Simon Tolkien - The Inheritance

“If you want to see the cross, bring the codex to the church on Tuesday at three o’clock. Tell no one.” The note was handwritten, and there was no date or signature. She’d picked it up off the floor inside the door of her room when she had returned to the inn for the codex with Trave hot on her heels, and she still had no idea who had left it there. Each day since her arrival in the capital, she had walked up and down the long tree-lined avenues of the Bois de Boulogne, oblivious to her surroundings while she debated whether or not to keep the appointment. But deep down she had always known she would go. The desire for the cross had become a physical longing, gnawing at her insides. The lust for it consumed her.

She was frightened of going alone, but she possessed neither the capacity for trust nor the money to go out and recruit an assistant, even if she had known where to find one. The Frenchman she had enticed out of the cafe on the road to Rouen had turned out a useless coward. He’d have left her to Trave if she hadn’t got to his truck in time. No, she was better off on her own. But that didn’t mean that she wouldn’t go prepared. The day before she had found a man in Montmartre who was willing to sell her a gun. There was nowhere to fire it, but she had practised the mechanism again and again before going to bed, and now she felt confident that she could use the revolver to good effect if she had to. It gave her a sense of security, knowing that it was in the shoulder bag by the bed, wrapped up in her clothes with the codex.

She kept the book with her at all times now after what had happened before, but it really didn’t interest her much anymore. It was a means to an end. Nothing more. The cross was somewhere in Marjean Church. Sasha was sure of it. She could think of nothing else.

She dressed carefully, settling her hair down over the upright collar of her padded jacket so that the livid burn mark on her neck was almost invisible, and then went downstairs to eat a late breakfast. An hour later she had paid her bill and was on the road north. She hummed a tune to herself as she came out into the open fields of the Norman countryside and then realised with a start that it was The Marseillaise. She was filled with a sudden rush of optimism and pressed her foot down on the accelerator, taking the Citroen speeding down the road, like an arrow between the winter hedgerows.

This time she had no difficulty finding the gateway, but the sudden descent into semidarkness as the car passed under the overhanging trees filled her with a sense of foreboding, and it was a relief to get back out into the light. She parked beside the ruined chateau and immediately began walking up the path to the church. She was early and there was no one in sight, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t being watched. The church made her feel that way. It dominated the surrounding landscape with a brooding presence, and Sasha was not the first to be unnerved by it. The gun in her pocket felt more reassuring with every step she took.

There was a new silver-coloured padlock on the door, but for some reason it was already open and there was nothing to keep her from walking inside. She stopped at the beginning of the nave to get her bearings and then froze to the spot when an apparently disembodied voice spoke to her from only a few feet away.

“You’re standing just where my father died,” said the voice. “There used to be a bloodstain on the stone, but it’s gone now.”

For a moment Sasha could not see who was speaking, but then a figure she recognised stepped out from behind a grey stone pillar in the south transept and began walking across the nave toward her. It was Mary Martin, but a different Mary from the one Sasha remembered. She was dressed in a leather flying jacket and a pair of blue jeans, and the slightly masculine effect of her clothing was accentuated by the easy authority with which she moved. She made Sasha feel like an intruder.

It had to be Mary who had sent the note. And Mary was Rocard’s daughter. Somehow she must have survived the massacre of her family at the end of the war.

“You killed Cade,” said Sasha, blurting out the accusation a second after the idea had entered her head. “It wasn’t Stephen at all. It was you.”

“That’s right. It was me,” said Mary, acknowledging her guilt with an easy smile. She was standing close beside Sasha now and looked her straight in the eye until Sasha dropped her gaze. The experience was disconcerting. Sasha felt as if Mary was looking inside her, and she backed away toward the door, resisting the temptation to take the gun out of her pocket.

“I’m glad you killed him,” she said. “You saved me the trouble of doing it myself.”

“Why do you say that?” It was Mary’s turn to look surprised.

“Because of what he did to my father. Cade took everything from him: his work, his family, his position in society. And then he laughed about what he’d done. I heard him one night at the manor house.” Sasha made no effort to hide her bitterness as she remembered the last poverty-stricken years of her father’s life spent in the cold tenement room in Oxford while Cade lived in the lap of luxury only a few miles away.

“Well, we’ve certainly found something we agree about,” said Mary, looking Sasha up and down with a new regard. “You know, I wasn’t even six when he and Ritter killed my parents. But I still knew it meant nothing to Cade. And he didn’t just kill them either. He tortured my mother and our old servant before they died. I heard him shouting at them down in the crypt before he shot them.” Mary spoke in a flat, even voice that was strangely at odds with the terrible events she was describing. It was as if she was talking about something that had happened to somebody else, not to her at all. Perhaps that was the only way she could cope with such terrible memories.

“Where were you?” asked Sasha.

“When they came into the church? I was in the tower. There are windows on the stairway, and I spent a lot of time up there when I was a kid, watching the Nazis down below. I liked seeing them when they couldn’t see me. Most of the windows look outside, but one of them faces down into the church. You can see it over there,” said Mary, pointing to an opening halfway up the back wall. “I had a grandstand view. And then, after I heard the gunshots, I ran up to the top of the tower and stood there, watching our house burning up in the twilight. It’s funny: if they hadn’t done that, they might have found out about me. And Cade might still be alive.”

“But he isn’t,” said Sasha harshly. “He’s dead, and you’ve got what he was looking for. I know you have.”

“The cross, you mean,” said Mary, staring Sasha straight in the eye.

“Yes. You said in the note that you’d show it to me.”

“Only if you’ve got the codex. That’s what I said.”

“How did you find out I’ve got it?”

“It wasn’t hard to guess once I heard you’d come back here again. I have friends in the village, you know. This was my home once upon a time.”

“The codex is here,” said Sasha, tapping her bag. “Now show me the cross.”

“So you can steal it? Have it for yourself? Is that why you want to see it?” asked Mary, making no effort to conceal her contempt.

Sasha said nothing. She bit her lip, and her hand trembled on the gun in her pocket.

“What would you do to get it, I wonder?” asked Mary, smiling. “Would you kill defenceless men and women, execute old people like Cade did? How much is it worth to you, Sasha?”

Sasha’s temper finally snapped. There was clearly only one way to get what she wanted, and that was by force. She should have seen that at the outset, instead of wasting time talking. Taking a step back, she took the gun out of her pocket and pointed it at Mary’s chest.