by J. F. Penn
He unwrapped it to reveal an old key, the cuts deep and jagged.
“In 1492,” he explained, “the Jews who refused to convert locked their doors and left their homes. Everything was taken from them, but some kept the keys. Over hundreds of years, few people have returned, but some of the keys were handed down, and some places from that time still stand. This key was given to me by an American who said it would unlock a secret that could threaten the Church itself. He didn't understand what that meant, but he was the last of his line with no one else to leave the key with, so he left it here with us.”
Morgan nodded. “For we are family wherever we are in the world. My father used to say that.”
The Rabbi smiled. “It remains true.”
“But what does it unlock?” Martin asked.
Rabbi Jonah reached back into the chest and pulled out a hand-drawn map of old Toledo. A hamsa symbol lay over the end of one street.
“This house has been in the same Christian family since 1492. It’s said that their ancestors were part of the Inquisition and they picked the best houses and the best land when the Jews were expelled. They also have one of the most extensive private collections of holy relics in all of Spain.”
“But surely the key can’t be for a modern house?”
The Rabbi shook his head. “No, but there is a vault where the relics are held, inside the old house. Some say what is kept down there is both Jewish and Christian. Some even say it can raise the dead.”
11
Toledo, Spain.
It was dusk by the time Morgan and Martin left the synagogue and headed toward the house marked with a hamsa upon the map.
The old city was quiet away from the throng of tourists. There were few street lamps, but Morgan was happy to walk in the shadows, where memories of those driven out still haunted the stones in layers of bloody history. She clutched the key in her hand, ready to enter the old house as a representative of a Jewish family beyond the grave. But more than that, she was curious to see what the relic room held.
Morgan wasn't actually Jewish – her mother had been a Christian – but she was raised in Israel with her father, a Kabbalist Jew. The Catholic faith still puzzled her with its extravagant images of saints with the faces of the dead instead of an ineffable God whose name could not even be spoken. For Jews, a dead body should be buried whole, not cut into bits and worshipped as something holy. Yet Spain was full of these relics, body parts of martyrs kept in boxes, hidden beneath altars, consecrating the ground they lay upon. These saints interceded with God on behalf of those still living, and it seemed to have worked for the Catholic monarchs in 1492. He certainly hadn't been on the side of the Jews back then.
Turning down increasingly narrow streets, Morgan and Martin finally reached the door of the house of the hamsa. The front wall had been rebuilt with modern bricks, but an inlaid stone tablet told of its historic value. It had a thick wooden door etched with a cross, on which rested a knocker in the shape of a sword. An electronic keypad sat next to it on the side wall. Like Toledo itself, the house was a mixture of medieval and modern life.
“What if someone’s in there?” Martin whispered, his back against the stone wall.
Morgan turned to reassure him. “It’s OK. The family are away for the summer, so it should be empty.”
“Maybe we should wait. Get permission?”
Morgan thought back to the Latino man in the cathedral, his muscular body, the determination on his face. “We don't have time.”
She lifted the sword knocker and banged it down. The sound reverberated through the house. But there were no footsteps, no sounds within. Morgan knocked again. They waited another minute before she stepped back.
“Over to you.”
Martin pulled an electronic device from his bag and attached it over the keypad. “I still don’t know if we should be doing this.”
He turned it on. With a click and a clunk, the door opened into a grand hallway.
It was clear that the family didn’t really live here. The place was pristine, all stark minimalist furniture and modern art with no sense of being a home.
“It looks like they gutted the original building,” Martin noted as they walked inside.
Morgan stopped by one of the inner door frames, her arms spanning the size of the walls either side. “But look. This thicker wall is from an older time. They must have constructed around the medieval house, adding a modern skin.”
She wandered further through the labyrinth of rooms, Martin following behind until they reached a medieval door studded with metal divots and an elaborate keyhole. Morgan pulled out the ancient key and fitted it into the lock, sliding it inside with ease.
“It fits,” she said in wonder, amazed that it would really work after so long. But then the craftsmanship of the Toledo metalworkers was renowned in the medieval world, so why shouldn’t their locks last for hundreds of years?
She turned the key and pushed open the door.
It was dark, but there was a curious sense of abundance in the space beyond. Morgan flicked on a lamp, casting a golden light over what lay inside.
Ornate carved wooden cabinets stretched up to the ceiling on all four walls of the room, each glass-fronted to show what lay within – religious relics, the bones and blood of the dead.
Martin turned slowly to take it all in, his eyes wide. “This is incredible. I've never seen so many reliquaries in a private collection. There must be hundreds, if not thousands, of relics in here.”
The macabre spectacle made Morgan uneasy. Whose bones were these really? She leaned closer to one of the cabinets. A skull lay on a bed of crimson cloth surrounded by faded silk flowers. Above it, a femur bone stood in a leg-shaped golden reliquary inscribed with the name of an obscure saint. Next to it, a row of tiny boxes with slivers of bone and vials of blood within. And so it went on. In every cabinet, there were more bones, more body parts, more congealed blood.
Morgan frowned. “Why would the Toledo Bible lead here? Why the hamsa symbol?”
