The Sixth Key (16 page)

There was a pause. I was suddenly no longer in the church of
Bugarach with Rahn; I was in the library on the Island of the Dead with the
Writer of Letters, who seemed to me like a modern version of Shakespeare’s
Prospero.

‘So, what do you think of it?’ he said,
sitting forwards, looking at me probingly.

‘It has the makings of a decent mystery, so
far. I like the way you’ve interpolated the inscription into your plot.’

‘My plot?’

‘Yes.’

He smiled. ‘This is your story, remember?’

‘Right.’ I nodded, returning his smile. ‘So,
does the church in Bugarach exist?’

‘Of course! All of those things that Rahn saw
are there. You could see them today if you wanted to; not much changes in
little villages like that.’

‘All those clues?’

‘Indeed. The interesting thing about clues is
that you can find them everywhere – but are they an illusion? For
instance, one can add two and two to make four, but four of what? You see, you
have to know what you are adding before it can make practical sense. Sometimes
knowing the number is not enough.’

He stood, then. ‘Lunch?’

I followed him out to the garden to a table
set for two. Prosciutto crudo, pane di casa and bresaola, with a bottle of recoaro.

‘Before,’ I ventured as we sat down, ‘you said
you knew Otto Rahn.’

‘Did I?’ He seemed surprised.

‘Yes, you said that you knew him, but you
didn’t reveal how you knew him.’

‘There are many ways of knowing an
individual.’ The Writer of Letters placed a linen napkin over his lap. ‘I am an
objective observer . . . and he has interested me for a long time. Just as you
have.’

‘You keep speaking of him as though he were
still alive.’

‘Do I? How remiss of me. They say he took his
own life.’

‘And did he?’

‘We won’t know that until we finish the story.
If I were your character, would you have me disclose something crucial to the
plot so soon in the narrative?’

‘No, I suppose not.’

‘Then again, you could always edit it out, if
it turned out not to be true.’

‘Is it true or not?’

‘Perhaps the answer to the riddle you came
here to solve, the inscription about death, is related to the mystery of Rahn’s
life?’ he said, as enigmatic as ever.

‘How so?’

‘To write about the Grail is to write about
eternal life. To know the meaning of life, one has to understand death and to
understand death, one has to know the meaning of evil. You see they are
interdependent. The idea of a Grail chalice is really quite old. Priests used
to drink from a chalice long before Christ. That was how He revealed Himself to
His priests in the old mysteries. When He came to Earth, He was a revelation of
the mysteries and drank from the cup, that is, He died so that He could rescue
life from death ... good from evil – that is the secret of the blood in
the chalice – the secret of the Holy Grail.

‘But I’m not writing about the Grail . . . I
want to write a book about the Apocalypse of Saint John.’

‘Oh, I know what you’re writing about . . .
but what is the Apocalypse if not a revelation of the Grail – and what is
the Grail if not a vessel of revelation? You see, the two always go together.
In fact, Rahn’s last book was about this very mystery – but I’m not
talking about Rahn’s little travel diary that Himmler had printed and bound in
calfskin; the one he made compulsory reading for the SS. That book, Lucifer’s
Court, was just something Rahn patched together in a hurry. No, Rahn’s last
book has not been published yet.’

‘What are you suggesting?’

‘I don’t know.’ His eyes were full of
jocularity and it annoyed me. ‘You’re the one writing the story. I’m just one
of your characters. What would you have me suggest?’

I sat back in the pale sun. ‘A character only
comes to life when he starts to disobey the writer.’

‘Well countered! In that case I shall divulge
that what Rahn found in the south of France was not what anyone had expected.
Perhaps it is not even what you expect.’

‘So where do we go to from here?’

‘Imagine we are once again in that universe
consisting of endless interlocking galleries. Let us turn away from Rahn, who
is lying in a stupor in that church at Bugarach, to another aspect of the past.
We need only find the gallery marked 1238.’

‘That’s exactly seven hundred years before
Rahn’s time.’

‘Yes. Rahn was living seven hundred years
after a very significant happening, you might say, an event which cast both its
light and its shadow into the future, seven hundred years forward in time.’

