Peter put his ear against the rough wood of the door. He couldn’t hear anything behind it, but that told him little. This door was his only route outside. There was no window in the cell. Its sturdy walls had been built to last an eternity and were impenetrable. But staying here was not an option.
Earlier that evening, after Brother Antonius had shown him to this cell, Peter ate a simple but nutritious meal in the deserted refectory.
He imagined it in better days, bustling with large groups of tourists sitting convivially together at the long tables, enjoying the soup and the traditionally baked bread before retiring to their rooms in the guest wing. At two o’clock in the morning, a large caravan of people would go up the mountain, Antonius had explained to him. The first stage of the journey stopped at the foot of the steps that had been created by a monk as an act of penitence, carved out of the granite by hand. Many people chose to do the first stage by camel, providing a major source of income for the local Bedouins. On the busiest days in summer, the line of people winding their way up the mountain was kilometres long, and their lamps and flaming torches made them look like a glowing snake. When they reached the top some four hours later, they would discover that taking a quiet moment to reflect was out of the question. Hundreds of people would be squashed together on the plateau, all seeking the best position from which to watch the sun rise over the mountains of Israel and Jordan in the east.
Peter and Antonius sat at an empty table, but shortly after they had begun to eat, they were joined by one of the other brothers. He said very little but looked up repeatedly to fix Peter with a penetrating stare. He introduced himself as Brother Milan. Like all the other monks Peter had seen so far, Milan had a full beard. His age was hard to guess; he was obviously over sixty, but Peter couldn’t tell more accurately than that. Laughter lines crinkled around his eyes and he looked friendly but radiated a stern, meticulous intelligence. For some reason, Peter found it easy to imagine him in a rage.
Peter had been careful to keep the purpose of his visit vague, and Antonius hadn’t questioned him too closely about it. It was almost as if Bedouins turned up at the door every evening with a stranded foreigner in tow.
They talked briefly about Leiden, a city that, much to Peter’s surprise, both Antonius and Milan had heard of. Dutch scholars had visited their library on numerous occasions to study the manuscripts.
Coen Zoutman.
Some of them had even stayed for months. One of them had been from Leiden and repaid their hospitality by bringing copies of manuscripts from Leiden University’s library to add to the monastery’s collection.
Peter couldn’t put his finger on what it was, but as soon as the conversation turned to Leiden, he noticed a change in Brother Milan’s mood. The monk narrowed his eyes as if he was furiously turning something over in his mind.
Antonius excused himself – the sound of ringing bells had sounded in the distance, signalling the start of evening prayers – and Peter was left alone with Brother Milan, who evidently wasn’t obliged to go to the service.
A few other monks passed through the room, including one who seemed unusually tall, all hurriedly making their way to the church.
Even when the last brother had closed the refectory door behind him, and it was clear that they were now completely alone, Brother Milan looked furtively around the hall before he spoke. ‘You know Coen Zoutman?’
Peter nodded slowly.
It was odd to hear the name of the man whose tragic death had been the catalyst for this adventure spoken here, thousands of kilometres from home.
‘You know Coen Zoutman,’ Milan said again, and it sounded like statement this time rather than a question.
‘You knew Coen?’ Peter said, amazed.
‘Knew? You don’t mean to say that he’s …’
‘I’m sorry,’ Peter said. ‘He’s dead, but … how did you know each other?’
The monk was visibly upset by the news of Coen’s death. His lips moved silently as if he was saying a prayer, beseeching God for a blessing. ‘That’s … That doesn’t matter now,’ he said, regaining his composure.
‘I saw in the guestbook that you’re from the Netherlands, from Leiden. I’m always inclined to be particularly alert whenever I see that. And now, with this terrible news …’ Brother Milan stared into space, lost in thought for a moment. ‘Did Coen die naturally?’
What should I say?
‘I’m sorry, no. He was murdered. The police don’t know who did it yet.’
But I do.
‘I think I may have been waiting for you,’ Milan said.
‘Waiting?’
For me?
‘Come with me.’
Brother Milan led him out of the refectory. His long, black habit swished over the floor. It covered his feet entirely, making him look as though he was floating above the ground.
They walked down a series of long, empty, terracotta-tiled corridors, crossed a courtyard and eventually entered a small chapel.
When Peter saw what was inside it, he gasped in horror.
Piled up in the chapel’s large alcoves were hundreds upon hundreds of human skulls. The gaping holes where their eyes had been seemed to be staring blindly back at him. Many of the skulls’ jaws had slipped crookedly downwards, making them look like they were trying to scream something from another realm, a reproach or a warning.
‘Why are we here?’ Peter asked. He clenched his fists, ready to fight his way back outside if he had to.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ said Milan, who could see that Peter was confused and on the edge of panic. ‘I’m on the same side as you. The same side as all of you. Look …’ he said, sweeping his arm in an arc towards the skulls, almost like a guide telling a story to an attentive tour group.
