The testament, p.52
The Testament, page 52
As Bravo reached out to open it, Jenny said, "I don't think-" Then her eyes rolled up and she collapsed. At once, he laid her flat, listened for her breath, took her pulse. She was alive, but his hand came away covered in blood. Quickly now, he took off his shirt, ripping it into strips. With a rising sense of urgency, he unwound the tourniquet she'd fashioned out of her own shirt. He was appalled to see the wound. He wiped away the blood seeping out of it. There was no doubt, the wound was far more serious than she'd made it out to be. He bound her again, using two of the strips he'd made of his shirt, making a double layer, tying them both tighter in an effort to cut down on the rate of blood loss. He looked around. Of course there was not a soul in sight. It was at best a kilometer to the Sumela Monastery, and from there a twenty-minute ride to the clinic at Macka. He took her pulse again and was alarmed to discover it slower than it had been before. If it became erratic… Even so, he might not get her back to civilization in time.
He wiped his sweating face, turned to face his toy chest. He knew what lay within. With a trembling hand, he opened the chest. Here were the secrets the Order had been amassing for centuries-documents, secret treaties, clandestine histories, suppressed memoirs, incriminating financial records. And there, among them, was the Testament of Jesus Christ. He touched it, but did not pick it up. Funny, now that he had found it, he had no time to read it. His attention was elsewhere: the small clay phial with its stone stopper.
The Quintessence.
All he had to do was open it, apply the tiniest amount to Jenny's wound. She would be healed, her life saved. How could he not do it? He picked it up, cupped it in his two palms. It was almost without weight, as if its contents were lighter than air, like angels' wings.
Open it, apply a small amount to her wound. She would live-absolutely, no question. If he didn't, there was only faith to go on, faith that he could get her to the clinic, that he could save her.
His fingers curled around the stopper.
And then what? What would happen to her afterward? Would she live to be 150 years old? two hundred? four hundred, like Fra Leoni? Would she want that? Had he the right to do it, to change the natural order? Surely, his father had had the same agonizing decision to make when Steffi grew gravely ill…
And then his father appeared beside him.
"Dad, what should I do?"
"It's your decision now, Bravo."
"I love her, I don't want her to die."
"I loved Steffi, I didn't want her to die."
"But you betrayed her, you slept with Camille."
"I'm human, Bravo, just like everyone else."
"But you're not like everyone else, Dad!"
Dexter smiled. "When you were a child, it was good for you to see me that way, it gave you comfort and security, that's the way of the world. But now you're an adult, you have to accept me as I really was, you have to provide your own comfort and security…"
Bravo, blinking away tears, found himself once again alone by the seething Cauldron, Jenny beside him. He heard her labored breathing, looked down again at the vessel that held the Quintessence.
Faith. Was his faith strong enough?
He carefully replaced the Quintessence in the chest. But it was as if the phial were alive, it was so difficult to let it go, to pull his hand away. With an extreme effort he did, closed the lid and lowered the toy chest back into the hole his father had made for it.
The buried Quintessence nevertheless beat like a telltale heart as he replaced the soil, tamped it down, replaced the bed of pine needles and forest detritus. Then, with a fervent prayer to the Virgin Mary, cradling Jenny in his arms, he began the trek back to Sumela.
Eight hours later, in the middle of the night, Jenny awoke in terrible pain. She cried out. Then Bravo had her hand, was bending over her. She could see his face in the soft lamplight.
"Where am I?"
"Macka," he said. "Next door is the clinic's surgery."
"The cache?"
"It was just where my father buried it," he said. "Breathe easy, Jenny, it's safe."
"I want to get out of here." She tried to rise, moaned. With a rattle of tubes that ran into her, carrying blood and saline, she sank back against the rough pillow.
"Tomorrow or the next day," Bravo said, "when your fever is completely gone, we'll move you to Trabzon."
"We?"
"I called Khalif. He's out of the hospital and is all too happy to come get us with an ambulance. I wasn't going to trust you to a car for the three-hour drive out of the mountains."
He gave her some water, waited a moment while she swallowed. "Go back to sleep now, you need your rest."
"And you don't?"
He laughed, but all she could muster was a smile. For the moment, it was enough.
"Bravo, what will happen now?"
"Now that I have control of the cache, you mean?" He watched her eyes, large and serious. The time had passed for joking, he saw. She needed answers, no less than he had, which was why he hadn't slept a wink since he'd brought her to the clinic at Macka. He'd been too busy thinking, then making a series of calls.
"I've spoken to my sister, Emma," he said. "She's the net-worker, in touch with all the members of the Order, at every level. They have voted. I'm the new Magister Regens."