‘But as you stated earlier: in a room full of
galleries, time is one with space. So what does time matter anyhow?’ I tried to
trip him up.

‘It is true that time is significant only in
the world of the living, in the world in which history happens. But insofar as
these things occurred in the world of time, their timing is of great
importance. Do you remember that young boy, Matteu, who was saved by the
Templar knight in Béziers? Well, by now he is a Templar troubadour. He has been
to the East crusading against the infidel; he has sat with Sufi poets in the
courts of Frederick II; and he has cheated death countless times. Now his task
is to run messages from the Temple to the Cathars during the war of religion
and sometimes to escort important Cathars to safety.’

‘So they were affiliated, the Cathars and
Templars?’

‘Of course, the Templars called the Cathars
their cousins and they did what they could, in a “quiet way”, to help them
during those years of Catholic persecution. If you read Rahn’s books, you will
see how he is trying to remember something of that time, in fact, he’s trying
to keep his promise to the Countess P.’

‘Which was?’ I asked.

‘To be a guardian . . .’

The red valley gouged out by giants was already in shadow when
Isobel and her mistresses, Rosamunda and Blanche, came to the base of
Montsegur. Ahead of them the Templar troubadour, Matteu, led the way – a
man already past his prime and yet eternally youthful. She had always felt safe
with him and she did so now despite the dangers of this journey. In truth, they
had been walking for days in fear of being caught, and despite their exhaustion
they would have to climb that steep narrow path to the château before dark.

Yes, Isobel was tired, so tired she could
barely feel her feet, and to add to everything else the dark clouds above were
scudding across the coppering sky and threatening a downpour. She felt she must
soon collapse from the weight of the belongings she carried added to that of
the child in her belly. For they had been forced to leave the animals below in
the township, since the way to the château could only be scaled on foot and a
perilous way it was, with its narrow path and smooth stones. She dared not look
down, forcing her eyes to stare ahead to the straight backs of her mistresses
who led the way, pausing now and then to lend her a hand.

She had never seen the mistresses tired, nor
had she ever seen them afraid. They had made this pilgrimage each year for as
long as she could remember and she recalled them walking just as they were
doing now, alongside one another, both with their black dresses flapping, each
moving one leg after the other in a rhythm that matched the rhythm of their
prayers.

Soon, she told herself, they would reach those
walls – and safety – but now, through the trees, she could hear the
herdsmen gathering the goats before the storm broke. In the distance, bells
clanged their discordant resonance and the sky grew closer. Such sounds made
her want to hide behind a clump of hazel bushes fearing danger, for she was a
child of war.

She couldn’t remember a time without it, nor
the fear of the Dominicans or their familiars. She knew the stories back to
front. A papal legate had excommunicated the Count of Toulouse for protecting
the Cathars and he was, in turn, murdered by one of the count’s officers,
causing the pope to call for a Crusade against the heretics. She would not be
here if her mother, just a bundle at the time, had not been spirited away from
Béziers by the two sisters on the eve of the Feast of Magdalene. They had taken
the small child and the treasure that had once belonged to Mary Magdalene
herself – the Cathar treasure, which must be handed down from woman to
woman. From that time on, the sacred treasure in its pouch had been safely
hidden beneath the folds of Rosamunda’s dress, and it was there now.

Isobel looked up to see the clouds gathering
in counsel and preparing to drizzle their concerns over the valley floor. A low
rumble made the Earth tremble and she pulled the shawl over her shoulders and
recalled the stories. After the fall of Béziers in 1209 and the terrible
massacre of all its citizens, the world turned over into a hell pit. Siege
after siege, battle after battle. Those were terrible years. War in the
Corbieres, war in the Minverois and in the Razés, war in Foix and in Toulouse.
The land was laid to waste, and villages and towns were destroyed. Who would
want to tend crops that would surely be trampled to dust? Who would want to
repair a stable door or to fix a leaking roof when at any moment everything
might be put to the torch? Insecurity and chaos ruled the land, and the nobles,
despoiled of their inheritance, went into hiding, striking out at the Crusaders
from their high strongholds. In the meantime a vast network of secret agents,
troubadours like Matteu, had brought news of planned attacks, sieges and
skirmishes. Her mother had been seventeen and pregnant with Isobel when the
young Count Raymond, having returned from exile with an army, took over the
city of Toulouse against the foreign enemy. Alongside the other women her
mother dug walls, hauled rubble through the streets and worked the siege
engines. For three weeks they waited for Simon de Montfort, the leader of the
Crusade, to come to rescue his wife from the Château de Nabornnais. Isobel’s
mother was among the women recruited to fire the heavy blocks of masonry from a
trebuchet and they had been firing at random into a confused mass of soldiers
when Simon de Montfort was struck on the head and killed. That same hour her
mother collapsed and some time later died giving birth to Isobel.

