THE MARAIS, PARIS—MARCH 1208
Lucas watched from the shadows as Manel left the alley. They would meet at Porte Sainte-Geneviève in two hours’ time to begin their journey southeast. From Lyon, Manel de Perella would be accompanied by merchants, soldiers, and men of God traveling to the Italian provinces; many would go all the way to the Vatican and beyond. Lucas could send a letter with a knight in the retinue, spelling out his suspicions of the papal emissary’s betrayal. Suspicions that could be delivered even as the Catalan freshened himself in his quarters before seeing the pope.
Lucas’s mouth turned up in a sour smile. He would leave Manel be. Spies were useful, and not just those who reported to you. The spies who didn’t know they’d been found out were the most valuable of all.
A glint of white caught his eye. A woman crossed the street to his left. Her head was covered loosely by a shawl of dark green wool, and her blond hair fell in a flowing tail across one shoulder as she bent to talk to the child at her side. She so resembled Paloma that Lucas nearly stepped into the street to hail her. She stood up abruptly, and he fell into the shadows. When he peered out a moment later, she was gone.
The sound of barking dogs erupted from inside the cluster of tall, putty-colored buildings across the way. Lucas moved swiftly up the confined street until he came to the passageway from which Manel had emerged. Just inside, tepid rays of sun dripped into a courtyard.
Two gray terriers streaked across the stones, followed by a man cloaked in black. His brown riding breeches were tucked into tall boots of worn leather faded to dull gray and patched with strips of brown. Lucas heard the sharp pitch of a young woman’s voice, and the dogs dashed out of sight. The man raised a hand in farewell and turned.
Lucas fell back immediately, pressing his body flat against the wall. A pair of young women, their woven baskets full of vegetables, stared and giggled as they passed, and one whispered behind a raised hand. His black glare forced their eyes away, and they drew together, hurrying on. Lucas didn’t linger either. Four long strides returned him to the street corner. He rounded it and edged his head out so he could just see the street ahead.
• • •
After he’d learned of Paloma’s betrayal, Lucas tore through the Aude Valley from Limoux to Montpellier, determined to leave Languedoc forever. But he’d stopped in Lagrasse, tortured by the knowledge that Paloma was so close, praying to see her one last time.
He’d inquired about the d’Aran family in the village, and a stable boy had heedlessly raised his hand to point out Paloma’s husband, who stood outside a smithy, engaged in animated conversation. Lucas had hissed at the child just as the boy opened his mouth to call out to Raoul d’Aran and shoved a coin in his hand to pay for his silence.
• • •
Lucas surveilled d’Aran from the shadows now, just as he’d watched him in Lagrasse, knowing the man had not traveled so far simply to visit with a cousin.
PARIS—MONDAY AFTERNOON
Lia plunged into the Marais, wandering without destination through the quieter streets, past rue des Francs-Bourgeois and down rue Quincampoix, where the shops were shuttered for the long lunch break. Her thoughts were leaves whirling down an alley, and she hardly noticed where her feet led.
She’d parted ways with Jordí not long before. He had hailed a taxi from the curbside, claiming an appointment at Librairie Loeb-Larocque, a rare books dealer in the thirteenth arrondissement. Before he climbed into the backseat, she placed a hand on his arm.
“You never told me how you died. Or why you’ve come back. Will you tell me what happened to you?”
His face was unreadable, his eyes hidden again behind dark glasses, but the corners of his mouth lifted in hint of a smile. “Meet me at La Colombe on rue Pecquay at eight. I’ll finish my story over dinner.” He tipped his hat and squeezed into the tiny Renault.
“Lia,” Jordí called from the open window, and she turned halfway. “I do recall something else from Castelnau’s letter. Two short sentences, written in a different hand and added at the bottom. The words made no sense to me at the time, so I thought little of them. But perhaps their very oddness cemented the words in my memory.” He motioned her closer, and she knelt down. “‘The bear is a traitor. A falcon flies south, and the dove will die.’” Jordí rolled up the window. The taxi jerked away from the curb and sped south from the curve of a roundabout.
Lia had repeated the words, committing them to memory. They meant nothing to her, but they sounded like a warning. What she would give to read that last piece of correspondence Castelnau had received. Important enough that he’d sought it in his final moments.
She was starving. She’d left Minerve at dawn, grabbing a horrid cup of coffee at a service station along the way, but she’d eaten nothing since the night before. The aromas of the Marais at lunchtime left her weak with hunger.
