The Sixth Key(62)

‘No . . . no,’ Marty said with a laugh, noticing Matteu’s face. ‘I am not going to rebuke you! I wanted to say that I have grown some sense of these songs of the Grail that you troubadours sing.’

Matteu couldn’t believe it; his face opened up in a smile. ‘You do?’

‘Yes, I think I know what it is, this thing called the Grail.’

‘Well then: is it a stone or a cup?’

‘I think it may mean many things,’ he said. ‘One might say it was Jesus, who came to Earth to be the vessel for the Lord; or the soul of every man, the soul full of faith in Christ; or the Earth and all its creatures, for the Earth has taken up the body and the blood of Christ.’

Matteu fell silent and thoughtful, looking at it for a long time with his face to the dying sun. These were good answers.

‘Do you know, I dream that it is a woman,’ Matteu said. ‘A woman holding her dead son. Sometimes I think I see it when the moon is only a sickle. Sometimes, it looks like that to me as well, like a vessel.’

Bishop Marty nodded as if he were privy to some knowledge he was not going to share with him. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that is a good likeness.’

Matteu grew full of enthusiasm. ‘You know, I think after this I shall sing a new song – I shall sing of how once upon a time a castle of the Grail was threatened by the Devil’s armies. I will tell how at the time of the greatest danger a dove flew down from the Heavens to split open the summit of Bidorta with its beak so that Esclarmonde de Foix, the angel keeper of the Grail, could throw the Grail into the heart of that mountain to keep it safe! Do you think they will look for it a long time, thinking that it is in the mountains?’

He smiled. ‘Yes, I think they will.’

‘They may burn all the pure ones,’ Matteu said, ‘but no one will forget them because of my songs. I will sing how Esclarmonde turned into a dove and flew from the very top of the keep, towards the mountains of the land of Prester John. And that is why her grave will never be found, because she never died.’

The bishop looked at Matteu. ‘But Esclarmonde has been dead many years . . .’

‘Yes, of course,’ he said, ‘but just between you and me, I feel her presence every now and again, in the night. Sometimes I think she whispers songs into my ears – she is so beautiful!’ He remembered something then. ‘Do you recall how you once told me that when you were a child you escaped from the Crusaders? How a beautiful woman woke you in the night and told you to hide in the forest?’

The bishop paused. ‘Yes, I remember it.’

‘Perhaps that was the Goddess herself?’

He smiled. ‘Yes, perhaps it was.’

They sat for a time like that. They could hear the sounds of the army making revelry below. Matteu realised he must soon go.

‘Matteu, I wondered if I could ask you to take something else away with you?’

‘What is it?’

‘This.’ He handed Matteu a roll of parchments. ‘It is a wisdom I have learnt while I have been on this mountain. It belongs with the child.’

Matteu took the roll and put it inside his pouch.

‘Go with God, Matteu,’ Bishop Marty said.

Matteu nodded full of sadness. ‘And you, Bishop!’

Afterwards, Matteu took the quiet child and the treasure and together with four perfects made his way through the Porteil Chimney to the secret track. They travelled all night over that path with nothing to guide them but the waning moon, and came to the summit of Bidorta before sunrise.

While the child rested, Matteu and the others made a great fire, big enough to be seen from the field below. When the sun rose over the world, casting its rays over the spines of the dragon mountains, he went to look to the valley below. He could see one great pyre on which many of his friends would soon meet their death. He remembered Bertrand Marty and a deep sadness overwhelmed him. He knew that the bishop would be looking up to the summit seeking the sign that the child and the treasure were safe and that when he saw it he would be thankful. Matteu was weary. He had seen too much death. He would not wait for the Catholics to light the pyre; he did not want to hear the screams of his friends.

He said, ‘We go!’





24


Magic Squares

‘Not far from here,’ said the cousin, ‘is a hermitage where a hermit has his residence.’

Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote


En route to Saint-Paul-de-Fenouillet, 1938

Rahn was woken by a sudden jolt and opened his eyes. He was in the Tourster with Eva driving along a narrow road, perilously close to a low stone wall, the only thing between them and the gorges below.

‘Something is happening to the car!’ Eva said.