CARCASSONNE—MID-FEBRUARY
Dull light and stagnant air sank heavily into Carcassonne’s dreary streets. Lia paced in front of the shaded windows of the Institute for Cathar Studies, her cell phone pressed against her ear. Through the glass front doors, she could hear the institute’s phone ring and ring, her call echoing in the dark, unattended space. The sign on the locked front door stated the institute was closed indefinitely.
She was also waiting on Father Bonafé—Jordí. He’d left a message on her phone late the night before, long after she’d gone to bed, his first contact since her visit to Narbonne the previous month. He’d assured her someone would be at the institute to open the doors for them at 9:00 a.m.
Jordí hadn’t given any details about the last-minute arrangements, but she dared to hope it was an opportunity to see documents few knew existed—and to be a witness to their safekeeping. She’d driven from Minerve in a state of shaky anticipation. But it wasn’t only from excitement at seeing the collection. A few days following their dinner in Gruissan, she’d called the cell number on Lucas’s business card.
“Let’s talk more about this book,” she’d said. He sent web links of sample layouts. Lia’s excitement for the project began to build when she saw how skillfully his photographs captured Languedoc’s craggy beauty and the haunting Cathar ruins. Light warmed or chilled the stone, depending upon the time of day and season of the year; he’d conveyed the intensity of the sun and wind by showing the timeless natural world interacting with man-made antiquity. Her mind was already crafting the accompanying text, weaving a narrative of fact with the living, breathing past.
Early that morning, it struck her: Lucas and Jordí should meet. She’d left a rushed message on Lucas’s voice mail: “I know it’s last minute, but could you meet me at the Institute for Cathar Studies in Carcassonne today? There’s someone I’d like to introduce to you. Afterward, we could head up to the Cité for those interior shots you need of the basilica. Just a thought. Call me.”
And he had, while she was in the shower. She listened to his message, holding a towel closed with her arms. “I can be there, Lia. But who is this ‘someone’?”
She laughed when her return call went straight to his voice mail. “Tag, you’re it,” she said in English, then continued in French, “I’m so glad you’ll be there. It’s my friend Jordí Bonafé. He’s the archivist at Saint-Just et Saint-Pasteur. Meet us at noon.” She knew Jordí would never allow a stranger into the collection, but they could all meet later, after she’d viewed the archives, and have some lunch.
She had tapped out a quick text message to Jordí: Sorry, short notice. Invited photographer Lucas Moisset to lunch. Noon, Institute. Explain later.
Neither man had responded before she left for Carcassonne, an hour’s drive southwest of Minerve. But a text beeped through the endless ringing of her call to the institute. She disconnected the pointless call and opened the message, cursing as she read the text: Won’t make it today. Can’t reach contact at ICS. So sorry, try again soon. Fr. Jordí.
Frustrated, she walked back to her car and tossed her laptop bag onto the Peugeot’s backseat. Once behind the wheel, she punched out a message to Lucas: Don’t come to town. Institute closed. Meet me at basilica.
Lia slammed the car into reverse, peeling out of the institute’s parking lot, the Peugeot’s tires squealing on the wet pavement. She steered out of town and up to Languedoc’s most famous site: the medieval fortress city perched above Carcassonne.
SAINT-GILLES, PROVENCE-LANGUEDOC BORDER—JANUARY 1208
The young monk crouched behind a carved column, hidden in the shadows of the nave, his knuckles stuffed in his mouth to stifle a scream. His knees, bent against the cold stone, shot nails of pain down his shins. Round and dark, Jordí Bonafé had arrived in Saint-Gilles from the Sant Benet de Bages monastery in Catalunya only days before.
He heard the church door snick shut. Whispering a prayer for courage, Jordí rose on shaking legs and shuffled to Castelnau. The monk fell to his knees before the archdeacon, flinching at the naked expression of horror in the dead man’s open eyes, the pain in his twisted mouth. Blood pooled around the upper half of the body, coagulating in the cold air of the nave. Jordí hoisted his bulk and stumbled to the altar, where he uncorked a small vial of olive oil and upturned it against his thumb. He returned to the slain priest’s side and knelt by his head.