Weaving through the narrow streets, she found her way to the Marché des Enfants Rouges. The cafeteria, full of food vendors and kiosks of cheeses, produce, and charcuterie, hummed with activity. The fine day had routed workers from their offices, and the market—open on one side to the street—was warm with packed bodies. Lia queued at the counter of her favorite Lebanese vendor, where the orders were quickly dispatched. In ten minutes, she had a tray full of fragrant falafel, warm pita bread, and tabbouleh redolent of lemons and parsley.
Several tables and benches were arranged in the open courtyard outside the vendors’ stalls, and copper columns radiated heat from propane burners. Lia found an open space at the end of a table and slipped in beside a young couple. He spoke French with a broad Australian drawl, and she replied in a husky Catalonian burr. The woman’s beauty was intoxicating. Her flaxen hair was piled in a loose chignon, and a silk scarf was wound with practiced abandon around her neck. A cream jersey dress clung to her frame, hugging her breasts and the angles of her shoulders. She spoke with her hands; silver rings on her long fingers caught the light, and a stack of thin bracelets clicked as she gestured. Her partner leaned forward, struggling to understand her rapid-fire French, or perhaps he just wanted to soak in her aura. His replies echoed her words, repeating them to make certain he’d caught their meaning. He was unself-conscious and completely smitten.
Soon, the couple had eaten their fill. The Australian towered over the women as he gathered the remains of lunch. When he stepped away to dispose of their trays, the Catalan turned to Lia. As she looked into the woman’s stormy-green irises, Lia flinched, and her heart skipped. It was like looking into a mirror.
“I love Paris,” the woman said. “There is no city such as this for beautiful men and romance.”
“He is lovely.” Lia was lost in those eyes so like her own. “And I think the French lessons are going quite well.”
“Just a little tutoring on the side” was her blithe reply. She tucked loose strands of hair behind her ears and placed her long, bejeweled fingers on the table. “What you seek is not in Paris, Lia.” This time she spoke in Occitan. “The dove waits in Lagrasse.”
Lia set down her fork. “What? What did you just say?”
At that moment, the Australian reappeared at the table. He held out a hand to his companion, and she rose like a sylph, gathering her bag and coat over one arm. She gave Lia one last look. “Return to Languedoc. The truth awaits you there.” The man looked quizzically between the women, not understanding the arcane language. With a nod, the Catalan beauty moved past him, and they walked on.
Lia sat with her hands flat on either side of her tray, her appetite gone. When she could trust her legs, she rose and dumped what remained of her lunch in a nearby trash bin, adding the tray and utensils to the growing stack on top.
She passed through the Marais in a daze. At the intersection of rue des Lombards and rue Nicolas Flamel, a shadow emerged from an arched doorway and headed straight for her. Lia caught a whiff of roses as the figure approached. Details of a face came into view: wrinkled, leathery skin, a ruined mouth, and eyes grown old before their time. It was the Romani woman who had sold her a rose a short while before in the Square du Temple. As they drew side by side, the woman stopped.
“Go home, Lia. Go back to Languedoc.” She too spoke in Occitan, her voice hardly rising above a whisper. She continued on without a backward glance.
Lia stopped in the recess of a large doorway and watched people stream past. The sounds of their conversations and the watery rainbows of their clothing and shopping bags were as distant as a vapor trail high in the sky. Gathering herself, she reentered the silvery March sunlight. Her feet carried her across the Pont d’Arcole to the Île de la Cité, where the Cathédrale Notre-Dame rose in monumental splendor. Turning left on rue du Cloître de Notre Dame, she approached the cathedral’s east end. The sight of the massive flying buttresses ascending to the heavens, holding up the cathedral and the weight of history, lifted some of the leaden weight from her heart.
She sank onto a bench to watch the afternoon sun dip over Notre-Dame and turn its gray stone to platinum. This heart of Paris had been a site of ceremony centuries before the Templars constructed their citadel in 1140. From temple to basilica to cathedral, great houses of worship had stood watch as the city grew up from the swamps and plains around the Seine.
History vibrated, rejoiced, and clamored all around Lia. It was a thing she could touch, as warm and alive as her skin, as vital as the beating of her heart. Go home. Go back to Languedoc, the flower seller had muttered. The dove waits in Lagrasse, said the beauty with the Catalan accent that made a melody of her Occitan words. Lia felt no malice from these women; they seemed to be extensions of her own mind, her intuition revealing itself in human form.
