Blood of the Lamb (50 page)

Thomas watched Livia explore the unguent jar on the wooden statue of Mary Magdalene. He found himself oddly calm, his heart no longer pounding with the urgency and fright of the day before. Whatever they found—if there was anything to find—might reveal to him the meaning of Lorenzo’s final words. Or those words might remain forever a mystery. Of more importance to Thomas was his own mystery: Would he be able to forgive Lorenzo for his betrayal? For his hate?

Livia’s searching hands suddenly stopped still. After a moment she repositioned herself, gripped the jar with her left hand, and placed her right on its carved lid. Thomas could see the slow, steady force she was using in the set of her shoulders. The lid didn’t move. Livia dropped her arms and stared at it. “Thomas? In my bag there’s a vial. Can you hand it to me?”

Thomas, not used to rummaging through a woman’s handbag, spent a minute finding it. “This?”

“Yes. It’s the scent I use. Not really a perfume. An essential oil.” She took the vial he handed her, unscrewed the top, and poured the oil carefully on the seam between the jar and its lid. The heady scent of gardenias wafted down to Thomas as the oil perched on the surface of the wood and then gradually began to seep in. Livia restoppered the vial and handed it back down. Slowly, she started to work at the lid again. Nothing, nothing, nothing—then, finally, Thomas could see it begin to give. With calm patience Livia pressured it, pushing down, turning, until at last, millimeter by millimeter, she was able to unscrew it. Slowly and deliberately, she took the lid off, reached into the hollow jar, and removed a rolled, beribboned, wax-sealed scroll.

105

Standing at the back of the church, he could see only that Livia Pietro and Thomas Kelly had been escorted by a monk to the Magdalene chapel. But he didn’t need to be near to see—to know—what they were doing. When he’d gotten the call telling him they’d left the apartment, he’d gone out, too, into the fresh Rome morning. He didn’t try to follow them. Anywhere they had it in mind to go was their own business and they had his blessing. Anywhere but here. He came straight to Santa Maria Maddalena, hoping that they wouldn’t appear, but knowing they would.

He’d never been sure how much of the truth Lorenzo Cossa knew. It was possible, he’d thought, that though the contents of the document Livia Pietro and Thomas Kelly had just found were known to the Cardinal, its hiding place might not be. It had also seemed possible that, even if he knew, he hadn’t had a chance to pass his knowledge on. When Livia and Kelly walked into the church, though, that possibility was lost. He took heart when it became clear that they didn’t know what next step to take, but the resourcefulness they’d proved yesterday came into play here, too. He wasn’t sure how they’d done it and it didn’t matter: once they’d found the statue, it was all but assured they’d find the treasure it held.

This day was a long time coming, but it was always bound to come. He’d been given, not instructions to follow, but the immeasurable honor and immense responsibility of deciding what to do when it came. He’d pondered the question long and hard, never coming to a conclusion. Now he’d reached one. Now he had to.

Stepping from the shadows, the Pontifex strode forward.

106

Thomas sank slowly onto the marble plinth. Livia stood beside him, the unrolled vellum scroll from the unguent jar in her hand. Around him Santa Maria Maddalena faded, became a still photograph, a frozen stage set. Nothing lived, moved, breathed. He was ice-cold. The words he’d just read—he wanted to never have seen them; if that wasn’t possible, to instantly forget them. But they swam before his eyes and, though he’d never heard them spoken, they sounded in his head.

Roma profecturi hoc testamentum relinquimus. Nobis praesentibus non erat opus talibus litteris; nos ipsi vitaque nostra pro testibus veritatis erant. Quamquam ex hac urbe discedimus, testimonium illud manet. Sumus etiamnunc inter vos. Estote certi: si necessarium fiet, nos revelabimus naturamque nostram duplicem manifestabimus, id quod non prius necessarium erit quam aut Ecclesia aut Noantri pacto inter duas nostras gentes valenti deficiant. Ad quod tempus—utinam ne veniat—fidem servabimus atque occultum tenebimus et pactum et nostram ipsorum naturam.

Preparing to depart from Rome, we leave behind this Testament. While we remained, no such document was required. The proof of its truth was ourselves and our lived lives. Though we leave this city, that proof remains. We are still among you. If necessary, be sure we will reveal ourselves, and make our dual natures known. That necessity will not arise until the day either the Church or the Noantri fail to conform to the Concordat between our peoples. Until such time—may it never come!—we will honor our vows, revealing neither the secret of the Concordat nor the secret of our own natures.

Below this brief, world-changing text, a date:

DIE DOMINICA XXII APRILIS ANNO DOMINI MDCI

Sunday, 22 April, the Year of Our Lord 1601.

and the signatures.

On the left,
Maria Magdalena.

On the right,
Jesus Nazarenus.

Mary Magdalene.

Jesus of Nazareth.

This was what it was, then: the secret Lorenzo had thought the Church could not survive. Thomas wasn’t sure he’d survive it himself.
Dual natures
. Could this document be real? Could it be authenticated? But even as the scholar in him, desperate for a handhold, asked the question, the priest knew it was beside the point. The Concordat existed; the Noantri existed. Even if this Testament couldn’t be proved real by any science known to man, its revelation, with its signatures and its date, would force the Concordat and the Noantri into the light. The ensuing whirlwind would bring down the Church, and who knew what would fall with it? If the . . . if the signatories . . . Thomas couldn’t bring himself to say their names, even in his own head.
Come on, Father Kelly, you’re a Jesuit,
he told himself.
You don’t fear knowledge.
If he hadn’t been frozen, he’d have laughed. Had he been just a tiny bit proud of how he’d accepted the Noantri, even come to respect and feel fondness for them, in so short a time?
Then accept this, Father Kelly: your Savior is also . . . is also . . .

