The Tavernier Stones: A Novel

by Stephen Parrish

  The priest made his entrance behind a pair of altar boys. The three marched solemnly toward the altar, the boys each carrying a lighted candle, the priest holding a Bible above his head like a shield.

  Laß leuch-ten, Herr, dein An-ge-sicht,

  er-füll mit dei-ner Gna-de Licht

  die Die-ner dei-nes Thro-nes!

  The procession stopped at the foot of the altar while the congregation continued singing. John took an interest in the priest’s garments. He wore a Gothic-style chasuble made of bright green fabric and decorated with ornate crosses. Around his neck hung a white silk stole embroidered in gold.

  Mach un-ser Herz von Sün-den rein,

  da-mit wir wür-dig tre-ten ein

  zum Op-fer dei-nes Soh-nes!

  As the hymn ended, the priest and his two altar boys bowed to the altar and assumed their places. The boys each placed their candles on the marble-topped table, then stood off to one side in front of wooden chairs. The priest went behind the table and bent over to kiss it. He said, “Brüder und Schwestern, damit wir die heiligen Geheimnisse feiern können, wollen wir bekennen, daß wir gesündigt haben …”

  While the congregation reflected on the sins it had committed during the previous week, John studied the altar. The marble-topped table was pulled farther away from the wall for the service, and he wondered whether the priest would notice that the floor beneath him had been disturbed.

  He glanced over at David and Sarah. Sarah was looking around, obviously reveling in a novel experience. He found her childlike curiosity appealing. David was staring down at the floor. He seemed troubled by the words being spoken, although John was sure he did not literally understand them.

  The priest said, “Lasset uns beten.”

  John prayed also, silently to himself: Dear God, we both know the reason I’m in your house today. I’m on a mission I don’t believe I can quit. Please understand my mission, and give me the strength not only to see it through, but also to comport myself according to your wishes the moment I do.

  “Amen.”

  Now everyone took his seat, and there were hushed sighs of relief throughout the room. An elderly woman went to the front of the altar and read from the Bible. John recognized the text from Isaiah, chapter fifty-five. He turned and inventoried the people seated around him. One pew back was a barrel-shaped man who was glaring suspiciously at everyone in his vicinity. If John’s instincts were correct, this man was present for purely secular reasons.

  He looked across his own pew, past David and Sarah, at a middle-aged woman with long gray hair and a pointed nose. She could have served as a stand-in for the Wicked Witch of the West. As he watched her, she turned suddenly and regarded him blandly with pale blue eyes.

  He looked away. The man next to her was young and clean cut, like a yuppie. He stared vacantly at the altar as though his thoughts were elsewhere.

  The woman at the podium finished reading from Isaiah. The priest then led a responsorial psalm. John knew another reading and another psalm would follow. He looked to his right at the stained glass windows on the south wall.

  Frieda Blumenfeld looked at the windows too, especially the easternmost one, closest to the altar. The skewed cross stood out bluntly in contrast with the escheresque weave of pastel bricks. Whatever was supposed to happen at noon on the summer solstice was going to happen in the next forty minutes: the sun was already shining brightly through myriad pieces of colored glass, warming up to reveal the solution to a mystery that had befuddled historians for three centuries.

  She noticed that the young man with whom she had shared a glance was also scrutinizing the windows. She wondered how many others in the church had their eyes open for clues, and how many of those had guessed the most likely sources.

  After the second responsorial psalm, the congregation rose to its feet for a reading of the Gospel. Blumenfeld rose as well. This isn’t so hard, she thought; you just do what everyone else is doing.

  The priest sang: “Hal-le-lu-ja, hal-le-lu-ja, hal-le-lu-ja.”

  “Hal-le-lu-ja,” Blumenfeld muttered to herself.

  He walked over to the podium and opened his Bible to a page marked with a ribbon. “Aus dem heiligen Evengelium nach Matthäus …”

  In synchronization with everyone else, Blumenfeld traced a small cross with her right thumb on her forehead, lips, and heart. She remembered enough of her school catechism to follow the Gospel according to Saint Matthew. That is, if she had been paying attention. The church was full to bursting. All these people can’t be here for love of Jesus, she thought. Maybe a hundred on a typical Sunday morning. That meant some two hundred were present for reasons other than holy mass.

  The priest bent over the Bible and kissed it. Blumenfeld heard him mumble, “Herr, durch dein Evangelium nimm hinweg unsere Sünden.” May the words of the Gospel wipe away our sins. Indeed, she thought, and please throw in the ones we intend to commit.

  Sarah, John noticed, was listening intently to the mass, even though she couldn’t have understood a word of it. At this point, the priest was delivering the homily, explaining the Gospel he had just read and tying it into the previous readings, the philosophy of the church, and even current events. He made a public service announcement about a missing twelve-year-old girl named Erika and commented on the surprising turnout this bright, sunny Sunday.

  John also noticed that David kept glancing at Sarah, then at John, probably making sure they weren’t stealing furtive glances or making surreptitious physical contact.

