Timeline

DESIDE
VIVIX

"I remember," Marek said. "Elsie said this was a new word for her, vivix. But she didn't say anything about deside. And that doesn't even look like Latin to me. And it's not Occitan, or old French."

With his dagger, he cut a corner from the parchment, then scratched the two words into the material, folded it, and slipped it into his pocket.

"But what does it mean?" Kate said.

Marek shook his head. "No idea at all."

"It was added in the margin," she said. "Maybe it doesn't mean anything. Maybe it's a doodle, or an accounting, or something like that."

"I doubt it."

"They must have doodled back then."

"I know, but this doesn't look like a doodle, Kate. This is a serious notation." He turned back to the manuscript, running his finger along the text. "Okay. Okay… It says here that Transitus occultus incipit… the passage starts… propre ad capellam viridem, sive capellam mortis - at the green chapel, also known as the chapel of death - and-"

"The green chapel?" she said in an odd voice.

Marek nodded. "That's right. But it doesn't say where the chapel is." He sighed. "If the passage really connects to the limestone caves, it could be anywhere."

No, André," she said. "It's not."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean," she said, "that I know where the green chapel is."

Kate said, "It was marked on the survey charts for the Dordogne project - it's a ruin, just outside the project area. I remember wondering why it hadn't been included in the project, because it was so close. On the chart, it was marked `chapelle verte morte,' and I thought it meant the `chapel of green death.' I remember, because it sounded like something out of Edgar Allan Poe."

"Do you remember where it is, exactly?"

"Not exactly, except that it's in the forest about a kilometer north of Bezenac."

"Then it's possible," Marek said. "A kilometer-long tunnel is possible."

From behind them, they heard the sound of soldiers coming down into the cellar.

"Time to go."

He led them to the left, into a corridor, where the staircase was located. When Kate had seen it before, it disappeared into a mound of earth. Now it ran straight up to a wooden trapdoor.

Marek climbed the stairs, put his shoulder to the door. It opened easily. They saw gray sky, and smoke.

Marek went through, and they followed after him.

They emerged in an orchard, the fruit trees in neat rows, the spring leaves a bright green. They ran ahead through the trees, eventually arriving at the monastery wall. It was twelve feet tall, too high to climb. But they climbed the trees, then dropped over the wall, landing outside. Directly ahead they saw a section of dense, uncleared forest. They ran toward it, once again entering the dark canopy of the trees.