The Making of the Lamb (67 page)

“I’ve got my laptop in my backpack, haven’t I?”

Of course. He carries the thing everywhere.

“I’ll text you when I get it sorted. Have a look about in the meantime.”

Ned’s father had not hesitated to inform his son what an insensible career choice he was making taking up the cloth, but the ministry couldn’t possibly be worse than running Geoffrey’s Internet startup.

“No worries, I’ll just go check out some of the shops. See you later.”

Geoffrey disappeared into the café, and Ned stopped at a little teashop across the street. They seemed to offer every herbal variety imaginable, but he only wanted his favorite English breakfast. After a night of partying, he needed the caffeine. His order somehow disturbed the matron’s cosmic aura, as she flustered about preparing it instead of her typical herbal concoctions.

Stepping onto the pavement with his takeaway cup, he looked up and down the street. Spying a new-age shop, he thought it might be amusing to browse among the pagans. His first impression was that he had stepped into a shop for witches and wizards:
Diagon Alley,
remembered Ned, from the Harry Potter movies. Packets of every manner of incense were neatly arranged on one wall. Maps showing lay lines passing through the Tor in all directions hung on another. Cauldrons and wands were offered, as was a modest collection of books. That was more to his liking.

Most of the collection revolved around new-age spiritual concepts that held little interest for Ned, but among the books he spotted a thin used paperback called
The Traditions of Glastonbury: The Biblical Missing Years of Christ—A
NSWERED
.
The author was an archeologist, E. Raymond Capt. The cover featured a tapestry showing young Jesus and an older man paddling up a stream at the base of the Tor.
How did this get in here? Maybe the shop owner thought it would sell from local interest.
Ned thumbed through it, recalling what Father Michael Walters had told him, thirteen years before, of the legends surrounding Christ’s visit to Britain, how Joseph of Arimathea founded Glastonbury Abbey as the first house of worship in all Christendom, and even something of King Arthur.
I wonder whatever happened to Father Walters? That was such a crazy motto he had me memorize. Look for the secret of the Lord where the lamb turns to the beginning of his life.

Turning another page, Ned spotted an image of a time-worn architectural feature on a doorway: a carving of a lamb beneath a cross. At first glance the image seemed like a typical Agnus Dei image for “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world,” but there was something odd about it that Ned could not immediately place. He continued reading, and then it hit him.
The lamb is facing the wrong way!
The typical Agnus Dei image showed the lamb and the cross facing the west, towards the end of Christ’s life—his death and resurrection. But according to Capt’s book, this lamb was facing the east, the direction associated with the sunrise, representing the beginning of Christ’s life with his future before him. That’s it! A lamb turned to the beginning of his life!

Ned turned the page again. The doorway feature was on a chapel in Cornwall. According to the book, the north transept of that chapel held an example of Ogham script carved into a panel on the wall.
Could this piece of script be a link in the mystery? Ned hadn’t given much thought in the last decade to Father Walters and the mystery, but now he wondered about it. Only one way to find out…

Ned paid for the book and hurried out to fetch Geoffrey. He found him at a high table, typing madly on his laptop. “Geoff, can you hurry? I’ve got…look, I’m sorry, but I’ve got to cancel that climb up the Tor.”

“What’s got into you, Ned?”

“I’ve got something I need to take care of. Immediately.”

“One minute.” Geoffrey typed a few more lines of code, and they left the café. They caught the next bus back to the festival car park. The traffic had improved, but not much. As they crept down the road, Ned beat the steering wheel.

“What’s up, mate? I’m usually the impatient one,” Geoffrey muttered.

“Maybe nothing,” said Ned. “But maybe...just maybe...something really amazing.”

Finally they got onto the A361 and then the A37 north from Shepton Mallet.

Ned packed Geoff off at the Bristol train station and took the M5 west to where it ended, an hour later, just south of Exeter.

Ned debated whether he should find a room to stay for the night, but he knew he was too excited to sleep. He continued on the two-lane into Cornwall, swinging around each of the roundabouts at full speed. He crossed Bodmin Moor at midnight. An hour later he pulled over to the side of the road just outside Truro and slept.

The light of breaking dawn awoke Ned from his light sleep. Stopping only for a coffee, he proceeded south on the A3078. He was used to driving between the hedgerows, and the road narrowed only occasionally to force two lanes of opposing traffic down to one.

He had to park the car some distance from the chapel, and he walked to it on a public path. He took a look at the photograph in the book and compared it to the chapel. Yes, it was certainly the right building. The chapel was attached to a larger estate house called Place Manor. According to the sign, the chapel was a decommissioned church, no longer consecrated ground for the Church of England, now in the custody of the C of E Conservation Trust. He approached the old oak door, darkened with age. He tried it, and it creaked open. By now the sun was up, illuminating the interior through tall lancet windows. Ned gazed around at the memorials, stretching back hundreds of years in commemoration of various members of the family that owned the house. Where was that Ogham script sample for which he had come all this way?

He found it on the wall of the north transept, just where Raymond Capt said it would be. Ned took out a pencil and some paper, and he made a rubbing.

He stared at his work as he walked back down to the car. He had the inscription. Now he needed to find someone to read it. Maybe that museum expert Father Walters knew.

I bet the man will be surprised to hear from me after all these years.
Tracking down Father Walters took a number of phone calls, but eventually Ned found the priest living in a retired housing scheme operated by the Church of England Pensions Board.

