MINERVE—WEDNESDAY
Lia shoved her feet into her running shoes, grabbed her bag and keys, and slammed the door behind her, leaving Jordí alone in Le Pèlerin. She raced up the street, but Raoul’s Jeep was gone. She tried his number, but there was no cell service; the phone was useless.
She forced herself to stop and consider where Raoul would have gone. After Lucas? She had no idea where Lucas lived, and the address for his studio in Narbonne was a postbox. Then the response rang as clearly as if someone stood next to her, speaking the words aloud.
Logis du Martinet. Raoul’s home.
Clouds weighted with rain hung so low she could almost touch their ragged skins. As she ran down rue des Célestins to the garage she shared with a neighbor, her footsteps reverberated in the mist, and the sound of her breathing filled the space around her head. The silent village unnerved her. Not even a cat sidled past. In the predawn, Minerve appeared abandoned.
The garage door creaked as she pushed it open. It escaped her grasp at the last moment, slamming up to the roof in an explosion of metal against stone. Clanging dread filled the air. She waited, her heart slamming in her chest. No sound followed. Even the car’s engine turning over made her cringe, as if the noise might wake the dead from the peace of their eternal slumber.
Creeping through the canyons of Minerve’s cobbled streets, she peered through the condensation on her windshield, looking for a glow from a kitchen window, a wisp of smoke from a chimney, the flutter of a bedroom curtain, a pale face peering outside to see who dared disturb the silence. No light, no smoke, no face. Lia pulled away from town, taking the right onto Route d’Azillanet.
She sped south down small roads that were just slivers on a map. The familiar modern landmarks had vanished. The army of wind turbines that kept vigil over the Corbières Valley was gone; what had been vineyards with glossy green leaves were fallow fields filled with dull, gray-brown stubs.
She picked up speed along the long stretch of road toward Lagrasse, but when she took the back way into the village, the tarmac thinned again and became hard-packed earth. Lia slowed, uncertain and anxious as the miles peeled away beneath her tires and fell into time.
Lagrasse was below her, tucked into a small valley through which the Orbieu River chortled with the mountain runoff of early spring. A left down rue des Tineries would take her to the center of the village. She veered right instead and onto a rough gravel road gouged with deep potholes. She gripped the steering wheel tighter as granite and limestone cliffs rose to her right and shadows shifted in the brush on the other side of the road.
No light was visible from Logis du Martinet. The iron gate shifted with the wind as it bounced open and shut against the latch, the bar vibrating in laughter at a private, sinister joke. Lia switched off the headlights and rolled down the window. Nothing could be heard but the wind, which scissored between poplar trees on either side of the rock-strewn lane. It was a dialogue of air that susurrated her name. She killed the engine and left the car a few feet from the gate. Lia checked her cell phone again: not only was there no signal, but the phone wouldn’t even turn on.
“Shit.” She shoved it into her pocket and slipped through the gate, sliding the bolt home. The camera system that had been in place during her earlier visit was gone. She was greeted only by the wind and the first plash of rain.
The handle on the arched door of the winery’s entrance turned easily. Lia let herself in and closed the door against the weather. The silence was immediate. Brackish dawn light seeped in from the skylights that spanned the first feet of the long, vaulted room. Her eyes adjusted to the dimness, and the clumps of shadows reconciled themselves into meaningful shapes.
“What the hell?” She spun in place, taking in the inexplicable.
Raoul had kept his property spotless and the winery pristine. Each space where unbottled wine was stored—whether a stainless steel fermenting tank or the room of oak tonneaux—was a marvel of gleaming surfaces and polished wood. But now it looked as if the winery had never seen his steady hand. Muck streaked thickly across the skylights, and the brick walls were coated with the black fuzz of wild yeasts.
Gone were the enormous stainless steel tanks that had lined the left side of the vast cave. Instead were giant vats of wood, but the vats had collapsed into chunks and splinters. The odor of rotted wood pushed against the intoxicating aroma of fermented grapes.
“Raoul?” Lia called out as she stepped into the vast, shadowy space.
The door to his office hung on broken hinges. The square window that faced his house was intact but filthy, and cobwebs trailed from its wooden casement to the floor. There was no desk, no computer, no light—just a table tilting on three legs and small piles of gray rubbish in the corner that could have been mice nests. Or worse.
She walked toward the back end of the chai—the storehouse—and turned left. The floor sloped down to a great, open space. A half-moon window set high in the wall at the far end overlooked the room. Its glass pane rattled with the wind, and she could hear the insistent percussion of the rain. Again, the room was familiar, but only by the shape of its bones. Where once there had been sealed and gleaming cement floors, a bottling machine, and crates of clear and green glass bottles, a floor of broken and crumbling brick with patches of bare earth showing through like open wounds now existed.
