Page 38 (1/2)

RENNES-LE-CHATEAU

10:40 AM

MALONE FOLLOWED MARK AS THEY APPROACHED THE CHURCH OF Saint Mary Magdalene Services were not held there during summer Sunday was apparently too popular a day for tourists, as a croas alreadypictures and recording video

"We’ll need a ticket," Mark said "Can’t enter this church without paying a fee"

Malone stepped into the Villa Bethanie and waited in a short line Back outside, he found Mark standing before a railed garden where the Visigoth pillar and statue of the Virgin that Royce Claridon had told him about stood He read the words PENITENCE, PENITENCE and MISSION 1891 carved on the pillar’s face

"The Notre Da at the statue "Sauniere was enthralled by Lourdes, which was the premier Marian vision of his tie center, so he built this garden and designed the statue and pillar"

Malone gestured at the people "He got his wish"

"True But not for the reason he iined I’m sure none of the people here today even knows that the pillar is not the original It’s a copy, put there years ago The original is difficult to read Weather took a toll It’s in the presbytery museum Which is true for a lot of this place Little is as it was in Sauniere’s time"

They approached the church’s ilded tympanum Malone read the words, TERRIBILIS EST LOCU ISTE From Genesis Terrible is this place He knew the tale of Jacob who drea from his sleep, uttered the words--Terrible is this place--then named what he’d dreaht occurred to him "But in the Old Testaious center"

"Precisely One more subtle clue Sauniere left behind There are evenrisen about thirty o Stephanie had taken her husband’s bedrooested that he and Mark head for the church He wanted to talk to the younger ive her tiht, and sooner or later her son was going to have to face her But he thought delaying that inevitability ood idea Geoffrey had offered to come, but Mark had told him no Malone had sensed that Mark Nelle wanted to speak to him alone, too

They entered the nave

The church was single-aisled with a high ceiling A hideous carved devil, crouching low, clothed in a green robe, and grireeted them

"It’s actually the demon Asmodeus, not the devil," Mark said

"Another e?"

"You apparently know him"

"A custodian of secrets, if I recall"

"You do Look at the rest of the fount"

Above the holy water stoup stood four angels, each one enacting a separate part of the sign of the cross Beneath them ritten, PAR CE SIGNE TU LE VAINCRAS Malone translated the French By this sign ye shall conquer hinificance of those words "That’s what Constantine said when he first fought his rival, Maxentius According to the story, he supposedly saw a cross on the sun with those words emblazoned beneath"

"But there’s one difference" Mark pointed to the carved letters "No hin ye shall conquer"

"Is that significant?"

"My father discovered an ancient Jewish legend that told of how the kingof the Temple of Solo forced to tote water--the one element he despised So this fount’s symbolism is not out of character But the him in the quotation was clearly added by Sauniere Some say the hier in the holy water and n of the cross, which Catholics do, the devil--hi of the word in the French phrase Par ce signe tu le vaincras The word le, ’him,’ represents the thirteenth and fourteenth letters 1314"

He recalled his reading from the Templar book "The year Jacques de Molay was executed"

"Coincidence?" Mark shrugged

About twenty people ery, which all oozed a cryptic allusion Stained-glass s lined the outer walls, lively froht sun, and he noticed the scenes Mary and Martha at Bethany Mary Magdalenethe risen Christ The resurrection of Lazarus

"It’s like a theological fun house," he whispered

"That’s one way of putting it"

Mark motioned to the checkerboard floor before the altar "The crypt entrance is there, just before that wrought-iron grille, hidden beneath the tiles A few years ago so radar survey of the building and s before the local authorities stopped them The results showed a subsurface anomaly beneath the altar that could be a crypt"

"No digging was done?"

