Part 28 (1/2)

'Probably not your colleagues.' Doug threw the plank on to the lakebed. Mud spattered and slopped around it. 'They wouldn't want to get their feet dirty.'

They made their way out into the lake, jumping from stone to stone. As they came closer to the church, Ellie could see a brown line on the tower showing where the lake level had once been. Only the very top of the tower would have showed. She didn't like to think that where she was walking had once been under twenty feet of water.

'When did this happen?' she asked aloud.

'The Environmental Impact report was dated a year ago. It sounds as if the church was still submerged then.'

The last stone was still a little distance from the church. The ground around it looked higher than the surrounding lakebed: they decided to risk it. Mud squelched under their feet, but not far below they felt the hard grip of rock.

'It would have sunk if it wasn't built on something solid,' said Doug.

'But who built it?'

Doug had doubted the file when it called the church 'Norman', but in fact it was a textbook example: the crenellated square tower; the concentric arches around the door; the shark's-tooth pattern that made you feel as if you were being swallowed whole. The door had rotted long ago, though the rusted hinges still grasped out into s.p.a.ce. Through the opening, Ellie saw a twin row of columns leading towards a raised stone dais. It reminded her of the Monsalvat vault.

'It's so well preserved,' she marvelled. 'It must be almost a thousand years old, drowned for G.o.d knows how long. But all it needs is a new roof and a scrub.'

'The Normans built to last.'

They walked down the aisle towards the dais. She stared at the capitals on top of the columns. Submersion had softened the carvings to smooth ripples, like the contours of a seabed, but occasionally she could make out the shape of an eagle or a man or some fantastic beast. Were they important?

At the transept they found more carvings. Stone humps pushed out through the mud that caked the floor: at first she thought they might be fallen masonry, but they were too regular for that. When she bent closer, she could make out the vague outlines of human figures lying flat on their backs.

'Effigies,' said Doug. He pointed to one, better preserved than the others through some quirk of the stone or the water. 'That looks like a s.h.i.+eld across his chest. They were probably knights.'

'Could there be anything inside?'

They crouched and tried to lift the stone. Water had defaced the carvings so thoroughly there was nothing to grip: try as they might, they couldn't move it.

A noise sounded behind them: not a falling stone or a frightened bird, but the mechanical click of steel. They spun around.

Half-hidden against the mottled walls, a man in camouflage fatigues stood in the corner and pointed a rifle at them.

XL.

France, 1142 'A lot of people have been looking for you, Peter. You're lucky we found you first.'

I a.s.sume he's being ironic. My hands are shackled together above my head and looped over a hook in the wall; I have to stretch my toes just to touch the floor. My legs ache, my arms burn, and half my face is covered in dried blood. It still feels as if my head's split open.

My captor sees the disbelief on my face. 'You don't know what the others would have done.'

I squint through the one eye that isn't crusted with blood. I'm in a round stone chamber. Arched windows ring it, but all I can see beyond is bright blankness. Grey light drills into my skull. It feels high up, a tower. I can't see a door.

'Who are you?'

My interrogator steps back. He's an impressive man: tall, powerful and solid. He's probably ten years older than me, but there's a solemnity in his face that's ageless. He reminds me of my father.

'I belong to a holy order.'

I can't think of anyone more different from the reedy, G.o.d-bothering monks I lived with.

'A brotherhood. A group of men bound to protect a secret.'

I spit blood on the floor. 'What have I got do with it?'

'You've been part of it your whole life.' He folds his arms and stands inches away from me. Even dangled from my hook, I have to look up. His grey eyes hold me like a fist. 'Your father belonged to our order.'

He's too close, his voice too loud. I wish he would curtain off the windows the light's killing me.

'My father?'

'The men who killed him were after our secret. The secret we kept on the ile de Peche.'

I spin on my hook like a corpse on a gibbet. I know what he's going to say next.

'You helped Malegant take it. You betrayed yourself and everything your father stood for. You betrayed a secret we've kept for generations.'

My legs give way. I slump towards the floor, but the chains hold me back. They dig into my wrists my arms almost pull out of their sockets.

Strong hands clamp around my side and lift me upright. His strength is incredible he holds me as easily as a child.

'The treasure Malegant stole is beyond all reckoning. We've killed men for less, Peter of Camros.'

At last I realise where I've heard his voice before. 'That night in the fog. In the field of stones. That was you.'

'We heard about Malegant's plan and came to stop him. We were too late. All we found were corpses.'

The anguish in his voice cuts me worse than the chains. I can taste salt on my tongue: blood and sea air. No one escapes.

'After the attack, Malegant disappeared. You're the last man left alive to have seen him.'

'What happened to the others?'

He ignores me. 'Malegant's been looking for you the length and breadth of Christendom.'

'He knew my name,' I murmur.

'He knew everything about you. It amused him to involve you in his abomination. To rub the salt of your treachery in our wounds. Now that you've escaped, he's terrified you'll lead us back to him. That's why you're lucky we found you.'

He raises me up to unhook me, and lowers me gently on to the floor. I bury my head in my hands.

'Why don't you kill me?' I'm almost pleading with him.

'Because you've got what so many men never get the chance to atone for your sins.'

Troyes My heart skips a beat as we pa.s.s through the Porte de Paris inside the city walls. The blood sings in my veins, like the morning of a battle: the world is full of brilliant colours and every sound, every movement, explodes on my senses. It makes me feel sick. I scan the crowds for faces from my nightmares, for the goldsmith with the silver hand, for Malegant.

I'm by myself, but not alone. Hugh, the knight who captured me, is ahead dressed as a Flemish cordwainer. Two more of his men are behind me, always watching. They could save their energy: there's no danger I'll try to escape. As long as Hugh's leading me to Malegant, to the secrets he stole from the ile de Peche and to some answers, I'll follow him into the jaws of h.e.l.l.

I go to the goldsmith's quarter and look for the shop under the sign of the eagle. The sign's changed it's a golden c.o.c.k now but the clerks are still sitting at their tables out the front, sliding coins across the chequered cloths like chess pieces. A fat man in an ermine cape oversees them, prowling back and forth, checking their counting. Wine splashes out of the cup in his hand as he barks his commands. I tell him I'm looking for Malegant de Mortain.