From the first time he'd travelled through the region in 1997, he had been intrigued by rumours attaching to Rennes-les-Bains in general, the Domaine de la Cade in particular. The whole area was riddled with mystery and legends: allegations of buried treasure, conspiracies, cock-and-bull stories of secret societies, anything and everything, from the Templars and the Cathars back to the Visigoths, the Romans and the Celts. The one story that had caught Julian's imagination, though, was more contemporary. Written accounts, dating back to the end of the last century, of a deconsecrated sepulchre set within the grounds, a deck of Tarot cards believed to have been painted as some kind of treasure map, and the fire that had destroyed part of the original house.
The region around Couiza and Rennes-le-Château in the fifth century AD had been at the heart of the Visigoth empire. This was common knowledge. Historians and archaeologists had long speculated that the legendary treasure plundered by the Visigoths in the sack of Rome, had been brought to the southwest of France. There, the evidence ran out. But the more Julian discovered, the more convinced he'd become that the greatest part of the Visigoth treasure was still there for the finding. And that the cards - the originals, not printed copies were the key.
Julian became obsessed. He applied for licences to excavate, sinking all his money and resources into the search. His success was limited, turning up little more than a few Visigoth grave goods - swords, buckles, drinking cups, nothing special. When his permit to dig expired, he continued illegally. Like a gambler, he was hooked, convinced that it was only a matter of time.
When the hotel had come up for sale four years ago, Julian persuaded Seymour to make an offer. Ironically, despite the huge differences between them, it had turned out to be a good move. The partnership had worked well until the final few months, when Seymour had become more involved in the day-to-day running of the business. And he asked to see the books. The sun on the lawn was strong, flooding the room through the high windows of the old study in the Domaine de la Cade. Julian glanced up at the painting on the wall above his desk. It was an old Tarot symbol, similar to a figure of eight lying on its side. The infinity symbol. Are you ready?'
Julian turned to see his nephew, in a black suit and tie, standing in the doorway, his mop of black hair pushed back from his forehead. In his late twenties, with his broad shoulders and clear skin, Hal looked like the sportsman he had been in his university days. A rugby blue, tennis half-blue.
Julian leaned forward and ground the stub of his cigarette into the glass ashtray on the window ledge, then drained his whisky. He was impatient for the funeral to be over and for things to get back to normal. He'd had more than enough of Hal drifting around the place. 'I'll be right with you,' he said. 'Two minutes.'
The lobby inside was tiny, so confined that she could touch the walls without even stretching out. To her left was a bright chart of the signs of the zodiac, a swirl of colour and pattern and symbols, most of which Meredith didn't recognise. On the wall to her right hung an old-fashioned mirror with an ornate gilt frame. She checked out her reflection, then turned away and tapped on the second door straight ahead.
'Hello? Anybody here?'
The room was small, but full of life. The walls were painted in more bright colours, like a day-care centre - yellow, red, green, with patterns of lines, stripes, triangles and zigzags in purple, blue, silver. A single window, right opposite the door, was covered by a curtain of transparent lilac gauze. Through it, Meredith could see the pale stone walls of the nineteenth-century building behind, with its black wrought-iron balustrade and long shuttered doors, cheered up by boxes of geraniums and tumbling purple and orange pansies.
The only pieces of furniture in the room were a small square wooden table right in the centre, the legs visible beneath a black and white linen cloth covered with circles and more astrological symbols, and two straight-backed wooden chairs either side. They had woven seats, like in the painting by Van Gogh, she thought.
Meredith heard a door slam someplace else in the building, then footsteps. She could feel herself colouring up. She felt embarrassed to be standing there, uninvited, and was about to go when a woman appeared from behind a bamboo screen on the far side of the room.
In her mid-forties, attractive, she was dressed in a fitted shirt and khaki pants, with expensively cut shoulder-length brown hair flecked with grey and an easy smile, not at all how Meredith imagined a Tarot reader to look. No hoop earrings, no headscarf.
She smiled. 'Guilty as charged. I hope you haven't been waiting long?' Meredith shook her head. 'A couple of minutes.' The woman held out her hand. 'I'm Laura.' They shook. 'Meredith.'
