‘I see . . .’ Eva said, from her chair near the bed. ‘Who are these penitents?’
‘They’re a group of Jesuit priests who dabble in rituals of black magic and human sacrifice. The interesting thing is, that the sacrament had a special part to play in these rituals. All sorts of terrible things were done to it, like mixing it with urine and excrement and forcing people to consume it to rid them of evil spirits . . . or perhaps to do the opposite.’
‘To inoculate them with evil spirits – to possess them!’ she said.
‘Yes, that is what I have learnt.’
‘So, do you think that’s why my uncle scratched that symbol into the tabernacle, to protect it?’
‘I think so.’
Her paleness made her lips look all the more red. ‘He was afraid,’ she said.
‘Perhaps he wanted to make certain that when his time came he would have a sacrament that was untainted.’
She turned to the hearth and fell quiet. ‘So, you think the priests on the list formed a kind of—’
‘Conventicle?’ Rahn prompted.
‘Yes.’
‘Perhaps – let’s look at the list again and go through what we know, shall we?’ He took the list out of his pocket along with the pencil and gave them to her. ‘If you would be so kind as to write down what I tell you, it may help me to get some perspective.’ He resumed his pacing. ‘Verger was executed in 1857 . . . can you add that date? Antoine Bigou, we know nothing about yet except that he was a contemporary of Saunière’s. Now, the next abbé, Grassaud, met Saunière in 1886 when he came to Saint-Paul-de-Fenouillet. I think he has a lot more to do with this than he admitted. Saunière came here to this village in 1885 and sometime later he found something; something so interesting that the Bishop of Carcassonne paid for him to take it to Paris.’ He continued to pace. ‘We also know that Saunière told two other priests of his discoveries: Abbé Boudet and Abbé Gélis. Gélis wrote something in his diary about treasure and shortly after that he was brutally murdered, in 1897. The next abbé is . . . ?’
‘Rivière,’ Eva said.
‘That’s right. He outlived Saunière. He’s the one who refused to give him his last sacrament in 1915. He refused because of something he’d apparently heard in Saunière’s confession and before he died he told someone that Saunière had gone over to the Devil. What does that mean and what did he hear?’ He paused to look at her. ‘All of these priests were connected and they all seem to gravitate around Saunière – like the rings of Saturn.’
He went to Eva to look at the list again.
Jean-Louis Verger – Paris 1857
Antoine Bigou – Rennes-le-Château
~
A J Grassaud – Saint-Paul-de-Fenouillet 1886
A C Saunière – Rennes-le-Château 1885
A K Boudet – Rennes-les-Bains
A A Gélis – Coustaussa murdered 1897
A L Rivière – Espéraza refused last sacrament 1915
‘These five priests were contemporaries and are set apart from the other two. Why? Perhaps they had a different significance for Abbé Cros.’
‘Or perhaps those are the priests my uncle was investigating?’ she said.
‘We don’t know that with any certainty yet.’
‘Do you think Saunière found the Pope’s grimoire, Le Serpent Rouge?’ she asked.
‘Or else he found the missing key that we spoke about before, the formula that is missing from the grimoires.’
She watched him take up his pacing again, with a puzzled expression. ‘Do you know what this key is?’
‘I haven’t a clue, but everything we’ve heard points to it having something to do with the Cathar treasure.’
‘If it’s been left out of the grimoires intentionally, perhaps it is too evil?’
‘That is a very good assumption. I have a sense things will be clearer when we learn something about this Abbé Bigou, the man who sits at the top of the list with Verger. It seems to me that he had a very important part to play in the mystery surrounding these priests.’
But Eva wasn’t listening. She was taken by her own thoughts and he had a moment to observe her more closely. She was taller than most women and thinner than was generally considered the ideal, but there was no angularity in her frame and it gave her a look that was almost elf-like. Her face was fine boned and symmetrical, her eyes large and widely spaced, her short hair reflected the firelight in reds and golds. She needed protection, someone who knew what he was doing, and right now Rahn felt more like Sancho Panza than Don Quixote, more like Watson than Holmes. Deodat was right – what good was knowledge without the wisdom to use it? Maybe Satan knew him too well and had surmised that he was good when it came to imponderables but a poor detective when it came to real life.