The Testament of James (Case Files of Matthew Hunter and Chantal Stevens)

by Vin Suprynowicz

  “Have you called it in?”

  “I just got here. Are you OK?”

  “I’ve got the gun, don’t I?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Skeezix smiled.

  “Where did they go?”

  “I think they said Robinson Hall, same place you guys went this morning.”

  “OK. One of the Italians is hurt in there. He fell down and hit his head in the ladies room, understand?”

  “Sure. That happens all the time.”

  “I called for an ambulance, when it comes can you flag ’em down and tell them to go in this door, turn right, down the hall to the ladies room?”

  “OK, sure.”

  “Then make yourself scarce before they try to get your name and address. You’ll be OK if it starts to rain?” In fact, a few large cold drops were already coming down.

  “I hate rain.”

  “I know you do.” Though it never seemed to stop the Skeezer from wandering around in it, no matter how forlorn and bedraggled he looked. It was not clear that Skeezix drove, or even knew how. “Call Marian and tell her Rashid and I are OK, please? Maybe she can reach Lance White. Did Lance White go with Matthew? The good-looking guy in the white pants?”

  “Not sure.”

  “Then, once you point the medics inside, you can go hide out somewhere dry. Do you need your glasses to see?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Put them in your pocket. Got some kind of kerchief?”

  Skeezix produced one. Chantal tied it around his head. “There, Covers up your most distinguishing feature,” which was of course his tabby-patterned brown, gray and gold hair. “No sense making you any easier to identify than necessary. Thanks, Skeezix, I really appreciate your tracking us down. Show them the way into the building, then make yourself scarce, then check in with Marian. I’m afraid we’ve got to go.”

  “Glad you’re OK, Chantal.”

  She gave him a quick hug, shoved a couple of bucks into his shirt pocket to make sure he could afford a bowl of soup at Rue de L’Espoir, then told Rashid to drive the blue Sentra; she’d sit in the back where she could keep an eye on everybody.

  As they turned out of the parking lot she could hear a siren coming in the distance. In fact, they passed the ambulance as they started up the hill. Chantal used her own cell to call Marian at the store and report they were OK, that she’d seen Skeezix. Marian let out an “Oh thank God,” then said she had Skeezix on the other line. She confirmed Matthew had no cell, as always, but said she’d try to get word to him through the Reverend White.

  A chill wind blew up, now. Paper bags and scraps of newspapers were picked up from the gutters, sent swirling across the street and sidewalks. Then, surprisingly loud like insects splatting came the large, tentative splashes of rain on the windshield. The whole sky had grown as dark as the horizon, making it a shock as she directed Rashid to turn onto Waterman Street and Robinson Hall loomed in front of them and then the old building and its weird marble animal gargoyles was blasted with an illumination of white light, followed by a peal of thunder like the clap of doom.

  * * *

  Lance White, having apparently abandoned his role of bodyguard to Professor St. Vincent and the book, climbed up on a table at the opposite end of the reading room from Dominic Penitente’s balcony, from which the inquisitor still dominated the huge and sparsely-lit space, looming like a giant bat in his black cape.

  The weird hollow light penetrating from the stained glass windows overhead edged both men in luminous shades of red, purple, and green. Lance, particularly, seemed almost to shimmer and glow. Matthew caught himself wondering if he was fully recovered from his mushroom trip of the day before. “Recover” was the wrong word, anyway. Your perceptions never quite went back to the way they’d been before. Some fragment of that extra richness always remained to inform the way you saw the world thereafter.

  “It’s not the crucifixion, is it?” asked the Californian in his bright shirt and white slacks — now a kaleidoscope of shifting colors from the stained glass overhead. “The reason the masses can’t be exposed to The Testament of James — the reason you want to haul it away and bury it in your catacombs — isn’t because of James reporting his brother survived?”

  “Of course it’s not the crucifixion,” replied Dominic Penitente, clearly exasperated at another delay. “Are we schoolchildren?” Thunder rolled again, sounding like it was just down the street.