By the time she returned to the hotel, silver strands of light were fading from the boulevards, and purple shadows burgeoned from side streets, subsuming the day. Lia climbed the winding stairs to room 602, weary from the morning’s drive and footsore from wandering Paris’s pavement and cobblestone.
She sat on the bed, massaging her aching toes, wondering if she had time for a hot bath before dinner, when the blood plunged from her head, turning her face to ice, her limbs to stone.
“That photo.” Her foot fell with a thud to the floor. She pulled her satchel into her lap and rummaged in its depths. Her shoulder bag contained only her wallet, cell phone, and a notebook. She’d left the photo with Jordí. “Damn it,” she cursed. “Damn my distracted mind.”
She replayed their final moments together, when she’d given her impassioned defense of the importance of history. She hadn’t noticed him secreting away the odd photograph, and she cursed again at her carelessness. No matter what the apparitions may have warned, she had to see Jordí and retrieve that photo.
• • •
Lia waited at the restaurant for over an hour, drinking a pichet of Burgundy before finally ordering a meal. Her texts and calls to Jordí’s cell phone went unanswered. She lingered over her meal and ordered a Cognac, followed by a cappuccino. A trio of German businessmen watched her from the restaurant’s bar, and one made his move while she sipped her coffee. Her waiter, discreet and stern, was at her table in a heartbeat, explaining graciously that madame was dining alone this evening, but he would be happy to show monsieur an excellent window table. Lia mouthed her thanks.
On her way out, she paused by the servers’ station to express gratitude to her unlikely champion.
“It was nothing, madame. I sensed that you preferred to be left in peace.” He peered at her over the top of his reading glasses.
“I was expecting someone, but he never showed.”
“A grievous error.” The waiter lifted the glasses to the top of his head and offered her a kind, tired smile. “No one should treat a woman with such disregard.”
She couldn’t help her very un-French grin. “I was waiting for a priest, believe it or not. Obviously, my feminine charms were lost on him.”
He shook his head and sniffed. “I gave up on the Christian church long ago,” he said. “I’m a Buddhist.”
Lia received his smug irony with grace. “It’s such a beautiful faith, Buddhism. Always a chance for rebirth and redemption, to do things better the next time.” The waiter blinked, and his green eyes softened, as though he now saw a whole person in front of him, not just a customer.
“If the priest does make an appearance, he’s a large man, but short, costaud.” She held her arms out in front of her belly to emphasize Jordí’s girth. “He’s in his late fifties, looks very dapper—suit, hat, cane, maybe a red scarf…” She stopped when the waiter’s mouth opened in surprise.
“He was here, earlier this evening, not long before you arrived. He said he was meeting someone, and I seated him at the very table where you were. Then another man came in and headed straight to his table. When I brought a bottle of water, they were arguing in whispers and waved me away. I took a few orders, and when I turned back, the table was empty. But your friend left this.”
From a shelf below the computer where he’d been recording receipts, the waiter pulled out a basket that jingled with forgotten keys. Neatly folded on one side was a crimson-red cashmere scarf. A corner hung loose, weighed down by an embroidered white dove. Lia let the fine material slide through her fingers.
“Do you mind if I take this?” She draped the scarf over her wrist. “I’ll return it to my friend.”
The waiter assented, and a shout from the kitchen pulled his attention away.
“Wait.” She held him back with a hand on his arm. “The man who was with the priest. What did he look like?”
“Tall, much taller than me. French, with a southern accent, like yours. His hair was dark blond. And his eyes—black.”
• • •
Outside the restaurant, Lia withdrew Lucas’s business card from her purse. She’d planned to confront Jordí with it when they met this afternoon, but his unexpected reversal on her quest into the truth of Castelnau’s death had driven Lucas Moisset from her mind. The raised gold lettering of his name and title glinted in the low light, and the peregrine falcon watermark hovered beneath.
Lia then sent two texts. The first she dashed off to Jordí: Call ASAP. I know where that photo was taken. It took her several tries to find the right words for a message to Raoul. At last, she hit Send. She wished she could see his face when he read: I’m sorry. I believe you. I’m coming home.
She raised the collar on her coat and drew her scarf snugly around her neck. Trusting her instincts to see her safely back to the hotel, Lia stepped out of the shelter of light that glowed from the restaurant’s windows and into the empty street.