant him room. But just then her limbs refused to function.

“I must ask you not to touch this.”

Muriel made do with a simple nod. She had heard of these but until this moment assumed it was a legend seventeen hundred years in the making. Helena was said to have encased the pieces of wood in silver inscribed with words from the book of John. There they were for her to read, the Greek letters carved by hand: I am the true vine.

The wood was brownish red, almost like it had been petrified. Which was impossible, of course. The process of petrification took far longer than several centuries. She knew it was most likely a patina of blood that concealed the grain.

Muriel felt the emotions well up in her like great waves, crashing upon her heart, sending her to her knees. Even then she could not take her eyes off the small sliver of wood. She had lived with her faith her entire life. She was a child of the church. And yet it seemed to her as though she had never experienced her Savior’s gift in such a way as now.