The day she and her mother had spied the disaffected Saunière toiling over the road to their village with his bags in his hands, dressed in his black cassock and hat, looking like a man who has been deprived of his birthright, they knew they had found their priest. Immediately Abbé Boudet, a member of their order, was informed and the entire affair was set into motion.
Saunière’s arrogance had made him a willing servant, but they could not have known the extent of his incautious nature, or how obsessed he would become with finding the missing treasure for himself. His task had been merely to find the parchment and leave clues in his church for those who would follow, but his tongue was loose.
She bent down to look at the corpse’s face. It still bore some resemblance to Saunière: the dimpled chin, the shock of dark hair, the brooding mouth. He never knew the true goal of the secret and yet he had been so full of his own importance! She wiped away some fluid from his shrivelled lips. And to think he had imagined himself an initiate! His journey to England had made him powerful, but it had been on her behalf and for another purpose entirely.
No, it had been a preparation for her task. For she had met the chosen initiate only two years before in Vienna, where at the time he had been undergoing instruction by members of the Thule Gesellschaft. They had seen in the young man called Adolf Hitler the perfect combination of stupidity and fervour, an empty vessel for the future impregnation of the seed of Sorat. Oh, it was exciting and difficult and frustrating to anticipate, to wait. But in the cards she had seen the one who would come to unlock the secret whereabouts of the key, the one destined to be tenet – and nothing could be accomplished without him. She would know him by his willingness to enter Hell. A question put to all true initiates.
She adjusted the gown on Saunière’s shoulders, smoothing her hands over it and picking off some stray lint. She wondered what the villagers would say when they found out that their illustrious priest had died a pauper, his only income his priestly stipend. That the Villa Bethany, the Tour Magdala; everything had always belonged to her? Even now his spirit had joined the circle of those whose spirits would be used by the initiate – the circle of those who had willingly chosen to die and even those who were murdered to cleanse the world of riffraff. It had not taken much to convince Saunière to sell his soul and to join that circle in return for eternal life. They had enacted the ritual of excarnation, of suicide, in the crypt of the dames using the secret of sator, arepo, tenet, opera, rotas. It had been accomplished! The stroke had hit him in a matter of days. They always suffered strokes – so that way the spirit left the body gradually . . . excruciatingly. She didn’t know how many had partaken of the bread and wine blessed by Satan to join the circle of the undead but she knew they were countless. Saunière was only one among many! How many masses for the dead had he conducted himself, using those wafers, trapping the unwary in that realm of midday, between life and death? She could feel his agonised presence nearby. Immortality has its price. Penitence!
People were arriving. She could see them in their finery, in their silks and furs and top hats, threading through the snow-covered garden. She looked down at her wrist, the snake entwining the anchor was showing slightly and she adjusted her lace-edged sleeve over it and donned the mask of the grieving housekeeper. With her heart full of an imminent thrill, she left the conservatory to greet them.
48
Lady in Waiting
‘What was the fair lady’s game? What did she really want?’
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘The Adventure of the Second Stain’
Maison de Cros, Bugarach, 1938
‘You certainly make it hard for me to keep you out of trouble, Otto Rahn!’
It was Eva! She was busy cutting their bindings with his penknife. He coughed and his lungs burst into screams of pain. When they were loose she herded them without a word to an opening and they stooped to enter what seemed to be a low storeroom. After negotiating their way through boxes and barrels and bric-a-brac, she directed them on their knees through a small hatch into what became a low tunnel.
‘Keep moving, don’t stop, it leads outside!’ she called out to them from behind.
They proceeded for a time, coughing and wheezing and stumbling in the darkness. Here the air was clear and earthy, and eventually Rahn came to some stone steps that led upwards to the garden. By instinct and without thought, he staggered as far as he could from the conflagration before throwing himself down. The others followed and the four of them sat, breathing fresh air into their tortured lungs, coughing and spitting. He could hear Deodat vomiting and coughing. The sleet came down all around them and the ground was wet. Above, the clouded firmament was untouched by this human madness. There was lightning in the far reaches and he could tell the moon was rising behind it.