Bristol House (47 page)

Annie put her arms around him and held him while he wept. Eventually he pulled back a bit and looked at her and stroked her hair and kissed her softly on the lips. “Thanks for coming,” he said. “It means a lot.”

“As soon as you walked out the door, I realized how much I wanted to be here with you. Only for support. I didn’t mean to intrude.”

“You’re not an intrusion,” he said. “You could never be that. And one thing about all this . . . the timing could have been a lot worse. I am so damned glad Maggie got to meet you.”

“Not as glad as I am to have met her. Your mother was unique.”

The nurse appeared again; this time she walked down the corridor to where they were. Annie and Geoff stood up. “If you’ve finished your good-byes,” the nurse said, “I’ll take care of things.” She nodded toward Maggie’s room. “And there are some papers we need you to sign, Mr. Harris. You can come back and do it tomorrow if you prefer.”

“I’d rather get it over wi—” Geoff broke off. He murmured an apology and drew Annie aside. “The spooks,” he said. “I called them from the cab. They were heading over to my place. I told them you’d meet them there and explain everything. I said you could do it better than I.”

“I’ll go to your house now,” Annie said. “As long as you’re sure you’re okay.”

“I’m fine,” he said. “I expect I won’t be when it hits she’s really gone, but for now . . . I’m okay.”

Annie stepped in and hugged him hard. He hugged her back. Eventually they broke, but she took his face between her hands and stood on tiptoe for one last kiss. When it ended, she started to turn away and leave, then stopped. “I forgot. I don’t have any money. I didn’t take my bag when we left your house earlier. Fortunately I had a ten-pound note in my pocket and that paid for the cab here.”

“Annie’s hidden treasures,” he said.

“You’ve noticed,” she said, holding out her hand.

Geoff found his wallet and gave her a couple of bills and all his coins. They kissed again and he held on to her for a long few seconds. “Thanks again for coming,” he whispered. “Thank you so much.”

***

There was a red telephone marked “Taxi” inside the building’s front door. Annie used it to summon a cab. “Twenty-nine Orde Hall Street,” she told the driver, then leaned back and tried to shut off the thoughts of Maggie’s death and how Geoff must really feel and switch to academic mode. She needed to organize a ton of facts that might seem random and unbelievable, and do it well enough so the MI6 guys were persuaded to shift their focus from Jerusalem to Rome. Otherwise—oh my God.

She had left number eight Bristol House unlocked.

At least she was almost sure that’s what she’d done. She’d pulled the door closed behind her, but she hadn’t locked it.

All Mrs. Walton’s precious possessions, her pictures and furniture and china, much of it in her family for generations . . .
I know Auntie Bea would love to let her flat, as long as she was sure the tenant would look after her things.
The very first London obligation she’d assumed.

And what about the mural? What if somehow Philip Weinraub knew Annie and Geoff had figured out its significance? Maybe Weinraub would send someone to deface it. Why would he do that? She had no idea, but he’d burgled the place before. That’s why she’d changed the locks. What good was that if she didn’t use them?

On the other hand, maybe she had.

No, she had not. The more she thought about it, the more sure she was she’d left the flat unlocked.

The cab had crossed the river and was heading up Cannon Street. Annie leaned forward and knocked on the screen. The driver slid it back. “I’ve changed my mind,” she said. “Take me to Bristol House on Southampton Row.”

37

Dom Justin

From the Waiting Place

A short time after Diego di Mantova and I had revealed to each other that we both served the Speckled Egg, all of his party, including myself and Rebecca, left Jacopo’s household in Strasbourg. In two weeks we crossed the Rhine, and a few days later we were in Freiburg.

I expected Diego would keep Rebecca with him as nurse to his children and companion to his nights for some time more. Instead, no sooner had we arrived in the town than he deposited her at a fine house in the Jewish quarter. “The master of the place was once a renowned silversmith. Now he is old and ill and waits to die,” Diego told me. “He is a widower, and his wife of many years was barren. He is alone except for those he pays to stay beneath his roof. Swollen belly or no, he will gladly take Rebecca to his bed to warm his ancient bones. And she, clever girl that she is, will probably prevail on him to marry her before he dies and give her and the child his name. In the end, I have no doubt, he will leave her his fortune.”