Isobel could see the walls of the château of
Montsegur rising up out of the trees and she paused to catch her breath. She
wondered if the good Cathar bishop would be waiting for her with his smiling
eyes at the summit.

After her mother died the twin sisters
Rosamunda and Blanche took over her rearing and she had travelled with them
whenever they visited the good Bishop Guilhabert de Castres, usually nearing
Easter and the Festival of Bema. They said the bishop had lived for twelve
years as a hermit in a cave to make penance for the sins of the world. Some
said he was given to drink from the cup called the Holy Grail in that cave; the
cup from which the Lord Himself had drunk at the Last Supper. There were many
tales about him, but Isobel knew him as a teacher. He came to Montsegur now and
again to teach and to counsel and to prepare for a momentous occasion he had
seen in his visions, which he referred to as an Apocalypse – the end of
the world.

The wind swirled the brambles and bracken now
and shook their wiry arms. Ignoring the temper of nature Isobel followed her
mistresses up the steep-edged path holding on to the trunks of the boxwood
trees that grew all around. Isobel knew that this journey to Montsegur had
something to do with the Apocalypse the good bishop was expecting. After all,
they had come here to prepare for it and to safeguard the treasure that
Rosamunda had carried under her skirt all these years. Yes, the world was
darkening and war was once again upon them. That is why the bishop had asked
the noble Raymond de Parella to donate Montsegur to the cause, so that it could
be made ready for the dark time, when the dragon of the church would come to
steal the Holy Grail. She also sensed excitement in those around her for the
child she was carrying, the child of the gallant young noble she had married
when she was seventeen. She had known her husband only two months before he
died at the hands of the inquisitors, and now she would soon have his child.
She was afraid.

Her thinking had taken her to the top of the
mountain, tearful and breathless. At the gate built into the great wall she
turned around to see the mountains, mist laden and quiet, before her. She
wondered if this would be the last time she would see them and was afraid for
what would become of her child in a world that was soon to end. The painful
thought made a tremble pass through her body and a strange and unwelcome
wetness moved downwards over her legs. ‘My child?’ she said, making the sisters
turn around to look at her. A terrible cramping pain now seized her and the
thoughts for her child and the world came together with the thoughts of God and
snapped shut on her mind like two opposing blades making a final cut. When she
looked down she saw blood on the earth at her feet and she gave a sob of fear.

The sisters were at her side, each taking her
by an arm and carrying her to Bishop Guilhabert, who was then instructing the
children. When the bishop saw her he knew what to do. He took Isobel to the
keep and ordered the women to get some hot water. And so it was that upon a bed
of straw, Isobel strained for all her life’s worth to give birth to the child.
She knew she must be screaming and yet she did not hear anything except her
child’s heart beating in her ears. The world was a confusion of sounds and
light. The only face she recognised was Bishop Guilhabert’s when he came to her
and said, ‘It is a boy, my dear, a beautiful boy. Listen, child, you have done
a good thing. He is our master born again . . . he will live!’

She felt herself smile, but all her strength
had gone out from her, leaving her feeling like a naked limb in winter,
trembling with the slightest breeze; she was the breeze that shook it and the
sun that made it grow and the water that fed it. A voice whispered in her ear
that her name Isobel meant ‘Beautiful Isis’. Somehow she knew what this meant.

For a moment the troubadour Matteu’s face
stared down into hers. She heard the voice calling in the distance . . . the
blackness came.