by Glenn Cooper
Cal had the small glassine envelope with him. Rasouly took a pair of specimen forceps from his desk and examined it under a strong light.
‘This is Aramaic?’ he asked.
‘It is.’
‘Was anyone able to translate it?’
‘We both did,’ Cal said. ‘It didn’t make sense to me because it corresponds phonetically to a language called Enochian that only a very few people know. Eve is one of them.’
‘It says, “the great one who,”’ she said.
‘And who is the great one?’ Rasouly asked.
‘We don’t know that,’ she answered.
‘We’re going to need the other fragments to make sense of it.’
Rasouly returned the papyrus to its envelope. He tented his long, delicate fingers, the kind of fingers well suited to assembling small pottery shards into whole ceramics. Then he surprised them with a bombshell.
‘Well, I’m afraid you’re not going to find what you’re looking for in London.’
Cal swallowed. ‘Okay—’
‘I don’t have to look anywhere. I remember my father telling me about this years ago when I was a graduate student here in the mid-nineties. He told me he had been commissioned to do restoration and translation of some epigraphy from a monastery in Mosul.’
‘The site was close to Mosul,’ Cal said.
‘Well, then. It fits. He told me that all the artifacts from this dig, by edict of the Iraqi authorities, had to be sent to the Baghdad Museum. He was going to be doing his analysis in Baghdad.’
‘Not London,’ Cal said.
‘Not London.’
‘So, when my father wrote in his diary that he was sending the papyri to your father he meant care of the Baghdad Museum?’
‘Almost certainly, I would say. But then Kuwait happened, and the Americans invaded, and Dad stopped going to Iraq. My mother thought it was too dangerous.’
‘Your father told me over the phone that when my father died in 1989 the funding for the work dried up.’
‘Well, probably that was an issue too.’
‘Are you saying the papyri are in Baghdad?’ Cal asked.
‘Actually, I can tell you with some certainty that they are not.’
Cal stifled a few choice words in case Rasouly was the type of guy to take offense. ‘How do you know that?’ he said.
‘Do you recall when the Americans invaded Iraq again in 2003 and all of us in the antiquities community watched in horror as the Baghdad Museum was looted? I may or may not have discussed this with my father at the time but a year or two after I remember very clearly having a conversation with him about whether he knew if the epigraphy he had worked on over the years stored in Baghdad had survived the war. He told me that he had corresponded with the director of the paleography department at the museum, who told him that after the invasion all of his specimens had been sent to the Cairo Museum for safekeeping.’
‘Even though the material wasn’t Egyptian?’ Cal asked.
‘I suppose the Egyptians did it as a courtesy of one Muslim museum director to another,’ Rasouly said.
‘And you think they’re still there?’
‘I really don’t know but I don’t believe they were ever sent back to my father. I believe that’s where your papyri probably are.’
Cal slowly shook his head and said to Eve, ‘How’d you like to go to Egypt?’
She grinned back, ‘I’d like that very much.’
‘You can do something for me, Professor Donovan,’ Rasouly said.
‘Anything I can.’
‘If my father was indeed murdered, please do your utmost to help the authorities find the killer and bring him to justice.’
TWENTY-ONE
Constantinople, 1095
During the month after he murdered Daniel Basidi, Thaddeus aimlessly wandered the arid land, surviving mostly on alms and the rabbits and rats he snared. There were days when he had nothing to put in his belly. But the woven bag containing Daniel’s precious scrying stone, wax seals, and magic table was rarely off his shoulder. Lacking a plan, he walked in circles and figure-eights, sometimes returning to the very spot where he had begun. Every dark-skinned soul he encountered stirred up new hatred and he uttered under his breath: Saracen bastard – were you the one who killed my parents?
Saracens.
The Christian term for the followers of the Prophet Mohammed. It didn’t matter whether they were Arabs or Seljuk Turks, they were all Saracens to him. It was a Semitic word meaning thief, marauder, plunderer, and it perfectly encapsulated his contempt. Every so often he encountered one of the rare souls who wore a crucifix around his neck or marked his house with the Chi Rho christogram, or the outline of a fish. He would approach them, invoking kinship, hoping for the reward of a proper meal.
