The Sixth Key (27 page)

‘As you wish,’ she said. ‘But you haven’t told
me what you’re going to do.’

‘I’m going to burn them.’

‘You’re going to cremate them?’

‘Would you rather walk through them and have
them crawling all over you? I assure you that their bite is quite painful.’

She gave him the candle and he placed a candle
to each wall simultaneously. It was not a pleasant scene. The mass of bodies
caught alight creating an arch of fire. Rahn braced himself for the sound.

‘Do they always squeal like that?’ she said,
unperturbed.

‘Yes.’

There was a frenzy and those spiders that had
not been consumed by the conflagration moved off almost magically, leaving only
an acrid smell.

He gave Eva her candle. ‘That was easy,’ he
said merrily. ‘Far easier than a nest of snakes, or rats. Why, I remember there
was a cave at Ornolac that—’

She was looking at him with a singular
expression.

‘What?’

‘You have one on your head,’ she said.

He scrambled to get it off and stomped on it
until it was nothing more than a brown stain.

‘Yes, frightening indeed!’ she said, and
walked ahead.

Rahn gathered what pride he had to him and
followed.

This
girl is something else!

As Rahn had foreseen, the tunnel came to an
end. It looked like someone had tried to wall up what might have once been an
entrance to another chamber. When he inspected it further, he found a short,
narrow opening in the wall at head height. He managed to pull down some rocks,
and shone his candle into it. He had been right, there was another chamber
behind it. He was in his element: his heart pounded with excitement and this
made his head throb. He looked around but there was nothing on which he could
stand.

‘I’ll give you a hoist,’ the girl said.

‘What? Nonsense!’ he answered. He tried to
lift himself up but it was too hard.

‘Like this – just put one foot here and
I’ll hoist you up. I said you would need me.’ She was smiling as she held out
her laced hands for him. ‘Am I going to wait all day?’

With Eva’s help he was soon scrambling through
the aperture. He told her to wait for him and fell into a round chamber for his
efforts. He walked about the perimeter, looking to the centre and couldn’t
believe his eyes. A circular depression had been cut into the floor of the rock
that looked just like the one at Wewelsburg, only half the size. He was filled
with a nauseating memory: the man pleading for the life of his children;
Himmler grimacing; the sounds of shots.

‘Are you alright?’ Eva said, behind him.

‘I thought I told you . . . wait a minute, how
on Earth did you get here?’

‘I’m very athletic. Look,’ she said, pointing
to the walls. ‘What are these?’

Still vexed, he took his candle to the symbols
drawn on the walls. ‘I’ve seen them before, in grimoires. This is proof that
we’re on the right track! This crypt has been used for black magic rituals.’

‘But why here, in the tombs of the dames?’

‘Remember, the Order of penitents that
Saunière and Jean-Louis Verger belonged to supposedly had a copy of Le Serpent
Rouge, the pope’s grimoire; this same order was involved in saying masses for
the dead and the sacrament . . . the sacrament given to the dying. The pagans
conducted their funerary rites near tombs or underground and I’ll bet the
penitents did too. Black magicians, you see, don’t only use demons, phantoms,
ghosts and elemental beings for their infernal ends. I’m beginning to think
they also use the dead.’

She was silent, perhaps horror-struck.

He continued, ‘They invoke the spirits of the
dead, or those who are in limbo, the living dead.’

‘Like in séances?’

‘I think so. I’m afraid this is not my line of
expertise, but I’m learning fast.’ He looked about for another exit. ‘Saunière
must have tried to get to this crypt through the graveyard. That would explain
all the digging.’

‘But why not just come through the other
crypt?’

‘Did you see all the water? That crypt must
fill up when it rains. That’s what the young Abbé Lucien told us yesterday.
This town is riddled with tunnels and cisterns – a catchment that
supplies water to the residents.’

Eve looked into the circular depression.
‘What’s that? Is that stained with what I think it is?’

‘It’s a ceremonial pit and yes, that’s blood.’
But when he shone the candle into it he was taken aback by what he saw.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘Look for yourself!’

The
stone in the depression had been carved to depict a circular version of the
Sator Square:

‘They’ve circled the square,’ Rahn said. ‘But
that’s not all. See the floor up here? It’s been marked in the shape of a
pentagram and a hexagram inside a square. Outside that a larger circle
completes it.’ He showed her. The smaller circle is the soul; the square
represents water, fire, earth, air; the pentagram points to the etheric forces,
the forces the alchemists say are related to warmth, light, sound and life.
These forces run through the hands, feet and head, just like Leonardo da Vinci
drew in his Vitruvian Man, but they are also found in the Earth; and the
hexagram represents the astral forces, the forces of thinking, feeling, and
willing. These signs all form a protection for the one performing the ritual
sacrifice.’

‘I just had a thought. That little patch in
the cemetery for unbaptised children—’

‘Don’t think about that,’ he said quickly.
‘They use mostly animals: goats or kids, chickens, sheep; that sort of thing.’
But in his heart he felt a tremble. ‘Kids’ in grimoires actually meant children
. . .

They both heard something and paused.

‘What’s that?’ she said.

He knew what it was, he’d heard it before and
it had nearly cost him his life. He looked at her. ‘When you came to the church
was it raining?’

‘Yes, it was falling down like buckets!’

