‘He certainly didn’t seem a drunkard,’ I remarked.

‘Yeah, well,’ Paul smiled faintly, ‘that doesn’t mean anything. My Uncle Aaron soaks up liquor like a sponge, but you’d never know it. He only slurs on days he’s stone cold sober.’ We’d reached the leaning gate. Paul pulled it open and stood aside to let me pass through first.

I looked at him, curious. ‘Do you think he was telling us the truth? About not writing Harry the letter, I mean?’

‘Why would he lie?’

Why indeed? I looked back one final time at the dismal yellow farmhouse, at the crumbling walls and sagging roof. The curtains of the kitchen window twitched and then lay still, and the only movement left was that of the lone black chicken, stalking haughtily across the yard through the long and waving grass. I felt a faint cold shiver that I recognised as fear, although I didn’t know its cause.

‘The chapelle, next,’ said Paul, and slammed the gate behind us with a clang that sent the chicken scuttling for cover.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Two plummets dropt for one to sound the abyss …

Paul pulled the jangling ring of keys from the iron lock and swung the great door reverently, as though he hated to disturb the peaceful atmosphere laced with the songs of unseen birds and the whispering of wind in shadowed alcoves. Above the old baptismal font the bay tree rustled gently, while the wild flowers nodded drowsily along the edges of the empty grass-filled graves. Soft weathered faces watched us from each corner of the architecture, from every ledge and pediment and every vaulted niche, and in the shadowed aisle behind the tall black iron gates the pensive saints gazed through the bars as one stares at a lion in its cage.

It should have been unnerving, having all those eyes upon me, but it wasn’t. Oddly enough, it was reassuring. I felt again that rush of pure contentment, of childlike wonder, and the sense of beauty stabbed so deeply that I had to blink back tears.

‘Wow,’ said Paul. ‘It doesn’t lose its impact, does it, second time around?’

I shook my head. ‘You’ve been here before?’

‘Yeah. It was one of the first places we discovered after the château. Simon read about it in a book, I think, and when he found out Christian had a key …’ He shrugged, and left it at that, moving past me to the soaring grille of iron.

‘And what’s the word for this place, then? Secluded?’ I guessed. ‘Sacred?’

He grinned. ‘Sanctuary.’

I recalled my own first reaction to the place, and felt an even closer kinship with this quiet young man I’d only met three days ago.

The iron gates swung open, and we stepped into the cloistered aisle with its peeling frescoes and fragile-looking pillars. ‘Sacred,’ Paul informed me, as he shuffled the ring of keys, ‘is just through here.’

‘Just through here’ lay beyond the altar, beyond the second iron gate – the gate that Christian hadn’t had the key to yesterday. The tunnelled passage in behind looked every bit as uninviting as I remembered, and even when Paul had successfully sprung the lock I hung back, hesitating, peering with a coward’s eyes into the darkness. ‘I haven’t brought a torch.’

‘A flashlight, you mean? That’s OK, I’ve got one.’ It was a pocket torch, a small one, hardly any help at all, but he snapped it on and stepped into the passageway ahead of me. ‘I think the main switch is around here somewhere. Yeah, here we go.’ A flood of brilliant yellow light dissolved the lurking shadows.

I blinked, surprised. ‘Electric light?’

‘Sure. This place is kind of a museum, you know. They do take tourists through, during the summer, and I guess they don’t want people stumbling around. Here, watch your step.’ He guided me over the uneven threshold. The passageway was filled on either side with artefacts and curious equipment, neatly laid out on display. Ancient tools for farming and for wine-making shared equal space with emblems of religion and broken statuary, the whole effect being one of wondrous variety. ‘This is where the hermit lived, originally,’ said Paul. A few steps on, the passage turned and widened briefly in an arched and empty room of sorts, where more pale statues stared benignly down on us.

My claustrophobia eased a little and I paused to draw a deep and steady breath. ‘Is this the sacred part?’

‘No. Behind you.’

I turned, and saw what looked like another tunnel running down into the rock, its entrance barred by an ornate black metal barrier, waist-high, anchored in the scarred and worn limestone. Curious, I went as close as the barrier allowed, and peered over it at the flight of crudely chiselled stairs that steeply dropped towards a glowing light. It made me dizzy, looking down. ‘Like Jacob’s ladder in reverse,’ I said to Paul, as he joined me at the railing.

‘It’s a well,’ he said. ‘A holy well.’

‘But where’s the water?’

He smiled. ‘Come on. I’ll show you.’

I had no great desire to go still deeper underground, but neither did I want to seem a coward. And at least I trusted Paul to bring me safely out again.

Climbing the barrier proved simple enough, no different than climbing a stile back home, but the stairs were a different matter. They were irregular in shape, some only several inches high while others fell two feet or more, and my fingers scrabbled in the dust and chips of rock to find a firmer handhold as I made my slow descent. Paul, who had clearly done this before, went down like a mountain goat, his steps sure and even. I was more ungainly, and brought the dust with me, a great whoofing cloud of it that swirled on even after I had stopped to join Paul on the narrow ledge at the bottom of the stairs.