The Priests' Code

by B. B. Balthis

  ‘Lastly, we mustn’t forget the medieval tomb of the couple with their bodies covered by a blanket. It’s important, since most couples don’t have a statue carved of themselves lying in bed and then put it in a public place. The symbolism is so blatant it almost shouts it out.’

  ‘I think I can do this part,’ I replied. ‘The cover being turned down is a revelation; a literal uncovering. It shows a certain intimacy, or joining, with both lying there like that. They might shout “Our eyes are uncovered; we can see! Can you?”’

  ‘I agree, and I can’t help thinking of the secret that Harcourt wrote about. There’s one more thing. There’s a sealed-up room in the tower. I read about it. But why? There must be a reason for it being sealed.’

  ‘Peter told me about it, too. We could ask him.’

  ‘Maybe, but let’s keep it to ourselves for now. I think that the less people we involve the better. And one more thing – I’m starving. What’s for lunch?’

  ‘I’ll make some sandwiches.’

  Caro followed me through to the kitchen. ‘What I find so fascinating is the thought of a story being told in so many ways, over different time periods and using different symbolic and belief references. It’s like the church has been used as some sort of 3D book, and why not, I suppose? It was already being used to record other important details, like births, deaths, and marriages.’

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  ‘So where do we go from here, Ben? I’m almost more excited by the notebook and church than the parchments. I’m still wondering about any possible connections between the two, although I can’t see how that could be.’

  I had been fairly quiet so far, taking in everything she had said. She was a smart woman, as well as a vastly experienced historian. It would be foolish not to listen to an opinion like hers.

  ‘OK, let’s sum things up. Firstly, there are the parchments which speak for themselves. The Italian assured me they weren’t fakes, and I think I believe him. I imagine there would be plenty of people who would want to get their hands on them if they could, and there’s no way that he’s the only person who knows of their existence. That puts him in danger and, by proxy, me, because I’ve seen them.

  Then there’s the journal found quite by chance in a box of junk from a jumble sale. Enter Adrian Harcourt. He wants to get his hands on it, but, apart from giving me a warning of danger, he won’t say why. The cottage was broken into, probably by him, but nothing stolen. There’s Black Coat following me, but I’m assuming the Italian has something to do with that. I don’t understand why Black Coat spoke briefly with Adrian in Oxford, though. The copy journal has now gone missing, most likely stolen by the bishop, who I thought was my friend. The parchments might be of interest to him, but how could he have known about the journal? And, finally, the local church seems to be holding some mysterious secret from the past, possibly linked to the journal, which alludes to connections with France during its last civil war.’

  ‘Your summing up almost covers it, apart from the parchments. I’m getting that déjà vu feeling, cousin of mine! I think we’ve been here before, haven’t we? I know we’ve been skating around the issue for years, but perhaps it would be best if we just faced it?’

  I looked at the clock. It was nearly three in the afternoon, and I felt exhausted. I decided to make a strong cup of tea first and take a breather for a few minutes. I reached to open the kitchen window, which was at the front of the cottage. The white car was parked up on the verge outside with Black Coat in it, and he appeared to be working on a small laptop perched on the steering wheel. It was overcast and windy, and I allowed the fresh, clean air to blow into the kitchen, inhaling deeply.

  I carried the tea and a plate of Italian biscotti back through to the living room. I knew exactly what she was referring to, and reflected for a moment as she flicked through the copies of the parchments and the journal, and studied the photographs again.

  * * *

  My parents’ and grandparents’ house, now my own, was part of the ancient Château of Antugnac; now almost unrecognisable as a château, but of great importance in its heyday. There were huge vaulted cellars underneath, believed to be much older than the building now standing, which itself dated back to the thirteenth century. The cellars had small passages running between them that would come to sudden dead ends, blocked up many years ago, for reasons that were now unknown.

  An ancient church stood behind the house, with remains of earlier buildings beneath its stone floor. I supposed that it was quite likely that there would have been a passage or two going up and into the church; in fact, there appeared to be several that headed in that direction. There was even one that sloped downwards towards the river, also blocked off by rough-hewn pieces of stone. As was usual when one was used to something, and indeed when it was fairly commonplace, my family took little notice of the remarkable cellars, which would make most historians of today very excited indeed.

  We stored our wine down there in terracotta racks against the wall of the first cellar. Often a large ham would hang from a hook in the ceiling, and strings of onions occasionally, but our terrace was too small to grow anything, and my grandparents were too elderly to bother with the plot of land they owned on the edge of the village. My parents weren’t remotely interested in gardening, so we bought most of our fresh food from neighbours or the local markets. My grandfather kept his boxes of tools in the first cellar, as well as a large pile of dry wood for the fire, and some ancient chairs that used to be on the terrace outside. The cellar next to this had bits of junk in it, things that might ‘come in handy’ sometime, and other bits of rubbish that would never come in handy but were kept there anyway.

