The Templar legacy

PRIER EN VENIR.

Malone's mind came alive. He recalled the words at the center of Marie d'Hautpoul's gravestone. REDDIS REGIS CELLIS ARCIS. And what Claridon said about them in Avignon.

Reddis means "to give back, to restore something previously taken." Regis derives from rex, which is king. Cella refers to a storeroom. Arcis stems from arx – a stronghold, fortress, citadel.

The words had seemed meaningless at the time. But perhaps they simply needed rearranging.

Storeroom, fortress, restore something previously taken, king.

By adding a few prepositions, the message might be, In a storeroom, at a stronghold fortress, restore something previously taken from the king.

And the arrow that stretched down the center of the gravestone, between the words, starting at the top with the letters P-S and ending at PR?-CUM.

Pr?-cum. Latin for "pray to come."

He stared again at the letters scratched into the rock.

French for "pray to come."

He smiled and told them what he thought. "The abbe Bigou was a clever one, I'll give him that."

"That arrow on the gravestone," Mark said, "had to be significant. It's dead in the center, in a place of prominence."

Malone's senses were now alert, his mind surging through the information, and he started to take notice of the floor. Many of the flagstones were gone, the remaining cracked and misshapen, but he noticed a pattern. A series of squares, framed by a narrow stone line, ran from front to back and left to right.

He counted.

In one of the framed rectangles he tallied seven stones across, nine down. He counted another section. The same. Then another.

"The floor is arranged seven, nine," he told them.

Mark and Henrik moved toward the altar, themselves counting. "And there are nine sections from the rear door to the altar," Mark said.

"And seven go across," Stephanie said, as she finished finding a final floor section near an outer wall.

"Okay, we seem to be in the right place," Malone said. He thought again about the headstone. Pray to come. He gazed up at the French words scratched into the stone, then down at the floor. Bees continued to buzz near the altar. "Let's get those light bars and that generator in here. We need to see what we're doing."

"I think we also need to stay tonight," Cassiopeia said. "The nearest inn is in Elne, thirty miles away. We should camp here."

"We have supplies?" Malone asked.

"We can get them," she said. "Elne is a fairly good-sized town. We can buy what we need there without drawing any attention. But I don't want to leave."

He could see that none of the others wanted to go, either. An excitement was stirring. He could feel it, too. The riddle was no longer some abstract concept, impossible to understand. Instead, the answer lay somewhere around them. And contrary to what he'd told Cassiopeia yesterday, he wanted to find it.

"I'll go," Geoffrey said. "Each of you needs to stay and decide what we do next. It's for you, not me."

"We appreciate that," Thorvaldsen said.

Cassiopeia reached into her pocket and produced a wad of euros. "You'll need money."

Geoffrey took the funds and smiled. "Just give me a list and I'll be back by nightfall."