‘I’m also … Coen and I …’ he began, but then changed his mind. ‘This is what remains of us when we’re gone, isn’t it? These are the skulls of all the monks who’ve lived here since the monastery was founded. Many of them have completely turned to dust. This is all that’s left. This is our fate. Do you agree? Our bodies are only temporary vessels for the soul. The earth is only our temporary home. We weren’t supposed to be here. We have a higher calling. Our true home is in the Garden of Eden that we were once cast out of.’
We got to get ourselves back to the garden … So far, Milan hasn’t said anything that I didn’t already know about or that contradicts Christian doctrine, Peter thought. Doesn’t every Christian believe that life is merely a long test of faith? Earth is the laboratory that God uses to decide which of us will be with Him forever after death and which of us will be separated from Him.
‘We must break free from our bodies,’ Milan went on. ‘Break free from the physical matter that keeps us shackled to the earth. Otherwise, we’ll keep coming back for as long as it takes for us to learn our lessons.’
What is he talking about? Keep coming back? Reincarnation? That’s not part of Christian dogma …
‘That’s why I’m here. That’s why we’re all here in this monastery, to focus on the eternal through study and prayer, and to turn away from the temporal. But I …’ He paused. ‘But I discovered that … Coen came here sometimes to do research, as a … He was an initiate … We had many long conversations together. He showed me that we need to read the Old Testament stories in Genesis and Exodus in a way that’s quite different from our previous understanding of them.’
Peter got the impression that Brother Milan wanted to tell many different things at once but didn’t know where to start. Large beads of sweat were forming on his forehead. A hush had fallen over the small chapel, as if everything had come to a standstill.
‘What does Coen have to do with all of this?’
‘When he was here, he confided in me …’ the monk said, looking more composed now. ‘Coen told me that his death would be unnatural and violent, and that he would send someone to …’
Send someone? But I hadn’t planned to come here at all, Peter wanted to shout
. Was Coen going to send that young man, Yona Falaina? Did I really end up here by chance? Have I come here of my own free will? Or am I being directed by a higher power? Was I destined to come here?
‘Coen was a living book,’ the monk said. When Peter nodded to show that he understood what this meant, he continued. ‘There were six living books spread over three different places. The tides of history determined that those places would be Jerusalem, Leiden and Boston. One living book for each city, each with a second book in training. I’ve heard rumours that there was sometimes even a third pupil. The pupils are usually young, but sometimes older people too …’
A second and sometimes even a third pupil? In Boston, that was George with Tony as the third. Does this mean that there’s another living book alive still in Jerusalem? If that’s true, then Tony slipped up … Or did he murder that person as well? And who could Leiden’s third living book be?
The idea had fleetingly occurred to him in America. He hadn’t given it a great deal of thought then. But now, that possibility had bizarrely become a very likely probability. Peter was dumbfounded.
Fay? Had Coen been about to initiate her so that she …
‘It went terribly wrong in Jerusalem with those two murders. And now Coen in Leiden …’
‘Someone else was killed in Leiden shortly after Coen,’ Peter said. ‘A young man, Yona.’
Milan shook his head, aghast.
And two people were drowned in Boston, Peter almost added. But how much shocking information can a person process at once?
‘But are you also—’
‘No, no,’ Peter said. ‘I’ve not been initiated, but I have learned something about it. I know about the history of the living books. I think I know who the third person in Leiden was going to be. And I know who the third person in Boston was – or is. And I know that he’s responsible for the murders. He fooled the chairman of the Boston lodge into trusting him, but his only goal was to erase the secret knowledge forever.’
The look of shock had not yet left Milan’s face.
I’ve got to ask him.
‘But what is this secret knowledge? What is it about?’
‘It’s about …’ Brother Milan leaned forward and whispered so softly that Peter could barely hear him. ‘It’s about the Torah. Or, in other words, it’s about the first five books of the Old Testament. The books as we know them are … there’s another tradition, an oral tradition, a different version that explains the original meaning of the books. The books aren’t an accurate historical account, nor were they ever intended to be. The stories are ultimately all about … the journey inwards. Not the Ex-odus, the outward journey, but the Eis-odus, the inward journey. Gnothi seauton, Know thyself … It’s about the Christ within us, the journey of the soul. It’s too complicated for me to be able to explain everything to you here now.’
‘And how does Coen fit into this?’
‘Coen visited us here a few times. He said … The last time that he was here, he was very, very worried. He knew what had happened in Jerusalem, of course, and he was convinced that the murderer would eventually come for him. So, Coen made the decision to write some of the knowledge down for the first time in history, the first time in more than three thousand years. Doing so was absolutely forbidden, but he chose to write a synopsis of the second book. He chose Exodus because he considered it to be the most important book. Everything springs from Exodus. It’s in Exodus that God makes his promise to the people of Israel, telling the Hebrews that they will have their own land, a place of safety. Their journey through the desert and the crossing of the Red Sea represent the soul’s journey after death. Before the soul can reach heaven, the promised land, a host of enemies must be vanquished and inner demons defeated. Man longs for the fleshpots of Egypt. Our fleshly desires keep our souls trapped in our bodies. The mind is willing, but, ultimately, the flesh is weak.’
What Brother Milan was telling him was astonishing, but it made sense.
