The Cellars of Notre Dame: a gripping, dark historical thriller

By Barbara Frale

Dark secrets lie in the tunnels beneath...
Paris, 1298. Disguised as an outlaw, a personage of the highest rank sneaks through the cellars of Notre Dame. The maze of secret tunnels hides a laboratory. Here, occult studies are conducted under the guidance of the renowned scientist, Arnaldo da Villanova. Studies which remain a secret.

Rome, 1301. Denounced for impiety by mysterious informers in Paris, Villanova seeks refuge in Italy and becomes Pope Boniface VIII's personal physician. Yet Villanova knows a secret, one capable of discrediting and overthrowing the French monarchy. He's not safe. It's clear someone wants to silence him forever.

Will he pay the price for the secret he keeps with his life?

Praise for Barbara Frale:

'An academic who has dedicated years of work to books on this topic... A pleasure to read' UMBERTO ECO.

'A long-awaited historical thriller' THE REPUBLIC.

'A brilliant writer' IL GIORNALE.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Sep 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9781838932961

Barbara Frale

Barbara Frale is a medieval historian of the Vatican's Secret Archive. An expert in ancient scripture and documents, she has published several non-fiction books on the Templars, the Shroud of Turin and Celestine V's controversial resignation as pope.

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Also by Barbara Frale

The Templars and the Shroud of Christ

The Cellars of Notre Dame

THE CELLARS OF NOTRE-DAME

Barbara Frale

Translated by Richard McKenna

An Aries book

www.headofzeus.com

This edition first published in the United Kingdom in 2020 by Aries, an imprint of Head of Zeus Ltd

Copyright © Barbara Frale, 2020

The moral right of Barbara Frale to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 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 both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781838932961

Cover design © Lisa Brewster

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Contents

Welcome Page

Copyright

Epigraph

Part 1: The Beast of the Apocalypse

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Part 2: The Fourth Horseman

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Part 3: Price of Blood

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Part 4: The Crown of Thorns

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Part 5: Crescent Moon

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Thanks

About the Author

An Invitation from the Publisher

Several years ago, whilst visiting, or rather, rummaging about inside, Notre-Dame, the author of this book found, in an obscure nook of one of the towers, the following word, engraved by hand upon the wall: ἈΝÁΓΚΗ

These Greek capitals, black with age, and rather deeply graven in the stone, with I know not what signs peculiar to Gothic calligraphy imprinted upon their forms and upon their attitudes, as though with the purpose of revealing that it had been a hand of the Middle Ages which had inscribed them there, and especially the fatal and melancholy meaning contained in them, struck the author deeply.

He questioned himself; he sought to divine who could have been that soul in torment which had not been willing to quit this world without leaving this stigma of crime or unhappiness upon the brow of the ancient church.

Victor Hugo.

In the year of our Lord 1301, after the mid-August feast of the Holy Virgin, some merchants from the north escorted to Florence the ambassador they had sent to the French army which had come down into Italy.

The messenger was unable to report what Prince Charles of Valois, brother of the King of France, had told him; he arrived, in fact, as a cadaver inside a cask, in a state of putrefaction so advanced that of his face, pink with worms, there remained almost only the stripped bones and the cartilage of the nose, which emerged from the rotten flesh brought so mercilessly into the open.

The French denied any involvement, stating that the envoy had never reached their camp.

A few days later, a chest was delivered to that same Palazzo della Signoria where the cask had revealed its macabre contents, from Rome: inside it, the Priors found the severed head of a canon who had left the city a month earlier with the commission to deliver a secret letter to the Pope. His tongue had been cut off, and his eyes torn out; his empty eye sockets were a mute and hideous cry for vendetta.

However, the head of the Roman Apostolic Chancellery claimed that the man had never entered the gates of the city.

Florence, which was strenuously defending its republican liberty, thus saw itself clamped in the pincers of a double threat: from the north loomed the prince of Valois, who was officially bringing his army to Sicily to reconquer the island lost in the War of the Vespers, while from the south the Pope, anxious to expand the borders of the Papal State, looked avidly at the fertile lands of the Florentine countryside.

Philip IV of France, known as the Fair, but also as the Iron King at that time commanded the largest kingdom and the most powerful army in the Christian world; a consecrated sovereign and nephew of a holy king, he saw himself as being the Anointed of God. And Boniface VIII, Vicar of Christ and of Peter, supreme Roman pontiff, was lord over the souls and over the bodies of the entire human race.

