The Book of Love (3 page)

“Whoa!” The anchor reeled in her chair. “Don’t you think those are pretty harsh words?”

“No, I think they’re necessary. There were entire cultures in the south of France and areas of Italy that were eradicated for believing exactly what is in my book. They believed that they were descended from Jesus and Mary, and they practiced a beautifully pure form of Christianity that they claimed came directly from Jesus himself, brought to them by Mary Magdalene following the crucifixion.”

“You’re talking about the Cathars.”

“Yes.
Cathar
comes from the Greek word for ‘purity,’ as these people were the purest Christians to live in the Western world. And in the only crusade ever declared against other Christians, the Catholic Church of the thirteenth century massacred the Cathar people en masse. The Inquisition was founded to destroy the Cathars. These people had to be eliminated because they didn’t just know the truth, they
were
the truth. And make no mistake, it was ethnic cleansing. Genocide. Harsh words? Of course they are. But butchering an entire people is harsh, and we can’t hide behind words that try to justify it anymore. The word
crusade
carries a connotation that it was somehow acceptable to murder people in the name of God. So let’s stop calling it that and call it what it was. Mass murder. A holocaust.”

“So when you hear modern scholars say that these people don’t exist or that the traditions of their culture don’t matter—”

“It breaks my heart to think that such evil has the last word.
Of course
there’s very little physical proof left of Mary Magdalene’s presence. Over eight hundred thousand people were slaughtered to ensure that there would be no physical proof left to find. Ever. And the worst of the massacres took place on July twenty-second in 1209 and a year
later in 1210. That’s Mary Magdalene’s feast day, and it’s not a coincidence. Inquisition documents from that time indicated that it was ‘just retribution for these people who believed that the whore was married to Jesus.’”

“Which brings me to the question on everybody’s lips. You claim that the story you tell about Jesus marrying Mary Magdalene comes from a lost gospel you recently discovered in the south of France. Yet you refuse to divulge your sources or tell any more about this mysterious document. What are we to make of this? Your harshest critics say that you have invented the entire story. Why should we believe you when you don’t come forth with more proof that this gospel even exists?”

This question was tough but important, and Maureen had to answer it with great care. What she could not yet reveal to the world was the rest of the story: that the gospel had been taken to Rome by her own cousin, Father Peter Healy. Father Peter and a Vatican committee were now working to authenticate the gospel. Until the Church ruled officially on the priceless manuscript, which could take years given its explosive content and the ramifications for Christianity, Maureen had agreed not to divulge any of the facts surrounding its discovery. In return, she had been allowed to tell her version of Mary Magdalene’s story without fear of reprisals—if and only if she phrased it as fiction for the time being. It was a compromise she had had to make, but one that cost her dearly. She felt real sisterhood with Cassandra, the prophetess of Greek legend: doomed to know and tell the truth, yet equally doomed never to be believed.

Maureen took a breath and answered the question to the best of her ability.

“I have to protect the people who aided in the discovery. And there is a lot more information to be revealed, so I can’t risk those sources at any cost if I want to continue to have access to them. Because I can’t disclose the sources behind my information, I had to write this book as fiction. I am hoping that the story will speak for itself. My job as a storyteller is to awaken audiences to the idea of alternate possibilities to one
of humanity’s greatest stories. This is why I call it the greatest story never told. And certainly, I believe it to be the truth with all my heart. But let people read it and judge it on its own merits. Let readers decide if it feels like the truth to them.”

“We’ll leave it at that—let the reader decide.” The lovely blond anchor was holding up a copy of the book. “
The Truth Against the World
indeed. Thank you, Maureen Paschal, for joining us. A fascinating subject to be sure, but I’m afraid we’re out of time.”

It is the great dichotomy of television that it takes many hours to prepare for a segment that lasts three or four minutes. Still, Maureen was satisfied that she had made her points succinctly and forcefully and was grateful to both the producers and the anchor for their fair and intelligent treatment of the subject.

Now it was all of 7:15 a.m. and Maureen was dressed, made-up, and coiffed to the nines—and wanted nothing more than to go back to bed.

Château des Pommes Bleues
Arques, France
present day

B
ÉRENGER
S
INCLAIR
stood before the encased artifact that dominated his expansive library. The case was mounted above a massive stone fireplace, the hearth currently dormant owing to the late spring warmth that had come to the rocky foothills of the Languedoc. Lord Sinclair was a collector of the highest order. He was a man gifted with the political power and financial resources to obtain most anything he desired. The object in this case was of immense value to him not only because he was a serious collector of historical pieces, but because it was a symbol of his deeply held spiritual beliefs.

To the casual eye it could have been any medieval banner, tattered and faded almost beyond identification. The bloodstains that lined the edges had turned a muddy shade of brown, over five and a half centuries since the soldier who carried this banner had been put to death. Her death.

Closer inspection of the fabric showed what had once been a richly embroidered motto emblazoned across a background of golden fleurs-de-lis. It was a simple yet powerful conjunction of names that read “Jhesus-Maria.” The bold and visionary soldier who had carried this banner was executed for heresy, burned at the stake until dead in the town square of Rouen in 1431. While the official records of her trial indicate a number of convenient charges created by the Church leaders in France at the time, this banner represented her true crime: belief that Jesus had been married to Mary Magdalene, belief that their descendants belonged on the throne of France at any cost, and the subsequent conviction that the original and pure practices of Christianity could be restored under the appropriate king. This was the reason that the names were connected: they were the names of man and wife, conjoined in love and law.