Her eyes opened wide. "And what of the Haute Cour?"
"It will advise me, just as it advised the Magister Regens centuries ago. New members will have to be nominated, of course. The first one I'll nominate is you."
"Me?"
He laughed again, more softly.
"Then you must also nominate a Venetian nun named Arcangela."
"The Anchorite-yes, I know about her." He nodded his assent. "It's past time the valuable women of the Order were recognized, their ideas, schemes and insights brought fully into the fold."
"And where will we go from here?"
"Sleep now, Jenny. Tomorrow will be soon enough-"
"Not for me. I won't sleep until you tell me."
He sat in the semidarkness contemplating her question. It was a good one, the only one that counted, and he had pondered long and hard through the night as to what needed to be done.
"First, you and I will move the cache to a safer place. I'm going to need time to evaluate its contents, determine what our power really is. The Order needs to continue my father's work. Even as we talk here, the world is changing, and not for the better, I fear. There is a new war coming, Jenny. In fact, it's already begun. My father knew it, and now so do I. A religious war that will rock every nation unless it can be averted. The fundamentalists on each side-the Christians and the Islamics-are determined to exterminate the other, and neither cares who gets in their way. We can't let that happen, can we?"
"No," she said. "We can't."
"Then you'll help me." His excitement rushed out of him like sparks from an engine. "The first order of business is to make contact with all the elements of the Order's ancient religious network my father kept alive and running."
Jenny smiled. It was what she most wanted to hear. But she was already slipping into sleep, and she answered him only in her dreams.
Khalif did not arrive alone. With him when he drew up in the ambulance were two paramedics, who immediately jumped out with a stretcher and went to get Jenny. When Bravo was done directing them, he came out into the narrow street to greet his friend. Khalif's shoulder was bandaged and his arm was in a cast; nevertheless the Turk seemed remarkably chipper.
"Your call was manna from heaven. It's good to be back in the game."
They embraced was if they were long-lost brothers.
Khalif's face turned sober. "How is she?"
"She'll be okay, she's tough."
It was only then that he noticed another figure standing in the shadows across the street. At first, he seemed unfamiliar. Then Bravo recognized him as the old priest he had first given the coin to at the Church of l'Angelo Nicolo` in Venice. He remembered Jenny asking him if he could trust the old man. Somehow, Bravo had known that he could.
The electric blue eyes watched him as they had in the church, with a mixture of curiosity and amusement. But now there was something else in them: he no longer felt a child in the old priest's eyes.
The paramedics appeared with Jenny on the stretcher. They paused long enough for Bravo to lean over, press his lips to hers.
"I'll be right next to you," he said, "all the way home."
The paramedics put her into the rear of the ambulance, and Khalif climbed in after them. The driver sat behind the wheel, picking at his nails. A dog barked somewhere along the sun-blasted street, otherwise all was still. Not another soul in sight.
The old priest crossed the street.
"You didn't use the Quintessence, did you?"
Bravo felt the weight of the priest's solemn gaze on him. He had spoken in Trapazuntine Greek, but Bravo suspected it could just as well have been Latin, or Greek or any number of ancient languages.
"No," he replied in the same language.
"Why not?" the old priest asked. "You had cause."
"But not just cause."
The old priest's robes were black, his long, wild hair pure white. Around his neck was a short chain that held a key-a key, Bravo saw now, that was the twin to the one his father had left for him, the key that opened the original chest that had for centuries held the order's cache of secrets. It was the key held by Jon Molko, Dexter Shaw's backup. Dexter must have given it to the old priest for safekeeping.
The old priest inclined his head imperceptibly. "I've waited a long time for this moment."
Bravo took a deep breath. He knew he was looking at living history. "And if I'd opened the Quintessence?"
The old priest smiled. "It is sealed with wax, but over the centuries the seal cracked, and when your father removed the lid he found that the contents had evaporated."
Bravo waited, stunned. His heart was a trip-hammer beating in his chest. "He tried to save my mother."
"Though I counseled against it." The old priest locked his fingers together. "He wanted to be Magister Regens. His idea was correct, but he was not the one. Now you know why."
Bravo bowed his head for a moment, trying to gather himself. Then he said, "What is to be done with the Testament?"
The old priest's gaze held steady. He had not blinked once, not even in this bright sunlight. "That is for you to decide."
"It is not for me alone to decide. I am asking for your advice."
The old priest stroked his beard for a moment. "You already understand the extreme danger of the Quintessence, you've felt it yourself. The Testament of Christ is just as dangerous. What it contains-the words of Jesus-has the power to upend all Christianity. Is this what you want?"
