Ava frowned. “How did a Catholic order of crusader-monks allow an excommunicate heretic who had murdered the pope’s legate to join? How was that possible?”
Torquemada shrugged apologetically. “They were strange times, and the whole affair remains something of a mystery. But you have to remember that we look back and see Catholics and Cathars fighting in the Languedoc. In reality, they were brothers and sisters, mothers and sons. You can never underestimate ties of blood and kinship. Anyway, there’s no doubt the count of Toulouse was a heretic. He was infamous as one of the faidit lords.”
Ava felt the word as if it hit her physically. “What did you just say?”
She was staring at him, incredulous.
Torquemada seemed taken aback by the force of her reaction. “His lands were confiscated because of his heretical sympathies.”
“You said faidit.” Her heart was beating faster now. “What does it mean?”
“The faidit lords were the ones who lost their property and titles as punishment for their heresies,” he answered. “They were notorious – especially the count of Toulouse, who some said brought the shattering crusade upon his people. The history books call him Count Raymond VI of Toulouse, but at the time he was widely known as Raymond the faidit.”
Ava’s breath caught in her throat.
Raimundus Faiditus – Raymond the faidit.
“It’s a Catalan word,” Torquemada continued. “It means exiled. That’s not a perfect translation. But it’s close enough.”
As he said the word ‘perfect’, something in the depths of Ava’s mind sparked, forming a connection.
“That’s the same word Jennings used,” she whispered, as the full implications dawned on her. “He said that Durov was not perfect, but he will be.” She could feel the blood draining from her face. “That was the main Cathar rite, wasn’t it? The ritual of perfection?”
She was sure she was right.
Because there was something else, too.
She had not appreciated it before, but suddenly it made sense.
On the vellum, the four groups of three small circles inside the seven-pointed star were not random.
They just needed to be connected in the right way.
And when they were, they formed a familiar shape.
The Cathar cross.
The Grand Master nodded. “Ordinary Cathars were Credentes, or Believers. But once they had been through the ritual of Consolation, they became Perfecti, or Perfects. From that moment, they lived in simple poverty, avoiding meat, alcohol, and sex. It was a kind of living death that—”
“Oh my God,” Ava cut him off, turning pale as she suddenly realized with horror what Durov was planning. “Which airport are Durov’s followers arriving at?”
“Saint-Gaudens – it’s a small airfield about fifty miles south-west of Toulouse.”
“Can you get us to Toulouse?”
Torquemada nodded. He leant forward and tapped the driver on the shoulder. “Biggin Hill. Prepare the plane.”
Ava pulled out her phone and dialled Ferguson’s number.
From the ringing tone, she could tell he was back in the UK.
He picked up almost immediately.
“Look, Ava, I just wanted to—” he began.
“It’s fine,” she cut in.
“I just don’t want—” he continued.
“There’s no time for that now,” she interrupted again. “Can you be at Biggin Hill airport in two hours?”
“Sure. What’s going on?” He sounded concerned.
“Do you know what tomorrow is?”
“The twenty-fourth of June,” he answered. “So what?”
“It’s Saint John’s day, traditionally the Summer Solstice.” She fought to keep back her rising sense of dread. “If I’m right, that’s when Durov is planning to stage his own apocalypse.”
Chapter 55
Prat dels Cremats
Languedoc-Roussillon-Midi-Pyrénées
The Republic of France
DUROV WAS FILLED with a sense of serenity.
He knew it was here.
Waiting for him.
All the clues pointed to this place.
The Skoptsy he had personally selected were gathered around – exactly one hundred and forty-four souls, representing the one hundred and forty-four thousand to be sealed and saved in the Apocalypse. They were drawn from his whole network – from Russia, Europe, the United States, and beyond.
All were zealous in the faith.
They understood what needed to happen.
It was dark in the field, and the only illumination came from the moonlight and two dozen flaming torches planted in a precise circle around them.
Durov gazed up at the large rocky mountain – a pog, he had heard the locals call it. His eyes travelled up the vast outcrop, to the point where the peak was lost in the night sky.
He would have to wait until tomorrow to see the castle.
With his excitement building, he turned back to what needed to be done.
Tonight, he was going to come face to face with history.
And with his destiny.
This was all meant to be.
There was a reason why the Holy Mother had chosen him for this task. Thanks to her intervention, he had learned everything about Rasputin’s obsession with the Apocalypse, and the message the mystic monk had left for posterity.
Rasputin had been fascinated that John’s eschatological vision was never read in Orthodox churches. He had studied it, becoming ever more intrigued by its arcane symbols. His curiosity had led to an obsession, until one day he came across the piece of vellum in the tsar’s icon of Our Lady of Philermos. He had not understood it fully, but appreciated that it was of immense Apocalyptic significance. When the Revolution upended the royal family’s traditional way of life, he had been privy to the sacred icon being spirited out of Russia, and had carefully recorded for posterity where it had been taken.
Durov inhaled deeply, savouring the still evening air.
Stepping forward, he moved into the centre of the expectant group, and approached the weather-beaten stone monument they were gathered round.