In one of these Christian houses, as far west as he had ever been, he was invited inside.
The patriarch, a man who called himself Jeremiah of Jaza, delighted at the sight of a Christian pilgrim in these parts and lavished attention on the young man.
Thaddeus gaped at the bowls of roasted goat and flatbread and dates beautifully presented on reed mats. He asked why there was such bounty and why the members of the family were dressed in finery.
‘Do you not know what today is?’ Jeremiah asked.
‘I know not.’
‘It is Midsummer Day, the Feast of St John the Baptist.’
Thaddeus began to sob, imagining the festivities that were happening at this very moment at his monastery.
‘What is the matter, my son?’ his host asked.
‘I was reminded of the feast that I am missing.’
‘Where?’
‘At my monastery.’
‘You are a monk?’
At his nod, Jeremiah clasped his hands together and exclaimed to his wife, sons, and daughters that they were blessed to have a priest in their midst on a holy day.
Thaddeus lowered his head and said, ‘I do not know whether I am still a priest. I left my community.’
‘Why is that?’
He was not going to explain. He could think of nothing to say and remained silent.
Jeremiah seemed to read into his silence. ‘The life of a monk is surely hard for a young man such as yourself. Losing one’s way, losing one’s faith for a time is, I would think, natural. You will regain what you have lost. I can see the light in your eyes. It is God’s light.’
Thaddeus did not wish to opine on the ebb and flow of faith. He was more interested in the bowls of food and the jugs of beer so close at hand.
‘For now, the life of a pilgrim suits me.’
‘But you are a pilgrim priest and you do honor our home. Will you lead us in prayer, Brother Thaddeus?’
Reluctantly, Thaddeus did so and was rewarded with the biggest joint of goat.
After the meal, he reclined on a cushion and satisfied his host’s curiosity but only to a point. He told Jeremiah that when he was just ten years of age the Turks butchered his family simply because they were Christian. He alone survived. A community of monks took him in. He began as an apprentice to a stone mason then became a novice and finally received Holy Orders. He was the best flint-knapper in the monastery and made all the sickle blades his brothers used to harvest grains for their bread and their beer. One day the bishop surely would have put him in charge of all the stone work.
‘Then why did you leave, Thaddeus?’ his host asked.
Now, well-supped with beer sloshing around his gut, he had an answer to give.
‘The faith of Christ is about love,’ the young man said. ‘But I could not love. I am consumed by hate for the Saracens. I watched them cut the throats of my mother and my father and my brothers. I wish they had caught me too and thrown me down the village well with the other children, so I would not have had to live with hatred all my days. I had to leave the monastery to act upon my hatred.’
‘But what can you do?’ Jeremiah asked. ‘What will you do?’
‘
If I were a soldier I would fight. Alas I know nothing of soldiering. But I have another weapon.’
‘And what is this weapon?’
Thaddeus lowered his voice so that Jeremiah’s lounging family could not hear. ‘I know magic. I can speak to the angels. I will have them do my bidding.’
Jeremiah seemed fearful. ‘But angels are good, Brother Thaddeus.’
‘Some are good. Some are not,’ he said without elaboration. ‘The instruments of my magic are here in my bag. Would you like to see the stone I use to converse with them?’
He let his host peek at the obsidian mirror and hurriedly returned it to the sack.
‘However, I am crippled by my ignorance,’ Thaddeus said. ‘I do not know how to direct the angels to my purpose.’
‘Why can you not ask them to smite the Saracens who did evil unto your kin or to smite all the Saracens who occupy our land?’
‘I do not think the angels can smite mortal men by their own hand. They must work through men.’
‘What will you do, then?’
‘I need the counsel of a wise and powerful Christian.’
Jeremiah thought for a while then said, ‘Then you must go west to Constantinople and seek an audience with the wisest and most powerful Christian in the kingdom. You must see Emperor Alexios.’
