by J. G. Sandom
“But I have to understand.”
“It has to do with group theory, with relationships described by roots which exclude transcendental numbers. It has to do with symmetry. Okay?”
“Can’t you explain it without numbers?”
“That’s like asking me to speak French without using words. Here,” he said, “imagine my fist represents the dominant sequence equivalent to the symmetry of the labyrinth at Amiens.” He thrust it out. “And here,” he added, circling the fist with his other hand, one finger jauntily extended, “here is the other sequence I discovered, like a minor in music, circling about. You see? Like the rings around Saturn.”
“Right,” said Lyman, desperate. Old man, new maths. The woman with the knitting needles was eyeing him oddly. She wrenched at her yarn and a fresh blue length appeared, as if by magic, out of the bag at her feet. Lyman sighed. “Like Saturn.”
“That’s right. So I transmuted the second sequence with gematria, and it turned out that the numbers are equivalent to a word which Guy says was the phrase for ‘spirit’ or ‘engineer’ back in the Middle Ages. Like the modern French word génie. But the last few letters made no sense. Then I realized it was a hybrid: GN thirty-seven twenty-four. You see? Letters and numbers. That was the final reference.
“Even in the Middle Ages the Bible was organized in the same numerical sequence. Genesis, chapter thirty-seven, verse twenty-four. ‘And they took him,’ meaning the dreamer Joseph, ‘and cast him into a pit: and the pit was empty, there was no water in it.’ It’s an obvious reference to the well which I saw in the temple, the one with the spiral staircase wrapped around it. In the old days, the well extended from the basement temple all the way up to the cathedral. The priests and deacons used to draw their water from it for their services, for cleaning—that sort of thing. The well was the main entrance. What we crawled through was intended only as a ventilation shaft.”
Obvious, Lyman thought derisively. If it were so obvious, why had it taken him so long? “Child’s play,” he said tightly.
Lyman suddenly felt tired. He looked out the window and noticed that the flat gray fields of corn and winter grain had been replaced by trees. The train rode on an embankment at least fifty feet from the forest floor, and the fecund thickness of the branches put him in mind of South America. The rains had swelled the leaves, the tree roots, the bogs which glittered periodically through the green. Only the occasional stone house—passing in a wink’s time—only the periodic village brought him back to France. Is this what Argentina looked like? he wondered. Surely they had jungles there, or was it all just plains and archipelagos, buckled by mountains, circled by condors? “I want to thank you,” he said suddenly. “For going along with all of this, Joseph.”
Koster gazed out of the window. His hair was getting long and it hung across his forehead, covering one eye. He started to speak, then stopped. “Forget it,” he said finally. “We’re even now, that’s all.” He tried to smile. “What about Grabowski though? What do I tell him?”
“Tell him you’re finished with your work at Amiens, and you’ve decided to move on to Chartres. Don’t tell him about the temple or the labyrinth. And for God’s sake, don’t tell him the sequence.”
“What if he asks about you?”
“As far as anyone else is concerned, I’m just a tourist you met on the way.”
“He won’t believe that. If Scarcella’s on to you, then Grabowski must be too.”
“Perhaps. But as long as he thinks you don’t know, we’ll be safe. Trust me.”
“What about Mariane?”
“Listen, Joseph. Scarcella has no reason to harm anyone, least of all Mariane. He has to play this very carefully now, especially after the hotel. Why should he try and force the information out of you when you’re about to give it to him through Grabowski? Really. There’s nothing to worry about,” he lied. “All you have to do is unravel the second labyrinth and I’ll handle the rest. Then you can go back to New York.”
Another town flashed by. Gazeran. Épernon. Maintenon. They were approaching Chartres; Lyman could see more houses through the trees. Fields skipped about, slate gray like chips of water, like ponds furrowed by the wind.
“That’s not what I meant,” Koster said quietly. “I want to help. I do, really. I understand exactly what you’re feeling.”
