The Messiah Secret

by James Becker

  Anyway, they’d both gone, which suited him fine. And their work at the Hall was now complete. The individual specialists had prepared their inventories, listing all the items they’d assessed, their historical importance, and where possible their likely commercial value. All he had to do now was collate their data, write a covering letter with his overall assessment of the collections and present the final report to his superior at the British Museum. Then he could get back to his regular work.

  But, he reflected, as he stepped outside the Hall for the last time on that Friday evening and looked up at the crumbling masonry of the old building, it hadn’t been an entirely unpleasant interlude. A week in the country, all expenses paid, engaged on what amounted to an academic treasure hunt – there were definitely much worse ways to spend one’s time.

  These pleasant thoughts were interrupted by a brisk tap on his shoulder. Mayhew jumped – the rest of the team had left about a quarter of an hour earlier, and he knew he was alone at the building.

  He spun round, and came face to face with one of his personal nightmares.

  The man standing in front of him was shorter than Mayhew, perhaps five feet six, and stocky, with the solid bulk that comes from hard physical exercise. A bandage covered his left ear and that side of his face, and his dark unblinking eyes seemed to sear into Mayhew’s soul.

  The man’s physical appearance was disturbing enough, but what Mayhew found alarmingly difficult to reconcile was the clerical collar the stranger wore at the neck of his black shirt, and the pistol in his right hand, a pistol that was aimed directly at him.

  Mayhew caught his breath. ‘Who are you? What do you want?’

  ‘One question at a time, fat boy,’ the man said, his voice quiet and measured, his accent American and the words simple but delivered with such menace that Mayhew felt his bowels loosening.

  ‘I’ve got no money,’ he stammered.

  ‘I don’t want your money. I just want you. Open the door you’ve just locked and get back inside the building.’

  Mayhew looked around him frantically. He needed help.

  The stranger chuckled softly. ‘There’s nobody here but us. Just get that through your thick skull. I could kill you right here, right now, and nobody would even hear the shot. So move before I do just that.’

  Mayhew’s hands were trembling so much that it took him three tries before he got the key into the lock.

  ‘Get a move on,’ the man snapped, poking his gun into Mayhew’s back.

  Finally the door swung open. Mayhew staggered as a powerful hand shoved him forwards, almost fell, then regained his footing as the door slammed behind him. Turning back he saw the American gangster – despite the clerical collar, what else could the man be? – putting the key into his pocket.

  ‘Go into the kitchen,’ the man said, pointing towards the back of the house.

  Mayhew nodded dumbly and led the way. It never occurred to him to wonder how the man could possibly know where the kitchen was located.

  ‘What do you want from me?’ Mayhew asked again, once he was in the kitchen.

  The man ignored his question, gesturing with his pistol to a wooden armchair standing in one corner of the room. ‘Take off your jacket, then go and sit down.’

  Mayhew placed his jacket on the table, then walked across to the chair.

  The man followed him, pulled a handful of plastic cable ties from his pocket and tossed one to Mayhew. ‘Put that around your right wrist and pull it tight,’ he ordered, and watched closely as Mayhew obeyed him. ‘That’s good,’ he said, stepping closer and securing Mayhew’s left wrist to the other arm of the chair. Then he drew a small pair of pliers from his pocket and pulled both cable ties tight.

  Mayhew grimaced as the thin plastic cut into the flesh of his wrists.

  The man pulled another chair across and sat down opposite him, laying the pistol on the kitchen table. From one of the inside pockets of his jacket he drew a leather whip with multiple steel-tipped thongs and placed it beside the automatic.

  Gulping for air, Mayhew watched his actions with increasing trepidation.

  ‘This is a scourge,’ the man said conversationally, looking down at the whip. ‘It’s one of the oldest implements of chastisement, used for both punishment and persuasion, and even for self-flagellation. The name is derived from the Latin excoriare, meaning “to flay” and corium, “skin”, and it was used by the Romans to punish offenders. It’s been used through the ages in monastic orders around the world, and I’ll introduce you to it in a moment. Then I’m going to ask you some questions. I suggest you answer them as quickly, fully and accurately as you can.’

