Haunted Echoes

by Cindy Dees

  I commented, “I thought the Marians disappeared before, say, Queen Elizabeth the First, came along.”

  Robert shrugged. “Weren’t you listening the night Catrina and I talked about all this?”

  My cheeks heated up. “Actually, I spent most of the time trying to avoid ogling your rear end. I wasn’t paying much attention to the conversation.”

  “Now that’s an appropriate reason to blush.” Robert grinned and chucked my pink cheek. “Catrina intimated that small pockets of Marians might have survived in secret. She suggested that, if this was the case, they would have used nontraditional means to record their beliefs and pass them on to their daughters—codes in letters, pieces of art, songs or poetry perhaps.”

  An image of the Black Madonna in my backpack exploded across my brain. What had Elizabeth called it? A fertility talisman that also gave its owner a long, healthy life? The gift of Life, she’d said. That certainly jived with a cult of women mixing pagan and Christian images together.

  “Are there still Marians today?” I asked eagerly.

  Robert shrugged. “I dunno. Last time I checked, I don’t have the right gender of equipment to find and join them.”

  “Aww, come on. But you like women! What better place to meet tons of chicks than at a goddess worship meeting?”

  He leaned over the maps and kissed me thoroughly. Eventually he sighed, “Ah, lassie, but I’ve already got me hands full with a right-spirited filly. I canna’ spare a thought for any other ladies.”

  “A filly?” I grinned back at him. “If you weren’t such a good kisser, you could be mistaken for a male chauvinist.”

  His eyes twinkled, the silver flecks in them more prominent than usual. “Go ahead. Admit it. You love alpha males like me.”

  That did make me laugh aloud.

  He treated me to several more delicious minutes of Me, Tarzan, You, Jane making out. Man, the guy could kiss. When every last hair on my body was standing straight up, my toes were tingling, and my entire being ached to make love to him, he was a complete cad and pulled away from me.

  “This place is not fitting for making love to a lady like you. I’ll wait until I can shower you with rose petals and surround you with sterling silver candlesticks and crystal champagne flutes.”

  I couldn’t fault the man for the noble and romantic sentiment, but his restraint left me more than a little frustrated.

  Our friend the taciturn sailor showed up soon afterward to let us out for another potty break. I was able to stretch my legs and move around a bit, as well. I needed to check my voice mail messages and see if there were any further developments in the St. Germain murder investigation. Or even more worrisome, in Elise’s health. We were out in the middle of the Mediterranean, and all I could see around us was black water and nearly black sky. But these satellite cell phones advertised that they’d work anywhere. What the heck. I flipped the lid open. I had seventeen voice mails waiting for me, mostly from Littmann and few from the Paris police. I started when I saw Elise’s home phone number in the list.

  My heart leaped into my throat. Oh, Lord. Had something happened to her? My fingers fumbled as I returned that call. It took two endless minutes for the call to go through, and the connection was scratchy when it did finally start to ring. But I was too scared to care.

  “Allô?”

  “Madame Trucot? Is everything all right?”

  “Analise. She has been waiting for your call. She wishes to ask the same of you.”

  “Elise is there? She’s home?”

  “Oui. She refused to stay in the hospital another day. But when she heard about the murder they believe you did, perhaps it would have been better had she stayed at Val de Grace a few more days.”

  “I didn’t do it, I swear.”

  “Child, I know you did not. I have looked into your eyes and there is no murder in them. Believe me, I have seen it before. I know what the soul of a killer looks like.”

  I had no answer for that other than abject gratitude that someone believed me. I waited while the housekeeper went to pass the telephone to Elise.

  “Ana? Is that you?”

  I closed my eyes in distress. Her voice was tissue-thin and weak. So…old. “It’s me, all right. How are you feeling?”

  She laughed. And while the sound of it was old, I still heard a spark of her charming effervescence in it. “I am fine, now. I have been so worried about you. What has been happening?”

