Pentecost (2 page)

 
A cloaked figure stood by the pyre gazing into the flames as the body crisped and charred. His fingers rose to touch the stolen stone around his neck as he turned and faded into the alleyways of night.

Extract from The Times of India,
 

May 2.

 
      A violent storm rocked the city of Varanasi last night, with lightning igniting fires across the city even in the heavy rain. Scientists cannot explain how the fires burned so fiercely in monsoon conditions, but witnesses said lightning was seen in balls of scarlet fire as well as forked flames. A pillar of fire was reportedly seen above Manikarnika ghat on the banks of the Ganges.

 
      “It was as if a whirling djinn was in our midst,” said Rajiv Gupta, a local tradesman.
 

Even more unusual were reports of miracles that occurred at the time the pillar of fire was sighted. Beggars living on the edges of the ghat, drawn to the fiery spectacle, have claimed to be healed of various diseases and one man allegedly regained his sight after twenty years of blindness. Hindu priests as well as the police are investigating the claims, reportedly attributing them to mass hysteria associated with the violent storm.

May 18

Oxford, England.
 

May 18, 9.46pm

 
Dr Morgan Sierra sat at her desk, finishing notes on her cases for the day. Glancing at the time, she stood up and stretched, rolling her neck to loosen the taut muscles. It had been another long day, she thought, but there was no one to go home to and time for just a few more pages. Crossing the office to the small kitchen, she refilled her coffee cup, the bitter black her only real addiction. The fledgling practice was slowly gaining clients as her expertise in dealing with religious and psychological issues became known, but the University still frowned on her specialty. She battled their criticism daily while balancing her lecturing and tutorial appointments. Morgan’s clinical psychology practice dealt particularly with people whose problems related to religion in some way, those trapped in cults or who claimed supernatural experiences. She also increasingly consulted with government think tanks on the impact of fundamentalist religion in the country. It had been hard work but Morgan had built up her practice to supplement the meager number of students she taught at the University in anomalistic psychology. The field studied ostensibly paranormal activity and behavior under scientific conditions, analyzing why certain phenomena existed and how they could be explained. Morgan sometimes wondered what she was trying to prove to herself, let alone others.
 

 
She sipped the hot coffee as she gazed at her many bookshelves, her mind wandering. Even while she loved being there, Morgan knew that the issue with the University of Oxford was its age and the instant kudos the name evoked. It trapped scholars and all who worshipped at their feet into ancient thought patterns with no room for change or progress. She thought of the doors in the Bodleian library, the venerable institution just around the corner from her office. The names of the Schools were written above them, inscribed in an ancient hand, gold-leafed and stamped into thick oak, banded with copper. Divinity and Scientia were two separate doors and the problem was that her door sat between them, and neither entirely accepted her field of research. Psychology sat within the Faculty of Science and was concerned with measurement, the scientific method, statistical instruments, experiments, control, even animal labs. The Faculty of Theology sat within Divinity, among the monks of Blackfriars, the nuns of the convent of the Assumption at Headington and the Quakers of St Giles. The Theology curriculum still boasted St John’s Gospel in Greek, Israel before the exile and Patristics, while students still debated the Trinity with arguments used by Origen and Augustine, unchanged since the fourth century. Dons wore black soutanes on Sundays, held the Eucharist and celebrated Mass while on weekdays they held forth on dogma and ritual. They were the faithful. Morgan felt she was an anomaly between the two faculties because she specialized in the phenomena between psychology and religion, the unexplained between science and faith, that which fell through the gap.

 
Thinking of the Faculty took her back to her father and growing up with him in Israel. She looked down at the picture of him on her desk, his smiling eyes forever captured in the silver frame. She traced his image with a fingertip. He would have been proud to see what she had become and where she sat now, although he had been taken from her too soon to see it. On the days she felt inadequate, an impostor in this eminent place, she remembered that he had always believed in her and she carried on in his memory. It had been his library and study of Kabbalism that had first inspired her. It had sparked her own search for divinity and truth. He had found peace in it, but she had yet to find her own. She had joined the Israeli Defense Force, as all young people were required to do but she stayed on after the mandatory period as they had funded her training as a psychologist.
 

Morgan had been employed to investigate how fundamentalism affected behavior on both sides of the ideological fence. She smiled to herself as she remembered how her studies had ignited such heated debates with her father. After several years of active service, she had believed that the key to any form of peace was an understanding between the faiths, a common ground rather than a divisive duality. Evil and violence could be found on all sides and virtue wasn’t owned by anyone’s god. That wasn’t such a popular stand though and it was easier to think about such issues in the sterility of Britain, away from the religious melting pot of Israel. She sighed, leaning forward to complete her notes as the clock ticked towards ten.

 
Her assistant had left hours ago and Morgan was finishing alone before heading back to her little house in the up and coming area of Jericho. She had been expecting a visit earlier from an American academic who had an interesting proposition for her, but he hadn’t shown up. She had agreed to talk with him because he had mentioned research affiliations with her old University in Israel as well as opportunities in the US which might serve her career well. Oxford looked favorably on academics who brought in their own research grants. Maybe she would call him tomorrow, but for now it was time to head home. She began to pack up her files, preferring to start with a clean desk every morning.

