We entered the palace by way of an imposing central gate, a portal through which a steady stream of tourists flowed. Once inside, we stepped behind a large display and ducked down a cordoned-off staircase. It led deep into the palace, to a vast chamber whose darkness seemed to clutch at the narrow beam of Stefan’s flashlight.
The beam brought us to an iron grille made of bars thicker than my thumbs, fastened with a hefty padlock. Stefan retrieved a pair of keys from a cord around his neck—keys that made me think of Saint Peter, the heavenly gatekeeper. Leaning against the grille, Stefan wrestled it open on groaning hinges, then motioned us inside and closed the gate behind us. He stooped to the floor and flicked a switch in a long cord that stretched somewhere into the darkness, and a string of dim bulbs, jury-rigged to the damp wall, revealed a crumbling stone staircase that descended through a rough-hewn tunnel.
Reaching awkwardly back through the gate, Stefan replaced the lock and clicked it shut behind us, locking us in, then led us forward. As we edged down the steep, uneven steps, we seemed to be descending not merely into the depths of the papal palace, but through the layers of time itself: one century deep, two centuries, three, four, five, six centuries into the past.
The stairs ended in a short horizontal hallway; at its far end, another padlocked gate of heavy iron guarded the entrance to a cavelike room whose dimensions I couldn’t discern for the darkness. This gate was even heavier than the first, and it took Stefan and Miranda both to tug it open. Inside the chamber, stout stone pillars and Gothic arches supported a low, vaulted ceiling. A lone bulb—the last in the string of lights rigged in the stairway—illuminated a small arc of the rough floor and the nearest pair of columns. Stefan turned to study my face as I surveyed the room. “Probably too far from the dining hall to be the wine cellar,” I said. “Was this a crypt? A dungeon?”
He shook his head and smiled, evidently pleased that I’d guessed wrong. “La chambre du trésor,” he answered. “The treasure room.”
“And was the treasure room half empty or half full?” I was joking, but he took it seriously.
“Totally full. Complètement. This room was overflowing with gold and silver and jewels. Millions’, maybe billions’ worth.”
“Hmm. I never really thought about the net worth of the pope,” I said.
“The pope did, for sure,” he shot back. “The popes of Avignon were richer and more powerful than any of Europe’s kings or emperors. Charlemagne ruled half of Europe. The popes ruled all of Europe. Tout entier.”
“But they didn’t exactly rule,” I pointed out. “Not the way Charlemagne did.”
“Non?” He cocked his head, lifting an eyebrow. “Tell me, how was it different?”
“Well, the popes didn’t have an army.”
“Bool-shit,” he scoffed. “Who were the Crusaders and the Knights Templar if not the pope’s warriors? They were sent to the Middle East to add the Holy Land to the empire of the Holy Father. L’impérialisme, plain and simple.”
“You’re putting a mighty cynical spin on the Church,” I said.
“Mon Dieu, just look at this place where we are working. The biggest Gothic palace in Europe. The epicenter of money and power.”
I flashed back to the skyline I’d seen as we approached Avignon from across the Rh?ne. “Okay,” I conceded, “maybe you have a point.”
“Oh, hell, don’t encourage him, Dr. B,” Miranda squawked. “He’ll pontificate all day. Pun intended.”
Ignoring her protest, Stefan resumed. “Go; sell everything you have, and give the money to the poor—that’s what Jesus said. The popes said, ‘Give the money to us.’”
“I take it you don’t approve,” I said drily.
He shrugged and smiled cynically. “Au contraire, mon ami. I approve completely. And gratefully.” He swept his arm in a wide, encompassing arc. “I owe my career to the popes. They and their faithful flocks—pious, hardworking sheep—created the world’s greatest art and architecture. I would be foolish and ungrateful if I did not approve.”
Miranda was right; once he got wound up, it was tough to wind him down, and I was fast approaching my limit. “I’m thinking you didn’t bring me here just to talk about the glory and the greed of the medieval popes,” I said. “So cut to the chase. What the hell is going on here? And why all the cloak-and-dagger stuff?”