Kate Mosse - Labyrinth

He pulled a yellow handkerchief from his top pocket and carefully wiped his face and forehead beneath the rim of his hat. The edges of the river far below him were lush and tended, with sand-colored paths winding through the trees and bushes. On the north bank, set among sweeping lawns, there were well-tended flower beds, filled with huge, exotic flowers. Well-dressed ladies sat on the metal benches in the shade of the trees, looking down over the water and talking, while their small dogs panted patiently beside them, or snapped at the heels of the occasional jogger.

The Pont Vieux led straight into the Quartier de la Trivalle, which had been transformed from a drab suburb into the gateway to the medieval Cite. Black wrought-iron railings had been set at intervals along the pavements to stop cars from parking. Fiery orange, purple and crimson pansies trailed out of their containers like hair tumbling down a young girl’s back. Chrome tables and chairs glittered outside the cafes and twisted copper-topped lamps had elbowed aside the old, workaday streetlights. Even the old iron and plastic guttering, which leaked and cracked in the heavy rain and heat, had been replaced by sleek, brushed-metal drainpipes with ends shaped like the mouths of angry fish.

The boulangerie and alimentation generate had survived, as had the Hotel du Pont Vieux, but the boucherie now sold antiques and the haberdashers was a new age emporium, dispensing crystals, tarot cards and books on spiritual enlightenment.

How many years had it been since last he was here? He’d lost count.

Baillard turned right into rue de la Gaffe and saw the signs of creeping gentrification here too. The street was only just wide enough for a single car, more an alleyway than a road. There was an art gallery on the corner- La Maison du Chevalier-with two large arched windows protected by metal bars, like a Hollywood portcullis. There were six painted wooden shields on the wall and a metal ring by the door for people to tie their dogs where once they tethered horses.

Several of the doors were newly painted. He saw white ceramic house numbers with blue and yellow borders and twists of tiny flowers. The occasional backpacker, clutching maps and water bottles, stopped to ask in halting French for directions to the Cite, but there was little other movement.

Jeanne Giraud lived in a small house backing onto the grassy slopes that led steeply up to the medieval ramparts. At her end of the street, fewer of the dwellings had been refurbished. Some were derelict or boarded up. An old woman and a man sat outside on chairs brought out from their kitchen. Baillard raised his hat and wished them good day as he passed. He knew some of Jeanne’s neighbors by sight, having built up a nodding acquaintance over the years.

Jeanne was sitting outside her front door in the shade, anticipating his arrival. She looked neat and efficient as always, in a plain long-sleeved shirt and a straight dark skirt. Her hair was drawn back into a bun at the nape of her neck. She looked like the schoolteacher she had been, until her retirement twenty years ago. In the years they’d known each other, he’d never seen her anything less than perfectly and formally turned out.

Audric smiled, remembering how curious she had been in the early days, always asking questions. Where did he live? What did he do in the long months they did not see each other? Where did he go?

Traveling, he’d told her. Researching and gathering material for his books, visiting friends.

Who, she had asked?

Companions, those with whom he’d studied and shared experiences. He had told her of his friendship with Grace.

A while later, he admitted his home was in a village in the Pyrenees, not far from Montsegur. But he shared very little else about himself and, as the decades slipped by, she had given up asking.

Jeanne was an intuitive and methodical researcher, diligent, conscientious and unsentimental, all invaluable qualities. For the past thirty years or so, she had worked with him on every one of his books, most particularly his last, unfinished work, a biography of a Cathar family in thirteenth-century Carcassonne.

For Jeanne, it had been a piece of detective work. For Audric, it was a labor of love.

Jeanne raised her hand when she saw him coming. “Audric,” she smiled. “It’s been a long time.”

Her took her hands between his. “ Bonjorn .”

She stood back to look him up and down. “You look well.”

“ Te tanben ,” he answered. You too.

“You’ve made good time.”

He nodded. “The train was punctual.”

Jeanne looked scandalized. “You didn’t walk from the station?”

“It’s not so far,” he smiled. “I admit, I wanted to see how Carcassona had changed since last I was here.”

Baillard followed her into the cool little house. The brown and beige tiles on the floor and walls gave everything a somber, old-fashioned look. A small oval table stood in the center of the room, its battered legs sticking out from underneath a yellow and blue oilskin cloth. There was a bureau in the corner with an old-fashioned typewriter sitting on it, next to French windows that gave on to a small terrace.

Jeanne came out of the pantry with a tray with a jug of water, a bowl of ice, a plate of crisp, peppered biscuits, a bowl of sour green olives and a saucer for the pits. She put the tray carefully down on the table and then reached up to the narrow wooden ledge that ran, at shoulder height, the length of the room. Her hand found a bottle of Guignolet, a bitter cherry liqueur he knew she kept only for his rare visits.

The ice cracked and chinked against the sides as the bright red alcohol trickled over the cubes. For a while they sat in companionable silence, as they had done many times before. An occasional fragment of guide book commentary, belched out in several languages, filtered down from the Cite as the tourist train completed one of its regular circuits of the walls.

Audric carefully put his glass on the table. “So,” he said. “Tell me what happened.”

Jeanne pulled her chair closer to the table. “My grandson Yves, as you know, is with the Police Judiciaire, departement de I’Ariege, stationed in Foix itself. Yesterday, he was called to an archeological dig in the Sabarthes Mountains, close to the Pic de Soularac, where two skeletons had been found. Yves was surprised his superiors seemed to be treating it as a potential murder scene, even though he said it was clear the skeletons had been there for some considerable time.” She paused. “Of course, Yves did not interview the woman who found the bodies himself, but he was present. Yves knows a little of the work I’ve been doing for you, enough certainly to know the discovery of this cave would be of interest.”

Audric drew in his breath. For so many years he had tried to imagine how he would feel at this moment. He had never lost faith that, at last, the time would come when he would learn the truth of those final hours.

The decades rolled one into the other. He watched the seasons follow their endless cycle; the green of spring slipping into the gold of summer; the burnished palette of autumn vanishing beneath the austere whiteness of the winter; the first thaw of the mountain streams in spring.

Still, no word had come. E ara ? And now?

“Yves went inside the cave himself?” he asked.

Jeanne nodded.

“What did he see?”

“There was an altar. Behind it, carved into the rock itself, was the symbol of the labyrinth.”

“And the bodies? Where were they?”

“In a grave, no more than a dip in the ground in truth, in front of the altar. There were objects lying between the bodies, although there were too many people for him to get close enough to see properly.”