Enoch's Device (10 page)

S
tanding before the wall of
scrawled symbols in the crypt of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Dónall looked stunned. “Say that again?” he asked Remi.

Remi smiled perversely. “We know where the Book of Enoch is hidden.”

“What’s the Book of Enoch?” Ciarán asked.

Dónall tried to explain. “Remember that curious verse in Genesis? The Book of Enoch supposedly tells the whole tale.”

Ciarán blinked in astonishment. “But it’s not part of scripture.”

“That’s because the Church does not want you to know about it,” Remi insisted. “It is the subject of the greatest conspiracy ever perpetrated in the name of theology. Nearly every copy of this book, a book that had been well known to the apostles and the ancient Jews—a book as old as the book of Genesis, perhaps—was destroyed by our church fathers five hundred years ago, by men who perpetrated a fantastic lie conceived by none other than Saint Augustine!”

Remi’s face reddened. “What
of
that verse in Genesis? ‘
When the Sons of God went into the daughters of men . . .
’ Who are the sons of God? Throughout the Old Testament, ‘sons of God’ refers to the angels. Nowhere does it refer to mortal men. The early Christians and the Jews accepted that the sons of God were divine beings. But did that deter Augustine? No! To hide the divine origins of the sons of God, he proclaimed they were the righteous—and mortal—sons of Seth. And that the ‘daughters of men’ were not just human women but, specifically, the sinful daughters of the line of Cain. Are we to believe that God’s wrath was brought upon the earth because the Sethites and Cainites interbred? Was that the great sin that nearly destroyed all creation? And what of the Nephilim, the giants spoken of in that verse? How could two mortal lines produce such offspring? Augustine ignores all this, all in the name of rationalizing religion and suppressing the supernatural origins of everything the Church fears! And now even to suggest the true meaning of that verse is heresy!”

Remi’s voice echoed through the crypt. The hulking shapes of the Merovingian sarcophagi loomed beyond the shrine, dimly visible in the flickering candlelight. Dónall still looked dazed. “How did you find it?” he asked.

“The truth can never be completely suppressed,” Remi said vehemently. “A copy of the Book of Enoch remained in the Royal Library of Charlemagne—perhaps the only copy in Europe to survive. It was referenced by Maugis d’Aygremont and undoubtedly preserved by him, for Maugis understood the sanctity of the truth. But the book never showed up at Saint-Denis or Reims or anywhere the great library was supposedly scattered. For twenty-five years we searched for it. Then this summer, at the abbey of Saint-Martin, Nicolas found an obscure reference to it, and its possible location. He sent a letter from Tours saying he was going to the place where the book was hidden.” Remi glanced at them hopelessly. “I never heard from him again.”

The color was returning to Dónall’s face. “That doesn’t mean Nicolas is dead.”

“You know what happened to our other brothers!” Remi snapped. “Do you think that was all just an archbishop’s inquisition? Someone else was telling them where we were. Someone who was watching us, who wanted us dead, who needed to make sure we never found that book.”

“But why?” Ciarán pressed. “The book is ancient. Why does it matter now?”

Remi gave him a curious look. “It is the final clue, the crux of the prophecy.”

Dónall shook his head. “He doesn’t know.”

“My God, Dónall!” Remi cried. “The most important secret you hold—and one that affects him, and affects us all. You never
told
him?”

“There is no evidence,” Dónall said.

“
Evidence!
Have you not gazed at the stars?”

Ciarán had a sudden thought. “Maugis said the prophecy was etched in the heavens.”

Remi looked confused. “So you
do
know?”

“I’ve only shown him the verses in Maugis’ book,” Dónall sighed.

Remi grimaced. He grabbed Ciarán by the sleeve and pulled him to one of the drawings on the wall: a sphinx, lion-bodied with a woman’s head and full, unseemly breasts. The image had been sketched in fearsome detail, from the claws on the feline paws to the high cheekbones and flowing hair of the womanly visage. “Do you know the meaning of the sphinx?” he asked fervently.

“Actually,” Ciarán replied, “I think I do.”

Ciarán studied the symbols. Amid a score of others, twelve of them formed a roughly circular pattern around a narrow seven-pointed star. “Etched,” Ciarán said, “means written or drawn, as in a picture. So pictures in the heavens must refer to the constellations.”

“Exactly,” said Remi. “It has been written there since the beginning of time, and you don’t need Maugis to tell you that. Remember the Psalm: ‘
The heavens declare the glory of God; day to day they pour forth speech, and night to night they declare knowledge; their voice goes out to all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.
’ The stars declare the knowledge, don’t you see? The knowledge of the prophecy!”

“The signs of the zodiac,” Ciarán said.

“Precisely! The ancient Greeks, the Egyptians, the Babylonians—every people throughout history has recognized these signs. When read together, they tell a prophecy of things to come. The signs are arranged in a circle, so what they mean depends on where you start reading. If you begin at Aries and end with Pisces, the meaning is very different from beginning with Capricorn and ending with Sagittarius.”

“It leaves a little room for interpretation, doesn’t it?” Dónall added.

