Pain is but transitory,,while damnation is eternal. I chose not to swear falsely against my brethren or the Order. I pray God may inspire my executioner to strangle me before my body is consumed by the flames. Of more significance, I pray my time in purgatory will be short before my Lord and all his saints receive me into heaven. I pray I may be forgiven the sin of pride which lured me· from my original station, which made me seek knowledge I should have not sought, which has caused me to question those things that are a matter of faith and to die in a state of torment of revelation I do not wish to heed.
I ask that you who find this writing pray for me also, for time on this earth and my supply of material with which to write quickly expire.
Conclusion by the Translator
There is no surviving complete list of the Templars who were burned at the stake in Paris between October of 1307 and April of 1310, if there ever was such a document. We know that de Molay made no effort to escape, believing to the last the name of the Order would be restored.
It is likely no such list ever existed, the very anonymity of the victims being part of the terror Philip wished to inspire in those hesitant to confess. To die without name was to die without sacrament or burial in consecrated ground, and, hence, without unction and subsequent hope of resurrection-a fearsome prospect in the early fourteenth century.
Whatever Pietro may have found in the cave that so shook his faith, we will never know, nor is it significant. What matters is his first hand account of life as a Templar, albeit a noncombatant, in the days after the retreat from Palestine.
His narrative will be of interest to historians for years to come.
N.W.
CHAPTER TWO
1
Rennes-le-Château
It was only a few minutes drive to Rennes-le-Château on a road as twisted as a bedspring and almost as narrow. A cluster of stone and plaster buildings clung to the top of a hill. Francis had been right about Saunière being something of a tourist industry. Two or three couples festooned with cameras wandered through narrow, mostly empty streets. A small visitors' center hawked postcards with Saunière's picture and books in multiple tongues on the possibilities of what he had found. Signs in three languages reminded guests it was illegal to dig on public property. Apparently the priest's find had inspired tales of buried treasure.
The small Romanesque church was no larger than the town's other buildings, its only remarkable feature the gilt border around its low door. The Church of Mary Magdalene, the guidebook said, built in 1867.
Saunière's church.
Lang went inside.
Just beside the door, he was surprised by the leering face of a carved stone devil, his twisted body painted red and squatting under the weight· of the holy water stoup. The vaulted ceiling was about twenty feet high and richly decorated with painted designs. The church itself was no more than a simple rectangle, with a center aisle dividing eight pews. The single room could not have held a hundred people. And yet every detail was as richly done as the largest cathedral.
The pulpit was carefully carved with the scene of an angel standing beside an empty cave.
The discovery that Christ had left the tomb.
Appropriate.
Everywhere Lang looked, he saw evidence of what had probably been the most skilled artists available. He understood Saunière's intent, to erect a place of quality and dignity that avoided ostentation. The priest had not intended to become an ecclesiastical parvenu.
Lang walked around, making a second inspection, impressed with the craftsmanship, the carving of the oak altar rail and pulpit steps. The altar, white marble, perhaps Carrara, was engraved with a triptych of Christ's birth, crucifixion and, again, an angel in an otherwise empty tomb. Curiously, this latter scene occupied the center rather than the chronologically correct last section.
Stations of the cross marched around the walls. Nothing unusual in a Catholic church, Lang thought. Until he came to fourteen, the last. Christ, half wrapped in a shroud, being carried to the tomb. But there was something… Above the figures, the moon. Lang was fairly certain Jewish law required a burial before sundown of the Friday before Sabbath. If so, perhaps the figures were not taking Him to the tomb. Another message from a dead priest? If Lang had had doubts as to what the priest had found, Saunière's church dispelled them.
Outside, he left the car parked to walk through the hamlet. A loaf of bread, cheese, sausage and bottled water made lunch, eaten while contemplating the church's facade.
Dusting off the crumbs, Lang cramped back into the little car. Once down the hill and on the other side of Rennes-les-Bains, the road began a steep ascent before it forked. Lang pulled onto a narrow shoulder and consulted the rental company's map. It was too small to have the detail he needed, so he peered in one direction, then the other, as though the answer might be coming down the road.
Actually, it was. Almost, anyway. Lang was turning his head to see when he spotted a stone cross to his left, mounted a few feet up the hillside. Such calvaire are common in the countryside of Catholic countries but this one wasn't alone. Beyond it was a statue of Christ, also not unusual. But Lang couldn't recall ever seeing both together. And this stature was a little different: instead of facing the passing motorist, it was perpendicular to the road, staring into the blue haze of the distance.
He got out of the car and climbed up to the cross. It bore no name but the conventional IN RI and a date too eroded by years of weather to be easily readable. The statue was life-size and mounted on a plinth as though to give Christ a better view of the hills and valleys. At one time, He had been pointing at something, judging from the extended right arm broken off at the elbow.
Standing on tiptoe to bring his eyes even with the stone shoulders, Lang sighted down the damaged arm. It was aimed at a hill somewhat taller than the others. Even from the poor detail of the map, Lang figured he was looking at Cardou, the slope on which Pietro had made his discovery.
Was the statue a clue or just one more roadside shrine?
Lang walked back to the cross. Although shorter than the statue, its elevation made the top higher than Christ's head. From a few feet further up the slope, Lang could line up cross and statue like front and rear gunsights. The place on Cardou, the target, was indistinguishable from the surrounding slopes, nothing but white limestone with a scattering of trees tenaciously rooted in the rocky soil.
With his hiker's compass Lang noted he was facing a heading of about seventy-five degrees, a little north of due east. Trying to keep the compass as balanced as possible, he walked around to the front of the cross and squinted closely at the blurred date. It could possibly have been 1838.
Or it could have been the mathematical equivalent of the word puzzle in the picture.
1838
8-1=7
8-3=5
Seventy-five. Seventy-five degrees.
Compass heading or just a date? A few days ago, a week ago, Lang would have seen -no encrypted message in a date on a cross. But then, he would never have thought about paintings as maps or Latin anagrams, either.
Magnetic north, of course, was not only different from true north but it also moved a little every few years.
Seventy-five degrees in Saunière's time might not be the same exact heading today. Also, every compass had its own unique, built-in, degree of error. Without the correction card that came with the compasses on ships and aircraft, there was no way to know how far off the instrument might be. Or that it might not be off at all.
Returning to the car, Lang picked up the camera and took a number of shots lining the cross and statue up against the backdrop of Cardou.
Then he drove down a steep descent, crossed the Aude just past the point at which the Sals branched off, and turned almost due east. To his left he could see a silhouette dark against the afternoon sun, a tower of Blanchefort on its white pinnacle.