Not only that, but the charm hadn't been minted of silver. Whoever forged it made it from the metal of the sword.

From Joan of Arc's sword.Annja still couldn't get around the thought of that.

Setting her sandwich to the side for a moment, Annja opened the attachments. The poster had done a great job with the pictures. They were clear and clean.

Judging from the pictures, the coin the poster owned was very similar to the one Annja had found in the cave. But that one looked like silver, even carried a dark patina that had never touched the one that Annja had found.

However, the coin in the pictures only had the image of the mountain, not the wolf. And there was no shadowy figure trapped behind three lines in the die mark.

She sighed and returned her attention to her sandwich. The mystery had deepened again. She loved archaeology for its challenges, stories and puzzles. But she hated the frustration that sometimes came with all of those.

The third message was from Zoodio, the original responder to her posting.

Hey. Hope you've had some luck with your enigma. I've had a bit, but it appears contradictory and confusing.

Welcome to archaeology, Annja thought wryly.

The coin you've got is different than the ones minted at the monastery. And minting for a monastery is weird anyway. I understand they took gold for the Vatican and all that. Had to fund the additional churches somehow. But they marked ingots with the papal seal. Most of the time, though, the church never bothered to melt down and recast anything that came through the offerings.

I noticed differences on your coin, though. I mean, the images I pulled up and got from friends are different. But I didn't find any that looked like the one you've got.

Taking a moment, Annja opened the images Zoodio had embedded in the message. Sifting through them, she found they were similar to the ones she'd gotten from the previous poster.

To start with, the coin you found doesn't appear to be made out of silver. Some other material?

Also, yours has differences. Did you notice the shadowy figure behind the stylized rain? I didn't at first. Had to look at it again, but I think it's there.

Excitement thrummed through Annja. She clicked on the embedded picture and it opened in a new window.

The image was one of those she had posted, but Zoodio had used a red marker to circle the shadowy figure, then colored it in yellow highlighter to make it stand out more.

This really caught my eye. I love stuff that doesn't make sense. I mean, eventually it will, but not at that precise moment, you know?

So I started looking. Turns out that the original Silent Rain monastery was attacked and burned down in 1767.

Shifting in her seat, noticing that it had started to rain outside, Annja felt another thrill of excitement. Zoodio hadn't been looking for a connection between the Brotherhood of the Silent Rain and La Bête, but she had suspected it was there because of Lesauvage's interests.

Of course, the monks showing up hadn't daunted that conclusion.

La Bête had claimed its final victim, at least according to most of the records, in 1767, over three hundred years ago. And the monastery burned down that same year. Annja smiled at her rain-dappled image in the window. That can't be a coincidence, she thought. She was feeling energized. I do love secrets that have been hidden for hundreds of years.

She pondered the sword and how it had vanished. That was a whole other kind of secret.

During the flight back to the United States, she had come to the conclusion that Garin and Roux had somehow tricked her. She didn't know how, and she didn't know why, but there was no other explanation for the sword's disappearance that made any sense at all.

She shivered slightly and returned her focus to the computer.

Turns out that the monastery was self-contained. They didn't take just anyone who wanted in.

Not only that, these guys are supposed to be like the Jesuits. Warlike, you know? Trained in the sword and the pistol. Supposed to be masters of the blade and crack shots and all that rot.

Well… Annja thought, maybe they weren't as good as their reputation. Or maybe the latest generation has gotten rusty.

Then again, Roux, Garin and Henshaw weren't your average man on the street. The monks had walked into a hornet's nest.

The brotherhood wasn't well liked by the rest of the church. Too independent, too self-involved. Instead of reaching out to the community, the brotherhood sort of withdrew from it.

From the accounts I read, they didn't want to be contaminated by outsiders.

Then where did they get recruits? Annja wondered. She opened her journal and started making notes. As questions arose, she entered those, as well.

Later, she'd timeline it and start combing through the facts and suppositions she had and try to find the answers she needed. She'd learned to work through an outline, make certain the bones were there regarding an event she was researching, then flesh it out once she knew what she was looking for.

In a way they became the perfect prison.

Shortly before the monastery was destroyed, the pope or one of the high church members ordered a prisoner moved there. The Silent Rain monks were supposed to keep the prisoner until they were told to set him or her free. Rumor exists that the prisoner was a woman.

Annja found the possibility intriguing. Why would a woman be locked up in a monastery? Normally a woman would have been sent to an abbey. Or simply imprisoned.

But the story of Joan of Arc, how she'd been imprisoned and later killed at the hands of brutal men, echoed in Annja's head. Written history had a way of being more kind and gentle than what an archaeologist actually found broken and bashed at the bottom of a sacrificial well or buried in an unmarked shallow grave.

While working on dig sites throughout Europe, and even in the American Southwest, Annja had seen several murder victims. Those people had never been important enough in history's selective vision to rate even a footnote most of the time. People were lost throughout history. It was a sad truth, but it was a truth.

Whoever it was, the story goes that an armed force descended on the monastery to free the prisoner. During the battle, the monastery burned to the ground. The fields were sown with salt so nothing would grow there for years.

And, supposedly, everyone at the monastery was killed. No one knows what happened to the prisoner.

But there's also a story that a few local knights, unhappy with how the church was speaking out against their hunting parties, decided they'd had enough and razed the monastery for that reason.

Don't know.

But I found the shadowy image (if it's there and not just a figment of my imagination!) really interesting.

I hope you'll let me know what you find out.

Annja closed down the notebook computer and gazed out the window. There were so many unanswered questions.

A few minutes later, she flagged down a taxi and gave her address in Brooklyn. The sound of the tires splashing through the rain-filled streets lulled her. Her eyelids dropped. She laid her head back on the seat and let her mind roam. So many images were at war for her attention. The find at the cave. La Bête. Lesauvage, so smooth and so dangerous. Avery Moreau, whose father had been killed by Inspector Richelieu. The Brotherhood of the Silent Rain. Roux. Garin.

And the sword.

In her mind's eye, she pictured the sword as it had been, broken into fragments. She could clearly see the piece that had been stamped by the Silent Rain monastery.

In her memory, she reached for it again. Incredibly, the pieces all fit together and the sword was once more whole. She reached for the sword, felt the rough leather wrapped around the hilt and the cold metal against her flesh.