Lorena could feel that her mind was in semi-darkness as floods of tears dragged feelings out of her consciousness that were too intense to understand without the release of weeping.
“As sure as my mother could ever be,” she managed to say between sobs.
Lorena had the sensation of returning home after three centuries of absence, when Michel took her in his arms. Mauricio cried as well, thinking of his mother, whom he had never been able to embrace, and of his father, who he would never see again. In the same way as his wife, he sensed he was returning home and that a new light was sending him more love than he had ever felt before.
Michel was first to recover enough presence of mind to express into words the feelings which had overtaken them.
“My daughter, you are the fruit of a great love. During these last days, I have not stopped thinking of Flavia every time I looked at you. I soon became certain that you were her daughter, although I preferred not to enquire. Now, I am a priest and I could not even imagine Flavia ever having talked about me. Your mother was a married woman and what was most normal and probable was that you should be the daughter of her husband. And yet, more than once, when I saw your light blue eyes I wondered to myself if Our Lord had perhaps created an angel using a poor sinner. After all, does God not make worms turn into butterflies?”
It did not pass unnoticed to Lorena that the last question had been a direct reference to the verses by Dante that Michel had left with her mother to remember him by. Those verses had come back to her repeatedly during the journey as she observed her father. Now at last she could express her innermost feelings.
“Only when the worm is really a butterfly in disguise,” replied Lorena. “If I have been able to fly it has been thanks to your wings. I was unaware you even existed, but it was your blood that coursed through my veins and your vitality that gave me the strength to become what I am now. You could not take care of me, hold, or educate me when I was a child, but I see now that you have always been with me. I am so proud that you are my father. I love you so much.”
Love blurred the limits that separated father from daughter, and for an instant they believed they were one.
“We priests need to confess our sins as well,” said Michel in a low voice. “The fruit from the forbidden tree which I tasted in my youth consumed me from within when I stopped seeing the woman with whom I had fallen in love. I desired no other. There was no hope left in my life. Desolate were my nights and cold was the dawn, my voice had lost the will to sing and my body had no appetite. Having no interest in earthly matters, I sought refuge in the church. But the soul’s wounds are not cured by escaping from the world. Doubts about my faith assailed me, showing no respect for my condition as a priest. I was lost in a forest of dark emotions when I entered into this very cave, hoping to be devoured by some wild beast. I found neither ravenous bears nor wolves but men gathered around a fire: ‘Why do you look so sad?’ they asked. ‘Clouds pass by but the sky always remains. Come into the depths of the cave with us and you will learn to see in the dark. It will be then that you learn what is left of you when the fog which envelops you now has cleared.’ I had nothing to lose. I spent a week in the belly of that cave and came out transformed. Although I knew I could never go back and be together with Flavia, I resolved that our love would inspire me to give the very best of myself by helping others.”
Leonardo da Vinci, thought Mauricio, had also chosen a very similar cave to depict the first encounter between Jesus and Saint John the Baptist, contravening the instructions given by the congregation that had commissioned the painting. Perhaps Leonardo had risked ignoring such an important order, despite it being his first commission in Milan, to enable him to find out personally the importance of certain caves? One thing was certain, the brotherhood of the Immaculate Conception did not keep the painting and the Florentine Dominicans had thrown his sanguine drawing of the Virgin of the Rocks into the flames.
“I later found out,” Michel continued, “that I had participated in rites similar to those of the Good Men centuries before in the same place and that my ancestor Pierre Blanch had been one of their principal masters.”
“Which, of course, ties up again,” Mauricio broke in, “with the ring, which, as an heir, should rightfully belong to you.”
“Indeed,” agreed Michel. “We could trace my genealogical tree through the church archives, but I think that this letter from Lorenzo Il Magnifico should be sufficient.”
By the flickering light of the fire, Mauricio examined the document that Blanch had produced from his robes. The envelope and paper certainly belonged to the Medici household, there was no doubt about that. The handwriting and the signature also corresponded exactly to those of Il Magnifico.
