It took her six minutes. Then, as she put the empty pouch back into her case, she heard the door open.
Ross still wasn't used to having the bed he had shared with Lauren to himself. Throughout their marriage he had often been away, but he could only remember a handful of nights when he had slept alone at home.
Last night he had drunk a bottle of wine and watched TV into the early hours, careful not to disturb his father who was staying in one of the guest bedrooms. Free to watch any channel he chose, he eventually fell asleep in front of one of the reality makeover shows that Lauren liked, and when he woke he had been curled up on her side of the bed. After breakfast, his father had gone to Manhattan to visit her mother, and Ross had made his daily pilgrimage to the hospital. When he'd arrived, mildly hungover, the last thing he had expected to see was a nun kneeling at his wife's bedside.
'Who are you?' he demanded. 'What are you doing here?'
When she turned he saw that she had been crying. Despite that, she possessed a serene, ageless beauty and the most amazing eyes he had ever seen - piercing sky-blue irises ringed with violet. 'I am Sister Chantal. I came to see Dr Lauren Ross.' She spoke English in the precise way that well-educated Europeans often do. 'Who are you?'
'Ross Kelly, Lauren's husband. Are you with Father General Leonardo Torino?'
Fear flickered in the nun's eyes. 'No.'
'Then how do you know Lauren?'
'Through her work. We've never met but I feel I know her because she understands the mind of a man I admire.' She struggled to stand, and Ross helped her to her feet. 'How did this happen to your wife?' she asked. He explained about the intruder in Lauren's office, and the beautiful eyes flickered again. 'Was anything taken?' 'Some cash, jewellery and a video camera, maybe something from her computer. Why?'
'Has anybody else contacted you about Father Orlando's manuscript?'
'What manuscript?'
'The manuscript you know as the Voynich Cipher. You mentioned the Father General. Has he been to see you about the manuscript?'
This was too weird. 'What's going on? What's this about?'
Those striking eyes stared at him, unblinking, assessing. 'I need your help.' She gestured to Lauren. 'And you need mine.' Beneath the brittle calm he detected a fierce desperation now. 'Time is running out. I'm getting weaker and there's much we need to do.'
'We?'
'Yes. You, your wife and I.'
'My wife? What are you talking about? She's--'
Sister Chantal gripped his arm with surprising strength. 'Let me explain. It's important. For all of us. Can we talk somewhere we won't be disturbed? Somewhere private?'
As Ross looked into those disconcerting eyes, every rational instinct told him to ask her politely but firmly to leave. Yet something about her passion and desperation chimed with his own. And what did he have to lose? He made a decision that would change for ever his already shattered life. 'Come with me,' he said.
Chapter 16.
Later that day
As Father General Leonardo Torino stepped out of the limousine and walked up the gravel drive to the Kelly house he felt confident of the outcome. He prided himself on knowing the hearts and minds of men, and his meeting with Ross Kelly in the hospital chapel had gone better than he had hoped.
He rang the doorbell and waited. He heard raised voices, then the door opened. When he saw the guarded expression on the geologist's face, his confidence evaporated. Kelly led him into the kitchen, where Torino saw an elderly nun sitting at the table, an empty coffee cup in front of her. His surprise at her presence was compounded by the fleeting panic he saw in her eyes as Ross introduced them. As he processed this he noticed her slip an opaque plastic bag into the case beside her. 'Good afternoon, Sister.'
'Father General.' She fingered the large crucifix that hung from her neck, then bowed her head and rose from the chair. 'I'm sorry, I'm tired. I must leave.'
Kelly moved towards her and a look passed between them. 'Sister Chantal, let me show you to the lounge. You can rest there while I talk with the Father General.'
Sister Chantal grabbed her small case and cane, and put her arm through his.
Her name further piqued Torino's interest. He was sure he had come across it recently but couldn't remember where. He waited in the kitchen until Kelly returned. 'I'm surprised to find a nun visiting you, a non-believer.'
