by Sam Cabot
Livia’s searching hands suddenly stopped still. After a moment she repositioned herself, gripped the jar with her left hand, and placed her right on its carved lid. Thomas could see the slow, steady force she was using in the set of her shoulders. The lid didn’t move. Livia dropped her arms and stared at it. “Thomas? In my bag there’s a vial. Can you hand it to me?”
Thomas, not used to rummaging through a woman’s handbag, spent a minute finding it. “This?”
“Yes. It’s the scent I use. Not really a perfume. An essential oil.” She took the vial he handed her, unscrewed the top, and poured the oil carefully on the seam between the jar and its lid. The heady scent of gardenias wafted down to Thomas as the oil perched on the surface of the wood and then gradually began to seep in. Livia restoppered the vial and handed it back down. Slowly, she started to work at the lid again. Nothing, nothing, nothing—then, finally, Thomas could see it begin to give. With calm patience Livia pressured it, pushing down, turning, until at last, millimeter by millimeter, she was able to unscrew it. Slowly and deliberately, she took the lid off, reached into the hollow jar, and removed a rolled, beribboned, wax-sealed scroll.
105
Standing at the back of the church, he could see only that Livia Pietro and Thomas Kelly had been escorted by a monk to the Magdalene chapel. But he didn’t need to be near to see—to know—what they were doing. When he’d gotten the call telling him they’d left the apartment, he’d gone out, too, into the fresh Rome morning. He didn’t try to follow them. Anywhere they had it in mind to go was their own business and they had his blessing. Anywhere but here. He came straight to Santa Maria Maddalena, hoping that they wouldn’t appear, but knowing they would.
He’d never been sure how much of the truth Lorenzo Cossa knew. It was possible, he’d thought, that though the contents of the document Livia Pietro and Thomas Kelly had just found were known to the Cardinal, its hiding place might not be. It had also seemed possible that, even if he knew, he hadn’t had a chance to pass his knowledge on. When Livia and Kelly walked into the church, though, that possibility was lost. He took heart when it became clear that they didn’t know what next step to take, but the resourcefulness they’d proved yesterday came into play here, too. He wasn’t sure how they’d done it and it didn’t matter: once they’d found the statue, it was all but assured they’d find the treasure it held.
This day was a long time coming, but it was always bound to come. He’d been given, not instructions to follow, but the immeasurable honor and immense responsibility of deciding what to do when it came. He’d pondered the question long and hard, never coming to a conclusion. Now he’d reached one. Now he had to.
Stepping from the shadows, the Pontifex strode forward.
106
Thomas sank slowly onto the marble plinth. Livia stood beside him, the unrolled vellum scroll from the unguent jar in her hand. Around him Santa Maria Maddalena faded, became a still photograph, a frozen stage set. Nothing lived, moved, breathed. He was ice-cold. The words he’d just read—he wanted to never have seen them; if that wasn’t possible, to instantly forget them. But they swam before his eyes and, though he’d never heard them spoken, they sounded in his head.
Roma profecturi hoc testamentum relinquimus. Nobis praesentibus non erat opus talibus litteris; nos ipsi vitaque nostra pro testibus veritatis erant. Quamquam ex hac urbe discedimus, testimonium illud manet. Sumus etiamnunc inter vos. Estote certi: si necessarium fiet, nos revelabimus naturamque nostram duplicem manifestabimus, id quod non prius necessarium erit quam aut Ecclesia aut Noantri pacto inter duas nostras gentes valenti deficiant. Ad quod tempus—utinam ne veniat—fidem servabimus atque occultum tenebimus et pactum et nostram ipsorum naturam.
Preparing to depart from Rome, we leave behind this Testament. While we remained, no such document was required. The proof of its truth was ourselves and our lived lives. Though we leave this city, that proof remains. We are still among you. If necessary, be sure we will reveal ourselves, and make our dual natures known. That necessity will not arise until the day either the Church or the Noantri fail to conform to the Concordat between our peoples. Until such time—may it never come!—we will honor our vows, revealing neither the secret of the Concordat nor the secret of our own natures.