It seemed to me a good solution to the problem of Rebecca. Despite the sinful nature of our lust, I had many times found myself agitated by the thought of what awaited her and my unborn child. Now, with Diego’s suggestion, I felt at peace regarding their future. I had, after all, already made her a secret gift of the most precious thing I possessed and the most effective protection I could offer.

While we were yet in the house of Jacopo, I hid one night near where she slept and waited until she went to Diego’s bed, then searched among her things for a place to hide the small and precious Agnus Dei given me by Dom Hilary the night I last saw him. It is well-known that this particular sacramental has immense power. Like the blood of the lamb that marked the doorposts of the Israelites so the angel of death might pass over them, the blessed wax protects against all evil, all fear, and all enemies. It quiets the wind, prevents shipwreck, and guarantees safe passage and a happy death. There was nothing better I could do for Rebecca or the child.

I thought sure my gift was inspired by the Holy Spirit because when I looked for a safe place to hide the Agnus Dei, somewhere Rebecca would have it with her but perhaps not know she did, the silver tube that the Jew of Holborn had bestowed upon her came miraculously to my hand.

Rebecca had cleverly made a place for it in the heel of a boot, one of a pair that Diego’s brother Giuseppe caused to be fashioned for her while we were in Metz. (What Rebecca had done to merit the gift, I never allowed myself to ponder.) That night in Strasbourg, while I searched for the perfect hiding place for the most precious sacramental in all Christendom, the heel of one boot parted from its body, and I saw in its hollow core the bequest given Rebecca by her father. For a time I trembled to touch that which perhaps Jesus Christ had touched, and I went on my knees before it and prayed for forgiveness for my sins, and even hers. Then the Spirit spoke within my mind, and I remembered what I had seen the old Jew do. I twisted the two silver knobs in the fashion he had. One end of the thing came free.

I recalled as well what he had said about the parchment inside the tube—that it was never to be removed or exchanged for another. That, however, was a Jew’s thing, while what I wished to give her was a powerful talisman of the New Dispensation, the salvation come through Jesus Christ. Without hesitation, I removed the tightly rolled bit of parchment and put in its place the bloodred Agnus Dei. Then I closed the tube and returned it to the hiding place Rebecca had made in the heel of the boot. Ever after I had a sense of profound peace about her and the son or daughter—flesh of my flesh—she would bear.

Later I unrolled the parchment, curious to know what might be written on it, but the thing was in the language of the Hebrews, which I could not read, so I put it on the kitchen fire.

A week later we were in Freiburg, and a few days after that I was at last high in the mountains of the Black Forest, in the Rhenish Charterhouse where, finally confessed of all my sins and unburdened of the terrible story of the travails of our brethren in London, I would spend the rest of my earthly days.

There, as in all other Charterhouses, every Thursday I walked with my new brother monks, changing partners each quarter of an hour. On one such occasion not long after I arrived, I took my place beside the monk called Dom Felix and greeted him in Latin, since in those early days we had no other common language. He smiled and took my hand and pressed into it the speckled egg of a quail.

It was a year before I had enough of the Rhenish tongue to ask Felix if there were other priests of the True Obedience of Avignon in the monastery, and to learn that there were not, though a few others of our allegiance could be found in the area. Indeed, it was because Diego di Mantova had accompanied me to that Charterhouse that Dom Felix had known I was of their number. Eventually I told him of my remarkable journey and how, having been priested by the Speckled Egg himself, I received from his hand the Agnus Dei blessed by the last true pope. I offered as well an explanation of sorts as to why I could not show him that precious relic. “It is where Almighty God meant for it to be,” I said. But at that time I said no more.