'It's natural to feel nervous,' said Laura. 'Most people do their first time.' Meredith pulled the brochure from her pocket and put it down on the table.
'It's not that, it's just - a girl gave me a flyer in the street a couple of days back. Since I was passing . . .' She tailed off again. 'It's kind of for research. I don't want to waste your time.'
'Like I said, it's research. I'm working on a biography. In this street, actually right here, there was a famous bookstore that comes up a lot. The coincidence, I suppose you could say, rather appealed to me.' She smiled, trying to relax herself. 'Although your - your daughter, was it?' - Laura nodded - 'said there was no such thing as coincidence.'
Laura nodded. 'OK. Some clients have a preference for a certain type of reading. They have a particular issue they want to explore - could be work, a relationship, a major decision to make, anything really. Others are after something more general.' 'General is good.' Laura smiled. 'Right. The next decision is the deck you would like to use.'
Laura gestured to a row of different decks of cards, all face down, set along the side of the table. 'I appreciate it's confusing to start with, but it's better if you choose. Just see if you like the feel of any of them in particular, OK?'
Laura picked up the deck closest to her and fanned the cards across the table. They had royal blue backs with long-tailed golden stars on them. 'They're beautiful,' Meredith said. 'That's the Universal Waite Tarot, a very popular deck.' The next pack had a simple white and red repeat pattern on the back. 'This one is, in many ways, the classic deck,' Laura said. 'It's called the Marseille Tarot. It dates from the sixteenth century. It's a deck I occasionally use, although truthfully it's a little plain for contemporary tastes. Most querents prefer modern packs.'
Meredith looked along the line and then pointed to a deck that was a little smaller than the rest. The cards had beautiful deep green backs with filigree lines of gold and silver. 'What's this one?'
Laura shook her head. 'No, the name of the original publisher of the deck. No one knows the artist or who commissioned the cards in the first place. Pretty much all we know is that it originates from southwest France towards the very end of the 1890s.'
'I was just going to say that the original deck of cards - or at least some of it - is much older. We can't be sure how authentic all the images actually are, since the major arcana have characteristics that suggest they were added - or at least modified - later. The designs, and the clothes of the characters on certain of the cards are contemporaneous with fin de siècle styles, whereas the minor arcana are more classical.'
'With a couple of minor contemporary exceptions, there are seventy-eight cards in a standard Tarot pack, divided into the major and the minor arcana - arcana is the Latin word for "secrets". The major arcana, twenty-two cards in all, are numbered one to twenty-one - the Fool being unnumbered - and are unique to the Tarot deck. Each has an allegorical picture and a set of clear narrative meanings.'
'Absolutely. The remaining fifty-six cards, the minor arcana - pip cards as they're sometimes known - are divided into four suits and resemble ordinary playing cards, except that they have an extra court card. So in a standard Tarot deck we have King, Queen, Knight, then the additional card - the Page - before ten. Different decks give the suits different names pentacles or coins, cups, wands or batons, and swords. Broadly speaking, they correspond to the suits of standard playing cards of diamonds, hearts, clubs and spades.' 'Right.'
'Most experts agree that the earliest Tarot cards, those that resemble the decks we have today, date from northern Italy in the middle of the fifteenth century. The modern Tarot revival, however, began in the early years of the last century, when an English occultist, Arthur Edward Waite, produced a new deck. His key innovation was to give, for the first time, an individual and symbolic scene to each of the seventy-eight cards. Before that, the pip cards had only numbers.' 'What about the Bousquet deck?'
'The court cards in each of the four suits are illustrated. The style of painting suggests they date from the late sixteenth century. Certainly pre-Waite. But the major arcana are different. As I said, the clothing of the characters is definitely 1890s European.' 'How come?'
'The general consensus is that the publisher - Bousquet - didn't have a full set of cards to work from, so either had the major arcana painted or else copied them in the style and character of the extant cards.' 'Copied them from what?'
Laura shrugged. 'From fragments of surviving cards, or possibly from illustrations of the original deck in a book. Like I said, I'm not an expert.' Meredith looked back down at the green-backed cards shot through with gold and silver. 'Someone did a good job.'
