Simone clambers down the ladder, calling, “And where will I find these twenty eggs, laid by twenty pious hens to glorify God, His Holiness Pope Benedict, and French fresco painters?”
D’Albon laughs and moves his index finger in a downward spiral. “All the way down, at the bottom of the tower, where it’s nice and cool. Soon it will become the subtreasury, filled with gold, silver, and jewels. But for now, it’s the egg cellar. Eggs and plaster and rags.”
Simone ducks through the doorway into the spiral staircase and starts down, but then—on impulse—he stops and looks overhead. The stairs continue upward, apparently to the roof, and Simone decides to take a quick detour before fetching the eggs. He jogs up the first spiral, walks briskly up the second, and lumbers up the third, huffing by the time he steps onto the rooftop.
The view from the roof is dizzying and dazzling. To the west, the arches of Saint Bénézet’s Bridge cascade across the Rh?ne to Villeneuve. At their far end is another square tower, this one built by the king of France to collect bridge tolls…and to remind the sometimes arrogant residents of Avignon who holds the real reins of power in this part of God’s world. From below, d’Albon’s voice wafts upward; an apprentice is getting a scolding for his clumsy plasterwork, and Simone turns from the view and scurries for the cellar.
Spiraling down turn after turn, he feels his head begin to spin, and he stops near the bottom and leans on the wall to steady himself. It’s cool and dark down here—there are no windows in the tower’s lower levels, only narrow slits that provide stingy hints of light and air. In the chamber just below him, he hears a gritty, sliding sound, punctuated by grunts of exertion. Curious now, he descends the final few stairs and peeks into the chamber—the egg cellar that will soon brim with treasure. By the golden glow of a flickering lamp, he sees a portly workman shoving a heavy chest into a deep niche in the wall, then wedging a flat stone over the opening and slathering mortar around the edges. The man’s troweling technique appears oddly awkward, and his work looks shoddy. Simone’s puzzlement only increases when the man finishes sealing the stone in place; when he stands, Simone sees that the pale garment he’d taken for a workman’s smock is instead a floor-length white robe. A Cistercian monk’s robe. The kind of robe favored, as everyone knows, by Pope Benedict himself: the White Cardinal who has become the White Pope.
Suddenly Simone senses the vulnerability of his position: lurking in the stairwell spying on some furtive secret of the pope’s. Edging back up the stairs one level, Simone ducks into a dark, vacant room and waits until he hears footsteps. From his hiding place, he sees the white-robed figure pass by like some stout, panting ghost. Once the footfalls and panting have faded, Simone hurries back to the cellar. He should collect the eggs and hurry upstairs with them—the French painters will be running out of tempera any minute now, if they haven’t already—but his curiosity triumphs over his sense of responsibility. Crossing to the far wall, he squats beside the mortar bucket and studies the crude handiwork, as if close inspection of the wall’s surface might reveal what’s hidden inside. Hidden by the pope himself! But why? Why hide a treasure chest inside the wall, when the entire room, floor to ceiling, is meant to be heaped with riches? In any case, why not order a real mason to do the work?
Astonished by his own sudden boldness, Simone picks up the trowel and uses the tip to scrape out the line of mortar holding the flat stone in position. Then he pries the panel free, leans it against the wall, and tugs the chest from its niche. The chest, a stone box, is wired shut, and the wires are crimped together with lead seals—the seals of Benedict XII!—to protect the contents. Rubies and emeralds? Gold florins? Perhaps even the Holy Grail?