by Steve Berry
“The work being done today is for the tourists,” she said, noticing his interest. “Part of the show. We’ll return to serious building tomorrow.”
“The sign out front said it’ll take thirty years to finish.”
“Easily.”
She was right. She did possess many peculiarities.
“I intentionally left Lars’s notebook for de Roquefort to find in Avignon.”
That revelation shocked him. “Why?”
“Henrik wanted to talk to the Nelles privately. It’s why we’re here. He also said that you’re a man of honor. I trust precious few people in this world, but Henrik is one I do. So I’m going to take him at his word and tell you some things no one else knows.”
Mark listened as Henrik Thorvaldsen explained. His mother appeared interested, too, but Geoffrey simply stared at the table, hardly blinking, seemingly in a trance.
“It’s time you fully understand what Lars believed,” Henrik said to Stephanie. “Contrary to what you may have thought, he was not some crackpot chasing after treasure. A serious purpose lay behind his inquiries.”
“I’ll ignore your insult, since I want to hear what you have to say.”
A look of irritation crept into Thorvaldsen’s eyes. “Lars’s theory was simple, though it really was not his. Ernst Scoville formulated most of it, which involved a novel look at the Gospels of the New Testament, especially with how they dealt with the resurrection. Cassiopeia hinted at some of this earlier.
“Let’s start with Mark’s. His was the first Gospel, written around AD 70, perhaps the only Gospel the early Christians possessed after Christ died. It contains six hundred sixty-five verses, yet only eight are devoted to the resurrection. This most remarkable of events only rated a brief mention. Why? The answer is simple. When Mark’s Gospel was written, the story of the resurrection had yet to develop, and the Gospel ends without mention of the fact that the disciples believed Jesus had been raised from the dead. Instead, it tells us that the disciples fled. Only women appear in Mark’s version of what happened, and they ignore a command to tell the disciples to go to Galilee so the risen Christ could meet them there. Rather, the women, too, are confused and flee, telling no one what they saw. There are no angels, only a young man dressed in white who calmly announces that He has risen. No guards, no burial clothes, and no risen Lord.”
Mark knew everything Thorvaldsen had just said was true. He’d studied that Gospel in great detail.
“Matthew’s testimony came a decade later. The Romans had by then sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple. Many Jews had fled into the Greek-speaking world. The Orthodox Jews who stayed in the Holy Land viewed the new Jewish Christians as a problem—as much of one as the Romans were. Hostility existed between the Orthodox Jews and the emerging Jewish Christians. Matthew’s Gospel was probably written by one of those unknown Jewish Christian scribes. Mark’s Gospel had left many unanswered questions, so Matthew changed the story to suit his troubled time.
“Now the messenger who announces the resurrection becomes an angel. He descends in an earthquake, with a face like lightning. Guards are struck down. The stone has been removed from the tomb, and an angel perches upon it. The women are still gripped with fear, but it is rapidly replaced with joy. Contrary to the women in Mark’s account, the women here rush out to tell the disciples what’s happened and actually confront the risen Christ. Here, for the first time, the risen Lord is actually described. And what did the women do?”
“They took hold of His feet and worshiped Him,” Mark softly said. “Later, Jesus appeared to His disciples and proclaimed that ‘all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.’ He tells them he’ll always be with them.”
“What a change,” Thorvaldsen said. “The Jewish Messiah named Jesus has now become Christ to the world. In Matthew, everything is more vivid. Miraculous, too. Then comes Luke, sometime around AD 90. By then the Jewish Christians had moved further away from Judaism, so Luke radically modified the resurrection story to accommodate this change. The women are at the tomb again, but this time they find it empty and go tell the disciples. Peter returns and sees only the discarded burial clothes. Then Luke tells a story that appears nowhere else in the Bible. It involves Jesus traveling in disguise, encountering certain disciples, sharing a meal, then, when recognized, vanishing. There is also a later encounter with all of the disciples where they doubt His flesh, so He eats with them, then vanishes. And only in Luke do we find the story of Jesus’s ascension into heaven. What’s happened? A sense of rapture has now been grafted onto the risen Christ.”
