One of the legionnaires had put a severed head on his lance like a trophy. He rode into the middle of the village, which was already ablaze and in chaos. He shouted, and suddenly Shane could understand him.
“Submit! Your gods have left you. Only our god will protect you!”
As if to underscore the point, another legionnaire hurled a spear at a fleeing youth, piercing him through. The carnage continued until everyone in the once peaceful town was dead. Before the pack disappeared, Shane saw a legionnaire with the sign of the fish on his shield ride past him, a scornful smile on his face.
“Victoria, it was like I was really there,” Shane said, drained from the experience of sharing his vision. “It was much more than just a nightmare.”
“Adam, I see parallels and a message to your own life, here. This eternal frustration with the world that always makes you turn away from any beautiful moment. But the fact that you’re sharing this is a first step to overcome your dark world,” Victoria said tenderly, and Shane knew that she was genuine. This was as sympathetic as she had sounded since their separation. “I’m here for you if you need me. If you want, Jarod could come stay with you in three weeks’ time. I have to go to New York, and he misses you so much. I’ll call you on Friday.”
“I’d like that. Thanks for listening.”
They hung up less than a minute later, but the conversation had done what Shane had hoped it would. It had restored some of his strength. He could think about the vision a little more dispassionately now.
He remembered that in the dream he had visited the village before the attack, feeling very much at home. The village was made up of about forty houses surrounded by a rampart of wood and sand piles. Beyond the heavy wooden gate that formed the entrance was a fountain in a square about a hundred yards away. Arranged in a circle on the square were the house of a blacksmith, a market hall of some sort, and two other houses, one belonging to a chieftain and another to a Druid. Shane had seen many people going about their business on a beautiful, sunny day. The style of the houses and the differences in dress showed there were differences in social class, but no one seemed to be unhappy or suffering. On the contrary, this community, perhaps because of its size, seemed to function well. He would have gladly stayed there.
Until the destruction began.
DUBLIN – MARCH 13, PRESENT DAY
Padre Luca Morati’s forehead wrinkled like an accordion. His hands, trembling as they reached for the telephone, were covered with age spots, and every vein was visible through his pale, thin skin. At ninety-four, the old man was well connected in the Vatican and belonged, along with the oldest and most influential clergy, to the Curia.
“Oh, good Lord, I have failed,” he sighed sadly as he leaned back in his old leather chair in slow motion, trying to fix his weak eyes on something in the room. Every inch of every wall was filled with books of incalculable age and value. At the window, where he could look out on the entrance to Trinity College, there was a table from the colonial period covered with papers and books, lit by a common library lamp that lent the antique mahogany piece an incomparably warm and typically Irish character.
The line he was calling finally connected. “Si?”
“This is Padre Morati. Put me through—it’s urgent.”
A moment of silence—during which a fly setting down would have seemed like an earthquake—was followed by the abrupt voice of the person he’d been calling. “How may I help you?”
“Salvoni, I’m afraid the thing we’ve feared is coming closer. The son is following in his father’s footsteps.” Morati felt a sudden uneasiness in his stomach, a mixture of uncertainty and a bad conscience. He’d been living with these feelings for decades without ever questioning their source.
“What happened?”
“I think Ronald MacClary has found a clue. He’s giving a lecture this weekend at Trinity. Its blasphemous subject matter must have been fueled by new knowledge.”
“But Padre, we’ve known for a long time that he, like so many others, is trying to discredit us with his agnostic lectures and his scientific delusions. Just because he’s giving another lecture doesn’t mean that he’s discovered something.”
“The subject matter concerns me, Salvoni. He’s drawing conclusions that would require evidence to prove.”
“When is the lecture?” interrupted the cardinal, now audibly nervous.
“This Friday, at eight p.m. in the old lecture hall.”
“Thank you, Padre. Just to be on the safe side, we’ll send someone to listen to his unbearable lies. May the good Lord reward you for your unrelenting vigilance and let you remain with us for a long time to come.”
The cardinal hung up without another word.
Morati sank down into his chair, his hands covering his face. Within seconds, his body was shaking with sobs.
For more than forty years Morati had served as vice prefect of the Vatican archives. As such, he was one of the few people allowed to see the priceless cultural objects and the written records and testimonies that the missionaries had stolen during their campaigns against those with different beliefs. He was also allowed into the library outside of Vatican City that contained material that could be dated back to the eighth century. The Vatican’s real secret archive was also one of the best-protected places and only known to certain selected members of the Roman Curia. To make sure that the conservationists and researchers who worked there couldn’t steal or destroy anything, they had to undergo an extensive procedure at the beginning of every work day. After they had been searched for cameras, recording equipment, radio equipment, knives, matches, or anything else that could be destructive in any way, they were driven from the Sistine Chapel to a place outside of Rome in a car with darkened windows. They were only allowed out of the car in a dark garage and then were taken to work where they were constantly observed in rooms protected from light and germs. At the end of the day, they went through the whole procedure again as they were escorted back to Rome.