  For his part, John was little concerned at the moment about Sarah’s proximity. He stood at the end of the pew, as close as anyone to the stained glass windows on the south wall, and squinted as the sun’s rays streamed through the fragile glass. He bowed with the rest of the congregation while reciting the part of the Creed that described Jesus becoming man: “ … hat Fleisch angenommen und ist Mensch geworden …”

  As he straightened up again, the rays hit him with such force that he had to turn his head aside. The sun had been rising steadily during the mass; it projected images in the stained glass windows onto the opposite wall of the nave, where they made a kaleidoscope of blurred patterns on the stone surfaces and wooden balustrade.

  Blumenfeld checked her watch; it would be noon in another half-hour. She followed the glances of the man at the opposite end of her pew and noticed the patterns forming on the north wall. Meanwhile, the congregation was offering up general intercessions.

  “… um Rettung von Krankheit …”

  “Christus, erhöre uns.”

  As the sun continued to rise, the patterns advanced toward the altar and descended toward the floor. At first Blumenfeld found the abstract shapes and swimming colors pleasing; the pastel bricks were just becoming recognizable, as though cast by a weak slide projector. Then the skewed cross began to take shape on the balustrade, and her expression turned to stone.

  “… von Hunger und Krieg …”

  “Christus, erhöre uns.”

  John watched the cross advance and descend; it had dropped below the wooden balustrade and was creeping onto the stone surface above the row of sarcophagi lined up along the north wall. He looked pointedly at David, who almost imperceptively nodded his acknowledgement.

  The cross seemed to be going somewhere. It seemed to have a destination.

  John did some quick figuring. Although the church faced south, the sun rising from the east was shining into the windows. That was because the church stood at nearly fifty degrees north latitude. Which meant that even at summer solstice, when the sun reached its highest point in the sky all year, sunlight would stream into the windows from about twenty-six degrees south of vertical. It was enough angle to cast images onto the lower part of the far wall of a narrow church flattened against a rock face. The sun moved from east to west as well as climbed higher, which explained why the images on the wall glided toward the altar while slipping gradually toward the floor.

  The sun was already near the top of the windo
w and in a short while would rise above the arched pane. On the opposite wall, the skewed cross was coming into focus.

  Blumenfeld wished the people around her would shrink, or fall down and die, or do something to get out of the way, so she would be in a better position to extrapolate the cross’s path. But now everyone was supposed to shake hands with his neighbors in the “sign of peace” part of the mass. She shook Gebhardt’s hand. She looked down the pew and caught the eye of the young man with a close-cropped beard. She nodded to him in a small but formal greeting. He only stared back.

  She turned and shook the hand of the barrel-shaped man sitting behind her. As he leaned forward to reach her, his jacket opened slightly, revealing the handle of a police revolver sticking out from his belt.

  So, she thought, the danger is every bit as great as the stakes.

  The priest broke up a piece of host and dropped it into a chalice containing wine. “Seht das Lamm Gottes, das hinwegnimmt die Sünde der Welt.”

  The congregation responded, “Herr, ich bin nicht würdig …”

  Indeed, John thought, I am not worthy. All he wanted to do now was determine where the cross was going. He noticed that David had planted his right foot on the kneeling beam as though he were getting ready to stand on top of it to improve his view. The organ’s throaty voice once again filled the small church. Members of the congregation began leaving their pews to approach the altar and share in the body of Christ. As John and David stepped into the aisle to join them, Sarah shook her head at the two and remained standing in her place.

  O heil-ge See-len-spei-se auf die-ser Pil-ger-rei-se,

  o Man-na, Him-mels-brot!

  John got in the short line forming in the right aisle, with David right behind him. To his left, in the line moving steadily up the center aisle, were the witch and the yuppie.

  Wollst un-sern Hun-ger stil-len, mit Gna-den uns er-fül-len,

  uns ret-ten vor dem ew-gen Tod.

  John knelt at the foot of the altar, with David to his right, and waited for the priest to make his way over. He bent forward to look down the line of kneeling people. The barrel-shaped man was dead center in the line, his head bowed and his eyes closed. He was either taking communion very seriously or was spiritually far away. Beyond him, the witch and her companion had occupied places as far to the left side of the altar as they could get—and as close as they could be to the apparent destination of the cross.

  O sü-ßer Bronn des Le-bens, fließ nicht für uns ver-ge-bens,

  du un-sers Hei-lands Blut!

  The priest worked his way down the line of kneeling people until he reached the person to John’s immediate left. John muttered a quick prayer: Lord, may I receive this gift in purity of heart—despite what I intend to do immediately afterwards.

  The priest took one step over and held a round piece of host in front of John’s face.

  “Der Leib Christi,” he said.

  John looked into his eyes and answered, “Amen.” He opened his mouth, and the priest laid the host on his tongue.

  O lösch den Durst der See-len, so wird uns nichts mehr feh-len, du un-ser al-ler-höch-stes Gut!

  John waited for David to receive his host, then they both stood up. But instead of returning to their seats, they crossed the nave, weaving through people still approaching or leaving the altar.

  The image of the skewed cross was so clear, it almost looked like it had been painted onto the wall.

  John glanced at his watch; it was just minutes before noon. He turned to check the stained glass window and observed that the sun was rising past the upper pane, about to disappear from view.