  “A week later our Lord visits the disciples in Galilee; he shows them his healing wounds; he joins them for dinner,” Brother Dominic intoned in his deep, James Earl Jones voice. “To be a Christian it is not necessary to believe that the dead eat fish dinners. Why do you think the church celebrates the Ascension forty days after? He remained for forty days. Of course it’s not about surviving the crucifixion. All this is already there, in the canon. The reason the masses cannot be exposed to the infection of the Testament of James is the other!”

  “Who again made us one in the sacrament,” smiled Lance White.

  “Yes, ‘Who again made us one in the sacrament’!”

  “Healing the rift between our animal natures, our human intellect, and the spirit of the divine. It’s the miracle of the loaves, isn’t it?”

  Penitente waved his arm, then changed the direction of the gesture and crossed himself. “Do you have any idea what kind of madness would result if this account of the Saviour’s ministry were acknowledged — how long we have worked to suppress this heresy? It would destroy civil order as we know it. You think we have violence and chaos and madness now? The brother of Jesus, a most holy man, must have gone mad if he actually wrote this, he must have been possessed by a demon. The dangers are too terrible to contemplate!”

  “So Jesus condemned the priests, the Sanhedrin,” asked Lance, in a calculated tone, “for keeping the knowledge of the sacrament secret from the people, and then, what was worse, for not even using it themselves, for turning their backs on a chance to experience God directly, to hear the voice of God as Moses heard the voice of God in the burning bush, by consuming the manna?”

  “You tread on dangerous ground, now.”

  “So what was he handing out? Shall I tell them, Brother Dominic?”

  “There was a time you would not have dared to speak this way,” the black monk warned.

  “Back when you guys could burn anyone who asked the wrong questions on a pile of green wood? How many did your great abbot Arnaud massacre at Beziers? Twenty thousand? Who said ‘Kill them all, God will know his own’? Your guys made him an archbishop for that. Judaism was a mystery religion, and the guy you chose as your savior was dedicated to bringing the mystery of Moses back out of the shadows. Moses told them to keep the mystery safe in the Ark, so it would always be available to the younger generations. But the priests grew jealous of their power. If just anyone could learn how to speak to God directly, to hear the voice of God, then why would they need the priests and the temple full of blood? So to protect their power and their privilege, to maintain their monopoly over telling people how an angry God could be propitiated, they hid the mystery away until it was lost and forgotten, even to them.”

  “Abomination!” shouted Dominic Penitente, as a flash of purple-white lightning lit up the whole room, followed instantly by a crack of thunder overhead at the cupola, close enough to make the rest of them duck their heads.

  Lance White’s cell phone started to ring. He turned it off.

  “What was the mystery?” Matthew asked.

  “Like so many secrets, it’s right there for anyone to see,” smiled Lance White. “Moses chides the Israelites for their lack of faith; the next morning the manna is on the ground, like hoarfrost. In the end, they must have figured out how to dry and preserve it, because some was stored in the Ark of the Covenant, so the children of Israel would always know what it looked like.”

  “Stop!” shouted the black-clad monk. “It’s madness to speak of this! It’s heresy!” The thunder was all around them, no
w, the sheets of rain lashing the stained glass windows of the cupola overhead. And the air smelled odd — ozone, maybe, or iodine, from the charges of the lightning, mixed with the smell of dust disturbed after many years.

  “No, it’s the knowledge all the great religions were originally designed to preserve.” Lance White spread his own arms wide, gazing upward and looking downright beatific. “It’s the direct path to the knowledge of God and his will that the priests had slammed closed, and which to keep closed they were willing to see Jesus crucified in pain. It’s a secret the church could hope to keep hidden while it expanded into Europe, which has surprisingly few safe natural entheogens, except the witches’ ointment. But it was a secret you were terrified would resurface when your priests reported back from the New World that the indigenous people here could see the face of God, hear the voice of God by ingesting the peyotl cactus, the flower seed ololioqui, even through the manna itself, the sacred mushroom teonanacatl, the flesh of the God.”