“So that’s it.” Someone spoke, a warm voice penetrating the ice in which Thomas was locked. Slowly, he looked up. Livia, appearing as shaken as he was, stared at the scroll in her hand. “That’s the reason,” she breathed. “Why Martin the Fifth signed the Concordat at all. What forced him into it. They did. It was this.”

Yes,
Thomas thought.
Fine.
That question now was answered. What of it? What did such a thing matter now, when . . .

“Yes.” Another voice, dark and quiet. Thomas turned; Livia gasped. Before them stood the man—the Noantri—who’d sat at the center of the Conclave yesterday. The Pontifex Aliorum. The Pope of the Others. The Noantri ruler.

“Yes,” he said again. The Pontifex stepped closer, pointing to the document Livia held. “You now know the final secret.”

A long silence; then Thomas, to his surprise, heard a ghost of his own voice. “Who else . . .”

“Only the Conclave,” the Pontifex replied. “No other Noantri, and no one in the Church, have this knowledge. The Church has swirled with dark rumors for centuries, stories of another document even more dangerous than the Concordat. But that the Concordat—and we—exist is perilous enough for the Church.”

“But Lorenzo knew. How?”

The Pontifex turned his dark gaze on Thomas. He waited; then he spoke. “Ending the persecution of the Noantri, and accepting the help we could give him, brought Martin the Fifth to power over the rival line of Popes then at Avignon. If he had lost that struggle, the Antipope John would have reigned. John was his papal name. He was born Baldassare Cossa.”

“Cossa,” Thomas repeated. He felt simultaneously that vast knowledge was being revealed to him, and that he was unbearably stupid.

“Lorenzo Cardinal Cossa was descended from Baldassare’s brother’s line. The Cossas, believing the Church illegitimate from the moment the Concordat was signed, have been determined to regain the papacy since.”

“Regain? Lorenzo? He’d have . . . made himself Pope?”

“A spy in the retinue of Martin the Fifth brought the knowledge of this”—again, a gesture at the document—“to Baldassare Cossa. Once the Avignon Popes lost the struggle for power, the Cossa family understood what they’d need to regain it: both the Concordat and this Testament. It’s an odd irony that, though it is the Noantri to whom time is no enemy, the Cossas have been willing to wait as long as necessary, passing this knowledge from father to son.”

“And Lorenzo also passed it on?”

“We think not—except to you.”

Thomas felt the meaning of the Pontifex’s words as a physical blow.

“It took more than one hundred and fifty years after the signing of the Concordat to bring the entire Church into line. The last man executed by fire died in 1600. The resulting outcry ended the practice and convinced Jesus and Mary that they could vanish again—could return the Church, and the choice to believe and follow, to men.

“They wrote this Testament. The Noantri were told of its existence, and that it had been placed in the care of the Order of Saint Camillus, chosen because of their humble devotion to the infirm and the dying. We were not told what form the Testament took nor where it was placed. The friars were given to understand their work would be supported as long as they took especial care of this statue, without a reason given.”

“But surely,” Thomas said, “you must have deduced its location. Why not take it into your care? Why leave it here for . . . for someone to find?” By which he meant,
For me to find, and read, and learn.
He meant,
Why force this unwanted knowledge upon me?

The Pontifex nodded. “We had. But it wasn’t ours to move. It was done thus to assure that its keeping would be in the hands of both parties. The Noantri have kept watch over this church since that time, and the friars, over the statue. All was well until the ascendancy of Lorenzo Cossa. He felt himself uniquely positioned for the search for the Concordat.”

“He positioned himself. He positioned me.”

“Thomas?” Livia said. “What I said before, I still think it’s true. The Cardinal believed himself to be doing good.”

Thomas didn’t answer.

In the silence, Livia turned to the Pontifex. “Lord. This knowledge—you understand what a tremendous shock it is. To us both.”

“Of course. It will take time to fully understand it.”

“May I ask—”

“When the Savior,” Thomas interrupted, needing to know the answer to the question Livia was having trouble framing—or maybe her question was different, but he didn’t care, it was this he needed to know—“when he promised eternal life, was it this he meant? Endless human existence? Not transcendent heavenly life, eternally with the Father?” Did he also, then, lie?

“No,” the Pontifex said calmly. “The opposite. He was ready to die for his flock, Father Kelly, to prove his faith and sustain yours. He nearly did. When he was cut down from the cross he was thought to be dead. But Mary Magdalene was Noantri. She knew he still lived—barely, but lived.” He gazed at the wooden statue. “Art and legend have always depicted Mary as miserable and debased until she met Jesus of Nazareth. That was indeed her condition, but not because she was a prostitute—she was not. At that time, the Noantri, with no understanding of what we were, no knowledge of others like ourselves, lived constrained, degraded, furtive lives. The preaching of Jesus, the promise that the least among us could be redeemed, was a revelation to Mary. When he was on the edge of death she struggled with her newfound faith, and realized she could in her way give him what he’d given her: the promise of eternal life.”

“And if he chose not to accept her gift . . .”

The Pontifex nodded again. “She could restore him to his mortality.”