"No way the locals would allow that Too many risks to the tourist industry"

He s Claridon said yesterday"

They settled into one of the pews

"One thing is certain," Mark said in a hushed tone "There’s no path to any treasure here But Sauniere did use this church to telegraph what he believed And fro I’ve read about the man, that act fits with his brazen personality"

Malone noticed that nothing around hi tainted any beauty Then another point beca was consistent Each artistic expression, from the statues, to the reliefs, to the as individual--without regard to theme, as if similarity would somehow be offensive

An odd collection of esoteric saints stared down at him with listless expressions, as if they, too, were earish detail St Roch displayed a wounded thigh St Gerdalene held an odd-shaped vase Try as he ht, Malone could not become comfortable He’d been inside many European churches and most exuded a deep sense of time and history This one seemed only to repel

"Sauniere directed every detail of the decoration," Mark was saying "Nothing was placed here without his approval" Mark pointed at one of the statues "St Anthony of Padua We pray to hiht that irony "Another e?"

"Clearly Check out the stations of the cross"

The carvings began at the pulpit, seven along the north wall, then another seven on the south Each was a colorful bas-relief that depicted a ht patina and cartoonish detail seee, aren’t they?" Mark asked "When they were installed in 1887, they were common for the area In Rocamadour, there’s a nearly identical set The Giscard House in Toulouse made those and these Much has been made of these stations Conspiratorialists claiins or are actually some sort of treasure es in them"

Malone noticed some of the curious aspects The black slave boy who held the wash bowl for Pilate The veil Pilate wore A tru sounded as Christ fell with the cross Three silver discs held aloft The child confronting Christ, wrapped in a Scottish tartan blanket A Ro dice for Christ’s cloak, the numbers three, four, and five visible on the faces

"Look at station fourteen," Mark said, gesturing toward the south wall

Malone stood and walked to the front of the church Candles flickered before the altar and he quickly noticed the bas-relief beneath A worotto before a cross formed by two branches A skull rested at the branch base and he iht in Avignon

He turned and studied the ie of the last station of the cross, nu carried by two men as three wo a fullcarried to the tomb," he whispered to Mark, who’d approached close behind hi to Roman law, a crucified man was never allowed burial That forainst the e for the accused to slowly die on the cross--death taking several days and for all to see, the body left for the carrion birds Yet supposedly Pilate granted Christ’s body to Joesph of Arimathea so that it could be buried Have you ever wondered why?"

"Not really"

"Others have Remember, Christ was killed on the eve of the Sabbath He could not, by law, be buried after the sun set" Mark pointed at station 14 "Yet Sauniere hung this representation, which clearly shows the body being carried after dark"

Malone still didn’t understand the significance

"What if instead of being carried into the to carried out, after dark?"

He said nothing

"Are you familiar with the Gnostic Gospels?" Mark asked

He was They were found along the upper Nile in 1945 Seven Bedouin field hands were digging when they ca it contained gold, they smashed the urn open and found thirteen leather-bound codices Not quite a book, but a close ancestor The neatly written, ragged-edged texts were all in ancient Coptic, most likely composed bythe fourth century They contained forty-six ancient Christianfrom the second century, the codices themselves fashioned in the fourth century So or discarded, but by 1947 the remainder were acquired by a local museum

He told Mark what he knew

"The answer as to why the monks buried the codices came from history," Mark said "In the fourth century Athanasius, the bishop of Alexandria, wrote a letter that was sent to all the churches in Egypt He decreed that only the twenty-seven books contained within the recently formulated New Testament could be considered Scripture All other heretical books must be destroyed None of the forty-six manuscripts in that urn conformed So the monks at the Pachomian monastery chose to hide the thirteen codices rather than burn thee in church leadership Of course, no change ever occurred Instead, Roman Christianity flourished But thank heaven the codices survived These are the Gnostic GospelsIn one, Peter’s, it is written, And as they declared what things they had seen, again they saw threeone"

Malone stared again at station 14 Twoone

"The Gnostic Gospels were extraordinary texts," Mark said "Many scholars now say the Gospel of Thomas, which was included in them, may be the closest we have to Christ’s actual words The early Christians were terrified of the Gnostics The word cae’ Gnostics were si Catholic version of Christianity eventually elis"

"And the Templars kept that alive?"

Mark nodded "The Gnostic Gospels, and several ians today have never seen, are contained in the abbey’s library The Templars were broad-minded when it came to Scripture There’s a lot to be learned from these so-called heretical works"