The Devil's Path (An Alexander Scott Novel Book 1) Read online

  Scott stood there looking over Kate’s shoulder. She was the historian; he was a soldier, a man used to making life-and-death decisions, not poking around in books written well before Columbus ever set foot in the new world. They truly may have been opposites, but at this junction in their lives, they never had a greater need for the other.

  After close to three hours of seemingly pointless effort, Kate finally turned to Scott. Wiping the dust from her face, Kate’s emerald-green eyes brilliantly shone in the candlelight.

  “You have something?” asked Scott expectantly.

  “Oh yes,” said Kate with a devilish grin. “I most certainly have something.”

  “Well, don’t keep me hanging on, what did you find?”

  Kate laid the book delicately on a small wooden table in the center of the room and then pointed to a passage in the old and worn book. “Essentially, this book is a record of the Bors family in the Normandy region, first as Kings and then as Dukes, loyal to the Kings of France. From what I have read so far, they lived here in peace until just before the time of the First Crusades to the Holy Land in 1096. It would appear that the Bors line ended suddenly with the unexpected death of Bors XI without a single remaining male heir. His family, desperate not to become destitute, arranged for their eldest daughter to be married into the family of William of Normandy, who history records as William the Conqueror, the last man to successfully invade and hold England,” Kate explained before turning the page. Pointing to a new passage, she continued. “It says here that all lands and possessions of the Bors family then became the property of Robert, son of William of Normandy.”

  “Is there anything in there about the Grail?” asked Scott.

  Kate shook her head. “If all properties became the property of William’s son Robert, then we must assume that according to the custom of the day that the Grail also became his possession.”

  Scott picked up his candle, stood, and walked over to the dust-covered books, searching for something, anything on the history of the Williams of Normandy. Kate joined him. Their search proved to be fruitless. After another frustrating hour, digging through the books, Scott and Kate heard the priest calling down to them. Putting the books back exactly where they found them, they climbed up the ladder and up into the church, wishing they had been able to discover more. Father Francois let out a little chuckle looking at Kate and Scott; they were covered from head to toe in dust.

  After washing up, Scott, Kate, and Father Francois sat down at his tiny kitchen table and ate a hearty meal of chicken soup, warm fresh bread and another bottle of red wine.

  The sound of thunder boomed over the church and was quickly followed by a torrential summer downpour. The sound of the rain hitting the clay tiles of the roof echoed inside the near empty church. Scott dug out his pocket watch and was surprised to see that it was already so late in the day. He was beginning to wonder where they could find lodging for the evening, when Kate looked over and asked the priest if he knew anything about the family history of the Williams of Normandy.

  He shook his head and then stopped in mid-swing. “Wait a second my child, I don’t, but Father Hulot over at Mont Saint-Michael might. He is quite the accomplished scholar.”

  “Is it far?” asked Scott, dipping some bread in his soup.

  “You must have seen it when you came down the road to my church,” said the priest. “You can’t miss it. It’s a massive and magnificently beautiful church built upon a hill out in the sea. You can only get to it during low tide,” explained the father.

  “I thought that was a castle,” said Kate recalling the colossal structure. “It truly is breathtaking.”

  “That it is…that it is,” the priest said.

  Scott decided to change the subject and said, “Father, is there an Inn or cottage nearby where my cousin, and I can spend the night?”

  “I’m sorry, my son, but you’ll have to make do here tonight,” said Father Francois, wiping some crumbs from his beard. “The nearest inn is nearly two kilometers down the road, and in this storm, you’d be soaked to the skin before you got to out of the church grounds. I have some spare blankets. You can consider yourselves my guests for the evening.”

  Scott looked over at Kate, who simply shrugged her shoulders and went back to her scrumptious meal.

  “Please consider us your humble guests for the night,” said Scott to the Father.

  “Excellent,” said the priest as he stood up, shuffled over to his cupboard, and brought back two more bottles of wine. “Then you won’t mind helping me with these will you?”

