Jim Rubart Trilogy

by James L. Rubart

  For a man who revered books, Tesser didn’t show much respect for those that filled his library.

  As if reading Corin’s mind Tesser said, “Those books are now rubbish. Disproven three times over. But at the time they were published, people, me included, revered them.” He drew his fingers along the books one shelf down. “Makes one wonder what books we bow down to today will be thrown on the fire tomorrow, doesn’t it?”

  “Sure.”

  A few seconds later Tesser pulled a thick volume off the shelf and stroked the cover. “Ah yes. Here it is. Please don’t drop it.” He held it up for Corin to see, then tossed it toward him like a Frisbee.

  Corin stuttered forward and caught the book just before it struck the floor. The title of the book was written in faded jade calligraphy. Underneath was a subtitle. “What is this?”

  “It might help us. You, I mean. Understand what your chair is all about. I’ve already read it.”

  Corin pointed to the cover. “It would help if I could read it. What’s the translation?”

  “It’s Latin and roughly translated says, ‘Ladies of the Christ Chair: Order of the Ones Who Are Known 1785–1969.’ There are other volumes of course.” Tesser creaked down from the step onto the floor. “But that’s the only one I can easily get to. The others are locked away.”

  Corin’s body tingled as if his skin was being peppered with mild electric shocks. Unbelievable. The chair legend was real. “I Googled everything I could think of having to do with a chair Christ made and didn’t find—”

  “Pshaw.” Tesser waved at Corin and scowled. “Everyone thinks typing a few words into Google and hitting return is research. No one looks in books or libraries anymore. It would take too much time. Wikipedia is the teacher of the world, without the credentials to back it up.” Tesser stared at Corin. “Hmm?”

  Corin ignored the comment. “So there really is a fully formed legend about the chair.”

  “Yes, absolutely of course, of course, as you can see from the book in your hand. The Holy Grail gets all the press, but there are other legends of other artifacts surrounding Christ that have been passed down through the ages—things He touched, or used during His time on earth—along with one about a certain chair.” Tesser held out his hand. “Let me see that.”

  Corin handed him the book and the professor thumbed through its pages, stopping on some for a few seconds, flipping through others with only a short glance. When he got about halfway through he set the book down and pointed to a line drawing. Corin blinked. It was Nicole.

  “Unbelievable. That’s the lady who gave me the chair.”

  “Uh-huh, uh-huh, yep, that’s right.” Tesser rubbed his chin and nodded in double-time. “You’ve found her or she’s found you. Can you get to her?”

  “No. She e-mailed me and I wrote back asking to meet, but so far she hasn’t written back.”

  “Let’s hope she does.” Tesser picked up the book again. “Guess what the legend says about the chair?”

  “Tell me.”

  “It isn’t just a chair that Christ made.” Tesser’s face sobered. “It is supposedly a chair Christ sat in after He rose from the dead and appeared to the Twelve. The same meeting where Thomas had said he wouldn’t believe till he saw the scars in Christ’s hands. And the legend says it’s a chair that contains all His power.” Tesser got a distant look in his eyes.

  “You’re kidding.” Heat washed through Corin as he thought of Brittan. Shasta. Was it possible?

  “According to the legend He gave the chair to Peter before the Ascension. When Peter was crucified upside down, the chair was passed to John, who took it with him when he was banished to the island of Patmos.”

  “Do you think it could heal people?”

  Tesser ran his fingers over the open pages and kept talking as if he didn’t hear Corin. “Think about that. If only it were more than a legend. Christ’s power placed in that chair.” Tesser snapped his fingers and stared at Corin, bouncing slightly on his toes.

  “Think about the army you could have if the legend were true!” Tesser swiped his hand through the air as if it held a sword. “No nation could stop that kind of power.”

  “So what supposedly happened to the chair after they tried to kill John by boiling him in oil?”

  “I’m impressed. You do know a bit of church history.”

  “A very little bit.” Corin held up his thumb and forefinger with a small space in between them. “I learned that in one of your classes.”

  “So you did listen off and on.” Tesser thumbed through more of the book. “Just checking to see if my memory is accurate. Ah yes, here we go.” He tapped a page three times. “Apparently after John miraculously survived the boiling incident, he and the chair went to Patmos, and after he died it stayed there, tucked away for over three hundred years till it slowly slipped from consciousness. It wasn’t till early AD 400 when a small band of Christian women discovered the chair and bought it from the owner of the building in which it sat who didn’t realize what he had. They formed a sect or an organization and called it Custodis of Chair, which in English means ‘Keepers of the Chair.’”

  Tesser turned another page. “Their goal was simple. Protect the chair. Keep its location secret. Use it only in times of great need.”

  “Use it?”

  “Didn’t you hear what I said about it containing Christ’s healing power? They believed the chair had special powers. That is a key component of the legend. It was proof the chair was made by Christ.”

  “Such as?”

  “The usual. Healings. Deep insights into the human condition. Visions given to people who sit in the chair. Seeing Christ appear as they sat in it, those sorts of things.”