Mark had read similar Scripture analyses in the Templar archives. Learned brothers had for centuries studied the Word, noting errors, evaluating contradictions, and hypothesizing on the many conflicts in names, dates, places, and events.
“Then there’s John,” Thorvaldsen said. “The Gospel written the furthest away from Jesus’s life, around AD 100. There are so many changes in this Gospel, it’s almost as if John talks of a totally different Christ. No Bethlehem birth—Nazareth is Jesus’s birthplace here. The other three talk of a three-year ministry. John says only one. The Last Supper in John occurred on the day before the Passover—the crucifixion on the day the Passover lamb was slaughtered. This is different from the other Gospels. John also moved the cleansing of the Temple from the day after Palm Sunday to a time early in Christ’s ministry.
“In John, Mary Magdalene alone goes to the tomb and finds it empty. She never even considers a resurrection, but instead thinks the body has been stolen. Only when she returns with Peter and the other disciple does she see two angels. Then the angels are transformed into Jesus Himself.
“Look how this one detail, about who was in the tomb, changed. Mark’s young man dressed in white became Matthew’s dazzling angel, which Luke expanded to two angels, which John modified to two angels who become Christ. And was the risen Lord seen in the garden on the first day of the week, as Christians are always told? Mark and Luke said no. Matthew, yes. John said not at first, but Mary Magdalene did see Him later. What happened is clear. Over time, the resurrection was made more and more miraculous to accommodate a changing world.”
“I assume,” Stephanie said, “you don’t adhere to the principle of biblical inerrancy?”
“There’s nothing whatsoever literal within the Bible. It’s a tale riddled with inconsistencies, and the only way they can be explained is through the use of faith. That may have worked a thousand years ago, or even five hundred years ago, but that explanation is no longer acceptable. The human mind today questions. Your husband questioned.”
“So what was it Lars meant to do?”
“The impossible,” Mark muttered.
His mother looked at him with strangely understanding eyes. “But that never stopped him.” The voice was low and melodious, as if she’d just realized a truth that had long lain hidden. “If nothing else, he was a wonderful dreamer.”
“But his dreams had a basis,” Mark said. “The Templars once knew what Dad wanted to know. Even today, they read and study Scripture that’s not a part of the New Testament. The Gospel of Philip, the Letter of Barnabas, the Acts of Peter, the Epistle of the Apostles, the Secret Book of John, the Gospel of Mary, the Didache. And the Gospel of Thomas, which is to them perhaps the closest we have to what Jesus may have actually said, since it has not been subjected to countless translations. Many of these so-called heretical texts are eye opening. And that was what made the Templars special. The true source of their power. Not wealth or might, but knowledge.”
Malone stood under the shade of tall poplars that dotted the promontory. A cool breeze eased past and dulled the sun’s rays, reminding him of a fall afternoon at the beach. He was waiting for Cassiopeia to tell him what nobody else knew. “Why did you allow de Roquefort to have Lars Nelle’s notebook?”
“Because it’s useless.” A crinkle of amusement slipped into her dark eyes.
“I thought it contained Lars’s private t
houghts. Information he never published. The key to everything.”
“Some of that is true, but it’s not the key to anything. Lars created it just for the Templars.”
“Would Claridon have known that?”
“Probably not. Lars was a secretive man. He told no one everything. He said once that only the paranoid survived in his line of work.”
“How do you know this?”
“Henrik was aware. Lars never spoke of the details, but he told Henrik of his encounters with the Templars. On occasion, he actually believed he was speaking to the Order’s master. They talked several times, but eventually de Roquefort entered the picture. And he was altogether different. More aggressive, less tolerant. So Lars created the notebook for de Roquefort to focus on—not unlike the misdirection Saunière himself used.”