  Scott smiled; he knew it was more an order than a question. He only hoped that his head did not hurt too much the next morning.

  Chapter 10

  Vienna, Austria

  The four-horse carriage raced up the cobblestone path, the sound of the horses’ hooves rhythmically echoing off the stone buildings surrounding the palatial courtyard. With a call to his horses, the driver brought the black-painted carriage came to a sudden halt.

  A man dressed in a white military-style jacket with light blue trousers ran up to the coach, opened the door, and then held it as its only passenger stepped out.

  He was a man in his mid-thirties, dressed in a tight, gray suit with highly polished black shoes. He turned to the driver and ordered him to wait. The man had thick wavy brown hair with a closely trimmed beard with charcoal gray eyes. His body was lean and firm. Taking a quick look around, he dismissively walked straight past the man holding the carriage door for him and purposely strode inside the arched front entrance of his father’s mansion.

  Situated on the outskirts of Vienna, the Wollf manor house was built on a wide kidney-shaped lake, in the middle of their three hundred-acre estate. No one was ever allowed to hunt on their family land; to do so was hazardous to the person’s health. The estate had been the exclusive property of the Wollf family for countless generations.

  Walking straight through the immaculately kept mansion, the gray-suited man came out on the far side. Looking towards the lake, the man saw his father, Marius Wollf, wrapped in a red blanket, sitting in a wicker basket chair, trying his best to throw some bread to a couple of swans swimming near him on the calm lake waters. Digging into his pocket, Karl Wollf, the only son of Marius, took a deep breath, pulled out a couple of telegrams, and then with his head held high, he walked over beside his father.

  “Good morning, father,” said Karl, looking down at the family patriarch sitting uncomfortably hunched over in his chair.

  “Good morning to you, Karl,” said the elder Wollf, without looking up. “I hope you that have managed to bring me some good news this morning.”

  “I am sorry, father, but I do not,” said Karl, wishing that he had something good to pass on for once.

  His father slowly looked up with a grimace of pain etched on his milky white face. “Well, don’t just stand there, tell me what you know today, my son.”

  Karl looked into his father’s dull brown eyes. His father may have been bad-tempered, but he still loved and respected him. He feared that his father was getting worse by the day. He knew his father was dying. It was just a matter of time. Karl had hired the finest physician in all of Vienna, but modern medicine could not halt his father’s rapid decline. Clearing his mind of such thoughts, Karl said, “Father, I have a telegram from London. Our lead man in Western Europe, Etienne DuBois, was found shot dead in an alleyway. One of his men, a Russian, I believe, was taken into custody, but I have been informed that he has been dealt with already. I have given direction for DuBois’ deputy, Connor Devlin, the Irish assassin, to assume his duties,” said Karl as if he was talking about the weather.

  The elder Wollf nodded his head approvingly and then with a raspy voice, he told his son to continue.

  “I have another telegram; this one comes from our agent in Southampton. Regrettably, he lost track of Miss O’Sullivan and Colonel Scott somewhere in Wales. Once again, a number of our men were killed. One man, a local hire
, was badly wounded in the leg. Rather than take his own life, he allowed himself to be arrested and then held by the constabulary. I have also issued orders for his immediate elimination,” said Karl dryly. “I suspect that he has already been dealt with by now.”

  “Very good, Karl, but I don’t understand, how did our people lose the Americans?”

  “Father, we only have so many men,” said Karl. “They cannot be everywhere. The Americans cannot remain hidden forever. They will turn up again soon enough.”

  “Of that I also have no doubt,” said Karl’s father as he tossed a piece of bread into the lake. The nearest swan instantly grabbed it and hungrily ate it down. “We should have ended this fiasco at sea. Your men had their orders. All they had to do was snatch Miss O’Sullivan off her boat, and we would have our answers by now.”

  Karl bristled inside at his father’s insinuation of incompetence. “Father, the plan was bold. I approved it, even if the technology used has not been properly field-tested. It should have worked. The problem was Colonel Scott…he should not have been there. Someone unexpected and unplanned for has interposed themselves between our goals and ourselves. As for Scott, he seems to have developed an annoying habit of stymieing my plans,” said Karl through gritted teeth.

