The Book of Love (55 page)

Maureen smiled at him warmly. “I look forward to it. It will be an honor.”

Maureen walked toward the first tapestry to get a closer look. It was one of the most magnificent pieces of art she had ever seen. The detail was exquisite. How it was possible to achieve such texture and color through the weaving of threads was beyond her capacity to comprehend.

“You know them, of course. And you know the allegory?”

Bérenger answered, “The unicorn represents Jesus?”

“The unicorn represents the true teachings of Jesus. It is a rare and beautiful creature that represents the Book of Love and the Way of Love that stems from it. Or that should have, had it been allowed to flourish. But no, it was hunted down and destroyed, as is depicted in the tapestries.”

“Oh!” Maureen was listening, but her attention had been caught by the proliferation of symbols on the tapestries. In no fewer than five places on the first tapestry alone, the strange combination of the letter
A
and the backwards letter
E
was found, in all cases tied together by a rope with tassels. “This is on all the cards that you sent! What does it mean?”

Destino approached the first tapestry with his aged, hobbled walk and began to trace the initials with his finger. “See the rope? It is called a
cordeliere
, and it was used in ancient times to bind the bride and bridegroom in the handfasting nuptial ceremonies that preceded divine union. Now, the knot that you see here is a bridal knot, also known as an Isis knot. And the letters…Well, the
A
is for Asherah and the
E
is for El.”

Maureen was thrilled by the explanation. It was so elegant, so beautiful. But she had one question. “Why is the
E
backwards?”

“Because each beloved is the reflection of the other. They are mirror images, which is why small mirrors were given as gifts in the wedding ceremonies of our people. So in the case of the monogram, it is a celebration of the divine and sacred union of Asherah and El, and a reminder that we will always see our reflection in the eyes of our true beloved.

“A very wise man once said that ‘art will save the world,’ and the members of our Order have believed and practiced that since the days of Nicodemus and the
Volto Santo
. But it is not just the symbolism that matters,” Destino continued. “It is the intention of the artist. For this is the great secret of art. True art is imbued with the spirit of the artist; this is what creates a masterpiece—love for the subject and an intense desire to convey that love. An initiate can observe a piece of art and take the meaning of that piece directly into his heart and spirit. It is not
about seeing the art, it is about feeling it. This is why there are some authentic pieces that the Church claims are copies. Because they do not want people like you to spend too much time in their presence. Believe me when I tell you that the
Volto Santo
is a living, breathing piece of art. It contains the passion of Nicodemus, his memory of the crucifixion. But most of all, it contains his memory of the true teachings of Jesus.”

“That’s why it spoke to Matilda,” Maureen observed.

“Yes, of course. And she was a child and pure, so she heard the voice of the artist very clearly, just as the children in Fátima heard Our Lady. But if the Church tells us that it is not really the
Volto Santo
, that the masterpiece of the Holy Face created by Nicodemus was somehow lost with no explanation and that this is a copy, perhaps no one will try too hard to hear what it is actually saying. And yet they keep it locked up at the Cathedral in San Martino in an iron cage that makes it quite difficult to view. The same is true of the painting created by Saint Luke that is now at the top of the Holy Stairs in Rome. It is kept behind many inches of thick glass and bars so that you can never be in the presence of it completely. And for extra protection, they say it is a forgery, so you will not be too inclined to look at it closely.”

Both Bérenger and Maureen were speechless. The idea of art containing the truth in so many layers, even beyond the basics of symbolism, was thrilling. “You must remember,” Destino continued, “that this idea of art saving the world reached its peak during the Renaissance, and that, my dear, is what we must approach next. When you are ready, I will ask you to meet me in Florence and I will tell you a tale of the most beautiful men and women who…who have ever lived.” Destino’s voice caught in his throat for a moment. He allowed the pause in honor of these great people of the past. “They embodied the understanding of
the time returns,
and they used it to create a rebirth of human understanding. I promise you that once you know the truth about Lorenzo de Medici, his friends, Sandro Botticelli and Michelangelo Buonarroti, and the marvelous women who inspired them all, you will never look at art the same way again. Nor should you.”