My dear friend, Mauricio,
By the time you read these words I shall no more number among the living. However, even from the kingdom of the dead, I speak to you in order to remind you of our last conversation. Do as you promised me you would. The key is 133.
The letter was brief and contained neither specific names nor any explicit reference to the ring, for obvious elementary questions of security. Despite this, Mauricio was now convinced that Michel Blanch was the legitimate person to receive the ring and not a mere impostor who might have slyly intercepted the letter. “Everything has its moment and its time under the sun,” Michel had said in Aigne as the only answer to his supplications to learn more about the ring. Precisely the same phrase that Lorenzo Il Magnifico pronounced when Mauricio had expressed his doubts about the possibility of ever finding out the secret of the emerald. At last the moment had arrived.
“What does the key of 33 mean?” he asked. “Il Magnifico once explained that the triangle represents the number 3. And that two triangles placed one upon the other, forming the Hebrew symbol, produce the number 33, a key not only for Jews but for the whole of humanity. How could all this relate to the ring?”
“Through the Good Men, of course. In accordance with their cosmogony, the destiny of humanity is to return consciously to their divine abode after having transcended all material pitfalls. Humanity, according to its interpretation of the Apocalypse, is supposedly composed of a third of the celestial spirits swept up by the tail of Lucifer’s dragon during his fall. What percent does a third represent? Thirty-three, plus three … And so on, indefinitely. Tell me now, what phrase is engraved on the ring?”
“Light, light, more light,” answered Mauricio.
“Abraham Abulafia wrote that motto in Castilian Spanish to give us a clue, ‘Luz, luz, más luz.’ In Spanish, luz or light is composed of three letters,” Michel explained. “Therefore the mathematical translation of the sentence would be: 33+3. Do you follow me? We all come from the light, we all fall into darkness together with Lucifer, and a third of the celestial spirits swept away from the heavens by the dragon’s tail will return transfigured into light. Number 33 contains, therefore, the key to the origin, mystery, and destiny of humanity.”
In the same way as rain merges into the rivers effortlessly, ideas flowed into Lorena with the same natural ease.
“So the ring holds the same key and identical message as The Divine Comedy, because the metamorphosis that the human species has to undergo before it reaches its final destination constitutes the deepest meaning of Dante’s work.”
“Indeed, this is so,” agreed Michel, raising his eyebrows in admiration, “although I have not met many people who share the same opinion.”
“This is because they have not read the poet with enough attention. Or did Dante perhaps not pen these later verses in The Divine Comedy?”
Oh Christians, arrogant, exhausted, wretched,
whose intellects are sick and cannot see,
who place your confidence in backward steps,
do you not know that we are worms and born
to form the angelic butterfly that soars
without defenses, to confront His judgment?
“The very same verses that I left with your
mother for her to remember me by!” exclaimed Michel, unable to contain his surprise.
“Everything fits together, finally,” remarked Lorena, “and I imagine that it is no coincidence that The Divine Comedy’s mathematical structure contains the same number as the ring. Dante’s major work is divided into three books: Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise. The first consists of 34 cantos, and the others of 33 cantos each. They add up to a total of 100. And if we divide the cantos among the three books that compose it, the results would also be 33+3 … ”
Mauricio read in Michel’s eyes the great pride he felt as he listened to his daughter and could not help thinking that Lorena would be worthy enough to inherit in the future the same jewel which he was thinking of handing over to her father.
“Nothing is fortuitous, as you rightly pointed out,” affirmed Michel. “Dante Alighieri, besides being a great poet, was into the secrets of the unutterable. A proof of this is his youthful work The New Life, in which he already shows that nine is his favorite number because it contains three times three, the master number. In this book, he tells of how he falls in love with Beatrice and how, nine years later, the second meeting inspires a strange dream that is reflected in such inspired rhymes that the fedeli d’amore accepted him into their closed circle.
