The Price of Glory (41 page)

The track continued through a pine forest along the side of the valley and though they made good progress they did not see the monastery again until they emerged just a couple of hundred feet below it and saw to their surprise that it was practically a ruin. Windows were broken, part of the roof collapsed, and the front door stood half open on rusted hinges.

They passed cautiously into the dim interior. Birds flitted about the roof beams and there were rat droppings on the stone floors. They went from room to room. Signs of desecration were everywhere. Statues beheaded or otherwise mutilated, religious paintings ripped from the walls and slashed with knives, books lying about the floors with their backs broken and the pages torn; a smell of damp and mould, but also something else … something that smelled suspiciously like coffee.

Nathan followed his nose to the chapel. It looked as if someone had used it as a barn or a manger. There was straw and dried dung on the floor and a stack of farm implements in one corner and the smashed windows had been boarded up. The sunlight lanced through the cracks and highlighted the dust circulating in the still air. Dust and a hint of smoke. There were the remains of a fire under the belltower but the ashes were cold. They stood and listened at the foot of the steps. Not a sound. Then Whiteley murmured that he thought the smoke was coming from below.

“Below?”

“There must be a crypt.”

They found the steps leading down. Whiteley pointed. In the dust on the bottom step they could see the clear outline of a footprint. Nathan cocked his pistol and remembered to remove the cap. He lifted the latch as silently as he could and kicked the door open, pressing himself back into the wall and aiming the pistol at the length of his arm.

He could see nothing at first in the gloom but he could smell the smoke and the coffee and something else that he remembered from some other time, some other crypt: the smell of candles, hastily extinguished. He looked back up the steps. Whiteley had his rifle at his shoulder, the two marines a step or two behind him with their muskets raised.

“Step out into the light. We know you are in there.”

He spoke in French, his words echoing in the darkness of the vault. Silence. Then they came shuffling out of the shadows with their hands raised. A man and two women with two small children, clinging to their skirts. Almost in rags, their faces pinched and dirty. They might have been gypsies or peasants driven off the land.

Nathan lowered his pistol. “Signor Grimaldi?”

“My name is Luigi Caravello,” the man said in French with a heavy Italian accent. “We are refugees from the war. Poor peasants from Calvo,
monsieur
.”

“Well, I am an English naval officer,” said Nathan, also in French, “sent to find the family of Signor Frederico Grimaldi.”

The man stared at him.
“Inglese?”
He might have taken them for bandits the way they were dressed and with the weapons they were carrying.

“Yes. My name is Captain Nathaniel Peake. I was sent with Signor George Grimaldi to find you.”

“Georgio Grimaldi. He is with you?” He peered past them into the light.

“No. He has gone back to England. We had given up hope of finding you.”

“You are English?” It finally dawned on him it was true. “Oh, thank God. Thank God.” He turned to the women and spoke a stream of Italian. There was a wail from the older one. She went down on her knees and made the sign of the cross.

“We thought you were the French,” said the man. “I am Nicolas Grimaldi. Frederico Grimaldi is my father. But he is ill. He is dying.”

He led Nathan deeper into the darkness of the crypt and struggled to light a candle. By its flame Nathan saw an emaciated figure lying on a crude pallet. He looked like a corpse but his eyes were half open and there was a rasp of breath in his throat.

“What is wrong with him?” Nathan asked gently.

“The doctor says it is his heart. And he has the water of the lungs.
Polmonite
.”

“The doctor?”

“From the village. He gave us medicines but he said there was nothing to be done. His heart has given out. I do not think it will be long now.”

“We will make a litter for him,” Nathan said, “and get him back to the ship.”

“You cannot move him,” his son insisted passionately, “not in the state he is in. And what of the French?” One of the women addressed him in Italian and after a brief discussion, she let out a shriek and threw herself at Nathan's feet, clasping his legs. The children began to howl and the other woman raised both arms to the vaulted roof and appealed to her chosen deities.

“I have my orders,” Nathan persisted but he felt the sweat break out on his brow. “I must get you to a place of safety.”

“He will not last more than a few hours,” Nicolas Grimaldi implored him, “and then we will bury him here in the crypt. It is a holy place, at least.”

