by Richard Reed
“I have met her,” said Dubois, without batting an eyelid. “It was many years ago when I was just 11 or 12 years old, but what she told me – and showed me – convinced me she was genuine.”
“Where is she?” asked Rachel.
“Here, in the Languedoc – where the first Mary Magdalene made her home all those centuries ago. She lives her life as just another French woman. You wouldn’t know her if you passed her in the street.”
“What did she show you?” asked David.
“A number of parchments, similar to the one you have here.”
“This doesn’t prove anything!” said David caustically. “As far as I’m concerned, this could just be a red herring.”
“Don’t be so quick to dismiss this, David,” said Rachel, frowning. “Who knows where it might lead? And these other parchments – aren’t you curious as to what they might say?”
“But it’s taking us away from Rennes-le-Château,” argued David.
“Mon ami, this is Rennes-le-Château – it’s what it’s all about,” said Dubois. “It’s not just what Saunière discovered, it’s who he met on those long walks in the countryside for which he was famous. It’s how he was able to blackmail the Church. I’m afraid he wasn’t a very honourable man; selling masses was the least of his sins. If you think the idea of Jesus being married to Mary is controversial now, think what it must have been like in the 19th century – it would have been a sacrilege to the Catholic Church! They would have stopped at nothing to keep the truth from leaking out. Why else would the Archduke of Austria-Hungary have been involved? They were devout Catholics who wanted to protect the established order. The real mystery is why they let Saunière live as long as they did.”
“You think…” Rachel’s voice trailed off.
“His death was no accident, mam’selle, that much is for certain. It was a critical point in the Great War for the Austrians – they and the Germans were facing certain defeat. Saunière had outlived his usefulness, if you can call it that.”
“And now?” queried Rachel. “You say this woman who claims… this latest Magdalene could be in danger?”
“Is in danger. Serious danger. Do you think the Catholic Church is any more ready now for a woman to proclaim herself the direct descendant of Jesus and Mary than it was a century ago? Think of the implications! Catholicism is a male-only hierarchy that justifies its existence on the basis that Jesus was celibate, and entrusted his message only to men – his 12 disciples. It’s why only men can be priests, and is the reason for their enforced celibacy.”
“Of course,” said Rachel. “I hadn’t stopped to think about things from that perspective. The issue of women priests is one of the biggest barriers in the move to reunify Rome with the Anglican Church, even as things stand now. Living proof that Mary was not just Jesus’s wife, but also his closest disciple, would shatter centuries of complacent male domination.”
“And think of theological implications! continued Dubois. “Jesus was – is – God; that is what the Church believes. That Jesus, while on Earth, was both human and divine. What would that have made his children, or their descendants? Demigods? It would give them greater moral authority than the Pope! It would undermine the whole credibility of the Church.”
Rachel stood silently for a few moments, struggling to take in the implications of what Dubois had said. “If that’s true, it makes you wonder why they didn’t pull every string in the book to get this dig stopped,” she said finally.
“Perhaps they did – but as I said, money talks.”
“And now the dig has gone ahead, you think they are waiting for a chance to silence her?”
“If they find out where she is. Of course, at first they just wanted to stop the whole thing – but our bull-headed mayor was determined to bring in National Geographic, and put Rennes on the tourist trail for the Americans. So then they turned to more devious means – I’m afraid I don’t think your ‘accident’ was an accident at all, mam’selle,” he said, turning to Rachel. “Your reputation as an investigative journalist precedes you. They hoped the exercise would not turn up anything conclusive, and without you digging around behind the scenes, as it were, the whole thing would be a five-minute wonder. At worst, another Magdalene tomb to add to the ones in Vézelay and St-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume. But now you have got this far…”
“They didn’t know the full truth about the tomb,” observed Rachel.
“I think not, or they would have taken more extreme steps to stop you.”
“More extreme than trying to kill me?”
“Why stop at one murder? You must understand, this has been going on for centuries. For these people, the preservation of the Roman Catholic Church exceeds all other considerations. You would have been casualties of war.”
“Like the Cathars…”
“That was not war, that was genocide – but yes, in a manner of speaking.”
“So what do you suggest we do now?” asked Rachel.
“We need to find Anne-Marie and take her to a place of safety.”
“Anne-Marie?”
“The current descendant of the Magdalene.”
“And how do we do that?”
“I may be able to help you. As I have said, I met her many years ago – she was middle-aged then, so she would be an old woman by now.”
“How did you meet her?”
“I used to run errands for Nöel Corbu – the man who befriended Marie Dénarnaud in her later years. He bought the Villa Bethania from her, Saunière’s grand house – it was always in her name, not Saunière’s. I was inquisitive – always asking questions about my great aunt. One day he said to me, ‘Would you like to meet the woman at the centre of all this?’ Naturally, I was confused. I said, ‘But Aunt Marie is dead.’ He said, ‘Come with me, and you will understand. Someone else must know the truth besides me. I will not live forever.’ To be truthful, I thought he was a little mad.