“The ‘Faithful to Love’?” Mauricio was intrigued.
“The Faithful to Love, the secret group to which Dante belonged,” explained Michel, “continued the tradition initiated by the Provencal poets. As you know, the first troubadours’ object of desire was always unattainable: women of great beauty, intelligence, sensitivity … and married to noble lords. Naturally, such love affairs were doomed. Morality would not permit them and their powerful husbands even less. The poets attempted to make a virtue out of necessity and sublimate their passion until it became transformed into a love so pure that the mere act of serving and adoring the lady without hoping for anything in return became the path to perfection chosen to save their souls. However, the pathway of those who are faithful in love is strewn with peril, and I am not only talking about the well of bitterness in which the most disinterested troubadour can fall when his love is not reciprocated. There are also other pitfalls bordering the path which the bold traveler follows. What happens when the fruit he has tasted cannot be forgotten? Ah, but happiness is forbidden! The greater the pleasure, the greater the suffering. Utter bliss can lead to the deepest bitterness. The custodian of guilt keeps the master key under seven locks of pain and few are those who ever regain hope.”
It seemed obvious to Lorena that Michel had used the digression about the troubadours to talk about his own suffering, which her mother also shared. She was aware that he had become a man dedicated to God, but was that a sufficient reason for two people who loved each other so much never to meet again?”
“Someone once said, a long time ago, the only mortal sin is to betray the heart,” murmured Lorena quietly.
Michel must have recognized perfectly what he had said to Flavia just before their first kiss, because a shudder visibly ran through his body as he struggled to hold back more tears.
“Happiness should never be forbidden,” said Lorena as she stroked his hand. “Why not return to Florence with us and meet your grandchildren?”
Lorena thought it unnecessary to add that Flavia would be overjoyed to see him again, although it was implicit in the invitation.
“I would like nothing more,” Michel Blanch answered, “yet as hard as it might seem to you, every one of us must fulfill the role which life has chosen for them. For the time being, the parishioners of Ornolac will need a pastor and so, in the same way as my ancestor did, I shall repay the debt I owe to existence by using the emerald in these caves to initiate those who might reach higher levels of consciousness.”
Should the destiny of the emerald take priority over man’s happiness? wondered Lorena, as Mauricio, who had discreetly remained in the background, moved by the extraordinary dialogue between father and daughter, approached Michel to give him a heartfelt embrace before handing him the ring. The very same ring that many centuries ago had looked for refuge in Barcelona. The emerald that his family had kept for generations and that had found the way back to its origins at last. With a solemn gesture, he placed it in the hands of the person who would be its future custodian. It was the birth of a new era for all those assembled there.
“It seems paradoxical,” said Mauricio, “that the sacred emerald has belonged to Cathar heretics, Jewish rabbis, false converts, and is now being entrusted to a Christian priest.”
“It is not paradoxical at all,” Michel Blanch denied vigorously, “but a veritable lesson, for our true self observes immutably the storm clouds formed by our ideas and beliefs. This is why Pierre Blanch did not mind Abraham Abulafia being the custodian of the emerald, despite being a Jew. Both knew they were united on a higher level, above those passing clouds, in the same way that we are all attached by invisible threads that will bring us all together again in the future.”
It was then that Lorena understood that once Michel Blanch had concluded the task destiny had reserved for him, he would head for Florence, where he had an assignation with his heart.
129
“‘There will come an age in years to come when the ocean shall loosen the bonds of things, then a great expanse of land shall be revealed and a new mariner, such as he who had been Jason’s guide, by the name of Thyphis will discover a new world and the island of Thule will not mark the limit of the lands.’”
