by A D Davies
Father Pandi paused, thinking. “You are not the first people this month to ask about that item. But you are the first to come with an order from the Holy See to lend it to you. Under the assumption you are correct about this other exploration.”
“Who else was asking?” Dan said, his eyes becoming slits, roving the interior.
“Oh, a Chinese pair.” Father Pandi sounded relaxed. “Possibly Korean. I assumed a gay couple, not that this matters, of course.”
“Of course,” Toby said. “They inquired after a picture like this? Or about what we’re here to borrow?”
“They mentioned the cavity beneath and asked if anything interesting remained from those days. I explained it wasn’t open to the public. And I assured them there was nothing there. I was not lying to them, Mr. Smith. Or was I?”
Toby referred to the codex again. “The author describes the location, and the cavern, in detail. We are certain this is the correct place.”
The page Father Pandi resumed examining featured a cross-legged godlike image, not dissimilar to one of the many Hindu gods. It was clearly not your average Aztec deity, but there was something about the design that suggested the same people crafted it. Depicted in brown ink, tiny human creatures toiled all around this unnamed God, farming, harvesting, and eating. It was the opposite page that had led them here, though. A map, and an illustration of a much larger church, which Toby guessed was gleaned from the original plans.
Charlie said, “We think it is some sort of benevolent blessing on the people here.”
“It looks kind of Indian,” Harpal remarked.
Dan made a hmm. “We’ve been over that, thanks.”
Harpal shrank back. Toby would give the lad a slap on the back later and tell him not to worry about the attitude. They would come around soon enough.
Instead, he concentrated on the question of the author’s identity. “The descendants of the conquistadores were often of mixed race. As I’m sure you are aware, Father, their ancestors married into native families and supplanted the religions and traditions observed for centuries.”
“Supplanted?” Father Pandi said, glancing up at Toby. It was the first time his tone came across less than genial.
“Supplanted or adapted.” Toby offered a pacifying smile. “It’s undeniable that the spread of Christianity was so successful due to their willingness to bring local traditions into their own doctrines. Even our most traditional Christian ceremonies have roots in other cultures. The cutting down of a tree, bringing it into your house, and decorating it—a fine Christmas activity in all our homes, I’m sure—is a Germanic pagan ritual, which was common throughout Western Europe and up into what we now call Scandinavia—”
Dan snored.
Harpal did not join in this time.
Charlie said, “Father, are you able to direct us to the part of your cathedral where we can view this?”
The priest frowned. “There is no such artwork here, I can assure you.”
Harpal opened his mouth to speak but thought better of it.
“If we can view the room,” Charlie said, “we’ll determine if what we need is there.”
“Please.” Toby put his hands together, like an upside-down prayer. “We understood you would grant us access.”
Father Pandi took in the four people whom the archbishop of Mexico City, by way of the Vatican, had requested he accommodate. He shuffled a few steps to his right and said, “Follow me.”
They deviated from the original path, passing by the supposedly miraculous bust and out through a modern annex that housed the toilet block. Beyond the fire exit, Father Pandi hurried along the western edge of the building, and even Dan had to stride to keep up.
“I don’t like this,” Dan said.
Toby trotted to maintain the pace. “He just wants to see what we’re searching for. He has to be sure it’s genuine before granting us access to—”
“Not right now,” Charlie said and tipped her head toward Harpal.
“You’re my employer here, not Colin bloody Waterston,” Harpal said. “Everything is confidential. What exactly are we looking for? It might help if I know.”
Charlie pulled to a halt. “We are looking for whatever the author chose not to write in this book.”
She handed the codex to Toby. He put on his own cotton gloves and eased the book closed before securing it in Dan’s pack.
Charlie swung her own backpack off her shoulder and dug inside, pulling out two golf ball sized nodes. She slapped one on the wall beside the door next to which Father Pandi lingered, beckoning them inside.
“What is that?” the priest asked.
“It’s to help with our comms,” Charlie said. “Don’t worry, it is completely harmless to the brickwork. The adhesive is temporary organic compound that’ll evaporate an hour after I remove it.”
Harpal’s eyebrows popped. “Impressive. You’ve improved them again.”
Charlie gave a sharp nod and followed Father Pandi in through a thick wooden door which he held open for her. She slapped the other node inside the frame.
“You’re quite sure…?” Father Pandi started.
“We’ve tested them on older surfaces than these. I promise they won’t leave a mark.”
They progressed through what Toby thought of as a hovel, like a hobbit house, where they all had to duck to avoid rubbing their heads on the rough ceiling carved out of the bedrock. It was lit with electric lanterns designed to look like oil burners and got darker as they trailed into a narrow corridor. There was no room for lights, so they edged through on faith that the priest did not have a cadre of mercenaries waiting to ambush them.
Melodramatic?
Perhaps, but it wouldn’t have been the first time. In fact, it was one reason LORI was down to bare bones here in Mexico.
They emerged into a gloomy bedroom which Toby had seen online, the former priest’s quarters, recreated for modern tourists to gawk at and comment on how spartan the living conditions were back in the Cathedral’s glory days.