What God has put together, let no man tear asunder. Jhesus-Maria. This was the banner carried by Saint Joan in the siege of Orléans,
the standard of the maid of Lorraine, the emblem of the visionary soldier known to the world as Joan of Arc. Beneath the case inscribed in gold was one of the saint’s more famous quotes. For a girl of nineteen, she had been astonishingly eloquent. And uniquely courageous.

Bérenger Sinclair ran his hands through his thick, dark hair as he stood before the artifact in careful thought. On days like this, when he was tired and strained, he came into his library to pay homage to this brave teenage girl who had been instilled with a faith so great that she feared nothing and sacrificed everything. She inspired him and gave him strength.

He felt a strange closeness to her, for reasons that were complicated within his family and tradition. History recorded that Joan was born on the sixth day of January, although insiders within his heretical culture knew that this was not true. Joan’s actual birth at the vernal equinox had to be obscured to protect her from the dangerous and watchful eyes of the medieval Church. Specifically, she had to be shielded from those who monitored female children from select French families who were born on or near the vernal equinox. January the sixth had been chosen as a “safe” date for Joan’s birth; it was celebrated on the liturgical calendar as the feast day of the Epiphany, the day when light comes to the world. Bérenger knew this well, as it was his own birthday.

Sadly, obscuring her birth date had not saved the little maid of Lorraine from her fate. For some, destiny is inescapable. Joan had embraced her legacy as the daughter of a potent prophecy, all too publicly.

The prophecy, referred to as
l’Attendue
in French and translated into English as “The Expected One,” referred to a series of women in history who would come forward and preserve the truth—the truth about Jesus and Mary Magdalene and about the gospels that were authored by each of them separately. According to the prophecy, these Expected Ones would be born within a certain period surrounding the
vernal equinox, come from a specific bloodline, and be blessed with holy visions that would lead each to the truth, and to her destiny.

As The Expected One of her time, Saint Joan paid the ultimate price, as many others had before and since.

And that was why he was here, in the library today, in contemplation before Joan’s precious artifact. Because he knew in his heart that it was time for him to fulfill his own legacy. For this was where he held something else in common with brave Joan: he had his own prophecy to contend with. And he knew that God had given him extraordinary resources to do just that, knew that all the blessings he had accumulated in his life were provided so that he might fulfill his own promise, in this place and this time in history. He had done this by aiding Maureen in her search, playing an integral role in the discovery of Mary Magdalene’s magnificent, untold story. But that treasured gospel was now out of his reach and in the hands of the Church. Further, it appeared that Maureen was also out of his reach. While he knew he had the ability to assist in her latest quest for the illusory Book of Love, she did not currently share that sentiment.

It was his own fault that Maureen did not want to include him in this. After the Church commandeered the gospel, Bérenger had behaved like an insensitive dolt toward her, something for which he now did heavy penance.

At a loss to determine exactly what his role was currently, he was feeling rudderless and alone. This thing called destiny was a complex and often inscrutable taskmaster.

“Bérenger, may I speak to you?”

Turning to the door, Bérenger smiled at the hulking, masculine form of Roland Gélis, his closest friend and confidant. Roland had lived at the château since he was a child, when his father was major-domo during the life of Alistair Sinclair, Bérenger’s grandfather and the fearsome family patriarch who built a billion-dollar fortune in North Sea oil. Together, the boys had been raised in the traditions of
Pommes Bleues
, the French phrase that translated to “blue apples.” It was a reference to the large, round grapes found in that region of
France, grapes that, for centuries, had represented the bloodline of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. The association was derived from the verse in John fifteen, “I am the vine and you are the branches.” All descendants of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, either genetically or spiritually, were branches of the vine. The Languedoc was high heretic country.

Though the Gélis family had worked in service to the Sinclairs for several generations, they were not subservient. They were nobility in their own right, in the quiet way that so many families in the Languedoc and Midi-Pyrenees region were, carrying the secret traditions of their people with extraordinary grace and dignity, even when subjected to the greatest persecutions. The Gélises were of Cathar heritage, and they were pure.

“Of course, Roland. Come in.”

Roland sensed immediately that the Scotsman was not himself.

“What is bothering you, brother?”

Bérenger shook his head. “Nothing. Everything.” He took a breath and managed to look embarrassed as he confessed, “I fear I am something of a lost sheep without my shepherdess.”

“Ah.” Roland understood immediately. Bérenger had been self-flagellating over Maureen since the argument that had trounced their fledgling relationship before it had ever had time to grow. Prior to that explosion, they had all assumed that given the immense adventure they shared during the search for Magdalene’s lost gospel, they would remain inseparable: Bérenger Sinclair and Maureen Paschal, Roland Gélis and Tamara Wisdom, who was Maureen’s best friend and Roland’s fiancée. They were the Four Musketeers, bound by honor and a common mission—to defend the truth against the world. They had even installed a wood plaque inscribed with the famous quote from D’Artagnan over the library door:

A
LL FOR ONE, ONE FOR ALL—THAT IS OUR MOTTO, IS IT NOT
?

But when Maureen returned to California to work on her book, some of that intimacy began to erode. Maureen was consumed with
the passion to tell Magdalene’s story, and to chronicle their adventures in finding it while they were still so fresh in her mind. That was her mission and Bérenger respected her for it. They had all left her alone and hoped she would return to the château when she was ready. But since the release of the book, Maureen was busier than she had ever been. She had time only for the work that Mary had given her.