The Book of Love (52 page)

Maureen approached the center of the labyrinth and silently said the Pater Noster within the six petals, just as Matilda had taught her through the telling of her story. As she completed the prayer, Bérenger
entered the center of the six-petaled rose, where she awaited him. Silently, he took both her hands and they stood, facing each other, in the center of the labyrinth where the dazzling first light of summer filtered through ancient glass, to cast bands of blue into the ancient temple of love.

Just before midday, the little group of pilgrims made their way to window 10 to await the arrival of the beam of light that would illuminate the brass spike in the tilted stone. It came, as it always had, right on time. The beam of sun shone through the perfectly round hole and rested on the brass, long enough for it to glitter in the light.

“The
wouivre
.” Destino smiled, and the scarred side of his face puckered with the explanation. “Its heart is in the earth, beneath us here in the place within the crypt that covered the original mound. This place”—he pointed at the brass spike—“is the precise wellspring of the current. It is nothing less than…the heartbeat of the planet Earth.”

Destino left them with that piece of extraordinary information and the cathedral. Before leaving, he invited them to spend the following day with him in the French headquarters of the Order of the Holy Sepulcher, located on the outskirts of Chartres proper. He explained that it was a sprawling property along the river Eure with a magnificent view of the cathedral from the lower lands. All of them were very much looking forward to seeing this man in his natural habitat and finding out more about him. He was enigmatic, he was mesmerizing, and he was clearly a brilliant source of information. Then there was that little matter of the scar on his face. Could it be possible that as late as the twentieth century, the leaders of the Order were still taking that terrible scar upon themselves? Clearly, this was the case. Maureen wondered at what stage a successor was chosen for the Master, and when the scar was inflicted. Would it be an appropriate question to ask? She wasn’t sure, but she was terribly curious about these old ways that were still handed down in the most ancient of secret societies.

Chartres
present day

T
hey were discussing Destino as the group of five walked back to the hotel to rest for a while before dinner. Peter’s cell phone rang, and Maureen could see by his face that the news he was receiving had him agitated. When he snapped the cover shut, she asked him, “What happened?”

He stopped walking for a moment and the others stopped with him. “I don’t know what to say. That was Tómas DeCaro. He said that the Arques committee has announced that they are going to hold a press conference tomorrow morning regarding the Magdalene material. We think they’re going to authenticate it.”

“But that’s fantastic!” This was Tammy.

Peter shook his head. “Is it? I’m afraid to be optimistic. I have worked with these men for two years, and I am finding this hard to believe, as is Tómas. Barberini is here in France, and they have asked me to come to Paris tonight for an emergency meeting. That’s all I know, other than I have a train to catch in an hour.”

Maureen pleaded a headache and went back to her room alone after seeing Peter head to the train station. Bérenger was tired too, and he also knew that he needed to give her time and space to process all that had happened today. He was learning to understand her moods and rhythms and had often seen that she required time to write and to think; those were her processes, and he gave them to her.

Realizing, however, that she was too tired to do either, Maureen decided to take a nap before dinner. She closed her eyes and was asleep almost instantly. She slept hard for the remainder of the afternoon. She was jolted awake by the ringing of the phone in her room two hours later.

“Maureen, is that you?”

The voice on the other end was Irish. And female. Maureen rubbed the sleep from her eyes as she tried to gather her wits. “Uh-huh,” she said, semicoherent.

“I’m so sorry to bother you, love,” the brogue continued. “It’s Maggie Cusack.”

Peter’s housekeeper. Maureen was instantly awake. “What’s wrong, Maggie?”

“Nothing’s wrong, nothing at all. It’s just that Father Healy rang and he said there is an urgent matter that he needs you to attend to. He wouldn’t tell me much, mind you; he can be very secretive in his way. Not that I ask questions; sure, it’s none of my business.”

Get on with it, Maggie,
Maureen was dying to say, but she remained politely quiet.

“Well, here are the directions that he gave exactly. He said you are to go to the door to the crypt at the southern side of the cathedral at eight o’clock precisely and that you are to tell no one—not even Lord Sinclair—that you are going there. He said secrecy is of the utmost importance, and that you will understand it when you get there. But he was most insistent that I convey to you the importance of this. Someone will meet you there, and will tell you more. In the meantime, because the good father is on his way to meetings in Paris, it will be very hard to reach him over the next hours. He did tell me that the authenti
cation is happening and it has to do with that, and that you would understand it all.”