  The man removed his jacket, picked up the scourge and stepped towards the wooden armchair.

  ‘No, wait,’ Mayhew shouted desperately. ‘I’ll tell you anything I can.’

  ‘I know you will. There’s not the slightest doubt about that.’

  ‘No. Please – please wait—’

  ‘Be silent. Remember that our Lord Jesus Christ endured a scourging during His Passion, before He was made to carry His cross to Calvary. This holy instrument will simply encourage your cooperation and ensure your recollections are accurate.’

  The man turned so that he was facing his captive, then swung the scourge against Mayhew’s chest, the steel-tipped ends of the thongs ripping apart the thin cotton of his shirt and carving furrows across his torso.

  Mayhew howled in pain and leaned back as far as he could in the chair. His fists clenched and more blood appeared around the cable ties as the thin plastic cut deep into his wrists.

  The man moved around to the other side of the chair, changed his grip on the scourge and swung it again. Then he moved back to his own chair and sat down.

  After a couple of minutes, Mayhew’s howls of pain had subsided to low moans of agony.

  ‘Now,’ the man said, ‘we’ll start at the beginning – tell me everything you know about Bartholomew’s Folly.’

  Whatever Mayhew had been expecting, this wasn’t it.

  ‘But it’s just a story, a story about a stupid man who lost a fortune searching for something that wasn’t there.’

  ‘Then it won’t be a problem for you to tell me all about it, will it?’

  Mayhew shook his head. ‘No, but I mean . . .’ His voice trailed away into silence.

  The man picked up his scourge, as Mayhew gathered his thoughts, and quickly explained everything he knew or had read about Bartholomew Wendell-Carfax’s abortive expeditions to Persia.

  ‘I’ve read all that in one of the guidebooks,’ the man snapped. ‘I need more information. Why do you think he was just wasting his time?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Five minutes ago you told me Bartholomew Wendell-Carfax was just – and I quote – “a stupid man who lost a fortune searching for something that wasn’t there.” Unquote. That’s what you said. So how do you know it wasn’t there?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know that, of course,’ Mayhew wailed. ‘What I said was an educated guess.’

  ‘So educate me. Give me your reasons.’

  Mayhew paused, trying desperately to think clearly amid the waves of panic and fear that were threatening to overwhelm him.

  ‘There are two reasons,’ he said finally. ‘First, the fragment of Persian text probably dated from the first century AD, and it’s likely that in the next two thousand years somebody would have stumbled across this so-called treasure – if it ever existed – and recovered it.’

  ‘And the second reason?’

  ‘From everything I’ve read, Bartholomew Wendell-Carfax had no real idea of where to look. He might not even have been searching in the right country. The only clue to the location was the “valley of the flowers”, and I suspect that that would have been a fairly common-place name in many cultures around that time. Unless, of course, the remainder of the fragment Bartholomew found contained some other information that we don’t have.’

  ‘You mean what’s printed in that guid
ebook isn’t the whole translation?’

  ‘No.’ Mayhew struggled briefly against his restraints. It was no good – he was held fast. ‘If you read the section, you can see that what’s contained is only the part of the text that Bartholomew showed to Oliver. He must have kept the rest of it hidden somewhere. Oliver spent quite a lot of his time in later life looking for the original, and that’s the reason for all the damaged walls in the house. He was certain there was a hidden passage or panel somewhere that held the Persian parchment.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. It’s well established that Bartholomew did find a piece of parchment, and that it subsequently vanished. But whether it’s hidden somewhere here in the house or locked away in a bank safety deposit box we know nothing about, or even got destroyed in the last eighty-odd years, is another matter entirely.’

  The man tightened the grip on the scourge. ‘Give me your best guess.’

