The Magdalene Cipher

by Jim Hougan

  The immigration officer was a thin young man with cold blue eyes and a dark beard that formed a shield around his mouth, then followed his jawline to where it met with his sideburns. After a bored glance at Dunphy’s broken nose, he leafed through the passport’s immaculate pages, looking for stamps.

  “Mr. Pitt,” he said, pronouncing the name as if he were spitting out a seed.

  “Yes.”

  “Coming from? . . .”

  “Tenerife,” Dunphy replied.

  “Holiday or business?”

  “Bit of both.”

  “And what business would that be?”

  Nothing too interesting, Dunphy thought. “Accountancy.”

  The immigration man glanced over Dunphy’s shoulder. “Just yourself?” he asked, sounding doubtful.

  Dunphy nodded. “For now. I’m meeting friends in London.”

  “I see.” The immigration officer frowned and gestured at Dunphy’s nose. “Fight?”

  Dunphy shifted uncomfortably on his feet. “No. I was mugged.”

  The immigration man grimaced. “Las Americas?”

  Dunphy nodded. It seemed to be what the man wanted.

  The immigration officer shook his head. “Spanish bastards,” he muttered, and brought his stamp crashing down on the passport. Then he handed it back and smiled. “Welcome to the British Isles, Mr. Pitt!”

  Finding Van Worden was not hard. The dialing tones on the tape recording indicated that Schidlof’s call had been a local one. It was a simple matter, then, for Dunphy and Clem to find an Internet café in the Strand, where they looked him up on the Web. To Dunphy’s surprise, the professor was living on Cheyne Walk in Chelsea. He must have jogged past the place a hundred times.

  “Are you coming with me?” Dunphy asked.

  “Of course,” Clem said. “But shouldn’t we call ahead?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  Why not, indeed? While Dunphy had no way of knowing if Schidlof had actually met with Van Worden, one thing was certain: Van Worden would know of the professor’s demise soon after calling him. And knowing that, he might be cautious about meeting strangers. “Let’s just surprise him,” Dunphy told her.

  As it turned out, Van Worden was the sole occupant of the Faery Queene, a rusting houseboat moored in the lea of the Battersea Bridge. Uncertain of the protocols for boarding vessels in the middle of a city, and unable to bring himself to shout “Ahoy,” Dunphy led Clem up the gangplank and onto the boat. Coming upon a door, he knocked tentatively and waited. When no one answered, he knocked again—louder, this time.

  “Hang on!”

  A moment later, the door was wrenched open by a distinguished-looking man in his late forties, holding a glass of red wine and a clove cigarette. “Help you?” he asked, swinging his head from Dunphy to Clem, and back again.

  “I’m looking for an Al Van Worden?”

  “Ye-esss?”

  “My name’s Jack Dunphy,” he said. “Are you . . .”

  “Ye-esss?”

  “Well, I was wondering if we could . . . have a chat. It wouldn’t take long.”

  Van Worden looked them up and down. “You’re not Jehovah’s Witnesses, are you?”

  Clem giggled.

  “No,” Dunphy said. “Nothing like that. We’re friends of Professor Schidlof.”

  Van Worden blinked. Took a sip of wine. “Chap who died.”

  “Right.”

  “And you say you’re friends of his?”

  “Only in a sense. We’re following up on an inquiry that he made.”

  Van Worden nodded, more to himself than to Dunphy or Clem. “Can’t help, I’m afraid.” And with that, he began to close the door.

  “Actually,” Dunphy said, pressing his toe against the bottom of the door, “I think you can. Schidlof thought so, too.”

  Van Worden glanced at Dunphy’s foot and grimaced. “Don’t want to be involved, really.”

  “I can understand that, but—”

  “Waste of time, in any case.”

  “Why is that?” Dunphy asked.

  “Spoke to the man once. Never really met him.”

  “I know.”

  Van Worden seemed taken aback. “Do you?” he asked. “And how do you know?”

  Dunphy thought better of it, then told the truth. “I was bugging him.”

  Van Worden took a long drag on his cigarette and let the smoke eddy from his nostrils. Sipped his wine. “But you’re not the police,” he said.

  “No,” Dunphy replied. “We’re not.”

