The Sixth Key

by Adriana Koulias

  ‘What would it be – a sign, a word, a seal?’ Rahn asked him.

  ‘It could be any one of those,’ he said. ‘But there is something I can add to this.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Since you’ve been away I’ve had moment to retrace our searches those years ago and I think I know why we didn’t find the treasure of the Cathars inside those caves at Lombrives.’

  ‘Really? I’m listening,’ Rahn said.

  Deodat smiled. ‘I think it was moved.’

  ‘By whom? The caves were inaccessible until recently.’

  ‘Yes, we both know that the treasure was taken from Montsegur by four Cathars during the siege in the thirteenth century. We both have long suspected that it was taken to the caves at Lombrives. On this, most Cathar scholars agree, but what if the treasure was taken away from the caves? What if some time after the siege, and before the Catholics walled up all the exits out of those caves – condemning the last of those poor Cathars who were trapped inside to die a miserable death – someone escaped with it?’

  Rahn was much struck by this. ‘I see your point. After that, superstition and fear of the church would have prevented curious men from breaking down the seals to those caves to look for the treasure, until we decided to go there.’

  ‘That’s right. And the legend that it is buried in those caves has kept the treasure safe all these years. This is exciting, Rahn! Here, finally, is a scent we can work with!’ He snapped the book shut.

  ‘I had a sense for it, you know, and now your words are a confirmation.’

  ‘Well, my boy! That Monti mentions an abbé . . . a priest . . .’

  ‘Yes, he came here and saw a priest who knew something about the grimoire.’

  ‘Interesting,’ Deodat said, sitting down.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, tomorrow I’m due to visit a priest myself, Abbé Cros.

  He’s retired and lives at Bugarach; we played chess once or twice a week for many years. He is a very erudite man but he’s had a run of bad luck – a stroke left him paralysed very recently, and he isn’t well. The point is, before he was paralysed he came to see me. From our conversation I gathered that he had been investigating something for the Vatican for a long time. He didn’t want to tell me anything in detail. It sounded to me like he had found something untoward and that he seemed rather afraid. At any rate, I have seen him once or twice since and he has never mentioned it again. Only two days ago, his niece called saying that he has asked to see me urgently and I said I would visit him at the earliest opportunity, which is tomorrow. Why don’t you come with me? We could ask him if he knows anything about this grimoire – perhaps he is the priest Monti saw when he came here. Stranger coincidences have been known to happen.’

  Rahn agreed, though at the time he couldn’t know that he was taking another fork in the path of his destiny.

  13

  Of Fish and Men

  ‘In the pool where you least expect it, there will be fish.’

  Ovid

  That night Rahn slept fitfully. Dreams of screaming children woke him early, covered in sweat. He got up and padded to the kitchen to make coffee, feeling a little unnerved. The wood-fired stove hummed lazily and he threw two good logs in and sat at the table. He tried to keep warm while he read Monti’s notebook. Now and again he paused to watch the world outside the window coming to life. The sun was rising and as a child full of night terrors he had always associated it with the return of normality. But were nightmares the reality and normality just a dream?

  In that little kitchen with only the sounds of the fire and the pendulum clock for company, he thought things through. He wondered what Deodat would say if he told him the whole truth: that he was working for a madman on whose whim he had travelled to France; that in the meantime one man was already dead because of the grimoire; and that he suspected he was being followed by agents of a certain Serinus, whose true identity he didn’t know. He didn’t want to contemplate what Deodat would say if he told him about Wewelsburg. Rahn would never forget that crypt of death and those poor wretched children. Had he placed his friend in harm’s way by coming here? He was certain of it and he told himself the only honourable thing to do was to keep Deodat completely out of the picture and to leave Arques as soon as possible. After all, he knew the Pyrenees better than many French men and it would not be hard for him to find a good hiding hole in the mountains. But as he thought this he was also, quite paradoxically, thinking of reasons why he should stay put because he and Deodat shared one fault: they were like hunting dogs whose noses could not be prevented from following their prey once trained on the scent of a fox. The lust for the chase had seized them. He sighed. What to do, what to do?

