It looks wrong on her hand.
Alice found herself immersed deep in a past she did not remember. The vellum should be dry and brittle to the touch, like dying leaves on the tree in autumn. But she could almost feel the leather ties between her own fingers, soft and flexible, even though they ought to be stiff through the long years of disuse, as if the memory was written in her bones and blood. She remembered how the covers shimmered, shifted colour under the light.
She could see the image of a tiny gold chalice, no bigger than a ten pence piece, shining like a jewel on the heavy cream parchment. On the following pages, lines of ornate script. She heard Marie-Cecile speaking into the gloom and, at the same time, behind her eyes she saw the red and blue and yellow and gold letters. The Book of Potions.
Images of two-dimensional figures, animals and birds flooded into her head. She could picture a sheet of parchment, thicker than the other pages but different – translucent, yellow. It was papyrus, the weave of the leaves apparent. It was covered with identical symbols as at the beginning of the book, except this time tiny drawings of plants, numbers and measurements were interspersed between them.
She was thinking of the second book now, the Book of Numbers. On the first page was a picture of the labyrinth itself, rather than a chalice.
Without realising she was doing so, Alice looked around the chamber once more, this time seeing the space through different eyes, unconsciously verifying its shape and proportions.
She looked back to the altar. Her memory of the third book was the strongest. Shimmering in gold on the first page was the ankh, the ancient Egyptian symbol of life, familiar now the world over. Between the leather-covered wooden boards of the Book of Words were blank pages, like a white guard surrounding the papyrus buried in the centre of the book. The hieroglyphs were dense and unyielding. Row after row of tightly drawn symbols covered the entire sheet. There were no splashes of colour, no indication of where one word ended and the next began.
Concealed within this was the incantation.
Alice opened her eyes and sensed Audric looking at her.
A look of understanding flashed between them. The words were coming back to her, slipping quietly from the dusty corners of her mind. She was momentarily transported out of herself, for a fraction of a second, looking down on the scene from above.
Eight hundred years ago Alais had said these words. And Audric had heard them.
The truth will make us free.
Nothing had changed, yet she was suddenly no longer afraid.
A sound from the altar drew her attention. The stillness passed and the world of the present came rushing back. And, with it, fear.
Marie-Cecile took up the earthenware bowl, small enough to cup between her hands. From beside it she took a small knife with a dull worn blade. She raised her long, white arms above her head.
“Dintrar,‘ she called. Enter.
Francois-Baptiste stepped from the darkness of the tunnel. His eyes swept around his surroundings like a searchlight, skimming over Audric, then Alice, then coming to rest on Will. Alice saw the triumph on the boy’s face and knew that Francois-Baptiste had inflicted the injuries on Will.
I’ll not let you hurt him this time.
Then his gaze moved on. He paused a moment at the sight of the three books laid out in a row on the altar, surprised or relieved, Alice couldn’t tell, then his eyes came to rest on the face of his mother.
Despite the distance, Alice could feel the tension between them.
A flicker of a smile played across Marie-Cecile’s face as she stepped down from the altar, the knife and the bowl in her hands. Her robe shimmered like spun moonshine in the flickering light of the candles as she moved through the chamber. Alice could smell the subtle trace of her perfume in the air, light beneath the heavy aroma of burning oil in the lamp.
Francois-Baptiste too started to move. He came down the steps until he was standing behind Will.
Marie-Cecile stopped in front of him and whispered something to Will, too quiet for Alice to hear. Although Francois-Baptiste’s smile stayed in place, she saw the anger in his face as he leaned forward, lifted Will’s bound hands and offered his arm to Marie-Cecile.
Alice flinched as Marie-Cecile made a single incision between Will’s wrist and elbow. He winced and she could see the shock in his eyes, but he made no sound.
Marie-Cecile held the bowl to catch five drops of blood.
She repeated the process with Audric, then came to a halt in front of Alice. She could see the excitement in Marie-Cecile’s face as she traced the point of the blade along the white underside of Alice’s arm, along the line of the old wound. Then with the precision of a surgeon with a scalpel, she inserted the knife into the skin and pressed the tip down, slowly, until her scar split open again.
The pain took her by surprise, an ache, not a sharp sensation. Alice felt warm at first, then quickly cold and numb. She stared mesmerised by the drops of blood falling, one by one, into the oddly pale mixture in the bowl.
Then it was over. Francois-Baptiste released her and followed his mother towards the altar. Marie-Cecile repeated the procedure with her son, then positioned herself between the altar and the labyrinth.
She placed the bowl in the centre and drew the knife across her own skin, watching as her own blood trickled down her arm.
The mingling of bloods.
A flash of understanding went through Alice. The Grail belonged to all faiths and none. Christian, Jew, Moslem. Five guardians, chosen for their character, their deeds, not their bloodline. All were equal.
Alice watched Marie-Cecile reach forward and slip something out from between the pages of each of the books in turn. She held up the third one. A sheet of paper. No, not paper, papyrus. As Marie-Cecile held it up to the light, the weave of the reeds was clear. The symbol was clear.
The ankh, the symbol of life.
Marie-Cecile lifted the bowl to her lips and drank. When it was empty, she replaced the bowl with both hands and looked out over the chamber until she had fixed Audric with her gaze. It seemed to Alice she was challenging him to make her stop.
Now she pulled the ring from her thumb and turned to the stone labyrinth, disturbing the hushed air. As the lamplight flickered behind her, sending shadows leaping up the walls, Alice saw, in the shadows in the carved rock, two shapes that she had never before noticed.
Hidden within the outline of the labyrinth, the shadow of the shape of the ankh and the outline of a cup were clearly identifiable.
Alice heard a sharp click, as if a key was being inserted into a lock. For a moment, nothing seemed to happen. Then, from deep in the wall, there was the noise of something shifting, stone against stone.
Marie-Cecile stepped back. Alice saw that a small opening a little bigger than the books had been revealed at the centre of the labyrinth. A compartment.
Words and phrases sprang into her mind, Audric’s explanation and her own investigations all mixed up together.
At the centre of the labyrinth is enlightenment, at the centre lies understanding. Alice thought about the Christian pilgrims walking the Chemin de Jerusalem in the nave of Chartres Cathedral, walking the ever decreasing spirals of the labyrinth in search of illumination.
Here, in the Grail labyrinth, the light – literally – was at the heart of things.
Alice watched as Marie-Cecile took the lantern from the altar and hung it in the alcove. It was a perfect fit. Straight away it brightened and the chamber was flooded with light.
Marie-Cecile lifted a papyrus from one of the books on the altar and slid it into a slot at the front of the alcove. A little of the lamplight was lost and the cave darkened.