Destino ambled with them through the town and up the hill to his beloved cathedral. Against his body he clutched a battered messenger bag, which he patted periodically as he walked. He wanted to show them something, a specific detail on the exterior and another on the interior, before the day was over. It was the twenty-second day of June, and he reminded them that extraordinary things were known to happen on the twenty-second day of a month. He winked at Maureen when he said this, and she smiled back, thinking all the while that for such an old and weathered face, and one with a fearsome scar, there was something about Destino that was incredibly beautiful.

The man was holy. Of that, she had no doubt.

They followed Destino at his slow, hobbled pace, content to let him lead while he filled them in on the history of this marvelous town that covered the pulse point of the earth, a town that gave birth to the most important and spectacular shrine in the Christian world. They came around the western entrance and passed the spires to walk toward the lovely sculpture of Saint Modesta.

“You know her story?” Destino asked.

“Modesta? She was martyred by her Roman father,” Bérenger replied.

“Not literally.” Destino shook his head. “Everything about Modesta’s story is symbolic. Modesta was a daughter of the prophecy, an Expected One, at a time when the Book of Love resided here in La Beauce. All threats to the power of the growing Church had to be eliminated in the wake of Constantine and his councils. And Modesta—indeed all women of the prophecy—represented a great threat. What could her ‘Roman father’ be a symbol of?”

Maureen got it immediately. “A patriarch in Rome. The pope or the Church. So Modesta was executed as an example to any woman who would challenge the newly established Church doctrines? A Christian killed by her own ‘father’?”

“Partially, but her true crime was this.” Destino gently ushered Maureen and Bérenger around the pillar and pointed up at another, parallel sculpture of a man. “Potentian. Her husband. They were exe
cuted together because they represented the couples model of preaching that came from Jesus and Madonna Magdalena. Beloveds teaching from the Book of Love was more dangerous than anything and it always will be.”

In response, Maureen grabbed Bérenger’s hand, and he squeezed hers. They paid their respects to Modesta as they passed, and Destino stopped, pointing to one of the pillars. “Look closely. This is deteriorated but important. Most miss it, even those who would be able to recognize it for what it means.”

The pillar showed a cart with wheels, and atop the cart was a casket of sorts.

“An ark,” Bérenger said.

“The Ark of the New Covenant,” Maureen added. “Matilda’s ark?”

Destino nodded, the smile pulling at the weathered scar. “Yes, Matilda’s ark indeed. And this lettering here, it provides the instruction for the artisans and architects at the onset of the rebuilding of this, the Door of the Initiates. It says,
Hic Amititur, Archa Cederis
. It is flawed Latin by modern standards, but the translation is roughly
‘Here things take their course. You are to work through the Ark.’
And this is what they did. They utilized the Libro Rosso, the New Covenant, and translated the entire book into the stone and the glass that have stood here in testament to love and the truth for eight hundred years.”

The wonders would never cease, of this Maureen was certain. She saw the answering wonder in Bérenger’s eyes too, as they followed Destino through the door and into the church. He paused and pointed first to the western rose window high in the church, then down at the floor, where the labyrinth was once again littered with chairs in the age-old act of vandalism. “Here is something you will not believe, even though you are here and looking at it. The diameter of the rose window and the diameter of the labyrinth are exactly the same.”

He was right. Standing on the ground and looking up many stories to the rose window, it was impossible to understand that it was forty-two feet across. It was another amazing feat of architecture. Destino wasn’t finished boasting about the astonishing accomplishments of the
architects at Chartres. “It is geometrically perfect. If the rose window were on hinges, it would fall down right here and cover the labyrinth perfectly. Can you imagine such precision?”

He did not wait to answer before moving them along. The old man was positively giddy as he led them across the transept and to the left, to stand before the majesty of the Blue Madonna, Our Lady of the Beautiful Window. He was beaming at them as he leaned in, whispering.

“This…this is only for those with ears to hear. And for me, it is most exciting as I have had so few occasions in which to share this secret. You were both correct when you identified this window as Notre Dame, and all that this title carries with it. But here is what you do not know. There was a human model for this window. The most appropriate model in the history of our Order.”