Laura made a fan of the suit of pentacles, facing Meredith on the table, starting from the ace at the beginning to the king at the end. Then she dealt a few cards from the major arcana at the head of the deck. 'See the difference between the two styles?'
Laura tapped one of the cards. 'Here's another unique modification in the Bousquet Tarot. As well as the names of the court cards having been changed - Maître and Maîtresse, for example, instead of King and Queen - there are personal touches in some of the major arcana too. This one, for example, card II, is usually called the High Priestess. Here, she has the title La Prêtresse. The same figure appears here in card VI too as one of the lovers - Les Amoureux. Also, if you look on card XV, Le Diable, it is the same woman again chained at the demon's feet.' 'And that's unusual?'
'Many packs link cards VI and XV, but not usually II as well.' 'So some person,' said Meredith slowly, thinking aloud, 'either independently or on instruction, went to a lot of trouble to personalise these cards.'
She looked across the table at Laura, on impulse suddenly wanting to say something about the personal quest that had brought her to France. To tell her that in a matter of hours, she was heading for Rennes-les-Bains. But Laura started speaking again and the moment was lost.
'The Bousquet Tarot also respects traditional associations. For example, swords is the suit of air, representing intelligence and intellect, wands is the suit of fire, energy and conflict, cups is the suit associated with water and the emotions. Finally pentacles' - she tapped the card of the king sitting on his throne surrounded by what looked like gold coins - 'is the suit of earth, of physical reality, of treasure.'
Laura cleared the table, leaving only the major arcana, which she dealt into three rows of seven cards facing Meredith, lowest number to highest. Le Mat, card 0, the unnumbered Fool, she placed alone at the top.
'I like to see the major arcana in terms of a journey,' Laura said. 'They are the imponderables, the big issues of life that cannot be changed or fought against. Laid out like this, it's clear how these three rows represent the three different levels of development - the conscious, the unconscious and the higher consciousness.'
'At the start of each row is a powerful image: Le Pagad, the Magician, at the beginning of the first row. La Force at the beginning of the second. Finally, at the head of the bottom row, we have card XV, Le Diable.'
Something stirred in Meredith's mind as she looked at the image of the twisted demon. She glanced at the faces of the man and woman chained at the devil's feet with a spark of recognition. Then it faded.
'The advantage of laying the major arcana out like this is that it not only shows the journey of the fool - Le Mat - from ignorance to enlightenment, but it also makes explicit the vertical connections between the cards,' Laura continued. 'So, you can see how Strength is the octave of the Magician, and the Devil is the octave of Strength. Other patterns also leap out: both the Magician and Strength have the infinity sign above their heads. Also, the Devil is raising his arm in a gesture reminiscent of the Magician.'
'Do you usually explain these principles in terms of music?' she asked. 'Sometimes,' Laura replied. 'It depends on the querent. There are lots of ways to explain how Tarot can be interpreted; music is just one of them. Why do you ask?'
Meredith shrugged it off. 'Because it's my area of work. I guess I was just wondering if you had somehow picked up on that.' She hesitated. 'I don't remember mentioning anything about it, that's all.' Laura gave a slight smile. 'Does the idea bother you?' 'What, that you somehow picked it up, no,' she lied. Meredith didn't like the way it was making her feel. Her heart was telling her she might learn something about herself, about who she really was. So she wanted Laura to get things right. At the same time, her head was telling her it was all nonsense.
Meredith laughed, although she didn't think it was funny. 'All systems of divination, like music itself, work through patterns,' Laura continued. 'If you're interested, there was an American cartomancer, Paul Foster Case, who came up with a whole theory linking particular of the major arcana to individual notes of the musical scale.' 'Maybe I'll check that out,' Meredith said.
Laura gathered up the cards and tidied the deck. She held Meredith's gaze, and for one clear, sharp moment, Meredith was certain she was seeing right into her soul; seeing all the anxiety, the doubt - the hope too -reflected in her eyes.