  Van Worden nodded, appreciative of Dunphy’s candor. Then he frowned. “Give me one good reason I should talk to you,” he said.

  Dunphy thought about it and drew a blank. Finally, Clem stepped up to the door and gave him a soft look. “It would be so nice of you,” she said.

  Van Worden cleared his throat. “Done,” he said, and held open the door for them.

  They followed Van Worden down a narrow corridor hung with black-and-white photographs of medieval churches and cathedrals. Passing a galley that smelled of baking bread, they continued on their way through a sort of drawing room crammed with books, then out to the deck, where chairs were clustered around a wrought-iron table topped with glass.

  “Port?”

  “Thanks,” Dunphy said. “I’d love some.”

  “Clocktower. Not bad. Best I can do, in any case.” Van Worden poured each of them a glass and gestured to a plate of cheese. “Damned good Stilton, though. Have some.”

  Clem was standing at the rail, looking upriver toward the Battersea Bridge. “What a wonderful place,” she enthused, as the waves from a passing boat lapped against the hull.

  “Want to buy it?”

  Dunphy laughed. “We’re not really in the market—”

  “I’d give you a good price.”

  “Sorry.”

  Van Worden shrugged. “Don’t blame you. Damned nuisance, really.”

  “Then . . . you don’t like it here?” Clem asked.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well,” Van Worden said, “to begin with, I’m an Arsenal supporter. Worth my life to go out for a pint on a weekend.”

  “Then . . . why did you buy it?”

  “Albert Hofmann,” Van Worden answered.

  Dunphy laughed, but Clem gave her head a quick little shake and frowned.

  “Chap who discovered LSD,” Van Worden explained. Then he turned to Dunphy. “Know anything about engines?” he asked.

  “No,” Dunphy replied.

  “Neither do I—so I suppose we’ll just stay where we are.” The older man fell into a lime-colored Adirondack chair and gestured for Dunphy and Clem to do the same in seats across from him. “Now, then,” he said, “what’s this all about?”

  Dunphy wasn’t sure how much to tell him, so he came directly to the point. “It’s like Schidlof said. We’re interested in the Magdalene Society.”

  “Because? . . .”

  “Well, for one thing, because we’re not at all sure it’s a thing of the past.”

  Van Worden grunted. “Well, you’re right about that,” he said. “It’s not.”

  The answer was unexpected and brought a puzzled frown to Dunphy’s face. He was trying to remember the tape he’d listened to. “When you spoke with Schidlof on the phone,” he said, “you seemed surprised when he suggested the Society might still be around.”

  “I was surprised.”

  “But now you’re not.”

  Van Worden shook his head. “Until Dr. Schidlof was killed, there were only rumors.”

  “And his death changed that?”

  “Of course!”

  “Why?” Clem asked.

  “Because of the way he died.”

  “What do you mean?” Dunphy asked.

  Van Worden shifted in his seat and seemed to change the subject. “How much do you know about the Magdalene Society?” he asked.

  “Not much,” Dunphy said.


  “But something, surely.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then tell me something I don’t know,” Van Worden insisted, “as a way of establishing your bona fides.”

  Dunphy thought about it. Finally he said, “The one who runs it is called the Helmsman.”

  “That’s hardly a secret.”

  “In the thirties and forties, the Helmsman was Ezra Pound.”

  Van Worden gaped. “The poet?”

  Dunphy nodded.

  “Good lord,” Van Worden exclaimed. And then he remembered. “But wasn’t Pound the one who . . .”

  Dunphy nodded. “Went to the bin? Yeah, he was. But it didn’t get in the way of things. He held court in the asylum—saw whoever he wanted to see, did whatever he wanted to do.”

  “Really?! Well, I’m not surprised,” Van Worden remarked. “They’ve had a number of Nautonniers who’ve been poets. Madmen, too, for that matter.”

  Warming to the subject, Van Worden told them that he first became interested in the Lodge of Munsalvaesche (as the Magdalene Society had formerly been known) while writing an introductory essay to an anthology of gnostic literature.

