The Thirteenth Apostle (8 page)

“Do you know what that means, according to your absurd beliefs?”

Judas lowered his head and wrung his hands.

“Every oath that is sworn calls on the Everlasting. Caiaphas swore an oath to me, he gave me money as a token of his good faith, and yet Jesus died as a malefactor! Ah yes, only the Everlasting can be judge of such infamy.”

“Didn't Jesus tell us again and again that we were not to swear by God's throne, since this was insulting to him?”

Judas shook his head.

“God judges, brother; God must judge the infamy of men…”

Peter thought: “This is what the priests have done to us – made us the slaves of absurd beliefs. This is what we need to free Israel from, first and foremost – and if this doesn't happen with Jesus, it will have to happen without him. But Judas is doomed. It's too late for him.”

“Well, Judas?” he said.

“Well, it's all over. All we can do now is go back home to Galilee to expiate the Master's death for as long as we live. It's all over, Peter!”

The apostle took a step towards Judas, who stared at him mistrustfully. To reassure him, Peter smiled at him. “This man is a victim of Jewish power, let him die in peace!” Then he unsheathed his
sica,
and with a sudden thrust, as he had once learnt from the Zealots, he plunged it into Judas's belly. With a grimace of disgust, he jerked it upwards until he felt the sternum obstructing his weapon.

“God has judged, Judas,” he whispered into his face. “God always judges: Caiaphas will continue to live – so much the worst for Israel.”

With his eyes widening in horror, Judas, without a cry, toppled forwards, his belly slashed open and his entrails spilling out onto the sand.

Peter stepped back, slowly, and looked up and down the dead-end street: nothing had moved, there would be no witnesses. Slowly, he wiped his short sword on the inside of his tunic. Then he looked up. The cheerful Passover sun was shedding its light on the land of Israel, reminding him of their departure from slavery in the land of Egypt, and the miraculous parting of the waters of the Red Sea.

On that day, a people had been born: the People of God. Twelve tribes had then wandered through the desert before settling in Canaan: the old Israel, which was now on its last legs. A new Israel needed to come into being, and this time it would be led by twelve apostles. So there were only eleven of them left? God himself would appoint a replacement for Judas.

But never would the Judaean, the so-called beloved disciple, be one of the Twelve.

Never.

* * *

Peter stepped over Judas's body. When it was discovered, everyone would think it was a settling of accounts between Zealots: disembowelling their enemies was their calling card. He took a last glance at the body.

“From now on, I am the rock on which the Church will be built, and death will not prevail against us. It is not all over, Judas.”

15

Two days had gone by since the death of Andrei. Nil gazed at his table strewn with papers, the result of years of research. He thought he had elucidated the circumstances of the death of Judas: the plot had been hatched during the final days preceding the crucifixion. Judas had been murdered; he had not hanged himself. The events that ensued could be understood only if the texts were scrutinized in detail, so that one could discover, behind what they openly said, what they merely hinted at. History is not an exact science: its truth comes from the juxtaposition of accumulated clues.

Now he needed to apply the same method to the mysterious note he had found in the hand of his dead friend. For this, he needed to gain access to the historical library. The new librarian would be appointed only after the funeral, which was to take place the following day.

He closed his eyes and allowed the memories to rise up within him.

“Father Nil, I have just learnt that, while working on the restorations at Germigny, the workers have unearthed an ancient
inscription. I'd like to see it. Do you think you could come with me? I need to photograph some manuscripts in Orléans, and the road goes past Germigny-des-Prés…”

They parked on the square in the little village. Nil was pleased to see this church again. Charlemagne's architect had wanted to reproduce in miniature the cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle, built in about 800. Its marvellous stained glass in alabaster created a powerful atmosphere inside, a sense of intimacy and meditation.

They made their way to the threshold of the sanctuary.

“See how it is still wrapped in mystery!”

Andrei's whispering was rendered barely audible by the noise of the hammers attacking the end wall: to remove the windows, the workers had been obliged to remove the coating surrounding them. In between two openings, just where the nave continued, one could make out in the gloom a gaping hole. Andrei went over to the men.

“Excuse me, gentlemen, I'd like to take a look at a slab that I gather you found while you were doing the restoration.”

“Oh, the stone? Yes, we found it under a layer of coating. We pulled it down from the wall and placed it in the left transept.”

“Can we examine it?”

“No problem: you're the first people to take an interest in it.”

The two monks walked a little further on and noticed on the floor a square slab, the edges of which bore the traces of having been embedded. Andrei bent over, then went down on one knee.

“Ah… the embedding is clearly original. When it was
in situ
, this slab would have been directly in view of the faithful. So it assumed a particular importance… Then – look – it was covered with a coating that seems more recent.”

Nil shared his companion's excitement. These men never
referred to history as a period that was over and done with: the past was their present. At this precise moment, they could hear a voice from across the centuries: the voice of the emperor who had ordered this slab to be engraved and wished it to be embedded in such a remarkable spot.

Andrei took out his handkerchief and delicately wiped the surface of the stone.

“The coating is of the same type as those in Romanesque churches. So this slab must have been covered with it two or three centuries after being set in place: one day, the need was felt to hide the inscription from the public. So in whose interest was it to hide it away?”

Characters were starting to appear under the coating as it crumbled into dust.

“Carolingian script. But… it's the text of the
Symbolon
of Nicaea!”

“The text of the Creed?”

“Indeed. I wonder why they wanted it to be so prominent, under full view of all, in this imperial church. In particular, I wonder…”

Andrei knelt looking at the inscription for a long while. Then he stood up, dusted himself down and placed his hand on Nil's shoulder.

“My friend, in this reproduction of the Nicene Creed, there's something I don't understand: I've never seen it before.”