“He asked if he could trust me, and of course, I said yes. He swore me to secrecy – he told me many lives depended on it – and took me to a village several kilometres from here. He told me he would not take a direct route because he did not want me to remember how to get to there. We went into an old cottage, and there she was. I’m afraid I can’t remember much more about it.”
“Did you ever meet her again?” asked Rachel.
“No, mam’selle. A year or two after our meeting, Corbu was killed in a tragic car accident.”
Rachel shuddered.
“Now there’s a familiar theme,” observed David drily. “So how do we go about meeting this… Anne-Marie, if you don’t know where she lives? Is there any other way we can get in touch with her?”
“Not directly, m’sieur. But as you may have discovered for yourselves, Saunière left many clues here at Rennes, both in the church and elsewhere. It may be that if we follow them carefully, they will lead us to her.”
“How can clues left more than 100 years ago possibly help us find this woman now?”
“If we are meant to find her, we will.”
“Spare us the cryptic mumbo-jumbo,” snapped David in exasperation. “I’ve had quite enough theology for one day.”
“I think you’re being a little harsh,” said Rachel, putting her hand gently on his arm. “Give the guy a break – he’s offering to help us. He has met her, after all.”
“He met someone who claimed to be her, based on a totally uncorroborated theory. If he’s telling the truth.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, monsieur, but I suspect you followed certain clues to discover the tomb of St Marie?” said Dubois, ignoring the slur.
“Yes, but that tomb has been there for 1,000 years.”
“Saunière was alive only 100 years ago – is it not possible he left some clues that may still be relevant today, m’sieur?” said Dubois politely.
“I suppose so,” said David irritatedly, still suspicious of his motives.
“Well then, let us look at the evidence before
us. What do you have to lose? You cannot go back into the crypt – perhaps we will uncover some more clues.”
“Any suggestions as to where we should start?” said David sarcastically.
“Do you remember I said Saunière made a discovery on those long country walks that have caused so much speculation? I believe he met Marie – or at least, her great-grandmother. I do not know whether it was by chance, or whether he found some evidence – but I am convinced he met her. That was why he built La Tour Magdala, at such vast expense – not so much to honour St Marie, but out of reverence and homage to her direct line of descendants…”
“So you’re saying that La Tour holds the key?” interrupted Rachel.
“Exactement, mam’selle! For instance, did you know that there are precisely 22 steps in the staircase leading from the study to the top of the tower? And 22 holes in the battlements…”
“Crenelations,” corrected Rachel.
“Oui! And there are also 22 steps in the glass tower opposite, the Orangerie. And 22 steps – 11 on each side – in the staircases that lead from the garden to the balcony that connects the two towers.”
“So what does that prove?” asked David sarcastically.
“M’sieur, July 22nd is the feast day of the Madeleine.”
Rachel looked at him in astonishment, then turned to David, an expression of incredulity on her face. “The inscription over the statue of the Devil inside the church – ‘By this sign you will vanquish him’ – the extra two letters, making a total of 22. Remember? It all adds up – quite literally.”
“So what? Saunière was obsessed with Mary Magdalene – we know that. But that still doesn’t put us any nearer finding her alleged – and I stress alleged – descendant.”
“David, for God’s sake stop being so dismissive,” said Rachel angrily. “It’s a clue. Let’s go and see if there any other clues hidden in the tower. We haven’t really paid it much attention so far.”
“It wasn’t in the brief.”
“It is now. Let’s go look.”
“Now?”
“Do you have any better plans?”
The three of them walked over to La Tour Magdala, the strange neo-Gothic tower, complete with its quirky miniature turret in one corner, perched on the edge of the hillside occupied by Rennes-le-Château. It looked like something out of a Victorian romance fantasy – or, perhaps, a Monty Python sketch, thought Rachel whimsically.
A grand stone balcony – known locally as the Belvedere – ran from one side of the tower along the edge of the hill until it met the Orangerie. This tower, a mirror image of La Tour Magdala, had a stone base but a glass superstructure, which Saunière had used as a greenhouse. Below the Belvedere, and half encircled by it, was the garden, now somewhat scrappy and forlorn, but once meticulously maintained to a precise design laid down by the mysterious priest. No-one was quite certain what its geometric patterns were supposed to mean, though some speculated it represented key points in the life of Mary Magdalene. Collectively, the whole area, including the Villa Bethanie, the house he had built for himself, had become known as the Domaine.
“I still don’t get it – why the two towers?” asked Rachel as they crossed the garden.
“No-one has really come up with a convincing explanation for that, mam’selle,” said Dubois. “Though it is true to say that this whole area – the garden and the two towers – form half of an imaginary chessboard. That is to say, this garden, with its two sides at right angles, is one half of the board. If you were to continue the lines to make up a complete board, the area is exactly 64 times that of La Tour. And, of course, there are 64 squares on a chessboard. Furthermore, the two towers occupy the precise positions of the rooks on a chessboard – La Tour being the black rook, one assumes, and the glass one the white rook.
“When we go inside La Tour, you will note there are 64 squares on the floor. There is symmetry in everything he did.”
“What on earth does it all mean?” asked Rachel, bemused.
“I’m afraid, mam’selle, the only person who knows the answer to that was struck down here on January 17, 1917 and died a few days later – on the 22nd, as it happens.”
