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.

Seeing the old castle was a lot easier than getting there. Twice he took white dirt roads which headed towards the top of the mountain but turned out to be disappointing. One ended in a barnyard, leaving him staring at a pigsty with the occupants staring right back. The second was more devious. It headed straight for the old Templar fort, waiting until it dipped over a rise to make a right-angle turn and intercept the same road that had led him not to the castle but to pork.

Lang remembered something Dawn used to say, that a man would drive to hell before he would stop and ask directions, to which Lang retorted that the last man to ask directions was one of the Wise Men who asked King Herod where the Christ child had been born. The inquiry had a less than salutary effect on a lot of local infants and men haven't asked directions since. Herod notwithstanding, Lang would have inquired if he could have found someone to ask.

The third time was indeed the charm.

No matter how slowly Lang drove, white dust billowed behind the car like a chute behind a dragster. When he stopped to look at the woefully inadequate map, a capricious wind blew the choking, stinging cloud into the Peugeot's open windows. By the time he was pretty well covered with dust, the road became little more than a path and its grade increased enough to provoke mechanical protests from the car's already underpowered engine. The path became a track and the track ended at a level spot a hundred yards or so from the summit.