Oh, God, Lyman thought. Here it comes—the American capacity for empathy. Or maybe it was just Koster’s Catholic demeanor, his desire to confess.
“I had a son once too,” said Koster evenly. “But there was an… accident. He died soon after he was born.”
“I’m sorry,” Lyman said.
The American shrugged, the knitting needles clacked, and the window darkened without warning. There was a muffled press of air and Lyman realized they had traveled underground. A tunnel or a bridge. The countryside had been replaced by darkness…and the pale lines of his own face reflected in the glass. Then they were free again.
Lyman tried to think of something to say. People had begun to gather up their belongings. A man in a black coat and heavy grease-stained boots stood right beside him in the aisle. He was carrying a suitcase marked with a stamp from the Republic of Togo.
Always distant but a few more leagues, thought Lyman. Always unknown to one another. “We must be getting close,” he said. Koster nodded.
The train began to turn, tilting to one side, the houses stretching into streets and other houses still, into a warehouse and a water tower through the trees, only a cartoon shadow to the spires rising of a sudden up ahead, two towers like two hands about to clasp. “I can see the cathedral,” Lyman said.
Koster leaned forward, craning his neck to see out the window. “Where? Oh, yeah,” he said. “It looks so small from here.” Then he added, “Can you imagine walking toward it through the fields, Nigel? I mean back in the Middle Ages. Can you imagine seeing it like this on the horizon for the first time? The Cult of Relics and all that. Like a pilgrim.”
Lyman nodded and the cathedral vanished behind trees. Like a pair of pilgrims, he thought.
• • •
They checked into a little hotel near the Place Drouaise, due north of the cathedral near the convent of the Soeurs du Bon-Secours. The Métropole stood parallel to the road to Rouen. It was an agreeable one-star establishment, clean and moderately priced, and Lyman was delighted to discover a real bathtub in his room.
They had coffee in the dining room downstairs after unpacking and then headed directly for the cathedral. Lyman wanted to get an early start. He reasoned that if they could discover the location of the gospel by the end of the day, they might return to Amiens as early as the following evening. All that remained then was the rendezvous with Scarcella, the final confrontation.
They were discussing the details when the street curved suddenly. Beyond the circle of the Place Drouaise, rising high above the rooftops and the trees, poised on a hill at the very center of the town, stood the cathedral. For a moment neither of them spoke. They moved together silently through the street, forming a memory. A stone walk extended from the road between a line of trees, beside the rampart of the old medieval town, up, up and around the hill, into the dark entanglement of streets before the western square, the woodwork and the stone, the towers racing one another to the sky. “The roof looks so green,” said Lyman.
“That’s the oxidization,” Koster answered automatically.
What did he see, thought Lyman, with his architect’s perspective? Oxidization over green?
The Promenade des Charbonniers circled the walls of the old city. It would have required a formidable force, thought Lyman, to breech those ramparts in the Middle Ages. They shot straight up above the path, fifty feet of grim uncompromising stone. And then a path above, and then another wall before the town itself. No wonder the towers could be seen so far away. The cathedral rose like a lighthouse from the open plain.
It took them fifteen minutes to climb the walk, and they found themselves, tire
d and winded, at a gate which opened onto a narrow cobbled street within the walls of the old city. The pavement led them on, past alleys and a garage now and then, past other crooked streets. Chartres was completely different from Amiens. These buildings had been standing for six hundred years. No bombs had fallen here. There were no shrapnel marks, no sudden stands of 1950s brick within circles of old stone.
They followed the cathedral towers high above the rooftops as they walked. Koster had begun a monologue about the history of Chartres but Lyman kept it at a distance. He didn’t care to know the facts, not this time anyway. He preferred his own interpretation. Then, suddenly, the street simply gave up. They slipped inside another gate and discovered they were standing at the northern flank of the cathedral. Lyman shaded his eyes, blocking his own horizon, taking in the stonework a section at a time. The flying buttresses unrolled against the walls like miller’s wheels, and he thought that the cathedral appeared not like a lighthouse now—a beacon at the center of a plain—but like an engine churning, static in our time but relentless, grinding with the force and patience of tectonic plates. A God machine.