Below this brief, world-changing text, a date:
DIE DOMINICA XXII APRILIS ANNO DOMINI MDCI
Sunday, 22 April, the Year of Our Lord 1601.
and the signatures.
On the left, Maria Magdalena.
On the right, Jesus Nazarenus.
Mary Magdalene.
Jesus of Nazareth.
This was what it was, then: the secret Lorenzo had thought the Church could not survive. Thomas wasn’t sure he’d survive it himself. Dual natures. Could this document be real? Could it be authenticated? But even as the scholar in him, desperate for a handhold, asked the question, the priest knew it was beside the point. The Concordat existed; the Noantri existed. Even if this Testament couldn’t be proved real by any science known to man, its revelation, with its signatures and its date, would force the Concordat and the Noantri into the light. The ensuing whirlwind would bring down the Church, and who knew what would fall with it? If the . . . if the signatories . . . Thomas couldn’t bring himself to say their names, even in his own head. Come on, Father Kelly, you’re a Jesuit, he told himself. You don’t fear knowledge. If he hadn’t been frozen, he’d have laughed. Had he been just a tiny bit proud of how he’d accepted the Noantri, even come to respect and feel fondness for them, in so short a time? Then accept this, Father Kelly: your Savior is also . . . is also . . .
“So that’s it.” Someone spoke, a warm voice penetrating the ice in which Thomas was locked. Slowly, he looked up. Livia, appearing as shaken as he was, stared at the scroll in her hand. “That’s the reason,” she breathed. “Why Martin the Fifth signed the Concordat at all. What forced him into it. They did. It was this.”
Yes, Thomas thought. Fine. That question now was answered. What of it? What did such a thing matter now, when . . .
“Yes.” Another voice, dark and quiet. Thomas turned; Livia gasped. Before them stood the man—the Noantri—who’d sat at the center of the Conclave yesterday. The Pontifex Aliorum. The Pope of the Others. The Noantri ruler.
“Yes,” he said again. The Pontifex stepped closer, pointing to the document Livia held. “You now know the final secret.”
A long silence; then Thomas, to his surprise, heard a ghost of his own voice. “Who else . . .”
“Only the Conclave,” the Pontifex replied. “No other Noantri, and no one in the Church, have this knowledge. The Church has swirled with dark rumors for centuries, stories of another document even more dangerous than the Concordat. But that the Concordat—and we—exist is perilous enough for the Church.”
“But Lorenzo knew. How?”
The Pontifex turned his dark gaze on Thomas. He waited; then he spoke. “Ending the persecution of the Noantri, and accepting the help we could give him, brought Martin the Fifth to power over the rival line of Popes then at Avignon. If he had lost that struggle, the Antipope John would have reigned. John was his papal name. He was born Baldassare Cossa.”
“Cossa,” Thomas repeated. He felt simultaneously that vast knowledge was being revealed to him, and that he was unbearably stupid.
“Lorenzo Cardinal Cossa was descended from Baldassare’s brother’s line. The Cossas, believing the Church illegitimate from the moment the Concordat was signed, have been determined to regain the papacy since.”
“Regain? Lorenzo? He’d have . . . made himself Pope?”
“A spy in the retinue of Martin the Fifth brought the knowledge of this”—again, a gesture at the document—“to Baldassare Cossa. Once the Avignon Popes lost the struggle for power, the Cossa family understood what they’d need to regain it: both the Concordat and this Testament. It’s an odd irony that, tho
ugh it is the Noantri to whom time is no enemy, the Cossas have been willing to wait as long as necessary, passing this knowledge from father to son.”
“And Lorenzo also passed it on?”
“We think not—except to you.”
Thomas felt the meaning of the Pontifex’s words as a physical blow.
“It took more than one hundred and fifty years after the signing of the Concordat to bring the entire Church into line. The last man executed by fire died in 1600. The resulting outcry ended the practice and convinced Jesus and Mary that they could vanish again—could return the Church, and the choice to believe and follow, to men.