“Would the Templar master have known this? When Mark was taken to the abbey, he had the notebook with him. The master kept it hidden until a month ago, when he sent it to Stephanie.”
“Hard to say. But if he sent the notebook to Stephanie, it’s possible the master calculated that de Roquefort would again chase after it. He apparently wanted Stephanie involved, so what better way than to bait her with something irresistible?”
Smart, he had to admit. And it worked.
“The master surely felt Stephanie would use the considerable resources at her disposal to aid the quest,” she said.
“He didn’t know Stephanie. Too stubborn. She’d try it on her own first.”
“But you were there to help.”
“Lucky me.”
“Oh, it’s not that bad. We never would have met otherwise.”
“Like I said, lucky me.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment. Otherwise my feelings might be hurt.”
“I doubt you bruise so easily.”
“You handled yourself well in Copenhagen,” she said. “Then again in Roskilde.”
“You were in the cathedral?”
“For a while, but I left when the shooting started. It would have been impossible for me to help without revealing my presence, and Henrik wanted that kept secret.”
“And what if I had been unable to stop those men inside?”
“Oh, come now. You?” She threw him a smile. “Tell me something. How shocked were you when the brother leaped from the Round Tower?”
“Not something you see every day.”
“He fulfilled his oath. Trapped, he chose death rather than risk the Order’s exposure.”
“I assume you were there because of my mention to Henrik that Stephanie was coming for a visit.”
“Partly. When I heard of Ernst Scoville’s sudden demise, I learned from some of the older men in Rennes that he’d spoken with Stephanie and that she was coming to France. They’re all Rennes enthusiasts, spending their days playing chess and fantasizing about Saunière. Each one of them lives in a conspiratorialist dream. Scoville bragged that he meant to get Lars’s notebook. He didn’t care for Stephanie, though he’d led her to believe otherwise. Obviously he, too, was unaware that the journal was by and large meaningless. His death aroused my suspicions, so I contacted Henrik and learned of Stephanie’s impending Danish visit. We decided that I should go to Denmark.”
“And Avignon?”
“I had a source at the asylum. No one believed Claridon was crazy. Deceitful, untrustworthy, an opportunist—certainly. But not insane. So I watched until you returned to claim Claridon. Henrik and I knew there was something in the palace archives, just not what. As Henrik said at lunch, Mark never met Henrik. Mark was much tougher to deal with than his father. He only occasionally searched. Something, perhaps, to keep his father’s memory alive. Whatever he may have found, he kept totally to himself. He and Claridon connected for a while, but it was a loose association. Then, when Mark disappeared in the avalanche and Claridon retreated to the asylum, Henrik and I gave up.”
“Until now.”
“The quest is back on, and this time there may well be somewhere to go.”
He waited for her to explain.
“We have the book with the gravestone and we also have Reading the Rules of the Caridad. Together, we might actually be able to determine what Saunière found, since we’re the first to have so many pieces of the puzzle.”
“And what do we do if we find anything?”
“As a Muslim? I’d like to tell the world. As a realist? I don’t know. The historical arrogance of Christianity is nauseating. To it, every other religion is an imitation. Amazing, really. All of Western history is shaped by its narrow precepts. Art, architecture, music, writing—even society itself became Christianity’s servants. That simple movement ultimately formed the mold from which Western civilization was crafted, and it could all be predicated on a lie. Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“I’m not a religious person.”
Her thin lips creased into another smile. “But you’re a curious man. Henrik speaks of your courage and intellect in reverent terms. A bibliophile, with an eidetic memory. Quite a combination.”
“And I can cook, too.”
She chuckled. “You don’t fool me. Finding the Great Devise would mean something to you.”
“Let’s just say that it would be a most unusual find.”
“Fair enough. We’ll leave it at that. But if we’re successful, I look forward to seeing your reaction.”
“You’re that confident there’s something to find?”