Father Pandi faced them, his fingers tapping a handcrafted chest of drawers. “Are you really from the Vatican?”
“We are here with the blessing of the Vatican,” Toby said. “I promise, this is nothing that will harm your congregation or the building itself. It is a curiosity that the church would like explored. They trust us with what you and your predecessors have been keeping safe all these years. Using us to investigate means they can distance themselves from any accusations of supporting unholy relics.”
Father Pandi’s fingers ceased dancing. “Unholy…”
“Nothing that would compromise you.” Charlie placed another communication node just inside the corridor they had exited. “Just a painting you didn’t know was there.”
Again, Father Pandi frowned at the tech. “This seems… highly irregular.”
“It daisy chains our comms so we can talk to the outside world when we’re deep underground,” Dan said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“The drawers.” Toby gestured to the chest that the priest was touching. “Does this lovely piece of furniture hide what we are here to see?”
“It might.” Father Pandi braced himself against the item, both hands ready to lift. “Perhaps your large friend could give me a hand?”
Dan gave Toby a who me? look, and Toby answered with a nod. Dan sighed and went to work, taking the other side of the chest of drawers, which was plainly weighted down with more than just underpants and dress shirts—presumably to prevent damage should a tourist bump into it with any degree of force. They dragged it with a screech across the smooth flagstone floor, revealing a plain plastered wall. Father Pandi insisted on pulling it farther away than Toby expected they would need.
At an appropriate distance, the holy man appeared as out of breath as Toby had been after his trek along the jungle path, and even Dan looked as if he’d just finished a gym workout.
“There’s nothing there,” Harpal said.
Father P
andi pointed at the ground. “Not up here.”
Charlie crouched and examined the square stone tiles making up that part of the floor. Father Pandi joined her, then the other men crowded around.
Father Pandi rapped his knuckles on one tile. A faint echo came back at them.
“Hollow,” Charlie said.
“Indeed, indeed.” Father Pandi extended a hand towards Dan without glancing at him. “If you are as organized as I expect, you will have something to pry this up with.”
“Ah-hem.” Charlie again flipped the backpack off her shoulder and opened it, producing a foot long crowbar, and handing it to Father Pandi.
The priest accepted the tool and levered up the square of black slatelike stone. Cool air hissed out and Toby’s breath caught in his throat.
“What you seek is down there,” Father Pandi said.
Chapter Two
The priest of St Bernard’s Cathedral had revealed a hole with metal rungs sewn into the rock like staples that hadn’t embedded fully. The meagre light only illuminated the first ten feet.
Harpal peered in. “Another day, another dark pit.” He looked pointedly at Dan. “You know I miss this sort of thing.”
“You’ll be back,” Toby said, tempted to engage his back slap now, but thought better of it.
“Don’t we all get a say in that?” Dan asked.
“Of course, but—”
“We agreed,” Charlie said. “He’s welcome whenever he’s ready. Just like Bridget will be back.”
Dan tutted. “This is nothing like Bridget. He had a choice.”
“Alright, I’ve taken your crap ever since I had to go freelance.” Harpal squared up to Dan and jabbed a finger in his chest. “It wasn’t my fault we lost our funding. It wasn’t my fault I’ve got bills to pay that LORI can’t meet. And it wasn’t my fault Bridget got recalled by parents who don’t understand what she’s trying to achieve.”
On the third jabbed finger, Dan caught the digit and squeezed. Harpal’s knees buckled, and he yelped in pain.
Father Pandi leaped between the pair and shoved Dan, breaking his hold on Harpal. “This is still God’s house. I will not have this. And I will remove you from these premises, refuse to give you what you are here for, and take whatever punishment the Vatican deems appropriate—if any. Which I doubt there will be.”
Toby had regained his feet without realizing it. His face was hot. “For crying out loud, we are a family. That’s why am trying to keep us together. Families argue. Families fall out and break away, and they come back. They always come back.”
All held their ground. Toby’s blood pulsed in his head as he took several deep breaths.
Dan ran his hands through his hair, bringing his temper under control. “I’m sorry.” He pointed at Father Pandi while Harpal regained his feet, gripping his finger. “And I’m apologizing to the Reverend and Toby, not you, Harps. Don’t lay your hands on me again.”
Harpal steeled his jaw, scanning between Toby and Charlie. “Let’s just get on with it.”
Charlie’s feet were already dangling over the hole’s edge, finding purchase on the makeshift ladder. “Boys will be boys.”
She commenced her descent, followed by Harpal, then Toby. Toby paused when he heard Dan say, “Wait, you’re coming too?”
Father Pandi was indeed climbing over the side. “I am responsible for this property. No matter that the cardinal says you are allowed in, you do not strike me as holy people. I will not permit you to damage my home.”
“It’s fine,” Toby said. “He’ll need to see this.”
Charlie dropped several glow sticks, showing the bottom was around thirty feet below. She, Harpal, and Dan wore head torches, while Toby kept a flashlight clipped to his belt, although he did not turn it on yet.