Two of Whiteley's marines prised the woman from Nathan's legs and he took Grimaldi's arm and led him up the steps to the chapel where he could hear himself think. In the daylight he saw that he was younger than he had first thought: about thirty or so but with streaks of grey in his hair and a growth of beard.

“This is a difficult situation,” Nathan began, “but I cannot risk the lives of my men by waiting here until your father is dead.”

“Then leave us. We did not ask you to come.”

“We cannot allow you to fall into the hands of the French.”

“Well, we must take our chance on that.”

Nathan looked up at the sunlight streaming through the smashed windows. It must be mid-morning.

“Who knows you are here?” he asked him. “Besides the doctor.”

“The priest, down in the village. I had to get help, when I found the Holy Brothers were not here.”

“You did not know it was a ruin?”

“No. I thought they would help us—this is an endowment of the Grimaldi. But it seems they were driven out when the French came, at the time of the Terror.”

“So this priest—you trust him?”

“I think so. He is one of those they call the Judas priests—that swore an oath of loyalty to the Republic. But he has given us food and clothing and he found us the doctor. Only …” He hesitated.

“Only what?”

“He says the French are looking for us. They have sent someone from Paris—a commissaire of police from the
Sûreté
. And another man, a foreigner. He thinks an Englishman.”

“An Englishman?” For one ludicrous moment Nathan thought it might be Bicknell Coney. It would not entirely have surprised him.

“They have been asking about us in Monaco—and in the villages.”

“
Signor,
you know why this is, and why they are so anxious to find you?”

Grimaldi looked up at Nathan and shook his head, biting his lip. e was lying.

Nathan spelled it out for him. “If the French come and find your father they will torture him—or rather they will torture you and your family—your mother, your wife, your children—to make him tell them what he knows.”

Grimaldi was close to tears. “But what can he tell? What does he know?”

“Of the Casa di San Giorgio.”

Grimaldi sank down on the steps of what used to be the altar. “You mean the gold.” Nathan nodded. “And that is what you want, also.”

For once Nathan wished George Grimaldi were with them. He might have found a better way of putting it.

“I was instructed to make an offer. To take the reserves of the Casa di San Giorgio under the protection of the Bank of England.”

Grimaldi stared at him in disbelief for a moment. Then he threw back his head and made a sound in his throat very like laughter.

“Forgive me,
signor,
but I do not see that there is anything to laugh about,” Nathan informed him curtly.

“No? Perhaps not,” Grimaldi acknowledged. “But some would find it very funny indeed, one of the best jokes in history. For there
are
no reserves of the Casa di San Giorgio. There never have been. Not for half a century at least.” He saw the disbelief in Nathan's eye. “Oh, but it is quite true. My father told me. Do you think he would lie to me—on his deathbed?”

“But …” Nathan was at a loss. “But it is the Bank of San Giorgio.”

“That is the joke. For it is worth nothing. The only thing of value is the name. And that was enough, so long as no-one knew.” He was close to tears now. He sat there on the altar and he looked up at Nathan like a supplicant. “The vaults were empty, my friend, quite empty.”

Nathan stared at him in disbelief. “But what of the
Sacro Catino?
” Grimaldi was silent for a moment and when he spoke again it was in a different tone. Drained of emotion, world-weary. “The
Sacro Catino
. So that is what you are looking for.” He spoke a sentence in English. “The quest of the Holy Grail.”

“
Signor,
I am under orders to offer …”

“The protection of the Bank of England. For the Holy Grail. An interesting proposition. But impossible, I am afraid.”

“Why impossible?”

“Because someone dropped it.”

“Someone
dropped
it?”

“Many years ago. And it shattered into a hundred pieces.”

“But I thought it was made of emerald?”

“So it was said. Until someone dropped it—and then it was discovered to be made of glass. You may consider it appropriate. A metaphor for the Casa di San Giorgio.”

Nathan put a hand to his brow. “Well, I still have to get you out of here.”

Grimaldi stood up and seized his arm. “Let him die,” he pleaded. “The priest has given him the last rites. Let him die here and in peace. And then we will go with you.”

Nathan looked at the windows again, at the motes of dust swirling in the sunbeams. He sighed.