Like two pillars, these men held up the very world; but unfortunately, they were not in agreement with one another.

An elder of the Medici family, old Guccio di Bonagiunta, who had been Gonfaloniere of Justice and had guided the fate of Florence more wisely than others, advised the Signoria to find the shrewdest, wisest, and most prudent man in the city, and instruct him to investigate the aims of the king of France and the true intentions of the pope.

The choice fell on Durante di Alaghiero Alighieri, known to all as Dante. Noble but with an ironclad devotion to the Republic, Dante was a white Guelph, and well reputed for his poetic abilities.

And, what was even more important in those dark times, his great shrewdness.

1

THE BEAST OF THE APOCALYPSE

And the Lord said unto Moses, "Stretch out thine hand toward heaven,

that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, even darkness which may be felt!" 10.21

I

The flashes of lightning in a sky as black as the abyss made the horse start with terror. The streets of Paris were a lake of mud, and as it recovered itself, the beast turned the corner too fast and slipped. The fugitive was thrown to the ground.

He got up quickly. God, what a knock his head had taken! Yet again, the Thraex helmet had saved his life. He caught his breath and then made his escape by running breakneck through the alleys of the Right Bank and down through the darkness of the night towards the Seine, which glittered in the distance. Down through Place de Grève, past the rafts bobbing on the water, across the long line of the bridge, and through the illustrious houses clustered around Notre-Dame. The moon conferred upon the great façade an eerie character, and its stone devils, saints and prophets stared down with stern faces, as though angry with him.

The throng of beggars sleeping in the churchyard noticed him, and their confused shouting, like the screeching of so many swarming insects, stopped abruptly.

Look! someone whispered. It’s Lanius.

There was silence, as a prickle of fear ran across their skin.

Come on, get out the way! ordered the beggars’ leader. He was the oldest of that sinister crowd of wretched, rotten folk: harmless beggars by day and thieves and cutthroats by night, sworn enemies of the Hospice of the poor and the guards of the much-feared King.

No one blocked his way. No one dared. When, without warning, he appeared, as feral and devastating as a force of nature, that bastard always left a scar on the smooth face of the Paris that mattered. No one knew if he was even completely human, or was perhaps some demon spewed out from of the bowels of the earth. The awful helmet he wore on his head had turned black, they said, because it had been burned by the flames of hell.

The horde parted in two instantly: the fugitive was among them and nobody wanted to get too close to him. Tall, powerful and fierce, he passed swiftly with the gait of a Roman gladiator and that great double-headed axe stained with the blood of his many victims. He didn’t speak, only glancing at the leader of the beggars, who nodded soundlessly. They had helped each other escape trouble more than once. The old man was his compass for orienting himself along the streets of the nocturnal city when he immersed himself in its darkness to carry out one of his misdeeds. Lanius repaid him by moving the right levers in the palaces of power to protect him and his followers from the axe and the gallows. They were bonded by an ironclad pact tacitly held in the name of mutual aid; neither one of them intended to betray it.

The moonlight reflected off the metal of the helmet. Almost nothing was visible of his face, except his eyes, but that was enough to fill the old ringleader with fear and veneration.

It was only a moment, and then the bandit plunged into the mob, breathing in the smell of filthy rags, of flesh too long unwashed, and of breath that reeked of hunger. The dense mass of rotten, stinking bodies swallowed him up to vomit him out again in safety and then close behind him as he passed, rendering him invisible.

The pursuers arrived, and the mob formed itself into a compact wall against the soldiers of the Châtelet, who threateningly waved their clubs, which bore the lily flower.

Get out of the way, you curs! roared the sergeant. We saw him. He went into the church!

Charity, sir!

Have pity on us!

A piece of bread!

In unison, a hundred hands, a hundred voices, crowded the square, imploring, pulling at robes and removing bags, while the soldiers struck blindly with their clubs at toothless faces and crooked backs. They knew they were in danger – they were too few of them here to prevail.

Let’s get out of here! shouted the sergeant, and his men backed away from the stench and misery of the purulent throng, which risked swallowing them up entirely.

Sons of bitches! cried the beggars, throwing rotten apples, stones and broken tiles at the inglorious retreat of the royal forces.