It was a two-month trek through vast empty spaces of Syria and Asia Minor. Sometimes Thaddeus went days without seeing another person. Whenever he happened upon a Christian he asked about the nearest church or monastery where he might receive some succor.
On some solitary nights, when the moon was full and bright enough to reflect into the showstone, he set up his magic implements and summoned the angel who had been his companion on the journey. Jachniel had appeared to him in the thirteenth Aethyr, identifying himself as one of the guardians of the gates of the South Wind.
‘Will I reach Constantinople?’ Thaddeus would ask.
‘You will,’ the angel would respond.
‘What will I find there?’
The answer was always the same. ‘Your destiny.’
Once, in the Anatolian town of Kaisariyah, the halfway point on his journey, Thaddeus was set upon by Saracen thieves while trying to find some clean straw for the night and had to fight them off with his walking stick. He had cut three grooves into the lower half of the sturdy staff and, using his knapping skills, he had embedded and glued rows of flint blades. The thieves received the cutting end and fled, leaving trails of crimson. It was the first time the young man had ever drawn blood from a Saracen and he reveled in it. He ran a finger over the shiny, red-streaked flint and tasted the coppery blood. It tasted like revenge; it tasted like victory. Invigorated, he continued westward at a swifter pace.
The Christian city of Constantinople was protected by the Theodosian walls. Emperor Theodosius II had erected the massive, double-rowed stone walls six centuries earlier and they remained virtually impregnable. They had saved the Byzantine Empire time and again from marauding Arabs, Bulgars, and Slavs and now a solitary underweight pilgrim presented himself at one of its many gates.
One of the soldiers manning the gates asked what he wanted.
‘I wish to enter the city, friend,’ Thaddeus said.
‘For what purpose?’
‘I intend to join a monastery.’
‘Bit old for a novice,’ the soldier scoffed.
Thaddeus pulled out the silver crucifix hanging from his neck. ‘I am a priest.’
The soldier cleared his throat. ‘Sorry, father. You are free to enter.’
‘Where is the Emperor’s palace?’ Thaddeus asked.
‘No monastery there, father.’
‘Seeing the place where the Emperor resides is part of my pilgrimage.’
‘Keep walking toward the setting sun. It is close to the sea. You will come to the hippodrome first. The palace is nearby.’
The great palace stood on a steeply sloping hillside beside the hippodrome. It had been built seven hundred years earlier by the first Christian emperor, Constantine, and had survived all manner of man and God-made calamities – fires, earthquakes, riots, and sieges. The palace complex spread seaward toward the magnificent Hagia Sophia church on a series of earthwork terraces that Constantine had personally designed. The complex was so vast that a bewildered Thaddeus had no idea where to approach it to seek entry, but everyone he questioned pointed him toward the Augustaion Square at the south side of the Hagia Sophia and from there, the Chalke Gate, so named because of gilded bronze tiles used on its roof. But when he arrived, no amount of pleading his case could get him past the grim-faced soldiers who manned the gate. He returned again and again, and the answer was always the same.
This was a Christian city, a place where a priest was treated kindly. Thaddeus ate well, slept in a proper bed most nights, and regained his strength. In his second week in Constantinople, he met the owner of a lodging house while begging for bread in the Augustaion Square. The man offered him a tiny room at no charge and in conversation one night told him that the Patriarch of Constantinople had returned from a journey to Rome and would be celebrating Mass the very next day at the Hagia Sophia. That night Thaddeus entered the thirteenth Aethyr and spoke with the angel Jachniel.
‘I have not been able to speak with the Emperor,’ he told the angel.
‘He is most high and esteemed,’ Jachniel replied.
‘Tomorrow I will try to speak with the Patriarch of this city.’
‘Tell the Patriarch that Pope Urban II did whisper into his ear as he was departing Rome, and this is what he said: “You stand between two worlds, the noble world of our Lord, Jesus Christ, and the dark world of the heathen Turk. Be as unyielding as a great boulder for you are the sword of Christ.”’
‘And if I tell him what the Pope said unto him, will he help me have audience with the Emperor?’
‘He will.’
‘And what should I tell the Emperor so that he will heed my words?’
‘You will tell him about his son.’