Ned arrived without calling ahead. The staff showed him to Father Walter’s room. Ned knocked and entered a narrow room, barely big enough for a twin bed and a recliner. The old priest sat in his recliner by the window, a shadow of the man Ned remembered from more than a decade earlier.

“Hello, Father. I don’t suppose you remember me.”

Father Walters looked at him blankly.

I hope he hasn’t gone senile.
“I’m Ned Jacobs. We met at St. Hilary’s shortly before you retired.” The priest still showed no sign of recognition. “You shared a secret with me, from the tunic cross.”

Father Walters suddenly became animated. “Ned, after all these years! Did you figure it out? Did it lead you to the Holy Grail?” The priest laughed and clutched Ned’s hand.

Ned smiled. “Not quite yet, Father, but I think I’m close to something.” Ned showed Father Walters the rubbing and explained how he’d found the Ogham inscription. “Can you tell me who translated the other one for you?”

“Oh, my boy, that was so long ago…” Father Walters lowered the footrest of the recliner and pressed the arms of the chair to help him stand. “Let’s see if I can find it.”

A bookcase stood nearby, packed chockablock with all sorts of books. Father Walters pulled out a battered old Moleskine notebook. He snapped the elastic back and opened the book. Glancing over Father Walters’s shoulder, Ned saw pages filled with penciled notes and sketches. As Father Walters flipped through it, newspaper and magazine clippings came loose and fluttered to the floor. He seemed not to notice. Ned stooped to gather them up. “Must be in here someplace,” muttered Father Walters to himself. “Somewhere.” Ned tucked the clippings back into the notebook as the priest continued to turn pages. “Ah, here it is.”

Father Walters showed Ned the page. Ned took out his phone and tapped the name into a web browser. The search results seemed to take forever to appear, but at last they came. “Ha. He still works at the British Museum.” Ned gave the Father a grin. “Want to come with me?”

Though Father Walters was eager, it took some doing to check him out of the home. “Luv, ’e’s too frail to travel,” the head nurse moaned.

“Would you deny an old man a bit of fresh air?” Father Walters protested. “You think I’m not in my right mind?”

After a complaint to the director, a ream of paperwork, a suitcase crammed with spare clothes and toiletries, and instructions to Ned about the old man’s medication schedule, they were finally on their way.

“It describes a location,” said the British Museum specialist. “Measured by paces from the altar of a place called Lammana Priory. Whatever that is.”

“Never heard of it,” admitted Father Walters.

Ned pulled out his laptop and looked it up. “It’s on Looe Island.”

“In Cornwall?” Father Walters asked.

“Where else?” Ned laughed. “The abbots of Glastonbury owned the priory at least since the Dark Ages. It’s also called Saint George’s Island, just off the coast.”

“Well, then, young man.” Father Walters stood, looking more spry than he had in the home. “Let’s get going.”

Within a few days of the old priest’s liberation from the retirement home, he and Ned were driving down the A387 toward the twin villages of East Looe and West Looe.

“We have the distances to pace out from the altar,” said Ned. “But how do we find the altar?”

“My boy, we don’t have to. It’s already been found.”

“It has?”

“The altar was found. But not whatever is buried at the site described in the Ogham message.”

“Right, right.” Ned shifted his grip on the wheel. “What do you mean the altar was found?”

Father Walters opened his Moleskine notebook and searched through the magazine clippings. “I have quite a collection of articles,” he said. “I seem to remember one... Ah, young man, here it is.”

He handed a clipping to Ned.

“Two years back,” Father Walters said, “I saw this article about an archeological dig on St. George’s Island. I’m always interested in things like that. It was part of a Time Team episode on Channel 4.”

Ned looked over the clipping. Under a bold headline—
“Archeologists Uncover Christian Altar Dating from Roman Antiquity”
—the photo showed several khaki-clad archaeologists with trowels and brushes, standing in a trench.

“It gives the location of the altar?” asked Ned.

“Precisely.”

“Ha!”

Ned found a marina in East Looe and rented a small motorboat. As they set out across Looe Bay, the sun glinted on the whitecaps. Ned turned to the priest. “Good thing the manager didn’t ask many questions. The island’s a wildlife refuge. No telling how long it would take to get permission to dig.”

Father Walters chuckled. “It’s often easier to obtain forgiveness than permission.”

Ned laughed, the wind ruffling his hair.

The island was not far from the harbor entrance. Ned steered the boat toward it.

The delight shining in the old man’s eyes must look something like his own, Ned thought.

They had done it! Decoded the clues. Solved the mystery.

Saint Joseph’s buried secrets would soon be theirs.

B
efore I get started, let me give a word of warning: This afterword will have some plot spoilers. Please read the book first. I will cite some of my sources, but this is not a full bibliography. For more information, I invite you to visit
www.makingofthelamb.com
.

How did this book come to be written and what purpose does it serve?

The Making of the Lamb
was first conceived as I was preparing for my baptism in 2004. I was doing quite a bit of sailing with my good friend, Austin Mill, and he gave me a small plaque for my sailboat honoring Saint Joseph of Arimathea. Joseph is the patron saint of sailors, miners, and funeral directors. Austin also introduced me to the Jerusalem Hymn, which sets in music the legend that Jesus traveled to Britain during his “missing” teenaged years, which are left out of the Bible. In the course of my travels with Austin, one of us got the idea that the legend would be a good basis for a novel.