"But it's the truth."
"Ah, yes, the truth." The old priest took a step toward him. "During its long history the Order has continually struggled with the truth. How the debates raged back and forth within the Haute Cour! Now I must ask you what we asked ourselves: which will better promote the natural order of things, truth or perception? When you have answered that question, Bravo, you will know what to do with the Testament."
He began to walk up the street, in the direction of Sumela. "Wait," Bravo said. "Will I see you again?"
The old priest paused. "Oh, yes."
"What shall I call you, then. Surely not Fra-"
"That name is ancient, it has outlived its moment," the old priest said at once. "Call me, rather, by my Christian name, the name my father and mother gave me at birth. Call me Braventino."
AUTHOR'S NOTE
THE HISTORY BEHIND THE FICTION
Virtually all of the history in The Testament is real. The Franciscan Observatines are recorded in history, as are the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, who inspired my own Knights of St. Clement of the Holy Land.
It seems inevitable that the Gnostic Observatines and the Knights would be at each other's throats. From as far back as the early 1300s, there was a deep division within the Franciscans regarding the strict vow of poverty demanded by St. Francis upon the founding of the Order in the beginning of the thirteenth century. The Observatines (also called Observantists) believed in it, the Conventuals did not. The dispute came to a head in 1322 when Pope John XXII sided with the Conventuals and their allies, the more established Dominican Order.
The pope's papal bull, Cum inter nonmullos, which said among other things that the rule of poverty was "erroneous and heretical," was likely a subterfuge. It seems far more plausible that the pope wanted to stamp out a faction of the Franciscans bent on roaming the world, spreading their gospel, their power and influence, rather than staying put in monasteries, as the Conventuals were bound to do. This is the real reason he ruled against the Observatines.
However, the ruling was hardly the end of the Observatines. Quite the opposite, in fact. In the latter part of the fifteenth century and the first two decades of the sixteenth century, a good number of Observatines who had accepted the papal bull were in the Middle East, especially Trebizond, ostensibly serving both as emissaries and proselytizers. It seems likely that they were also carrying on the business of the Observatines. It is here, at the place where East and West meet, that I have imagined my Gnostic Observatines discovering many of their secrets, including the fragment of the Testament of Jesus, and the Quintessence, which is also recorded in history as the fabled Fifth Element, sought after by every Alchemist on earth.
To conform to history as much as possible, I have set the official founding of the Gnostic Observatine Order more or less to this date, though certainly there were stirrings within the Observatines in the decade before 1322.
Gnosticism is, in and of itself, anathema to the Vatican and its staunchly traditionalist orders. Its name derives from the Greek word for "knowledge." Gnostics, to put it simply, believe that the physical world is corrupt, evil, that the way to salvation lies in adhering to the wholly spiritual path to goodness. Some even hold that Jesus was a purely spiritual being, so only appeared to die on the cross. Some gnostics also pursue studies in the so-called "esoteric mysteries," which the Church has judged to be magic, and so, heretical.
The Knights, champions of both Christ and the pope, would naturally be predisposed to despise and fear the Order, who took quite seriously St. Francis's edict to roam the world, spreading his gospel. It's entirely logical that the Knights would be only too happy to do the pope's bidding in dismantling the Order's power.
The Secret Gospel of Mark is recorded in history, as well. Sections of it are quoted in a letter attributed to the second-century church father Clement of Alexandria to Theodore. Clement claims that after Peter's death, Mark brought his original gospel to Alexandria and wrote a "more spiritual gospel" The letter was unearthed by the biblical scholar Morton Smith in 1958 in the Mar Saba monastery just south of Jerusalem. Not surprisingly, its authenticity is disputed by many biblical scholars, who do not believe that the historical Jesus was a miracle worker.
However, that is precisely how the Secret Gospel of Mark portrays him in this passage: "And they come into Bethany. And a certain woman whose brother had died was there. And, coming, she prostrated herself before Jesus and said to him, 'Son of David, have mercy on me.' But the disciples rebuked her. And Jesus, being angered, went off with her into the garden where the tomb was, and straightaway, going in where the youth was, he stretched forth his hand and raised him, seizing his hand."
Smith's subsequent study of the gospels led him to the following contention: that Jesus "could admit his followers to the kingdom of God, and he could do it in some special way, so that they were not there merely by anticipation, nor by virtue of belief and obedience, nor by some other figure of speech."
In any event, no matter one's personal beliefs, the possibilities Smith-and, indeed, history itself-have revealed remain fascinating, the stuff of endless speculation, the basis of fiction that continues to enthrall us all.
Notes
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