  I filled her in very briefly, glossing over the parts where we’d been in danger. She was elated when I told her we’d recovered the statue, and deeply concerned when I told her what few details I knew about St. Germain’s murder and how I was being set up.

  She said fiercely, “Do not worry about the police. You have friends who can pull just as powerful strings as your enemies can. I will make some phone calls and help the police see reason.”

  I thanked her, but I wondered just how seriously she would be taken.

  “And in the meantime, young lady, if you and your handsome Scotsman can stop whoever’s attacking the French power grid, you will go a long way toward clearing your names. I may be able to arrange some small amount of help for you in Languedoc, but I cannot promise much on such short notice.”

  I replied, “We should be back in Paris late tomorrow morning with your statue. After that, we’ll head to Languedoc and see if we can track down whoever’s trying to wreck the power grid.”

  Elise said gently, “You know, I am in fact an old lady. It is not a tragedy if I should happen to feel my age. I had a pretty good run of it, there. You needn’t hurry back here on my account. The authorities are looking for you, and I expect they are staking out my home to that end. It could be dangerous for you to sashay right back into Paris at the moment.”

  I made an impatient sound. “I don’t care about myself. I’m worried about you. I don’t want you to die.”

  “Child, I’m not about to die. I’ve been in vigorous health my whole life. I have another ten or twenty years left in these old bones even without the Lady’s help. It’s more important that you stop those who would use the ley lines for their own ill-gotten ends. It is an offense against Mother Earth.”

  Spoken like a true Marian.

  Abruptly, my mind completely vapor locked. Could it be? Was Elise Villecourt one of the elusive Marians?

  “Elise,” I asked slowly, “have you ever heard of a group of women called the Marians?”

  Only static answered me for the longest time. And then she finally said, “More to the point, where did you hear about them?”

  “Queen Elizabeth the First referred to them in my dreams. And then a family called the Adrianos had an art exhibit while we were in Rome that talked about them a little—”

  Elise cut me off, ordering sharply, “Say no more. Not over the phone!”

  Startled, I subsided.

  She continued forcefully. “Go to Languedoc. Save the world. And then get yourself up here to Paris. We need to talk.”

  And with that, she hung up.

  Well, then.

  Night on the water was cold, and a damp chill soaked right through to my bones. It actually felt good to crawl back behind the electric panel and the abundant heat it put off.

  “Sleep,” Robert urged me. “Tomorrow could be a long day. We’ve got to get back into France undetected, and then we’ve got to find the exact location of this nexus of doom. And most of the features on this map are hundreds of years out of date. The cities and roads are mostly gone by now.” Then he added grimly, “I have a bad feeling about this. I think whoever’s blasting the French power grid is going to go for the big one sooner rather than later. Especially if they find out we’ve stolen the ley line map and can track them down.”

  I frowned at that implication. The only way anyone would know we had the map, besides happening to have access to the Italian police database, was to be closely connected to the Vatican and the Catholic Church itself. Was our attacker a random terrorist, or was h
e a religious zealot of some kind? Either way, we could be walking into serious danger by tomorrow evening.

  But what really scared the living hell out of me was not any concern for myself. The thought of any harm befalling Robert sent me into a near panic. Oh, God. I really had fallen for the guy. Hard.

  I was seeing ghosts. I’d become a thief. A nation’s safety rested on my shoulders. And people were trying to kill me. What next?

  Chapter 18

  E lise’s jet made a hair-raising descent into a steep-sided valley and landed at a deserted private airfield slightly after noon. It took me a moment to peel my white knuckles off the armrests and stand. But we’d made it. The pilots said we were east of a town called Limoux and roughly twenty miles south of Carcassonne. That put us in the heart of the Languedoc region.

  The mountains around us were steep, but their tops were rounded with age and erosion. Their green flanks were just starting to show hints of gold for the fall to come. The valley floor was flat, and the strip of concrete we’d landed on sat in the middle of fields, whatever had grown in them this summer already harvested. The black dirt lay fallow around us.

  “Any idea how we’re going to get out of here?” I asked Robert.