‘In that case we had better go, and now!’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘A flash flood. This chamber is protected by
the wall.’

‘You mean we’ll be trapped?’

Finally, the girl sounds ill at ease! ‘Not if
we hurry. Come on!’ he said, grabbing her arm.

He led the way out of the crypt and waited for
Eva to climb down through the opening first. By the time they were halfway
through the first part of the tunnel, the water had reached Rahn’s knees. It
was unbearably cold. Rahn could hardly feel his feet and he was trembling. Eva
followed, stumbling in the near dark.

‘How does it happen so quickly?’ she said.

‘I was caught in the caves of Ornolac during a
rainstorm. I hit my head,’ he said, between breaths, ‘and I only survived
because a Senegalese friend, a man who is almost a giant, carried me on his
shoulder through the channels swollen with water. He carried me for miles! Hard
to believe, but true.’

Eventually, they emerged from the tunnel and
found the steps that led to the confessional. The water was waist-high here,
too close for comfort, Rahn thought, but when the opening above became visible,
he made an awful discovery.

‘Someone has locked the hatch!’ he said.

‘What?’

‘The hatch! The hatch is locked! But I saw two
more exits. Wait here. And don’t worry, as I said, I’m used to things like
this.’ He left her shivering on the topmost steps, encroached upon by the
rising water.

Moving through floating bones and other
debris, with the candlestick held high over the water in one hand and his
jacket in the other, he took an eternity to make his way to the other steps he
had seen earlier. No luck! These only led to a boarded-up sub-floor. Immersing
his shivering limbs back into the water he looked for the third set of steps.
If he found that boarded-up as well, then things were not going to work out in
their favour. To his great relief these steps led upwards in a spiral to a
small room full of bric-a-brac.

He descended again quickly. ‘I’ve found it!’
he called out, and made a hasty journey across the flooded crypt holding the
candle out before him.

His return with Eva was difficult because the
water was now nearly at the level of his chest and he had to help her through
the mud and debris, bones and swimming rats and floating spiders. All this
while trying not to trip on submerged obstacles, keeping his candle lit and,
most importantly, his coat dry. By the time they reached those steps, however,
Rahn had dropped his candle into the water, and Eva’s had gone out, leaving
them in utter darkness. His legs and hands were numb and he had to find fresh
reserves of strength in order to drag Eva, who was now listless, up the steps
and into the room.

The room felt narrow and smelt stuffy. He
could see almost nothing except that the walls appeared to be whitewashed and
the floor underfoot felt like compacted dirt. There was a small window, which
was hardly sufficient for ventilation or light. The only way out was what
looked like a door or hatch at the top of another set of steps.

‘Where are we?’ Her voice sounded sleepy and drugged,
and this alarmed him. He placed his jacket over her shoulders.

‘That way must lead into the sacristy.’ Rahn
pointed to a door. ‘This must be a second secret way in and out of the crypt.’

He was mentally prepared for it to be locked
and so when he found that it opened easily into a small closet, he was so
relieved he nearly fainted. He had to get past a number of musty priest’s robes
in order to find a second door, through which he emerged into the sacristy. He
returned to help the poor shaking girl.

The door leading to the sacristy from the
church opened out into the area between the statue of Saint Anthony of Padua
and the altar enclosure. The priest had said that the tomb of Sigisbert lay
somewhere beyond it, perhaps because he knew that, behind that false wall in
the sacristy closet, there was a way to the crypt.

The church seemed to be bursting with light
compared to the darkness of the sacristy. Rahn made certain there was no one in
sight. Someone had locked the hatch and they might still be in the church.
Luckily for them, whoever it was either didn’t know about the second entrance
or didn’t think he and Eva would be able to find it. Peering down the nave, he
realised the pulpit had been built over the second entrance. Perhaps by
Saunière, wishing to keep it secret? These thoughts ran through his mind in the
time it took for him to blink. He felt his old fear rising up. He tried to calm
himself. There was sweat forming over his brow. Having survived being trapped
and nearly drowned in a crypt hadn’t made him any braver when it came to
churches. But he could hear his teeth chattering and he knew he had to get out
of his wet clothes, or he would succumb to the cold himself.

‘What are you waiting for?’ Eva shivered next
to him.

Rahn took her arm and the two of them made
their way out of the church and into the awful night, frozen to the bone,
toiling through the wind and rain back to the house. Rahn helped her up the
stairs, got the fire going in the little hearth and gently helped her out of
her soaking clothes and into the bed. He took off his own wet things and found
a spare blanket, which he swung over his shoulders, moving the chair closer to
the fire for warmth.

‘Please, get on the bed, won’t you?’ Eva said,
surprising him. She held out her hand, long and slender like the rest of her.

He hesitated. She isn’t in her right mind and
might regret this in the morning.

‘I’m afraid I—’

‘Please!’ she said. ‘I’m so cold!’

Falteringly, he lay on the bed over the
covers. He lay there rather stiffly, not knowing what to do. Arousal was the
furthest thing from his mind; after all, she was under a score of blankets and
besides, Rahn’s body had taken a battering these last few hours and he doubted
that it would obey him, even if he could stop thinking for a moment to sense
the stirring of desire. Also, he felt enormously guilty for having dragged her
and Deodat into this mess and he was not about to compound it by taking
advantage of her when she wasn’t in her right mind.