They found a cafe-cum-restaurant only a short walk away from the church and sat outside in a kind of sprawling garden dotted with tables and chairs. They ordered drinks and food, and while they were waiting sat in companionable silence enjoying the warmth of the sunlight filtering through the trees.
‘This has been interesting,’ Bronson said after the waiter had brought their drinks, ‘and perhaps even instructive, but I don’t think coming here has been particularly helpful to what we’re doing right now. According to that document, we know the Ark was taken from Montségur to Campagne-sur-Aude via the “place of the castle of the Voisins”, which we’re assuming was Rennes-le-Château because this is the only place that seems to tick all the boxes. We also know that about the only building here where Raymond d’Aniort wouldn’t have left the Ark was the castle itself, because the Voisins were opposed to the Cathars and by extension to the Templars as well.’
‘Which is just as well,’ Angela pointed out, ‘because it’s private property, so even if we had wanted to get inside to take a look around, we probably wouldn’t have been able to.’
‘Exactly. So the relic could have been stored in the church or almost any other building here, presumably under armed guard. We’ve no way of knowing where, and even if we could somehow deduce that it had been stored in that building over there, for example’ – Bronson pointed at random across the garden at one of the adjoining properties – ‘that still wouldn’t help us. Let’s hope we find something at Campagne-sur-Aude.’
Their food arrived shortly afterwards, a steak and salad for Angela and another cassoulet for Bronson – he’d definitely got a taste for that particular local dish.
‘Going back to Bérenger Saunière,’ he said between mouthfuls, ‘there have been dozens of theories about where his money actually came from, most of them based on misinformation or by cherry-picking certain facts, something I’ve noticed both conspiracy theorists and conspiracy debunkers tend to do quite a lot.
‘There was a story about him finding old manuscripts inside a hollow Visigothic pillar, manuscripts containing a secret that threatened the Catholic Church and allowed him to blackmail the Vatican. Bearing in mind the record of the Church when it comes to dealing with heretics or awkward criticism, I think if Saunière had found something like that he would have met with an unfortunate fatal accident quite soon afterwards rather than be given enough money by the Vatican to turn him into a multimillionaire. Anyway, that story seems to have been a complete invention.
‘Then there was another tale about him finding half the money raised by Blanche of Castile to pay the ransom demanded by the Egyptians for the release of her son, Louis IX. There’s some basis of truth in that, because Louis was captured and she did pay the ransom, but that’s as far as it goes. Quite why Blanche would have raised a sum twice as large as the payment demanded, or why she would then have hidden the second half of it at Rennes-le-Château but didn’t bother to recover it has never been explained.’
‘So where do you think the money came from?’ Angela asked, spearing another piece of steak.
‘Good question. I think there are a few bits of information that would allow us to make an educated guess. Nothing definitive, but certainly suggestive. This settlement started life as a Visigoth fortress and the Visigoths were accomplished workers in gold. They sacked Rome and removed most of the wealth and treasure the city possessed, and that was almost certainly taken either to Carcassonne or to their fortress here, or perhaps split between the two. We know from history that Alaric II later had to abandon this fortress in a hurry and flee south when the Visigoths were threatened by the Frankish leader Clovis. It’s at least possible that the Visigoths would have buried most of the treasure they’d amassed because they would have needed to move quickly. So finding buried Visigoth treasure in the vicinity of Rennes-le-Château is a definite possibility, and its probable existence is supported by the historical record.
‘You talked about Bézu and the German casters who were imported to work in the area, and the fact that this region once had gold and silver mines. There’s historical evidence that in the middle of the seventeenth century a cache of gold coins was discovered near here, and two large gold bars were found in the nineteenth century, one outside this village and the other near Bézu. Then there were the two instances of counterfeiting gold coins you told me about at the castle of Bézu. What I’m getting at is that historically, gold has figured quite a lot in this area.
