Free The Graves of Saints by Christopher Golden Page B

decided to get all philosophical.’
    ‘Picking a dead king and doing research with no room for conjecture about the future would have bored the shit out of me. Besides, this way I get to spin theories that will eat up some of
the assignment’s word length. Trust me, fifteen pages on Marie Antoinette losing her head would have ended with me throwing myself from the top of Notre Dame.’
    Hannah laughed.
    ‘My suicide is funny to you?’
    ‘No. But I’m calling you Quasimodo for the rest of the day.’
    They both smiled, but then lapsed into the silence of old friends, long-ago lovers, and other people who no longer have anything to prove to one another. Charlie drove around for a while trying
to figure out where he was supposed to park in order for them to explore the Basilica. When he finally had it sorted out, they found themselves right in front of a café and couldn’t
resist going in for a coffee. A few minutes later, coffee in hand, they strode down the street and paused to gaze up at the building’s façade.
    The Basilica of Saint-Denis was a huge, sprawling, Gothic cathedral that had served as the prototype for an entire wave of architecture. It had been founded in the seventh century by Dagobert,
one of the Merovingian kings, who had chosen the site because it held the tomb of Saint Denis. Hannah couldn’t deny that all of the stories that had their endings at the basilica were
interesting. The place became an abbey, the center of a Roman Catholic monastic society, and over the course of many centuries, myths and stories had sprung up about its various architectural
advancements. More importantly to her and to pretty much the whole world, the Basilica of Saint-Denis was known as the necropolis of France – eight hundred years’ worth of kings and
queens and other royals were buried there. What had started as a tomb for Saint Denis had become the crypt for Charles Martel, Pepin the Younger, and a whole host of kings called Henry and
Louis.
    To most tourists, the main attraction at the basilica was likely the tomb of Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette. Hannah had never been inside the place, but as she and Charlie walked along
the street toward it, she glanced around for a cake shop, certain that someone must have taken advantage of the opportunity. When she didn’t find one, she wasn’t sure if she was
disenchanted or pleased; home in the US, she felt sure there would have been a shop called Let Them Eat Cake right outside the cathedral doors.
    Hannah hadn’t come to research Marie Antoinette or Louis XVI, however. She was much more interested in Catherine de’Medici, who had been ignored by her husband during his reign as
king, but then gone on to hold the reins of power for three decades after his death. She’d seen her three sons each become king in succession, but all the while she had been in control.
Catherine had a reputation for brutality, but other than that, she was Hannah’s sort of woman. As she tipped back her coffee and drained the last bitter dregs, she gazed up at the cathedral.
It was both beautiful and formidable, but what really struck her was how much money must have been involved in its upkeep.
    ‘Who pays for all of this?’ she asked.
    Charlie gave her a sidelong glance. ‘So now you’re interested?’
    For a moment she wasn’t sure what he meant, and then realized he thought she was asking about his own research paper.
    ‘Not in what you’re working on. I’m just wondering. There’s no way Rome has the budget for it.’
    Charlie nodded. ‘You wouldn’t think so, but you’d be wrong. When the Vatican fell apart after the revelation, the church treasury was frozen. Payments weren’t being made
because they were trying to protect church wealth from lawsuits. Yeah, the Papal hierarchy completely collapsed, but not for long. It was only, like, two years before the College of Cardinals were
able to agree on a new Pope.’
    The revelation. The day, many