The Expected One (31 page)

Maureen paused for a moment. There was still a crucial question that needed to be answered. “When do we open the chest?”

She was sincerely surprised that they had not done so. These people had dedicated large portions of their lives to finding this treasure. In Sinclair’s case, multiple generations had spent millions of dollars in pursuit of it. Although they regarded her as The Expected One, she hardly felt that she deserved to see it before they did. But Sinclair had insisted that no one even touch the chest until Maureen was ready, and Roland stood guard over it personally during the night, sleeping between the door and the chest.

“As soon as you are ready to make it downstairs,” Sinclair responded.

Roland was fidgeting, an interesting spectacle for such a large man. Tammy noticed and asked with concern, “What is it, Roland?”

The Occitan hulk stepped closer to Maureen. “The chest. It is a holy relic, Mademoiselle. I think…I believe if you touch it, maybe it will heal your wounds?”

Maureen was touched deeply by his faith. She reached out and took his hand. “You may be right. Let’s see if I can get up…”

Peter was worried. “Are you sure you’re ready to try this so soon? It’s a long walk down these corridors, and there are several flights of stairs.”

Roland smiled at Peter, then at Maureen. “Mademoiselle, there is no need to walk.”

And as Maureen indicated that she was ready, Roland lifted her out of bed without effort and carried her gently through the château.

Father Peter Healy followed mutely behind the giant who carried the rag doll form of his cousin through the château. He had never felt so helpless in his life, so completely out of control in a situation. He had a sense that Maureen was now somewhere he could not reach. The discovery of the chest had come through some kind of divine intervention; he saw it in her and he knew the others did as well. There was an air of prescience in the huge house. Something monumental was happening, and none of them would come through it unchanged.

Then there was Maureen’s medical condition. The doctor had been appalled at the wound in the back of her head; he had called it a miracle that she was alive. Peter contemplated just how literal that might turn out to be. Perhaps Roland was right. In fact, Peter had argued that his cousin should be hospitalized. It was Roland — not Sinclair — who fought this suggestion. The big man was adamant that Maureen should not be taken too far away from the chest. Maureen’s contact with the relic may have already worked some kind of divine healing, as her survival was phenomenal.

As they approached the door of Sinclair’s study, Peter realized that the grasp he had on the rosary beads in his pocket was causing the chain to cut into his hand.

The chest rested on the floor, next to a sumptuous sofa. Roland placed Maureen gently on the velvet cushions as she thanked him softly. Tammy sat on one side of her, Peter on the other, while Sinclair and Roland remained standing. No one stirred or spoke for a long moment. The silence was broken by a small sob that escaped from Maureen.

No one else moved as Maureen leaned forward carefully. She placed both hands on the lid of the large trunk and closed her eyes. Tears slid past her eyelids and down her cheeks. Finally, she opened her eyes and looked at each of the faces around her.

“They’re in here,” she said in a whisper. “I can feel it.”

“Are you ready?” Sinclair asked gently.

Maureen smiled at him, a calm, knowing smile that transformed her face. For a moment, she wasn’t Maureen Paschal. She was somebody entirely different, a woman brimming with inner light and peace. Later, when Bérenger Sinclair remembered that moment, he would say that he saw Mary Magdalene herself sitting in Maureen’s place.

Maureen turned to Tammy with a smile of radiant compassion. She reached out to her friend and squeezed her hand tightly for a moment, then released it. In that second Tammy knew she had been forgiven. They had all been brought here for some divine purpose, some higher good, and everyone in the room knew it. It was that knowing which transformed each of them, and bonded them for eternity at the same time. Tammy buried her face in her hands and cried softly.

Sinclair and Roland knelt beside the chest and looked to Maureen for confirmation. When she nodded, each man hooked fingers beneath the lid and prepared for a difficult opening. But the hinges did not react with the rust of age they all expected. The lid slid open effortlessly, so much so that it almost caused Roland to lose his balance. Not that anyone noticed. They were all too busy gaping at the two perfectly preserved, large clay jars resting within the chest.

Peter was very tense in his place beside Maureen, but he broke the silence first. “The jars — they’re almost identical to those used to house the Dead Sea Scrolls.”

Roland knelt beside the chest and ran his hand reverently along the top of one jar. “Perfect,” he whispered.

Sinclair nodded. “Indeed. And look, there’s no dust or erosion and no sign of wear or age. It’s as if these jars have been suspended in time.”