He closed the archdeacon’s eyelids and anointed them with blessed oil, speaking the words to send his soul to eternal rest with God. “Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine.” It was not the extreme unction the slain papal legate deserved, but Jordí could do no more.
When he made the sign of the cross over the archdeacon, Jordí saw that the man’s right arm was bent beneath his body at a severe angle. It was one indignity he could correct. He grunted as he rolled the body onto its side, and the archdeacon’s sodden cloak pulled away from a pool of blood with a wet sound. Jordí’s gorge rose in disgust, and bile stung his throat, but he tugged the crooked arm free.
Castelnau’s hand fell with a hideous thump onto the step below, and a leather pouch unfurled in his palm. The finely tooled calfskin glowed warmly in the candlelight, though the edges were stained red. Using two fingers, Jordí removed the spoiled pouch and laid it on the step away from the body and the blood.
The archdeacon’s other arm was flung wide, his hand empty. Jordí crouched behind him and lifted his shoulders, silently asking God’s forgiveness for this morbid curiosity. There was nothing underneath the priest.
He lowered the body carefully, cradling the head until it came to rest on the stone tile, and moved Castelnau’s arms to his sides. Blowing air through puffed cheeks, he looked around the altar and into the nave. The shadows were shifting from black to gray as the first thread of light seeped in the eastern window high above the altar. He shuddered at the memory of the knife against his neck and the low voice growling in his ear. Jordí prepared himself to lie, for how could he admit he’d been too great a coward to do more than witness the murder of Archdeacon Pierre de Castelnau? He would say he’d been sent on an errand by the archdeacon and only saw a man fleeing the abbey. A man wearing Toulouse’s coat of arms.
A triangle of cream caught his eye. Jordí crossed the dais, grimacing at the stiffness in his legs. With the toe of his sandaled foot, he pulled the scrap out from the bottom edge of the silk broderie covering the altar.
It was a folded sheet of vellum bearing a red wax seal, but the wax was cracked and the seal split in two. The missive had been opened. Jordí pressed the two halves of the seal together until they formed an image of a standing bear in profile. He retrieved the leather wallet from the step and saw that another insignia had been branded onto the leather flap. This seal showed two knights riding one horse, encircled by a border of Latin words: Sigillum Militum Xpisti. The seal of the Soldiers of Christ. Although the bear meant nothing to him, Jordí recognized the symbol of the Knights Templar, and it filled him with a sense of doom. Blood throbbed in his ears, a drumbeat that said, Leave it be, Jordí Baltasar Bonafé. Leave it be. He knew he should drop the letter and let wiser heads take over this horror.
He opened the sheet.
Heavy, scrawling Latin text nearly filled one page, but the correspondence bore no salutation or signature, only a date: December 1207. At the bottom, a different hand had penned two lines in delicate script. As Jordí absorbed the words, his heart pounded so hard he couldn’t swallow, and his hands were clammy with sweat.
A rooster crowed in the distance, and another answered. Weighed down by shock, Jordí collected the bloodied leather pouch from the side of Castelnau’s corpse and found the spot behind a grand column where he’d witnessed the assassination. There, a stone tile had shifted under his feet as he’d crouched in terror. He wiped the pouch on his robe and tucked the vellum inside.
Working a fingernail between the loose mortar and stone, Jordí pried up a corner of the tile, and the rest of it broke free. He dug out a hollow in the dirt below and buried the leather pouch in the cold space. After replacing the tile, he trod over the stone, using his bulk to press it level with the others.
He passed down the aisle and melted into the blackness behind the altar. A few minutes later, the church bell began to clang. First in a slow, steady peal, and then faster, losing rhythm, its notes of panic sweeping across the village and into the plains beyond.