  Deodat came into the kitchen looking fresh in a casual suit with a blue silk handkerchief in the pocket and a tie to match, disturbing the flow of Rahn’s thoughts. He was the sort of man who always dressed impeccably, except when potholing; at those times, one could easily mistake him for a vagabond.

  The pendulum clock in the drawing room struck seven.

  ‘The Countess P still controls time, even from beyond the grave,’ Deodat said, in a jovial mood.

  Rahn smiled. It was true, the old dame did like to have the world march to her rhythm and now he’d inherited the clock, every hour on the hour, she would command his thoughts!

  As soon as they had finished breakfast, Deodat herded Rahn out of the house at an inelegant pace and led him out to the barn, where in a perfunctory fashion he unveiled the Tourster. The great animal had been slumbering beneath a grey dust sheet and was in perfect condition: gleaming black with a beige top; tyres painted white; and chrome wheels polished to a mirror finish. Rahn felt joy to see it but it was temporary, for the car had been the Countess’s favourite toy and he felt sad to think she would never sit in it again.

  ‘You know,’ Deodat said, touching it with a fond air, ‘the Countess never allowed her German driver near it after you were gone. Do you remember that unsightly golfing outfit and the half belt jacket he always wore? Your countrymen have no taste,’ he said, looking at Rahn’s attire with paternal fondness. ‘I see you’re still wearing that lucky fedora. The same you risked your life to rescue from that ravine?’

  ‘Before you say what I know you are going to say, please let me remind you that were it not for this lucky fedora, we may never have got out of that cave!’ Rahn remarked, rather wounded.

  ‘But you’d have to admit, Rahn, it does look rather odd teamed with those loose beige pants, and that flying jacket that appears to have been stolen from a Pabst film set.’

  But before Rahn could reply to his friend’s audacious accusation Madame Sabine’s shrill voice sounded from the house, telling the magistrate not to be late for dinner, since regular meals were better for his digestion.

  ‘Damn that woman!’ he cursed under his breath, before calling out in a sweet voice, ‘Yes, Madame!’ Then: ‘Quickly, Rahn, my boy, get in that bloody automobile before she comes, or she’ll find some reason for me to stay.’

  They took the road to Couiza and not far from Serres, Deodat told him to make a left turn.

  ‘I forgot to tell you, La Dame sends his best regards,’ Rahn said.

  This made not the slightest difference to Deodat’s mood, but Rahn did notice him grumble something under his breath. It must have been something unflattering, even offensive, because he smiled.

  ‘Will you ever forgive La Dame?’

  ‘Never,’ was Deodat’s quick answer, his determined cheerfulness wavering a little. ‘I told you before and I’ll tell you again, that day in the cave, when he convinced you to chalk in those engravings just to get a better photo . . . well, that was the end of everything as far as I’m concerned.’

  Rahn wanted to say there was no use taking pictures if the drawings were not going to come out, but he knew Deodat would never change his mind, so he looked out at the road and tried to think of something besides his own troubles.

  The c
ountry they were passing through was imbued with a special sadness and Rahn knew the reason for it – it was the soil’s memory of bloodshed. Long ago the Cathars of this area had taken refuge in deep caverns within those wild hills, and in those densely wooded forests and shadowed narrow valleys pierced by the snaking river Aude. They had run away from their homes fearing the inquisitors and their terrible tortures, tortures that either led to the stake or to the murus strictus – a form of imprisonment so terrible it not only resulted in the loss of one’s sanity but also one’s humanity. In this country many had died but not one had ever revealed the whereabouts of the treasure of their people.