Roland commented, “They’re sealed with something.”

Maureen ran her hand along the top of one jar, jumping as if she had been shocked by an electrical current. “Could it be wax?”

“Wait a minute,” Peter interrupted. “We need to discuss this for a moment. If these jars contain what you all hope and believe they do, we have no right to open them.”

“No? Then who does?” Sinclair’s tone was sharp. “The Church? These jars aren’t going anywhere until we can all verify their contents. And the last place I want them to end up is in a Vatican vault where they will be hidden from the world for another two thousand years.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Peter said, more calmly than he felt. “I mean that if there are documents in these jars that have been sealed for two thousand years, sudden exposure to the air could damage them, even destroy them. I’m merely suggesting that we find an acceptable neutral outlet — perhaps through the French government — to open these jars. If we ruin them, you have nothing to show for a lifetime of searching. It would be criminal, literally and spiritually.”

Sinclair’s face showed his dilemma. The idea of damaging the jars’ contents was too horrifying to consider. But the temptation of a lifelong dream that was inches from his fingertips was hard to deny, as was his innate suspicion of outsiders involved in bloodline business. He was rendered momentarily speechless as Roland knelt before Maureen.

“Mademoiselle,” he began, “this is your decision. I believe that she has brought you to us and that through you she will tell us her will.”

Maureen began to answer Roland, but stopped as a wave of dizziness overcame her. Peter and Tammy reached out simultaneously to steady her. Everything went black for Maureen, but only for a moment. And then it came to her with crystal clarity. When the words came out, they were a command.

“Open the jars, Roland.”

The instruction issued from her mouth, but the voice that spoke it was not Maureen’s.

Sinclair and Roland carefully lifted the jars from the chest and placed them on the large mahogany table.

Roland deferred to Maureen with exceptional reverence. “Which one first?”

Maureen, supported on either side by Peter and Tammy, laid a finger on one of the jars. She couldn’t say why she chose this one first; she just knew it was the right choice. Roland followed her directions, running his finger along the rim of the jar. Sinclair retrieved an antique letter opener from his desk and began to work on the wax seal. Tammy stood by, transfixed, never taking her eyes off Roland.

Peter looked petrified. Among them, he was the only one who knew what it was to work with ancient documents and priceless data from the past. The potential for great damage was immense. Even damaging the jars would be a terrible shame.

As if to punctuate his thought, a sickening crumbling noise filled the tense room. Sinclair’s letter opener had shattered the lid of the first jar and taken a chip out of the rim. Peter cringed, and put his face in his hands. But he couldn’t hide for long. Maureen’s sharp intake of breath beside him forced him to take notice.

“My hands are too big, Mademoiselle,” Roland said to Maureen.

Maureen moved forward a step on wobbly legs and reached her hand into the damaged jar.

What she removed — slowly and gingerly — resembled two books written on ancient, linen-looking paper. The black ink of the writing stood in vivid contrast to the flaxen pages. The letters were small, precise, and perfectly legible.

Peter leaned over Maureen, unable to hold back his own growing excitement about what was now on the table before them. He looked into the rapt faces around him, but delivered his judgment directly to Maureen. His voice cracked as he pronounced, “The writing. It’s…Greek.”

Maureen’s breath caught in her throat. She asked him hopefully, “Can you read any of it?”

But she knew the answer before he spoke; all the color had drained from his face. It was clear to everyone in the room at that moment that the world Father Peter Healy knew would never look quite the same.

“I am Mary, called Magdalene,” he translated slowly. “And…” He stopped, not for dramatic effect but because he really wasn’t sure if he could continue. One look at Maureen’s face and he knew there was no choice but to go on.

“I am the lawful wife of Jesus, called the messiah, who was a royal son of the house of David.”

P
eter worked through the night on the translations. Maureen refused to leave the room, resting periodically on the velvet sofa. Roland brought extra pillows and a coverlet. Maureen smiled assurance at him as he fussed around her with great concern. Strangely, she felt fine. Her head didn’t hurt in the least, and she was feeling amazingly strong.

She stayed on the sofa as she didn’t want to hover over Peter. Sinclair was doing enough of that for everyone. But Peter didn’t seem to mind; Maureen thought he probably didn’t even notice. Peter was immersed, completely absorbed in the sacred nature of his task as scribe.

