The Lake of Learning Read online

  La Vertat.

  The Truth.

  Which meant nothing to him. It carried no value. No importance. No significance. The whole thing heretical. All that mattered was that it was important to Simone. She’d spent her life searching for it.

  And now it lay in reach.

  But she would not have it.

  Simone followed the trail through a tangled mass of leaves and shrubs. The sun slow-baked the ground, casting hard-edged shadows, coating their arms and faces in a thin coat of perspiration. Surely the trail was popular with hikers, but not today. She and Vitt were alone.

  Or were they?

  Could Roland be out there? Watching? She could not underestimate his resentment. Not this time. That was why she’d brought her gun, safely tucked in her backpack, ready, just in case. She would not be led to slaughter like her ancestors.

  Far from that, in fact.

  They kept walking, deviating from the path, heading for the valley’s northwest corner. What had once surely been a steep slope, elevating land from water, had been shaved down to a slope that descended on all sides from a small wooded promontory. They climbed the incline of soft soil and scree and crested the lip of the rock shelf. The rhythmic tapping of a woodpecker greeted their arrival. Birch, pine, and scrub were thickly sown across the shelf.

  “Let’s spread out and see what there is to find,” Simone said.

  They both dropped their backpacks and headed off in separate directions. Five minutes later she spotted a dove carved at the base of a gray boulder, its body and wings visible in the stone’s discoloration. Time had eroded most of it away, but there was enough to see one thing.

  The image had been prepared upside down.

  She was about to call out when Vitt yelled, “I have something.”

  She hustled over and saw another inverted dove at the base of another boulder.

  “These are carved all over this region,” she told Vitt. “But none are upside down. And if you were not privy to what we know, that anomaly would not be important.” She gently traced the image on the gray rock face. “We have two landmarks.”

  And she told Vitt about the other.

  They were close. She could feel it. The Cathars had been a simple people, possessed of simple thoughts. The whole idea of their religion was to keep it simple. So this quest would not be complicated.

  “I’d say my dove and yours are about twenty meters apart,” Simone noted. “Mark this with something we can see, and I’ll go do the same.”

  She hustled back and laid a branch from the ground atop the boulder. Then she fanned out and, a few minutes later, found another chunk of rock with another upside-down dove down near its base partially buried in the ground.

  She’d almost missed it.

  Vitt had headed off in the opposite direction. She played a hunch and called out, telling her to explore to the right of her initial find. She watched as Vitt followed the instruction.

  “Come about parallel to me,” she said. “But stay in a line off the first dove you found.”

  Vitt seemed to adjust her course. If she was right, there should be another marker near where her companion was looking.

  “I have it,” Vitt called out.

  “Mark it where I can see it.”

  Vitt did and she tagged her boulder too. A quick look through the trees showed that the four doves formed a rough square, about twenty meters long on each side.

  “Stay where you are,” she said to Vitt.

  And she hustled back to the first dove she’d found.

  Now Vitt stood diagonal to her.

  “Walk to me,” she called out.

  She did the same, avoiding some of the underbrush and trees, but staying in a relatively straight line to Vitt.

  The two women met.

  “You think the four markers lead to something in the center?” Vitt asked.

  “I do. We need to be close to the line formed by the other two markers.”

  They readjusted their meeting spot, trying to intersect that imaginary line.

  “This is it,” Vitt said. “Or as close as we can get without string.”

  “Arnaut had no string.”

  She stared down at the ground. Hard. Solid. A layer of scree and soil above a rock base. Together they cleared off the surface with their boots. Vitt hustled back to where their backpacks were located and returned with them, finding a collapsible shovel and starting to scrape away.

  Then she saw it.

  A notch in the stone, extending in both directions along a roughly straight line. Not deep. But there. And noticeable. Vitt stopped her efforts and concentrated on the line, using the shovel blade to scrape it clean and reveal more.

  A corner came into view.

  She stared at Vitt and said, “That’s not natural.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  Chapter 19

  Beláncourt approached the promontory from the opposite side that Simone and Vitt had used. The sun was slowly reaching its full burning height. He climbed the incline slow and careful, making no noise and finding cover as soon as he reached the top. He could see the two women as they moved through the trees and brush, hearing the excitement in their voices. Then he’d listened to digging and the shrill sound of a metal blade sliding across hard rock. He decided not to tempt fate and approach any closer. Instead, he’d wait to see what happened. He had no direct line of sight on Simone or Vitt, but they were in front of him, about fifty meters away, among the foliage.

  He recalled listening to Simone years ago talk about the mythical Lake of Learning. She’d always believed that the Cathar who escaped Montségur was a messenger of God and that divine providence had guarded his every move. Proof of that conclusion was the fact that what he’d hidden away had remained hidden for eight centuries. Of course, few had ever really gone in search of it, and this whole place, for the past sixty years, had been a protected national park. A bit difficult to engage in a full-scale treasure hunting expedition. Yet Simone and Vitt were here, among the mountains and trees, zeroed in on one particular spot. Why? Had the Book of Hours truly revealed the Path to Light? Was the whole thing real?

