The Sixth Key(51)

He stood, then. ‘Lunch?’

I followed him out to the garden to a table set for two. Prosciutto crudo, pane di casa and bresaola, with a bottle of recoaro.

‘Before,’ I ventured as we sat down, ‘you said you knew Otto Rahn.’

‘Did I?’ He seemed surprised.

‘Yes, you said that you knew him, but you didn’t reveal how you knew him.’

‘There are many ways of knowing an individual.’ The Writer of Letters placed a linen napkin over his lap. ‘I am an objective observer . . . and he has interested me for a long time. Just as you have.’

‘You keep speaking of him as though he were still alive.’

‘Do I? How remiss of me. They say he took his own life.’

‘And did he?’

‘We won’t know that until we finish the story. If I were your character, would you have me disclose something crucial to the plot so soon in the narrative?’

‘No, I suppose not.’

‘Then again, you could always edit it out, if it turned out not to be true.’

‘Is it true or not?’

‘Perhaps the answer to the riddle you came here to solve, the inscription about death, is related to the mystery of Rahn’s life?’ he said, as enigmatic as ever.

‘How so?’

‘To write about the Grail is to write about eternal life. To know the meaning of life, one has to understand death and to understand death, one has to know the meaning of evil. You see they are interdependent. The idea of a Grail chalice is really quite old. Priests used to drink from a chalice long before Christ. That was how He revealed Himself to His priests in the old mysteries. When He came to Earth, He was a revelation of the mysteries and drank from the cup, that is, He died so that He could rescue life from death ... good from evil – that is the secret of the blood in the chalice – the secret of the Holy Grail.

‘But I’m not writing about the Grail . . . I want to write a book about the Apocalypse of Saint John.’

‘Oh, I know what you’re writing about . . . but what is the Apocalypse if not a revelation of the Grail – and what is the Grail if not a vessel of revelation? You see, the two always go together. In fact, Rahn’s last book was about this very mystery – but I’m not talking about Rahn’s little travel diary that Himmler had printed and bound in calfskin; the one he made compulsory reading for the SS. That book, Lucifer’s Court, was just something Rahn patched together in a hurry. No, Rahn’s last book has not been published yet.’

‘What are you suggesting?’

‘I don’t know.’ His eyes were full of jocularity and it annoyed me. ‘You’re the one writing the story. I’m just one of your characters. What would you have me suggest?’

I sat back in the pale sun. ‘A character only comes to life when he starts to disobey the writer.’

‘Well countered! In that case I shall divulge that what Rahn found in the south of France was not what anyone had expected. Perhaps it is not even what you expect.’

‘So where do we go to from here?’

‘Imagine we are once again in that universe consisting of endless interlocking galleries. Let us turn away from Rahn, who is lying in a stupor in that church at Bugarach, to another aspect of the past. We need only find the gallery marked 1238.’

‘That’s exactly seven hundred years before Rahn’s time.’

‘Yes. Rahn was living seven hundred years after a very significant happening, you might say, an event which cast both its light and its shadow into the future, seven hundred years forward in time.’

‘But as you stated earlier: in a room full of galleries, time is one with space. So what does time matter anyhow?’ I tried to trip him up.

‘It is true that time is significant only in the world of the living, in the world in which history happens. But insofar as these things occurred in the world of time, their timing is of great importance. Do you remember that young boy, Matteu, who was saved by the Templar knight in Béziers? Well, by now he is a Templar troubadour. He has been to the East crusading against the infidel; he has sat with Sufi poets in the courts of Frederick II; and he has cheated death countless times. Now his task is to run messages from the Temple to the Cathars during the war of religion and sometimes to escort important Cathars to safety.’

‘So they were affiliated, the Cathars and Templars?’

‘Of course, the Templars called the Cathars their cousins and they did what they could, in a “quiet way”, to help them during those years of Catholic persecution. If you read Rahn’s books, you will see how he is trying to remember something of that time, in fact, he’s trying to keep his promise to the Countess P.’