Tammy came in periodically to check on the progress, but retired late — at the same time as Roland. Maureen had been observing them together all day and came to the conclusion that this was not a coincidence. She thought about the night of the party, when she had heard Tammy in the corridor outside her room, joined by a man with an accent. Tammy and Roland. There was definitely something going on there, but it had the feel of a new pairing. Maureen didn’t think they had been involved with each other for too long. When all of this calmed down, she would extract the story from Tammy. She wanted to know the whole truth of all the relationships here in the Château des Pommes Bleues.

Her attention was drawn sharply back to the scrolls as Sinclair exclaimed loudly, “My God! Will you look at that!”

He had been standing over Peter nervously, watching. Peter scribbled furiously on yellow legal pads, writing verbatim translations of the Greek words. It wouldn’t all make sense immediately. He would need to finish the transcription, then go back and use his expertise in language to modify the sentences into a form that was logical from a twenty-first-century perspective.

“What is it?” Maureen asked.

Peter looked up and ran his hands over his face. “You need to see it. Come here, if you can. I don’t dare move this scroll at the moment.”

Maureen rose from the couch slowly, still cognizant of her head wound despite her miraculous recovery. She approached the table, and took a place to the right of Peter, who was sitting with his extensive notes spread out before him. Sinclair pointed to the original scrolls as Peter explained.

“These appear at the end of each major segment, we’ll call them chapters. It looks like a wax seal.”

Maureen followed Sinclair’s finger to the symbol in question. The now-familiar pattern of Maureen’s ring, nine circles dancing around a central tenth, had been applied to the bottom of the page.

“Mary Magdalene’s personal seal,” Sinclair said with reverence.

Maureen held her ring up to the image. They were identical. In fact, they could have been made by the very same ring.

By the time the sun rose on the Château des Pommes Bleues, much of the first book, the first-person account of Mary Magdalene’s life, had been translated. Peter worked like a man possessed on this gospel of the Magdalene, huddled over the pages. Sinclair had tea brought in for him, but other than a quick break to take a few sips, Peter wouldn’t stop. He looked extremely pale, and Maureen was worried.

“Pete, you have to take a break. You need to sleep for a few hours.”

“No.” He was emphatic. “I can’t. I can’t stop now. You don’t understand because you haven’t seen what I’ve seen yet. I have to keep going. I have to know what else she will say.”

They had all decided to wait until Peter was comfortable with the translations before reading any part of them. All respected Peter’s ability and the enormous responsibility they understood to be on his shoulders, but it was still hard for them to wait. At that moment, only Peter knew the content of the scrolls.

“I can’t leave them,” he continued, eyes shining with a fervor that Maureen had never seen before.

“Just for five minutes. Come outside with me for five minutes and walk in the morning air. It will be good for you. Then you can come back in and we’ll get breakfast for you here.”

“No, no food. I need to fast until the translations are finished. I can’t stop now.”

Sinclair thought he understood what Peter was feeling, but also saw how physically drained he appeared. He tried a different tactic. “Father Healy, you’ve done a commendable job, but your accuracy will suffer if you are overloaded. I’ll have Roland come in and guard the scrolls while you take a break.”

Sinclair rang a bell to summon Roland. Peter looked up at Maureen’s worried face.

“Okay,” he conceded. “Five minutes, just to get some air.”

Sinclair unlocked the gates to the Trinity Gardens, and Maureen entered them with Peter. A dove flew over the rows of rose bushes as the Mary Magdalene fountain gurgled in the morning sun.

Peter spoke first, his voice soft and filled with awe. “What is happening, Maureen? How did we get here, come to be a part of all of this? It’s like a dream, like…a miracle. Does this feel real to you?”

Maureen nodded. “Yes. I don’t know how to explain it, but I feel such a sense of calm about the whole thing. As though it all happened according to plan. And you’re as much a part of this as I am, Pete. It’s not an accident that you came with me, or that you teach ancient languages and can translate Greek. This was all…orchestrated.”

“I definitely feel that I’m playing a part in a master plan. I’m just not sure which part yet, or why me.”

Maureen stopped to smell one of the gloriously rich red roses in full bloom. Then she turned back to Peter. “How long has this been in the works? Was it planned before we were born? Further back? Was your grandfather destined to work on the Nag Hammadi library to prepare you for this specifically? Or was it planned two thousand years ago when Mary first hid her gospel?”

