They stood a moment inside the gates, looking over graves that were less than well cared for. Above, the sky was as hard as enamel and below, the weeds grew everywhere, headstones looked to be crumbling and some had even toppled over.
‘The cemetery needs some work, as you can see, but I can’t get anyone to do it.’
‘Why not?’ Rahn said.
‘We can’t keep tourists and riffraff from tearing the gates down and yet the residents of the town won’t venture beyond them!’
‘Really?’ Eva remarked.
‘They are afraid.’
Eva looked about her. ‘Of what? Their dead?’
‘So it seems.’
Rahn listened to this while he glanced down a long avenue of graves. Towering above it, beyond the wall of stone, he could see what looked like a glass conservatory.
‘Abbé Saunière is buried there, at the end of this avenue,’ the priest said, noticing his interest. ‘I’ll go and see if the madame will speak to you.’
He excused himself with a tip of his hat and a bat of his eyelashes and left with his long black cassock rustling between his legs.
It was eerily quiet now and Eva took Rahn’s arm again, sending an electric shock to his abused head. ‘I agree with you, I don’t like it here,’ she confided.
‘That’s why I think it is exactly the right place,’ he said to her as they walked to Saunière’s grave. He had not had a woman’s arm in his since Etienne, and it felt disconcerting.
The grave was nothing special, almost conspicuously so, just a simple horizontal stone slab with the usual inscriptions. They turned around again and walked back looking at other graves. Rahn noticed an ossuary on the far left and Eva went to a place set apart for the burial of unbaptised children.
‘Isn’t this sad?’ she said. ‘Some people say unbaptised babies become angels . . . others say they live in limbo. Apparently they are always buried where the rainfall from the church can run off onto their little plots – to baptise them with Holy Water.’
Rahn came over to her and took a look at the miserable patch of ground. ‘Well, Dante depicts limbo as the first circle of Hell but the pagans see it as a brightly lit castle, like the Elysium. Apparently, you can be in limbo and not know it—’
Rahn was interrupted by the priest who had returned wearing a triumphant smile.
‘Madame Dénarnaud has agreed to see you!’ he said. A moment later they were leaving the gloomy cemetery and retracing their steps past the church. Eventually they came to a small garden that led to a larger one shaded by tall trees.
‘Once,’ the priest said, walking briskly, ‘this was a magnificent paradise. Saunière planted rare, exotic species of trees and orchards bearing fruits never seen in these parts. All nurtured by subterranean aqueducts and cisterns. Quite ingenious!’ He paused a moment to orient them. ‘That large building is the Villa Bethany.’
‘Interesting name,’ Eva commented, still hanging onto Rahn’s arm.
‘Well, I suggest it has some connection to the church. Bethany being the home of Mary Magdalene and Lazarus, her brother, the one who was raised from the dead by Christ and became Saint John because of it.’
To Rahn the villa looked rather austere. ‘Did the priest build that too?’
‘Oh yes. These days it’s where the madame lives. She used to live in the vicarage, until I came. Ahead is the tower of Magdala
– it once had a wonderful library.’ Rahn grew attentive. ‘You say it once had, what happened to it?’
‘Unfortunately for me, an antiquarian bookseller from London came shortly after the abbé’s death to buy all his books. I would have liked to have seen them.’
Looking for Le Serpent Rouge, the Grimoire of Honorius III, perhaps? Rahn wanted to ask. But instead he trailed behind, glancing about at the decrepit garden, trying to imagine how it must have looked in its glory days.
‘All sorts of celebrities came here, apparently,’ the priest said, looking over his shoulder. ‘They ate and drank till all hours, even royalty, so I hear.’
‘Royalty?’
‘Yes, this village was graced by a visit from the Tuscan, Johann Salvator, of the Austrian Imperial family, who was also as it happens the nephew of Countess de Chambord who lived nearby. Actually, the Countess de Chambord was actively involved in trying to unite the exiled French Royal family with the House of Austria. There were some who wanted her husband, the Count de Chambord, to lead a new monarchy, but he died before it could be realised. Her donations helped to build these buildings and this garden. At any rate, her nephew, Johann Salvator, one day renounced his title and privileges and assumed the name John Orth, upon which he married a commoner, purchased a ship called the Santa Margareta and sailed for South America. They say his ship was lost and he was never heard from again, that is, until he came here to visit Abbé Saunière.’