  This now brought to his mind the promise he had made to the Countess P one evening after he had played her favourite piece, an improvisation of Handel’s suite, Gods Go a-Begging. She had said to him, ‘I only ask one thing of you, my dear, I want you to promise me that you will remember. You must remember – will you do that for me?’

  He had nodded, but what he had promised to remember he didn’t know exactly. He had always meant to ask her, only now it was too late.

  By the time they arrived at Bugarach the day had turned windy. The priest’s residence was set deep in a short valley some way from the township, near a brooding volcano whose hidden fires fuelled the hot springs of Rennes-les-Bains. The Maison de Cros stood large and stately at the end of a long dirt road and as they arrived a young woman met them. Immediately, Rahn was struck by how much she looked like the actress Louise Brooks who played Lulu in the Pabst film Pandora’s Box: dark hair cut short to accentuate the cheekbones; straight fringe to accentuate the eyes; red lipstick to bring out the mouth; somewhere between eighteen and twenty-five; long limbed and graceful in a pantsuit that flowed as she walked, smoking a cigarette held in one of those long filters. She introduced herself as Eva, the abbé’s niece, and escorted them through several rooms, sparsely furnished and decorated in an old style. Rahn didn’t like the house. It smelt of blocked drains and ashes and reminded him of a church. He did see a painting that interested him as he passed, a good reproduction of Poussin’s Les Bergers d’Arcardie hanging on the wall of the study. In fact the study walls were covered with paintings and he would have liked to have taken a moment to look at them. In the meantime, Eva talked with Deodat and Rahn overheard that she was visiting from Paris.

  ‘My uncle will be so happy to see you, magistrate, he’s been asking for you; in fact, he’s been a little anxious awaiting your arrival. He’s in the garden. These days he’s taken to sitting there for hours. He seems to like the fish pond.’

  The garden was dilapidated and its withered trees shivered occasioning a chorus of rustles in the late autumnal breeze. It was saved from gloom by its southerly orientation, which meant that it was mostly bathed in sun and it was in this sun that the old abbé sat, strapped to a wheelchair, with his knees covered in a thick red blanket and his head adorned with a black wool cap. Someone had placed him very near a large pond crowded with carp and ringing with frogs, and the old man stared into it with a vacant determination.

  Rahn recognised the fountain that crowned the pond; it was fashioned into a boy riding a dolphin. He smiled for its aptness, considering the proximity of this house to the extinct volcano the Pic de Bugarach.

  Eva noticed his smile. ‘Do you like it? The monks had the infant made in Carcassonne.’

  ‘The child hurled by Juno into the ocean from Mount Olympus,’ Rahn said, realising that he was trying to impress her, ‘before he became the god Vulcan. The god of volcanoes.’

  She raised one brow but did not smile. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘So this was once a monastery, that explains it,’ he murmured.

  ‘Explains what?’ she said.

  He wanted to say, that explains why I don’t like it. Instead he smiled. ‘It explains the architecture . . . thirteenth century?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, but she didn’t seem suitably impressed. ‘It was deserted during the Revolution when most of the monasteries in the south were closed down. It was laid to waste for a time, but it has been brought back from the dead, so to speak.’

  ‘Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Mademoiselle Cros?’ Deodat put in.

  She smiled graciously at Deodat. ‘Please, call me Eva.’ She went to her uncle and said, ‘You have visitors.’

  Deodat approached the old man. The abbé’s face was expressionless and there was dribble on his chin. Deodat shook one limp hand vigorously. ‘You lazy old fool!’ he said with fondness. ‘I thought I’d find you sitting about doing nothing.’

  The man’s eyes focused on Deodat and were filled with a sudden, lucid intensity. Rahn had the sense that the man had something urgent on his mind and it would brook no delay. The abbé raised one hand slightly, led by an index finger that seemed to be pointing to the heavens.

  Deodat didn’t seem to notice anything amiss. He said, quite unperturbed, ‘I have brought a friend: Otto Rahn. Do you recall that I spoke to you about him? He wrote that book I gave you on the Cathars.’

