The Omega Factor(108)
“That wasn’t me.”
“But you benefited from it.” Labelle banged his chest with a closed fist, then pointed. “I’m here to finish what Bernat de Foix started.”
What did that—
Labelle rushed forward in a quick, unexpected move, crossing the three meters that separated them, leaping into him with a flying tackle, wrapping his arms tight around Vilamur’s chest. The momentum from the impact drove them both back toward the cliff edge. They slammed into the hard ground, which hurt. He tried to resist but the young man was strong.
“To hell with you,” Labelle spit out in his ear. “And to the God of Light for me.”
The younger man’s feet dug into the rocky soil and, together, they slid forward, over the edge, out into open air.
He screamed in terror.
His eyes lost focus as he absorbed the weightless sensation of falling. Labelle kept his grip tight and their combined weight fell fast.
They slammed into a hard surface.
Labelle took the brunt. Surely, one of the many rocky outcroppings that dominated the cliff face.
Then more falling.
More shunting downward in repeated bounces. Eventually, Labelle let go and they dropped separately.
Then a final impact.
Hard. Solid. With no recoil.
And—
Nothingness.
Chapter 72
Fuentes surveyed the burial chamber. Everything appeared as described in The Testimony of John. Save for one addition. A ceramic urn in a wall niche with no markings on its exterior.
“The Maid of Orléans,” Sister Claire said. “We gathered her ashes from the pyre after she burned.”
He made the connection. “With the help of Jan van Eyck?”
She nodded. “He made that possible. Philip the Good betrayed Joan. Van Eyck disagreed with that but could do nothing to stop it. Instead, he aided us in recovering her ashes. He was close, on the inside. Without him we would not have been able to accomplish that.”
“What was she to the maidens?”
“One of us. She’d been in training here when she first heard the heavenly voices. She left here to go north and wage war.”
“Incredible that you have them. But van Eyck felt compelled to leave the world a reminder of his good deed, didn’t he? In the altarpiece.”
“Unfortunately, he did. Why? No one knows. He just did.”
“He was unaware of the Virgin’s remains?”
“Thankfully. No, he knew nothing of that.”
“The Vatican was not aware of what van Eyck did with the altarpiece until 1934.”
“We’ve known for centuries. But it only became an issue for us—in 1934.”
He was curious. “This order stole the Just Judges?”
“We did. Then it was taken from us and the two maidens who stole it were murdered. We never found their bodies or the panel. The war then intervened and we thought it all gone for good, until a few weeks ago.”
He pointed at the urn. “Those ashes have been here since 1431?”
She nodded. “Resting in eternal peace.”
“She’s a saint of the church and deserves so much more.”
“She was murdered by the church.”
“And then forgiven,” he said.
“And that makes what was done right?”
He paused. “No, of course not.” He turned back to the larger niche. “I suppose resting here, with the Blessed Virgin, is some consolation for our mistake.”
He realized that he could not remove Joan of Arc’s ashes. Their resurfacing would raise far too many questions. And he’d come to end all of the inquiries, not to create more. To the world, Jeanne d’Arc, the Maid of Orléans, died at the stake almost six hundred years ago, her ashes tossed into a river, gone, and there they would remain.
He examined the chiseled into the limestone beneath the shelf. There, just as John described. “Clever. The final number in the Greek numeric system. But Revelation says that Christ was alpha and omega, the beginning and the end.”
“Though Christ was first, she was, in many ways to the people who buried her, the last. Omega.”
He recalled what John had written. Beneath the resting place, into the rock we carved a symbol of how we regarded her. . “I suppose, to them, she was indeed the end.” He examined more closely the Greek etched into the hollow. . Itself to itself. “An interesting choice in phrase.”
“Not at all,” she said. “She was a human being who lived and died, returning to the dust from which she came. Not a fiction that the church later created for its own selfish purposes.”
More from The Testimony of John flashed through his brain. In the hollow we left another message that spoke to her life and death.
.
“All true, sister,” he muttered. “But that fantasy served us far better than any truth ever could.”
“Which explains why we have come to this point.”
Yes, it did.
His plan had been to find the tomb and destroy it, thereby silencing the maidens. But now that he was here, standing inside something so ancient, so reverent, he was overcome. He’d been a priest a long time. He’d joined the church out of a love for God and a sense of duty to his chosen church. He’d risen in the ranks thanks to an unwavering devotion to that purpose, one that others had recognized and rewarded. Now he was one step away from the ultimate achievement. Becoming pope. Was God speaking to him? Here? In this holiest of places?