  “Hang on,” he said, “I’ve got it right here.” Getting to his feet, he went inside and came back a few seconds later with a copy of a book entitled Gnostica. It was as thick as Dunphy’s forearm. “Some of the most interesting documents,” Van Worden explained, “were the pseudepigrapha. And the most interesting of those was the Apocryphon of the Magdalene. a”

  Dunphy looked puzzled. “What was that word you used?”

  “Which one?” Van Worden asked.

  “Pseudo-something.”

  “Pseudepigrapha?” Van Worden asked.

  Dunphy nodded.

  “It refers to gospels that were supposedly written by Biblical figures,” the professor said. “The one in question—the Apocryphon of the Magdalene a—was found in the ruins of an Irish monastery about a thousand years ago.” He opened the book to the appropriate page and handed it to Dunphy.

  Dunphy read a few lines and looked up. “And the original was written by Mary Magdalene?”

  “Allegedly.” Van Worden went on to explain that while there were a great many gaps in the narrative, the Apocryphon was at once a diary and an almanac of prophecies and portents. As a diary, it purported to record the secret wedding of Christ to Mary Magdalene.

  Dunphy made a skeptical sound.

  “It’s not as strange as it sounds,” Van Worden insisted. “In many of the Gospels, Jesus is referred to as a rabbi or teacher—and, as it happens, that says a lot about his marital status.”

  “I thought he was supposed to be a carpenter,” Dunphy said.

  Van Worden shook his head. “It’s a popular misconception. The word that’s used to describe him actually means scholar. A person with formal training—like a rabbi. And it makes sense. Everyone knows that Christ was a Jew, and that he gave religious instruction. What’s less well known is that Mishnaic law demands that a rabbi should take a wife—because ‘an unmarried man may not be a teacher.’ So the idea that Christ may have wed—and as a husband, sired children—isn’t as controversial as it sounds.”

  “But what about his wife?” Clem asked. “Wouldn’t the Bible have mentioned her, if he’d had one?”

  Van Worden rocked his head from side to side. “If he’d preached without having wed, it would have been scandalous—and we’d have heard about it. Otherwise, the subject would probably not have come up. After all, we’re talking about the Middle East, two thousand years ago. Wives didn’t have a public role, really. And we don’t hear much about the apostles’ wives, do we? Even so, it seems unlikely that none of them were married—wouldn’t you say?”

  Dunphy hadn’t thought about it, but now that he did . . .

  After the Crucifixion, Van Worden continued, and while pregnant with Christ’s child, Magdalene was put to sea in a boat without sails or oars. “According to various accounts—and there are various accounts—she was accompanied by Martha, Lazarus, and Joseph of Arimathea. There seems to have been a storm of some duration, and the implication is that it was caused by angels doing battle with the demons that pursued her. In the event, she landed safely at Marseille. And there, gave birth to Mérovée. A son.” Van Worden smiled and refilled each of their glasses. “Interesting story, no?”

  Clem’s eyes were huge. “Then what?” she asked.

  “Well, then there’s rather a lot of prophecy—if you’ve read Revelation, you’ll know the sort of thing I mean.”

  “But what about Mérovée?” Clem insisted. “What happened to him a?”

  “Oh, he did quite well for himself. Founded the Merovingian dynasty.” Van Worden’s forefingers curled into quotation marks. “Dynasty of the Long-Haired Kings.”

  “Why did they call them that?” Clem asked.

  “Apparently because they never cut their hair.”

  “Why not?” Dunphy wondered.

  “There was magic in it—in their hair, in their breath, in their blood.” Van Worden paused. “Look,” he said, “we’re talking about legends. This was the age of Arthur . . . and the age of the Grail, which, depending on whom you talk to, was either a cup—or a bloodline.”

  “What do you mean, a bloodline?” Dunphy asked.

  “Just what I said: a bloodline. The bloodline. The bloodline of Christ. The sang réel. The stories we have of the Merovingians suggest that they were as much sorcerers as kings. Magical beings.”

  “How so?” Clem asked.

  Van Worden smiled and lighted a cigarette. “Well, it was said they could heal the sick by laying on their hands. And that they could bring the dead to life with a kiss. They talked with the birds, flew with the bees, and hunted with bears and wolves. The weather was theirs to command, and—well, who’s to say? It was a very mysterious period.” Van Worden paused, then added, “Some would say, a deliberately mysterious period.”