  The man’s sharp gaze moved over Rahn and returned to Deodat. He wanted to say something, but when he tried to speak, what came out sounded like garbled whispers. Deodat sat on the lip of the pond directly in front of him and tried to make some sense of it.

  ‘You wanted to see me. Is it about what we spoke of before you fell ill?’ Deodat asked.

  The man’s face moved barely a muscle but there was something strange playing about his eyes. He opened his mouth a little and Deodat leant in to hear.

  ‘He wants to write something, I think,’ Deodat said to Eva, and immediately she disappeared into the house. Meanwhile the old man began to make movements with his mouth again. He looked frustrated, worried – even afraid, Rahn thought.

  When Eva returned, the abbé’s anxiety seemed to grow. She placed a fountain pen in his hand and held a piece of writing paper over a book so that he could scribble down what he had to say. The effort agitated him and his breathing grew laboured, but he managed to write one word:

  Sator

  When he was finished his eyes, full of meaning, returned to Deodat. He shook his head, almost imperceptibly, and tried again to form words. Deodat leant in one more time. ‘I think he’s saying something about the church. Is there something in the church you want, Eugene?’

  There was the slightest nod of the head.

  ‘What is it?’

  His eyes looked here and there, like a man seeking a place on which to lean his words. He glanced at his niece and Rahn saw something in the abbé’s eyes he couldn’t quite fathom. The girl bent to comfort him but the old man began silently weeping.

  ‘Look,’ Deodat said, patting the old man’s knee, ‘we can leave it for another time. We’ll come back when you’re feeling a little better.’

  The abbé didn’t look away from the pond and their polite exit was ignored.

  ‘Please don’t feel bad, magistrate,’ Eva said, seeing them out. ‘He’s been like that since he was visited by a friend, another priest, a week or so ago. Afterwards, he was so anxious to see you . . . Perhaps he was just overwhelmed?’

  Deodat turned to her. ‘An old friend saw him? Who was it?’

  ‘A priest, I think, from Saint-Paul-de-Fenouillet. But I don’t know what my uncle could possibly want from the church, since all his possessions were brought here from the presbytery when he fell ill. As far as I know, there’s nothing left at the church that belongs to him.’

  ‘Is it possible to see the church today?’ Deodat said. ‘I wanted to show it to my friend while we were here.’

  ‘I suppose so. It’s Sunday but there isn’t a priest there at the moment. Despite that the church is always open.’ She looked thoughtful, then said, ‘Would you like me to come with you?’

  ‘What about Eugene, my dear, won’t he need you?’

  ‘Giselle is here,’ she said, excited or so it seemed, at the prospect.

  When she returned, she was dressed in a skirt and loose blouse, a car
digan hanging over her shoulders. On her feet were sensible shoes and on her face she wore the flush of adventure. Deodat sat graciously in the back, letting her have the front seat next to Rahn, who was disconcerted, since he found her perfume and those legs peeking out from beneath that long skirt rather distracting, but not enough to prevent him from noticing, as he pulled out of the driveway, that a black car was parked some way down the road.

  He couldn’t remember seeing it on their arrival. It looked like a Citroën but it was impossible to tell at this distance. He kept an eye on it as he drove on in case it pulled out to follow them, but it didn’t.

  ‘You said the church has no priest and yet it is always open?’ Deodat asked Eva from the back.

  ‘It’s the tyranny of life in the country, I’m afraid, magistrate,’ she said. ‘The locksmith can’t find the time to come all the way from Carcassonne to Bugarach just to change three or four locks.’

  ‘Did something happen to the keys?’

  ‘When my uncle was struck down by his illness the sacristan was given the keys to the church so that he could continue to do the ordinary things: open it, dust and mop and keep the various vessels of the sacrament clean. But the keys went missing.’

  ‘Was he just careless?’ Rahn asked.