  Karl’s father stopped feeding the swans and once again painfully turned his head to look up at his son. His face was shallow, and his once vibrant eyes now seemed shrunken in their sockets. He was only sixty, but he was dying.

  “Karl, I don’t have much time left. I want…I need the Grail,” said the elder Wollf, stabbing the arm on his chair with a bony finger to emphasize his point. “Without it - I will surely die.”

  Karl dropped to one knee, took his father’s frail hand in his and said, “Father, no matter what I try, I cannot make Professor O’Sullivan talk you must believe me. I have repeatedly tried,” explained Karl. “He now refuses to even eat. I believe that he would rather die than divulge what he knows…I could however, try other methods,” said Karl menacingly.

  “No,” snapped his father. “I need him alive and unhurt…for now at least. No, my son, the solution will be in either getting his daughter to translate his damned nonsense writing or getting her to convince her father to help us. Nothing else will do.”

  “I understand,” said Karl standing up. “I will order our men to concentrate their search efforts on the French coastal ports.”

  Marius Wollf lifted his hand, ending the conversation. “Karl, my body may be weak, but my mind is not. There is no need for all of that. The Americans will surely come to you if you just know where to look. Send every man who can make it to Normandy, they will undoubtedly head to Mont Saint-Michael, just as the good Professor did. Trap them there and bring the girl back to me alive and unhurt.”

  “Colonel Scott?”

  “Kill him, but make sure your men do it in front of the girl, to show her that we mean business.”

  Clicking his heels together, Karl turned about and practically ran back to his carriage. He only hoped it was not going to be too late to get some of his best men to Mont Saint-Michael to deal with the Americans. A crooked smile crept across his face at the thought of Scott’s impending demise. His only regret would be in not seeing it himself.

  Chapter 11

  Mont Saint-Michael, France

  A warm golden-yellow sun slowly rose over Mont Saint-Michael, casting long shadows over the wet sandbanks surrounding the island. With the tide out, Scott and Kate could walk down the wet one-kilometer-long causeway connecting Saint-Michael to the mainland. Dating as far back as the sixth century, when it was first used as a fort, the massive church complex had steadily grown into a breathtakingly beautiful fortified abbey over the many centuries until it towered above the landscape, as large and as breathtaking as any cathedral in Paris.

  The smell of salt air mixed with the rank smell of the tidal area filled Kate and Scott’s senses as they made their way over the near deserted causeway. Aside from a farmer some distance behind them leading his tired-looking horse pulling a wobbly-looking wagon loaded with bread, Kate and Scott were alone.

  After providing them with Father Hulot’s name, the only other piece of information that Father Francois could recall was that Mont Saint-Michael, until last year, had been used as a prison for political prisoners and undesirables. Starting with the French Revolution and straight up until 1863, the Mont had been the property of the State.

  Scott felt quite refreshed after a deep night’s sleep stretched out on a pew. When he awoke this morning, he was happy to find that his head wasn’t pounding away like a kettledrum, but instead he felt invigorated. Kate, on the other hand, was not used to drinking that much wine in one sitting. At first, she had moved a bit sluggishly, but once she had some tea and bread for breakfast, she was fine. Scott and Kate thanked their host for his kind hospitality and even managed to get him to accept a few gold sovereigns for his troubles. With a wave goodbye, Scott and Kate managed to flag down a passing wagon and got a lift to the entrance to Mont Saint-Michael.

  Walking along silently, Kate was in awe. She could see that all around the base of the Mont was a low wall. Inside the wall were houses clinging to the side of the rocky hill. As she got closer, she saw in her mind how the church had evolved in layers like a wedding cake, from a fortress to church, to an abbey, and finally to a majestic church, one layer built right on top of the other. The sound of men calling to one another caught her attention. Craning her neck to look all the way up, Kate could see near the top that construction for yet another layer was well underway.