She swept her arms toward the distant outline of the Pyrénées. “It’s out there, no question. Saunière found it. We can, too.”
Stephanie again considered what Thorvaldsen had said about the New Testament, and made clear, “The Bible is not a literal document.”
Thorvaldsen shook his head. “A great many Christian faiths would take issue with that statement. For them, the Bible is the Word of God.”
She looked at Mark. “Did your father believe the Bible was not the Word of God?”
“We debated the point many times. I was, at first, a believer, and I’d argue with him. But I came to think like he did. It’s a book of stories. Glorious stories, designed to point people toward a good life. There’s even greatness in those stories—if one practices their moral. I don’t think it’s necessary that it’s the Word of God. It’s enough that the words are a timeless truth.”
“Elevating Christ to deity status was simply a way of elevating the importance of the message,” Thorvaldsen said. “After organized religion took over in the third and fourth centuries, so much was added to the tale that it’s impossible any longer to know its core. Lars wanted to change all that. He wanted to find what the Templars once possessed. When he first learned of Rennes-le-Château years ago, he immediately believed the Templar’s Great Devise was what Saunière had located. So he devoted his life to solving the Rennes puzzle.”
Stephanie was still not convinced. “What makes you think the Templars secreted anything away? Weren’t they arrested quickly? How was there time to hide anything?”
“They were prepared,” Mark said. “The Chronicles make that clear. What Philip IV did wasn’t without precedent. A hundred years earlier there was an incident with Frederick II, the king of Germany and Sicily. In 1228 he arrived in the Holy Land as an excommunicate, which meant he could not command a crusade. The Templars and Hospitallers stayed loyal to the pope and refused to follow him. Only his German Teutonic knights stood by his side. Ultimately, he negotiated a peace treaty with the Saracens that created a divided Jerusalem. The Temple Mount, which was where the Templars were headquartered, was given by that treaty to the Muslims. So you can imagine what the Templars thought of him. He was as amoral as Nero and universally hated. He even tried to kidnap the Order’s master. Finally he left the Holy Land in 1229, and as he made his way to the port at Acre, the locals threw excrement on him. He hated the Templars for their disloyalty, and when he returned to Sicily, he seized Templar property and made arrests. All of which was recorded in the Chronicles.”
“The Order had already seen, firsthand, what a hostile ruler could do to it. Philip IV was similar. As a young man he’d applied for Templar membership and had been refused, so he harbored a lifelong resentment toward the brotherhood. Early in his reign, the Templars actually saved Philip when he tried to devalue the French currency and the people revolted. He fled to the Paris Temple for refuge. Afterward, he felt beholden to the Templars. And monarchs never want to owe anyone. So, yes, by October 1307 the Order was ready. Unfortunately, nothing is recorded that tells us the details of what was done.” Mark’s gaze bored into Stephanie. “Dad gave his life to try to solve that mystery.”
“He did love looking, didn’t he?” Thorvaldsen said.
Though answering the Dane, Mark continued to face her. “It was one of the few things that actually brought him joy. He wanted to please his wife and himself and, unfortunately, he could do neither. So he opted out. Decided to leave us all.”
“I never wanted to believe he killed himself,” she said to her son.
“But we’ll never know, will we?”
“Perhaps you may,” Geoffrey said. And for the first time the young man lifted his gaze from the table. “The master said you might learn the truth of his death.”
“What do you know?” she asked.
“I know only what the master told me.”
“What did he tell you about my father?” Anger gripped Mark’s face. Stephanie could never recall seeing him vent that emotion on anyone but her.
“That will have to be learned, by you. I don’t know.” The voice was strange, hollow, and conciliatory. “The master told me to be tolerant of your emotion. He made clear you’re my senior, and I should offer you nothing but respect.”
“But you seem to be the only one with answers,” Stephanie said.
“No, madame. I know but markers. The answers, the master said, must come from all of you.”