Kate Mosse - Labyrinth

Shelagh tried to shake her head, but it sent a new wave of pain shuddering through her body.

“He passed something to her.”

“It wasn’t the book,” she managed to say.

Before she could choke out the rest of the sentence, the door opened and she heard muffled voices in the corridor, then the combination of the smell of aftershave and sweat.

“How were you supposed to get the book to Madame de l’Oradore?”

“Francois-Baptiste.” It hurt to speak. “Meet him at the Pic de – I had a number to ring.” She recoiled at the touch of his hand on her breast.

“Please don’t-”

“You see how much easier it is when you cooperate? Now, in a moment, you’re going to make that call for me.”

Shelagh tried to shake her head in terror. “If they find out I’ve told you, they’ll kill me.”

“And I will kill you and Mademoiselle Tanner if you don’t,” he said calmly. “It’s your choice.”

Shelagh had no way of knowing if he had Alice. If she was safe or here too.

“He is expecting you to call when you have the book, yes?”

She no longer had the courage to lie. She nodded. They are more concerned with a small disc, the size of the ring, than the ring itself.“

With horror, Shelagh realised she’d told him the one thing he hadn’t known.

“What’s the disc for?” he demanded.

“I don’t know.”

Shelagh heard herself screaming as the flame licked her skin.

“What – is – it – for?” he said. There was no emotion in his voice. She was freezing cold. There was a dreadful smell of burning flesh, sweet and sickly.

She could no longer distinguish one word from another as the pain started to carry her away. She was drifting, falling. She felt her neck giving way.

“We’re losing her. Get the hood off.”

The material was dragged off, catching on the cuts and split skin.

“Fits inside the ring…”

Her voice sounded as if it was coming from underwater. “Like a key. To the labyrinth…”

“Who else knows about this?” he was shouting at her, but she knew he couldn’t reach her now. Her chin dropped down on to her chest. He jerked her head back. One of her eyes was swollen shut, but the other flickered open. All she could see was a mass of blurred faces, moving in and out of her line of vision. “She doesn’t realise…”

Who?“ he said. ”Madame de l’Oradore? Jeanne Giraud?“

“Alice,” she whispered.

Alice arrived in Chartres late in the afternoon. She found a hotel, then bought a map and went straight to the address she’d been given by directory enquiries. Alice looked up in surprise at the elegant town house, with its gleaming brass knocker and letter box and elegant plants in the window boxes, and the tubs framing the steps. Alice couldn’t imagine Shelagh staying here.

2›What the hell are you going to say if someone answers? 2›

Alice took a deep breath, then walked up the steps and rang the bell. There was no answer. She waited, took a pace back and looked up at the windows, then tried again. She dialled the number. Seconds later, she could hear a phone ringing inside.

At least it was the right place.

It was an anticlimax but, if she was honest, a relief also. The confrontation, if that’s what was coming, could wait.

The square in front of the cathedral was thronging with tourists, all clutching cameras, and tour guides holding flags or colourful umbrellas held high. Orderly Germans, self-conscious English, glamorous Italians, quiet Japanese, enthusiastic Americans. All the children looked bored.

At some point during the long drive north, she’d stopped thinking she would learn anything from the labyrinth in Chartres. It seemed so obviously connected – the cave at the Pic de Soularac, to Grace, to her personally – too obvious. Part of her felt like she’d been set up to follow a false trail.

Still, Alice bought a ticket and joined an English-language tour, scheduled to start outside in five minutes. Their guide was an efficient, middle-aged woman with a superior manner and clipped voice.

“To the modern eye, cathedrals are grey, soaring structures of devotion and faith. However, in medieval times, they were very colourful, ratherthan like Hindu shrines in India or Thailand. The statues and tympana that adorned the great portals, in Chartres as elsewhere, were tricked out in polychrome.” The guide pointed up at the outside with her umbrella. “Look closely and you can still see fragments of pink, blue and yellow clinging to the cracks in the statues.”

All around Alice, people were nodding obediently.

“In 1194,” the woman continued, “a fire destroyed most of the city of Chartres as well as the cathedral itself. At first it was believed that the cathedral’s holiest relic, the sancta camisia – the robe supposedly worn by Mary at the birth of Christ – had been destroyed. But after three days the relic was discovered, having been hidden by the monks in the crypt. This was seen as a miracle, a sign that the cathedral should be rebuilt. The current edifice was finished in 1223 and in 1260 consecrated as the Cathedral Church of the Assumption of Our Lady, the first cathedral in France to be dedicated to the Virgin Mary.”

Alice listened with half an ear, until they arrived at the northern side of the cathedral. The guide pointed at the eerie stone procession of Old Testament kings and queens carved above the north portal.

Alice felt a flutter of nervous excitement.

“This is the only significant representation of the Old Testament in the cathedral,” said the guide, beckoning them closer. “On this pillar is a carving which many people believe shows the Ark of the Covenant being carried away from Jerusalem by Menelik, son of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, despite the fact that historians claim the story of Menelik was not known in Europe until the fifteenth century. And here” – she lowered her arm a little – ‘is another mystery. Those of you with good eyesight might just be able to make out the Latin – HIC AMITITUR ARCHA CEDERIS .“ She looked round the group and smiled smugly. The Latin scholars among you will realise that the inscription does not make sense. Some guidebooks translate ARCHA CEDERIS as: ”You are to work through the Ark“ and translate the entire inscription as: ”Here things take their course: you are to work through the Ark.“ However, if you take CEDERIS to be a corruption of FOEDERIS , as some commentators have suggested, then the inscription might be translated as: ”Here it is let go, the Ark of the Covenant“.”

She looked around the group. “This door, among other things, is one of the reasons for the number of myths and legends that have grown up around the cathedral. Unusually, the names of the master builders of Chartres Cathedral are not known. It is likely that, for some reason, no records were kept and the names were simply forgotten. However, those with more, shall we say, lurid imaginations have interpreted the absence of information differently. The most persistent of the rumours has it that the cathedral was built by descendants of the Poor Knights of Solomon, the Knights Templar, as a codified book in stone, a gigantic puzzle decipherable only by the initiated. Many believed the bones of Mary Magdalene had once been buried beneath the labyrinth. Or even the Holy Grail itself”.“

“Has anybody looked?” Alice said, regretting the words the second they were out of her mouth. Disapproving eyes swivelled to her like a spotlight.

The guide raised her eyebrows. “Certainly. On more than one occasion. But most of you will not be surprised to hear they found nothing. Another myth.” She paused. “Shall we move inside?”