Where can he have gone? asked one of the beggars.

What’s he done this time? another asked. Who’s he running from?

The old man shrugged.

He’s running from the king of France, he murmured. And from himself.

It was a sacrosanct truth, as certain as that the guards would never capture him, because – so the common people said – he was cursed, and thus possessed unparalleled strength. In reality his connections with highest levels of the court made him an untouchable: they ensured that the patrol kept wide of the places the outlaw chose for his nocturnal sorties. And it was a good thing for the guards that they didn’t find him, especially if it what the students of the Sorbonne said was true and that was a Latin name which meant ‘executioner’.

He appeared suddenly, struck, and then vanished. The night had birthed him, like some sluttish mother, and the cobbles of Paris had been his cradle. Perhaps he had found a way to hide in the labyrinth of tunnels upon which Notre-Dame stands, those narrow passages carved into the rock by the builders themselves – secret tunnels built for reasons unknown to the rest of the world.

In those tunnels, people said, things happened that were not permitted in the light of the sun. That superstitious fear that all the canons of the cathedral felt run through them and which made the caretakers jump at the slightest sound when the evening shadows began to loom had a face and a name. A bronzed face which bespoke interminable journeys in the lands beyond the sea, and a name all too familiar with the customs of the infidels he knew so well: Arnaldo da Villanova, known as the Catalan. Or, as he was called on the other side of the Mediterranean ocean, : he who has received the Light.

A wise elder, respected in all the universities of the Christian world as a talented doctor, he was considered by those who were best informed a magician of formidable power to boot. Wrapped in a black cloak, the Catalan had been seen descending beneath the great church: his grim figure, with a slight limp just like the one they say the Evil One has, inspired unholy fear in those who saw him. A fear which was only intensified by the strange stick he rested his weight upon – a long priestly ebony sceptre surmounted by a jackal’s head.

For months and months, down there had been his lair. Each of the cathedral’s foundation walls concealed unexpected cavities. Occult and nocturnal, an underground cathedral that descended into the belly of Paris – a twin of the cathedral above ground, which soared upwards, the glory of its towers and pinnacles piercing the blue of the sky. A secret cathedral whose roots lay in the centre of the earth; and Lanius, the warrior resurrected from hell, nested there like some poisonous beast.

People one could never have imagined meeting might encounter one another in those dark recesses, outside the reach of any law, and Arnaldo the Catalan must have known that brigand very well. No one knew for what purpose they had met down there, but the children of the darkness understand one another.

As silent as a thief in the darkness, Philip of Fontainbleau brushed against the stones at the base of Notre-Dame’s left tower.

It was the last place in the world where those who knew him would have imagined seeing him, and he felt like the absolute lord of the maze of underground tunnels that wound beneath the great church. He was the king of the labyrinth beneath Notre-Dame, although his rule extended far beyond the cathedral district. And far beyond Paris itself.

As for the king of France – that figure so hieratic and so distant from the common people as to seem superhuman – he served him faithfully. He had always bowed to the wishes of the king, who was monarch by the grace of God, in homage to that sacred authority that came directly from above. Accept, obey, always endure, and all in the name of a higher ideal, no matter how heavy and painful the load that one’s shoulders must bear. Like that night’s mission, for example, which had been among the most thankless of his entire life. That night he must send a clear message of warning, to threaten and to intimidate: things that the most eminent sovereign consecrated with the Chrism of the bishops, the man who had received from the Lord the miraculous power to heal the sick by laying on his hands, could not accomplish.

As indeed it was not permissible for His Majesty to go down to the tunnels beneath Notre-Dame, where knowledge that the Holy Church looked upon with suspicion was jealously guarded. And so it was that Philip di Fontainebleau descended into the dark womb of Paris to obtain for the sovereign the information he wanted. It was indispensable as well as desirable: a good king needs to know everything. He must have a hundred eyes, and perhaps even more, because the good of his people requires that he possess secrets his enemies do not even suspect exist. And Philip di Fontainebleau, a man without any official title, a simple knight like many others, provided for that need.

In the dark, his wandering fingers now recognized those lines deeply engraved into the rock. Carved with the tip of the chisel under the guidance of a powerful and wise hand, to render one precise word eternal. The icy night air brought back the memory of that distant day and he saw himself down there two years ago.