  “You see how dangerous are the lies in this book?” thundered the giant monk, swirling his cape. “The temples of the Aztecs besotted on these drugs were bathed in human blood! Are we really to believe the brother of our Lord risked damnation to write such blasphemies? That our Lord was luring his followers into the wilderness and leading them in drug-addled orgies by feeding them these demon plants?

  “The Bible says God gave mankind every herb and flower-bearing plant for his use,” Lance replied. “It mentions no ‘demon plants.’ Yet the church destroyed the entire herbal and medical knowledge of the Native Americans, just as they had the witches in Europe a century before, condemned whole races and peoples just for using these plants as God intended, the plants God gave us for our use.”

  “The people?” Brother Dominic sneered. “What is the subtlety of their understanding? Look at them brawling in the taverns, trampling each other at some pointless football match, swarming the courthouses to plead for their miscreant offspring to be given another chance. Do you really want to see these thoughtless mobs driven insane by hallucinogenic drugs, rampaging through the streets with torches and knives and nooses? Even the Master told the disciples he had one teaching for the masses and a different teaching for those who knew the way, who had been initiated into the mysteries of the inner temple.”

  “Yes, he did. And with how many have you shared the manna during the past century, allowing them to hear the voice of God for themselves? Anyone at all?”

  “Moses, Jesus, the great souls contend with the devil on our behalf,” shouted the black monk. “To let the mob hear the voice of God without careful guidance is madness. What are they ready to understand?”

  “So it’s better to never let them hear, at all?” asked Lance White. “Is that our destiny, to live in darkness forever?”

  “The light of knowledge can burn those who are unprepared,” intoned Dominic Penitente, pointing his finger in warning. There was more thunder now, and it was more continuous. The sheets of rain were going to make a mess of things outside.

  “You’ve had two thousand years to get them ready,” sighed Lance White, shaking his head as the colored light shimmered about him. “Instead you’ve built a religion of sin, guilt, fake chastity, and the Spanish Inquisition. You’ve persecuted and condemned young women who bear fruit after being abandoned by their lovers, blaming them for leading men into sin. You’ve condemned our Lord’s bride as a whore and his people as Christ-killers. You condemn homosexuals while insisting on a supposedly celibate priesthood that fucks your choirboys up the ass by the hundreds of thousands, a crime you punish by rewarding them with cruise tickets and a new parish.”

  “Without discipline, order, and a code of morals,” the man in black snarled back, “you’d allow mankind to degenerate into nothing better than beasts rutting in the fields! I know your kind, with your mail-order divinity degrees, uniting sodomites in so-called matrimony in a field full of flowers as some faggot strums a lute. Maybe you can sell them a group rate at your local AIDS hospice while you’re at it!”

  “Every other great ancient religion had its entheogenic sacrament,” added Matthew, calmly, still standing on the floor below the two. “The Rig Veda has its soma. So what was the manna, Brother Dominic? You’ve already read other copies of this book that you’re here to buy and destroy, haven’t you? Give the manna its name.”

  “The priests know, just as they did in Jesus’ time,” Lance White nodded. “They’re just not talkin’.”

  The volume of the pouring rain increased as the front door to the building opened behind them. Chantal and Rashid the Egyptian came up the hall toward the central reading room, Chantal gesturing with her revolver to keep their soaking wet one-time kidnapper — the lighter-haired, chubby character she thought of as Monk Number Three — shuffling ahead of them.

  “I really appreciate knowing how much you guys would have paid for my freedom,” Chantal said as they emerged into the scattered light cast by the few overhead pin-spots and the equally few green-shaded lamps still lit on the desks of the reading room. “But I hope you haven’t traded away anything valuable to preserve my modest virtue, just yet.”

  Silence reigned for a few seconds. Then Dominic Penitente from his balcony spoke gently to his remaining bedraggled assistant. “Fratellino, perché porta una pistola la signorina?”

  “L’ha preso dal Fratello Anselmo,” whined the smallest monk, literally bowing his head in shame. “Dovessi vedere come l’ha picchiato!”

  “I took it away so he wouldn’t hurt himself,” Chantal confirmed.

