A fake?’
‘It’s no older than this house,’ Anna said with a chuckle. ‘About eighteen-nineties. He was so pissed off– is that the right expression?–that he gave it to me for nothing. He should have known. As you say, a genuine item in that condition would have been worth a small fortune.’
Roberta smiled. ‘We Yanks are suckers for anything more than three hundred years old.’ She moved away from the framed scroll and looked across at the tall, wide bookcase, running her eyes along the hundreds of books in Anna’s collection. There was so much here–history, archaeology, architecture, art, science. ‘Some of this stuff is so interesting,’ she murmured. ‘One day when I get time…’ She remembered she had a little book of Post-it notes in her bag, still out in the car. ‘Excuse me for a moment, will you? I want to write down a few of these titles.’ She trotted out of the room.
Anna moved close to Ben. ‘Come, I’d like to show you something,’ she said. He stood up, and she took his arm. Her hand was warm on his skin.
‘What do you want to show me?’ he said.
She smiled. ‘This way.’
The two of them walked out of the french window and down the long garden. At the bottom, a rocky path led up to the open countryside and after they had scrambled up a short slope Ben found himself looking out at a magnificent sunset panorama. He could see for miles across the mountains of the Languedoc, and above it all the sky was a cathedral-rich canvas of shimmering golds, reds and blues.
Anna pointed across the valley and showed him two distant castle ruins, serrated black outlines perched miles apart against the sky on high mountain peaks. ‘Cathar strongholds,’ she said, shielding her eyes against the falling sun. ‘Destroyed by the Albigensian crusade in the thirteenth century. The Cathars and their ancestors built castles, churches, monasteries, all across the Languedoc. They were all crushed by the Pope’s army.’ She paused. ‘I’ll tell you something, Ben. Some specialist historians have believed that these places have a deeper significance.’
He shook his head. ‘What kind of deeper significance?’
She smiled. ‘Nobody knows for sure. It was said that somewhere in the Languedoc there lies an ancient secret. That the relative positions of Cathar sites give the clue to finding it, and that whoever could solve the puzzle would discover great wisdom and power.’ Her dark hair was blowing in the gentle evening breeze. She looked beautiful. ‘Ben,’ she said tentatively. ‘You haven’t told me the whole truth. I think you’re looking for something. Am I right? Something secret.’
He hesitated. ‘Yes.’
Her almond eyes sparkled. ‘I thought so. And it has something to do with alchemy, with the legend of Fulcanelli?’
He nodded, and couldn’t help but smile at her razor-sharp perceptiveness. ‘I was looking for a manuscript,’ he admitted. ‘I think Klaus Rheinfeld knew about it, and I’d been hoping he could help me. But it looks like I was wrong.’
‘Perhaps I can help you,’ she said softly. ‘We must meet again. I think we could work together on this.’
He said nothing for a moment. ‘I’d like that,’ he said.
Roberta had come back from the car to find the house empty. She heard their voices carrying on the wind, and looked out of the french window. She saw Ben and Anna climbing back down the slope towards the garden. She could hear Anna’s chiming laugh. Her slim figure was silhouetted against the sunset. Ben offered her a hand. Was it her imagination? They seemed to be getting on very well.
What do you expect? Anna’s gorgeous. She’d be hard for any man to resist.
‘What kind of thoughts are these, Ryder,’ she said to herself. ‘What do you care, anyway?’
But then she realized. She did care. A terrible thing was happening to her. She was falling in love with Ben Hope.
Ben was in a sombre mood the next day as he wandered aimlessly through the dusty streets of Saint-Jean. His search had slammed into a dead end.
When he’d phoned Fairfax two days earlier he’d held back from mentioning that the manuscript might have been destroyed. He’d been hoping that Anna Manzini would be able to tell him something positive. That had been a stupid false impression to give the old man. Now everything looked black, time was dragging by and he had no idea where to turn next.
In a square next to an ageing World War One memorial statue was the village bar, a one-roomed affair with a tiny terrace where leathery old men sat like reptiles in the sun, or played games of pétanque in the empty square. Ben walked in, and the clientele–all three of them, playing cards in a shady corner–turned to look as the tall, blond stranger appeared. He nodded them a sullen greeting, which was returned with grunts. At the bar, the proprietor was sitting reading the newspaper. The place smelled of stale beer and smoke.
He noticed a Missing Persons poster on the wall.
HAVE YOU SEEN THIS BOY? MARC DUBOIS, AGE 15.
He sighed. Another one. That’s what I should be doing–helping kids like that. Not hanging around here wasting time.
Leaning on the bar, he lit a cigarette and asked for his flask to be refilled. They only had one type of whisky in the place, an especially vile fluid the colour of horse urine. He didn’t care. He ordered an extra double measure of the same and sat on a bar-stool, gazing into space and sipping the burning liquor.
Maybe it’s time to give up this fiasco, he was thinking. This job had never been right for him, from the start. He should have stayed objective. His first impression had been right. Fairfax, like all desperate people who want to save someone they love, had fallen victim to his wishful thinking. So there was a good chance the Fulcanelli manuscript was lost–so what? It was probably all bullshit anyway. There wasn’t any great secret. Of course there wasn’t. It was all a fantasy, all myths and riddles and fodder for gullible dreamers.
But could he say that Anna Manzini was a gullible dreamer?
Who knows–maybe she is?
He slid his empty glass along the bar, tossed some coins on the pitted wooden surface and asked for another double. He’d already finished that one, and started on another, when the three old card players in the corner looked round at the sound of running footsteps.
Roberta burst in, looking flushed and excited.
‘Thought I’d find you here,’ she said. She was out of breath, as though she’d run all the way from Pascal’s cottage. ‘Listen, Ben, I’ve had an idea.’
He was in no mood for her enthusiasm. ‘Tell me about it some other time,’ he muttered. ‘I’m thinking.’ He was–thinking about picking up his phone and telling Fairfax it was over. He’d wire him back his money, give up and go home to his beach.
‘Listen, this is important,’ she insisted. ‘Come on, let’s go outside. No, don’t finish that. You look like you’ve had enough already. I want you with a clear head.’
‘Go away, Roberta. I’m busy.’
‘Yeah, busy drinking yourself into a stupor with that gut-rot.’
‘Gut-rot is what happens to you when you drink it,’ he corrected her. He pointed at the glass. ‘This is rot-gut’, he said emphatically.
‘Either way,’ she grunted impatiently. ‘Look at you. Call yourself a professional?’