Sanctus. Simon Toyne
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speed-dialled his mobile, wondering where he could have gone so suddenly. Mariella was obviously with him or she’d have picked up instead. The mobile connected. Cut straight to voicemail.
‘The monk has fallen,’ she said simply.
As she hung up, she realized she had tears in her eyes. She had watched and waited for the sign for so long, like generations of sentries before her. Now it seemed as if this too was just another false dawn. She took one last look at the empty summit then replaced the binoculars in the concealed cupboard and tapped a fifteen-digit sequence into the keyboard on the front of her safe. After a few seconds there was a hollow click.
A box the size of a laptop computer and about three times as thick lay behind the blast-proof titanium door, encased in moulded grey foam. Kathryn slid it free then carried it to the ottoman in front of the sofa.
The incredibly tough polycarbonate resin looked and felt like stone. She released the hidden catches holding the lid in place. Two fragments of slate lay inside, one above the other, each with faint markings etched on its surface. She looked down at the familiar pieces, carefully split from a seam by a prehistoric hand. All that remained of an ancient book, the carved symbols predated those of the Old Testament and could only hint at what else it might have contained. Its language was known as Malan, of the ancient tribe of Mala – Kathryn Mann’s ancestors. In the gloom she looked at the familiar shape the lines made.
It was the sacred shape of the Tau, adopted by the Greeks as their letter ‘T’ but older than language, symbol of the sun and the most ancient of gods. To the Sumerians it was Tammuz; the Romans called it Mithras, to the Greeks it was Attis. It was a symbol so sacred it had been placed on the lips of Egyptian kings as they were initiated into the mysteries. It symbolized life, resurrection and blood sacrifice. It was the shape the monk had formed with his body as he stood on top of the Citadel for all the world to see.
She read the words now, translating them in her head, matching their meaning with the heady symbolism and the events of the past few hours.
The one true cross will appear on earth
All will see it in a single moment – all will wonder
The cross will fall
The cross will rise
To unlock the Sacrament
And bring forth a new age
Beneath this last line she could see the tips of other beheaded symbols but the jagged edge of the broken slate drew an uneven line across them, preventing further knowledge of what they might have said.
The first two lines were easy enough to reconcile.
The true sign of the cross was the sign of the Tau, older by far than the Christian cross, and it had appeared on earth the moment the monk had spread his arms.
All had seen it in a single moment via the international news networks. All had wondered because it was extraordinary and unprecedented, and no one knew what it meant.
Then she faltered. She knew the text was incomplete, but she could not see a way past what remained.
The cross had indeed fallen, as the prophecy had foretold; but the cross had been a man.
She looked beyond the window. The Citadel was about eleven hundred feet from base to peak, and he had fallen down the sheer eastern face.
How could anyone possibly rise from that?
16
Athanasius clutched the loose bundle of documents to his chest as he rapped on the gilded door of the Abbot’s chambers. There was no reply. He slipped inside and found, to his great relief, that the room was empty. It meant, for the moment at least, he did not have to converse with the Abbot about how the problem of Brother Samuel had now been solved. It had brought him no joy. Brother Samuel had been one of his closest friends before he had chosen the path of the Sancti and disappeared forever into the strictly segregated upper reaches of the mountain. And now he was dead.
He arrived at the desk and laid out the day’s business, splitting the documents into two piles. The first contained the daily updates of the internal workings of the Citadel, stock-takes of provisions and schedules of works for the constant and ongoing repairs. The second much larger pile comprised reports of the Church’s vast interests beyond the walls of the Citadel – anything from the latest discoveries at current archaeological digs worldwide; synopses of current theological papers; outlines of books that had been submitted for publication; sometimes even proposals for television programmes or documentaries. Most of this information came from various official bodies either funded or wholly owned by the Church, but some of it was gleaned by the vast network of unofficial informers who worked silently in every part of the modern establishment and were as much a part of the Citadel’s tradition and history as were the prayers and sermons that made up the devotional day.
Athanasius glanced at the top sheet. It was a report submitted by an agent called Kafziel – one of the Church’s most prolific spies. Fragments of an ancient manuscript had been discovered in the ruins of a temple at a dig in Syria and he recommended an immediate ‘A and I’ – Acquisition and Investigation to learn and neutralize any threat they may contain. Athanasius shook his head. Another piece of priceless antiquity would undoubtedly end up locked in the gloom of the great library. His feelings on this continued policy was no secret within the Citadel. He had argued, along with Brother Samuel and Father Thomas – inventor and implementer of so many improvements within the library, that the hoarding of knowledge and censorship of alternative ideas was the sign of a weak church in a modern and open world. The three of them had often talked in private of a time when the Citadel’s great repository of learning might be shared with the outside for the greater good of God and man. Then Samuel had chosen to follow the ancient and secretive path of the Sancti and Athanasius could not help but feel that all their hopes had died with him. Everything Samuel had been associated with during his life in the Citadel would now be tainted.
He felt tears prick the corners of his eyes as he looked down at the day’s documents and imagined the news they would bring in the weeks to come: endless reports regarding the monk who had fallen, and how the world perceived it. He turned and headed back to the gilded door, blotting his eyes with the back of his hand as he slipped from the Abbot’s chambers and back into the mountain labyrinth. He needed to find somewhere private, where he could allow his emotions to run free.
Head down, he marched purposefully through the crisply air-conditioned tunnels. The wide, brightly lit thoroughfares narrowed into a dimly lit staircase leading to a narrow corridor beneath the great cathedral cave, lined on each side by doors to small private chapels. At the far end of the passage a candle burned in a shallow depression cut into the rock by one such door, denoting that the room beyond it was already occupied. Athanasius stepped inside. The few votive candles that lit the interior flickered in the wash of the closing door and light shimmered across the low, soot-stained ceiling and the T-shaped cross standing on a stone shelf cut into the far wall. A man in a plain black cassock was hunched in prayer before it.
The priest began to turn, but Athanasius did not need to see his face to know who it was. He dropped to the floor beside him and gripped him in a sudden and desperate embrace, the sounds of his sobs muffled by the thick material of his companion’s robes. They held each other like this for long minutes, neither speaking, locked in grief. Finally Athanasius drew back and looked into the round white face and intelligent blue eyes of Father Thomas, his black hair receding slightly and touched with grey at the temples, his cheeks glistening with tears in the candlelight.
‘I feel like all is lost.’
‘We are still here, Brother Athanasius. And what we three discussed in this room; that is not lost.’
Athanasius managed a smile, warmed by his friend’s words.
‘And