“What about that?” Martin pointed at an altar in the middle of the room. A golden case rested on top with glass panes on all four sides so the relic could be seen inside. He bent to look closer. “It’s a metacarpal, a finger bone, and look there.” A red wax seal capped the end of the bone. “It’s a vial, a relic that’s also a container of some kind.” He grinned with excitement. “This could be the link. In the West African tradition, a certain powder can bring the dead to life.”
“And Ezekiel stretched out his hand to summon the dead from the grave,” Morgan continued, recalling the image in the illuminated Bible. “So that could explain the idea of a finger bone.”
“Perhaps this will tell us more.” Martin turned to the book that rested next to the case. “It’s a Book of Days.” He flicked through the pages, skimming the text quickly.
Morgan watched him, wondering at how his brain worked. Some at ARKANE wondered if Martin was on the autism spectrum, some called him a socially awkward data geek, but regardless of labels, he was one of the most brilliant researchers she’d ever met.
A minute later, Martin pointed to a page covered in dense handwriting. “Here. It says that something was smuggled out from the dungeons of the Inquisition, a secret hidden within the Hand of Ezekiel.” He looked up. “This is it.”
“But it's only one finger,” Morgan said. “Where's the rest of it?”
A sharp banging suddenly echoed through the house. She turned toward the door. “They're here.”
Morgan hated to run again, but they had no choice. This wasn’t an official mission, they had no right to be in this house, and there was no one here who could fight next to her. She had no weapon, never even thinking that she might need one on a research trip to look at a Bible.
Martin pulled open his backpack and put the reliquary inside. He grabbed the book and stuffed that in as well. “Let's go.”
They slipped out of the room, and Morgan took one last look at the medieval d
oor, thinking of the Jewish family who had once owned the key. They wouldn't have wanted their old home to be full of dead flesh, holy relics of the faith that almost destroyed them. But perhaps she was one step closer to righting that ancient wrong.
She and Martin slipped out of the back door as they heard the entrance forced open with some kind of battering ram rather than an electronic key. The men didn’t care about being heard or seen, clearly determined to get what they wanted regardless of destruction in their wake. Something to keep in mind, Morgan thought. Perhaps it wasn't the last she would see of the Latino man and his team.
New Orleans, USA.
Luis sat at his desk, drumming his fingers on the table next to the bone box, every minute like an hour as he waited for news from Toledo. The files of experiments on the shelves of his office mocked him with their repeated failure. They were so close.
His phone rang. Finally, an incoming video call from Julio.
Luis tapped to accept the call. “Did you find the relic?”
But even as he spoke, Luis’s heart sank in his chest as he saw the expression on Julio’s face.
“The Bible had a Jewish symbol in it which led us to a synagogue. An old Rabbi tried to tell us there was nothing to find, but after some – persuasion – he told us of a family who kept a relic room. We’re in the shrine now, but there are so many bones here. I don’t know which one you want.”
Julio held up the phone on video mode and slowly turned around, taking in the expanse of walls filled with relics. Luis squinted at the screen as he tried to process the sheer number of them. It was magnificent, a real treasure trove, but Julio could hardly bring everything back. After all, most relics were just dead bone, whereas what he sought was so much more.
“Is there anything in pride of place? Anything on an altar?”
Julio walked forward, the video screen focusing on a table with a rumpled white altar-cloth marked with lines of dust.
“Someone has been here already and taken the relic.” Julio’s voice was low, a note of threat in his tone. “I’ll get it back for you, señor, I promise.”
Luis put his head in his hands, trying to calm his rising panic. “Did the Rabbi mention anyone else who visited today?”
Julio shook his head. “I didn’t ask him. Sorry, boss. I wasn’t thinking.”
“Get back there and find the security camera footage. I want a picture of whoever was in that museum before you.”
Luis ended the call, willing Julio to find whoever had beat him to the relic. It was only one finger bone, but he needed all five.
Suddenly, a red light flashed on the wall of the office. His phone began to ring with a tone reserved for only one reason.
Elena.
Luis rose to his feet and hurried as fast as he could to the elevator, down, and then back toward the medical suite. He shuffled, half-running, panting as he rushed down the corridor.
The door to Elena's room was open. The sound of raised voices within. The high-pitched beeping of medical equipment.
Luis stood at the door watching as the doctors worked on his daughter, her petite frame covered in bony growths, the ravages of their shared disease. She was intubated, sedated, her face crumpling into peace as the drugs took her beyond pain.
Helplessness rose within him. He had the top medical team, access to the best drugs and cutting-edge technology. And yet, if he didn't find this miracle, his daughter would die. And his world would end with her.
“The latest growth is crushing her left lung,” one of the doctors said. “Every breath is difficult and painful. She was gasping and in agony, so we sedated her for now. What do you want us to do?”
I should let her go. It’s what she wants. Luis banged his fist on the door frame as his frustration spilled over. “Keep her alive as long as you can.”
Once they had stabilized her, Luis sat down by Elena’s bedside and took her hand in his. Her skin was warm, and the machines beeped to the rhythm of her pulse. He smoothed hair from her forehead, tucked the sheet around her. His daughter was alive. He would keep her that way.