Destino reached into the messenger bag and very carefully removed a piece of aged, painted parchment. As he revealed it to Maureen and Bérenger, they both grasped his meaning immediately. The parchment was a portrait of a medieval woman in a gorgeous gown of azure silk, a white wimple and veil, and the crown of the royal lineage of Charlemagne on her head, the crown inset with fleurs-de-lis and five specific jewels. Seated on her lap was a little boy with dark hair. Destino pointed to the fortress depicted above the madonna and child in the window and said, “Canossa.”

For Maureen, this would become the most beautiful and poetic aspect of the extraordinary temple that she found herself in. The Madonna of the Beautiful Window, known as the most famous and most glorious stained glass in the world, represented the female aspect of God—but wore the face of Matilda of Canossa, Countess of Tuscany.

Destino turned to Maureen, and she noticed then that there were tears in his ancient eyes as he said in a whisper, “You are…so much like her.”

Maureen’s tears echoed his, and she whispered in return, “Thank you, Master.”

“And like her,” the old man said, eyes gazing into a very distant past, “you are a credit to God.”

Chartres
present day

I
t was a dream that Maureen had had before, once in her sleep and once in a waking vision in the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris. It had caused Sinclair and the others to be sure that she was, in fact, The Expected One of her time, and it had led ultimately to the discovery of Mary Magdalene’s gospel.

But tonight, the dream had a twist that Maureen could not possibly have expected. Tonight she was given the glimpse of a truth that, even after all she had endured in the last two years, she was completely unprepared for.

It was starting to rain now, and Maureen was out of the crowd, but she could see her lady, Mary Magdalene, just ahead of her in her red veil. Lightning ripped through the unnaturally dark sky as she stumbled up the hill with Maureen behind her. It was a strange sensation of both participating and observing. Maureen could not tell if she was experiencing her own feelings or Magdalene’s feelings, as they were all blending together in the experience.

She was oblivious to the cuts and scrapes—hers, Magdalene’s, it no long mattered. She had only one goal, and that was to reach him.

The sound of a hammer striking a nail—metal pounding metal—rang with a sickening finality through the air. As she—or they—reached the foot of the cross, the rain escalated into a downpour. She looked up at him, and drops of his blood splashed down on her distraught face, blending with the relentless rain.

Maureen looked around, removed from Magdalene now and once again an observer. She could see her lady at the foot of the cross, supporting the figure of the mother of the Lord, who appeared to be nearly unconscious with her grief. There were other women wearing the partial red veils around them, the other Marys, huddled together, supporting each other. One younger woman in a white veil in the midst of them caught Maureen’s attention. This, she knew, was Veronica. There was a Roman centurion standing next to the women, but he appeared to be protecting them rather than terrorizing them. There was something kind in his face, something in his remarkable, light aqua eyes that appeared to be as tormented as the suffering family. Once, this man may have been a puzzling presence to her, but she knew him well from his deeds in the Arques gospel. He was Praetorus, who would one day share in the sacrament of the sacred union of beloveds with the lovely Veronica. Together in the future, they would spread the teachings of the Way.

Another Roman stood nearer the cross with his back to the mourning family. Maureen could not see his face at first, as he snapped orders at the other soldiers in the retinue near the cross. She could not hear his words, but there was a cold arrogance to his voice that was unmistakably dangerous. And she knew what came next, which made it that much worse. For this man could only be the accursed centurion Longinus Gaius. He was about to seal his own wretched fate to wander the earth in search of death and redemption.

A scream shattered the scene, a wail of absolute human despair that had come from the lips of Mary Magdalene. As Maureen looked up at her Easa on the cross, she saw immediately what had happened. The dark centurion, Longinus Gaius, had shoved his lance into her Lord’s
side, as she knew he would, until blood and water flowed from the wound.

The sounds of Magdalene’s grief blended with the harsh laughther of the evil Roman, as he turned and looked directly at Maureen. Maureen had just enough time to see the livid scar that zigzagged across the left side of his face as he shook his weapon in defiance. The weapon known to history as the Spear of Destiny.