  ‘I think it’s probably hidden here somewhere. Bartholomew was planning another expedition when he died, apparently, and he would have wanted the entire text available to him. He might have thought that there were still clues hidden in it, and he would probably have studied the text regularly.’

  ‘If it was parchment, handling it all the time wouldn’t have been such a sharp idea, though, would it?’

  Mayhew took a breath that sounded – even to him – like a sob. ‘But if he sealed the parchment in a plastic bag or mounted it between a couple of sheets of glass, and kept it away from moisture and sunlight, it would have lasted quite well. And he would also have made a copy of the text and kept that to hand. And I still think he would have kept it here, somewhere. It wouldn’t have been convenient to keep it in a bank, and it was a very precious and important relic for Bartholomew.’ Mayhew sighed. ‘But I’ve no idea where you’d start looking.’

  ‘That’s not bad,’ the man said, looking at Mayhew keenly. ‘Oliver told me the parchment did fall apart, several years ago. He also told me his father made a copy of the text before that happened.’

  ‘Oliver Wendell-Carfax told you?’ Mayhew whispered, an appalling realization suddenly crowding into his brain.

  The man nodded, a slight smile playing over his lips. Then he picked up the whip and walked across to the chair Mayhew was sitting in. This time he stepped behind the chair. The wooden back was tall and reached almost up to Mayhew’s neck.

  ‘Bend forward,’ he ordered, ‘or I’ll whip you twice.’

  Mayhew muttered something inaudible, then bent forward, his whole body trembling in anticipation of the agony to come.

  Instantly, the man swung the scourge down, opening up a line of new wounds on his prisoner’s back.

  Mayhew screamed again, as the man lashed his back a second time.

  ‘You said you’d only hit me once,’ Mayhew protested, between sobs of pain.

  ‘I make the rules,’ the man said simply, sitting down again, his voice still calm and controlled. ‘Now I need to know what else you found here. You’ve had all week to explore this place. What did you discover?’

  Mayhew shook his head, the pain of the lashes across his chest and back still clouding his mind. ‘We didn’t—’ he began, but the stranger again picked up the whip.

  ‘Wait, wait,’ Mayhew stammered desperately. ‘We did find something. It wasn’t much, but—’

  ‘I’ll be the judge of its value. Just tell me what it was.’

  ‘The vessel. The first-century pottery jar that the parchment had been sealed inside. We found that – at least we think we did – up in the attic. It was in pieces. Bartholomew broke it when he tried to remove the parchment.’

  ‘Who found it? And where is it now?’

  ‘One of our ceramic specialists – Angela Lewis – took it away with her.’

  ‘Tell me about her.’

  Sobbing, Mayhew described Angela and told the man where she lived and worked, and then fell silent. He’d apologise to her when he next saw her, he told himself. For now it was a matter of survival.

  ‘Did you find anything else?’

  Mayhew nodded miserably. ‘Chris Bronson – Angela’s former husband – found a small leather box full of papers, mainly notes Bartholomew had written. Angela said they were expedition records, that kind of thing, and a few bills and receipts.’

  ‘And she took them away with her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was silence as the man stared at Mayhew. ‘Anything else?’ he asked at last.

  ‘No, nothing to do with Bartholomew’s treasure hunt.’

  The man nodded and picked up the scourge again.

  ‘No more, please,’ Mayhew begged him. ‘No more. I can’t take it.’

  The man walked over to the kitchen sink, ran the cold tap and washed away the sticky drying blood from the leather thongs. He dried the scourge carefully on a tea towel and tucked it away in his jacket pocket, then shrugged the garment on to his shoulders.

  ‘Thank you,’ Mayhew croaked.

  The man turned back and looked down at him. ‘You have done your best to help me, I think, and so I shall be merciful.’

  He pulled a small bottle from another pocket of his jacket and unscrewed the stopper.

  ‘What’s that?’ Mayhew asked, his voice trembling with fear.

  ‘It’s holy water, nothing more.’