Only once had Morati seen the area immediately outside of the library. He was the only one who had ever lived to tell the tale, and he was never allowed to return.
Some of the artifacts Morati had seen in the archive contained unbelievable beauty and wisdom. There were writings here from prophets and spiritual leaders who disseminated very different tenets from those of the Church and whose effect threatened the power of the Church so much that a large portion of affiliated doctrines had already been destroyed. If humankind could see these tenets, the fate of the Church would be sealed. It would be put on trial for the greatest crime in history.
Since Morati had spent half his life reconstructing the evidence of the history of the Celtic Druids and other pagan scholars, he had asked to be transferred back home. He had been retired for twenty years now. Of course, that didn’t stop him from acting as protector of knowledge by keeping an eye on the MacClary family, particularly Ronald. The father had attracted enough attention, and, in Rome, people were afraid Ronald might discover something that could cause an uproar in an ever-more-critical Christian world.
Now MacClary’s son was creeping closer to a revelation. A revelation the Church could never allow him to experience.
DUBLIN – MARCH 13, PRESENT DAY
Ronald MacClary sat in his office, staring out into the morning light. Dublin in the spring was a mixture of sun, clouds, and rain that teased you with unpredictability. The sun pierced his dark brown eyes, lighting them up like amber and highlighting his three-day growth of beard and his gray-flecked hair.
Ronald MacClary had had a good life. He had been born in Boston just after the outbreak of World War II. His father had met his mother in the early 1930s on a trip to New York, and they were married soon after. After the United States joined the war, they moved to Dublin, where Sean MacClary was soon called to serve as a major in the Eighth British Army Division. His son Ronald, after studying archaeology, had gone to law school in Boston. There, he completed his degree in r
ecord time and later served for several years as a judge in the district court of Boston before being named to the Supreme Court, where he had been serving as chief justice for the past three years. But whenever he could, he still came back to his parents’ house in Dublin on Arbour Hill, across from the National Museum. There he buried himself in his father’s research.
MacClary was rummaging through one of the countless leather portfolios marked with the family crest when his gaze turned to the cabinet where his father’s inheritance had been stored for so long. In March 1943, just before he was born, his father had taken over leadership of a large unit of soldiers. Badly wounded, he came back from Austria, and a few years after returning home, he died from a grenade splinter that had lodged in his lung during combat. On his deathbed, he spoke to six-year-old Ronald in a way the boy could barely understand, but would never forget.
They were in a run-down hospital, and his father’s body had withered to the point where it seemed as though he’d already been long in his grave. The room reeked of fear, the smell alternating between antiseptic solutions and feces.
“You have to keep investigating my trove, my son,” Sean MacClary had said with as much emphasis as he could muster. “You’ll find everything in my library. I didn’t have time to write everything down, but it’s the key to understanding our culture, everything that makes us who we are. It all began with a horrible crime. Look in the...”
The diminished man’s breath faded, and only a strained rattle filled the room.
“Where should I look, Father?” Ronald said desperately, knowing that there was more to this and that it was without question the most important conversation of his young life. But the conversation, and his father’s life, was over.
As he got older, Ronald looked through every square inch of his father’s archives and never discovered anything. Even the scroll in the cabinet hadn’t yet revealed its secrets. One thing was clear: his father must have stumbled across something from antiquity, because that was the only thing his archaeological heart burned for. Hardly anyone had known as much detailed information about the Dark Ages, which was to the elder MacClary the blackest period of human civilization. In Sean MacClary’s mind, the Inquisition, the two world wars, and all the other conflicts were only byproducts of that earlier period of civilization.
His father’s legacy was much more to Ronald than just some historical or archaeological riddle. It was the only possible justification for the man having so little time, or love, left over for him. So many times, Ronald’s mother had bitterly cried over how alone and abandoned she felt. Even as a boy Ronald had found it all so unfair, and although in those few moments he’d had with his father he’d gotten excited about the search for the past, it had been the question of justice that led him to break off his studies in archaeology to begin studying law. However, those years of study in his father’s library had also made him a critical student of religious history.
Ronald couldn’t deny his roots. He had looked after his parents’ house and his father’s library for decades, watching over it like a treasure. He avoided making any changes for fear of forever losing the opportunity to solve the puzzle his father had laid out before him.
“It’s all God’s fault,” he said with an ironic smile. Then he turned back to his computer to finish his upcoming Trinity College lecture.
AUSTRIA – MARCH 13
Shane had no more time to think about the dream that had catapulted him awake this morning. He needed to get out of bed and on with his day. Within the next half hour, a dozen ailing people would begin filling his office.
He opened the bedroom door and headed to the bathroom. As he did, it occurred to him that all of his things were still in the suitcase in his home office. It had been late last night when he had gotten back from a seminar in Paris on alternative healing and herbalism. Making what was for him an unusually elegant turn, he headed resolutely toward his consulting room in his underwear, opened the door, and reached for his suitcase near the desk.
