LOGIS DU MARTINET, LAGRASSE—THE NEXT DAY
Lia parked the Peugeot behind Raoul’s Jeep, but she sat inside the car for several minutes after turning off the engine. The house and winery appeared sealed up and foreboding, gray brick against gray clouds. The wind had shoved in from the Mediterranean, and the air was thick with impending rain. In the distance, a thin smudge of smoke rose lazily into the overcast sky; Raoul was burning something in the fields beyond the winery. The pungent, ashy odor of smoldering vines wafted down from the slopes and drew her out of the car.
Her phone, tucked in the back pocket of her jeans, chirped with an incoming call. She fumbled for it, squinting at the screen: Lucas. She groaned and switched the phone to silent.
Once more into the vineyard, Lia quipped silently to stifle her anxiety. As she climbed the slope, past canes sprouting tiny fists of new green buds, the first drops of rain began to fall.
Raoul stood at the head of a row of vines, one hand pressed into a thick end post, watching the dying fire. Isis sat at his feet, her tail the color of iron-rich earth slapping the ground. She scooted toward Lia, grinning with her long, white teeth. Lia knelt down, and her open arms were filled with wriggling dog.
“I shouldn’t have come,” she said, holding Isis’s face away from hers. “But I was worried when you didn’t show or respond to my call.” Even as she said the words, Lia cringed at how shrill they sounded. “Now that I know you’re fine, I feel so foolish.” She prattled on, filling the space that loomed between them.
“It was rude of me to not call,” he conceded. “I owe you an explanation, Lia, but I won’t lie to you. It’s an explanation you may not want to hear.”
She rose to standing, and Isis collapsed at her feet. “Try me.”
“I did come by last night. But you had company.”
Lucas. Dammit.
“That was a coincidence, Raoul. He’s a photographer, and we’re working on a book together. He just stopped by…” Her sentences were choked. Even though she spoke the truth, her words rang hollow.
“From the looks if it, you’re doing more than just working together.” Raoul glanced away, but not before she saw glinting anger. “I saw more than I wanted to. So I left.”
Embarrassment and rage filled her in equal measure. Her face flamed, and her temper flared. “You spied on me? Oh, this is rich.”
They stood apart, trying to work through the other’s misunderstanding. Then Lia stepped forward and wove her fingers into his hand where it rested on the post.
“Two days ago, you said you’d been waiting for someone to show you who you should be. You kissed me. Can we go back to that moment?”
“Lia.” He drew her hand toward him, and she moved a step closer. “There is more I need to say. I am real. Real as you, real as this stone and these vines. But this”—he turned her hand up, tapping his fingers in the middle of her palm—“this flesh is arbitrary, temporary. I am of this world, but not of this time. Not completely.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about another life. I believe you and I may have known each other in another life.”
“You aren’t making any sense.”
“You’re an expert on the Cathar faith. Tell me what the Cathars believed about death and the afterlife.”
She pulled her hand from his in exasperation. Why would this history matter now? “The Cathars believed that death doesn’t always mean the end to the soul,” she replied. “They believed the soul of someone who died tragically could remain in some sort of suspended afterlife, seeking resolution through perpetual reincarnation.” Back on familiar academic ground, her voice and hands steadied. “But these are myths, Raoul. Religious superstitions, just like Christian miracles and saints.” The rain began to intensify.
Lia recited, “‘When I woke, I was.’ That’s what you said to me, but I thought you were talking about waking from the grief of losing your wife. My God. Don’t tell me you’re talking about reincarnation?”
Raoul lifted a shoulder in a maddening half shrug, neither conceding nor disagreeing.
“Reincarnation?” Lia repeated, her voice rising to a near-shout. She clasped Raoul’s wrists, forcing him to look her in the eye. “Is this what you are telling me?” Her mind raced as he nodded slowly, firmly, incredibly. “That is madness. Cruel, ridiculous madness.” Lia dropped his hands and stepped back.
Raoul held her gaze, but his face was dark and hard. She could see the sorrow in his eyes, but it was the disappointment that hurt the most.
“I can’t do crazy, Raoul,” she said. “I’ve lost too much to waste my heart like this.”