In Italian, the spear was called
il giavellotto di destino.

Destiny
and
destination
came from the same root, and that root was
Destino.

She had just enough time to realize that, in the twenty-first century, she had recently come to know this wretched face rather well.

Destino awoke with a start. He gasped desperately for air as he struggled to sit up in his bed. He was not shaken by the nightmare, but rather because tonight there was no nightmare. For the first time in his nearly eternal memory, the man who now called himself by the word that meant both
destiny
and
destination
had spent one night in peaceful slumber.

Was it possible? Could it be…over?

He did the only thing he could think of to do. He fell to his knees and began to recite the Pater Noster in Greek, the way he had first learned it. The way that
she
had taught it to him in her infinite mercy, all those centuries ago.

Tears slid down his ancient face, unbidden and uncontrolled. The man who had been known by so many names over so many centuries rose slowly.

It took some time for him to reach the antique mirror that had graced this chamber since it had been given to him by his own beloved so many years ago as a wedding gift. For the greatest curse of immortality was watching those you loved disappear, over and over again. Upon reaching the weathered glass, he met his own gaze steadily and
viewed his face as it changed. Here first he was Destino, the wizened keeper of the greatest stories never told, the man who must not fail his final challenge—to ensure that the complete teachings of the Libro Rosso found a modern storyteller to restore them for a new millennium; that the true history of the people would never be lost. He believed now that he had succeeded in this.

Going back further, he was the architect who orchestrated the masterpiece that was Chartres Cathedral. Then back further still, to a time that brought him great happiness in the memory of his favorite pupil, the miraculous Matilda of Canossa. If ever there was a woman worthy of her bloodline, it was she. Even today, the thought of her could make him smile, particularly when he thought of both Matilda and Maureen in tandem. How alike they were despite the fact that nearly a thousand years separated their lives and times; how much they proved together that the time returns.

Through his tears he watched in the mirror as the planes of his face took on the characters he had assumed through time, characters who worked tirelessly in search of a penance that never came. He reached up to touch the one element that did not change—the jagged scar on the left side of his face. It was the one constant of all these figures; all possessed the scar, because it was the same scar, on the same face of the same man.

He allowed himself, finally, to go back to the time that started it all, to the time when he received that scar in the service of Pontius Pilate. The recollection of that pain was not what tormented him now, rather it was the memory of his own misdeeds that had enslaved his mind and spirit for the past two thousand years of living hell. Every night of his interminable life was haunted with the memory of those actions: his own sadistic laughter rang in his head as he ripped the flesh from the Son of God with his scourging arm; he drowned nightly in his own disdain as he shoved the point of his spear into the side of the dying Jesus.

Closing his eyes now, he allowed himself to recall the great blessing and curse that had been placed upon him by his most heavenly father:

“Longinus Gaius, you have most offended me and all people of good heart with your vile deeds on this day. Your punishment shall be one of eternal damnation, but it will be an earthly damnation. You shall wander the earth without benefit of death so that each night when you lie down to sleep, your dreams will be haunted by the horrors of your own actions and the pain they have caused. Know that you will experience this torment until the end of time, or until you serve a suitable penance to redeem your tarnished soul in the name of my son Jesus Christ.”

He had indeed been driven to the brink of madness by this sentence, until the day that he went in search of Maria Magdalena to beg her forgiveness and receive her grace. She shared with him the glory of God to be found through the teachings of the Way of Love. And on the day that he stood at her gravesite as an accepted member of her family, beside her mourning children and her great companion and protector Maximinus, alongside Praetorus and Veronica, he took a vow before all of them. He would spend every waking minute of his eternal life teaching the lessons of the Book of Love. He would share the beauty of the Way as it had been taught and lived by his Lord Jesus Christ and his beloved wife, Maria Magdalena, and their holy children.

There was no man in the world who could understand the transformational power of love and forgiveness better than Longinus Gaius, the accursed centurion.