A few years later, after we knew of Henry’s having seized all the monasteries of England, including our Charterhouse in London, I learned that the tale of the precious relic I had brought with me out of England had made its way beyond the walls of the monastery. It occurred to me to wonder if indeed the story had first been circulated by Dom Hilary himself. It seemed possible because Henry had not dared send this former bishop, so popular with the ordinary folk of London, to Tyburn but had instead arranged that he should “escape” to France, to La Grande Chartreuse. But whether through Hilary or someone else, a legend had come to surround the Agnus Dei of Clement VII, the last true pope. Among the adherents of the True Obedience, it was said that when the blessed wax was found and taken back to England, the imposters in Rome would be overturned, England would be once more a Catholic land, and a pope of the true succession would ascend to the vacant chair.

As for Rebecca, it had gone with her almost exactly as Diego had predicted. She had been taken in marriage by the old Jew of Freiburg, and a month later he was dead and Rebecca had become a wealthy widow and heiress to a business—the smithing of silver—that she well understood. Sometime later, as if to give me comfort for never seeing the child who was flesh of my flesh, I heard that in her widowhood Rebecca had given birth to my son. (Though that I was his father was a secret she and I would take to our graves.) He was called by the Rhenish name Gottfried, which in English is Geoffrey.

That such information reached me in the silence and solitude of the Charterhouse seemed to me another mark of how closely the good God watches over all our affairs. It was a sign I never forgot, and a memory that stoked my faith during the more than forty years I spent on earth after the adventures I have told of here.

Seven years later another Thursday walk changed everything. After the first hour of the customary three, the rotation brought Dom Felix and me together. We took a few steps in companionable silence, then he said, “I am now the Speckled Egg.” I remember I paused, thoroughly surprised, and he touched my arm and urged me on lest we attract unwelcome attention.

“Dom Hilary went to his reward some months past,” my companion said. “The leadership of our small band has passed to me.”

I wished to kneel before him and offer my allegiance, but I dared not do so in that setting, so I murmured that I would be his good and faithful servant in all things. “That I have come to this peaceful place to live out my vows after the great turbulence and upheaval of my time in London and my perilous journey,” I said, “is for me proof that Almighty God looks with favor on the True Obedience of Avignon.”

Felix once more touched my arm, this time to show his acceptance of my oath of fealty. Then he said, “Now you must tell me the whereabouts of the Agnus Dei blessed by the last true pope. Where God means it to be, you said. Where is that?”

I did not hesitate but explained at once that the treasure was hidden in a silver case come from the Jewish Temple of Jerusalem before the Romans destroyed it, and as such likely had been touched by the hand of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ when he went to that Temple to pray, as scripture tells us he did. “That precious artifact is called in the tongue of the Hebrews a mezuzah. This one belongs to the Rebecca who came with me as far as Freiburg. It was given her by her father, and she solemnly promised to pass it to her firstborn and charge him to do the same, always with the admonition that the contents of the thing must never be disturbed.”

“And is this Rebecca,” he who was now the Speckled Egg asked, “she who is the widow of the Jewish silversmith of Freiburg?” I nodded agreement, and he added, “In those circumstances it would not, I think, be easy to get the thing back. She has become a powerful figure in the town, known to all, and the mistress of a thriving business that she grooms her only son to take over someday.”

“Perhaps we are not meant to get it back.” I blurted out the words without thinking, then realized my presumption, given that the man who walked beside me was now, in the eyes of us of the True Obedience, the Vicar of Christ on earth. “Though if you wish, I shall of course leave this place and try—”

He interrupted me with a quiet but forceful admonition. “You have wandered enough, Dom Justin. There will be no more adventures. Take the discipline an extra time every day for a week for having considered such a thing.”

It was almost time for us to switch partners, but Dom Felix asked me one more question: “How will we know this mezuzah from any other?”

I explained exactly what the thing looked like, including the engraving of the almond branch on its face and even the special way in which it opened.

“Very well. For now we shall leave the mezuzah where it is, but the description and the secret of its whereabouts will be passed from Speckled Egg to Speckled Egg, and we will strive always to watch the sons of the sons of the Jewish silversmith of Freiburg. Be at peace, Dom Justin. You have played your part.”