  “And these things were written down?”

  “Right here.” Tesser picked up the book and waved it in the air.

  “So where did the chair end up?”

  Tesser spread his hands and chortled. “You have it.”

  “Seriously.”

  “I’m not kidding. Kind of not kidding. I mean, okay, I am kidding. I think. But who knows? Maybe you really have it sitting in your . . . ?”

  “Someplace safe.”

  “Where is safe?”

  “I appreciate the concern.” Corin patted Tesser on the arm. “But don’t worry; it’s safe.”

  “Let’s find out what supposedly happened to it before it was given to you.” Tesser pawed through more of the book. “It might give us a clue as to whether your chair is one and the same.” For a few minutes the only sound in the huge library was of Tesser turning pages. “Okay, here we go.”

  Corin stared at the seconds ticking off the Seth Thomas Queen Anne clock on Tesser’s wall as the professor scoured centuries of legend.

  “Here we be, yes indeed.” Tesser repeatedly tapped the upper half of the page with his forefinger. “After the women found it on Patmos, they held it there, one generation passing it to the next. Then around AD 820 the Catholic church heard of the legend and came after the chair. But the women were warned and took the chair to France.

  “Throughout the subsequent generations, they claimed the chair had been passed down from mother to daughter along with the secrets of the chair and an oath to protect it above all else.”

  “And the lady who popped up on my doorstep is supposed to be a descendant of these ladies?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Why come to America with the chair?” Corin meandered over to Tesser’s fireplace and held his hands out to be warmed by the flames leaping off a large pile of crackling logs. “Wouldn’t they want the chair close to the Holy Land? Why risk taking it across the ocean?”

  “I’m sure it was a matter of debate among the ladies, but America makes sense.” Tesser waved his hand over a map of the world that hung on the wall behind h
is maple desk. “I would guess the chair was brought over in the late 1850s. By that time the country was well established. Laws were in place to protect people’s property. And if you were going to hide something from prying eyes, would you rather hide it in a country so vast it would take eons to search every nook and cranny?”

  It made sense. Corin turned and let the flames from the fire warm his back. “Here there’d be fewer unscrupulous treasure hunters. The Holy Land is rife with them. And America was a place where fewer people had ever heard of the legend.”

  “Exactly. Then as the eastern seaboard filled up with people, they decided to take the chair to a place farther west.”

  “Why Colorado? Why not Seattle? Or Los Angeles?”

  “It’s just a guess, but with visions of gold swirling around every claim and every curve of the creek bed, why would someone bother to get excited about some old chair?” Tesser sat back and folded his hands across his chest. “And the chair continued to pass from mother to daughter.”

  “But now, the chain is broken with me.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t have a daughter.”

  “But why me? I’m not ready to be a guardian of some miracle chair—”

  “It’s a legend, Corin!” Tesser laughed. “It would make a good movie, but it’s fiction. You’re not starting to take the healing part seriously, are you?”

  Corin sighed as he stood and strolled back over to Tesser and sat next to his old friend. “No, of course not.”

  But he had. For a moment, as he thought about the lady’s eyes and the intensity in them, he believed she could be the keeper of the genuine chair of Christ. That her ancestors formed an order that had passed a chair from one generation to the next for over sixteen hundred years. If a chair built by Jesus still existed, Corin would vote her as curator. And when he read the story about Brittan being healed, he’d believed for more than a moment.

  Tesser patted Corin’s knee. “For this next part, take a deep breath, all right?”

  “Why?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Tesser turned to the middle of the book and spread the pages with both palms but didn’t lift them for Corin to see. “Ready?”

  “For?”

  Tesser lifted his hands slowly as if he were a conductor raising his baton to start a symphony.

  Corin leaned forward and looked at the four sketches on the pages. “Oh, wow.” He fell back in his chair as heat instantly raced to every corner of his body. The drawings—drawn from four angles—were exact representations of the chair locked in his basement.

  “That’s my chair.”

  “Yes, I know.” Tesser held up the photos Corin had given him earlier and gazed at them. “See why I’m saying your chair could be the one in the legend?”

  “Whew.” Corin rubbed his forehead and let out a long breath. He stared at the drawings. There were two possibilities, maybe three. His was the chair of legend, it was a duplicate made from these drawings—he couldn’t think of a third option.

  “You wanted a little excitement in your life, right?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Oh sure you do. Everyone needs a little excitement now and again.” Tesser rubbed his hands together as his head bobbed.

  “Do you?”

  “Yes, and you’ve just given it to me. One more adventure to go on.”

  “And if the chair turns out to be the real thing?”

  “Why I’ll sit in it and live forever.” Tesser smiled.

  “You think it can cure death? That the power in the chair means—?”

  “No, Corin.” Tesser patted Corin’s hands again. “Fiction, remember? But humor an old man, eh? I won’t believe in the chair’s healing power till I see it with my own eyes, but I’m certainly fascinated by the legend. And even if your chair is only a duplicate made from these drawings . . .”—he laid his palm on the book—“we’ll have fun tracking down this mysterious lady. Find out if she’s real or a fake. And figure out why she gave the chair to you.”