When he surprisingly discovered that Patricia was already there.
“Good morning, Mr. Shane,” she said with an amused smile. “Would you like a coffee?”
He regarded the beautiful twenty-five-year-old woman, not knowing whether to hide his virtual nakedness or pretend as though this were all very natural. Patricia delivered herbs and ointments to his office every Wednesday. Her father, a farmer, gathered them to supplement his income.
Shane reached into his suitcase to get his bathrobe, putting it on quickly. “I didn’t expect you here so early, Patricia.” He pointed to the large package she was holding. “What’s that?”
“That’s the ten pounds of horsetail you ordered.”
Shane’s eyes widened. “Ten pounds? With that I could detox fifty patients at once! And I have enough stock, in any case. I’m sorry, but you must have misunderstood. I hope you can return it.”
“Yes, of course,” Patricia said, turning her eyes downward. “The rest should be right, though. Should I send you a bill at the end of the month as usual?”
“That would be great, thank you.”
“No problem. I’ll see you next time.”
Without another word, Patricia turned and left. Shane’s eyes followed her as she departed, noting the sense of longing that rose up unbidden as he watched her. When was the last time he’d felt anything like that?
Now that he was in his office, he decided to deal with his mail. Among the usual bills, thank-you notes, and advertisements, an envelope made from fine, handmade paper stuck out like a single rose in the middle of a barren field. He picked the letter out of the pile and decided to turn on the television to watch the news instead.
“...the next generation will be particularly affected. After negotiations broke down, Pachauri, head of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and an expert on the deteriorating state of the earth, warned heads of state about dismissing climate change as a problem for the future. ‘The effects will be noticeable during your terms in office,’ he said to the assemblage. After his...”
Shane turned off the television. He didn’t need a reporter to tell him that humankind had lost virtually all connection with nature. He went back to his mail and this time opened the beautiful envelope. Along with a notice about a meeting of healers and herbalists, he found another invitation in the envelope that caught his attention:
The Systematic Annihilation of Celtic Culture and Indigenous European Peoples and Its Effect on the World in Terms of Culture, Politics, and the Economy: A Lecture by Professor Ronald MacClary
Thomas Ryan had kept his word. A year earlier, he had met the Irishman at a meeting of alternative healers in Vienna. In his opinion, Ryan was a bit of a radical. He lived near Dublin in a commune that had dedicated itself to a return to a life in harmony with nature. Ryan had promised to get in touch with him since Shane wanted to learn more about the project. They’d spent an entire evening together talking about the Celts, the original inhabitants of Europe, and Shane had gotten the distinct impression that Ryan was making fun of the neo-Druids, who, as he put it, had never understood the true message of the scholars, the chieftains, and the Druids. There hadn’t been enough time in this first meeting to learn more, but one thing was clear: contemporary excavations suggested a very different image of the Celts than that of a group of barbarians who practiced human sacrifice.
What is happening here? Shane wondered. He’d just dreamt of this exact period and people. It can’t be an accident.
He sat down at his desk nervously and fished out his calendar, rashly deciding to accept the invitation to the conference. That was when he noted the date. Tomorrow.
Without hesitating, he took pen and paper and wrote a sign that read, “The office will be closed until further notice.”
He had very little time before his first patients would be standing at his door. He didn’t want to have to turn them away personally, so he needed to leave before they arrived. He added a few clea
n things to his suitcase, grabbed his passport and his wallet, and got dressed instantly. He performed the high-wire act of pulling his pants on while standing on one foot, while at the same time trying to call the airport on his cell phone. As he did this, something akin to peace suffused him. He put down his cell phone and sat on his office chair, his pants only halfway on.
“Slow down, Shane, slow down. What’s going on? You should listen to your logical side and not follow some crazy fantasy.”
Could it really be true? Was there really more behind the decline of the Celts than people knew? Ryan hadn’t yet succeeded in making a convincing argument for the superiority of the culture, laws, and lifestyle of the Druids, but he also hadn’t come anywhere near telling him everything. Shane was thinking about one particular detail from their conversation. Ryan had said that the dubious culture of the Western world, where nature, individuals, and entire peoples were sacrificed to the rule of money, wasn’t necessarily the only way. Maybe it was just a small but powerful accident—or an event—that had set Europe on this path. If you could find that point in time and show the alternative, the other path, it should be possible for mankind to go in a new direction.
Ryan was surprisingly confident that mankind would consciously choose to turn away from this path—a path that had cut them off from their true nature, that had made them apathetic and dumb as a herd of sheep—if they only understood the true reasons behind their original choice. There had to be a greater goal than the eternal chorus of growth, competition, and wealth, which was making it impossible for future generations to lead a healthy life, or to survive at all.
“Why do I always come back to this point of frustration when I think about mankind?” groaned Shane. Ryan had promised him that he would learn more about the secret of the Druids and the Celts when they saw each other again. Maybe his dream had been no accident after all and Victoria was right.
The Celtic Conspiracy Page 2