A.K.A. Goddess (24 page)

The Cluny, like the Cloisters in New York, specialized in medieval artifacts. It was almost a perfect fit.

Catrina Dauvergne, a former student of Aunt Bridge’s, had a double major in archeology and business, a master’s in the art of Medieval France, and a Ph.D. in museum studies. She already knew about the Kali Cup and wholly supported our plan to keep the Melusine Chalice from meeting a similar fate. We were bringing the grail to her now, as the museum closed, so that she could lock it in her personal safe and arrange its launch with the utmost privacy. Unlike with the Kali Cup, the Comitatus would have no advance notice.

I’d spent all day with the grail. I’d photographed it. I’d drunk from it again—with less dramatic but equally peaceful results. I hated to let it go.

But other women deserved to experience it, as well.

“And the Roman baths of the Hôtel de Cluny were built atop a site of ancient goddess worship,” continued Aunt Bridge.

Fine. So it was the perfect place. The fifteenth-century “hotel” was its own fortress, safe behind crenellated stone walls, accessible through only one set of high double doors, thick and wooden and fronted with iron bars. It had quiet dignity.

And it shared a Metro stop with the Sorbonne, which mean Aunt Bridge could easily visit the grail whenever she liked.

Passing through that one open doorway, we crossed the cobbled courtyard, not to the tower entrance but around to the back offices. We knocked, the door opened—and I met the woman who would introduce the Melusine Chalice to the modern world.

Dr. Dauvergne, in her midthirties, had a sleek beauty about her. Her hair was a honey-gold knot, her glasses hung on a chain around her neck, and her suit was conservative. She’d taken an endearingly plain picture for her ID tag.

She also held Aunt Bridge’s hands between hers for a long moment, with delight to see her old teacher. And she told Rhys and me to call her “Cat.” “We’re working together, after all.”

The administrative stretch of the museum looked like the abbey the building had once been, its small offices literal monks’ cells. Like most ancient buildings, it had exposed pipes and inadequate lighting. But the room into which Cat led us was larger, with brighter overhead lighting and steel tables holding different objets d’art.

In particular, I noticed a framed tapestry stretched on an easel, depicting a standing unicorn. My step slowed. “That’s not one of the tapestries, is it? I mean, I know it’s not a panel from your standing collection.”

“La Dame à la Licorne?” clarified Cat, and I nodded.

“We are in the last stages of acquiring this,” said Cat. “Clearly it is not one of the original six panels. But it is from fifteenth-century Flanders, commissioned through Lyons, and so may be related. I harbor particular theories that La Dame secretly references the Royal House of Stuart.”

Wow, did I ever want to sit down and talk shop with this lady. But of course, we weren’t there for the guided tour. We were there for something even more important.

“There were tapestries in Fontevrault, too,” I said, by way of transition, and offered her the photos I’d had developed that morning. It turned out that since I’d finished the film before going down Melusine’s well, all but the first few pictures had survived the water. “Before those bastards burned them.”

Catrina looked at the first of the photographs I handed her, then the next—and slowly sat down, her face blanching.

“Mon Dieu,” she murmured, wholly getting just how vast a cultural massacre the Comitatus had committed. She forced herself to continue through the shots. “They were beautiful….”

“They really were,” I agreed, my throat thick with loss. “I wish my photography could have done them justice.”

“It is appalling, that such a thing could happen in this enlightened time.”

“The people who have been trying to stop us,” I said, “are all about destruction. But they didn’t get this.”

And I unzipped the bag, and lifted out the grail.

Cat inhaled slowly, appreciatively. “Magnifique!”

Passing over that chalice was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. I could barely breathe around the lump in my throat. But I also felt immensely proud of myself.

If Cat was as competent as she seemed, this could work.

And once the grail was safe, I meant to put my considerable research skills to work—hunting down the Comitatus.

“Well,” said Rhys, as we left the courtyard through the doorway to the street. “A job well done, eh? How does it feel not to be solely responsible for the chalice anymore?”

“The Comitatus may still think I have it,” I reminded him, around a lump in my throat. My backpack felt so light! “As long as we’re buying Cat some time, maybe we can trick them into giving away more about themselves.”

He shook his head, but wisely withheld any critique of my latest plan. “So…you’ll be in Paris for a while longer?”

