SAINT-GILLES, PROVENCE-LANGUEDOC BORDER—FEBRUARY 1208
One month after the murder of Archdeacon Pierre de Castelnau, Jordí Bonafé labored up the steps leading from the abbey’s crypt to the nave. At the head of the stairs stood Abbot Bonnín, the head of the monastery at Saint-Gilles. He’d left for Narbonne shortly after Jordí’s arrival, assigning the young monk the chore of waiting on the visiting Cistercian archdeacon. It was only Jordí’s role as Castelnau’s acolyte that found him in the nave on that freezing January dawn. Bonnín returned days later to find his parish in an uproar and the novice priest nearly mute with shock.
“Brother Bonafé, here you are.” Bonnín heaved up his belly and tucked his thumbs into the wide strip of black felt that spanned his generous waist. “You have a visitor.”
Jordí paused at the top step as Bonnín moved aside, and a second figure stepped into view. He was horrified to feel the warm gush of urine flow down his leg as his bladder betrayed his fear. Before him stood a tall man with honeyed hair and black eyes. Pierre de Castelnau’s assassin.
“Brother Bonafé, allow me to introduce the sénéchal of the Aude and Hérault, Lucas Mauléon. He has been sent from Paris to meet with you.” Bonnín stepped aside. Jordí blinked, looked from one man to the other, and snapped his gaping mouth shut. The last time he’d seen this sénéchal, the man had been wearing the twelve-pointed cross of the French crown’s enemy, the Count of Toulouse.
“I’ve come to offer my regrets for your ordeal,” said Lucas. A smile flickered and vanished. “And to escort you to your new residence. You will continue your priestly training in Narbonne.”
“Narbonne?” Jordí kept his trembling hands folded inside his robes. The sharp odor of piss singed the air, and he prayed the rot-sweet scent wafting from the crypt would overpower it. “What of the abbey?”
“Your superiors thought it best to relieve you of the burden of all you witnessed here.”
“Witnessed?” choked Jordí. He cleared his throat and started again. “But it’s over. The man confessed and received his judgment before God. I wish to remain in Saint-Gilles.”
Mauléon’s face remained closed to the monk’s pleas. Bonnín watched the two men with detached curiosity. He wanted the scandal removed from his abbey, and if the Church and the law felt it best to reassign the rotund young monk, so be it. “Come, men, it stinks in this nave,” he said. “We’ll break our fast and send you on your way.”
Jordí excused himself, wanting to be rid of his soiled garment and catch his breath. He couldn’t meet the sénéchal’s eyes when he returned a short while later, his few things packed in a satchel of thick wool. He was trapped.
Mauléon rushed through the morning meal offered by the abbot and insisted on retaking the road soon after, aiming to arrive in Lunel by dusk. But Jordí begged to make one more visit to the abbey to offer a prayer for their journey.
Alone, Jordí entered the church. As he genuflected, he glanced around the nave; it was empty. He hurried up a side aisle toward the choir. His errand took only a moment. Before he emerged from the portico to the outside, he smoothed the thick cloak he wore over a clean cassock, willing his hands to cease their shaking.
The sénéchal flashed a grin at Jordí’s approach. “So, my fat friend, I hope you’ve bid your farewells to northern Languedoc. Perhaps by the time you return, this will be part of France.” He secured the saddle on the sturdy palfrey that would bear Jordí’s weight on the road to Narbonne and motioned him to the waiting horse. He held the reins while Jordí mounted the saddle. “You’re shaking like a child. Why so afraid?”
Sitting atop the mare’s short, sturdy legs and square back, the monk avoiding looking at the sénéchal. “This is all so sudden,” he said. “I hear these roads are no longer safe for small parties. Are we to travel alone?”
“These roads are unsafe only for those who would deny the will of the Christian Church and the Soldiers of Christ.” Mauléon lifted himself lightly onto the horse he called Achille and drew alongside Jordí. The horse and rider towered over the monk and his palfrey. “And we have a long journey ahead of us, so there will be plenty of time for me to explain how you will best be of service.”
Thinking of the words he’d read in the abbey of Saint-Gilles—the warning about a falcon sent to slaughter the dove—Jordí shuddered. But Mauléon hadn’t finished. “And whatever service we find for you, resistance will be met with the point of the same knife you saw slide into the archdeacon’s chest.”
Jordí couldn’t get his brain to work fast enough to decipher what he should do, whom he could tell that Lucas Mauléon was Castelnau’s assassin. He could only pray, pray for God’s protection. It was not likely he could count on that of the Church.
Mauléon kicked out with the toe of his boot and dug it into the flank of Jordí’s horse. The mare whinnied and shot forward. Jordí lurched in the saddle but regained his balance. He glanced behind to see the sénéchal laughing.
As they continued west, Jordí considered the calfskin pouch and the sheet of fine paper with the broken red wax seal folded within that he’d pressed under a stone in the nave of Saint-Gilles in the minutes after committing Castelnau’s body to God. That velvety calfskin was now molded to the barrel of his belly, secured around his waist by a wide strip of cotton. It gave him some measure of security. Someday he would figure out how to use it to his advantage.
LE PÈLERIN, MINERVE—THURSDAY EVENING
Lia returned to Le Pèlerin as dusk crept over the valley. Slipping off her shoes in the foyer, she pulled her heavy heart up the stairs, sank onto the bed, and curled into a ball under a wool blanket.
Her suitcase sat tucked in a corner next to the armoire. It would be so easy to gather her few things, pour out the milk, toss the fruit, shutter the windows, and walk away. She could go anywhere. But nowhere she’d been before. No, it would have to be someplace new—one without familiar faces or any trace of the history she’d studied and thought she understood. Certainly no place where ghosts and memories could haunt her.
Lia had come to Languedoc in search of healing and for the only thing that made sense to her—the distant, ancient past. The past she could control, because she knew what happened in the end. But the past as she’d understood it was now a present that wrapped her in mystery and threat. What she thought she knew and could control through footnotes and translation was changing before her eyes.
A man from time gone by walked this world, as real as the sunrise, coming in search of her—or perhaps in search of rescue from a force that reason said simply couldn’t exist. Lia balanced how it would feel to leave Raoul behind with her guilt and confusion over loving again.
The possibility of starting over loomed like a chasm. Where would she go that wouldn’t be an ending? Languedoc—in the folds of these mountains, in these valleys of stone, with the history of these crumbling citadels—was her home. Rose and Domènec were her family now.
Exhausted, Lia drifted into a dream and found herself on a river bank along the Cesse. Before her stood Raoul, wearing the cloak of the man who had traveled forward through the centuries. Or had she traveled back?
What if we just disappeared, left this mess behind? her dream voice pleaded. We could vanish into Greece, Morocco…
He would follow us, Paloma. His hand caressed her cheek. There would be no peace. But you don’t have to be a part of this story. He found me through you, and he’s using you to draw me out. I am here. You can leave. And when this is over, I will find you.
She woke to silence. Before she gathered the energy to move her limbs and face the present, she replayed the dream, seeking the warmth in Raoul’s skin and the assurance of love in his eyes.
He’d called her Paloma.
“I have to find him,” she said aloud to the dark. “I have to find this man who is after Raoul. That’s why I’m here.”
She sat up and switched on the light. Taking her journal from the nightstand, she wrote down everything Jordí had said to her in the bistro, every word and phrase she could remember, his expressions and hesitations. Her questions and disbelief became acceptance and resignation as she wrote. She’d fallen in love with a man who should not be.