Maureen considered this. It was strange, as Peter was very rarely so clandestine, but this phone call today about the Magdalene material had shaken him visibly. Something of great importance was happening, and if he needed Maureen at the door of the crypt for some reason, she would be there. And he said it was related to the authentication, which made her pulse race with the possibility. She was a little uncertain about lying to Bérenger—because she was due at dinner at 8:30 and would have to make up some kind of excuse to get out of it—but there was nothing else she could do. Eventually she would tell him the truth and apologize for the deception. He came from the world of secret societies; he of all people knew that sometimes these secrets were necessary.

Maggie was pleading on the other end. “Please, Maureen. Don’t let him down on this, or I’m afraid he will have my job. This is terribly important to him.”

“Okay, Maggie, thanks.” Maureen hung up, wondering what on earth was going on.

Maureen was a terrible liar. She realized that she couldn’t effectively fabricate with Bérenger, so she called Tammy and Roland’s room as an alternate strategy. Pleading the fear of an oncoming migraine, she asked Tammy to inform Bérenger that she was going to bed and would see them all in the morning at breakfast. Tammy didn’t sound completely convinced, but she accepted the explanation and rushed off the phone. Maureen had the impression that Tammy and Roland were…occupied. All the better. Tammy asked far fewer questions than usual.

The hotel was large enough that Maureen could slip out unnoticed for her eight o’clock rendezvous. As she climbed the hill toward the cathedral, she hit the speed dial, number two, to see if Peter was avail
able yet in Paris. The call immediately hit his voice mail, indicating that his phone was either turned off or he was out of range. She left a message.

“Hi, it’s me. I talked to Maggie and I am on my way to the crypt. Not sure who is meeting me there, but dying to find out what is happening in the authentication process. Call me when you can.”

She walked around the Royal Portal to the right, along the south side of the cathedral, where the heavy and ancient entrance door to the crypt was located. It was shut, but as Maureen approached it to knock, she heard the hinges creak as it opened slowly. She didn’t see anyone at first; she saw only some candles flickering in the darkness. They threw shadowed light on the stone steps that led down into the crypt.

Maureen nearly jumped out of her skin as an unseen figure reached out to touch her. She turned and saw that the man was dressed head to toe in a dark robe and was virtually invisible in the lightless room. He gestured to the stairs, and she saw as he drew closer to the candlelight that his head was completely covered in a hood, with stitching over the eye sockets. The color was a deep, midnight blue. Maureen realized in a flash, too late, that this was one of the same ominous men she had seen in her dream in Orval. The hooded men to whom her stolen book had been delivered.

The slamming of the exterior door, and the sound of a heavy bolt thrown behind her, punctuated Maureen’s complete understanding of this predicament. She was trapped in the crypt of Chartres Cathedral. And that could only mean one thing: her abductor was a high-ranking member of the Church.

“Enter, Signorina Paschal.” It was a command rather than an invitation, made by an accented voice, raspy with age, coming from down the hallway. Maureen did not see the owner of the voice in the darkness as the hooded figure behind her urged her forward. They had walked another fifteen to twenty feet when the hooded escort grabbed her elbow and stopped abruptly. He snapped his fingers, and another man, identically dressed in his ominous robe and faceless hood, came around
a corner carrying a thick beeswax candle in an iron holder. He leaned forward to illuminate the wide semicircular cistern that appeared to be built into the wall.

The man behind Maureen grabbed her by the hair, yanking her head over the well, as the other figure moved the candle down below the rim of the stone surface. Maureen panicked, thinking he was going to throw her in, and grabbed the edge of the well as she let out a scream. Her assailant let go of her hair to cover her mouth and stifle the sound but didn’t attempt to harm her further.

“The fate of Saint Modesta. It will be yours if you do not cooperate in full.” The man who covered her mouth spoke, and she recognized his voice immediately. She would never forget it. It was the voice of the gunman who had robbed them at Orval. “You realize, of course, that no one would ever find your body, should it be necessary to duplicate Modesta’s demise.”

Maureen was led around a corner into a surprisingly large subterranean chapel. There were more candles in this space, and she was able to get a glimpse of the ancient decoration on the wall. Celtic in appearance, it was the oldest art in Chartres, and it added to the mystic intensity of this place. To Maureen’s right was the statue of Notre Dame Sous Terre, Our Lady Under the Earth, but the present company had chosen not to illuminate it. Instead, the candles were reserved for the space at the altar where a plain wooden crate was waiting. Next to the crate sat another man, dressed in the strange hooded costume. He removed his hood as she approached, and Maureen’s heart sank.

Father Girolamo de Pazzi gestured for Maureen to sit in the empty chair beside him.

Maureen said nothing and waited for the old man to speak. His hooded henchman stood closely behind Maureen, a constant reminder of her captivity—and of the fate of Modesta.