“January 17 seems to be a recurring theme,” said Rachel, glancing at David. He shook his head to indicate she shouldn’t say any more about the date on the tomb in the crypt.
“Indeed, it is a date that occurs with great regularity in the history of Rennes-le-Château, mam’selle,” said Dubois, apparently oblivious to their brief interchange of looks. “Most notably, it is the date on which Marie de Nègre d’Ables died – the date written on that famous tombstone.”
“Isn’t there something else about January 17? Blue apples, or something bizarre?”
Dubois smiled indulgently. “Oui, for sure. It is said that on that day a ray of light shines through a stained glass window in the church and creates an illusion of blue apples on the wall. It has achieved significance among our treasure hunter friends because some of the parchments that were allegedly discovered – and I stress ‘allegedly’, mam’selle – can, it is claimed, be decoded to reveal a hidden message. That message contains a garbled reference to ‘blue apples at midday’. But those parchments are almost certainly fakes.”
“Well there’s a surprise,” said David sarcastically.
Dubois turned abruptly and entered La Tour.
David shrugged, and Rachel gave him a glare before following Dubois into Saunière’s study in the basement of the tower. She had, of course, looked around the tower on several occasions during the course of the dig, but now she examined it with renewed interest. The walls were covered with rich, wooden art nouveau panelling, but it was the floor that held her interest. As Dubois had said, there were 64 squares, each made up of four tiles. The richly patterned tiles were quite remarkable in their detail – a gold cross inside a multi-pointed star, inside what looked like a pale yellow marigold with tendrils trailing down inside. This complex image was contained in a red circle with a black and gold border.
The intersection of each group of four tiles made up another, smaller circular pattern: a blue flower within a white flower within a red circle, and again a black and gold border. Here and there the tiles were damaged where the floor had been dug up by treasure hunters desperate to discover the elusive secrets of Rennes-le-Château.
“This is incredible,” said Rachel. “I never really noticed the complexity of the patterns before. They look highly symbolic, but what does it all mean?”
“No-one is quite sure, mam’selle,” said Dubois.
“Reminds me of a Templar floor tile I saw at Templecombe in Somerset,” mused David. “I was part of the behind-the-scenes crew on the Time Team dig at the site of the former Templar lodge there.”
“So the Templars crop up again,” mused Rachel, studying the tile pattern thoughtfully. “I suppose the cross in the centre must symbolise Jesus. And the star could be the star of David. Or maybe the star that supposedly led the three wise men to the infant Jesus. And perhaps that fuzzy marigold shape is meant to signify a womb – the marigold is supposed to be the flower of the Virgin Mary, and those strange tendrils would fit the womb analogy.”
“You have a keen mind,” observed Dubois. “I can understand why the Church didn’t want you… how do you say? poking around!”
“It’s just guesswork, really – with perhaps a little feminine intuition thrown in. And I suppose the smaller, blue flower in the adjacent circles could symbolise the Magdalene. The Christ and the Magdalene theme would certainly fit in with what we have discovered.”
“You may well be right, mam’selle.”
Rachel moved over to the window and looked down to the fields below. “But why did he build the tower here, right on the edge of the cliff? It must have made it much more difficult to construct. As it is, I’ve noticed a huge crack in the outside wall where the foundations have moved.”
Dubois hesitated briefly. “It’s the view, of course,” he said awkwardly.
“Saunière would spend hours admiring the landscape, either from here or, in the summer, from the belvedere. C’est magnifique, n’est-pas?” he added, gesturing to the stunning vista framed in the window.
Rachel certainly couldn’t deny the panorama was anything but magnificent, with row upon row of dusky hills rising up one behind the other to meet the brooding massif of the distant Hautes Pyrénées. Greens, browns and golds stretched in every direction as far as the eye could see. It was quite breathtaking.
“I can see that he would never tire of this,” she admitted. “But still I wonder, why right on the edge like this? Anyway, let’s go up to the top and see if we get any more insights.”
She started up the staircase, counting as she went. As she reached 11, she found herself in front of an embrasure enclosing a small arched window overlooking the countryside below. “If there are 22 steps here, as you say, it’s interesting that the half-way mark stops directly in front of this window,’ she remarked. “Is there anything significant in that direction?”
“Who knows?” said Dubois evasively.
Rachel gave him a hard stare before moving on up spiral staircase, emerging onto the roof platform exactly 11 more steps later. She grasped hold of the parapet and gazed into the distance for a while, losing herself in the soft outlines of the hills, limned with gold in the soft summer sunlight. What was going on here? What had Saunière been trying to hint at? Something more than just the tomb of Mary Magdalene – significant though that undoubtedly was. She felt sure there was something more; something she was missing.
She looked across at David and Dubois. David looked angry, and was obviously not happy at their continuing relationship with Dubois. The articulate Dubois was, on the other hand, a picture of certitude – if not smugness.
“Well, I don’t suppose there is much to be gained standing here admiring the scenery, stunning though it is,” said Rachel. “I think I’ll go back to the hotel and do some more research.”
“The hotel?” queried David. “Why don’t you do it here?”