  The man dabbed a little of the water on to the tip of his right forefinger and traced the sign of a cross on Mayhew’s forehead. Then he replaced the bottle in his pocket and strode back to the table.

  He turned to face Mayhew, crossed himself and softly intoned ‘In nomine padre, filii et spiritu sancti.’ Then he picked up the pistol and aimed it at Mayhew’s chest.

  ‘No, no! Wait! Please wait! I’ll do anything. Don’t kill me. Please.’

  The man shook his head. ‘Begging is undignified, and, in any case, I have no option. You’ve seen my face.’

  ‘No! I’ll do whatever you want me to do. Please! I’ll never tell anyone anything about you. And why didn’t you wear a mask?’

  The man shook his head again. ‘I would never hide my face. I believe God’s work should always be done openly.’

  ‘God’s work?’ Mayhew whispered incredulously, as the man took careful aim and squeezed the trigger.

  Mayhew’s body shook with the impact of the bullet. He remained upright for a couple of seconds, then slumped forwards lifelessly.

  The man walked over, felt for a pulse but found nothing. Then he turned and looked out of the window. His next step was clear. He’d go to London and find the woman who was also hunting for the treasure. His treasure.

  24

  For a few seconds, Angela stared at the page of text displayed on the computer screen in front of her, then glanced down at the copious notes she’d made on her laptop. She stood up, stretched her arms above her head and rotated her shoulder joints, trying to work the kinks out of her muscles.

  She realized she’d been working on the computer for almost four hours without a break – once she got her teeth into any project, she tended to become remarkably single-minded about it. She needed to take a short walk, let her eyes relax for a few minutes and maybe grab a cup of coffee.

  Twenty minutes later she sat back at her desk, put down her mug and took another bite of the salad sandwich she’d bought at a delicatessen a few dozen yards down Great Russell Street, across the road from the museum.

  She still wasn’t entirely certain, but the references she’d uncovered were beginning to make sense, and a tantalizing hypothesis was starting to take shape. The ‘treasure of the world’ seemed to be almost a code phrase that had echoed through the last two millennia, and appeared to refer to something quite specific. Exactly what was meant by the expression, Angela still didn’t know, but there were one or two hints, and it did seem to be an ancient relic of considerable importance.

  She also started to search backwards. Instead of looking for further first-century references to the ‘treasure
of the world’, she’d started at the other end of time, trying to find much more recent documents that contained the expression. Her rationale was that if she found a reference to that expression in a later book or manuscript, there might well be a note about where the author of the work had found the phrase, and that would enable her to establish a trail back through the historical record, to back-track the references to the relic. Hopefully, each mention of the expression would amplify her knowledge and narrow down the search area – always assuming there was still something left to search for.

  She’d consulted a wide range of late-medieval books without finding any reference to the phrase, and almost as an after-thought she’d decided to check the contents of a number of grimoires – a grimoire was essentially a textbook of magic. She wondered if that might be worth doing simply because, although such books mainly contained nonsensical spells, curses and incantations, they also often drew on a wide range of earlier sources.

  The third grimoire she looked at was the Liber Juratus, also known as The Sworne Booke of Honorius, the Liber Sacer and the Liber Sacratus, a medieval grimoire written in Latin that dated from the thirteenth century. The original text had vanished long, long ago, but two fourteenth-century copies had survived, and the vast British Museum database had a scanned copy of the Latin text, as well as a copy of the only known English translation of the work.

  Angela’s Latin was reasonable, so she’d carried out a full scan of the Latin text using the search string thesaurus mundi, which she thought was close enough to the expression ‘the treasure of the world’. That produced no results, so she altered the search term to arcarum mundi, and that generated two hits, not as part of any spell, but just in a passage that described a number of hidden relics. The author of the grimoire imbued one of these lost objects with the most extraordinary abilities, claiming that it could confer incredible power on its owner. From what Angela had found out so far, she had assumed that the hidden treasure was simply gold or silver or some other object of high intrinsic value, but the passage definitely suggested that whatever it was had magical properties.