Labyrinth

CHAPTER 68

What are you doing?“ asked Francois-Baptiste, coming into the room of the small, anonymous chalet not far from the Pic de Soularac.

Marie-Cecile was sitting at the table with the Book of Numbers open on a black padded book rest in front of her. She didn’t look up.

“Studying the layout of the chamber.”

Francois-Baptiste sat down beside her. “For any particular reason?”

“To remind myself of the points of difference between this diagram and the labyrinth cave itself.”

She felt him peering over her shoulder.

“Are there many?” he asked.

“A few. This,” she said, her finger hovering above the book, her red nail varnish just visible through her protective cotton gloves. “Our altar is here, as marked. In the actual cave it is closer to the wall.”

“Doesn’t that mean the labyrinth carving is obscured?”

She turned to look at him, surprised at the intelligence of the comment.

“But if the original guardians used the Book of Numbers for their ceremonies, as the Noublesso Veritable did, shouldn’t they be the same?”

“You would think so, yes,” she said. There is no tomb, that is the most obvious variation, although interestingly the grave where the skeletons were lying was in that exact position.“

“Have you heard any more about the bodies?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“So we still don’t know who they are?”

She shrugged. “Does it matter?”

“I suppose not,” he replied, although she could see her lack of interest bothered him.

“On balance,” she continued, “I don’t think any of these things matter. It is the pattern that is significant, the path walked by the Navigataire as the words are spoken.”

“You’re confident you’ll be able to read the parchment in the Book of Words?”

“Provided it dates from the same period as the other parchments, then yes. The hieroglyphs are simple enough.”

Anticipation swept through her, so sudden, so swift, that she raised her fingers as if a hand had wrapped itself around her throat. Tonight she would speak the forgotten words. Tonight the power of the Grail would descend to her. Time would be conquered.

“And if O’Donnell’s lying?” said Francois-Baptiste. “If she doesn’t have the book? Or if Authie hasn’t found it either?”

Marie-Cecile’s eyes snapped open, jolted back to the present by her son’s abrasive, challenging tone. She looked at him with dislike. “The Book of Words is there,” she said.

Angry to have her mood spoiled, Marie-Cecile closed the Book of Numbers and returned it to its wrapper. She placed the Book of Potions on the rest instead.

From the outside, the books looked identical. The same wooden boards covered with leather and held together with thin leather ties.

The first page was empty apart from a tiny gold chalice in the centre. The reverse side was blank. On the third page were the words and pictures that also appeared around the top of the walls in the basement chamber in the rue du Cheval Blanc.

The first letter of each of the pages following was illuminated, in red, blue or yellow with gold surrounds, but otherwise the text ran on, one word into the next, with no gaps showing where one thought ended and Another began.

Marie-Cecile turned to the parchment in the middle of the book.

Interspersed between the hieroglyphs were tiny pictures of plants and symbols picked out in green. After years of study and research, reading through the scholarship funded by the de l’Oradore fortune, her grandfather had realised that none of the illustrations were relevant.

Only the hieroglyphs written on the two Grail parchments mattered. All the rest – the words, the pictures, the colours – were there to obscure, to ornament, to hide the truth.

“It’s there,” she said, fixing Francois-Baptiste with a fierce look. She could see the doubt in his face, but wisely he decided to say nothing. “Fetch my things,” she said sharply. “After that, check where the car’s got to.”

He returned moments later with her square vanity case.

“Where do you want it?”

“Over there,” she said, pointing at the dressing table. Once he’d gone out again, Marie-Cecile walked over and sat down. The outside was soft brown leather, with her initials picked out in gold. It had been a present from her grandfather.

She opened the lid. Inside there was a large mirror and several pockets for brushes, beauty appliances, tissues and a pair of small gold scissors. The make-up was held in place in the top tray in neat, organised rows. Lipsticks, eye shadows, mascaras, kohl pencil, powder. A deeper compartment underneath contained the three red leather jewellery boxes.

“Where are they?” she said, without turning round.

“Not far away,” Francois-Baptiste replied. She could hear the tension in his voice.

“He’s all right?”

He walked towards her and put his hands on her shoulders. “Do you care, Maman?

Marie-Cecile stared at her reflection in the mirror, then at her son, framed in the glass above her head as if posed for a portrait. His voice was casual. His eyes betrayed him.

“No,” she replied, and saw his face relax a little. “Just interested.”

He squeezed her shoulders, and then took his hands away.

“Alive, to answer your question. Caused trouble when they were getting him out. They had to quieten him down a bit.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Not too much so, I hope,” she said. “He’s no use to me half-conscious.”

“Me?” he said sharply.

Marie-Cecile bit her tongue. She needed Francois-Baptiste in an amenable mood. “To us,” she said.