coincidence of the picture? The happenstance of the address? She wanted to go in.
She edged forward again. Leading up from the lobby was a narrow flight of stairs, the treads painted alternately red and green. At the top she could see a second door just visible through a covering of yellow wooden beads. Sky blue. So much colour.
She'd read somewhere that certain people saw music in their heads in colour. Symesthesia? Synesthesia? Was that it?
It was cool inside. Air trickled from a rattling old fan above the door. Particles of dust were dancing in the sluggish October air. If she really wanted some fin de siècle atmosphere, then what better than to have the same kind of experience that might have been on offer, right here, a hundred years ago? It's research really.
For a moment, everything hung in the balance. It seemed as if the building itself was holding its breath. Waiting, watching. Holding the flyer in her hand, like some kind of talisman, Meredith stepped inside. Then she put her foot on the bottom step and went up.
Many hundreds of miles to the south, in the beech woods above Rennes-les-Bains, a sudden breath of wind lifted the copper leaves on the branches of the ancient trees. The sound of a long-dead sigh, like fingers moving lightly over a keyboard.
Enfin.
The shifting of light upon the turn of a different stair.
CHAPTER 13 DOMAINE DE LA CADE
'Abbé, et merci à vous pour votre gentillesse. A tout à l'heure.' Julian Lawrence held the phone in his hand a moment, and then replaced the receiver. Tanned and in good shape, he looked younger than his fifty years. He pulled a package of cigarettes from his pocket, flipped open his Zippo, and lit a Gauloise. The vanilla smoke wreathed up into the still air.
The arrangements for this evening's service were in place. Now, provided his nephew Hal behaved appropriately, everything should go off satisfactorily. He sympathised with the boy, but it was awkward that Hal had been asking questions around the town about his father's accident. Stirring things up. He had even approached the coroner's office to query the cause of death on the certificate. Since the officer in charge of the case in the police commissariat in Couiza was a friend of Julian's - and the only witness to the incident itself was the local drunk - the matter had been gently dealt with. Hal's questions had been seen as the understandable reaction of a grieving son rather than comments of substance.
All the same, Julian would be glad when the boy had gone. There was nothing to unearth, but Hal was digging and, sooner or later, in a small town like Rennes-les-Bains, the gossip would start. No smoke without fire. Julian was banking on the fact that, once the funeral was over, Hal would leave the Domaine de la Cade and head back to England.
Julian and his brother Seymour, Hal's father, had jointly acquired the place four years before. Seymour, the elder by ten years and bored after retirement from the City, was obsessed with profit forecasts and spreadsheets and how to grow the business. Julian's preoccupation was different.
From the first time he'd travelled through the region in 1997, he had been intrigued by rumours attaching to Rennes-les-Bains in general, the Domaine de la Cade in particular. The whole area was riddled with mystery and legends: allegations of buried treasure, conspiracies, cock-and-bull stories of secret societies, anything and everything, from the Templars and the Cathars back to the Visigoths, the Romans and the Celts. The one story that had caught Julian's imagination, though, was more contemporary. Written accounts, dating back to the end of the last century, of a deconsecrated sepulchre set within the grounds, a deck of Tarot cards believed to have been painted as some kind of treasure map, and the fire that had destroyed part of the original house.
The region around Couiza and Rennes-le-Château in the fifth century AD had been at the heart of the Visigoth empire. This
She edged forward again. Leading up from the lobby was a narrow flight of stairs, the treads painted alternately red and green. At the top she could see a second door just visible through a covering of yellow wooden beads. Sky blue. So much colour.
She'd read somewhere that certain people saw music in their heads in colour. Symesthesia? Synesthesia? Was that it?
It was cool inside. Air trickled from a rattling old fan above the door. Particles of dust were dancing in the sluggish October air. If she really wanted some fin de siècle atmosphere, then what better than to have the same kind of experience that might have been on offer, right here, a hundred years ago? It's research really.
For a moment, everything hung in the balance. It seemed as if the building itself was holding its breath. Waiting, watching. Holding the flyer in her hand, like some kind of talisman, Meredith stepped inside. Then she put her foot on the bottom step and went up.
Many hundreds of miles to the south, in the beech woods above Rennes-les-Bains, a sudden breath of wind lifted the copper leaves on the branches of the ancient trees. The sound of a long-dead sigh, like fingers moving lightly over a keyboard.
Enfin.
The shifting of light upon the turn of a different stair.
CHAPTER 13 DOMAINE DE LA CADE
'Abbé, et merci à vous pour votre gentillesse. A tout à l'heure.' Julian Lawrence held the phone in his hand a moment, and then replaced the receiver. Tanned and in good shape, he looked younger than his fifty years. He pulled a package of cigarettes from his pocket, flipped open his Zippo, and lit a Gauloise. The vanilla smoke wreathed up into the still air.
The arrangements for this evening's service were in place. Now, provided his nephew Hal behaved appropriately, everything should go off satisfactorily. He sympathised with the boy, but it was awkward that Hal had been asking questions around the town about his father's accident. Stirring things up. He had even approached the coroner's office to query the cause of death on the certificate. Since the officer in charge of the case in the police commissariat in Couiza was a friend of Julian's - and the only witness to the incident itself was the local drunk - the matter had been gently dealt with. Hal's questions had been seen as the understandable reaction of a grieving son rather than comments of substance.
All the same, Julian would be glad when the boy had gone. There was nothing to unearth, but Hal was digging and, sooner or later, in a small town like Rennes-les-Bains, the gossip would start. No smoke without fire. Julian was banking on the fact that, once the funeral was over, Hal would leave the Domaine de la Cade and head back to England.
Julian and his brother Seymour, Hal's father, had jointly acquired the place four years before. Seymour, the elder by ten years and bored after retirement from the City, was obsessed with profit forecasts and spreadsheets and how to grow the business. Julian's preoccupation was different.
From the first time he'd travelled through the region in 1997, he had been intrigued by rumours attaching to Rennes-les-Bains in general, the Domaine de la Cade in particular. The whole area was riddled with mystery and legends: allegations of buried treasure, conspiracies, cock-and-bull stories of secret societies, anything and everything, from the Templars and the Cathars back to the Visigoths, the Romans and the Celts. The one story that had caught Julian's imagination, though, was more contemporary. Written accounts, dating back to the end of the last century, of a deconsecrated sepulchre set within the grounds, a deck of Tarot cards believed to have been painted as some kind of treasure map, and the fire that had destroyed part of the original house.
The region around Couiza and Rennes-le-Château in the fifth century AD had been at the heart of the Visigoth empire. This
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