CHAPTER 15 Shall we stick with the Bousquet deck?' Laura said. 'You clearly feel some connection with it.' Meredith looked down. The backs of the cards put her in mind of the woods around Mary's home in Chapel Hill. The colours of summer and fall all mixed up together. So different from the quiet suburbs of Milwaukee where she'd grown up. She nodded. 'OK.'
Laura removed the other three decks from the table, the brochure too. 'As we discussed, I'll do a general reading,' she said. 'It's my own spread based on a version of the Celtic Cross, a ten-card reading using the whole pack, minor as well as major arcana. It will offer an excellent overview of where you are now, what has happened in your recent past, and what the future might hold.'
'At the time the Bousquet Tarot was printed, the end of the nineteenth century, Tarot reading was still mysterious, dominated by cabals and elites.' Laura smiled. 'Things are different today. Modern readers seek to empower people, to give them the tools, the courage if you like, to change themselves and their lives. A reading is more likely to be of value if the querent confronts their hidden motivations or unconscious patterns of behaviour.' Meredith nodded.
'The downside with this is that there is an almost infinite variety of interpretations. Some people will tell you, for example, that a majority of major arcana cards coming up in a reading indicates that the situation is outside your control, whereas a majority of minor arcana suggests that your fate is in your own hands. All I can advise before we start is that I see a reading as a guide to what might happen, not what will happen.' 'OK.' Laura put the deck of cards down on the table between them. 'Shuffle them well, Meredith. Don't hurry. And while you're doing it, think of what it is you most want to discover, what it was that brought you here today. Some people find it helps to shut their eyes.'
There was a light breeze coming in through the open window, a relief after the earlier humidity. Meredith reached out and picked up the cards and began to shuffle. Slowly, the present started to recede from her conscious mind as she lost herself in the repetitive motion.
Fragments of memory, images and faces, floated into her mind in tones of sepia and grey, then melted away. Her beautiful, vulnerable, damaged mother. Her grandmother, Louisa, sitting at the piano. The serious-looking young man in military uniform in sepia tones. All the family she had never known.
For a moment, Meredith felt she was floating, weightless. The table, the two chairs, the colours, herself, all seen from a different perspective.
'OK. When you're ready, open your eyes.' Laura's voice was very distant now, heard but not heard, like the sound of music after the note has ended. Meredith blinked as the room rushed back to meet her, blurred at first, then somehow brighter than before.
'Put the cards back together, the middle pile first, then the top, then the bottom.' She felt Laura waiting until she was done. 'OK, the first card you're going to draw is what we call the significator. For this reading, this is the card that will represent you, the querent, the person you are. now. The sex of the figure on the card isn't important because each card carries within it archetypal masculine or feminine qualities and characteristics.'
'La Fille d'Epées,' said Laura. 'The Daughter of Swords. Swords is the suit of air, remember, of intellect. In the Bousquet deck, the Daughter of Swords is a powerful figure, a thinker, someone strong. At the same time, she is someone perhaps not fully connected to others. This could be because of her youth - the card often indicates a young person - or because of decisions taken. Sometimes it can indicate someone at the beginning of a journey.'
Meredith looked down at the image on the card. A slender and petite woman, wearing a knee-length red dress, with straight black hair to her shoulders. She looked like a dancer. She held the sword with both hands, neither threatening nor as if she herself was under threat, but as if she was protecting something. Behind her, a jagged mountain peak was set against a fierce blue sky dotted with white clouds.
'Draw again,' said Laura. 'Put this next card beneath La Fille d'Epées to your left. This second card denotes your situation as it is now. The environment in which you are working or living at the present time, the influences working on you.' Meredith placed it in position.
'The Ten of Cups,' Laura said. 'Cups is the suit of water, of emotion. This is also a positive card. Ten is the number of completion. It marks the end of one cycle and the beginning of another. It suggests that you are standing upon a threshold, that you are ready to move on and to make changes from a current position, which is already one of fulfilment, of success. It's an indication of changing times to come.' 'What kind of threshold?'
'It could be work, could be in your personal life, or both. Things will become clearer to you the further on in the reading we get. Draw again.' Meredith took a third card from the deck.