  “Madonna mia.” Dominic Penitente closed his eyes in prayer. “Ma e’ possible che tutti il paese cerca i suoi idioti persi?”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  STILL FRIDAY AFTERNOON

  “It appears you no longer have any hostages to trade, Brother Dominic.”

  “But how is this a problem, Brother Matthew?” asked the big Dominican, taking a deep breath and quickly recovering his equilibrium. “My only purpose was to bring the book out of hiding. I’m glad everything has worked out with no harm to anyone, except my associate Brother Anselmo, who it appears may have gotten just what he deserved for his rash and unauthorized actions, requiescat in pace. But now the time has come to ask our Egyptian associates what price they would ask for this aging manuscript, taking full account of its doubtful provenance.”

  “What do you offer, priest?” asked the former hostage Rashid al-Adar, a slightly smaller copy of his big brother, Hakim.

  “I come prepared to make a handsome offer, in cash, once I’ve examined the codex.”

  “Then come and have your look, so long as you handle carefully.”

  “I’ll bid for this book, too,” added Lance White.

  “With cash?”

  “Part cash. Mr. Hunter will vouch for my ability to produce the rest, once I have a chance to contact my bank in California in the morning.”

  “And your offer?”

  “How shall we proceed, Matthew?” Lance White asked. “Will you serve as auctioneer?”

  “But I object to such a so-called auction!” shouted Penitente, who at this point tossed a rope down from his balcony, vaulted the rail, caught the rope with his feet as well as his black-gloved hands, and slid down to land with both feet squarely on the floor, his black cape billowing out behind. With the thunder still rumbling outside even as the storm began to pass by, and now a strange golden light streaming down through the stained glass in the cupola three stories above, it was all highly dramatic. More than ever Matthew was convinced his first guess had been right — this character had to be some kind of frustrated former actor, the Italian Errol Flynn, seeking refuge in the church after a prodigal youth.

  “Here in my shoulder bag I have cash, American dollars.” Penitente smirked like the cat who already holds the bird in his claws. “Why should I enter an auction against someone who has little or none? Oh, Mr. Hunter is a fine and decent fellow, we all agree, to give his friend Mr. White the benefit of
the doubt, that’s all very nice. But who except a fool would allow his price to be driven up by the phantom bids of someone who claims he can come up with unlimited sums . . . perhaps tomorrow?” Penitente stretched out the next-to-last syllable, sneering with sarcasm.

  “For that matter, what if Mr. White wins this proposed bidding by mentioning some phenomenal sum, a half million, a million dollars, whatever? We all know that in an auction it’s easy to get carried away. And what if tomorrow he suddenly discovers raising such a sum is going to take longer than he thought, property must be sold, new mortgages taken out? It is, after all, a ‘holiday weekend.’ How long will we all sit around, begging the signorina’s pardon, with our dicks in our hands? What must I then pay, when you come back to the underbidder? The same amount this one dreamed up in his fevered imagination? And what if you no longer even control the book? Certain authorities from your own country are searching for it, even now. Let me see this manuscript; if it appears legitimate I offer two hundred thousand American dollars, right now, in cash. If the ‘Reverend’ Mr. White has more, let him show it.”

  “Two hundred fifty thousand, in a negotiable treasurer’s check to be delivered tomorrow by noon,” said Lance.

  “Promises! Maybe tomorrow!” Dominic Penitente pouted for effect, casting his voice in a mocking sing-song. He reached into his heavy black shoulder bag, pulled out a wad of hundred dollar bills, and held it up over his head for easier visibility. The mustard colored band meant there were a hundred of them — $10,000 in a single fistful. And his bag was still heavy, presumably with plenty more.

  “Let the priest see the book,” said the hawk-beaked Hakim al-Adar.

  Matthew beckoned for Richard, who’d come down the hall and had been lurking in the shadows, to bring out the book. He placed it carefully on a reading table where Penitente could examine it. Chantal pushed the other Italian forward, towards the table, so she could cover both inquisitors and the book at the same time. She lowered her barrel to knee level, but still held it two-handed, in obvious readiness.