Sepulchre

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  PART I - Paris September 1891

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  PART II - Paris October 2007

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  PART III - Rennes-les-Bains September 1891

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  PART IV - Rennes-les-Bains October 2007

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  PART V - Domaine de la Cade September 1891

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  PART VI - Rennes-le-Château October 2007

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  PART VII - Carcassonne September-October 1891

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  CHAPTER 61

  CHAPTER 62

  PART VIII - Hôtel de la Cade October 2007

  CHAPTER 63

  CHAPTER 64

  CHAPTER 65

  CHAPTER 66

  CHAPTER 67

  CHAPTER 68

  PART IX - The Glade October-November 1891

  CHAPTER 69

  CHAPTER 70

  CHAPTER 71

  CHAPTER 72

  CHAPTER 73

  CHAPTER 74

  CHAPTER 75

  CHAPTER 76

  CHAPTER 77

  CHAPTER 78

  CHAPTER 79

  CHAPTER 80

  CHAPTER 81

  CHAPTER 82

  CHAPTER 83

  PART X - The Lake October 2007

  CHAPTER 84

  CHAPTER 85

  CHAPTER 86

  CHAPTER 87

  PART XI - The Sepulchre November 1891-October 1897

  CHAPTER 88

  CHAPTER 89

  CHAPTER 90

  CHAPTER 91

  CHAPTER 92

  CHAPTER 93

  CHAPTER 94

  CHAPTER 95

  CHAPTER 96

  CHAPTER 97

  PART XII - The Ruins October 2007

  CHAPTER 98

  CHAPTER 99

  CHAPTER 100

  CHAPTER 101

  CODA

  AUTHOR’S NOTE ON THE VERNIER TAROT

  Acknowledgements

  Praise for Kate Mosse

  Sepulchre

  ‘Mosse’s gifts for historical fiction are considerable ... Mosse does what good popular historical novelists do best - make the past enticingly otherworldly, while also claiming it as our own’ Independent

  ‘The Labyrinth author is back with another brilliantly absorbing story . . . Richly evocative and full of compelling twists and turns’ Red

  ‘The latest from the author of best-selling Labyrinth, this adventure will keep you engrossed’ Eve

  ‘Better than Labyrinth!’ Simon Mayo Book Show

  ‘Ghosts, duels, murders, ill-fated love and conspiracy . . . addictively readable’ Daily Mail

  ‘A sure, deft momentum . . . the secrets begin to slip out thick and fast’ Daily Express

  ‘The best of the Brits . . . a ghoul thriller . . . Where Mosse really wins is in the writing department. She’s the real role model there’ Mirror

  ‘Sepulchre is a compulsive, fantastical, historical yarn. Mosse’s skill lies in the precise nature of her storytelling’ Observer

  ‘[Mosse is] a powerful storyteller with an abundant imagination’ Daily Telegraph

  ‘Her narrative lyricism, beautifully drawn female characters and deft journey from the past to the present day are also a cut above’ Scotland on Sunday

  ‘Try this if you enjoyed The Da Vinci Code but fancy something a bit more meaty’ News of the World

  Labyrinth

  ‘Labyrinth might be described as the thinking woman’s summer reading, chick lit with A levels . . . Mosse wears her learning so lightly . . . In this she is reminiscent of those twin goddesses of popular historical fiction, Jean Plaidy and Mary Renault’ Guardian

  ‘Labyrinth is a reader’s Holy Grail, mixing legend, religion, history, past and present in a heart-wrenching, thrilling tale. Eat your heart out, Dan Brown, this is the real thing’

  Val McDermid

  ‘A lovely, intelligent novel of discovery and loss, generous in its historical scope and intimate in its tender details’

  Nicci Gerrard

  ‘This year’s gripping romp . . . Mosse’s novel is always intelligently written . . . Labyrinth will fulfil everyone’s expectations for it, not least because of Mosse’s passion for the subject matter and her narrative verve’ Observer

  ‘Labyrinth has all the ingredients of a summer blockbuster’

  Daily Mail

  ‘Skilfully blending the lives of two women - separated by 800 years, yet united by a common destiny - Labyrinth is a time-slip adventure story steeped in the legends, secrets, atmosphere and history of the Cathars, Carcassonne and the Pyrenees’ Daily Express