“They wrote this Testament. The Noantri were told of its existence, and that it had been placed in the care of the Order of Saint Camillus, chosen because of their humble devotion to the infirm and the dying. We were not told what form the Testament took nor where it was placed. The friars were given to understand their work would be supported as long as they took especial care of this statue, without a reason given.”
“But surely,” Thomas said, “you must have deduced its location. Why not take it into your care? Why leave it here for . . . for someone to find?” By which he meant, For me to find, and read, and learn. He meant, Why force this unwanted knowledge upon me?
The Pontifex nodded. “We had. But it wasn’t ours to move. It was done thus to assure that its keeping would be in the hands of both parties. The Noantri have kept watch over this church since that time, and the friars, over the statue. All was well until the ascendancy of Lorenzo Cossa. He felt himself uniquely positioned for the search for the Concordat.”
“He positioned himself. He positioned me.”
“Thomas?” Livia said. “What I said before, I still think it’s true. The Cardinal believed himself to be doing good.”
Thomas didn’t answer.
In the silence, Livia turned to the Pontifex. “Lord. This knowledge—you understand what a tremendous shock it is. To us both.”
“Of course. It will take time to fully understand it.”
“May I ask—”
“When the Savior,” Thomas interrupted, needing to know the answer to the question Livia was having trouble framing—or maybe her question was different, but he didn’t care, it was this he needed to know—“when he promised eternal life, was it this he meant? Endless human existence? Not transcendent heavenly life, eternally with the Father?” Did he also, then, lie?
“No,” the Pontifex said calmly. “The opposite. He was ready to die for his flock, Father Kelly, to prove his faith and sustain yours. He nearly did. When he was cut down from the cross he was thought to be dead. But Mary Magdalene was Noantri. She knew he still lived—barely, but lived.” He gazed at the wooden statue. “Art and legend have always depicted Mary as miserable and debased until she met Jesus of Nazareth. That was indeed her condition, but not because she was a prostitute—she was not. At that time, the Noantri, with no understanding of what we were, no knowledge of others like ourselves, lived constrained, degraded, furtive lives. The preaching of Jesus, the promise that the least among us could be redeemed, was a revelation to Mary. When he was on the edge of death she struggled with her newfound faith, and realized she could in her way give him what he’d given her: the promise of eternal life.”
“And if he chose not to accept her gift . . .”
The Pontifex nodded again. “She could restore him to his mortality.”
“But he chose to remain,” Thomas whispered.
“As always, he assented to what he saw as the will of his Father.”
The grand church dedicated to the lowliest of Jesus’s followers fell completely silent. Not a footfall or a whisper interposed itself, waiting for Thomas to say, “So he is still here.”
“Yes.”
“Where?” Thomas had never wanted the answer to a question as much as he wanted this one.
The Pontifex smiled and spoke softly. “I don’t know.”
Thomas, stricken, could not reply.
“Understand,” the Pontifex said, “that he could have revealed himself at any moment before the writing of this Testament—or any moment since. But from the start of time, good has rarely come from religion. When it comes, it comes from faith. The Concordat was an attempt to set the Church founded in his name—a Church founded on faith—back onto a righteous path. Ultimately, though, each of us, Unchanged and Noantri, must choose our own way. If any good is to come of religion, faith must guide that choice, and faith does not merely allow, it absolutely requires, a lack of proof.”
In his head, Thomas heard his own earlier thoughts: If God’s existence could be “proved,” what was man offering God? Faith was what God asked of man. The only thing man has, and the only thing God wants.
Faith was our single gift to him.
107
What Livia felt now, she’d felt only once before, at the moment of her own Change: that the world had been revealed to her as overflowing, churning, mad with color and sound and scent, with promises she’d never thought to ask for and answers to questions she’d never thought to ask. This kaleidoscopic symphony, this vast, endless tapestry was before her now, again, in this silent church. What a gift! What a marvel, to live in such a world!