I smiled, liking the sound of that, even if I was still having trouble breathing.

Aunt Bridge, between Rhys and me, said, “Is your throat all right, Maggi? I believe I have a lozenge in my purse.”

My step slowed. My throat did feel sore. Not with the screaming intensity I’d felt over the last few days, but…what if this wasn’t mere emotions at ending my grail adventure?

That thought allowed other instincts to flow over me, nauseating suspicions that had to, had to be mistaken.

I looked back at the Cluny—and saw that someone had shut the barred gates and doors across the courtyard entrance since we’d left. Someone far stronger than Catrina Dauvergne…which meant our visit hadn’t been a complete secret, after all.

That alone wasn’t enough—but combined with my tight throat, I suddenly just…knew.

“Oh, my goddess,” I whispered. “Something’s wrong.”

“W hat do you mean, something’s—Maggi, wait!” called Rhys. But I was running along the museum’s fortress wall, racing back to its barred and blocked entrance. Walking more slowly, with Aunt Bridge on his arm, he fell behind.

I slammed my forearms against the doors, between the bars. I barely made noise, they were so thick. Each stood twice as high as me, flush to the carved stone jamb. They were locked.

Oh, no. Cat!

“Try her cell phone,” I said, backing up deliberately.

“Why—” began Rhys, but stopped as I took a running start—and leaped upward against the rise of the sculpted doorjamb. Like so much medieval architecture, it bore stone decorations—and my only hope for a handhold.

“We have to warn her,” I gasped, climbing it like a tree.

“Warn her about what?” warbled Aunt Bridge. “Magdalene, what are you doing?”

I was topping the jamb and reaching for the carved hood molding that arched over the stone portal, that’s what I was doing. Hopefully the ancient rock would hold me long enough to top the parapets. Haste made me clumsy. One foot skidded. I nearly fell to the sidewalk beneath me.

Clutching close to the wall, I looked down.

Rhys stretched a hand upward, eyes wide, as if he hoped to catch or steady me. Only when I saw that he couldn’t reach me did I realize on a gut level just how high this wall was.

Aunt Bridge had her cell phone out and was squinting at its display, pushing buttons.

I hooked my inside knee over the hood molding and accessed all my leg strength, all my balance, to ease myself upward, upward, until—yes! My hand reached the bottom edge of the crenellations. Reached, and knocked hard against them.

The battlement thrust outward, over the sidewalk. I would have to push away from the wall, away from the molding that held me, if I had any chance of scaling the top of the wall.

“It’s ringing,” Aunt Bridge called, beneath me. Beneath, and to one side. I wouldn’t risk landing on her.

I edged my outside foot precariously up, onto the hood molding in front of my inside knee. Now I crouched against the wall, between doorway and crenellations, like Spider-Man without the handy web.

“Maggi,” Rhys warned. Too late—not that I would’ve heeded him. With a final lunge, I rose up and outward. It was a move that, if I didn’t catch the embrasure between the up-thrust stone merlons, would launch me into a dramatic back flop onto the pavement far below.

My hands met air. Flailed forward. Caught stone. Then I clutched gratefully to the edge of the toothy parapet, steady.

“It’s transferring me to voice mail,” relayed Aunt Bridge. “What should I tell her?”

“I think she’s in danger.” I dragged myself across the embrasure on my stomach, glad for something solid beneath me. “She should lock her doors and call security or the police.”

Assuming the Comitatus hadn’t already gotten her.

Levering myself the rest of the way into the embrasure between the crenellation’s stone teeth, I looked down at the long drop onto cobblestone inside the wall—and felt momentary despair. Bad enough to lose Melusine’s grail, but to have put an innocent woman, not even a Grail Keeper, into the line of fire…

To my relief, a security guard jogged across the courtyard toward me, waving. “You must not do this!” he yelled in French, making a shooing motion. “You will be injured!”

“I need to get in!” I called, also in French. If he could just catch me, break my fall….

No—that would risk yet another innocent.

My accent must not have been as good as I’d thought, because this time he used English. “The museum, it is closed. Get down, or I will call the police.”

“Call them. One of your curators may be in danger.”

That got the guard’s attention. “What is this?”