All the puzzle pieces were slotting together …
This is what Tony was telling me, although he explained it differently. His obsession with sticking to a strictly literal reading of the stories is purely a reaction to the existence of these living books. If everyone started interpreting the Bible in different ways, its stories would lose their power to bring people together, and who knows what the consequences of that would be?
‘But what now?’ Peter asked.
‘I have it,’ Milan said. ‘I have the document that Coen wrote.’
I’m going to have to tell him.
‘Two men were drowned in Boston earlier this month. Sam and George. They were living books too.’
Milan’s eyes began to fill with tears.
‘Then there’s no one left! The knowledge is almost entirely lost. All we have left is what Coen wrote down. And I’m afraid that it’s not safe, not even here. Please, take it! It’s the only way that a small piece of the knowledge might be saved. It’s the only way we can stop it all being lost.’
What are the chances of someone getting caught up in a situation like this? Or was this fate? Is this a role that I was predestined to play?
‘Come,’ Brother Milan said. ‘Let’s go to my room.’
They left the chapel and walked past a bush that was growing over a two-metre-high wall, like a houseplant in a giant flowerpot. It wasn’t the actual bush from which God was supposed to have spoken to Moses, but according to legend, it had been grafted onto a branch of the original bush.
It doesn’t matter if a story is true or not as long as people believe it could be true … I must come back here one day, Peter thought with a pang of regret. It’s so beautiful.
They walked past the famous basilica, and Peter felt another pang of regret because he wouldn’t have an opportunity to go inside. They crossed the courtyard and came to the building that housed the monks’ cells. They stopped at a door that was indistinguishable from all the other doors they had passed.
The monk reached inside his habit and took out a bunch of large, antique-looking iron keys. Seamlessly, he inserted the correct key into the lock and turned it twice, producing a grating, metallic creak.
‘This is my room,’ said Milan, who hadn’t spoken since they had left the ossuary.
The cell was the mirror image of Peter’s except for the addition of two sturdy bookcases tightly packed with books.
As soon as they were inside, Milan closed the door behind them and then locked it.
‘Sit down,’ the monk told Peter. He stood in front of one of the bookcases and counted the books on the top shelf, starting at the left, touching each of the spines with his index finger.
‘You need to understand, Peter, that this knowledge has been passed down for thousands of years, since a time before the Bible even existed. And it didn’t start with Moses. Moses is a myth. There was someone like him, but the Moses in the Bible was an amalgamation of various figures, some historical, some fictional.’
When Milan turned around again, he was holding a book in his hands.
‘In principle, the secret knowledge may not be written down. To do so would be to desecrate the divinely inspired text. If you were to capture what it reveals in something as banal as a manuscript, then people would be able to copy its sacred words, and they would make mistakes … it would be a defilement. The text that Coen and the others had memorised was too sacred to make into an ordinary book. The words would take on a life of their own. You’d no longer know who had access to it. People would change words, whether unintentionally or deliberately.
‘So by various twists of fate, three groups of living books were created to preserve the text. To reduce the risk of the knowledge being lost, two living books from Jerusalem were sent to England after the destruction of the Temple in AD 70. And as you’re aware, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, two more went to Leiden. But there were disagreements and divisions in the Leiden group, and that’s why only some of the Separatists went to America. A number o
f those who stayed behind in Leiden joined the Freemasons. It was the safest place for them then – and now. Their ideas didn’t attract much attention there. The ones who went to America were the literalists, the hardliners who argued that everything should be taken literally and believed that the Bible should be read as a factual historical account. But one living book secretly joined them on their ship. He passed the knowledge on to others, and those others eventually joined the Freemasons, as their successors have continued to do to this day.’
He opened the book. The pages had been hollowed out and hidden inside it was another book. Although ‘book’ was too big a word to describe something that was more like a small portfolio. It was a parchment cover that contained just a few sheets of paper.
Brother Milan removed it from the hollowed-out book.
Peter couldn’t help feeling a deep disappointment when he saw it. Now he understood what Milan had meant when he said that a holy text could be defiled by writing it down.
It makes it so … ordinary, and it’s vulnerable to decay too. Paper doesn’t last forever. It degrades, grows mouldy, gets eaten by silverfish.
‘It’s only a small part of the complete text that Coen had memorised, and a summary at that, so not even the actual words themselves. But Coen made me promise to hide it. He said that I was to take the secret of its existence to my grave,’ the monk said solemnly, holding the six or seven pages in his hand.
‘And nobody else knows …’
‘Brother Antonius, who you just met, is my confessor. He knows that I have “something”, something important, but he doesn’t know what it is. I made a promise to Coen … but now the moment has come for me to break the promise, or rather the moment has come for me to keep a promise that I made to him. Coen told me that if something went wrong, he would send someone for this text. Someone who was intelligent enough and would somehow be guided by someone or something …’ Milan raised his eyes heavenward ‘… and find his way here. You may not have been sent here, at least, probably not in the way that Coen expected, but you are here now. And that’s all that matters.’
The Pilgrim Conspiracy Page 45