Kate Mosse - Labyrinth

Will grinned. “Yeah, sorry about that,” he apologised. “The local paper’s not usually so exciting. A man’s been found dead in the river, right in the centre of the city. He’d been stabbed in the back, his hands and feet were tied, the local radio station’s going crazy. They seem to think it’s some kind of ritual killing. Now they’re linking it to the disappearance last week of a local journalist, who was writing an expose of secret religious societies.”

The smile fell from Alice’s face. “Can I see that?” she said, reaching for the paper.

“Sure. Help yourself.”

Her sense of uneasiness grew as she read the list of names. The Noublesso Veritable . There was something familiar about the name.

“Are you okay?” Alice looked up to see Will gazing at her.

“Sorry,” she said. “I was miles away. It’s just I’ve come across something similar recently. The coincidence gave me a shock.”

“Coincidence? Sounds intriguing.”

“It’s a long story.”

“I’m in no hurry,” said Will, propping his elbows on the table and smiling encouragingly at her.

After being trapped inside her own thoughts for so long, Alice was tempted by the chance of finally talking to someone. And she sort of knew him. Only tell him what you want.

“Well, I’m not sure this is going to make much sense,” she began. “A couple of months ago I discovered, totally out of the blue, that an aunt I’d never heard of had died and left everything to me, including a house in France.”

“The lady in the photo.”

She nodded. “She’s called Grace Tanner. I was due to come to France anyway, to visit a friend who was working at an archaeological dig in the Pyrenees, so I decided to run the two trips together.” She hesitated. “Some things happened at the dig – I won’t bore you by going into detail except to say there seemed to be… Well, never mind.” She took a breath. “Yesterday, after a meeting with the solicitor, I went to my aunt’s house and I found some things… something, a pattern, which I’d seen at the dig.” She stumbled, inarticulate. “There was also a book by an author called Audric Baillard who, I’m almost a hundred per cent certain, is the man in the photo.”

“He’s still alive?”

“So far as I know. I haven’t been able to track him down.”

“What’s his relationship with your aunt?”

I’m not sure. I’m hoping he’ll be able to tell me. He’s my only link to her. And other things.“

To the labyrinth, the family tree, to my dream.

When she looked up, she saw Will was looking confused, but engaged.

“I can’t say I’m much the wiser yet,” he said with a grin.

I’m not explaining it very well,“ she admitted. ”Let’s talk about some less complicated. You never did tell me what you were doing in Chartres.“

“Like every other American in France, trying to write.”

Alice smiled. “Isn’t Paris more traditional?”

“I started off there, but I guess I found it too, well, impersonal, if you know what I mean. My parents knew folks here. I liked it. Ended up staying a while.”

Alice nodded, expecting him to carry on. Instead, he returned to something she’d said earlier. “This pattern you mentioned,” he said casually. “That you found at the dig and then at Grace’s house, what was special about it?”

She hesitated. “It’s a labyrinth.”

“Is that why you’re here in Chartres then? To go to the cathedral?”

“It’s not quite the same…” She stopped as caution returned. “Partly, although it’s more because I’m hoping to catch up with a friend. Shelagh. There’s a… a possibility she might be in Chartres.” Alice reached in her bag and passed the scrap of paper with the address scribbled on it across the table to Will. “I went there earlier, but there was no one there. So I decided to do my sightseeing, then go back in about an hour or so.”

Alice was shocked to see Will had turned white. He looked dumbstruck.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Why do you think your friend might be there?” he said in a tight voice.

“I don’t, for sure,” she said, still puzzled by the change that had come over him.

“This is the friend you went to visit at the dig?”

She nodded.

“And she saw this labyrinth pattern also? Like you?”

“I suppose so, although she didn’t mention it. She was more obsessed with something I’d found, which…” Alice broke off as Will abruptly stood up.

“What are you doing?” she said, unnerved by the expression on his face as he took her hand.

“Come with me. There’s something you ought to see.”

“Where are we going?” she asked again, hurrying to keep up with him.

Then they rounded the corner and Alice realised they were at the other end of rue du Cheval Blanc. Will strode towards the house, then ran up the steps to the front door.

“Are you out of your mind? What if someone’s come home?”

“There won’t be.”

“But how do you know?”

Alice watched with astonishment as Will produced a key from his pocket and opened the front door. “Hurry. Before someone sees us.”

“You have a key,” she said in disbelief. “Suppose you start telling me what the hell’s going on.”

Will ran back down the steps and grabbed her hand.

“There’s a version of your labyrinth here,” he hissed. “Okay? Now , will you come?”

2›What if it’s another trap? 2›

After everything that had happened, she’d be crazy to follow him. It was too much of a risk. Nobody even knew she was here. Curiosity won out over common sense. Alice looked up at Will’s face, eager and anxious at one and the same time.

She decided to give him another chance and trust him.

Alice found herself standing in a grand entrance hall, more like a museum than a private house. Will went straight to a tapestry opposite the front door and pulled it away from the wall.

“What are you doing?”

She ran after him and saw a tiny brass handle set into the panelling.

Will rattled and pushed at it, then turned round with frustration.

“Dammit. It’s been locked from the other side.”

“It’s a door?”

“Right.”

“And the labyrinth you saw, it’s down there?”

Will nodded. “You go down a flight of stairs and along a corridor, which leads into a weird sort of chamber. Egyptian symbols on the wall, a tomb with the symbol of the labyrinth, just like you described, carved on top. Now-” he broke off. The stuff in the newspaper. The fact your friend had this address…‘

You’re making a lot of assumptions based on not much,“ she said.

Will dropped the corner of the tapestry and was striding to a room on the opposite side of the hall. After a moment’s hesitation, Alice followed.

“What are you doing?” she hissed as Will opened the door.

Walking into the library was like stepping back in time. It was a formal room with the atmosphere of a men’s club. The shutters were partially closed and batons of yellow light lay stretched on the carpet like strips of golden cloth. There was an air of permanence, a smell of antiquity and polish.

Bookshelves ran from floor to ceiling along three sides of the room with sliding book ladders giving access to the highest shelves. Will knew exactly where he was going. There was a section dedicated to books on Chartres, photographic volumes set alongside the more serious examinations of architecture and social history.

Turning anxiously towards the door, her heart racing, Alice watched as Will pulled out a book with a family crest embossed on the front and carried it to the table. Alice looked over his shoulder as he flicked through the pages. Glossy colour photographs, old maps of Chartres, line and ink drawings flashed by until Will reached the section he wanted.