  “Is there anything else I need to know about the legend?”

  “Yes, I think so.” Tesser closed the book and waddled over to his old maple desk, set it down, and patted it once. Then he sat and picked up a stack of mail.

  “Well? Are you going to tell me?”

  Tesser glanced up as if seeing Corin for the first time that day. “Let’s save something for next time, hmm? I think you have enough to digest for one day. But we should get together again soon.” He glanced at the book. “I’ll read through it again during the coming week and see if the other things I remember being between its covers are indeed still recorded there.”

  Corin was tempted to tell Tesser to read through it in the coming day, but he stayed silent and left without comment.

  CORIN DROVE AWAY from the professor’s house with conflicting emotions bouncing through his mind. Could this really be happening? Could such things as a chair containing Christ’s power really exist? Ridiculous. But hadn’t Brittan been healed?

  He got to his store just in time to open but got little accomplished all day. He couldn’t stop thinking about the chair sitting in his basement.

  By the time he locked the store’s front door and climbed into his Highlander, it was close to eight thirty. Time to head home and crash.

  As Corin pulled out of the parking lot, he glanced at his cell phone. Whoops. He’d left it in the car all day. He picked it up and pushed the button to pull it out of hibernation. Wow. Five voice mails had come in while he was at the store. He pushed the recorded messages icon and stared at the little red dots seeming to scream for attention. All five calls were from Travis DeMiglio. That could only mean one thing.

  The results of the carbon dating had shocked him.

  CHAPTER 27

  Corin played the first message: “It’s Travis; I have your results. Very strange. Call me ASAP.”

  He deleted the call and played Travis’s next message.

  “It’s Travis again. Call me about what I found out about your piece as soon as you get this. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Delete.

  “Corin, sorry to bug you, but we have to talk about this chair of yours. It’s weird.”

  Corin pulled into traffic and cued up the next message.

  “Travis again. Listen, I ran the tests again and they came back even weirder. Let’s talk as soon as you can.”

  He played the last message.

  “Corin? Travis. I want to see that chair. Call me.”

  He glanced at his watch: 8:35. Travis had probably left the lab at least two hours ago, but what could it hurt to try? He could at least leave a message. He tapped Call Back on his phone and waited for his Bluetooth to kick in. A moment later Travis answered.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, you’re still there—”

  “Tell me all about this chair, Corin. Where you got it, how long you’ve had it, where it’s from, what it’s made of—forget that last part I know what it’s made of—but I want to know everything else.”

  It almost sounded like Travis was panting through the phone. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes.” Travis’s pen or pencil was tapping on a hard surface sounding like a woodpecker through the phone. “Not exactly.”

  “You’re all worked up over some lab results?” Corin heard papers shuffling in the background and then something crash to the floor. It wasn’t like Travis. He was organized to a fault. “You okay?”

  “Fine, just dropped some papers. And my briefcase.”

  “You’re not drunk, are you?”

  “Hah.”

  “Whatever you found really has you flummoxed.”

  “You could say that. More excited than anything else.”

  “About the results from
testing my chair.”

  “Yes.” Travis sighed through the phone and stopped talking.

  “Are you going to tell me?”

  “I’m just trying to figure out where to begin.” For ten seconds the only sound was the hum of the phone. “How important is this chair to you?”

  “Important.”

  “Something you want to keep?”

  Corin considered the question. Before he’d met with Tesser? He might have sold it if he could get some serious money. But now? No way. He wasn’t letting go.

  “Definitely want to keep it.” Corin swerved around a slow-moving dark blue Infiniti G35. Those cars were fast. What was the guy doing going forty in a forty mph zone? “So tell me.”

  “No actually, I’m not going to tell you.”

  “What?”

  “Not over the phone I mean. We need to do this face-to-face, all right?”

  “What, you think your phone is bugged?”

  “In person.”

  “Fine. When?”

  “Now.”

  “You’re forty-five minutes away from me and it’s eight forty-five. You sure?” Corin hoped Travis would say yes. He didn’t want to wait to find out what Travis had discovered.

  “If you meet me halfway, it will only be twenty-two minutes and thirty seconds for each of us.”

  “Where?”

  “Palmer Park. West end.”

  “A park? Why a park? Why not a restaurant where we can get a drink and catch up?”

  “You’re not getting it, are you? There’s some weird stuff going on around the piece you gave me.” Travis paused. “Very weird.”

  “Okay, see you in twenty minutes.”

  Travis was a scientist. Logical. Not easily blown by the winds of emotion. But something about the chair was pounding gale force winds at his friend’s sails.

  The saga of the chair was growing stranger by the hour.

  CORIN PARKED HIS car and walked toward the west end of the park. Before he’d walked thirty yards he spotted Travis standing under the going golden leaves of an aspen tree, glancing furtively around the park and up at the trees, as if the squirrels were about to start firing missiles his direction.