“It looks like we missed the morning service,” Koster said beside him.
“Good. Less of a crowd.”
They entered the cathedral through one of the side doors and the first thing Lyman noticed was the darkness. At Amiens, the majority of the cathedral’s original windows had been broken over the centuries, and then replaced by white translucent glass. But here the windows were the same as they had been since the Crusades, from ruby to cobalt blue, each pane a phrase, each lancet a whole story. They moved slowly toward the central aisle, wary of their footsteps. Lyman glimpsed a little room just off the western entrance where slides and photographs were being sold. Spiritual memorabilia, the Cult of Relics, he thought, remembering Christ’s words within the Temple: But you have made it a den of thieves. Or was that only Luke’s interpretation, just one more gospel truth?
“Anyone here to speak in English?”
Lyman tugged at Koster’s sleeve. A tall, almost emaciated Englishman with a seedy tweed jacket stood by the bulletin board beside the souvenir room. He had salt-and-pepper hair, pushed back with abandon, and a long red woolen scarf about his neck. “Anyone here for the lecture in English?” he repeated, cocking his head.
Koster planted himself before the guide. “Excuse me,” he began.
“Yes, all in order now. All in good time. Gather round.”
A group of what Lyman took to be Americans sidled by.
“I was wondering,” Koster added, “if I could talk to you about the labyrinth.”
The guide winced. “The labyrinth,” he repeated.
“That’s right. The legend of the Gospel of Thomas.”
“Oh, that! You’re not going to start dancing about the labyrinth, are you?” He turned and smiled at the impending crowd.
“What are you talking about?”
“Every year we get a few odd pilgrims who run through the labyrinth in their stocking feet. Spiritual vibrations and all that.”
A woman tittered. The guide smiled back. “And Thomas doesn’t play much of a role in this cathedral,” he continued. “This is the cathedral of Our Lady. Anyone here from Los Angeles? That belongs to Our Lady too, as the full name of the city implies.”
The guide turned and began to chatter on about the history of names. Lyman grabbed Koster by his anorak. “Never mind,” he said, pulling him away. The crowd was getting out of hand.
“Do join if you want to, the morning lecture in English.”
Lyman and Koster wandered over to the center of the cathedral. Most of the flagstones were covered by chairs, but the shape of the labyrinth was clearly visible beneath them: a white path in black boundaries; four quadrants, once again; but, this time, truly round instead of octagonal like the labyrinth at Amiens.
“The trick is to let yourself go,” Koster said, pulling out a tape measure. “Once you have the numbers, finding the pattern means falling into it. That’s the hardest part.”
Lyman reached for the tape. “I’ll hold this end. You take the other side.”
Several hours passed before they had gathered enough information for Koster to begin his calculations. He sat in a chair by the center of the labyrinth, punching at his calculator and scribbling numbers in his notebook.
Lyman waited patiently at his side. The darkness of the cathedral lent it privacy. He could watch the faithful pray, listen to the same gasp at the same Madonna in a dozen different languages, listen for the whir of film.
Lyman closed his eyes. He thought about buying Jackie a card. Something suitable. A snapshot of a gargoyle from the air. A demon in stained glass. A postcard of his own soul. He opened his eyes. “How much longer, Joseph?”
Koster looked up. “I don’t know.” Then he sighed. “It’s just not working out. I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know? I thought you said this would be easy.”
“According to my calculations, both Amiens and Chartres share a basic pattern, with seven bays in the nave, four in the choir and three in each arm of the transept. Seven is also the number of chapels they have in common, again in a three-four pattern.”
“Stop me if I’m wrong, but if the two labyrinths share a basic pattern, shouldn’t that be good? I mean, doesn’t it make it easier?”
“Of course it should. That’s just it. But the numbers don’t make sense. The gematria doesn’t work.”
