Read Chapter 24: The Crossing Keeper

The village had no name on the map, only a cluster of stone houses huddled against the grey Loire like pilgrims at a shrine. Elodie's boots had begun to blister by the time they reached its single crooked street, and James's limp had grown more pronounced with each mile, though he refused to acknowledge it.

An old woman was beating a rug against her doorframe, hair the colour of river mist, eyes sharp as flint. She watched them approach with the particular suspicion reserved for strangers who arrive on foot with neither luggage nor explanation.

"Bonjour," Elodie began, her French flattening into something more practical. "We're looking for an old crossing. A ferry, perhaps. Something that may no longer be in use."

The woman stopped her beating. "Ferry? There is no ferry here. There hasn't been in sixty years."

James stepped forward, pulling Marguerite's letter from his coat. The paper was creased now, softened from handling. "We believe there was once a religious house near the river. A chapel. Perhaps connected to the Beaumont family?"

The old woman's eyes flickered to the letter, then back to their faces. She set down her rug beater and wiped her hands on her apron.

"You're not from the university in Tours?"

"No," Elodie said quickly, perhaps too quickly. "We're independent researchers."

"Researchers." The woman repeated the word as if testing its weight. Then she laughed, a dry sound like wind through reeds. "You've come at the wrong time. The chapel is underwater now. Has been since the dam went in, forty years ago come autumn. Only shows itself in drought."

Elodie felt something tighten in her chest. "Shows itself?"

"When the river drops low enough, you can see the roof. Just the peak, poking up like a drowned man's knee." The woman crossed herself absently, a gesture so habitual it seemed forgotten even as she made it. "My grandmother used to tell stories. She remembered walking to Mass there as a girl, before the water rose."

James had gone very still. "What was the chapel called?"

"Saint-Michel-des-Eaux." The woman looked at them both with new interest. "The nuns let the river take it willingly. Said it was God's will, that the water would purify what the Church had abandoned."

"Abandoned?" Elodie's voice came out barely above a whisper.

"Heresy." The old woman spat the word. "Or so they called it. A handful of nuns who refused to condemn a local priest. Claimed he'd married a woman of the congregation. The bishop excommunicated them, then the floods came and made it all moot."

Marguerite and Jean. Lovers, not heretics. A marriage hidden within the language of heresy.

Elodie felt the silver cross warm against her collarbone, though the afternoon air had turned cool off the water.

"Do you have anything from the chapel?" James asked. "Anything that survived?"

The old woman studied him for a long moment. Then she reached into the pocket of her apron and withdrew something on a leather cord. It was a wooden cross, dark with age, the grain worn smooth by countless fingertips.

"My grandmother took this when they evacuated. She was a novice, the youngest one. Said the Mother Superior told her to keep it safe." The woman held it out, not quite offering it, not quite withdrawing it. "The nuns scattered after that. Most went back to their families. Some stayed by the river, waiting."

"Waiting for what?"

"For the chapel to rise again, I suppose. Or for someone to come looking for what was hidden beneath it." Her gaze moved from James to Elodie, and Elodie felt suddenly, uncomfortably seen. "You're not the first to come asking about those nuns."

Elodie's pulse quickened. "Someone else was here?"

"A man, two years ago. French. Said he was tracing the Beaumont family line. Older than you. Grey hair, silver spectacles. He asked the same questions, almost word for word."

Professor Finch.

James clearly reached the same conclusion; she saw his jaw tighten, saw his hand curl at his side. "What did you tell him?"

"That I knew nothing. And I gave him nothing." The old woman's eyes hardened. "He had the look of someone who takes things that aren't offered."

She extended the wooden cross toward Elodie, and Elodie reached for it automatically. Their fingers brushed—James's hand overlapping hers as he moved to steady the leather cord—and the touch sent a shock through her that had nothing to do with the coolness of the wood. His skin was warm, his fingers briefly closing over hers before he withdrew.

Neither of them acknowledged it.

"The cross," the woman said, "was carved from the chapel's original altar beam. If the nuns believed something was worth protecting, they may have left it somewhere the Church couldn't reach."

"The riverbed," Elodie said. "They let the chapel flood so no one could enter it."

"Clever girl." The old woman nodded approvingly. "The water is a better guardian than any lock."

James was already turning toward the river, calculating. "How deep does the water run at this point?"

"Twelve metres in the channel, perhaps less where the chapel stands. But the current is treacherous, and the dam releases without warning. Several swimmers have drowned there over the years."

"We need to get down there," Elodie said. "To the chapel floor."

"You need more than good intentions." The woman gestured toward the far bank, where a small boathouse leaned drunkenly against the shore. "Old Monsieur Delacroix keeps a flatboat tethered there. He uses it for fishing, but he'll hire it to anyone fool enough to ask. And if you speak to the woman in the white house past the bakery—the one who studies the fish—she has equipment that sees beneath the water."

James's eyebrows rose. "Sonar?"

"If that's the word you use." The old woman shrugged. "She's always pointing it at the riverbed, muttering about the chapel's foundations. Says they're older than they should be." She paused, and a flicker of something—fear, or perhaps warning—crossed her face. "But if I were you, I'd wait for the drought month. The river gives up her secrets slowly, and only when she chooses."

"We don't have a month," Elodie said. She looked at James, and for a moment the distance between them seemed smaller than it had all day—smaller than it had since the Bodleian, since the letter, since the train. "We have days at most."

James met her gaze, and something passed between them. Not forgiveness, not quite trust. But understanding.

"Then we make the river give up her secrets sooner." He turned back to the old woman. "Where do we find this Delacroix?"

"Follow the path past the churchyard. Green shutters, nets hung out to dry." She looked at Elodie, and her voice softened. "You keep that cross close, girl. Whatever those nuns hid, they died to keep it hidden. Make sure it was worth it."

Elodie closed her hand around the wooden cross. It was warm from the old woman's pocket, warm from the sun, warm against her skin.

But the silver cross beneath her shirt had grown warm too. Warm, and almost humming, as if it recognized something in the wood she held.

"Thank you," she said. "We'll see that it was."

As they walked toward the river path, James fell into step beside her, close enough that their shoulders almost touched. "You know that was Finch, don't you? Two years ago. He was already looking for this place."

"I know." Elodie kept her eyes on the path ahead, on the glint of water between the trees. "Which means he knows about the chapel. And whatever he knows, he's had two years longer than we have to find what's beneath it."

"So we have days, not weeks."

"Or hours."

James was silent for a moment. Then, quietly: "We should have told each other the truth from the start."

Elodie didn't answer. But she didn't disagree.

The river rushed beside them, cold and indifferent, holding its secrets in its depths.

For now.