Kelly frowned. 'As you said, we all need to believe in something.' The frown deepened. 'Tell me, Father General, why are you really interested in my wife's translation of the Voynich?'
'I thought I explained yesterday. It was written by one of our own. We regard the document as ours. We want to complete the translation.'
'Why?'
'Because it's part of our heritage. And it's a puzzle. Which is why your wife wanted to translate it.'
'You told me yesterday that you thought the manuscript was a parable - a simple story.' Kelly was studying him now. 'Is that what you really believe?'
The question bothered Torino. Yesterday the man had trusted him. Today he didn't. What had he been told? He thought of the package the nun had hidden and a frisson of excitement ran through him. What had Kelly seen? 'Of course it's a parable. It can't possibly be true, if that's what you're suggesting. Can it?'
'Tell me about the source you mentioned yesterday. Tell me what you think it is.'
'Why? What do you know about it, Dr Kelly?'
Kelly ignored his question. 'Tell me, Father General, what do you know about a priest called Orlando Falcon?'
Torino hid his thoughts better than most men but he knew his face betrayed him now. Only he knew about Father Orlando Falcon and his link with the Voynich. 'As I told you yesterday, we believe a Jesuit priest wrote the Voynich. And that priest may have been Father Orlando Falcon. What do you know about him?'
Kelly said nothing.
'I assume this has something to do with Sister Chantal's visit. Why don't you tell me what's troubling you? I can be a powerful ally. Like I said yesterday, the Church has resources. If you suspect there's more to the Voynich than you originally thought, it would be in your best interests to share it with us and come under the umbrella of the Church's protection.'
'Protection? From whom? I'm not giving Lauren's notes to anybody until I find out what's going on. I'm beginning to suspect that whoever broke into our house and harmed Lauren wanted her notes - badly.' Kelly was glaring at him now. 'How badly do you want them, Father?'
Torino valued self-control above all things, but at that moment almost lost his. To come so close to possessing what he most desired only to be thwarted was intolerable. Anger and frustration welled within him. 'You think I tried to steal your wife's notes? I don't need them. We have files in the Vatican, Inquisition Archives that will give us all the information we need. I only came here to expedite our translation and help you.'
'To help me? Are you sure you didn't want to use Lauren's notes for your own ends, whatever they may be?'
'Be careful, Dr Kelly. You have no idea what you're getting involved in. I'm offering to share the burden of this perilous knowledge before it's too late. Don't refuse it.'
'Why not? What will you do?'
Torino clenched his jaw and allowed his rage to cool into something harder. It was pointless saying more - he had already said too much. Kelly's mind was made up. What had the mysterious Sister Chantal said to him - or shown him? 'You'll regret this,' he said coldly, left the house, walked across the gravel and stepped into his limousine. As he sat back and considered his options, he suddenly remembered where he had last heard of Sister Chantal. He called his office in Rome and told them to put him through to Father Seamus Dunleavy at the Institute of Miracles. 'That letter from the Ugandan hospice you brought to my attention last week.'
'The spontaneous healing of the two brothers with Aids?'
'Yes. What was the name of the nun who went missing at around the same time?'
'Sister Chantal.' Torino was about to ask another q
uestion when Father Seamus continued: 'I don't know if it's relevant, Father General, but the hospice sent us something else linked to the case.'
'What?'
'A wooden box with ornate carvings. The cured boys claim the nun gave it to them.'
'Describe the carvings.'
'I'll take a photo and send it to you.'
As the image appeared on Torino's phone, his mouth dried. It confirmed that Sister Chantal was somehow linked to Orlando Falcon's Garden of God, and could be crucial to finding it. 'Thank you, Father, that's very helpful. Tell me one more thing. How much do we know about the nun, Sister Chantal?'
'Very little.'
'I want you to find out all you can. Who she is, how long she's been in her order, where she comes from - everything.'
As he hung up he knew he had to manage the next stage carefully. If the geologist and the nun did as Torino predicted, they would become invaluable, unwitting pawns. Otherwise Torino would have no choice but to intervene - aggressively.
