'There's a clue there that relates to the abbe Bigou and the tombstone of Marie d'Hautpoul de Blanchefort. Lars Nelle found a cryptogram. He believed the key to solving it lay in the painting.' Claridon was talking fast.
'I heard all that in the archives. I want to know what you failed to say.'
'I know nothing more. Please, my feet are frying.'
'That's the idea.' He reached into his cassock and removed Lars Nelle's journal.
'You have it?' Claridon said in amazement.
'Why so shocked?'
'His widow. She possessed it.'
'Not anymore.' He'd read most of the entries on the trip back from Avignon. He thumbed through until he found the cryptogram and held the open pages up for Claridon to see. 'Is that what Lars Nelle found?'
'Oui. Oui.'
'What's the message?'
'I don't know. Truly, I don't. Can you not remove the heat? Please, I beg you. My feet are in agony.'
He decided a show of compassion might loosen the tongue quicker. He slid the cart a foot back.
'Thank you. Thank you.' Claridon was breathing fast.
'Keep talking.'
'Lars Nelle found the cryptogram in a manuscript that Noel Corbu wrote in the sixties.'
'No one has ever found that manuscript.'
'Lars did. It was with a priest, whom Corbu entrusted the pages to before he died in 1968.'
He knew about Corbu from the reports one of his predecessors had recorded. That marshal, too, had searched for the Great Devise. 'What about the cryptogram?'
'The painting was referenced by Abbe Bigou himself, in the parish register, shortly before he fled France for Spain, so Lars believed it held the key to the puzzle. But he died before deciphering it.'
De Roquefort did not possess the lithograph of the painting. The woman had taken it, along with the book from the auction. Yet that could hardly be the only recorded image of Reading the Rules of the Caridad. Now that he knew what to look for, he'd find another.
'And what did the son know? Mark Nelle. What was his knowledge?'
'Not much. He was a teacher in Toulouse. He searched as a hobby on weekends. Not all that serious. But he was looking for Sauniere's hiding place in the mountains when he was killed in an avalanche.'
'He did not die there.'
'Of course he did. Five years ago.'
De Roquefort stepped close. 'Mark Nelle has lived here, in this abbey for the past five years. He was pulled from the snows and brought here. Our master took him in and made him our seneschal. He also wanted him to be our next master. But thanks to me, he failed. Mark Nelle fled these walls this afternoon. For the past five years he's scoured through our records, looking for clues, while you hid like a cockroach afraid of the light in a mental asylum.'
'You speak nonsense.'
'I speak truth. Here is where he stayed, while you cowered in fear.'
'You and your brothers were who I feared. Lars feared you, too.'
'He had reason to be scared. He lied to me, several times, and I detest deceit. He was given an opportunity to repent, but he chose to offer more lies.'
'You hung him from that bridge, didn't you? I always knew that.'
'He was a nonbeliever, an atheist. I believe you understand that I'll do what is necessary to achieve my goal. I wear the white cassock. I'm master of this abbey. Nearly five hundred brothers await my orders. Our Rule is clear. The order of the master is as if Christ commanded it, for it was Christ who said through the mouth of David, Ob auditu auris obedivit mihi. He obeyed me as soon as he heard me. That, too, should place fear in your heart.' He motioned with the journal. 'Now tell me what this puzzle says.'
'Lars thought it revealed the location of whatever it was Sauniere found.'
He reached for the cart. 'I swear to you, your feet will become nothing but stubs if you don't answer my question.'
Claridon's eyes went wide. 'What must I do to prove my sincerity? I only know parts of the story. Lars was like that. He shared little. You have his journal.'
An element of desperation clothed the words with believability. 'I'm still listening.'
'I know Sauniere found the cryptogram in the Rennes church when he was replacing the altar. He also found a crypt where he discovered that Marie d'Hautpoul de Blanchefort was not buried outside in the parish close, but beneath the church.'
He'd read all that in the journal, but he what he wanted to know was, 'How did Lars Nelle learn that?'
'He found the information about the crypt in old books discovered at Monfort-Lamaury, the fief of Simon de Montfort, which described the Rennes church in great detail. Then he found more references in Corbu's manuscript.'
He despised hearing the name Simon de Montfort-another thirteenth-century opportunist who commanded the Albigensian Crusade that ravaged the Languedoc in the name of the Church. If not for him, the Templars would have achieved their own separate state, which would have surely prevented their later downfall. The one flaw in the Order's early existence had been its dependency on secular rule. Why the first few masters felt compelled to link themselves so closely with kingship had always perplexed him.
'Sauniere learned that his predecessor, the abbe Bigou, erected Marie d'Hautpoul's tombstone. He thought the writing on it, and the reference Bigou left in the parish records about the painting, were clues.'
'They are ridiculously conspicuous.'
'Not to an eighteenth-century mind,' Claridon said. 'Most were illiterate then. So the simplest of codes, even words themselves, would have been quite effective. And actually they have been-staying hidden all this time.'
Something from the Chronicles flashed through de Roquefort's mind, from a time after the Purge. The only clue recorded to the Great Devise's location. Where is it best to hide a pebble? The answer suddenly became obvious. 'On the ground,' he muttered.
'What did you say?'
His mind snapped back to reality. 'Can you recall what you saw in the painting?'
Claridon's head bobbed up and down. 'Oui,monsieur. Every detail.'
Which gave the fool some value.
'And I also have the drawing,' Claridon said.
Had he heard right? 'The drawing of the gravestone?'
'The notes I made in the archive. When the lights went out, I snatched the paper from the table.'
He liked what he was hearing. 'Where is it?'
'In my pocket.'
He decided to make a deal. 'How about a collaboration? We both have certain knowledge. Why don't we pool our efforts.'
'And how would that benefit me?'
'Having your feet intact would be an immediate reward.'
'Quite right, monsieur. I like that a great deal.'
He decided to appeal to what he knew the man wanted. 'We seek the Great Devise for reasons different from you. Once it's found, I'm sure a certain monetary remuneration can compensate you for your trouble.' Then he made his point crystal clear. 'And besides, I'll not let you go. And if you manage to escape, I will find you.'
'I seem to have little choice.'
'You know they left you to us.'
Claridon said nothing.
'Malone and Stephanie Nelle. They made no effort to save you. Instead, they saved themselves. I heard you pleading for help in the archives. So did they. They did nothing.' He allowed his words to take root, hoping he'd correctly judged the man's weak character. 'Together, Monsieur Claridon, we could be successful. I possess Lars Nelle's journal and have access to an archive you can only imagine. You have the gravestone information and know things I don't. We both want the same thing, so let's both discover it.'
De Roquefort gripped a knife lying on the table between Claridon's outstretched legs and severed the