 
Morgan looked forward to her cycle in every morning. Her office sat at the end of Bath Place, a tiny alleyway opposite the Holywell Music Rooms in central Oxford, where medieval colleges jostled with modern city shops. May was a glorious time in the city, with rare sunshine bringing the city outdoors, punting on the river Cherwell and lazing in the botanical gardens. It seemed that summer had finally arrived, and Morgan was glad. She still found the endless wet winters difficult after the sun baked Israeli climate. When it rained too hard, water ran down the cobblestones and under her office door, soaking the carpet so it smelled damp. It had happened too much the last winter, but she still loved being in the center of the city and in this little nook between the Turf pub and Hertford College.
 

The Turf had low, dark beams the height of stooped old men and the walls leached the smell of stale tobacco. She had often finished a winter’s day with a mulled wine in the tiny bar. She could hear the dark wooden kegs of beer being rolled down the barrel vault, the crackle of the fire in the small hearths lit on cold nights. But now it was almost summer, time for the lively chatter of students drinking Pimms with lemonade, spiked with mint and cucumber. Tonight a live band played folk songs, and strains of the music could be heard along with cheers from the happy fans. These noises were the background to her office, her rhythmic day, and Oxford had just started to feel like home.

 
A sharp knock on the door made her jump. It was far too late for anyone to be here now and the door to the practice had no peephole, no chain lock. Morgan felt a spike of adrenalin, her Israeli suspicion kicking in at this late night visit. She pushed the feelings down with a wry smile. This was Oxford, England, not Jerusalem. A late night visit was only likely to be an academic with a research proposal. She walked into the outer office and opened the door.

 
A man stood outside, clean shaven, dark circles under his eyes emphasized by the shadow of a nearby street lamp. His indigo pinstriped suit was expensive but understated and he carried a large manila envelope.

 
“Dr Morgan Sierra?” The man asked with an American drawl; she heard hints of the south in it and thought she recognized the academic from the phone.

 
“Yes, and you must be Dr Everett?”

 
“Actually, Dr Everett is indisposed, but I’m his research assistant, Matthew Fry.” He held out his business card to Morgan. She took it as he continued.

 
“I’m so sorry to call this late but he asked me to come by and discuss his proposal with you. We fly back to the US in the morning so we don’t have much time. Would you have ten minutes now?”

 
Morgan didn’t sense any threat from him. Fry didn’t look like a research assistant but she knew she didn’t look much like the stereotype of an Oxford professor either. The lure of the potential American grant was too much to knock back. She stepped aside.

 
“Of course; I still have some coffee on if you’d like some.”

***

 
Morgan refilled her own mug and poured Fry a coffee in the small kitchen as he looked around her spacious office. The room was a treasure store of accumulated knowledge, walled with bookcases, with one window high up so the night sky could be seen. The books were an eclectic mix of ancient tomes with broken, unrecognizable spines and modern textbooks, all spilling from the shelves to piles on the floor. There was even a small reading nook, a cushioned space surrounded by towering shelves where a picture of a mandala hung on the wall, a circle in a square in hues of turquoise and garnet. Fry recognized it as one of psychologist Carl Jung’s pieces from the Red Book, his private work recently revealed to the public after years of secret storage. A Turkish rug lay on the floor, a runner with woven animals in twin pairs. There was also a black and white photo on her desk, an old man, perhaps her father, his eyes crinkled in laughter.

 
Morgan came back with the coffee and in the light of the desk lamp he could see her features more clearly. Her long dark curls were roughly tied back from an angular face, alive with expression. She wasn’t conventionally beautiful, but she had a gravity that commanded attention. Her sharp eyes were a keen blue with a curious slash of violet in the right eye. He found himself staring just slightly too long, and then said quickly, “Thank you for seeing me so late. Dr Everett is keen to have you work with us on a research project that you would be uniquely qualified for and we’re sure you would find challenging.”

 
He opened the envelope he carried and spread the contents out on her desk. Morgan walked around to get a better look. She shuffled through the photos and her eyes darted to one image, a roughly carved stone with a leather cord threaded through it.

 
“The stone. That’s why you’re here?”

Morgan’s hand flew to her throat where the outline of a similar stone could be seen through her fitted shirt. “It was given to me by my father before he died. But why is Dr Everett interested in these stones?”

Fry shuffled the documents and pulled out a map depicting the ancient world with red markers on it.
 

 
“Our research shows that there are twelve of them spread around the world. They’re relics from the early Church.”

Morgan frowned. “Surely not? My father would have mentioned its provenance. If it’s what you say it is, then it should be in a museum, not around my neck.”

 
“Perhaps, but given that you have one already and you’re an expert in religious history and psychology, we’d like to employ you to find the rest of them. We’d pay significantly for your time, as this is a project that Dr Everett cares deeply about. We have two stones already and we want the others as fast as possible.”

Morgan shook her head.
 

 
“I think you have the wrong academic. This stone has great sentimental value to me, but that’s about it.”

 
Fry frowned, taking a step towards her.

 
“If we can’t have your time for the project, then we want to buy the stone from you. It’s needed to complete the group. It’s critical that we have all twelve.”

 
Morgan stood her ground, her face stony. Her mind was reeling at the implications if it were true. This was something she felt drawn to investigate but the aggressive tactics of this man made her hesitant to become involved with his group.
 

 
“I think you should go now. Tell Dr Everett to put an offer in writing and I’ll consider it but I can’t promise anything.” She indicated the way out. “Thank you for your time.”

 
Fry started to walk towards the door, then turned.
 

“We know your sister has one too. The offer includes her stone. We need them both.”

Morgan opened her mouth to answer him but was interrupted by the sound of glass breaking from the outer office.