ever visited Rome, since the Italians would have killed them on sight. So the seven men who served here as pope built their own fortress and did not question the French throne. They owed their existence to the king, and delighted in this repose-their Avignon Captivity, as the papacy's time here came to be called.'
Into the next room the space became more confined. The Parement Chamber was identified as where the pope and cardinals would meet in secret consistories.
'This is also where the Golden Rose was presented,' Claridon said. 'A particularly arrogant gesture for the Avignon popes. On the fourth Sunday of Lent, the pope would honor one special person, usually a sovereign, with the presentation of a golden rose.'
'You don't approve?' Stephanie asked.
'Christ had no need for golden roses. Why should popes? Just more of the sacrilege this entire place reflected. Clement VI bought the whole town from Queen Joanna of Naples. Part of a deal she made to obtain absolution for her complicity in her husband's murder. For a hundred years criminals, adventurers, counterfeiters, and smugglers all escaped justice here, provided they paid proper homage to the pope.'
Through another chamber they entered what was labeled the Stag Room. Claridon switched on a series of soft incandescent lights. Malone lingered at the doorway long enough to glance back through the previous chamber into the Grand Tinel. A shadow flickered across the wall, enough for him to know they were not alone. He knew who was there. A tall, attractive, athletic woman – of color, as Claridon had said earlier in the car. The woman who'd followed them into the palace.
'-this is where the old and new palaces join,' Claridon was saying. 'Old behind us, new through that other portal. This was Clement VI's study.'
Malone had read in the souvenir book about Clement, a man who enjoyed paintings and poems, pleasing sounds, rare animals, and courtly love. He was quoted as saying, My predecessors didn't know how to be popes, so he transformed Benedict's old fortress into a lavish palace. A perfect example of Clement's material wants now surrounded him as painted images on the windowless walls. Fields, thickets, and streams, all under a blue sky. Men with nets by a green fishpond littered with swimming pike. Brittany spaniels. A young noble and his falcon. A child in a tree. Grasses, birds, bathers. Greens and brown predominated, but an orange dress, a blue fish, and fruit in the trees added dashes of sharp color.
'Clement had these frescoes painted in 1344. They were found beneath the whitewash the soldiers applied when the palace became a barracks in the nineteenth century. This room explains the Avignon popes, especially Clement VI. Some actually called him Clement the Magnificent. He possessed no calling for religious life. Satisfaction of penances, reversal of excommunications, remission of sins, even curtailment of years in purgatory for both the dead and living-all was for sale. You notice anything missing?'
Malone stared again at the frescoes. The hunting scenes were clearly escapism-people doing fun things-with a view that soared and dipped, but nothing particular called out to him.
Then it hit him.
'Where's God?'
'Good eye, monsieur.' Claridon's arms swept out. 'Not anywhere in this home of Clement VI is there a religious symbol. The omission speaks loudly. This was the bedroom of a king, not a pope, and that was how the Avignon prelates thought of themselves. These were the men who destroyed the Templars. Starting in 1307 with Clement V, who was Philip the Fair's co-conspirator, and ending with Gregory XI in 1378, these corrupt individuals crushed that Order. Lars always believed, and I agree, that this room proves what those men really valued.'
'Do you think the Templars survived?' Stephanie asked.
'Oui. They're out there. I've seen them. What exactly they are, I do not know. But they're out there.'
Malone could not decide if the declaration was fact or just the supposition of a man who saw conspiracies where none existed. All he knew was that a woman was stalking them who was expert enough to plant a slug above his head into a tree trunk, from fifty yards, at night, in a forty-mile-per-hour wind. She might even have been the one who saved his hide in Copenhagen. And she was real.
'Let's get on with it,' Malone said.
Claridon switched off the light. 'Follow me.'
They walked across the old palace to the north wing and the convention center. A placard noted that the facility was recently created by the city as a way to raise revenue for further restoration. The former Conclave Hall, Treasurer's Chamber, and Great Cellar had been equipped with bleacher seats, a stage, and audiovisual equipment. Down more passageways they passed stone effigies of more Avignon popes.
Claridon eventually stopped at a stout wooden door and tested the latch, which opened. 'Good. They still do not lock it at night.'
'Why not?' Malone asked.
'There's nothing of any value here besides information, and few thieves are interested in that.'
They stepped into a pitch-dark space.
'This was once the chapel of Benedict XII, the pope who conceived and built most of the old palace. In the late nineteenth century, this and the room above were converted into the district's archives. The palace keeps its records here, too.'
The light spilling in from the hall revealed a towering room filled with shelving, row after row. More lined the outer walls, one section stacked on top of the other, a railed walkway encircling. Behind the shelves rose arched windows, the black panes peppered by a steady rain.
'Four kilometers of shelving,' Claridon said. 'A gracious plenty of information.'
'But you know where to look?' Malone asked.
'I hope so.'
Claridon plunged ahead down the center aisle. Malone and Stephanie waited until a lamp came on fifty feet inside.
'Over here,' Claridon called out.
Malone closed the hall door and wondered how the woman was going to gain her entrance unnoticed. He led the way toward the light and they found Claridon standing next to a reading table.
'Lucky for history,' Claridon said, 'all the palace's artifacts were inventoried early in the eighteenth century. Then, in the late nineteenth century, photographs and drawings were made of what survived the Revolution. Lars and I both became familiar with how the information was organized.'
'And you didn't come look after Mark died because you thought the Knights Templar would kill you?' Malone asked.
'I realize, monsieur, you don't believe much of this. But I assure you I did the right thing. These records have rested here for centuries, so I thought they could rest quietly awhile longer. Staying alive seemed more important.'
'So why are you here now?' Stephanie asked.
'A long time has passed.' Claridon stepped from the table. 'Around us are the palace inventories. It will take me a few minutes to look. Why don't you sit and let me see if I can find what we want.' He produced a flashlight from his pocket. 'From the asylum. I thought we may need it.'
Malone slid out a chair, as did Stephanie. Claridon disappeared into the darkness. They sat and he could hear rummaging, the flashlight beam dancing across the vault overhead.
'This is what my husband did,' she said in a whisper. 'Hiding out in a forgotten palace, looking for nonsense.'
He caught the edge in her voice.
'While our marriage slipped away. While I worked twenty hours a day. This was what he did.'
A peal of thunder sent tremors through both him and the room.
'It was important to him,' Malone said, keeping his voice low, too. 'And there might even be something to it.'
'Like what, Cotton. Treasure? If Sauniere discovered those jewels in the crypt, okay. Luck like that visits people every once in a while. But there's nothing more. Bigou, Sauniere, Lars, Mark, Claridon. They're all dreamers.'
'Dreamers have many times changed the world.'
'This is a wild goose chase for a goose that doesn't exist.'
Claridon returned from the darkness and dropped a musty folder on the table. Water stains smeared its outside. Inside was a three-inch stack of black-and-white photographs and pencil drawings. 'Within a few feet of where Mark