  He hoped so.

  Because he’d derive no greater pleasure than in depriving Simone of its joy.

  Cassiopeia stared at what her shovel had revealed.

  An indentation in the rock floor that formed an oblong-shaped square, about a meter wide on each side. She stamped her boot atop its center. Nothing moved. She tapped it with her shovel. No hollow sound. The indentation itself had long filled in and was more a shallow u-shaped groove in the rock than a true seam.

  The Cathar version of X marks the spot?

  “Is it a way down?” Simone asked.

  An excellent question.

  “This was an island. Once a big limestone rock sticking out of a lake.” She glanced around at the mount. “It’s possible that the way to go is down.”

  She’d anticipated the contingency that whatever they were after might be buried, particularly in a cave, as southern France was littered with them.

  “Let’s find out.”

  Inside her backpack Cassiopeia found the blasting caps she’d brought. At the castle site they were sometimes used to loosen stone at the quarry, one of the few violations of the only-tools-and-materials-from-the-past rule. She returned and used the shovel to chip away four small holes at the corners of the indentation. The caps came with their own detonators that were radio controlled. Not overly powerful explosives, but concentrated and quite effective. She slipped a cap into each hole and filled in the cavities with rock and soil.

  “Let’s get back,” she said.

  And they retreated twenty meters away, seeking cover behind a large boulder. She activated the transmitter and hoped there was nobody nearby to hear anything, especially one of the park rangers.

  She pressed the button.

  Beláncourt Felt the rock quake under his feet and debris flew out in every direction. He’d wondered what Vitt
had been doing with all the digging.

  Now he knew.

  It took a few moments for the dust to settle. He was still on the incline, near the crest, safe behind a cluster of rock, able to see what was happening. Vitt and Simone flitted in and out among the trees. He calmed his breathing, listened beyond his adrenaline, and approached where the explosion had occurred.

  What was happening?

  Cassiopeia stared in astonishment at the hole in the ground.

  The blasting caps had shattered the stone, which was apparently some sort of plug over an underground cavity, revealing a black yaw about three quarters of a meter in diameter. She bent down, lifted a small chunk of rock, and dropped it into the hole. It hit the ground a few seconds later.

  “That’s not all that deep,” she said. “I brought rope.”

  She found a tight coil of thick nylon and tied one end to the nearest tree. She then tossed the rest into the hole. She’d brought along two flashlights.

  “Let me go first,” Simone said.

  She was going to argue, but decided it would not do any good, so she simply nodded. Before Simone stepped into the hole, she shined her flashlight down. The bottom appeared about four meters below.

  Simone slipped on a pair of thick leather gloves.

  This woman had come prepared.

  But who was she to judge?

  She’d brought along her own gloves.

  Simone sat on the edge of the opening and gripped the rope, working her way into the hole. It only took a few seconds for her to be on solid earth again.

  “It’s an easy drop,” Simone called up.

  She grabbed both backpacks and dropped them down.

  Before descending, she scanned the surroundings one last time.

  All seemed quiet.

  Hopefully, it would stay that way.

  Beláncourt watched as Cassiopeia Vitt disappeared into the ground, following Simone. The explosion had apparently exposed a way down into the earth. There’d been some noise as the charges exploded, but nothing ear-shattering, unless someone had been really close by.

  He debated what to do next.

  Follow?

  That could be a problem.

  The confines below could be tight and, with only one way in and out, exposure could be an issue. But the time had come to repay Simone. She needed to feel the hurt and pain he’d felt all these past years. She had to know that there was a price to be paid for murder. Governments called it capital punishment. He saw it as simple retribution. Unfortunately, Cassiopeia Vitt found herself in the middle.

  Not a good place.

  But that was not his problem.

  Chapter 20

  Cassiopeia followed Simone down a narrow fissure cut through limestone that led away from the former-island toward the nearby cliff face. The dank and moldy air smelled of decay and slid across her skin as heavy as a towel. She wondered how long it had been since a human had walked here.

  If ever.

  Simone seemed unfazed and unafraid, plunging into the darkness, following the beam of her flashlight. For an academician this woman had spunk.

  “Maybe we should slow down,” she said.

  She’d been in enough situations like this to know that an easy way in most times meant trouble. There could be boobytraps. Danger. But she told herself that this could be a Cathar site, and Cathars were not violent.

  The tunnel ended at a gallery with four other openings out, like fingers from the palm of a hand.

  Simone stopped.

  Overhead the vault was studded with the mutilated stumps of stalactites, jarred free by disturbances in the ground, their remnants scattered across the floor as rock and gravel. Cassiopeia scanned the walls with her light and was stunned at what she saw.

  She counted over fifty wall paintings.

  Bison. Horses. Ponies. Faces.