“Tell me, my dear. What did you come to Chartres to find?”

Maureen was mute. Her only defense at this moment was silence. They obviously wanted something from her, some piece of her knowledge or even of herself, and she was not going to give it freely.

“You do not wish to tell me? There is no need. You came to find the Book of Love because somebody told you it was here at Chartres Cathedral, no? Well, they did not lie to you. The Book of Love is here.”

Maureen tried not to show her surprise, or her curiosity, as de Pazzi continued.

“And not the copy, either. This is not the Libro Rosso and its patchwork of heresy.” He spat the last with contempt. “This is the authentic Book, the original. The document written in the hand of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is here because I brought it here. Come now, you cannot pretend that you would not give anything to see this Book. It is your destiny to do so.”

Maureen remained still. Even if the original Book of Love was here, even if she could see it or touch it, she could not imagine that she would ever be allowed to live long enough to tell anyone about it.

But Girolamo de Pazzi was not a foolish man. He had been stalking this prey for a long time and had studied her kind and character for all his adult life as a singular obsession. And after reading through her stolen notebook and observing her carefully in their last meeting, he knew what she would respond to: knowledge, information. The truth.

“You must know by now, Signorina Paschal, that I am not here to harm you. It doesn’t mean that I won’t if it becomes necessary, and as you have seen, these men are perfectly willing to do just that if you do not cooperate. But the truth is, I need you and it is to my benefit, and the benefit of my Church, to gain your cooperation. And so I would like to make a bargain with you. I will tell you a secret, a very great secret. And I will show you the greatest treasure in human history. But in return, you will do something for me.”

“What do you want me to do?” she asked with greater calm than she felt. Internally, she was praying to Easa for his strength and protection. If the Book of Love was really here, perhaps his presence would somehow protect her.

“First I will give you a hint as to the secret. Lucia Santos.”

Maureen paused, thinking fast and trying to figure out where this was going. She asked, “The real secret of Fátima. Is that what you’re going to tell me?”

He nodded.

“Why?”

“Because”—Father Girolamo paused, and for a moment she saw something other than bitter determination behind the old man’s eyes, something that looked almost like sadness—“I need your help.”

Maureen remained mute as he continued. “You want to know the true secret of Fátima? Here it is. The Blessed Immaculate Virgin came to tell the children of Fátima that we, the Holy Mother Church, were holding the Book of Love and had been doing so since Ignatius Loyola brought it with him to Rome. Yes, that is correct. When Loyola left the monastery of Montserrat, he revealed its hiding place in exchange for the right to study it and the freedom to create a new order with its own set of rules. This was granted, and the book was brought to our Eternal City and has been in our possession ever since.”

Maureen was taking it all in, committing it to memory on the off chance that the menacing men in the hoods really did let her live long enough to take this information out into the world.

“But you see, we had an unexpected complication. While the Book itself is intact, and it contains the words and diagrams as committed to the paper by our Lord, there is another layer of learning and teaching within this book. This is what we discussed once before. There are teachings within the Book that are only for those chosen to know them, those with eyes to see and ears to hear. But they cannot be accessed by most; even our Holy Fathers have not been able to break the seal that protects all that is contained within the Book of Love. Our Lord used something of his divinity to encode his holy teachings within these pages. No one has been able to reach them…except Lucia Santos. And even she could not do it all the time.”

“And was that one of the mysteries of Fátima? Was Lucia told how to unlock the secrets within the Book?”

The old priest shook his head. “She did not need to be told. It is not
something you can teach.” He spat the next sentence as a grudging admission. “It is something that…you are.”

The realization fell on Maureen, hard. “An Expected One.”

“Yes. While I cannot understand why it is that our Lord would entrust his most holy teachings to females, it appears that he has done just that.”

The power in de Pazzi’s revelation struck Maureen hard.
The Book of Love could only be unlocked by a woman.
In that instant, Maureen understood why. Jesus encoded his teachings in such a way that
women could not be extricated from the process of teaching and leadership
. It was a brilliant and exciting concept.

The old man surprised her by reading her thoughts. “I know what you are thinking, but you are wrong. The Libro Rosso is a copy of the Book of Love, and it was made by Philip. A man.”

Maureen shook her head. “No. It was
transcribed
by Philip. He wrote it down. But
she
translated it for him. The Libro Rosso itself says that Philip made the copy while visiting the pregnant Mary Magdalene in Alexandria, and that he created the copy under her instruction. She read it. He wrote it down.”

De Pazzi waved off this theory with annoyance, moving directly to the issue at hand. “And now you will be a good and obedient child of your Lord, and you will unlock this book for me. And we will have no more pretending, as when you viewed the prophecies.”