As Lia walked to her car, she ached to hear him say, “Stop, Lia. Don’t leave.” But no voice spoke, and she didn’t look back.
• • •
Lia stopped at the foot of the drive, out of view of Logis du Martinet, and pulled out her phone. She needed to see someone who didn’t know Raoul or Gabriel, someone who could be objective about her heart. If it hadn’t been for the previous night, she might even have called Lucas.
She cursed as Jordí’s recorded voice answered her call. She nearly hung up, but when the phone beeped, she let out in a rush, “Father Bonafé, Jordí, I need to see you. Any chance you’re around today? I’m headed to Narbonne now. Please call.”
Her phone rang as she waited for a convoy of trucks to pass before merging onto the road. “Of course I’ll meet you, Lia,” said Jordí. “Wherever, whenever you need.” She scribbled down the address of a bistro off rue Mazzini and sagged with relief over the steering wheel.
The sobs broke free as she pulled onto the highway.
NARBONNE—SAME DAY
Lia arrived in Narbonne feeling raw and displaced. The city seemed all but abandoned as the Narbonnais congregated in cafés and restaurants to wait out the spring tempest that had blown in from the Mediterranean. The aroma of onions in butter, the musty scent of damp wool, and the reassuring sound of laughter enveloped her in the foyer where Jordí waited. The maître d’ led them upstairs to a quiet table on the mezzanine.
“You were upset when you called. What’s happened?”
As she searched for the words to explain her morning, Lia realized she had to start from the beginning, which was Carcassonne and the terror of the corridor in the Basilique Saint-Nazaire et Saint-Celse. Everything seemed to tumble forward from that day.
“Yes, what can I bring you? Something to drink?” An aproned waiter dropped a basket of sliced bread on their table, his gaze roaming the mezzanine as he took stock of the other diners. Lia ordered a bowl of onion soup without looking at her menu. The priest ignored his as well and asked for beef cheek braised in red wine—the house specialty. He also ordered a bottle of Cabardès red. The waiter nodded absently, picked up their menus, and moved to the next table.
Re-creating scenes as fantastic as a fever dream, Lia told Jordí of the stranger who had approached her in the nave of Saint-Nazaire. She relived the disembodied footsteps echoing on the stone floor and the descent into the basilica’s bowels. How the stranger had shoved her through a suffocating corridor, insisting they were being followed, only to abandon her on the hillside above Carcassonne. Agitation sifted across the priest’s face as she spoke, but he remained silent.
A passing waiter brought their wine, opened the bottle, and poured the deep-violet Cabardès. The moment he left, Lia drank half her glass. “Winter solstice, the night I arrived, I thought I saw a face in my window. A man’s face, with a scar on his left side, here,” she said as she swept a finger across her cheek. Jordí blanched, and his irises swelled, but still he said nothing, and the words continued to pour from Lia. “But it was some sort of optical illusion or crazy vision. I went outside, and there was a Bonelli’s eagle sitting on my terrace, so close I could’ve touched him. He was one of the most magnificent things I’ve ever seen.
“Here’s where it really gets strange, Father. Jordí,” she corrected herself. “Two days after Carcassonne, the man from the basilica showed up at Mas Hivert. He’s a winemaker friend of Domènec’s. At first, he acted as if he’d never seen me before, claiming not to remember anything about Saint-Nazaire. But we talked and he…we…” Heat slid over her face. The priest gave her a curious look; her flushed skin said more than her stammered words. “I realized his was the same face that had appeared in my window on solstice night.” Lia sat back, a little scared but filled with relief at having finally told her story.
“Does this man have a name?” Jordí asked.
“Raoul Arango.”
At the mention of Raoul’s name, Jordí gripped the table’s edge, his knuckles turning white from the pressure. His reaction told her enough: their paths had intersected. And this seemed no more improbable to Lia than anything else she’d experienced since December 21.
The waiter appeared with their meals, and Jordí was spared from having to respond. He took time slicing his portion of tender beef nestled in a pile of baked conchiglioni and mushrooms and sat back, closing his mouth around a forkful of meat and vegetables.
Lia dipped her spoon into the large bowl before her and stirred the soup, releasing steam, before asking, “Jordí, how do you know Raoul?”