He pressed a number on speed dial: 'Marco, it's me. There's something the Church needs you to do.'
Chapter 17.
Ross Kelly didn't know what to think. What Sister Chantal had told him before Torino arrived was so ludicrous, so insane, that he couldn't believe it. When he had challenged Torino, he had expected the Black Pope to confirm his scepticism, but the priest's veiled threats had done the opposite. They had bolstered the nun's credibility.
Immediately Torino had left, Ross checked on Sister Chantal, who was asleep on the couch. He draped a blanket over her, took the opaque plastic bag from her hands and went up to Lauren's office. He powered up Lauren's computer, input her password and opened her private Voynich folder. Before he went into any files, however, he found himself staring at the nun's bag. He wanted to believe the story she had told him, recalling their earlier conversation, because it offered him hope where there was none . . .
'Ross, do you know who wrote the Voynich?'
'No idea. No one does, do they?'
'A Jesuit priest, Father Orlando Falcon, wrote it in the latter half of the sixteenth century, some years after the Spanish conquistador Pizarro conquered the Incan Empire of what is now Ecuador and Peru. It chronicles an ill-fated quest to find Eldorado, the legendary city of gold, for King Charles the Fifth of Spain. And it tells of what Father Orlando and the conquistadors discovered instead.'
'I thought the Voynich was an allegory - a piece of fiction.'
The nun shook her head. 'It was an account of what Orlando Falcon found. When he returned from the New World, the papal Inquisition was at its height. No less than three Grand Inquisitors became pope during the second half of the sixteenth century. The second, Pius the Fifth, was in power when Father Orlando returned to Rome, claiming to have found a miraculous garden that challenged the story of Genesis. Obviously this disturbed the pope and his cardinals. The story went against the prevailing dogma and undermined the scriptures. It threatened everything they and the Church stood for. There could only be one Eden and that must be in the Holy Land, or in Christendom. A second Garden of God couldn't exist in the New World among heathens and savages unless it was the Devil's work. They couldn't ignore Father Orlando, though, because he was a respected Jesuit, a one-time protege of the great Ignatius Loyola. So they pronounced him a heretic. A once fine priest who had become possessed while in the New World.'
'What did they do to him?'
'They demanded he recant. When he refused they handed him over to the torturers, who burnt his feet on hot coals. The next morning his feet had healed. He claimed this miracle was proof of his discovery, but it only confirmed the Grand Inquisitor's conviction that Satan had possessed his soul. The torturers then placed his feet in a wooden vice and crushed the bones. This time his body didn't heal and the Grand Inquisitor concluded the Devil had been driven out. But Father Orlando still refused to recant. For many months they held him in a cell while they decided what to do with him. He was not idle during that time.'
She paused to sip some coffee. Despite his scepticism, Ross was impatient for her to continue.
'When he realized that even the Church couldn't be trusted, and his miraculous discovery might die with him, he decided to record it for a time when it would be better appreciated and understood.' She stared into her cup. 'You must understand one thing. Father Orlando Falcon was an exceptional man. To record his discovery and protect it from those who would exploit it, he created a hybrid language, complete with its own characters. Apart from a few meaningless symbols, which he inserted to confuse those trying to decipher his work, most of his text and illustrations described the wonders he witnessed. And he did all this from memory, while lying in a tiny cell, crippled by torture, using materials smuggled in to him.
'Of course, they eventually found the manuscript, which sealed his fate. They called it The Devil's Book because of its unintelligible writing and pictures of a perverted Eden. He was sentenced to be burnt at the stake, the manuscript with him.'
'What happened?'
'He was executed, but an accomplice hid the manuscript in one of the Jesuit libraries. Father Orlando wanted the book hidden in plain view so that one day it would be found, deciphered and his miraculous garden rediscovered.'
'You really believe it existed?'
She looked at him as a patient teacher might at a slow pupil. 'It exists.'
'But what's this got to do with Lauren?'