“Not if you read them in the right order. The first riddle refers to the sphinx as the key. There it is.” Remi pointed a bony finger at the drawing of the mythical beast. “What does it mean?”

Ciarán had contemplated the answer since that night on the Irish Sea. He studied the picture, then glanced at the circular pattern of symbols.

Remi’s mouth hung open in anticipation.

“The riddle of the sphinx,” Ciarán began. “I thought about the riddle it posed to Oedipus: what creature goes on four legs in the morning, on two at midday, and on three in the evening? The answer, we know, is
man
. So maybe man is the key, but what does that have to do with the constellations?”

“Gemini is sometimes depicted as twin men,” Dónall offered, “and Orion is also a man.”

Remi flashed him a bitter look.

“But Orion is not part of the zodiac,” Ciarán said. “So then I thought, what if the sphinx itself is the riddle? If the sphinx literally
is
the key? A key is used to unlock something—not just chests or doors, but codes. To interpret the symbols, you need a key, something that tells what letter each symbol corresponds to. If the sphinx is literally the key, it should tell us how to read the code—in this case, the constellations. The sphinx has the head of a woman and the body of a lion—a woman first, and lion last. So what if the first constellation is a woman, and the last is a lion?”

“Virgo and Leo!” Remi beamed. “The prophecy starts with Virgo and ends with Leo. That is the key!”

“So it tells you the order in which to read the constellations,” Ciarán said. “But how do you know what they mean?”

“Ah,” Dónall replied, half smiling. “Now you’re traveling farther down the river of interpretation and into the misty seas of theory.”

“But some theories prove true,” Remi insisted. “Open your mind to the possibilities. Enlightened thinkers since ancient times have seen meaning in these constellations. But when the constellations tell the whole tale . . .” He shuddered. “Are you prepared for this?” he asked Ciarán. “It is a secret that forever changes the lives of any to whom it is revealed. A secret for which countless men over thousands of years have sacrificed their lives. One that has wrought great destruction in the past, yet offers a bare sliver of hope in the dark future to come. Once you have seen this, you will never look at the stars the same way again, knowing the dire warning they hold for us all.”

Ciarán had to wonder, was this simply a product of Remi’s madness, or something far graver? Yet he could not restrain his curiosity. “I want to know.”

“Good.” Remi’s eyes brightened. “First, put your mind in the frame of the man who first discovered the prophecy: Arcanus of Atlantis. The Atlanteans were like the ancient Greeks, so you must interpret the story the way a Greek would: in three acts—a beginning, a middle, and an end—with each act composed of four signs. If you begin with Virgo, the first four signs are Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, and Sagittarius.” He gestured to the four symbols that formed the top left third of the circle.

“Virgo, the first sign,” he said, pointing to the bottom of the four symbols, “is depicted as a woman holding a sheaf of wheat—a universal symbol of a seed. The Egyptians saw her as the goddess Isis. To the Celts, she is the Earth Mother. Others see her as Eve. Yet it is her seed that matters, her offspring. Perhaps the seed represents mankind. But Maugis saw something more specific: a bloodline traced through history from Arcanus to Constantine, to the heirs of Charlemagne—the bloodline of a champion of men who must fulfill the prophecy or all will be lost.

“Next is Libra, the scales. They speak to something being weighed and measured—a test. Third comes Scorpio. In Hebrew, its name is
Akrab,
which means war or conflict. Yet in Coptic, the name is
Isidis,
meaning attack of the enemy. And last is Sagittarius. He is the archer who aims his weapon at the heart of Scorpio.”

As Remi spoke, Ciarán recognized the meaning of another picture scrawled on the shrine’s wall: a muscular centaur pulling a bowstring and targeting a monstrous scorpion, its deadly curved sting poised to strike.

“Together, these tell the first act of the prophecy,” Remi continued. “A champion of men will be measured in a battle against the enemy. Only by wielding the weapon, Sagittarius, can the champion survive and defeat the enemy in this battle. Maugis called this the prime conflict.”

Remi pointed to the next four symbols, which completed the next third of the circle.

“Of the next act, we know much less. It begins with Capricorn, the goat, a universal symbol of sacrifice. Next is Aquarius, the flowing waters. It is believed this represents a journey. The waters flow into the constellations that surround Pisces, the next sign. Pisces is depicted as two fish bound by a chain. The chain also binds two other constellations: Andromeda, a woman, and Cetus, the Leviathan, a great monster of the sea.”

Flanking the symbols in this half of the circle were sketches of a woman, shamelessly naked yet beautiful, and a creature that looked like a whale, but with the scales of a fish and the jaws of a shark. A chain linked the woman’s wrists to the sea monster’s tail.

“This is where the meaning of the second act becomes a mystery,” Remi continued. “Maugis says nothing of it. Last of the four is Aries, the ram—again, a symbol of sacrifice. So the second act represents a journey of some type that begins and ends with sacrifice.”

Ciarán nodded, his eyes still riveted on the image of Andromeda and the Leviathan.

“The meaning of the final act is clearer.” Remi tapped a finger beside the last four symbols.