He turned back toward Tess, gesturing wildly. 'Go back. Go back and get some help.'
But Tess was already with him. She was also out of breath and held onto him. 'Please. It isn't safe up here. You said it yourself. It's not worth either of our lives.'
Reilly looked at her and smiled, and, at that very moment, he knew with utter certainty that he would spend the rest of his life with this woman. In that instant, he heard a panicked scream from Vance's direction. He turned in time to see Vance slipping down the smooth, steep outcropping he was climbing across, his fingers clawing for a hold but finding none in the polished surface of the black rocks.
Vance's feet finally caught onto a small ledge just as Reilly started forward, hastening across the rock face. He got to the overhang and looked down. Vance was hugging the wall of stone with one shivering hand, the other still locked around the codex.
'Take my hand,' he bellowed as he reached down, stretching his arm as far as it would go.
Vance glanced up, a look of sheer terror in his eyes. He inched the arm with the codex upward, but they were still a few inches apart. 'I can't,' he stammered.
Just then, the ledge under his feet crumbled away, removing the support from under his left leg. He reached out to hang on, and his fingers instinctively let go of their hold. The codex flew from his outstretched hand, opening as it bounced off an outcropping of rock. Pages of the diary spun into the air, floating in the salty air, spiraling downward toward the crashing water below.
Reilly didn't even have time to finish his 'Don't—'
Vance's voice erupted into a tortured 'No!' as he grabbed hopelessly for the papers. Then he was falling fast, outstretched arms flailing at the fluttering pages that looked like they were goading him.
He tumbled helplessly into the void before smashing onto the rocks below.
Tess reached Reilly and hung onto him. They edged outward, peering down the vertiginous drop.
Vance's body lay there, bent at unnatural angles. Waves crashed around him, lifting him up and moving him around like a rag doll. And all around his crumpled body, pages of the ancient document were gliding down into the sea, its swell swallowing up the ink that was washing off the parchment as well as the blood seeping from Vance's open wounds.
Reilly held firmly onto Tess. He stared down wistfully as the last of the pages were sucked out to sea. Guess we'll never know, he thought somberly, grinding his teeth at the thought.
And then he spotted something.
Letting go of Tess, he quickly backed up over the edge and climbed down the rock face.
'What are you doing?' she yelled, leaning over to see where he was going, her voice sick with worry.
Moments later, he reappeared over the lip of the rock. Tess reached down and helped him up, and saw that he was clutching something between his teeth.
It was a piece of parchment.
A lone page from the codex.
Tess stared at it in disbelief as Reilly handed it to her. He watched her. 'At least we have something to prove we didn't just imagine it all,' he managed, still breathless with the effort of retrieving it.
Tess studied the page in her hand for a long moment. Everything she'd lived through since that night at the Met, all the bloodshed and the fear and the turmoil inside her came rushing back at her.
And in that moment, she knew. She knew, without a shadow of a doubt, what she would do with it.
And without hesitation, she smiled at Reilly, crumpled up the sheet of parchment and sent it spinning over the bluff.
She watched it fall into the sea, then turned to Reilly, and wrapped her arms around him.
'I've got all I need,' she told him, before taking his hand and leading him away from the ledge.
Epilogue
The sumptuously decorated wooden grandstand stood close to the edge of a field on the lie de la Cite. Brighdy colored pennants rippled in the light breeze, the thin sunshine reflected in the gaudy accoutrements of the king's courtiers and henchmen who were already assembled there.
At the back of an excited and chattering crowd of commoners, Martin of Carmaux stood, stooped and weary. He wore a shabby brown robe, the gift of a friar he had met a few weeks earlier.
Although he was only a few years past forty, Martin had aged grievously. For almost two decades, he had labored in the Tuscan quarry under a brutal sun and the merciless lashes of the overseers. He had all but abandoned hope of escape when one of many rock slides, this one worse than most, killed a dozen of the men who slaved there, as well as some of the guards. By a stroke of luck, Martin and the man to whom he was shackled had been able to use the confusion and the swirling clouds of dust to make their escape.
Undeterred by the long years spent in virtual slavery and completely cut off from any news from beyond that accursed valley, Martin had only one thing in mind. He headed straight for the waterfall and found the rock with the fissures that resembled the Templars' splayed cross, recovered Aimard's letter, and began the long journey through the mountains and into France.
The journey had taken several months, but his long-delayed return to his homeland had only brought him crushing disappointment. He had learned of the disasters that had befallen the Knights Templar and as he drew ever closer to Paris, he knew that he was too late to do anything that would alter the Order's fate.
He had searched and asked, as discreetly as he could, but had found nothing. All of his brothers were gone, either dead or in hiding. The king's flag flew over the great Paris Temple.
He was alone.
Presently, standing there and waiting among the gossiping crowd, Martin identified the gray-clad figure of Pope Clement, who was climbing the steps of the grandstand and taking his place amid the peacock-bright courtiers.
As Martin watched, the pope's attention turned toward the center of the field where two stakes had been surrounded by brushwood. Movement caught Martin's eye as the emaciated and shattered bodies of two men he knew to be Jacques de Molay, the grand master of the Order, and Geoffroi de Charnay, the preceptor of Normandy, were being dragged onto the field.
With neither of the condemned men possessing any lingering capacity for physical resistance, they were quickly bound to the stakes. A heavyset man stepped forward with a lighted brand, then looked to the king for instructions.
A sudden stillness fell over the crowd, and Martin saw the king raise a hand in a careless gesture.
The brush was lit.
Smoke began to rise and soon flames licked through, twigs popping and crackling as the heat built up. Sickened and utterly helpless to intervene, Martin wanted to turn and walk away, but he felt the need to observe, to bear witness to this depraved act. Unwilling though he was, he pushed through to the front of the crowd. It was then, to his astonishment, that he saw the grand master raise his head and look directly at the king and the pope.
Even from this distance, the sight unsettled Martin. De Molay's eyes were blazing with a fire more fierce than the one that would soon consume him.
Despite his frail and broken appearance, the grand master's voice was strong and steady. 'In the name of the Order of the Knights of the Temple,' he rasped, 'I curse you, Philippe le Bel, and your buffoon pope, and I call on God Almighty to have you both join me before His seat within the year, to suffer His judgment, and burn forever in the furnaces of hell ...'
If de Molay said anything else, Martin didn't hear it, as the fire roared upward, obliterating any screams of the dying men. Then the breeze turned, and smoke swept over the grandstand and the crowd, carrying with it the sickening stench of burning flesh. Coughing and spluttering, the king stumbled down the steps, the pope trailing behind him, his eyes streaming from the smoke. As they passed close to where Martin stood, the old Templar watched the pope. He felt the bile of anger rising and burning in his throat, and, at that moment, he realized that his task was still not over.
Perhaps not in his lifetime. But one day, maybe, things would be different.
That night, he set off, leaving the city and heading south to the land of his forefathers, to Carmaux.