  There was no electric light in the cellar, but an oil lamp hung on a hook in the wall, and several stumps of candles were usually placed about with boxes of matches nearby. It wasn’t particularly damp but smelt ancient and dusty, and was a magnet to two very inquisitive children with active imaginations, namely Caro and myself. On very hot summer days, which in that region could reach 40°C, it was a haven of coolness and endless amusement. We would set up the deckchairs, play cards and other games, drink cold squash, and sometimes tell each other ghost stories, which usually meant we would be back upstairs very quickly. No one minded, and if we had been missing for a while this would be the first port of call to find us.

  * * *

  We were thirteen when it happened. The day was blisteringly hot, the sky almost bleached white by the sun, and we went downstairs with our usual iced drinks and games. We were both restless and roamed around the cellars adding to our map drawn on the wall of the different rooms and blocked passages, giving each one a name. I then went to fetch two of my grandfather’s chisels, and we slowly began to scrape out the soft, sandy mortar between the blocks of stone at one of the passage ends; the one that was at the highest point and facing in the direction of the church. We had been doing this for some months now, after reading a few of the ‘Famous Five’ books brought back, once again, from my parents’ travels.

  The passage was low, five feet high at most, and we chatted as we worked about what might be on the other side. I favoured skeletons, Caro treasure, and we planned our futures in this way for hours. Finally, we reached the point where several of the stones were loose, and we eased them out with a small crowbar. Lighting a few more candles, we crawled through the dust and dirt, emerging into another cellar room, much smaller than those beneath the actual house, but with a vaulted ceiling and what looked like a small stone altar at one end. A few half-rotten sacks lay on the hard floor, but it wasn’t until we held the candles closer to the walls to look for a door that we saw the paintings and etchings. They were everywhere.

  Caro spoke first, her voice almost a whisper. ‘Who do you think has been down here doing this? It must have been a long time ago, because the room was closed off.’

  ‘No idea, but it must have take
n ages. Perhaps they were prisoners? I’m sure this passage leads to the church, so they could have been monks, I suppose.’

  We held our candles up to the walls to look more closely.

  On the left wall were several scenes of boats on a choppy sea with five people in them: two men, two women and a child, all with halos, and there were several variants of this theme. We were both at a Catholic school and knew full well that we were seeing religious scenes. We had also seen enough locally by way of statues, paintings, and churches to guess that many of the pictures were of Jesus and Mary. This was not surprising to us as children. We lived in a religious, mostly Catholic country, and with Rennes-le-Château nearby, and its many mysteries, we were used to it.

  Directly in front of us were several of a woman in red robes and it was obvious to us that this was Mary Magdalene, holding a golden jar and with the usual halo. There was another of a boat scene with two men in it, sailing out to sea, two woman and child standing on the shore.

  The front wall showed two men set against a green hill scene, a tall tower at its top. Both had staffs supporting them as they walked. Near that was a painting of what looked like a side view into a narrow cave or tomb. A man lay in it, still with a halo and his eyes wide open. There were various mountain and hill scenes, some looking very local, some much too lush to be from the south of France. One hill scene showed a village at its top, easily recognisable as Rennes-le-Château, a bright sun overhead and many more variants of suns between the larger paintings. The initials C.D. were written in each corner.

  The walls to the right and left showed numerous depictions of two knights on horseback, one with a long brown box, lit up with beams of light. The same box was shown again in a boat sailing on another choppy sea, between two strips of land. Several more were of Jesus and Mary together, looking regal and serene, with crowns and halos; the ever-present jar making Mary easy to identify.

  All the walls had Templar-style crosses and bees, randomly placed. Finally, around the edges of each wall were symbols of alchemy and astronomy, and Roman numerals: ones, twos, fours, and keys: lots of keys, keyholes, and padlocks, painted in black and gold. The blocked entrance was quite clear from inside the room, and at its top was a triangle wound around with vines. In the centre was a crown, a large letter S transposed over it, and written below Amor Vincit Omnia: Love Conquers All.

  To us, it was like the inside of an ornately painted church, of which there were many in the region. Whilst it was an exciting find, it wasn’t the skeletons or treasure that we had been hoping for.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Caro’s voice brought me back from my reverie.

  ‘Do you remember when your mother came in? She was like someone possessed.’

  ‘How could I forget?’

  It had happened a few weeks after our initial discovery. We had decided to copy the paintings and were in the decorated cell, candles lit, happily drawing and chatting. We heard our names being called, scrabbled to our feet, and were just crawling out of the hole we had made in the wall when my mother marched around the corner. She was furious, dragged us to our feet, and slapped us both very hard, so hard, in fact, that I fell back down onto the dusty floor. She then pushed us in front of her, through the passages and other cellar rooms and back up the stairs to the salon.

  ‘She was so angry.’

  Back upstairs, my grandparents tried to calm her down, but she would have none of it. She made us swear to tell no one about the painted room and said that we would go to hell if we did. It was such an odd threat, since neither she nor my father were churchgoers, so surely didn’t believe in hell.

  ‘I’ve never been as terrified as I was on that day, not ever, in the whole of my fifty-five years. She sent you home, do you remember? They disappeared for several months after that and, for the first time, I was glad they were gone. I even hoped that they would never come back.’

