“From childhood to his dying day, Newton wanted to understand the prophecies,” Maryse said quietly, following Ari’s gaze around the nave. “He was twelve years old when he read Daniel.”
“So…from the rebuilding of Jerusalem to the coming of Messiah is a jubilee of jubilees,” Ari went on. “Which, according to Newton, brings us to the year we are in now.”
Mortimer smiled. “Well, Newton didn’t actually predict the year of the Messiah’s coming. He tried to read Daniel logically. Where Daniel prophesied that ‘seven sevens’ would elapse from the rebuilding of Jerusalem to the coming of Prince Messiah, Newton reasoned that the ‘sevens’ must relate to the jubilees. Others since Newton have postulated the theory of the ‘jubilee of jubilees.’ ”
“I take it you don’t really buy this theory then.”
Mortimer’s smile grew. “My friend, no man knows the hour or the day. The crack of doom will come when it comes.”
“So for you the cathedral is not a clock.…”
“Counting down to the end of time? Yes, I suspect it was intended to be that. There are too many hints and clues. It’s just that I haven’t yet put it all together for myself.”
Maryse was not startled to hear Mortimer confess this. How much more there was to do!
“If you haven’t, who has?” Ari asked him.
“The men with the keys of understanding prophecy died a long time ago. But we do what we can to unlock its secrets.”
“ ‘Until he comes whose right it is to reign?’ ”
“Precisely. And in the meantime, we have to determine why two men with that motto on their hands died so coincidentally, hundreds of miles apart, on the same day.”
Ari looked bemused at Mortimer. “We have to determine?”
“Isn’t that why you’re here? People have been coming here for centuries trying to find the keys to their own mysteries.”
“What makes you think the answer is here?”
“Look around,” Mortimer said. “From what Maryse tells me, your whole story is put together for you right here.”
Ari cocked his head, looking bewildered at them both.
“Fragments. That’s what you have,” Mortimer urged him on. “Pieces in a kaleidoscope. Put them together randomly and you get pictures of nothing. You must do what St. Thomas did.”
“St. Thomas?”
“Aquinas. The apostle of truth. He was alive and teaching when this cathedral was built. May even have visited here. Aquinas said that truth is the conformity of the thing with the intellect. What we have to do.”
“I’m not following you.”
“Your gold rings. Your silver icon and crimson stole and spatters of blood. Your four beasts. There may be a pattern in this. So…what patterns do you see around you?” Mortimer was gazing up at the West Rose that shone high on the wall above the labyrinth, and Ari looked up too.
Blazing in the center, Christ, the Messiah of the Christians—according to them, ‘he whose right it is to reign’—entwined in a red stole, coming to judge the world. Around him, eight angels and, at the cardinal points, the four guardian spirits: the lion, the eagle, the bull, and the winged man. Unmistakable echoes. Ari saw in his mind once again the azure ceiling of the Sancta Sanctorum with the same four golden figures; the splash of blood engineered across the altar-throne of God; the victim solemn on the floor, his red sash looped around his neck.
“Victim?” thought Ari. Chandos was the perpetrator, not the victim, wasn’t he?
Maryse was looking up at the window as well, reciting softly. “Donec veniret…donec veniret…until he comes again whose right it is.…”
“Saint Bruno had a wicked bishop, so he withdrew from it all to wait for the Lord…‘for Him whose right it is to reign,’ ” Mortimer was saying, still examining the window. “But the Lord did not come in Bruno’s time. Some feel there’s been too much withdrawing from it all. Time to force the issue. Can’t stay in the cave forever.”
“And Chandos murdered the pope he considered wicked. He forced the issue.”
“Possibly,” Mortimer said, wondering. “But which issue?”
“I don’t follow you.”
Mortimer turned on him. “Rather pat, isn’t it? Monsignor the private secretary, with cryptic ring on his finger, believes his pope to be an ‘impious and wicked prince of Israel’ leading the Church to hell, so he kills pope, leaves note, kills himself.”
“It’s logical.”
“Very imperfectly. The thing must conform with the intellect. Too many loose fragments. There’s something much bigger at work here.”
“Right,” Ari sighed impatiently. “There’s the missing icon. There’s blood on the altar where there should be none. And, not least, a scientist who’s been playing at genetics with a blood sample labeled ‘Chandos,’ is lying dead half a continent away, an identical ring on his finger.”
And there was something more behind that refrigerator door at Technion, Ari thought—the blood of the priests of Israel.
“Well summarized. Something much bigger at work. Must get our intellects around it. Let’s see what the cathedral has to tell us. Consider, for example, the number twenty-eight.”
“What?”
“The number twenty-eight,” Mortimer continued, twirling his cane in a circle over his head.
Ari continued to stare speechless at Mortimer.
Maryse laughed and said, “He means there are twenty-eight bays around the nave. The bays are separated by columns, and each bay contains a chapel dedicated to a particular saint.”
“Well, there are actually twenty-nine, my dear,” Mortimer corrected her, “but the central element—the twenty-ninth bay—is reserved for the figure of Christ and his mother, as usual. At any rate, it’s clear that the number twenty-eight is crucial to this mystery.” He paused and then walked slowly around the circle of the labyrinth.