Peter was silent for a moment before answering. “You know, before last night I would have had a very different answer than the one I have now.”

“Why?”

“Because of her, and what she says in her scrolls. She says exactly what you just did — it’s astounding. She says that some things are etched in God’s plan, that some people are simply destined to play a particular part. Maureen, it’s amazing. I’m reading a firsthand account of Jesus and the apostles by someone who speaks of them all in such human terms. There is nothing like this…” — he hesitated to use the word for only a moment — “…
gospel
in any Church literature. I feel so unworthy of it.”

“But you are worthy,” Maureen assured him emphatically. “You were chosen for this. Look at how much divine intervention was required to bring us all together, to this place and time, to tell this story.”

“But what story do we tell?” Peter looked tormented, and for the first time Maureen saw that he was wrestling with some very strong inner demons. “What story do
I
tell? If these gospels are authentic…”

Maureen stopped in her tracks and looked at him, incredulous. “How can you doubt it? After everything it took to get us here, to this place?” Maureen touched the back of her head where the huge gash was healing.

“It’s now a question of faith for me, Maureen. The scrolls are perfectly preserved, not a flaw on them, not a word missing. The jars didn’t even have dirt on them. How is that possible? It’s one of two things — either it’s a modern forgery or it’s an act of divine will.”

“What do you truly believe?”

“I’ve spent twenty straight hours translating the most astounding document. And much of what I’m reading is…essentially heretical, yet it also provides a vision of Jesus that is beautiful in an extraordinary and human way. But what I think won’t matter. The scrolls will still have to be authenticated through rigorous processes for the world at large to accept them.”

He paused, taking time to come to terms with it all in his own head. “If they can be proven to be authentic, this challenges the belief system of a large part of the human race for the last two thousand years. It challenges everything I’ve ever been taught, everything I ever believed.”

Maureen looked at the man, her cousin and best friend, for a long moment. She had always known him to be a rock, a pillar of strength and absolute integrity. He was also a man of intense faith and loyalty to his Church.

She asked simply, “What will you do?”

“I haven’t had time to think that far. I need to see what the rest of these scrolls say to see how much they contradict, or hopefully confirm, the gospel accounts as we know them. I haven’t reached Mary’s description of the crucifixion — or the resurrection.”

Maureen understood suddenly why Peter was so reluctant to leave the scrolls before finishing the translations. Mary Magdalene’s authenticated account of the events following the crucifixion could be critical to the belief system of one-third of the earth’s population. Christianity was based on the understanding that Jesus rose from the dead on the third day. And as Mary Magdalene was the first witness of his resurrection, according to Gospel accounts, her first-person version of those events would be vital.

Maureen learned during her research that theorists who had written about Mary Magdalene as Jesus’ wife had also overwhelmingly taken the position that Jesus was not the son of God and did not rise from the dead. Various hypotheses existed regarding Jesus surviving the crucifixion; another common theory was that his physical body had simply been moved by his followers. No one had ever theorized that Jesus had been married
and
had been the son of God. For some reason, those two circumstances had always been viewed as mutually exclusive. Perhaps that’s why Mary’s existence as the first apostle had been so threatening to the Church throughout history.

No doubt all of these things had been running through Peter’s mind in the last, intense hours. He responded to Maureen’s question.

“It will depend on what official position the Church takes.”

“And what if they deny them? Then what? Do you choose the institution of the Church, or do you choose what you know in your heart to be the truth?”

“I hope those things are not mutually exclusive,” Peter said with a wry smile. “Perhaps that is overly optimistic. But if that happens, well, then the time will come.”

“The time for what?”

“Eligere magistrum. To choose a master.”

They had finished their walk and returned to the château, Maureen convincing Peter to at least take a shower to refresh himself before returning to his task. She went back to her own room to wash her face and gather her thoughts. Exhaustion was creeping in, but she couldn’t surrender to it, not yet. Not until she knew what was in the scrolls.

As Maureen dried her face on an elegant red towel, there was a knock on her door.

Tammy bounced into her room. “Good morning. Did I miss anything?”

“Not yet. Peter is going to read to us from the first book as soon as he feels the translation is ready. He says it’s stunning, but that’s all I know.”

“Where is he now?”

“He’s in his room taking a little break. Didn’t want to leave the scrolls, but we insisted on it. He’s having a hard time even though he won’t admit it publicly. This is a huge responsibility for him. Maybe even a huge liability.”