Roux looked at her then. "Wasn't he the man whose heraldry is represented on the lozenge?"

"No. That heraldry belonged to his brother, Sir Henry. And to Sir Henry's father before him. Roger was Sir Henry's younger brother. One of them, anyway."

"But he wasn't entitled to the heraldry because of the law of primogeniture," Roux said, understanding.

Avery turned to them. "I don't know what that law is."

"Basically," Annja said, moving to the next coffin, "it's a law that keeps the family farm from being split up. Say a man has three sons. Like Sir Henry's father. The eldest son, Sir Henry, inherits all the family lands and titles. At the time, it took a lot of land to field a knight, and knights were the lifeblood of a king's army."

"That's not true anymore," Avery said.

"No, but it was when Father Roger was around." Annja frightened away another rat and read the next inscription. "Fathers had to have a system to keep brothers from fighting over the lands. So a simple method was devised. The first son inherited the land. The second son was given to the military. The third son was given to the church."

"And if there were more?"

"They were apprenticed to master craftsmen as best as could be done," Annja said.

"Roger was a third-born son," Roux said.

"Right," Annja agreed. "He was given to the church."

"Which wasn't without its own problems," Roux said. "England had fought the Roman influence for six hundred years before the Anglican Church was declared."

"Henry VIII closed the Roman Catholic abbeys and monasteries during his reign," Annja added, "and supported the Anglican Church. Father Roger, as evidenced by his presence here, was Roman Catholic."

"Why did they send him here?" Roux asked.

"As punishment."

"For what?"

"I think he fathered Carolyn. The girl who was born while Sir Richard of Kirkland was over in the New World fighting the French and the Indians."

"What makes you think that?"

"Why else would the Falhout family heraldry be on the lozenge?"

Roux had no answer.

Chapter 30

"ITHINK THE Roman Catholic Church found out about Father Roger's indiscretion with Sir Richard of Kirkland's wife," Annja went on. "And once they did, I think the Vatican shipped Father Roger here before the affair caused any further problems in London."

"Such as Sir Richard coming home and killing him?" Roux suggested.

"Yes. King George III would have backed one of his knights in such a matter, and the Roman Catholic Church could have lost even more ground in England. They'd already lost a lot by that time."

"So it was better to hide the problem than to deal with it," Roux said.

"Hiding the problem wasdealing with it. But I think they had more to hide than they'd originally believed." Annja moved to the next stone coffin. "They also had Carolyn to hide."

"The child?"

Annja nodded. "The daughter of Father Roger and Sir Richard's wife. Some of the reports I read suggest that she showed signs of inbreeding, but I believe that was a cover-up, an attempt to point the blame elsewhere. I think Carolyn's condition was caused by something worse than inbreeding."

"What?" Roux dusted off another coffin.

"Have you heard of Proteus Syndrome?"

"The disfigurement that created the Elephant Man?"

"Yes. Joseph Merrick's X-rays and CT scans were examined by a radiologist who determined that the disease was Proteus Syndrome."

Roux turned and faced her. "You think Carolyn had Proteus Syndrome?"

"Yes. More than that, I think she was La Bête." All the pieces came together in Annja's mind. She was certain she had most of it now. "I saw that creature in the cave where I found the charm. It looked almost human. At least, aspects of it did."

"But Proteus Syndrome is debilitating and life-threatening," Roux argued. "It creates massive tissue growth. Merrick's head was too misshapen and too heavy for his body. He died at twenty-seven, strangled by the weight of his own head."

"Does Proteus Syndrome always have to present negatively?" Annja asked. "Couldn't it sometimes be an unexpected change and growth that makes a person stronger?" She looked at Roux. "I saw all those pieces of this sword become one again. I think that's harder to believe than my suggestion about Proteus Syndrome."

"You believe the disease turned her into an animal?"

Annja took a deep breath. "We'll never know if it was her condition or the treatment she received as a result of it. That's an argument for the nature-versus-nurture people. Sir Richard disowned Carolyn and cast her from his house. Her mother never visited her in the abbey. And the nuns – " She shook her head, thinking about the afflicted child. Sometimes things hadn't been easy in the orphanage where she'd grown up, but the conditions had to have been a lot better than in the eighteenth century. "The nuns couldn't have known how to treat her or what to do."

"They would have believed she was demon spawn," Roux said quietly. He shrugged. "In those days, the church believed everything, and everyone, who was different was demon spawn."

Annja silently agreed.

"Carolyn killed the sisters in the abbey where she was first kept," Roux said. "You have to wonder what triggered that, but I'm afraid I could hazard a guess. The human mind has its breaking points."

Annja was surprised. She hadn't known the old man had been truly listening to her while she'd pursued the truth. "Yes. Then they faked her death and shipped her here."

"To be with her father."

"Yes."

"As further punishment?"

Shaking her head, Annja said, "I think Father Roger wouldn't allow any harm to come to his daughter. He forced the church to send her here."

"How did he do that?"

"I don't know. I only know that he must have. Otherwise she wouldn't have been here." Annja moved on to the next coffin. "Once here, Carolyn must have grown bigger, stronger andmore intelligent. Or possibly she was always intelligent. Either way, she learned to escape from the monastery."

"She was La Bête," Roux said, understanding.

"I believe so. If you look at those pictures I took of the corpse in the cave where I found the charm, you can see the misshapen limbs and body. Proteus Syndrome didn't occur to me then, but it did later."

They kept searching.

"Here it is, then." Avery brushed layers of dust from a stone coffin.

Joining him, Annja held her candle lantern closer to the inscription.

Father Roger

1713-1767

Cursed by God

Condemned by Believers

Below the inscription was a carving of the standing stag that matched the one on the charm. Annja placed the candle lantern on the coffin and brushed at the dust, exposing the top to see if there were any more inscriptions.

Emotions swirled within her. There was excitement, of course. There always was when she made a discovery. But it was bittersweet this time. She couldn't help thinking about the innocent child afflicted with a disease no one had understood or even known existed at the time.

"The grave diggers always get the last word," Roux said. "Not very generous, were they?"