At its base was a plinth under a carved structure shaped liked a sarcophagus. A gravestone rose from it, up to the height of a man. The whole monument was capped by a circular headpiece bearing a five-pointed star surmounting three crosses, the middle one incised deeper and wider than the other two.
In the flickering torchlight, Durov read the simple words incised into the memorial:
ALS CATARS
ALS MARTIRS
DEL PUR AMOR CRESTIAN
16 DE MARÇ 1244
He was not skilled in Mediterranean languages, but it was not difficult to translate the Provençal:
TO THE CATHARS
TO THE MARTYRS
OF PURE CHRISTIAN LOVE
16 MARCH 1244
He watched as five of the Skoptsy stepped forward with spades and trowels, and began to dig out the earth in front of the monument.
He was not worried about interference from locals.
For the next twenty-four hours, the Skoptsy had the area completely to themselves.
Durov had explained to the mayor of the commune that he and his friends were from an astronomical society keen to conduct certain solstice experiments in the castle. He knew that the craggy ruins regularly attracted innumerable solar cranks bent on investigating how the castle’s architecture aligned with the sun’s rays on the solstices.
He had stressed to the mayor that they needed absolute privacy for their work, and was reassured by the official’s practised smile and nod of understanding that all would be well. Durov sealed the bargain with a handsome payment to the local archaeological trust, and an equally gratifying thank you to the mayor for his generous understanding.
As the sound of digging continued, and the hole in front of the monument deepened, Durov was calm.
Fifteen minutes passed, and the men opening up the
wide trench were sweating freely.
Durov used the time to prepare himself mentally for what was to come, allowing his mind to savour the words he knew so well:
I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet, Saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last: and, what thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches which are in Asia.
He felt himself floating in the holy words, until he was brought back to the present by the dull sound of a shovel striking something metallic.
It was the moment he had been waiting for.
He braced himself.
The prize had been deep in the earth for centuries.
Waiting.
The large stone funeral monument was not ancient, but the site of the Cathars’ martyrdom had been marked down the ages. The Cathar cross on the vellum fragment was the key, showing the roll would be where they had perished – where their noble souls guarded the scripture for the righteous.
The men began digging around the object they had struck, and soon exposed a metal chest.
His heart now hammering, Durov knelt down and used his fingers to scrape the last of the soil from around its edges.
He summoned one of the men to bring a torch.
When the man returned and held the flames directly over the hole, Durov could see that the container was iron, around a yard long, and bound with a number of irregular horizontal and vertical reinforcing bands. It was blackened with age, heavily rusted in places, but still visibly intact.
His eyes lingered lovingly on the heraldic shapes embossed on the sides of the chest. They were plain equilateral Latin crosses – the unmistakeable symbol of the medieval Knights of Saint John.
Brushing aside a clod of earth, he carefully examined the medieval barrel padlock hanging from the chest’s front, then stood and beckoned for the nearest man to pass his spade.
Placing the tool’s point against the box’s rusty hasp, Durov stamped down hard on the upper edge of the spade. With a dull scraping sound, the aged hasp and plate sheared cleanly off the chest, snapping the corroded weld, taking the padlock with them.
Durov knelt down again, and allowed the smell of freshly turned earth to fill his nostrils.
Steadying his hands, he reached in and raised the box’s lid.
It lifted easily, revealing a single object inside.
It was a smaller container, lighter in colour.
He offered a silent prayer as he took hold of the box and lifted it out, feeling the weight of the mission with which the Holy Mother had charged him.
By the light of the torch flame, he could see the container was made of solid lead, sealed tight with a thick band of tar covering the join where the lid met the body.
“Raduysya, Blagodatnaya!” he prayed quietly, “Gospod’s Toboyu.”3
The words filled him with power as his eyes settled on the emblem stamped into the lid. It was the Cathar cross – the cross of Toulouse – just as the vellum fragment had described.
There could be no mistake.
This was the box Count Raymond VI had instructed the Knights of Saint John to bury here for safekeeping, on the site of the Cathars’ martyrdom.
It was the Cathars’ treasure.
One of the men handed him a trowel. He knocked the earth off it, then gently forced its point into the tar, carefully working it around the length of the strip, cracking open the ancient sealant.
His heart was pumping hard as the lid came away.
He closed his eyes.
“Blagoslovenna Ty mezhdu zhonami, i blagosloven plod chreva Tvoego.4”
When he opened his eyes again, he saw, nestling in the cold lead case, a thick roll of light-tan-coloured parchment. It was around fourteen inches high, and six inches wide.
His nostrils flared in triumph.
The Holy Mother had not deceived him.
As he gazed at the roll in rapture, his eyes were drawn to the spot where its outer flap was fixed down, holding the manuscript firmly closed. They settled on the large irregular plain black seal.
It was unbroken.
Chapter 56
Toulouse
Languedoc-Roussillon-Midi-Pyrénées
The Republic of France
TORQUEMADA HAD BEEN as good as his word. An Order of Malta liveried plane had been fuelled and readied at Biggin Hill, and the pilot had taken Ava, Ferguson, and Mary to Toulouse.