The priest finished chewing and then set his knife and fork to rest on the side of his plate, taking Lia’s question in measured stride. “I knew of him a very long time ago,” he said. “He went by d’Aran then. I wasn’t around to know what became of him after…” Jordí’s voice dropped, and he spoke as though Lia had vanished from the banquette seat. “He was killed before he could—”
Lia’s harsh laughter cut short the priest’s hushed musing. Her resigned acceptance vanished. “Killed?” She leaned forward and said, “Pardon my language, Jordí, but what the fuck?”
He grimaced at the English words, understanding the curse. Then the priest turned up his palms as if to offer her the answer. Swallowing a wave of nausea, Lia pushed away the bowl. She gasped, and the gasp became incredulous laughter. Shoving back from the table, she glanced around, reassuring herself the sane world was still having a civilized lunch.
Jordí breathed in deeply and exhaled his answer in a hushed voice. “I don’t know when he left this earth, Lia. But he walked it still in 1208.”
The clattering of dishes, the rumble of conversation, the comforting buzz of normal life receded into the distance.
“Twelve-oh-eight,” she echoed. “This can’t be.”
“I’m sorry. I know this is so hard to understand.” She could almost hear him clucking in sympathy. “A lost soul has found you.”
“Please, stop.” Lia held up her hand. “Let me think.” Her glass shook as she lifted it to her lips and drank. “You’re telling me that this man I’m falling in love with”—the priest’s eyes widened—“yes, falling in love with, despite myself… You’re telling me he is eight hundred years old?” She forced a laugh, but it was empty of mirth.
Jordí’s words came back to her: I knew of him a very long time ago. Fear chilled the heat of her frustration. “Who are you, Jordí?”
“I attended seminary at Sant Benet with Raoul’s cousin. He was a dear friend of mine once.” Jordí hung his head, toying with the knife by his plate, his own meal forgotten. His words took a moment to sink in.
“I don’t believe what you’re telling me,” Lia said. But she already did. It was a truth she’d tried to ignore since the night she’d arrived in France: the past had caught up to her, bringing another life with it.
The priest sat in silence, letting her sort out the thoughts and emotions that barreled through her mind and pounded into her heart. At last, he spoke. “Lia, let me tell you a story.”
• • •
The rain had stopped while Jordí spun out his tale, and the bistro settled into the deep of the afternoon. A few diners murmured over their late lunches, and the waitstaff congregated at tables just outside the entrance, smoking and chatting. Some were enjoying a beer after their shift, while others prepared for the evening with small cups of thick, black espresso tempered by cubes of sugar.
“You witnessed Castelnau’s murder,” Lia said in a flat voice. The wall between her head and her heart crumbled as she tried to reason through what the priest had laid before her. “I’m a fool to accept a word of what you’ve just told me. And yet I believe you. Or at least I’m willing to play along.”
“I’m asking you to trust your instincts and accept the impossible,” he conceded.
“It was you who identified the assassin as a man of Toulouse’s? History has it Castelnau was ambushed outside of Saint-Gilles, near the river.”
Jordí toyed with his fork, running his finger along the pointed tines. “I didn’t tell anyone I’d seen the assassination. Only that I’d seen Toulouse’s man fleeing from the church before I found the body.”
“What? Why? If you’d said that much, why not tell the whole truth?”
“I was terrified that if word got around I’d witnessed the murder, I’d be next. At the very least, I’d be banished from the church for having stood by and let it happen.” He stabbed the fork into the linen tablecloth. “And you and I both know what happens to history along the way. Facts are only as good as the proof. But the man was wearing a red tunic with a twelve-pointed cross. The symbol of the House of Toulouse.”
“So, you just watched Castelnau die.” It wasn’t a question, but Jordí responded all the same.
“I was a coward. Yes. Weak. Stupid. I didn’t even understand what I was seeing when I read the letter.”
“What happened to that letter?” she asked.
Jordí shook his head. “I never reentered the abbey, and I left Saint-Gilles not long after. I thought many years ago to seek out that stone, but the church has been destroyed and rebuilt so many times. If the letter was ever found, history has buried its secrets.”