'Father Orlando wrote most of the manuscript in a hybrid language of two existing tongues so it could eventually be translated. But only by a scholar who was intelligent, dedicated and wise enough to understand his mind and grasp the significance of his discovery. Someone worthy of the garden.'
Ross remembered the night of Lauren's talk at the Beinecke when she had recited the final words of the Voynich: 'Congratulations, fellow scholar, you have read my story and so proved your dedication, intelligence and wisdom. Whatever your faith, God has now chosen you to do what I cannot: to keep His garden safe and ensure its miraculous powers are used for His glory.' He was overcome by wistful yearning. Earlier that day he had resigned from Xplore and been told of Lauren's pregnancy. His only problem then had been his career. Oh, happy days. 'Someone like my wife?' he said.
'Exactly. But Father Orlando always intended one key section of the manuscript to be impossible to translate. Although he used the same text characters as the rest of the document, its language was invented. Without knowing his grammar or vocabulary it could never be translated.'
Ross nodded. 'So, though she didn't realize it, my wife had already completed as much of the translation as anyone possibly could?'
'Yes.'
'So we'll never know what's in the last section.'
She seemed unsure how or whether to continue, but eventually said, 'When Father Orlando returned to Rome, he vowed to tell only the pope of what he had found. But when he discovered he couldn't trust even the highest authority with his secret he told the Inquisition he had burnt his chronicles. But he hadn't. He had placed them for safekeeping in a box with his personal effects, and before he was killed he told his accomplice where this box could be found. In it, a notebook gave detailed directions to the garden and outlined the natural hazards that protected it.'
'A separate notebook?'
'A separate notebook, written in his own tongue.' Her unblinking eyes didn't leave his. 'He also gave the accomplice a translation of the last section of what you call the Voynich.'
'What was in it?'
'An account of something even more mysterious than the garden. Something Father Orlando called the source and claimed was the power behind the garden.'
Ross sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. 'How can you possibly know this?'
'Because I am the Keeper,' she said, as though her statement needed no explanation.
'The Keeper?'
'The Keeper of the Garden. My duty is to watch over Father Orlando's discovery until someone dedicated, intelligent and wis
e enough to understand what to do with it deciphers the main part of his manuscript. When this happens I am to seek out the scholar responsible, confirm that they are worthy, then deliver the book to them and pass on my burden. Father Orlando prophesied that this would come to pass when the garden was under its greatest threat - and it's never been under more threat than it is now.'
Her voice grew more impassioned. 'Every year mankind gets closer to abusing the garden and its source. Each month on the news I see that loggers, farmers, roads and oil companies are encroaching on what was once remote, virgin jungle. I despaired of the document's ever being deciphered until I read about your wife's translation on the Internet, researched her background and discovered her love of conservation. I knew she was the one.' Sister Chantal reached into her case and pulled out a vacuum-sealed plastic bag. As she did so a leather pouch fell on to the floor. It was dusted with fragments of crushed rock. Their metallic iridescence reminded Ross of the Schreibersite rock sample he had given Lauren on his return from Uzbekistan, but their crystalline translucency was different - unique. He studied the fragments but couldn't identify which rock they came from - and he knew most rocks.
He switched his attention to the plastic bag. As she opened the seal, a faint, musty smell tainted the air. 'This is Father Orlando's book of directions to the garden.' She pulled it out and opened it carefully. The last few pages were a different colour from the rest. 'To keep them together, the translation of the Voynich's astrological section was bound into the back many years ago.' She passed it to him. The small book's grained leather had been carefully preserved but it was undeniably ancient. 'It's proof of what I say. If your wife could read it she'd have no doubt.'
He opened the book. The yellowed pages were covered in neat calligraphy. To his surprise, he could understand most of it. 'It's in Spanish.'
'Orlando Falcon's native tongue. He wrote it before his return to Rome, but it's appropriate that it's not in Latin, the language of the Church. After they betrayed him he vowed never to trust Rome again. We shouldn't either.'
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