Timeline. Part 14

"How old?"

"He can't tell."

"He can't date it?"

Marek shook his head. "Not enough organic material."

"So in that case," she said, "you came to his room because ..." She paused, staring at the eyegla.s.ses, then at him. She frowned. "I thought you said that signature was a forgery, Andre."

"I did, yes."

"But you also asked if David could do the carbon test tonight tonight, didn't you."

"Yes...."

"And then you came here, with the gla.s.s, because you're worried...." She shook her head as if to clear it. "About what? What do you think is going on?"

Marek looked at her. "I have absolutely no idea. Nothing makes sense."

"But you're worried."

"Yes," Marek said. "I'm worried."

The following day dawned bright and hot, a glaring sun beneath a cloudless sky. The Professor didn't call in the morning. Marek called him twice, but always got his voicemail: "Leave me a message, and I'll call you back."

Nor was there any word from Stern. When they called the lab at Les Eyzies they were told he was busy. A frustrated technician said, "He is repeating the tests again! Three times now!"

Why? Marek wondered. He considered going over to Les Eyzies to see for himself-it was just a short drive-but decided to stay at the storehouse in case the Professor called.

He never called.

In the middle of the morning, Elsie said, "Huh."

"What?"

She was looking at another piece of parchment. "This was the doc.u.ment on the stack right before the Professor's," she said.

Marek came over. "What about it?"

"It looks like there are ink spots from the Professor's pen. See, here, and here?"

Marek shrugged. "He was probably looking at this right before he wrote his note."

"But they're in the margin," she said, "almost like a notation."

"Notation to what?" he said. "What's the doc.u.ment about?"

"It's a piece of natural history," she said. "A description of an underground river by one of the monks. Says you have to be cautious at various points, marked off in paces, so on and so forth."

"An underground river...." Marek wasn't interested. The monks were the scholars of the region, and they often wrote little essays on local geography, or carpentry, the proper time to prune orchard trees, how best to store grain in winter, and so on. They were curiosities, and often wrong.

"'Marcellus has the key,'" she said, reading the text. "Wonder what that means. It's right where the Professor put his marks. Then ... something about ... giant feet ... no ... the giant's feet? ... The feet of the giant? ... And it says vivix vivix, which is Latin for ... let me see.... That's a new one...."

She consulted a dictionary.

Restless, Marek went outside and paced up and down. He was edgy, nervous.

"That's odd," she said, "there is no word vivix vivix. At least not in this dictionary." She made a note, in her methodical way.

Marek sighed.

The hours crawled by.

The Professor never called.

Finally it was three o'clock; the students were wandering up to the big tent for their afternoon break. Marek stood in the door and watched them. They seemed carefree, laughing, punching each other, making jokes.

The phone rang. He immediately turned back. Elsie picked it up. He heard her say, "Yes, he's here with me right now...."

He hurried into her room. "The Professor?"

She was shaking her head. "No. It's someone from ITC." And she handed him the phone.

"This is Andre Marek speaking," he said.

"Oh yes. Please hold, Mr. Marek. I know Mr. Doniger is eager to speak to you."

"He is?"

"Yes. We've been trying to reach you for several hours. Please hold while I find him for you."

A long pause. Some cla.s.sical music played. Marek put his hand over the phone and said to Elsie, "It's Doniger."

"Hey," she said. "You must rate. The big cheese himself."

"Why is Doniger calling me?"

Five minutes later, he was still waiting on hold, when Stern walked into the room, shaking his head. "You're not going to believe this."

"Yes? What?" Marek said, holding the phone.

Stern just handed him a sheet of paper. It said: 638 47 BP.

"What is this supposed to be?" Marek said.

"The date on the ink."

"What are you talking about?"

"The ink on that parchment," Stern said. "It's six hundred and thirty-eight years old, plus or minus forty-seven years."

"What?" Marek said.

"That's right. The ink has a date of A.D. A.D. 1361." 1361."

"What?"

"I know, I know," Stern said. "But we ran the test three times. There's no question about it. If the Professor really wrote that, he wrote it six hundred years ago." Marek flipped the paper over. On the other side, it said: AD 1361 47 years On the phone, the music ended with a click, and a taut voice said, "This is Bob Doniger. Mr. Marek?"

"Yes," Marek said.

"You may not remember, but we met a couple of years ago, when I visited the site."

"I remember very well," Marek said.

"I'm calling about Professor Johnston. We are very concerned for his safety."

"Is he missing?"

"No, he's not. We know exactly where he is."

Something in his tone sent a shiver down Marek's spine. Marek said, "Then can I speak to him?"