  ‘An elegantly written time-slip novel set in France. There’s medieval passion and modern-day conspiracy, all revolving around three hidden books’ Independent

  ‘Vast and engrossing’ Scotsman

  Kate Mosse is the author of five previous books, including the international bestseller Labyrinth. Translated into 37 languages and published in 40 countries, it also won the 2006 Richard and Judy Best Read award and was chosen as one of Waterstone’s Top 25 Novels of the past 25 years. Sepulchre will also be published in 37 languages in 40 countries. The Co-founder & Honorary Director of the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction and the Orange Broadband Award for New Writers, Kate lives with her family in West Sussex and Carcasonne. Find out more at www.sepulchre.co.uk.

  BY KATE MOSSE

  Novels

  Sepulchre

  Labyrinth

  Crucifix Lane

  Eskimo Kissing

  Sepulchre and Labyrinth are also available

  in audio editions from Orion.

  Non-Fiction

  Becoming a Mother

  The House: Behind the scenes at the

  Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

  Sepulchre

  KATE MOSSE

  Orion

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  An Orion ebook

  First published in Great Britain in 2007

  by Orion

  This paperback edition published in 2008

  by Orion Books Ltd,

  Orion House, 5 Upper St Martin’s Lane,

  London WC2H 9EA

  An Hachette
Livre UK company

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Copyright © Mosse Associates Ltd 2007

  The right of Kate Mosse to be identified as the author

  of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with

  the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

  reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,

  in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,

  photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior

  permission of the copyright owner.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance

  to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is

  available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978 1 4091 0834 4

  This ebook produced by Jouve, France

  The Orion Publishing Group’s policy is to use papers

  that are natural, renewable and recyclable products and

  made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging

  and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to

  the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  To my wonderful mother, Barbara Mosse,

  for that first piano

  And, as ever, my beloved Greg -

  for all things present, past and yet to come

  SÉPULTURE

  L’âme d’autrui est une forêt obscure où il faut marcher

  avec précaution.

  The soul of another is a dark forest in which one must

  tread carefully.

  Letter, 1891

  Claude Debussy

  The true Tarot is symbolism; it speaks no other language and offers no other signs.

  The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, 1910

  Arthur Edward Waite

  PRELUDE

  March 1891

  WEDNESDAY 25TH MARCH 1891

  This story begins in a city of bones. In the alleyways of the dead. In the silent boulevards, promenades and impasses of the Cimetière de Montmartre in Paris, a place inhabited by tombs and stone angels and the loitering ghosts of those forgotten before they are even cold in their graves.

  This story begins with the watchers at the gates, with the poor and the desperate of Paris who have come to profit from another’s loss. The gawping beggars and sharp-eyed chiffonniers, the wreath makers and peddlers of ex-voto trinkets, the girls twisting paper flowers, the carriages waiting with black hoods and smeared glass.

  The story begins with the pantomime of a burial. A small paid notice in Le Figaro advertised the place and the date and the hour, although few have come. It is a sparse crowd, dark veils and morning coats, polished boots and extravagant umbrellas to shelter from the unseasonable March rain.

  Léonie stands beside the open grave with her brother and their mother, her striking face obscured behind black lace. From the priest’s lips fall platitudes, words of absolution that leave all hearts cold and all emotion untouched. Ugly in his unstarched white necktie and vulgar buckled shoes and greasy complexion, he knows nothing of the lies and threads of deceit that have led to this patch of ground in the 18th arrondissement, on the northern outskirts of Paris.

  Léonie’s eyes are dry. Like the priest, she is ignorant of the events being played out on this wet afternoon. She believes she has come to attend a funeral, the marking of a life cut short. She has come to pay her last respects to her brother’s lover, a woman she never met in life. To support her brother in his grief.

  Léonie’s eyes are fixed upon the coffin being lowered into the damp earth where the worms and the spiders dwell. If she were to turn, quickly now, catching Anatole unawares, she would see the expression upon her beloved brother’s face and puzzle at it. It is not loss that swims in his eyes, but rather relief.