“Raoul?” Lia ventured again. Her voice echoed through the space. In the pressing darkness, her heart boomed and her chest tightened. The deeper she penetrated, the lower the ceiling slid. She descended several worn stone steps to face a small wooden door set deep in the wall. Here too the door had an iron handle set precisely in the middle. A vast cellar in disrepair, moldering and crumbling as if it had been left untended for centuries, yet the door opened soundlessly on well-oiled hinges. Lia peered in.
A small landing dropped abruptly to a spiral staircase that looked carved into the earth’s very core. She took a few tentative steps. The corkscrew was so tightly wound that only a few steps were visible before it twisted away. Two people passing would be forced to suck in and shrink their bodies. She could go no farther; her courage was at its end.
An image of the door flashed in her mind. She hadn’t thought to prop it open, but she hadn’t heard it close behind her either. Lia lunged back up the steps and slammed into the solid mass of the door. It held fast. There was no handle on this side. She moaned and slammed into it again. “No!” she screamed, and her stomach seized in panic. She scrabbled on the walls on either side of the door, pressing against the stone in a mad search for a hidden latch. She fell to her knees in front of the door, her face in her hands, keening softly, no longer able to fight the panic.
A stream of cool air, scented with rain, not ancient damp, pushed up from the stairwell. With the fresh air came a rush of understanding. By goodwill or evil, she no longer knew, but the certainty that she was meant to descend those steps pushed Lia from her knees to her feet.
Worn by the tread of thousands of feet and hundreds of years, the sandstone steps were smooth. The lip of each step had been rubbed away, curving and slippery under the soles of her shoes. Lia clung to the cracked and cold stone walls, allowing their tight spiral to brace her downward plunge. The thin stream of air rushed up to meet her. And there was light. A pearly glow, weak at first, growing stronger and more golden as she descended, allowed her to track her feet. She counted off the steps to keep calm. “…fifty-three…seventy-eight…” Her stomach roiled with nausea at the constant twisting, and cold sweat soaked into her sweater. Still she descended, like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole.
GRUISSAN—DECEMBER 1208
The rotund young man yanked up his hood, pulled his body deep into his cloak, and edged his way around the nave. Most of the trapped villagers were gathered at the altar, lost in their fear and hysteria. A trio—a woman and two children—stood apart, beside a stone column. The woman’s head was bent in prayer, her lips moving soundlessly.
Although he’d been sent as a spy for the sénéchal six weeks earlier, he’d yet to lay eyes on Paloma Gervais d’Aran. But he knew the descriptions of her slight frame and golden hair. Then there were the children, their delicate features so like their mother’s and so similar to one another’s.
He slipped through the shadows until he was at Paloma’s side. Her son’s eyes widened, and the man placed his finger to his lips. The boy squeezed his mother’s hand and buried his head in her skirts. When Paloma lifted her head, she looked right into his face.
“Follow me. Quickly,” he said. He wrapped a hand around her wrist.
“Let go of me,” she hissed and jerked away, but his grip tightened.
“Paloma.” He pulled her close and spoke firmly. “There is no time. If you want to save yourself and your children, you will do as I say.”
“How do you know my name?”
The truth, offered quickly, covered for months of lies. “There are Catholic priests who act against this crusade. You must know this. One waits outside to take you and your children to safety.”
“And the others?” Paloma nodded to the group. Most were on their knees now, praying, crying. The odor of smoke was intensifying, the silence beyond the church walls thick with doom.
“I’ll do what I can, but you must leave now.”
“If you know a way out, you must save us all!” She strained against his grip and opened her mouth wide as if to shout. In a flash, a short knife appeared, its point flush against the tender skin of Bertran’s throat. Jordí dropped her arm and turned his body so Bertran was crushed between them.
“If I leave here without you, I’ll be killed. If I let the others escape, we will all die together. There are guards posted everywhere, but you have the protection of Lucas Mauléon. Don’t be stupid.”
“Lucas?” Paloma gasped. “He is behind this? I will not come with you.”
Jordí scooped Bertran into his arms, still holding the short knife in one fist, but the boy went rigid and began to squirm. Jordí clamped a firm hand over Bertran’s mouth, the blade of the knife a hair’s width from the boy’s nose, and motioned with a jerk of his chin for Paloma to lead the way. His violence horrified him, but it would serve to save her life and the lives of these children. Inside, he roared. To Paloma, he said in a low, firm voice, “Move. Into the chapel.”