The preservation of the Book of Love became a greater hardship through history than he could have ever imagined when he first took that vow. In those days, they all still believed that the authentic New Covenant would be readily heard and accepted by the children of the world. It was a task that had challenged his physical and mental stamina through two millennia. He had watched in horror as the most beautiful souls were martyred for their belief in love, torn apart in horrific ways by the unconscionable laws of men and power, men who violated every true law of Jesus Christ in his own sacred name. He endured the atrocities of the Inquisition; he had lived the anguish of watching the truth die a wretched and unjust death, of watching the most miraculous teachings become twisted beyond recognition in the pitiless
hands of liars and powerbrokers. He had witnessed the intentional and systematic desecration of Mary Magdalene’s sacred name.

How could any of them have ever known that, two thousand years later, the world would still not have access to the true teachings of the Book of Love? And that such simple teachings of love and faith and community would be considered more dangerous today than they were even then? Of all the horrors he had witnessed, this was the greatest hell he had endured on earth.

As a part of his self-imposed penance, he began to record for posterity the glory of those who had lived and died for the true teachings of the Way. Who better to keep the records of history than a man who cannot die and remembers it all exactly as it transpired? Thus was the Libro Rosso born in his early refuge in Calabria. And now, it appeared that it could be resurrected for a new age and a new time, that the children of a fledgling millennium were ready to read it in its entirety.

We were entering a new era for those with ears to hear.

“Please…let them hear it,” he whispered to himself and to his Lord before rising again. He realized that there was very little time to do what must be done. And now that it was finally here, he was struck deeply by the sadness of it all. For there was truly great beauty in this world, in what God had created and in what man had created in his image, and hers. This longed-for death would be bitter in its sweetness.

But as Destino lay back down in what, he believed, was his preparation to die, he saw a vision of his Lord. It was Easa with his kind, dark eyes, whispering to him across time and space.

“You are my son, in whom I am well pleased. But your work is not yet finished.”

Destino smiled. Death would not claim him yet, and that was all the better. He had so many more stories to share with Maureen. Just as soon as she was finished with the book she would be charged to write about how, precisely, to read the Book of Love as it had been preserved within Chartres Cathedral.

Chartres
present day

M
AUREEN HAD HER WORK
cut out for her. There were over a thousand pieces of art in Chartres. The task of interpreting it all through the lens of the Book of Love and the Libro Rosso was gargantuan, one that could take years. But she would not have to do it alone. She would do it surrounded and assisted by those she loved, as there were many around her who had ears to hear and eyes to see. This was the greatest blessing that God had given her in a very blessed life—to have beautiful friends, a family of spirit, the most remarkable mentor in history, and an extraordinary man who had gifted her with the greatest sacrament of their people: the sacred union of beloveds.

Together, they would all prove the truth of the prophecy that the time returns. They would create something as beautiful and as enduring as the extraordinary men and women in history who had come before them with the same mission. They would invite the world into an understanding that all men and women who wish to be a part of the prophecy already are. For
the time returns
referred most of all to creating heaven on earth, and this would require the participation of the entire human race, because everyone is a prophet and everyone is one with God, just as all men and women are created equally in love.

On earth as it is in heaven.

This was a gargantuan and utopian task, perhaps, but Maureen had learned to believe in miracles over the last years of her life.

But first, she would add to the Libro Rosso herself. It was, after all, her destiny as an Expected One. Like Matilda before her, she would create her own monuments to the teaching of the Way and to the great men and women who had lived and died for so important a cause. Her twenty-first-century monuments would be in print and on paper, rather than stone or stained glass or canvas, and published around the world in many languages. She would add to the Libro Rosso by chronicling the lives and loves of Matilda and Brando, and the comrades who populated their story. They, more than anyone, deserved to be remem
bered for their contributions to the Way of Love. And there would be others. Destino had told her as much, and she looked so forward to exploring the lives of the other extraordinary men and women who awaited her in the past—and in the future.

Maureen was already planning to meet Destino as soon as possible in Florence, where she would begin formal training in the ways of the Order, the same training that Matilda had—under the same teacher. Bérenger would join them, as he had his own mission and prophecy to fulfill. They would work together to fulfill their destinies and their prophecies; they would work together to bring the Way of Love back to the people, under the guidance of a most extraordinary teacher.