They quickly took a snapshot, and left just as the workers were downing tools for lunch.

Andrei remained silent until Orléans. As Nil was preparing the camera for their work session, he stopped him.

“No, not with that film, it's the one we used for the slab. Put it to one side, and use another film for these manuscripts, if you don't mind.”

The journey home was glum. Before he got out of the car, Andrei turned to Nil. His face looked particularly grave.

“We'll develop the Germigny photo and make two copies. I'll take one and fax it straight away to an employee at the Vatican Library with whom I have been corresponding: I'd like to have his opinion; there are very few people capable of understanding the particularities of inscriptions from the High Middle Ages. The second copy… you can keep it and take good care of it in your cell. You never know.”

A fortnight later, Andrei had phoned Nil in his office. He seemed worried.

“I've just received a letter from the Vatican: they've told me to go and explain the translation of the Coptic manuscript I told you about. Why do they want me to go there? With the letter there was a note from the employee in the Vatican telling me he'd received the photo of the Germigny slab. But he didn't add anything by way of comment.”

Nil was just as surprised as his friend.

“When are you leaving?”

“Father Abbot came this morning to give me a ticket for the Rome express that leaves tomorrow. Father Nil… please, while I'm away, go back to Germigny. The snapshot that we took isn't clear: take another photo in a raking light.”

“Father Andrei, can you tell me what you are thinking?”

“I can't tell you any more today. Find some excuse or another to leave the Abbey, and quickly go and take that photo. We'll examine it together as soon as I'm back.”

Andrei had left for Rome the following day.

And he had never returned to the Abbey.

* * *

Nil opened his eyes. He would go as soon as he possibly could to carry out his friend's last wishes. But without him, what would be the use of a new snapshot of the inscription?

The tocsin started to chime lugubriously, announcing to the whole valley that, the next day, a monk was going to be solemnly borne to his last resting place. Nil half-opened the drawer in his table, and slipped his hand under the pile of letters.

His heart started to beat. He pulled the drawer open fully:
the photo taken at Germigny had disappeared, and so had Father Andrei's note.

“Impossible! It's impossible!”

He had poured the contents of the drawer out onto the table: there was no denying it – the snapshot and the note were just not there.

Monks take a vow of poverty, so they possess absolutely nothing, cannot lock anything away, and not a single cell in the Abbey had a lock. Only the offices of the steward and that of the Father Abbot had locks – and the three libraries, the keys to which had been distributed parsimoniously, as already mentioned.

But a monk's cell is the inviolable domain of his solitude: nobody is ever allowed in when its occupant is not there, or without obtaining his formal permission. Except for the Father Abbot who, ever since his election, had made it a point of honour to respect this intangible rule, which underlines the choice made by his monks to live in a community, but alone in the face of God.

Not only had
someone
violated Father Nil's sanctuary, but
someone
had rummaged around and stolen what he found. He glanced at the folders scattered in disorder across the table. Yes,
someone
had not been content with ferreting around in the drawer: the most voluminous of his files, the one on the Gospel according to St John, was not in its usual place. It had been slightly moved, and opened. Nil, who had used it every day since his classes had started, immediately saw that some of his notes were not in their right order, the logic of which was known to him alone. He even thought that some pages had disappeared.

A rule of Benedictine life had just been violated – he had evident proof of the fact. And there must be an extremely serious reason for that. He had the vague sense that there must be a link between the unusual events of these last few days – but what?

He had become a monk against the wishes of his family, who were non-believers. He remembered himself as a young novice.
The truth…
he had pledged his whole life to seeking it out. Two men had understood this: Rembert Leeland, his codisciple during the four years he had been a student in Rome, and Andrei. Leeland was now working somewhere in the Vatican, and Nil found himself alone, facing questions that he was unable to answer – and filled with a barely contained anguish that had not left him since the end of summer.

His hand smoothed down the thick file on St John's Gospel: it was all there. In fact, Andrei had not ceased to tell him as much, while refusing to give him any more information or to allow him into the library in the north wing. He could do no other: obedience was the rule. But Andrei was dead, perhaps because of that obedience. And his own cell had been searched, in violation of the immutable rules of the Abbey.

He had to do something.

There was an hour to go before vespers. He got up, went out into the corridor and made his way resolutely towards the stairs leading to the libraries.

* * *

Thanks to his good visual memory, he had recorded every little detail of Andrei's note in his mind.
Coptic manuscript (Apoc.)
– probably a Coptic apocalypse.
Apostle's letter
, then the three mysterious
M M M
, and the stone slab at Germigny. The thread linking all these mysterious elements must be lying unnoticed somewhere in the books of the library.

He came to Andrei's office, situated just next to the wing devoted to Biblical Studies. Ten yards further on was the corner of the north wing, and the entry to the library of Historical Studies.

The librarian's door had no more of a lock than any other cell in the monastery. He went in, switched the light on and sat heavily on the chair where, for so many happy hours, he had enjoyed conversations with his friend. Nothing had changed. Along the walls, the bookshelves with their piles of freshly labelled books: recent acquisitions, waiting to be definitively catalogued in one of the three wings. Underneath, the metal drawers in which Andrei filed the photocopies of the manuscripts on which he was working. The Coptic Apocalypse must be somewhere among them. Should he begin here?

Suddenly he gave a start. On a shelf, there were several rolls lying in disorder: the negatives of his manuscripts… Among them, in the first row, he immediately recognized the one he had used to photograph the Germigny slab. Andrei had left it there, without giving it another thought, before his departure for Rome.

Nil's photo had just been stolen, but they hadn't thought about the negative, or maybe they hadn't had time to inspect the librarian's office. Without hesitating, Nil got up, took the roll off the shelf and slipped it into his pocket. The last wishes of a dead man are sacred…