“Very well. I will give you until tomorrow morning,” he said. “I know it is harsh, but then if he is still alive we must take him with us and carry him to the coast.”

He told Whiteley what he had decided.

“Well, they have been here three weeks and the French have not found them,” offered the marine. “I do not suppose another day will make much difference. Touching wood.” Whiteley had been long enough with mariners to share their superstitions.

Nathan told him about the police officer they had sent from Paris. He kept the Englishman to himself. “If they have interrogated the sailors in the fort at Monaco they must know where they landed.”

“But they cannot have told them they were making for the abbey,” Whiteley pointed out. “Or they would be here by now.”

This was true.

“I will post a man in the belltower, all the same,” said Whiteley. “And we might as well make a camp here,” he added, looking about the chapel. “Unless you have any objections.”

“None at all.” Nathan looked up at the wrecked altar. “But there is something else I must do.” The lieutenant looked at him enquiringly. “There is someone I must try to find. In a village near here.”

Whiteley was puzzled. “The doctor?” he said. “The priest?”

Nathan shook his head. “He has already …” But then he stopped himself. It was a gift from the heavens. “Yes,” he said. “The priest.”

“Do you think that is wise? I mean, with respect, sir, I know the old man is close to death but …”

“It is something I have to do,” Nathan insisted. “But if I am not back by nightfall, then tomorrow, at crack of dawn, you must leave—with the whole family, and Grimaldi in a litter if needs be. But I must make that an order, Mr. Whiteley, is that clear? If I am not back at first light, you must leave without me.”

“Yes, sir.” Whiteley's face was stony. As well it might be. If he had placed Nathan under close arrest under armed guard there was not a court martial that would find against him. “But if I might be permitted to observe, sir, it is a reckless piece of work for the sake of a dying man and a Papist priest.”

“I know, but there it is.”

“And if he is not there?”

“Then I will come straight back.” But then he thought again. “Or I will make my own way to the rendezvous. That is why you must not wait for me here.”

He took his pack with him but not the map. He left that for Whiteley in case he was not back in time. He knew where he was going for he had looked at it so often on the map it was lodged firmly in his mind. The one certainty in so many imponderables. So many ghosts, so many rumours and conjectures and that one tantalising glimpse of a woman on a white horse riding into the waves. The one fixed point in his life: his lodestar. A village about five miles from here where there was a café in a square where a little girl used to sit with her father on market days and watch the world go by.

H
E
CUT A
STOUT
STICK
from a tree of myrtle, keeping a few of the leaves to crush in his hands for the scent. It reminded him of Sara and he wondered if she had used it in Paris, though he could not have put a name to it then. Perhaps it reminded her of her home in the mountains of Provence for it grew plentifully here, as it did in the Holy Land. It was a sacred plant in many religions. The Jews, he recalled, gave it to a bridegroom on his wedding night, and to a man who did good works, though unversed in the scriptures.

He made good time at first, following a long winding track that skirted the valleys, though always climbing. He thought it might be a goat track but then he came across a roadside shrine—a simple cross—which had not been made by cloven hooves. He decided it must be a pilgrim route, possibly connected with the abbey, though he did not encounter any pilgrims, or indeed any other travellers, in the course of his own short pilgrimage.

He walked through slopes of scrub and broom and stunted pines that leaned far out into the valley. Spring flowers grew in abundance among the grasses and he smelt the strong aroma of herbs. And every where was the sound of running water from mountain streams swollen by the melting snows. He did not want for refreshment and the climb was not arduous. He took off his coat, folded it into his pack and strode along in his shirtsleeves and breeches, using his walking stick for rhythm as much as for support. He had the route engraved in his mind and was able to navigate by the sun and the glimpses of sea he caught between the rolling hills. But then he was forced to descend into pine forest and follow a tortuous network of paths and tracks, his footsteps cushioned by a thick layer of pine needles, often veering from his course but always returning to it. He lost the sea as his guide but the sun stayed with him, though he did not care for the speed of its descent towards the hills in the west. He knew he would have difficulty getting back before dark. But at last, emerging from the trees, he saw a small town on a distant hilltop and knew it was Tourettes.