Benjamin smiled and closed the Bible. 'Master Ricard, may we look at your carp pond again?'
The cure waved his hand airily. 'You know where it is. By all means.'
We went out. In the late afternoon sunshine the overgrown garden hummed with the buzz of hunting bees. Benjamin led me to the edge of the carp pond.
'Isn't it strange?' he mused. 'Poor Giles Falconer was interested in birds and their flight and he falls from a tower. The Abbe Gerard was interested in miracles, particularly the one about Christ walking on the water, and he drowns. Waldegrave was keen on horses, and he is pounded to death by a horse's hooves. Do you see the connection, Roger?'
'Not yet,' I snarled. 'But give me another decade and I will!'
Benjamin nudged me gently. 'Come,' he said. 'Let's see the abbe's church. Perhaps that will yield a few secrets.'
The cure was only too willing to show us around. The church was large and lonely, surrounded and shaded by great elms which dominated the cemetery, extending their majestic branches in benediction over the sleeping dead. The large, low porch was guarded by a Norman doorway, heavy and oaken and studded with nails. Ricard unlocked this and we followed him inside. Despite the sunshine it was gloomy and the cure had to light some of the sconce torches. We stood and gazed around. Heavy arches rose into the darkness and between them arrow-slit windows, without glass or horn, dazzled white in the sunlight. At the far end was the chancel where the windows were of rich glass; the sunlight illuminated their noble colouring and lit up the black oak of the altar and other sanctuary furniture. It was a simple church. The walls were unpainted; the rood screen, uncarved, was nothing more than a wooden panel. Ricard pointed out the church's two notable features: the stone, sculpted baptismal font and the ornately carved choir screen above our heads. Benjamin looked at everything carefully as if trying to search out the Abbe Gerard's hiding-place.
'He can't have hidden his book here,' I said. 'This is scarcely Paradise.' I shivered. 'The place would frighten a ghost.'
Benjamin smiled absent-mindedly and stared up at the choir loft.
'A fine church,' he murmured. 'And the Abbe Gerard is buried where?'
'I told you,' Ricard answered crossly. 'In the churchyard, under one of the yew trees.'
We followed him back into the warm sunlight along the coffin wall and across the overgrown grass where a simple, white headstone, marked with the cross of Lorraine, stood next to a stunted yew tree. We studied the simple inscription. Benjamin made pleasant conversation, then prepared to leave. We shook Ricard's hand, collected our horses, and made what I thought was our way back to the chateau. Outside the village, however, Benjamin suddenly left the track, pushing his reluctant horse in amongst the trees.
'Master, have you left your senses?' I called.
Benjamin just waved me forward and I followed him into the forest darkness. God knows the place must not have changed in a thousand years. It was like entering some vast, green cathedral: trees stood like pillars and their rich foliage spanned out to hide the summer sun. Only when we entered a small glade, silent except for the bubbling of a brook which snaked through the green darkness, did Benjamin dismount and unhook the heavy saddle-bags he had swung across his horse's neck.
'In sweet God's name!' I murmured, almost frightened to raise my voice and break the stillness. 'Have you lost your wits, master?'
Benjamin stretched and gazed around.
'I found this spot when you were in Paris,' he remarked. 'It's secluded, near the road, and there's water to drink.'
'So?'
'So, Roger, we stay here until darkness. Then we go back to Abbe Gerard's grave. The coffin won't be buried deep. We'll disinter it and see what secrets the grave reveals.'
'Master, you're insane!' I yelped. 'This is France. Vauban's men are everywhere and the sentence for grave robbing is, I presume, the same as in England. Death by hanging!'
'Tush, Roger, we won't be seen.'
'And what are we supposed to use?' I shouted. 'Our hands and teeth?'
Benjamin kicked one of the sacks.
'There are small spades and mattocks here. They'll suffice.'
Now my master was like that; once he'd decided on the course of action, and that long face became resolute and those soft eyes hard, there was no turning him. We would stay in that damned forest and dig up poor, bloody Abbe Gerard whatever the outcome. He'd brought some food, bread and fruit, and we drank from the brook as we waited for the sun to set. The hours seemed to drag by. Benjamin gave me a lecture on the different types of trees and plants around us until I nodded off to sleep.
When I awoke, the sun was setting and Benjamin was staring at the bubbling waters of the brook and muttering something about men who walk on water. We both fell silent as the sun finally set and the forest became a different place; the silence became more oppressive, broken only by the rustling of animals in the undergrowth, the hoot of hunting owls and the blood-tingling screams of the bats which flitted amongst the trees. A hunter's moon rose, slipping in between the white wisps of clouds, bathing everything in a ghostly light. I sat and softly cursed those princes and prelates who had brought me to this haunted woodland to lurk like some animal whilst preparing to rob a grave.
'It's wrong,' I piously announced.
'No, it's not,' Benjamin replied. 'All sin, my dear Roger, lies in the will. I have nothing but the greatest respect and reverence for the Abbe Gerard but the king requires that book.'
'Why?' I snapped. 'Why the bloody hell does the fat bastard want it?'
'If I find it, I'll tell you,' Benjamin promised. 'Come, it's time we moved.'
We tethered and hobbled our horses, removed the spades and mattocks from the sacks and crept back on to the track. Every step we took only increased my fear as the twigs cracked like thunder under our booted feet and the night birds screeched horribly at our unwarranted intrusion. We found the path back to the church, crept over the wall, and froze as we heard the howl of a dog. We checked the priest's house. No lights burned so we returned to the graveyard, following the line of the church, jumping and starting when birds nestling in the eaves stirred and rustled their wings. We crept across the cemetery and stopped as a heavy-feathered owl swooped low to seize its shrieking victim in the long grass. At last, we reached the abbe's headstone and I began to dig like some demented mole.
'The sooner we finish our ghastly task,' I reasoned, 'the sooner I get back to my warm bed!'
Now and again Benjamin struck a tinder to ensure all was going well. At last my shovel scraped the coffin lid. I pressed again and heard the welcoming thud of metal on wood.
'We don't want it out,' Benjamin whispered.
So we continued digging around, clearing the earth on either side of the long, oblong coffin. Then both Benjamin and I, one of us working each side, bent down and began releasing the wooden pegs which screeched like ghosts protesting at their eternal dream being disturbed. I quietly cursed. The sound seemed so strident I was sure they could hear it in Maubisson. The pegs were removed more quickly than I had expected.
'Let's see,' Benjamin said. 'Let's see. I wonder…?'
'What's the matter?' I asked.
'Nothing,' he murmured. 'Lift the lid.'
It came away easily and Benjamin's suspicions were confirmed. We were not the first ones to open this coffin. Despite the summer heat the soil had been loose, the coffin pegs easily removed. Inside, the decaying, garish skeleton was lying haphazardly; the head and neck, to which pieces of dried flesh still hung, were skewed to one side whilst the rotting, white gauze which had once covered the corpse had been pulled back and bundled at the bottom of the coffin.
'Vauban,' Benjamin whispered. 'The bastard has been here before us.' He poked around in the coffin, softly exclaiming as his fingers touched rotting pieces of flesh. He tapped the bottom and sides. 'Nothing,' he concluded. 'But let us at least pay the abbe some last courtesy.'
Despite my protests, Benjamin insisted that we rearrange the skeleton in a more reverent position and that we say the Requiem.
Lord, I could have cursed! Here we were at the dead of night in a lonely cemetery in France, disturbing the