On the flight, Ava had told them all about the vellum fragment she had found in Jerusalem, and how the clues referred to Saint Polycarp hiding his original copy of the Apocalypse in Antioch. She had also told them about Swinton’s murder, Jennings’s confession, and her conversation with Torquemada.
On landing, a car had been waiting, and it had driven them to the centre of Toulouse, to a large residence that Torquemada had arranged for them. A housekeeper had been waiting, and now they were sitting in the garden, in the warm and fragranced night air, under the ancient gnarled trees, enjoying a homemade spread of local food.
“How does Polycarp hiding the letter in Antioch lead to Toulouse?” Mary asked. “I don’t see the link.”
“The key is Peter Bartholomew,” Ava explained, taking a fresh fig. “I looked him up. It’s an amazing story from the crusades.”
“Go on.” Ferguson nodded. “I could use a good war story.”
“It’s more of a mystery, really,” Ava continued. “During the First Crusade, the pilgrim armies marched on foot through eastern Europe, across modern-day Turkey, down into the Lebanon, and finally into Israel. It was gruelling. Along with the frequent battles, there was constant illness and starvation.
“When they arrived at Antioch, they found a city with a massive wall and four hundred towers. They immediately realized that they had to capture and control it in order to protect their rear and their supply lines.
“After eight months of siege, they’d made little progress, but had stripped the surrounding land of all food. So they rapidly began to starve. Eventually, they managed to bribe a local captain called Firouz to let a small group of crusaders into the Tower of the Two Sisters. Once inside, the raiding party immediately crept down and opened the city’s main gates for the whole Christian army to pour in. But, no sooner had the crusaders overwhelmed the city than a vast Muslim relief army arrived, and promptly started besieging them.
“The crusaders soon began to starve again. Morale plummeted to an all-time low. But, miraculously, at this crisis point, a simple pilgrim from Provençe had a wondrous vision. Saint Andrew appeared to him in a dream, and told him that the Holy Lance of Longinus was buried in the Cathedral of Saint Peter – Antioch’s ancient rock-cut church – where both Saint Peter and Saint Paul had been bishops before moving to Rome.”
Ava paused to top up her wine glass with chilled local rosé. “This divinely inspired pilgrim was called Peter Bartholomew. Guided by his visions, he led a party to dig up the floor of the ancient cathedral. After they had been at work for a while, he suddenly jumped down into the trench and triumphantly put his hands on a piece of iron protruding from the earth. The crusaders were convinced it was a sign of God’s favour, and rode out joyfully to attack the Muslim army, which they smashed.
“Peter Bartholomew’s discovery of the Holy Lance went down in history as a miracle – certainly one of the most important events on the road to Jerusalem. He was not so lucky, unfortunately. Some of the crusaders began a whispering campaign against him and his continuing visions, so he volunteered to undergo a biblical Trial by Fire to prove his truthfulness. On the appointed day, he walked between two walls of flame, convinced God would spare him. But he was so dreadfully burned that he died within days.
“Now,” Ava continued, “here’s where it gets interesting. The chronicles say that Peter Bartholomew gave the lance to the one-eyed Count Raymond of Saint-Gilles and Toulouse. He was the leader of the Provençal army, and the richest and most battle-hardened of all the crusaders, having spent much of his life
fighting the Reconquest in Spain. He was so powerful that when the crusaders finally conquered Jerusalem, they nominated him as their first choice to be king of Jerusalem – but he turned it down.”
“So Peter Bartholomew gave the Holy Lance to Count Raymond.” Mary frowned. “But what’s the connection with Polycarp?”
Ava leant forward in her chair. “I wonder if, while digging in the cathedral in Antioch, Peter Bartholomew discovered something more than the Holy Lance.”
“The Apocalypse roll,” Ferguson said, “hidden by Polycarp centuries earlier.”
“And you think Peter Bartholomew gave the roll to Count Raymond along with the lance?” Mary asked.
“It makes sense of the other clues,” Ava continued. “If Count Raymond of Saint-Gilles sent the Apocalypse roll back home, to Toulouse, it would have passed down from father to son, until it was finally entrusted to his great-great grandson, Count Raymond the faidit.”
“So that’s the Toulouse connection.” Ferguson leant back in his chair. “Makes sense.”
“Only part of it.” Ava smiled. “There’s more.”
She had finished eating, and stood up to leave. “If I’m right, tomorrow’s going to be a big day.”
DAY SEVEN
Chapter 57
Ariège
Languedoc-Roussillon-Midi-Pyrénées
The Republic of France
THEY SET OUT early, heading south towards Spain.
For the first half hour, the countryside was flat as they followed the Autoroute des Deux Mers, before turning off onto the Ariégeoise, where the landscape soon started to roll.
By the time they were approaching the ancient cathedral city of Pamiers, the foothills of the Pyrenees were clearly visible, heralding the start of the rugged mountain range that cut Spain off from France.
The Apocalypse Fire (Ava Curzon Trilogy Book 2) Page 30