  Passing by the twin turreted towers that once guarded the entrance to the Mont from attack, Kate and Scott strolled along a winding cobblestone road that led from the base of the hill all the way up to the front doors of the abbey. Everywhere they looked the whole complex had the feel of a medieval village frozen in time. Tall walls and ramparts made of gray stone stood guard all around. Scott thought to himself that this was a church that did not want to be bothered by the outside world.

  Everywhere, local workers dressed in dusty clothes were busy working to restore the church to its once magnificent appearance after years of neglect while it had been a prison. The church now had the feel of a major city renovation.

  When they arrived at the top, Scott saw that the tall wooden front doors to the abbey were open as if inviting strangers to come worship. They were about to step inside when Kate spotted a young priest walking along by himself, munching on an apple. With a flash of her pearl-white teeth and a bat of her eyelashes, Kate asked the priest if he could point them in the direction of Father Hulot. The priest almost choked on his apple when Kate stopped him, but soon happily obliged. Following the youthful priest inside the abbey, Scott and Kate stopped in their tracks, taken aback by the tall columns reaching from the floor high up into the ceiling that were spread throughout the inside of the spacious building supporting the arched roof. Copious windows adorned the walls of the abbey, allowing bright sunlight to cascade inside. A reverent and welcoming feeling spread throughout the massive hall. Dust flew through the air, as several young boys dressed in long blue coats were busy sweeping and cleaning the floor of the abbey with whiskbrooms.

  The priest with Scott and Kate saw an older-looking man and called out. With a smile on his slender clean-shaven face, a man with short gray hair approached.

  “May I introduce Father Hulot,” said the priest to Scott and Kate. With that, he politely bowed and left to carry on with his duties.

  “Good day, my children,” said Father Hulot, “how may I be of assistance?”

  Kate launched into her story once again explaining that Scott was a lawyer, needing assistance with a legal case relating to a relative of the Bors family. The father, seeing their less-than-clean clothing and the stubble on Scott’s chin, looked like he was growing suspicious of the pair, until Kate related their visit to Father Francois. Hearing Francois’ name, Father Hulot instantly offered to help them in any way that he co
uld. Leading Scott and Kate to an antechamber at the far end of the Abbey, Father Hulot opened a locked door revealing a set of stone stairs that wound down into the church’s depths. Grabbing a storm lantern from the wall, Hulot lit it and then led Scott and Kate down into the cool, dark room beneath the church. In the dark, Scott saw another lantern sitting on a long wooden bench and lit it. Light shone down the dark recesses of the long slender room that had been dug out of the rock hundreds of years ago when the Abbey had been a fort. Carvings in Latin adorned the walls. Papers, books, and manuscripts were piled haphazardly as far as the eye could see.

  “We haven’t had the time to inventory everything since the church took ownership of the church last year,” said Father Hulot apologetically.

  Scott shook his head at the mess. He thought the records kept by Father Francois were a clutter, but compared to this mess it had looked like an immaculately kept university library, thought Scott.

  Kate looked over and got straight to the point. “Father, could you please point us towards the books relating to the family lineage of William of Normandy, perhaps around the time of the First Crusades?”

  “They should be over on the far wall,” said Father Hulot, pointing at a bookshelf overflowing with dusty, leather-bound books.

  Scott and Kate thanked the priest.

  Before he left, Hulot said he would arrange for a plate of fresh fruit, and some water to be brought down to them in an hour or two.

  Knowing that she had to start somewhere, Kate picked up the closest book, opened it up, grabbed a seat, and then began to read.

  Scott grabbed a long piece of parchment, walked over to their table, sat down, and delicately unwrapped it. Like everything else he had seen to date, it was written in Latin. After a few minutes, even though his rusty Latin, he realized that it was an inventory of taxes raised in the local area in the year 1314. Delicately rolling it back up, he placed it exactly where he found it and grabbed another scroll. Turning, he looked over at Kate as she scrunched up her face and then reached for another dust-covered book.