‘Then there’s Saunière’s often peculiar conduct, in which he was usually assisted by Marie Dénarnaud, his housekeeper. She was sixteen years his junior and most likely rather more than just his housekeeper. Witnesses stated that during the renovations to the church, Saunière lifted stone slabs from the floor to expose underground chambers, and there are references in wills and other documents to crypts and family burial vaults under the church. There’s no doubt that a crypt and tombs exist beneath the building, and it seems likely that the entrance had been sealed up for over a century before Saunière took over.
‘But it wasn’t only the crypt that he explored. He and Marie Dénarnaud were seen at night digging up graves in the cemetery – so often that a complaint was lodged against him by the local council to make him stop. All this suggests to me that he quite literally dug up a treasure. Whether it was something hidden in a family vault under the church or a forgotten Visigoth grave lying deep down in the cemetery or a hidden cache of Visigoth gold is another matter. Don’t forget that the church here probably dates from about the eighth century and it was the norm for Christian churches to be deliberately built on pagan places of worship to help stamp out the older religions. There could well have been much older tombs in the cemetery, and we know the Visigoths often included valuable grave goods with their burials.
‘And then there was what happened after Saunière died in 1917. Marie Dénarnaud survived him by thirty-six years, and in July 1946 she sold her estate to a man named Noël Corbu because several of the properties needed repairing and she’d run out of money, despite the fortune Saunière had got through. He had deliberately placed everything in her name so that when he died he was quite literally penniless. The sale was an en viager transaction.’
‘I’ve heard of that, but remind me.’
‘It’s a bit like equity release but without the massive fees and extortionate interest. Older people, usually widows or widowers and without dependents, sell their property to a third party in return for a lump sum that’s usually about half what it’s actually worth – that’s called the occupied value, or valeur occupée – and a lifetime monthly payment from the buyer. They can stay in the house and the buyer only takes possession when they die. In Noël Corbu’s case, it wasn’t a bad deal for him, because Marie Dénarnaud died in 1953, only seven years after the sale. And there had been a sweetener. Dénarnaud had promised him that when she was on her deathbed she would reveal a secret that would provide him with untold riches, the clear implication being that this was whatever Saunière had exploited during his life. She allegedly said, “You shall have more money than you will be able to spend”, which seems quite definitive, if it’s true.
‘Unfortunately for Corbu, Marie Dénarnaud suffered a fit or stroke a few weeks before she died, meaning she could no longer speak or write, so he was never given the information he had expected to receive and the secret died with her. But there are a couple of things she’s reported to have said that I think are significant. Some of the villagers remember her saying that “the people of Rennes-le-Château walk on gold without knowing it”, which certainly suggests Saunière’s fortune had been based on something buried in the ground. She also said that “what was left was enough to feed the whole village for a hundred years and there’d still be some left”, which implies that Saunière certainly hadn’t spent it all. And that of course raises one very obvious question.’
‘Yes. If there was still plenty of money or treasure left, why did Marie Dénarnaud have to sell her estate?’
‘Noël Corbu asked her exactly that question, and her answer is interesting. She told him she “would never touch it”, and I think we can read something into that. She was the housekeeper for a priest, which at least implies that she was a religious woman at a time when religion was a very important part of the lives of most people. If what Saunière had found was, for example, part of a hoard of relics that the Visigoths had looted from Rome, or perhaps a Visigothic tomb filled with gold jewellery and ornaments, she might well have regarded that as non-Christian and pagan, although the Visigoths were Christians. Or perhaps she simply saw it as stolen property or grave-robbing.
‘That might have been why she refused to have any part of it. It might also have been the reason why she refused to tell Corbu the secret until she was near death. If she was ashamed of the source of Saunière’s wealth, she wouldn’t have wanted anyone else to know what it was until she had died.’
Angela nodded. ‘There are lots of ifs and buts and maybes in all that, but it sounds more likely to me than some of the other crackpot theories that have been suggested. You know, sacred geometry, missing tombs, “Et in Arcadia ego” and cryptic clues hidden in old paintings, all that kind of stuff.
‘Anyway, if you’ve finally finished stuffing your face with that cassoulet, why don’t we have a coffee and then get back on the road?’