“Dr. Dauvergne,” I explained, frustrated with just talk. But when I extended one leg downward, ready to drop myself toward the inside doorway’s hood molding, the guard pointed a warning finger at me. I suspected I wouldn’t get past him without a fight. “We were just in her offices, and I’m very afraid something has happened to her. You have to let us in.”

He shook his head. “No, this is impossible.”

“Then check on her yourself. But hurry!”

“No,” he insisted. “I mean, you cannot have only now spoken to Dr. Dauvergne. The museum offices, they are also closed.”

“She let us in the back door. Over there.” I pointed. “Look, we aren’t trying to get in.”

He tipped his head back, eyeing my perch on the wall.

“Other than to help her, I mean. Check on her, now, or I’m calling the police myself.” And going in without you.

A woman’s voice said, “Surely we do not need the police.” And the museum curator herself approached across the cobbles, her gaze a mix of confusion and amusement at this scene.

“Cat!” I exclaimed, glad to see her safe.

From the street side, Bridge said, “Cat? Thank goodness.”

“Paul, it is all right,” she was telling the guard. “Please, open a door for me? We can leave the gates locked.”

After a moment’s hesitation, he did as instructed.

“I’m afraid you really must get down,” she told me, and pointed as I shifted my weight to join her. “No—that side.”

“Cat, I think you might be in danger.”

“I trust Paul implicitly. But unless you wish to draw even more attention than you already have…?”

I glanced toward the street—and saw that I had quite an audience, some with cameras. I didn’t like giving up. But she was here. She was safe. The man beside her—whom she trusted—had keys to the gates as well as the doors.

So I repeated my climb in reverse—feet dangling past the bottom edge of the battlements, swinging in search of first the molding and then the bars. I jumped the last ten feet to land into an easy, shock-absorbing crouch.

Onlookers applauded, but I wheeled to grasp the iron bars. “Cat, our visit was supposed to be secret but someone shut the gates behind us. Was it Paul? Did you know he knew?”

And Cat said, “I’m sorry…do I know you?”

It’s as if the world froze, right there. Or as if I wanted it to, because part of me was starting to figure this out, faster than the rest of me could keep up.

I already suspected I was not going to like this.

Rhys stepped closer behind me, his hand on my shoulder relaying how much my climb had concerned him. “Mademoiselle Dauvergne, we were just in your office.”

Bridge said, “Catrina!”

Cat leaned closer—though she did not stand near enough to be grabbed through the bars. “Dr. Taillefer?” she exclaimed, then turned to the guard. “C’est bien, Paul. This is my old sociology professor. Dr. Taillefer, what are you doing here?”

“Are you sure, mademoiselle?” asked Paul, clearly torn. “They spoke of danger, and being in your offices. They demanded that I let them in, but I told them it was impossible.”

“I’m fine,” Cat assured him, touching his hand and winning a slave for life. “Thank you for watching after me.”

She turned back to us. “As Paul has explained, it is impossible to have visitors after closing. But if you would like to set an appointment, Dr. Taillefer, I would be glad to give you and your guests a personal tour of the exhibits during our regular hours.”

“You…” I protested as Paul went to speak to another security guard who’d shown up. “You’re with them, aren’t you?”

Cat blinked at me, searching. “With…?”

“With the Comitatus!”

She scrunched her mouth in what looked like real confusion. “Norse war bands?”

Aunt Bridge said, “The men we warned you about.”

“Ohhh.” She nodded even as she said, “No. Assuming there even is such a threat, I am not what you would call a ‘joiner.’ Now run along and stop causing trouble. You would appreciate the complication of the gendarmes even less than would Paul.”

“Try me.”

She blinked, all innocence. “And whatever would you tell them, strange woman whom I’ve never met before?”

Rhys’s hand tightened on my shoulder, advising caution.

I thought of Melusine’s cup, my cup, and desperately needed his steadying presence. “You know exactly what I would tell them. We brought that grail to you in good faith, Catrina.”

“Grail…” She shook her head, smiling at her own feigned confusion. “You’re claiming to have brought me an artifact?”

I lunged at the bars and managed to wedge a shoulder between them, reaching desperately for her. The hell with personal power—I wanted the power to smash her face into the cobblestones! Getting her keys so that I could retrieve the grail would just be gravy.