His phone vibrated with an incoming text from Julio.
Luis opened it to see a picture of a woman with strong, angular features and Hispanic or perhaps Israeli coloring. Her dark curls were tied back, and she had striking blue eyes with a curious slash of violet in the right one.
Behind her was a man with rough-cut blonde hair, wire-rim glasses, his face scrunched into a frown. The man would look more at home in a lab, but the woman held herself like someone who knew how to fight.
But then Luis looked again.
There was something beneath her strength. He recognized the way she held her body, an echo of the way he held his own. The posture of someone in physical pain. This woman had a weakness.
12
Madrid, Spain.
Martin sat in the corner of the drab hotel room reading the Toledo Book of Days. The modern city streets teemed with life outside the window, cars honking, the bustle of commuters, but he seemed oblivious, his mind anchored into centuries gone by. Morgan sat by the window, remaining as still as possible to allow him to stay deep in concentration. She watched as the frown deepened between his eyebrows. He reached up and ran his hand through the shock of blonde hair, tugging it so hard that it stood up at all angles. She knew that Martin would be itching to get this knowledge into the ARKANE database as soon as possible. He had a scanner back in London that would photograph the text and index it entirely, but for now, they would have to make do with reading it the old-fashioned way.
The relic sat in its glass case on a rickety desk by the wall, out of place here in the modern world. The gold leaf looked fake. It was too bright, too ornate. The bone inside was plain, and yet it held the real treasure.
“Incredible!” Martin said suddenly, jumping to his feet in excitement, bobbing up and down on his toes. “This journal has been passed down through those in the Brotherhood of the Breath, dedicated to preserving the secret in case the Church ever needed it, but also to keep it out of the hands of those who might use it in the wrong way.”
He paced the room, one hand clutching the book, the other sketching in the air, his face alive with passion. Morgan couldn’t help but be drawn into his story as Martin continued. “It began with the Inquisition. A secret brought from Equatorial Guinea by a zealous monk, a series of powders that when mixed together could bring the dead back to life, used in conjunction with specific words of power. Recalling the verses of Ezekiel about raising the dead, the Brotherhood didn’t destroy the powder but hid it within relics of finger bones to represent the Hand. They doubted, but they couldn’t destroy something that might have been a sign from God.”
Morgan went to the desk and picked up the reliquary. “It makes sense. Relics are so common in the Catholic world that they could hide these in plain sight. But where are the rest?”
Martin frowned. “That’s the puzzle. The Brotherhood entrusted it to five of their number who took them to different parts of the Catholic world over the years of Empire.”
“Does the book list their names?”
Martin shook his head. “No such luck. But it does give the name of a missionary college in Mexico where a Spanish priest arrived in 1750 carrying one of them. He was sent from the Spanish island of Majorca.”
A smile dawned on Morgan’s face as she considered his words.
Martin looked at her with suspicion. “You're not thinking …”
Morgan grinned. “It’s only an hours’ flight, and I’ve heard Majorca is beautiful. I'm sure Jake would want us to follow the clues and find the name of the priest. The only question is whether you’re coming with me?”
New Orleans, USA.
The sky was dark, heavy with rain clouds as Jake and Naomi walked out of the hotel, dressed for an excursion into the wetlands, carrying dry-bags with head-lamps, rain jackets and a change of clothes.
Fabienne sat outside in a four-wheel-drive truck, having changed from her urba
n clothes into faded denim, transforming the city girl into someone they hoped would lead them through the labyrinthine waterways of the Louisiana bayou.
Jake climbed into the back, leaving Naomi to ride up front. He gazed out of the window as they left the city, the highway overlooking gritty apartment buildings, strip malls and rundown neighborhoods. They passed one of the levees and Jake remembered the apocalyptic scenes in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It was hard to imagine how the city had survived, and yet it rose again from the mud and ruins, its people still playing jazz and singing. New Orleans was itself a resurrection.
After the inevitable traffic jams, they emerged from the city limits, heading south to finally arrive at the Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve.
Fabienne parked up beside a gate separating the road from a line of live oak and black walnut trees. Nature encroached on the concrete, lichen and moss inching its way out, clawing a foothold into the constructed world. The wild ruled this place and would reclaim its land just as soon as people turned their backs on it.
Fabienne climbed out and grabbed her backpack from the trunk along with a cooler bag. Jake raised an eyebrow. “We having a picnic out there?”
“Spicy chicken wings. Grandma’s favorite. I have rum too. Thought it might help the evening go well.” Fabienne pointed down the track. “We walk from here, and pick up kayaks to go deeper into the bayou.”
Jake felt a trickle of sweat run down his spine as he emerged from the car. It was hot and sultry out of the air conditioning, the air muggy with the approaching storm. He helped Naomi with her gear and then hefted his own pack onto his back. “Does your grandma live a long way out?”
Fabienne gave a half-smile, her expression guarded. “She tends to keep herself to herself. I’m only bringing you out here because she saw something in you. Perhaps she’ll help you with what you seek.” She shrugged. “Perhaps not.”