It seemed as if the entire city had turned out to celebrate Mass with the returning Patriarch. Nicholas III Grammatikos was rather tall and skeletal with a long white beard, but his voice was uncommonly strong. The great Hagia Sophia dome seemed to amplify it. It reached the back of the church where an enthralled Thaddeus, crushed in the throng like one olive too many in a stuffed jar, hung on every word of prayer. When it was time for the Patriarch to perform the eucharist, the faithful presented themselves one by one for communion. Finally, it was Thaddeus’s turn. He took the bread and the wine, but he did not move along swiftly like the others.
The old Patriarch looked at him with a furrowed brow and a younger priest was about to intervene when Thaddeus blurted out, ‘You stand between two worlds, the noble world of our Lord, Jesus Christ, and the dark world of the heathen Turk. Be as unyielding as a great boulder for you are the sword of Christ.’
The Patriarch said, ‘How knowest you these words?’
‘I speak with angels, Holy Father. I have a message for the Emperor.’
The palace was so vast that if Thaddeus’s life depended on his finding his way back to the Chalke Gate on his own, he would have perished. A palace official led him through myriad chambers, corridors, and courtyards until they reached a surprisingly small, though well-appointed room where the Emperor was lounging on a divan. Alexios Komnenos, who was known as Alexios I, had been emperor for fourteen years. He had the compact body of a soldier who had distinguished himself on the battlefield against Seljuk Turks and other invaders. His shaggy brown beard and fitful eyes gave him more the appearance of a ruffian than the Byzantine Emperor and he immediately challenged Thaddeus.
‘What about my son?’ he barked. ‘Patriarch Nicholas tells me you accosted him at Mass about my son. He tells me you speak with angels. Out with it, man.’
‘I do speak with angels, Your Majesty. The angel Jachniel spoke about your son to me not three days ago.’
Alexios unleashed
a torrent of flippancy. ‘Never heard of him. How many angels are there, anyway? I cannot keep them straight.’
‘There are myriad angels, Your Excellency. Jachniel is one of the guardians of the South Wind. He resides in the thirteenth Aethyr of Heaven.’
‘I like a good south wind. We do not get south winds that often. They come off the sea from the east mainly. Tell me, priest, which of my sons were you gossiping about?’
‘John, Your Excellency.’
He was the eldest son, the heir apparent.
‘Well, spit it out.’
‘It concerns a snake,’ Thaddeus said.
The Emperor swung his muscular legs to a sitting position and glowered at the young priest.
‘Speak more,’ he demanded.
‘A fortnight ago, in a palace garden, he was bitten on the great toe by a green snake. Though it was a poisonous viper, the surgeon did suck out the poison. That action together with your vigorous prayer did save him from mortal harm.’
Alexios was on his feet now, closing the distance to where Thaddeus stood in three angry strides. The Emperor’s guards lifted their spears to a two-handed ready position.
‘Who told you this?’ he bellowed.
Thaddeus flinched but held his ground. He could smell the spices from Alexios’s last meal on his hot breath. ‘The angel.’
‘Who do you know in my palace? The surgeon? A servant? Tell me now.’
‘I know no one, Your Excellency. I have just arrived in the city. I am a stranger to these parts. I hail from Al-Iraq, where I lived in a cloistered monastery.’
‘Which monastery?’
‘Rabban Hurmizd.’
‘I know of it. Why did you leave it?’
‘Because of my hatred of the Saracens. They butchered my family. I decided to use my powers as a scryer who communes with angels to bring vengeance upon them. Yet I need your help, Your Excellency. My guardian angel informed me about your son as a means to convince you of my powers.’
The Emperor backed off and returned to his divan and the palace guard relaxed their postures.
‘No one despises the Saracen more than I,’ Alexios said. ‘The Normans attack me from the west, the Saracens from the east but at least the Normans share our one and true God. The Saracen is a heathen, an abomination upon my realm, and my dream is to be the agent of their destruction. What angels do you commune with who might help us? This Jachniel? Are not the angels of Heaven mainly gentle beings lacking in bellicosity?’