“Twenty-eight is the product of the perfect number seven and the four cardinal points of the compass. Symbolizes the universe. There are 28 days in the cycle of the moon, as illustrated here in the labyrinth.” Mortimer stepped to its edge and pointed down. Ari could see that the labyrinth was completely closed in by a series of semi-circles like half-moons—the corrugated ring reminded him of an old-style watch gear.
“There are 112 of these half circles. We don’t know what they mean, but 112 is four times the cosmic number 28. And if you will glance up here,” Mortimer took off at a surprisingly fast gait, swung his stick, and pointed up at the South Rose. “See the enthroned Messiah surrounded by twenty-eight figures—the twenty-four priests of the temple and, once again at the cardinal points, the four guardian spirits—a lion, an ox, an eagle, and a winged human figure.”
“I don’t see where this is taking us.”
“Young man,” Mortimer walked up to him eagerly, almost whispering. “How many saints on the fresco surrounding the Sancta Sanctorum in Rome?”
“I don’t know. Twenty-eight?”
“Precisely. Seven on each wall of the cubical chapel. And what is depicted on the ceiling?”
“The four beasts…um, guardian spirits.”
“And what central element is now missing from the chapel?”
“An icon of Christ.”
“Not just an icon. The icon made without hands—Acheropita—taken from the holiest of holies. In toto orbe non est sanctior locus.” He paused again. “The sacred presence has fled from the temple.”
“The temple? What do you mean…temple?” Ari was not pleased—there was a tinge of blasphemy in all this.
“Why do you think these grand churches were built?” Mortimer pointed his cane at the vault above. “For envy of you!”
“Envy?”
“The Christians always envied the Jews their temple. ‘The house which King Solomon built for the Lord.’ Where God Himself was enthro
ned behind the veil in the shekina, the cloud of the Presence that departed the temple so long ago. And so they built these palaces for Him, higher all the time, grander and grander, hoping always to entice the Presence back again. Hagia Sofia, St. Peter’s, Chartres.…”
Then, quietly, Maryse echoed Mortimer. “And now the Presence has been taken from the Sancta Sanctorum—from the Holy of Holies at Rome.” Ari sensed a change in her voice, a realization—that what had been an investigation into the theft of a precious artwork had become a deeper search. Her eyes were on the great altar at the head of the nave, the red light in the dark that signified, as she had told him, the Real Presence of God in the tabernacle above the altar.
“Ezekiel 10:18,” Mortimer intoned almost like a command, and Maryse responded.
“Then the glory of the Lord departed from the house.”
“And why did the Lord abandon the temple?”
“Because of the men that devise mischief and give wicked counsel in the city.”
“And what is to become of the city?”
“The city is the cauldron…it shall be laid waste, the altars made desolate. Desolation and war shall sweep the land of Israel…”
“Sha!” Ari murmured, and the catechism stopped. He hated this sort of thing. “All my life…all my life fanatics have threatened Israel. One crank prophecy after another. But we are still there.”
“You don’t understand, Ari,” Maryse said. “I was speaking of the Church. The Roman Catholic Church.”
More Christian allegory, arrogating to themselves the promises—and threats—made to Israel. But Ari could see genuine anxiety in her face.
She went on. “In Ezekiel’s time, the Presence withdrew from the Holy of Holies in Solomon’s Temple because of the wickedness of the priests of Israel. Perhaps the same thing has happened in Rome.”
“Or more likely,” Mortimer broke in, “someone feels strongly that the same thing should happen in Rome.” Somewhere a door opened overhead. “The organist. Our time is up. Come. There’s something I want to show you.”
Mortimer led them up the nave toward the altar, nodding his head at the red-lit tabernacle as they passed. “The Real Presence.”
Or, thought Ari, just a red electric lamp.
But they bypassed the altar and stepped out of the cathedral through a great blackened arch. Outside they were in shadow, canopied from the daylight by the church. Mortimer turned and pointed his cane at a line of statues guarding the door they had just come through.
“The North Porch. These are the prophets who foretold the coming of the Messiah.”
Ari wondered why Mortimer wanted to show him these statues. In the pale, frozen light of morning they stood as still as gray ice. “Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel.” The next one he did not recognize, a man petrified with pain, wearing a ragged tunic and carrying a lamb in his arm. “John the Baptist.” Mortimer then paused over the last statue in the row.
“And this is Peter,” he said simply. “The first of the popes.”
Ari was startled. Although the face meant nothing to him, he recognized the robes, the turban, the breastplate studded with twelve stones, the broken cup in the hand. Almost automatically, he snapped a picture of it with his GeM.
There had been an engraving in one of his old yeshiva books, one of the pictures he had idled over while his father tried to teach him. Ari murmured, “It’s the kohen gadol…the great high priest.” He tried to remember.…
The great high priest entered the Holy of Holies once a year.
He held a cup of blood.
He sprinkled it seven times on the altar for the sins of the people.
Once a year. On Yom Kippur. On the Day of Atonement.
TO BE CONTINUED
In Volume II of
The Day of Atonement: The Flaming Sword
Breck England
Breck England juggles writing thrillers with composing classical music, French cooking, teaching MBA’s in the world-class Marriott School of Business, ghostwriting for authors such as Stephen R. Covey, and (formerly) singing in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. He is the author of The Tarleton Murders: Sherlock Holmes in America, published by Mango. He holds a PhD in English from the University of Utah. Breck lives with his wife Valerie in the Rocky Mountains of Utah among nearly innumerable grandchildren.
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