  “The copilot said it had been taken care of.”

  We turned around as the two pilots stepped out of the plane to have a look around and stretch their legs. The copilot said on cue, “Your ride should be here momentarily. They knew when we were landing, and we’re exactly on time.”

  Sure enough, just a few moments later, a plume of dust rose up from across the fields, headed our way.

  A late model Land Rover pulled out onto the runway and drove toward us. It pulled to a stop and I was shocked when none other than Catrina Dauvergne stepped out of it.

  “Welcome to Languedoc,” she said with a laugh at our disbelieving expressions.

  The two pilots wished us good luck and climbed back into their jet. They would continue on to Paris. Their flight plan had them proceeding there nonstop from Algiers. Funny how they hadn’t put on quite enough fuel and had been forced to make this quick, unscheduled stop along the way.

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” Catrina was saying. “I had to borrow the neighbor’s car. Our little Saxo won’t get up the mountain to the house with three adults in it.”

  The Land Rover, however, cruised up the rough, winding road to her farmhouse without the slightest trouble. Catrina chatted easily about the countryside, sharing some of the history of the region and pointing out landmarks here and there. It wasn’t a long drive. Maybe twenty minutes. But finally, I interrupted her.

  “How did you know to come pick us up?”

  Catrina threw me a guarded look. “A friend called and asked me to do a favor. I had to laugh when I found out I was to pick you up, since you are already a friend I would do such a favor for.”

  I took that as a great compliment. Catrina was not the sort of woman who made friends easily or lightly. But then, neither was I.

  We turned off the paved road then, onto a rocky and very rough dirt road that commanded all of Catrina’s attention. We rounded a last curve and then, before us laid the most wonderful French country home. It was a rectangular structure, golden stone with a red tile roof. Young roses grew under the ground floor windows and crisp, white cotton curtains fluttered in an open window.

  As we drove up, a man walked out of a partially cleared and pruned orchard beside the house. He had an ax and a long-handled pruning saw slung over his shoulder. Rhys. The ex-priest who had so swept Catrina off her feet. He was a handsome man in a pure, boyish sort of way. Not at all like dangerous, brooding Robert. The two men were of similar height. And thank God, they didn’t do any of that macho sizing-up crap that men so often do when they first meet. They just shook hands after Rhys wiped his hand on his jeans and nodded politely.

  Introductions were made all around, and we went through the house, which was in full renovation mode with projects in progress everywhere, to the back porch. I laid out croissants and pastries on a tray while Catrina made tea for everyone. We all had a bite to eat and enjoyed the bucolic sound of birds singing and the smell of earth warming under the warm morning sun.

  Catrina seemed totally at peace in this place and with this man. For that matter, Rhys looked pretty darned content, too. They made a powerful argument for saying yes to Robert and being done with it. I had a feeling he and I would be as good together as these two.

  It came up in conversation that Rhys was an amateur Holy Grail hunter and took frequent outings in the area to track down leads in the quest. As soon as he said that, Robert and I traded significant glances. Robert nodded in subtle agreement with my unspoken question.

  “Maybe you could help us, then, Rhys,” I said.

  “Of course. With what?”

  “We have a very old map of France. We’re trying to locate a spot on it to go visit. But because the map is so old, most of the landmarks on it have disappeared.”

  He leaned forward eagerly. “I have mapped a number of old village sites and roads onto current maps of the area.”

  I reached into my rucksack and pulled out the stolen ley line map. Rhys exclaimed in pleasure over the quality of the drawing. Thankfully, he didn’t ask where it came from. I didn’t relish the idea of telling a former priest we’d stolen it from the Vatican archives.

  I helped Catrina carry the dishes into the kitchen while the two men began to study the map. There was no dishwasher, so I dried while Catrina washed.

  Over my linen towel, I asked her, “I notice there’s no ring upon your finger yet. Is he going to pop the question soon?”

