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 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.