But a question grew in her, and with it a fear. One question, that did have to be asked.
“Lord,” she addressed the Pontifex, “what do you intend to do?”
“I?”
“Now that Father Kelly and I have come upon this knowledge.”
He regarded them without words for quite some time. “From the moment I was asked to lead our people,” he said quietly, “it was clear this day would sometime come. I have given much thought to this question and never found an answer. Even as I stepped forward to speak with you here, I was not sure what my duty required. Now, I am.” He paused. “Father Kelly. Livia. The choice is yours.”
Livia had to swallow before she could speak. “Ours, Lord?”
“As faith was put in me, I put mine in you, to make the correct choice. If you choose a path that I would not have, my faith will continue to guide me as we travel that path. Reveal what you know, or hide this secret again. I await your decision.”
Livia was struck dumb, unable even to think. She stood motionless, staring at the Pontifex, the dark eyes that seemed to see into her. For a few long moments, that was all. Then Thomas spoke.
“We will replace it.”
Slowly, he rose from the plinth and faced them. “I can’t claim to understand the meaning of what we’ve learned today. That will take a long time, perhaps a lifetime, of contemplation and prayer.” Unexpectedly, he smiled. “My lifetime. Not yours.”
“I think,” Livia said, “mine, also.”
Thomas met her eyes and went on. “That this document was written at all tells me there will come a time when these facts will be revealed. That it was hidden tells me that that time will come at the choosing of someone much greater than myself. Sir, your faith in us is an honor that will forever humble me. But the choice is not, in fact, ours. Jesus of Nazareth chose to keep this secret. Until he chooses otherwise, it will remain a secret.”
The Pontifex nodded slowly, but said, “Others—Unchanged, or Noantri—might one day discover what you have.”
“Then they will make their choices. I’ve made mine.”
Wordlessly, Livia handed the scroll to the Pontifex. He took it and glanced over it, a ghost of a smile playing on his lips. Then he rerolled it and, as lightly as she had, he stepped onto the marble plinth, removed the jar’s cap, and slipped the scroll inside. No one said anything until he was standing beside them again. Then it was the Pontifex who spoke.
“Thank you.”
Nothing else needed to be said. He turned to leave them. Before he could take a step, though, Thomas said, “Sir?”
The Pontifex turned back.
> “May I ask something?”
“You may.”
“Thank you. You speak as one who . . . knew them. Knew him.”
“I did. And loved them both. My own Change dates from not long before his. Father Kelly, you know my story, though it’s not as you’ve long thought.”
To Thomas’s puzzled look, the Pontifex continued.
“I also was thought to be in the arms of death, I also was brought back to this world. Jesus of Nazareth, however, did not accomplish that ‘miracle.’ It has been attributed to him, but in truth it was brought about by the same Noantri who later performed his. Mary Magdalene. She who was also”—he smiled again—“despite what biblical scholars say, Mary of Bethany. My sister.”
The Pontifex’s smile broadened as understanding dawned in Thomas’s eyes, though Livia herself didn’t quite believe it until she heard him say it.
“I am Lazarus.”
Then he turned in the aisle, and was gone.
POSTSCRIPT
NOTABLE NOANTRI—A BRIEF LIST
Most Noantri, of course, take some pains not to become famous. The spotlight makes disappearing, and reappearing in another place as another person—a necessity of eternal life—more difficult. Some, however, especially those in the arts, are unable to avoid public notice; and some frankly enjoy both the acclaim, and the thrill of danger that comes with it. Listed on the following pages are some men and women claimed by the Noantri as their own. It must be said that the siren song of fame is heard, perhaps, more clearly in some nations than in others; thus it will be noted that this list is heavy with Americans. The birth dates given for some here are the actual date of birth of the person before his or her Change; for others, they are the birth date associated with the identity we have come to know—a false date, in other words. Which are which are facts deeper in the Noantri Archive than your scribe was permitted to go.