There is a word that will mark your initiatory journey, and for each section you complete, you will write one letter, said the Master.

What is the word?

"Anànche," replied Arnaldo da Villanova.

Is it Arabic?

It is Greek, my son. You will discover the meaning yourself. One day.

The old man had wanted that clandestine workshop beneath Notre-Dame, hidden away like the cellars of the Temple of Solomon, because down there, he said, all human and divine science were preserved, in addition to the immense riches of Ophir. Unfortunately, he had left Paris before having communicated the entire wealth of his knowledge. Of the six letters that formed the milestones of his initiatory journey, he had only been able to inscribe two: . And now he felt an intense thrill of anger and remorse as his fingers, wandering in the darkness, recognized their outline.

Accursed melancholy! He must swallow his regrets and hurry up: he had a crucial mission to accomplish that night. He found what he was looking for, the iron pin emerging from the wall beneath a small font. The lever squeaked and the door opened. He bent down and stepped into the narrow passage. The tunnel was designed to be walked even in complete darkness; all that was necessary was to count your steps while your hands explored the walls, tighter around you than the maternal womb on the day of your birth. One had to seek the signs.

One, the moor’s head carved in relief. The first element. Two, the dolphin tail. Three, four… all the way up to seven, and then finally the door. Fontainebleau rummaged in his bag for the key. The rust left by two years of complete abandonment had not damaged the mechanism. The table was immediately to the left. A flint, a candle.

In the dim light of the flame, he saw the scene he knew so well. White walls, to reflect the light. At the four corners, sacred symbols and prayers capable of propitiating the work. Above, a small aperture for air which went up through a narrow duct to the floor of the church. A long table, covered with retorts, alembics and precious measuring instruments. Everything was shrouded with a thin veil of dust and the air was imbued with an unpleasant stench of mould: only two springs before, that small underground laboratory had been a sanctuary of science, and now it had the sad, off-putting aspect of a desecrated tomb.

He cursed. Why had Arnaldo gone? That was when the trouble had begun. Like the illness of the little prince Robert, which no doctor could cure. And like the atrocious, infamous wickedness which now threatened him, along with the whole of France.

Help me, God of Hosts! I know that the remedy for my ills are hidden down here!

He reached the shelf of books still lying tidy under a thick veil of dust and fumbled among the pages of symbols searching for the thing upon which his salvation depended. But where was it? Yet he must be there, he had seen it with his own eyes. The infallible medicine which could healing the dark future which had suddenly fallen upon him. It had been atrocious to be accused of possessing unsound blood, and even worse had been the awareness that his own unworthiness could harm countless other people…

He couldn’t find it. Arnaldo had taken that panacea capable of saving his life away with him. Despondency descended upon his heart, which had weathered so many storms.

Why did you leave me, you accursed old man ! You opened the universe of your science to me only to slam the door in my face before I could learn what I needed, and now I hang here like the soul of a dead man who cannot reach the Underworld and wanders the earth helplessly watching the living! I am not an initiate who possesses the whole Truth, but I no longer have the blissful ignorance of the common man, who does not even ask certain questions. But this is not the end of it, master Arnaldo. I will bring you back to Paris if it is the last thing I do!

He needed to rapidly devise a countermove. He must send someone to Rome who was capable of persuading the Pope to force the Catalan to return to France: under threat of excommunication, if needs be. He needed someone who was loyal to the king but who would also be welcomed by Boniface VIII.

And perhaps the perfect person lived not far from Notre-Dame! Matthew Bentivegna of Acquasparta, once a humble monk of Saint Francis of Assisi who had risen to the purple when he had donned cardinal’s robes, and was now well placed in the Sacred College. He had been granted a dispensation in perpetuity to live in Paris because he taught theology at the Sorbonne. He must visit Matthew immediately, take him completely by surprise in the middle of the night. But not in his usual clothes. A more rapid and direct method was needed to make the cardinal understand that the question was of vital importance for France. That the king commanded it and that in order to succeed he was willing to do anything. Even get his hands – those holy hands – dirty. Even unleash the worst thugs in Paris, including that damned mercenary whom good men prayed never to meet. Perhaps Lanius was not entirely human, because his face seemed to belong to the realm of shadows while in his body there was all the anger of the damned.