  And because she does not turn, she does not notice the man in grey top hat and frock coat, sheltering from the rain under the cypress trees in the furthest corner of the cemetery. He cuts a sharp figure, the sort of man to make une belle parisienne touch her hair and raise her eyes a little beneath her veils. His broad and strong hands, tailored in calfskin gloves, rest perfectly upon the silver head of his mahogany walking stick. They are such hands as might circle a waist, might draw a lover to him, might caress a pale cheek.

  He is watching, an expression of great intensity on his face. His pupils are black pinpricks in bright, blue eyes.

  The heavy thud of earth on the coffin lid. The priest’s dying words echo in the sombre air.

  ‘In nomine Patri, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.’

  He makes the sign of the cross, then walks away.

  Amen. So be it.

  Léonie lets fall her flower, picked freshly in the Parc Monceau this morning, a rose for remembrance. The bloom spirals down, down through the chill air, a flash of white slowly slipping from her black-gloved fingers.

  Let the dead rest. Let the dead sleep.

  The rain is falling more heavily. Beyond the high wrought-iron gates of the cemetery, the roofs, spires and domes of Paris are shrouded in a silver mist. It muffles the sounds of the rattling carriages in the Boulevard de Clichy and the distant shrieks of the trains pulling out from the Gare Saint-Lazare.

  The mourning party turns to depart the graveside. Léonie touches her brother’s arm. He pats her hand, lowers his head. As they walk out of the cemetery, more than anything Léonie hopes that this may be an end to it. That, after the last dismal months of persecution and tragedy, they might put it all behind them.

  That they might step out from the shadows and begin to live again.

  But now, many hundreds of miles to the south of Paris, something is stirring.

  A reaction, a connection, a consequence. In the ancient beech woods above the fashionable spa town of Rennes-les-Bains, a breath of wind lifts the leaves. Music heard, but not heard.

  Enfin.

  The word is breathed on the wind. At last.

  Compelled by the act of an innocent girl in a graveyard in Paris, something is moving within the stone sepulchre. Long forgotten in the tangled and overgrown alleyways of the Domaine de la Cade, something is waking. To the casual observer it would appear no more than a trick of the light in the fading afternoon, but for a fleeting instant, the plaster statues appear to breathe, to move, to sigh.

  And the portraits on the cards that lie buried beneath the earth and stone, where the river runs dry, momentarily seem to be alive. Fleeting figures, impressions, shades, not yet more than that. A suggestion, an illusion, a promise. The refraction of light, the movement of air beneath the turn of the stone stair. The inescapable relationship between place and moment.

  For in truth, this story begins not with bones in a Parisian graveyard, but with a deck of cards.

  The Devil’s Picture Book.

  PART I

  Paris September 1891

  CHAPTER 1

  PARIS

  WEDNESDAY 16TH SEPTEMBER 1891

  Léonie Vernier stood on the steps of the Palais Garnier, clutching her chatelaine bag and tapping her foot impatiently.

  Where is he?

  Dusk cloaked the Place de l’Opéra in a silky blue light.

  Léonie frowned. It was quite maddening. For almost one hour she had waited for her brother at the agreed rendezvous , beneath the impassive bronze gaze of the statues that graced the roof of the opera house. She had endured impertinent looks. She had watched the fiacres come and go, private carriages with their hoods up, public conveyances open to the elements, four-wheelers, gigs, all disembarking their passengers. A sea of black silk top hats and fine evening gowns from the showrooms of Maison Léoty and Charles Worth. It was an elegant first-night audience, a sophisticated crowd come to see and be seen.

  But no Anatole.

 
Once, Léonie thought she spied him. A gentleman of her brother’s bearing and proportions, tall and broad, and with the same measured step. From a distance, she even imagined his shining brown eyes and fine black moustache and raised her hand to wave. But then the man turned and she saw it was not he.

  Léonie returned her gaze to the Avenue de l’Opéra. It stretched diagonally all the way down to the Palais du Louvre, a remnant of fragile monarchy when a nervous French king sought a safe and direct route to his evening’s entertainment . The lanterns twinkled in the dusk, and squares of warm light spilled out through the lighted windows of the cafés and bars. The gas jets spat and spluttered.