  She stepped close, bent down near the floor, and saw the outline of a little horse, barely five centimeters long, finely executed in a flat red tint with engraved outlines. Its careful technique and disproportionately long neck and slender limbs brought to mind other Paleolithic paintings she’d seen in other French and Spanish caves.

  She studied three grotesque human forms, also painted in red outline on the concave wall of a little niche. The figure of a man, the head in profile, the rest of the body facing to the front. A ridge of rock formed an enormous vertical phallus. She smiled at the artist’s ingenuity. The second was a silhouette outlined in black with rounded back and pendent arms. It had horns and a tail, bringing to mind a sorcerer. The third figure, surrounded by stalagmites, showed a long head with retreating forehead and projecting jaw. All of the images, human and animal, were reduced to their essential traits.

  Simone seemed fascinated by the display too. “Isn’t it odd how they so carefully drew animals, but were so careless with people?”

  She agreed. “I’ve always thought them intentionally distorted. Mere masks of reality. I never believed that men who could draw animals in so masterly a fashion were incapable of doing the same with people.”

  “You’ve seen other paintings?”

  “In several caves. Near Lascaux, Font-de-Gaume, Les Combarelles, and around Monte Castillo. This area is loaded with them.”

  All were evidence from tens of thousands of years ago, when Stone Age humans occupied the Pyrenees and left behind a record of their world. Some were monochrome, usually in black or red. While most were polychrome, drawing on several colors with a mixture of techniques. Some were engraved, made by cutting lines into the rock surface with a flint or tool. Others were mere sketches with charcoal or manganese.

  “These are some of the best I’ve ever seen,” she said to Simone. “Incredible. They’ve been here since prehistoric times, undisturbed.”

  “Except by the Cathars, who chose this as their vault.”

  The drip, drip of water, eerie like a half-human cry, continued to break the silence. From which offshoot it originated was hard to say.

  “We need to focus on why we’re here,” Simone said. “Though these drawings are, indeed, a significant archeological find.”

  “Okay. What now?”

  Beláncourt used the rope to descend into the black hole, finding the bottom. A tunnel stretched ahead into blackness, not a thing visible beyond the light seeping down from above.

  He reached beneath his jacket and found the gun that he’d brought along, safe in a shoulder holster. In France, to own a gun you first had to acquire a hunting or sporting license, which required a psychological evaluation. A pain, but necessary if you wanted to hunt. He’d managed to fool the examiner and was easily approved. Pistols and revolvers were not allowed ever, but that didn’t stop people from carrying them. He’d owned several for years, along with his hunting rifles. Mainly for personal protection, since a man in his situation was susceptible to terrorists or kidnappers.

  Or at least that’s what he told people.

  He gripped the gun in his left hand.

  Then advanced ahead into the dense realm of blackness.

  Simone tried to contain herself. She’d imagined this moment for a long time. Now she was here. Think. Answer Vitt’s question.

  What now?

  With her light she surveyed the walls and the four other openings that led out.

  And saw them.

  Etched into limestone.

  Four letters.

  From the Cathar code.

  “You see that?” she asked Vitt.

  “I do. They’re similar to what’s in the manuscript, on the page that led us here.”

  She approached one of the etchings. Crude. Seemingly done in haste. Not totally complete, but enough for the letter to be clear. She reached into her pocket and found her phone. She’d recorded several images of the manuscript page.

  Just in case.

  Between the upside down doves and the words that translated to lake and learning, along the Path to Light, was one random symbol from the chart.

  Sh
e glanced up at the walls.

  And saw it.

  To her right.

  The same letter, marking one of the exits.

  “It’s down that way,” she said. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  Beláncourt stood in the blackness just before where the tunnel entered a large chamber, one where Simone and Vitt now stood. They both held flashlights and were studying the walls.

  He listened to their conversation and to Simone’s declaration of where they should head next. If they decided to retreat back his way they’d run right into him. His grip on the gun tightened as he watched them both, with packs shouldered to their backs, disappear into another tunnel, their lights fading to black. So far, he’d not used any light. Instead, he’d felt his way ahead in the darkness, using their lights in the distance as beacons. Now he stood in absolute blackness. To get across to where they’d gone he’d have to use some illumination.

  So he found his phone.

  And lit the screen.

  Then followed.

  Chapter 21

  Cassiopeia emerged from the tunnel right behind Simone, and they both stared up in amazement. They’d entered a large chamber, its walls pregnant with age and damp towering up thirty meters. The path to here had taken them down an incline, deeper into the ground, then through a natural stone archway. The chamber also accommodated water that entered on one side and exited on the other, confined to a channel, the stream’s flow slow and steady and without a sound. If not for their flashlights, they would have never known the water was there.

  There were no other exits.

  “This can’t be the end,” Simone said.

  “Don’t forget,” Cassiopeia said, “all this was set in motion over eight hundred years ago. What we’re looking at might be entirely different from then. There’s been a lot of geological change.”