With the air growing hotter and more humid with every rung, it took less than five minutes to reach the bottom and group together in the halo of light from the glow sticks. Toby handed Father Pandi the torch from his belt as a courtesy.
Charlie placed another node on the wall at the base of the ladder and tapped her ear. “Comms check.”
A second later, she nodded. The subvocal earpiece, which ran on bone conducting technology, was working. Due to a deficiency in funds they hoped would be resolved shortly, Charlie and Dan wore the only two currently available. Toby had volunteered to be the one to go without. Right now, Charlie’s husband, Phil, was listening in, ready to send in the cavalry if anything untoward occurred.
It seemed to Toby that nobody else was interested in their bounty. Nobody except a couple of Chinese gentlemen. Possibly Korean. But they were no longer present, and Phil would spot any incursion.
They all followed Father Pandi again, although the trip was shorter.
“We have no lights down here,” the priest said. “We do not usually accommodate people in this part of the structure. I have a stash of candles, though. Give me a moment.”
“Don’t worry,” Charlie said. “I’ve got this.”
She used her latest gadget, a ferociously bright spotlight on squat tripod legs, which she had christened dwarf arc lights. She could angle almost them like a satellite dish, so they didn’t blind everyone surrounding them the way a lantern would. It reached to knee height, and cracked to life, lighting up half the wall of this cavern. Dan took another from his own pack, set it up, and lit it.
They were in what appeared to be a cave, part of a larger structure that stretched into the dark behind them. Toby wasn’t interested in that area, though. He studied this blank wall, dusting the fingertips of both hands over the surface. Searching… “May I see the codex?”
“How big is this place?” Harpal asked.
Dan passed Toby the book and Charlie shone her head lamp as Toby creaked open the pages.
“It is half the footprint of the cathedral,” Father Pandi replied. “But it does not sit directly beneath. There is little here. It got looted before the original architects took possession. After, care was taken to preserve what remained. No gold, no jewels, you understand. But other things that could be removed. There was no need to demolish this. The ruins above were already abandoned hundreds of years earlier. The church did not rampage through the natives’ lives, nor ‘supplant’ their temple.”
Charlie concentrated on the diagram on the page before the one they showed Father Pandi. “But they did use the traditions to indoctrinate the native people into a foreign religion.”
Father Pandi responded without malice, taking no offence, although he may have been lost in thought as he, too, scanned the wall before them. “Bringing Jesus into their lives is hardly indoctrination.”
Toby migrated to the right, Charlie alongside him.
Dan checked back up the pipe. “Hey, Phil, all clear?” He waited for an answer and seemed satisfied. “Toby, you need me? I should be up top, watching our six.”
“No drone keeping watch?” Harpal asked.
“It’s a small one. Store bought. Phil says all clear, but—”
“It will spot anyone entering the quarters,” Toby said, still searching for what he was sure would be here. “Ah.”
His fingers found the grooves he was looking for and poked inside, flicking out dust and tiny pebbles. In seconds, the shape was clear in the dwarf arc lights.
Father Pandi squinted closer. “Is that… a figure-eight?
At some point, Charlie had taken the gray metal case from Dan’s pack, a container the size of a lunchbox. She unclipped it to reveal two stone bangles encased in protective foam rubber. Both were shaped like a tight letter C, the edges cut in opposite angles so they mirrored one another and could slot together magnetically.
“The Aradia bangle,” Toby said. “And the Ruby Rock bangle.”
He removed them both and balanced them in his hands as if attempting to discern which weighed the most. The green flecks in the Aradia bangle and the red ones in the Ruby Rock one were barely visible. If he didn’t know they were there, he would think it was jus
t a fine crystallization.
“Don’t you need Sibeko?” Harpal asked.
“I’m hoping not,” Toby said.
“No hard feelings about Sibeko either?”
Charlie answered for Toby. “Jules was never fully committed. And our phone calls and emails have gone unanswered. He’s got his own life now. It’s just us.”
Father Pandi observed closely. “The bracelets match the pattern.”
Toby said, “We recovered these some time ago. They are a key. When accessing the most ancient of places, yes, it needs a special type of person to activate them—possibly a DNA link which we are ill-equipped to investigate, even with proper funding. However, the codex is younger. It indicates no such requirement.”
Toby slotted the two bangles together, the open ends coming together, snapping into place as securely as powerful electromagnets.
“To us, it looks like a number eight. But that is just our modern way of thinking about the shape. The people who crafted the bangles had their own language. I doubt they even thought of these objects as bangles. Certainly not jewelry.”
Toby moved them toward the grooves he’d uncovered in the wall.
“Before she was recalled to… other business… our language expert, Bridget, had already determined that this shape was their word for key.”
He slotted the assembled bangles into the grooves, grating at first, remnants of debris having built up over the centuries. It stopped inches inside.
They all waited, not a breath taken between them.
Father Pandi asked, “Is something supposed to happen?”
“Maybe you need Sibeko after all,” Harpal said.
Toby examined the wall around the key, dusting it, wiping, blowing on the surface. “This was constructed less than five hundred years ago, not thousands. They can’t have known about the genetic line needed to activate…” He found another groove.