“But she rescued him.”
He saw the slender figure dressed as a knight, surrounded by other warriors in one of the panels.
“She brought him back to France, here to the abbey,” she continued. “He died here, but she was determined to take him home.” She indicated another panel.
“To Scotland. You see here, they crossed the channel.”
She stared at the images. “It is said there is a secret in the tapestry. Perhaps it is here.” She gestured to the next panel.
“She returned alone to the abbey. It is said that she lived the rest of her life here, then joined him. She made this tapestry. It is their story. It is considered a very valuable piece of art, like the Bayeaux Tapestry.” She frowned.
“But I fear it will be lost like so many other great pieces of art. I have heard that our people managed to remove paintings from the Louvre before the Germans entered Paris, but other things—statues, paintings, documents, all gone, stolen!” There was passion in her voice now.
“This is what they have taken from us—our history, and the lives of our young men and women, enslaved, murdered.” Her voice softened, but the anger was still there.
“I would burn it before I would let them have it.”
It was said with such passion that he knew she would do it. She looked at him then, and smiled a sad smile.
“You must go, now. Take your pictures, Paul Bennett. Don't ever stop.”
“Isn't there some way to bring your friend with us?”
“You worry for us?”
“What we've seen these past few weeks, the landing, and the countryside...”
She pressed her fingers against his lips.
“It is because of what you have seen that I must stay until he is better.” She slipped an arm around his neck and pulled him down for her kiss.
“Go, now!”
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
THE ABBEY CHURCH, MONT ST. MICHEL
“The order of Saint Benedict.” James Morgan commented about the mosaic that had been set into the floor as they walked up that last flight of steps to the abbey entrance.
It had been good twenty-minute climb at a steady pace. By the time they reached the top it was almost dark, the walkway lit by lampposts along the way, the sun an orange sliver at the horizon before it slowly sank into the ocean.
Modern lighting had been installed in place of the torches and candles of a thousand years earlier, but Kris still felt the history in the musty coolness of the stones of the passage, in the granite flagstones underfoot, and in the sounds that echoed through an adjacent passageway, in a way she hadn't experienced on that visit years earlier, surrounded by throngs of tourists.
“By the ninth century, the Benedictine order was the standard of monastic life throughout Europe,” Kris remembered from those early studies.
They walked up that last flight of steps to the abbey entrance. A directional sign indicated the cloisters were at the end of an adjacent hallway.
“They were called the Black Monks because of the color of their cassocks. Many were scribes while most commoners were rarely educated, except for the very wealthy. Their writings, journals, and translations of scripture flourished between the ninth and twelfth centuries, and abbeys were like libraries for books. Not just scripture, but manuscripts on botany, horticulture, and astrology. Religion spread throughout Europe. It was a way of uniting people, and controlling them.”
He gave her a sideways look. “Theology 101 with a little politics thrown in?”
She ignored the cynicism. “I must have been through a dozen abbeys the summer after my second year at college. You get a different perspective when you know the history of things, and how religion was used as a means of controlling people.”
“Ah, the summer of enlightenment.”
“There was restoration work going on here, and several areas were closed to the public.”
