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.”