Christopher Columbus quoted Seneca, with a voice as mighty as all the oceans he had conquered. Mauricio had transcribed that fragment of Medea in the letter he had sent to the great admiral, not only to wake his curiosity but also to flatter him. Apparently, the note had achieved the desired effect, for although by an extraordinarily lucky coincidence Christopher Columbus happened to be in Spain after many years of exploration in undiscovered lands, it did not guarantee being granted an audience, particularly if the petitioner happened to be a creditor like Mauricio.
Mauricio mentally gave thanks to the illustrious Roman thinker for having afforded him such an opportunity. He had avoided the first stumbling block but the hardest was yet to come. In fact, the admiral’s miserliness was nearly as legendary as his fame. Mauricio had an overriding need to recover the money he was owed if he did not want to live off Flavia’s charity when he returned to Florence.
“Yours is without doubt an exploit that will live forever in the mind of mankind,” stated Mauricio, attempting to appeal to his conceit, knowing full well that vanity tended to be the Achilles heel the most exalted persons often seem to suffer from.
“I am grateful for your praise,” said Christopher Columbus, placing the letter on the table, “but as you know I have not discovered a new world but have reached the most eastern part of the Indies, thus opening a new route through the ocean, also an exceptional feat, if you will forgive my lack of modesty. But tell me, what could have made you imagine otherwise?”
It was extremely difficult for Mauricio not to be overawed by his presence. Facing him was a hero worthy of the most legendary exploits recounted by Homer. The viceroy and governor of the newly discovered lands was about forty-five years old. Silver haired and with a regal air, his penetrating eyes were the same deep blue as the sea. Dressed in a velvet doublet, his outfit was as elegant as were his manners, and the man exuded self-confidence and authority. Mauricio attempted not to be daunted and to reply suitably; he needed to present himself as someone completely sure of himself in order to increase the chances of achieving his purpose.
“In the first place, the appearance of the natives who were brought back on your boats. The color of their skin is paler than that of African negroes and yet darker than ours. But neither are they like the subjects of the Great Khan described by Marco Polo, nor even remotely like the inhabitants of India or other known Oriental kingdoms. And what can one say of those brilliantly colored birds, chattering away like fishwives? In no ot
her corner of the world had such creatures ever been seen. Plato recounts in the Timaeus that in ancient times, long before Atlantis was swallowed up by the waves, it was possible to cross the Atlantic Ocean starting from the columns of Hercules2 after calling at the mythical, lost island. From there, the Greek philosopher recounts, it was possible to arrive at some other islands after which one reached terra firma on an immense continent. What if you had taken the same concealed route in which the ancient sages believed?”
Columbus’s features remained inscrutable, but his gaze was colder than steel.
“Nonsense. Poets can allow themselves to tell tall tales, but we sailors must stick to reality. I can assure you, had I not followed the map drawn up by Toscanelli, the eminent Florentine geographer, I would not be here talking to you but would be at the bottom of the sea. In any case, it would please me greatly to know who suggested such ideas that are so contrary to my experience and to my knowledge.”
These and other arguments, contrary to the official version had been propounded by Amerigo Vespucci, the person in charge of the provisions for Columbus’s boats and nephew of Giorgio Antonio Vespucci, one of the most outstanding members of the old Platonic Academy of Florence. Mauricio resolved not to disclose the name of his confident, remembering the old friendship which he had shared with Giorgio Antonio, now long dead, for it was obvious that the admiral was extremely upset by the revolutionary assumptions made by his nephew.
“These are rumors going around court,” replied Mauricio, attempting to appear light-hearted.
Columbus’s features remained calm, but his pale skin became flushed with indignation.
“All lies and slander!” he exclaimed. “There are many at court who bear me a grudge for having shown up their lack of knowledge. And there are many more who cannot accept that a foreigner had gone from carding wool in his youth to become a captain-in-chief of the fleet and viceroy of all I have discovered. Now they are all obliged to use my title of ‘Don’ when they address me, but behind my back they are conspiring, wolves in sheep’s clothing slandering me ceaselessly.”
The Florentine Emerald: The Secret of the Convert's Ring Page 42