There was no time to waste: he must send someone to open the way for him, and then the dark aura of the shadows would do its part. To accomplish the task, he needed to give the potent power of suggestion room for manoeuvre.

Re-emerging into the icy night air, Philip of Fontainebleau put his helmet back on and shouldered his double-headed axe.

*

In the alleys, a vague shadow grabbed at the grille of an opening slightly above street level. Good – the bars had been sawn as requested. The figure slipped into the hole and took a deep breath. A brief leap into empty space and then a thud, and a terrible stench of soot.

It was a lucky thing the cardinal demanded his cellars be always well-stocked with coal! He looked at himself: he must be as black as the devil’s arse – he could barely breathe, there was so much dust on him. The wet clothes had absorbed it like a sponge, but at least the pile of coal had muffled the fall. Moreover, given the structure of the building, there was no other way to sneak in.

He made his way down the slippery pile of coal until he found himself with his feet on the floor. Now he had to go up the stairs, hoping his accomplices had left the door to the garden open. He made his way to it and pushed the old wooden door gently open with the palm of his hand so that it wouldn’t squeak. He would have to give his accomplices a bonus; they had obeyed his instructions to the letter.

The night air struck him along with a gust of icy wind, that bitter killer who tears at the flesh of the healthy and slaughters children and the poor and old. There. The cardinal lived up there on the second floor, where the faint light of a window behind the loggia told him that someone was still awake.

And the ladder? Was it where it was supposed to be? Yes, fortunately. He put one foot on a rung: it felt stable. He climbed up it.

By the dim light of a candelabrum, Cardinal Matthew Bentivegna of Acquasparta was devoutly reciting his evening prayers.

He stopped and raised his hand to his heart, fearing that it was about to fail him: he had spoken the Evil One’s name and behold, he saw him appear before him!

Nearby, to the side of the window, there was a silhouette, completely black from head to toe. It was not human, but some angry demon, a monster resembling a large insect, its body covered with lustrous metallic flakes and with eyes of abnormal size, divided up like the cells of a beehive.

The cardinal immediately made the sign of the cross and commended his soul to the Madonna, just the way his mother had taught him to, just like when he was a child.

The monstrous being moved from the window and looked around the room with an inquisitive eye. To show the poor prelate that he was a man of flesh and blood and not some spectre vomited up from the underworld, he took off his helmet. Thus Matthew of Acquasparta saw that he was covered with soot, but that under the soot there was a face he knew very well. Heavens above! He would never have imagined seeing him like that. He was a consecrated man, by the name of God! Perhaps it was a nightmare, perhaps he was seeing things. The long penitential fast had weakened his body but must also have blurred the lucidity of his intellect if he now believed he was seeing that illustrious man in such sordid garb…

Every doubt vanished when the evildoer greeted him, his well-known voice dripping with sarcasm. He was amused by the sight of the fear and disgust on the cardinal’s bleached face.

God watch over you, most eminent father. Are you well?

The cardinal was not well at all, and in reality it was only thanks to the maternal hand of the Blessed Virgin that his old heart had held out. He didn’t ask him for what mad reason the other was decked out in that unfortunate manner which tore apart his sacred dignity. He didn’t dare.

What… what should I call you? he mumbled.

Call me what everyone calls me. Call me Lanius.

Matthew of Acquasparta swallowed hard and nodded. Perhaps it was just an awful nightmare and the next morning he would remember nothing of it; in the meantime, better try to understand the meaning of that sacrilegious masquerade.

What can I do for you… Lanius?

The man who had come at night, taking advantage of the reputation and impunity that dire name enjoyed among the beggars and criminals of Paris, made himself comfortable in a chair, crossed his ankles and put his feet up on a stool. He affected extreme arrogance, an irritating bandit bravado that clashed with the composed mastery of himself and demeanour that generally distinguished him. When he was dressed in silk and purple, of course.

You have to go to Rome, your eminence. Orders of the King.

The Cardinal too sat down, and put his hands on his knees, trying to understand what was happening.

It’s an informal order. Am I right?

Obviously, otherwise, you would have been summoned to the Louvre to receive the news. And instead, here I am.

W-well, Lanius … What a horrible name to call you by! In any case… how can I serve His Majesty’s wishes?

The bandit moved closer.

"You will have a squad of soldiers with you. You will be