Paloma leaned forward and nuzzled her son’s cheek with her nose. “Quiet now, little man,” she whispered in his ear. “You’re with Maman. We’re going to Papà.” She turned, holding Aicelina’s head firmly against her shoulder, and they slipped around the wood railing that separated the chapel from the nave.
In the center of the small chapel was a large stone sarcophagus that held the remains of the church’s benefactor. It filled the space, leaving them nowhere to go. Paloma hesitated, and Jordí pushed her forward. “Behind. There is space behind the tomb.”
A flight of steps opened at their feet as they descended into the gloom, and they were forced to feel for each step with their toes. The stairwell ended abruptly. Jordí, still holding Bertran, pressed up tight behind Paloma. “By your foot, there, on the right.”
Paloma stretched out her foot, shifting awkwardly under her daughter’s weight. A hollow thump sounded. Her foot had met something other than stone.
“Tap quickly three times, and then twice more, slowly.” Paloma did as she was told. Immediately, light appeared at her feet, a rectangle no higher than her knees. She hesitated.
“The others.” Her voice broke in agony. “We must save the others.”
“Save yourself. Save your children” was Jordí’s harsh reply. “I’ve told you—it is too late. The others are lost. Now move!” She crouched down and released Aicelina, holding the child back while she sank to her hands and knees and passed through the opening. Jordí pushed Aicelina and Bertran after her. He squeezed through the hole with some difficulty and emerged, panting, into a passageway outside the church wall.
Paloma knelt in the mud, her arms around her children, pressing their bodies into hers. Before them stood a small cart, drawn by two chestnut packhorses, which filled nearly the width of the alley. The horses shifted, and their ears pulled back against their squat heads. The odor of burning pitch and sulfur was strong, and the air was growing thick with smoke that rose in the sky over the pitched roof of Saint-Maurice. The driver sat hunched on a short bench above the horses, and he spoke without turning his head.
“Into the cart, under the cover.”
Bertran began to pull up the bottom edge of his tunic. Paloma bent to help him squat, and Aicelina began crying that she too had to pee. The driver let out an audible sigh.
“Better we all go now than in the cart,” Paloma pleaded. Jordí turned to give her privacy and looked back when she cleared her throat. She stood in profile, her hands pressed into the small of her back. It was only then he noticed she filled out the front of her simple gown.
“You are with child. Dear God.”
Jordí picked up Aicelina under her arms, and the child shrieked in protest. Paloma shushed and soothed her daughter, though her own voice quavered. She climbed in first. A patchwork cover of leather stretched tight over the bed of the cart, held in place by pegs tacked into the wagon’s sideboards. It was dark and close, but fresh straw had been strewn across the bed in thick layers, cushioning their limbs from the slatted floor. Paloma was forced to lie on her side.
“Look how snug and cozy we will be,” she said brightly to her children, as if it were a game. She clapped her hands and nodded to Jordí, who set Aicelina beside her and hoisted Bertran into the cart.
Once he was assured that they were inside and calm, Jordí yanked a thick skin heavy with the odor of cowhide over the end, matching up the holes in the leather to the pegs driven into the soft, weathered wood. He sealed them snugly as fingers in a glove.
“If you are stopped, show the letter and seal of the sénéchal,” he said to the hooded man holding the reins. “Thank you, Father.”
“We shall all be condemned to hell for letting the rest of those souls perish,” growled a voice from behind the hood. “May God forgive us.”
“I’ll do what I can. Now, flee.”
The driver slapped the flank of the nearest horse, and it started forward. He clicked his tongue and flicked the reins, and the horses moved in unison. Jordí watched as the cart passed into a covered alley and disappeared into shadow. He turned with a heavy sigh and kneeled down before the small rectangle of space carved into the church wall.
Smoke seeped from the opening. He coughed as he strained to fit his body in the hole. Half in, half out of the church, he felt hands clamp around his ankles with iron strength. He was dragged out and dropped in a pile of mud. Rolling over, spitting muck from his lips, he looked up.
Two years before, Jordí had walked from the seminary at Sant Benet to Poblet at the foot of the Prades Mountains to attend services at the Royal Abbey of Santa Maria de Poblet. The journey had taken three days, but the young monk and his fellow seminarians were carried by eager feet. They traveled to witness the services led by the famous abbot of Cîteaux, Arnaud Amalric.
Three men stood over him now. Two wore the uniform of men-at-arms. They flanked a tall weedy figure in a surcot of black velvet topped by a scarlet, hooded mantle embroidered in white and gold. Although this man’s head was covered, Jordí knew his face. Resignation overcame his fear at last. Paloma and her children were safe. His last thought, before the flat side of a sword knocked him unconscious, was to wonder why Arnaud Amalric would bother to murder a lowly monk.