  Within a few days, the cellar entrance had been blocked up, and we never went down there again. I didn’t even know what had happened to our painting books. It hadn’t stopped us talking about it though, and we had spent many weeks going over what we had seen, and trying to make sense of it. Now that the house was mine, I could, of course, open the cellars up again, but, so far, anyway, I hadn’t felt inclined to do so. As an adult, I knew full well what I had seen, and so did Caro.

  ‘It still really upsets you, doesn’t it? It does me too, but not so much. Your mother’s reaction was so odd and out of character. She was usually such a controlled woman. It feels like that whole unhappy episode has come back to haunt us. Or maybe we should look at it another way. Not to haunt us, but for us to accept and make peace with after all these years?’

  ‘I don’t know… maybe.’

  ‘I’ve been doing a lot of research back home for a book I’m putting together. I suppose I’m rehashing most of the stuff we’d discovered before we went off to university, although I have come across a few new things. Do you remember that summer, Ben?’

  ‘I remember it very well.’ We had spent our last summer trawling around the hills and villages, putting together an enormous amount of information about the history of the area going back thousands of years. We had researched in considerable detail the various myths, legends, and facts regarding treasure buried in the region by the Romans, Visigoths, Carolingians, Franks, Cathars, Templars, and everyone else in between. We had complied a huge dossier on the local churches, the priests that worked in them, and the always-present, subliminal messages about Jesus and Mary Magdalene. They refused to be silenced entirely, and the often, unspoken, beliefs of many people in the area that they had both been here bubbled under the surface constantly, like all unspoken things did.

  We knew the area very well, better than almost anyone except for a few elderly men who had lived here all their lives, and age was beginning to shut down their memories and voices. We knew all the villages, mountains, and hills, with their caves and grottos, and we knew each stream and river. We had spent our entire lives until then roaming around, often leaving the house at dawn and not returning until dusk.

  ‘Your language skills were brilliant, even back then. Do you remember the notebooks we made, full of alchemical, Teutonic, kabbalah, Celtic, and other symbols, and their meanings? I’ve still got them all, you know.’

  ‘That was the year that you decided, categorically, that you didn’t believe in God, and voiced it quite clearly to the priest, which didn’t go down very well. His face went so red that I thought he was going to have a stroke.’

  She laughed. ‘I remember! It was always harder for you, wasn’t it? I saw things in a very black and white way back then. Either something was true or it wasn’t. In my early days as a historian, it was something I had to battle with constantly, since the word “truth” is an oxymoron in history to say the least. Even as a young boy you engaged with things differently… made meanings differently. Your love of, and I might say, obsession, with Jesus as a person, was always there.

  ‘I wondered at one time if you were gay, and your fear of expressing this and the reaction it might have had at home turned you towards him as a way of expressing that desire. Gosh, Ben, I’m talking a lot. Sorry. I think I’m worried about you, that’s all. This could all turn very nasty. It seems like it already has, through no fault of your own. And yet the whole thing is intriguing and fascinating, and anyway I’m involved now, so we’re in it together.’

  * * *

  She reached over for the copied transcripts and pulled out the ones from the journal. I knew what she was going to say and told her so.

  ‘I think I know what you’re going to say Caro – it’s the French connection, and of course I’ve seen it. The dates in the journal, the French Revolution, Abbé B at R, and movements between A and R.’

  She nodded her head and let me carry on.

  ‘Abbé Bigou, Rennes-le-Château – Antug
nac and Rennes-le-Château. It’s the same old thing, isn’t it?’ Abbé Bigou was the priest at Rennes-le-Château in the latter part of the eighteenth century, and was frequently cited as being central to the Rennes-le-Château mysteries involving treasure, Jesus and Mary, and the Holy Grail.

  ‘We seem to be as deeply entrenched in it now, as we were when we were children, although I’m still baffled as to how all of this this could land up in our laps again. Is that synchronicity? Or do things keep coming back to a person until they’re resolved, like Jung said about dreams? Maybe I shouldn’t question it so much. Suppression is pointless, since things usually break through in the end, I know that.’

  ‘I’ll second it, too!’

  ‘Do you remember that time in Paris, when I was walking past a phone booth on the street and it rang? I picked it up, which I wouldn’t normally do, and it was you calling to tell me that grandfather was very ill? You had dialled the number of my landlady. I don’t know how that happened, but it did… strange things do happen. There is an explanation, I’m sure, but we simply don’t understand what it is yet…’ I stood up.

  ‘Come on you mad academic. Let’s go out and get some dinner. And if we’re kidnapped, we must just hope that we have eaten first. We are French, after all!’

  Putting on our coats, I opened the door to find the wine delivery man standing there, his finger poised to press the bell. All three of us jumped, then laughed, and I quickly brought the boxes into the house. As expected, she had refused any money for it. She said that, since we had left everything to each other in our wills, she had, in effect, spent my own money. There was some logic to this, and so I let it go.