  “What do you mean?” Dunphy asked.

  Van Worden seemed uncomfortable. “Well . . . there are some—I wouldn’t call them historians—but there are some who feel that the Dark Ages didn’t just happen. They say it was a golden age, and that it only seems dark to us today because our knowledge of the period has been eclipsed. The age faded into darkness because . . . well, because certain institutions wanted it that way.”

  Dunphy remembered reading something about this in Archaeus a. “Who are you talking about?” he asked.

  “Rome. Rome was the custodian of Western history. The Church fathers wrote it, preserved it—and when it fit their agenda, they erased it entirely.”

  Clementine stared at him. “You mean . . . like the Soviet Union? The way they made people disappear from photographs?”

  Van Worden shrugged.

  “So you’re telling me the Church blacked out three hundred years of European history?” Dunphy demanded.

  Van Worden shook his head. “It’s a conspiracy theory, that’s all. I’m just telling you what others have said. But it isn’t that surprising, really. Look at what the Jesuits did to Mayan history.”

  “What Mayan history?” Dunphy asked.

  “My point exactly.”

  “But why would the Church do that?” Clem asked.

  “According to the theory?”

  “Yes.”

  “To erase the memory of a golden age to which it had no connection, and to conceal the ‘dirty war’ that brought the age to an end.” Seeing Dunphy’s puzzlement, Van Worden elaborated. “The Merovingians were a walking, talking heresy, in and of themselves. By claiming to be the children of God—literally, His sons and daughters—they rendered every other throne and secular authority irrelevant or illegitimate. Who needs a pope in Rome if God’s own son (or grandson) is sitting on a throne in Paris? It was the most dangerous heresy in history. And because it was, the Merovingians were kidnapped, assassinated, and betrayed until, in the end, nearly every vestige of their rule had been erased. In effect, they disappeared
from history—”

  “Until the Apocryphon surfaced,” Dunphy said.

  “Precisely. And, of course, when the same heresy was brought to light in the Apocryphon, that light had to be extinguished, as well—and so it was. The cult was ruthlessly suppressed until, in the end, it was no more than a secret society, a conspiracy on the run.”

  “But a conspiracy to do what?” Dunphy asked.

  “Bring on the millennium,” Van Worden replied. “What else?”

  “And how did they expect to do that?” Dunphy asked.

  “Once the prophecies were fulfilled, it would be a fait accompli.”

  “And these are the prophecies—”

  “—in the Apocryphon, a” Van Worden replied.

  “You mean, about the grain encrypting itself,” Dunphy said. “And the skies—”

  “So you know them!” Van Worden exclaimed.

  Dunphy shrugged. “I’ve seen references to them.”

  “Of course, not all of the prophecies were so . . . poetic. Some were quite specific.”

  “Like what?”

  Van Worden shrugged. “ ‘These lands will then be one,’ ” he said.

  “That’s specific?”

  “As specific as these things get. It refers to a time when the European nations will be united—a single country, as it were. And there’s the business about Israel, as well: ‘Zion reborn in the aftermath of the ovens.’ Pretty remarkable, wouldn’t you say?”

  Dunphy nodded.

  “Inasmuch as the prophecies are also prescriptions,” Van Worden added, “the Magdalene Society would seem to have been one of the first Zionist organizations in Europe. Maybe the first.”

  Dunphy nibbled a bit of Stilton, then washed it down with the Clocktower. “So what happened to it?”

  “Until I heard how Schidlof died, I’d thought its only remnants were the black Virgins that you see in churches like Montserrat.”

  Dunphy and Clem looked at each other. “What do you mean?” Clem asked.

  Van Worden shrugged. “They’re statues of a black Madonna, sometimes with an infant—who’s also black. The Church won’t talk about them, but they’re everywhere in Europe.”

  “So why is she black?” Dunphy asked.

  Van Worden laughed. “Her blackness was like a code. Because it’s not the Virgin Mary holding Jesus—it’s the Magdalene, with Mérovée in her arms. It’s one of the last vestiges of a secret church—the Merovingian church that the Vatican tried to destroy.”