  Catrina looked up at me in horror. “I should hope not! If he does, then that would mean we’ve been having premarital sex, and that would be a sin. Better to stay unmarried and just be involved in a serious relationship.” She smiled mischievously. “What about you and Robert? Are you becoming an item or does he look at every woman that way?”

  I laughed. “He’s already proposed.”

  Catrina stared. “But you’ve only known each other what? A week?”

  “About that.”

  She shook her head in disbelief. “Scotsmen. So impulsive. You, too. Who’d have guessed?”

  Me? Impulsive? Hah. But then, I was actually contemplating his proposal, so maybe the shoe fit. I shrugged and picked up a teacup to dry it. “There’s something between us. Almost…magic. It’s as if I already know everything about him and he knows everything about me. Like we’re meant to be.”

  Catrina nodded wisely. “I know exactly what you mean.”

  She broke off as Rhys walked through just then. He came back in under a minute, striding enthusiastically through the room with several rolled maps tucked under his arm. Catrina and I rolled our eyes at each other, smiling. Men could be such overgrown kids sometimes.

  We’d just finished putting the cups and saucers away in the cupboard, which was minus its door at the moment, when Robert called from outside. “We’ve got it, Ana. The location of the nexus.”

  As soon as he said this, Catrina gave a startled lurch and looked over at me closely. “Nexus?”

  I nodded. “Our map shows all the major ley lines in France—at least, the ones people knew about in the fourteenth century.”

  “Ley lines?” she asked cautiously.

  If I didn’t know better, I’d say she’d heard of them before. I sighed. Time to make someone else think I was crazy. “They’re naturally occurring lines of energy—of power—running all over the earth in a sort of grid. People from old, pagan religions first mapped them a long time ago. They believed the power of those lines could be harnessed for healing and other magical effects.”

  Catrina hurried outside to look at the map, her brow furrowed. The mention of ley lines seemed to strike a big chord with her, that was for sure. I joined the rest, poring over the map. Rhys had his finger on a spot on a modern map.

  “There’s a large cave complex right here. I’d bet yo
ur nexus point is in one of them. Maybe marked by an old altar or monument of some kind. The pre-Christian religions tended to mark places of power with piles of stones or statues, maybe a basin for ritual washing or a flat stone for making sacrifices.”

  Robert nodded. “How far from here is this cave complex?”

  Rhys put another finger down on the map. “We’re here. I’d guess it’s no more than two hours’ drive. Although if the roads are bad, it could take several hours to get back that far into the mountains.”

  Robert looked up at the sun. “Then we’d better get going if Ana and I want to get there with any daylight left.”

  Rhys laughed. “Daylight won’t matter once you head down into those caves. It’ll be pitch-black inside.”

  Robert grimaced. “We got stuck in the catacombs overnight a few nights back. I know what you mean about it being pitch-black.”

  Rhys and Catrina exchanged almost embarrassed looks with each other and Rhys said uncomfortably to Robert, “Yeah, we got stuck in the catacombs once, too. It was…interesting…to say the least.”

  Catrina laughed. “Good thing you and I did get lost in there, or we might never have gotten together.”

  Rhys smiled at her, and it looked as if it came all the way from his heart, through his eyes to his mouth. Her return smile was just as sappy. Oh, yeah. Those two were head over heels for each other.

  Robert stood up. “Mind if we borrow this map?”

  Rhys replied, “Not at all. I’ve got a fair bit of spelunking gear if you need it, too.”

  “That would be great,” I replied. After fun with catacombs, I did not need to head anywhere underground ever again without absolutely everything I needed to make sure I made it back out again safely.

  Rhys led us down into an earthen cellar through old-fashioned folding doors outside the house. The steps were new, though, the wood still fresh and gold.

  Robert and I armed ourselves with ropes, flashlights, gloves, cleats that strapped onto the bottoms of our shoes, emergency blankets—silver plastic affairs that folded up into a palm-sized bundle—a first-aid kit, canteens, protein bars and even a small pickax. We looked more like gold prospectors in the Klondike than we did tourists out for a day hike to explore a few caves.