“And you remember nothing of what you read? A date? A signature? Anything?”
The priest squinted, peering through the haze of his memory. “I don’t recall a date or if it was signed. There wasn’t even a seal, just a simple sheet.”
Lia sighed her disappointment. “What was it Castelnau said before he was attacked? ‘It’s true. I was warned that Plessis would betray me.’ Is that it?” Jordí nodded. “Who warned Castelnau?”
“History has sealed that path,” Jordí said, lifting his shoulders and raising his hands. “Castelnau knew the man who killed him, that was for certain.”
Lia repeated the archdeacon’s words, turning them over in her mind. “Castelnau must have meant Philippe du Plessis,” she said. “He was the commander of the Knights Templar when the Cathar Crusade was declared.” Lia sat back, exhaling a low, soft whistle. “And you really told no one what you’d heard?”
“The name meant nothing to me at the time,” Jordí said. “I was just a country monk training to be a priest. A few days after the murder, one of Raymond’s men bragged he’d killed Castelnau. And he was killed by a mob immediately after. That’s as far as the trail went. Within weeks, Pope Innocent declared the crusade. The details of who had killed Castelnau or why no longer mattered.”
“How does Raoul fit into this?”
Jordí pulled at his shirt collar and smoothed his palm over the feathery strands of hair on the back of his head.
“Raoul d’Aran’s wife was Paloma Gervais, the daughter of a wealthy wine merchant in Limoux. She and Raoul had two children, a son and daughter.”
Lia’s heart pounded. “Bertran and Aicelina,” she said. Limoux. Paloma’s father. She recalled Raoul’s strained expression when she mentioned her grandparents’ village.
“Yes, how did you know?”
“Raoul told me their names. I didn’t know he was talking about a family from the thirteenth century. What became of them?”
“Sometime after the burning of Cluet in July 1208, she and the children were sent to hide in Gruissan. In December, they were found out and arrested and sent to the church of Saint-Maurice, where villagers accused as heretics were trapped inside. The church was destroyed by fire on December 18. It was assumed Paloma and the children were among the dead.”
She shuddered. She’d read many accounts of the torture and murder of innocents during the Cathar Crusade. Years later, the Spanish Inquisition would garner infamy, but those interrogation and torture techniques had their roots in Languedoc’s castle dungeons and churches.
“Why wasn’t Raoul with them?”
Jordí shook his head, his eyes downcast. “That I don’t know. I never met the man. I heard rumors that he led some sort of resistance movement to warn villagers and landowners of the coming doom, encouraging them to rise up against the Knights and the Church. Raoul d’Aran had the ear of Raymond of Toulouse, who defied the Church for many years, until—”
“Until it became obvious it was a hopeless cause,” she finished. After years of openly supporting the Cathars, even after being excommunicated by the Catholic Church for the murder of Castelnau, the count turned his back on Languedoc and joined the crusade to crush the heretics and end the south’s fight to remain independent from France. “How did Raoul die?”
“Lia, it’s all lost to history.”
“The scar.” She touched her face.
Jordí lifted his shoulders in a gesture that could have been a shrug or a sign of agreement. “A festering wound in those days could mean blood poisoning. Sepsis could take a man in a day or two.” He patted his chest and his side pockets. He brought out a phone from the depths of his coat and squinted at the screen. After tapping out a text reply, Jordí clasped his hands together on the table. “Lia, I apologize. That was the indomitable Madame Isner, wondering where I am. I’m late for a parish finance committee meeting. I must leave you now, but can we resume this conversation tomorrow morning?”
Lia gaped at him, uncomprehending. Leave now? In the middle of this impossible story? “Where do I fit into this, Jordí?” she asked. “Why has Raoul come into my life?”
“I believe his reincarnation is a sign that he has something to atone for, some part of his story to resolve. But I think those are questions you must ask Raoul.”
“I have one last question before I let you go,” Lia said. “Do I look like Paloma?”
Jordí’s expression was inscrutable, but his brown eyes took on that wooden glare she’d seen in his office in January. “I couldn’t say.” He pushed away from the table and stood. “I never met Paloma. Now, I really must go.”