What did the Templars have to do with anything, she wondered. But Samour lived in what had been the Knights’ old enclave.
“But why the Templars?”
“Stained glass was for cathedrals and monasteries.” He ran his fingers over a warm metal frame. “Apart from the aristocracy, tell me who else financed cathedral building? Promoted and used the artisans, the trades and the guilds?”
She figured it was a rhetorical question.
“The Templars ran it all. That’s until the Pope outlawed the Templars and took over their coffers.” He paused. “Like I said, little’s left of deTheodric’s work. They went the way of the Templars in 1311. Disbanded or executed, some accounts say.”
But a connection had to exist. “It’s your métier, what do you think?”
“There were stories,” he said, his words slow. A shrug. “But all glass artisans hear them.”
“Like what?”
He let out a puff of air. “Well, all trades and guilds were regulated at the time. Statutes and regulations in force until the Revolution. The powerful guilds paid the most tax and kept their craft secrets. Think of the windows at Chartres, no one’s replicated their technique.” He shook his head in rueful respect. “Or Abbé Suger, who developed that resonant blue ‘sapphire glass’ used at Saint-Denis.”
“But wouldn’t the techniques be passed down by word of mouth?”
“Or they died with the alchemists,” he said. “Like so many things, secrets lost, shrouded in time. Who knows?”
Something tugged in her mind.
“Art can happen by mistake,” he continued, a distant look in his eye.” In the thirteenth century, for example, a monk dropped his silver button into the glass and created indigo for the first time. We only found this out two hundred years ago. This discovery gave us a chance to make the indigo the hue guilds used before the Revolution in 1791.”
She heard other things in his voice now. A quiet excitement, almost awe. Any self-consciousness about his cleft palate had disappeared.
“For me it’s expression, glass gives form to beauty,” he said. “A painting with light. Not like the one-dimensional painting, where light shines on it. With glass, the light shines through.”
A purist, she thought, immersed in his trade.
He gestured to the diagram and its rows of Latin. “Of course, as journeymen we visited this guild’s masterpiece, a church window, the only one left of their work.”
Her pulse raced. “But you said this guild collapsed with the Templars.”
“Rumors handed down through time hint at conspiracies, plots …”
She straightened up. “Secret lost formulas?”
“So you think you’ve got one here, eh?”
“You tell me.”
He grinned. “But even so, it’s incomplete. Worthless.”
She pulled several hundred-franc bills from her wallet. “Say the other part of the formula were discovered. How valuable would it be?”
“More than a historical treasure.” His eyes gleamed. “Think of modern stained-glass windows made from an original ancient formula. The enhancement of cathedral restoration techniques.”
Ancient techniques for new windows in old cathedrals—interesting—but not sexy enough. Or worth murder. There was more, she knew it in her bones.
“Hasn’t anyone analyzed the components of this guild’s masterpiece?”
“A hundred feet up in the nave? Any exploration would damage the glass. It’s protected under historic preservation.”
Her mind went back to the Templars, the end of the guild. An angle to explain the questions swirling in her mind. “What if this powerful guild owed the Templars for some reason? The Templars demanded their secret formulas as payment. After their downfall the formula was lost and with it the guild’s influence?”
“Everything’s possible.”
“This window’s far away?” She imagined a long trip to Chartres or to a countryside cathedral hours away.
“You call Saint Nicholas des Champs far?”
Six blocks away and across from the Musée des Arts et Métiers. A block from where Pascal spent his youth.
“Mais non, it’s on my way to work.”
WITH THE WRAPPED indigo boxes in her bag, a perfect wedding present for Sebastien, she caught a taxi.
Her cell phone rang in her pocket. René’s number showed on her caller ID.
“Has Saj found Pascal’s file on Coulade’s computer, René?”
He sighed. “Not yet.”
Too bad. Impatient, she rolled and unrolled the encrypted page in her hands.
“Meizi keeps asking when you’ll help her,” he said, worry in his voice.
“As soon as I reach Prévost and find out the timing of the police raid. Tell Meizi to trust me, René.”
“You’re popular,” he said, sounding anxious now.
Her throat constricted. The men she’d lost in Zazie’s café?
“Two men?”
“I got rid of them.”
But for how long?
“Hold on, there’s another call,” René said.
She checked from the taxi window. If they were following her by car, they were stuck in traffic. But it bothered her.
“Pull over, Monsieur,” she told the driver.
“Ici?”
She paid, took her bag, and slammed the taxi door. Horns blared.
“Where are you, Aimée?” René asked.
“A block from the museum.”
She was around the corner from the church. But she didn’t have time.
“Right now you need to go to church,” she lowered her voice into her cell phone. Huddled in a doorway from the wind.
“Church?”
“Saint Nicholas des Champs. In the ninth chapel transept you’ll see a star-shaped stained-glass window,” she said. “Crafted by the same guild in Pascal’s encryption.”
“But what does that mean?”
“The glass guild disbanded with the Templars, but the formula connects somehow. The star, remember, in the formula?” She heard the rapid keystrokes over the line. It sounded like René was running searches. She tried to put this together. “If Pascal discovered properties in this alchemical recipe that could be used in something significant now …”
“Like you said, that would explain the DST’s interest.”
“Let me know as soon as you find it, René.”
She knew it existed. She was certain.
Pause. “Zazie called from the café,” René said. “Told me to tell you two men are sitting watching our door.”
Damned irritating. Aimée sucked in her breath. She needed a cigarette.
“You know what to do, René,” she said. “Go out the back.”
Sunday, Noon
RENÉ LOOKED BOTH ways before stepping into rue Bailleul. The thwack and scrape of the street sweeper’s green plastic-pronged broom provided counterpoint to the shouts of the man unloading crates of wine from a truck into the café’s rear.
All clear. At least his hip was cooperating today. He needed sun, heat, and the last installment for his Citroën. What he had was the DST on Aimée’s tail, the uneasy feeling Meizi was keeping things from him, and a crazy errand in a church.
He shut the Citroën’s door, keyed the ignition, and blasted the heater. His leather-upholstered seats heated up within a minute. One out of three wasn’t bad. He shifted into first and turned right into rue de l’Arbre-Sec.
“STAND HERE, MONSIEUR.” The young, black-frocked priest gestured René toward Chapelle Saint-Sauveur, the ninth of the twenty-seven side chapels. “Few visit our petit jewel. Or ask about it.” The priest, who had sideburns, let out an appreciative sigh. “Beautiful, non?”
From his vantage point, all René could see was a dance of silver-white light shivering on the worn stone-slab floor.