"Not at the moment, I'm afraid."

"Is the Professor in danger?"

"It's difficult to say. I hope not. But we're going to need the help of you and your group. I've already sent the plane to get you."

Marek said, "Mr. Doniger, we seem to have a message from Professor Johnston that is six hundred years-"

"Not on a cell phone," Doniger said, cutting him off. But Marek noticed that he didn't seem at all surprised. "It's three o'clock now in France, is that right?"

"Just after, yes."

"All right," Doniger said. "Pick the three members of your team who know the Dordogne region best. Drive to the airport at Bergerac. Don't bother to pack. We'll supply everything when you get here. The plane lands at six p.m. your time, and will bring you back to New Mexico. Is that clear?"

"Yes, but-"

"I'll see you then."

And Doniger hung up.

David Stern looked at Marek. "What was that all about?" he said.

Marek said, "Go get your pa.s.sport."

"What?"

"Go get your pa.s.sport. Then come back with the car."

"We going somewhere?"

"Yes, we are," Marek said.

And he reached for his radio.

Kate Erickson looked down from the ramparts of La Roque Castle into the inner bailey, the broad gra.s.sy center of the castle, twenty feet below. The gra.s.s was swarming with tourists of a dozen nationalities, all in bright clothes and shorts. Cameras clicking in every direction.

Beneath her, she heard a young girl say, "Another castle. Why do we have to go to all these stupid castles, Mom?" castle. Why do we have to go to all these stupid castles, Mom?"

The mother said, "Because Daddy is interested."

"But they're all the same, Mom."

"I know, dear...."

The father, a short distance away, was standing inside low walls that outlined a former room. "And this," he announced to his family, "was the great hall."

Looking down, Kate saw at once that it wasn't. The man was standing inside the remains of the kitchen. It was obvious from the three ovens still visible in the wall to the left. And the stone sluice that had brought water could be seen just behind the man as he spoke.

"What happened in the great hall?" his daughter asked.

"This is where they held their banquets, and where visiting knights paid homage to the king."

Kate sighed. There was no evidence a king had ever been to La Roque. On the contrary, doc.u.ments indicated that it had always been a private castle, built in the eleventh century by someone named Armand de Clery, and later heavily rebuilt early in the fourteenth century, with another ring of outer walls, and additional drawbridges. That added work was done by a knight named Francois le Gros, or Francis the Fat, around 1302.

Despite his name, Francois was an English knight, and he built La Roque in the new English style of castles, established by Edward I. The Edwardian castles were large, with s.p.a.cious inner courtyards and pleasant quarters for the lord. This suited Francois, who by all accounts had an artistic temperament, a lazy disposition, and a propensity for money troubles. Francois was forced to mortgage his castle, and later to sell it outright. During the Hundred Years War, La Roque was controlled by a succession of knights. But the fortifications held: the castle was never captured in battle, only in commercial transactions.

As for the great hall, she saw it was off to the left, badly ruined, but clearly indicating the outlines of a much larger room, almost a hundred feet long. The monumental fireplace-nine feet high and twelve feet wide-was still visible. Kate knew that any great hall of this size would have had stone walls and a timber roof. And yes, as she looked, she saw notches in the stone high up, to hold the big horizontal timbers. Then there would have been cross-bracing above that, to support the roof.

A British tour group squeezed past her on the narrow ramparts. She heard the guide say, "These ramparts were built by Sir Francis the Bad in 1363. Francis was a thoroughly nasty piece of work. He liked to torture men and women, and even children, in his vast dungeons. Now if you look to the left, you will see Lover's Leap, where Madame de Renaud fell to her death in 1292, disgraced because she was pregnant by her husband's stable boy. But it is disputed whether she fell or was pushed by her outraged spouse...."

Kate sighed. Where did they come up with this stuff? She turned to her sketchbook notes, where she was recording the outlines of the walls. This castle, too, had its secret pa.s.sages. But Francis the Fat was a skilled architect. His pa.s.sages were mostly for defense. One pa.s.sage ran from the ramparts down behind the far wall of the great hall, past the rear of the fireplace. Another pa.s.sage followed the battlements on the south ramparts.

But the most important pa.s.sage still eluded her. According to the fourteenth-century writer Froissart, the castle of La Roque had never been taken by siege because its attackers could never find the secret pa.s.sage that permitted food and water to be brought to the castle. It was rumored that this secret pa.s.sage was linked to the network of caves in the limestone rock below the castle; also that it ran some distance, ending in a concealed opening in the cliffs.

Somewhere.