  In front of him was a long row of sarcophagi, all packed closely together and extending lengthwise away from the wall. He had taken note of them during his first visit to the church but had not thought them significant. Each one was carved from a solid block of sandstone and covered with a precisely fitted rectangular lid. The sarcophagi were not sealed in any discernable way; the weight of their massive lids had apparently been deemed sufficient to secure their contents.

  John and David were not the only ones standing before the north wall. The witch and yuppie were also present. The two teams exchanged knowing and suspicious looks.

  Mit Glau-ben und Ver-trau-en wir dich ver-deckt hier schau-en in dei-ner Nie-drig-keit.

  Above the sarcophagi, portraits of the apostles Judas, Matthäus, Marcus, Johannes, and Simon peered down from the balustrade. As John and the others watched, captivated, the cross seemed to pause for a second, then it faded as the sun rose out of sight.

  The point of greatest clarity, just before fading, was a place on the wall immediately above one of the sandstone sarcophagi—the one beneath the portrait of the apostle Johannes.

  John looked at David, who raised his eyebrows in response. Together they stepped closer and examined the tomb. Engraved on its lid was a cipher:

  The last people receiving communion were just then leaving the altar. John decided that if he and David didn’t want to look like tourists disrupting a mass, they needed to return to their seats right away.

  Ach, laß es, Herr, ge-sche-hen, daß wir im Him-mel se-hen dich einst in dein-er Herr-lich-keit!

  Only the concluding rites remained to complete the service. The organ piped up one last time as the priest and his two altar boys wrapped up the ceremony and led a procession out of the church. The congregation bunched up behind them, eager for fresh air.

  Outside in the tunnel, in the commotion of the crowd, Sarah became separated from John and David. As she twisted around looking for them, she bumped into the scary-looking lady who had sat at the end of her pew.

  “Excuse me,” the lady said in heavily accented English.

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “My, but you are a pretty thing, aren’t you?”

  Startled and repulsed, Sarah muttered a quick thank you.

  “And that’s a very interesting signet ring you’re wearing.”

  Sarah turned and hurried down the steps to the tunnel exit. She looked over her shoulder once on the way down; the lady was still watching her, smiling. Passing through the tunnel gate onto the platform overlooking the town, she caught up to John and David and found them already arguing.

  “You weren’t supposed to eat the host,” John said.

  “Everyone else ate it.”

  “But you’re not … eligible.”

  “What was I supposed to do, toss it like a Frisbee?”

  Sarah recognized something in the crowd. The back of a head. Someone trying to conceal himself in the dispersing congregation.

  “Don’t talk now,” she said to John and David. “Just walk.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  BACK AT THE HOTEL, David and Sarah joined John in his room. John looked uncomfortably at the bed, then at David, but his concerns were unnecessary; promise of treasure governed the mood.

  “It all makes sense now,” John said. “By ‘extend in the ultimate prone position,’ Cellarius didn’t mean lie down on the floor and measure your height from something. What is the ultimate prone position, anyway? Death, of course. He was referring to the sarcophagus.”

  “You mean the stones are inside the sarcophagus?” Sarah asked.

  John shook his head.

  “Underneath it? But the thing’s made of solid rock. We’d never budge it.”

  John turned to David. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “The stones are neither in nor under the sarcophagus,” David said. “The sarcophagus is the entrance to the chambers beneath the church. The sarcophagus lid is the door. That’s why historians and other researchers have never found the chambers. The idea to look there wouldn’t have occurred to them. They wouldn’t have disturbed something so sacred.”

  “Like we’re going to,” John muttered.

  David said, “Hard as it may be for you to believe, I don’t want to defile a church anymore than you do. But if it’s merely an entrance, then there’s no one buried th
ere, and it’s not sacred. Look, what’s it going to take to find out? We merely lift the lid; at the very worst, we find some dusty bones inside, in which case we apologize profusely and close the lid again.”

  John looked out his window at the street below. Tourists wandered in and out of shops, oblivious to the ancient mystery being solved just a few feet away. “And if we do?” he asked. “If we only find bones? Then what?”

  “Then…I guess we might as well go home.” He paused. “Any more problems?”

  “Just one,” Sarah said. “There are several sarcophagi resting along the north wall, where the painting once hung. The south wall, the one containing the stained glass windows, came tumbling down a couple of hundred years ago. They’ve rebuilt it, but how do we know the image of the cross landed in the same place today as it did back then?”

  “Everything we have tells us the restoration was true to original design. We have no choice but to trust the restorers. Besides, the windows would have to be way off for the image to center on a different sarcophagus altogether. And even if it did, if we open one and find nothing, then we open another.”

  “Right,” John said. “Let’s open them all up. Let’s have a disco with the dead. We’ve already broken and entered, we’ve vandalized a church, and now we’re going to rob a grave. That ought to get us a thousand years in purgatory, if not jail. What more could they do to us if we just kept going and tore the whole place apart?” He picked up a tattered copy of the deciphered code from his nightstand and studied it for a moment.

  Extend in the vltimate prone poƒition

  From the foote of the elevation …