Lyman sighed. He had wanted it all to be over. He had wanted it all to end. Now with each passing moment, and each passing day, he could feel Scarcella slipping away. Grabowski would return to the Vatican. Koster would go back to New York. But when the game was up, when all was said and done, where would he go? Where could he go?
“Listen to me, Joseph,” he said. “The longer we stay here, the greater the chances that Scarcella will either leave France or discover the Gospel of Thomas himself. He could be here in Chartres already.”
“Great.”
“What I mean is, I was hoping to bring the gospel back to England, to set up the trap there. Now that’s out of the question. We’ll have to do it here. And that means we’ll need help, local help.”
“You mean the police.”
“I’m afraid it means Captain Musel. I can’t try and persuade the Chartres gendarmerie, not at this stage of the game. It would take forever, and time is something we don’t have, even if they did believe us.” He paused and looked down at the floor. “I’m going back to Amiens.”
“Why don’t you just call Musel?”
“This isn’t something I can ring him up about. I’ll have to show him the temple. I know it’s dangerous, but it’s the only way. And it won’t be easy. Even if he agrees, he’ll be working in another jurisdiction.”
“Maybe I should come too.”
“No, you stay here. Spend your time on the labyrinth. I’ll be back tomorrow.” He stood slowly. “Call me at the Hôtel de la Paix if anything happens.”
“What do you mean, happens?”
“I don’t know. Anything. Look, stop worrying. We were very careful at the station. I’ll see you tomorrow night.” They shook hands. “Good luck.”
With that he turned and headed for the entrance. The guide was back again for his last tour of the day, repeating the same words, the same speech as in the morning. “Do join if you want to…” Lyman hesitated in the doorway. Something was wrong. He spun about, trying vainly to spot Koster in the crowd. There he was, chatting with another man.
For a moment, Lyman considered rushing back. Then he noticed the American glance at his watch and speak a few more words, and the stranger in the olive-colored raincoat moved away.
I’m getting tired, Lyman thought. I’m losing touch. He cocked the collar of his coat and shuffled out the door.
Chapter XX
CHARTRES
September 26th, 1991
KOSTER KNEW HE WAS ABOUT TO DIE WHEN HE FIRST saw the gu
n. It came out of the darkness, out of the corridor ahead, the muzzle only, powder-flash red and pointing. He crouched against the wall, for the first time understanding the real character of stone, its intricate compactness. Then he heard the cry, and turned to follow Lyman to the ground. There was a dull thud as the body settled on its side, the slightest tremor, and even in the darkness he could see the tributary spreading through the Englishman’s shirt, the jagged hole like an open can of soup.
Koster awoke. The room was dark, his sheets and blankets soaked with perspiration. He turned on the light by his head as a truck groaned down the street. The clock on the nightstand read seven.
Seven, three, four, twelve. He repeated the numbers again, like a litany, over and over, trying to lean on them for balance. Numbers had always invoked a sense of security in Koster, and yet now they computed his failure. He had spent half the night at the Chartres cathedral trying to unravel the labyrinth. Half the night, and for nothing. He was no closer to the truth, no nearer to the Gospel of Thomas. He sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes. It was time for a shower, he thought, and then back to the labyrinth again.
It took him forty minutes to wash and dress. He was just slipping his shoes on when Jean-Luc Agay, the owner of the Hôtel Métropole, knocked on the door and told him that he had a visitor. Koster asked him who it was, but the innkeeper only shrugged. The stranger had not volunteered his name. He was a big man, in his sixties. He was wearing a suit, and glasses. That was all he knew.
Koster followed the innkeeper down the stairs. His visitor was sitting at a table in the dining room. He was facing the other way, reading a newspaper, drinking a cup of coffee with his left hand.
It was Grabowski.
“Joseph,” the archbishop said when he saw him. He tossed his newspaper on the table and stood up. “It’s good to see you again.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Taking in the country. And I wanted to see how you were getting along.”