The Map

by T. S. Learner

  ‘Please, Marquis, we are not tourists, and my friend is a very important historian. He is writing an important paper on the ancient estates of southern Spain and he would love to interview both yourself and see your family’s illustrious grounds.’

  ‘A thesis, you say?’

  ‘A detailed history that will be available in both English and Spanish.’

  ‘Marvellous!’ he barked. Three minutes later the heavy wooden door swung open. ‘It’s about time we were recognised for all we’ve done for this country. Come in, come in.’

  He ushered them into the courtyard.

  ‘As you can see, the property is not in the best of condition. I refuse to open it to the public, although I might be forced to, for the income, you know, so tiresome. The whole building and the grounds around are virtually untouched since the sixteenth century, although my own family did not come into possession of the estate until 1613.’

  ‘I see you keep bees,’ Izarra said, smiling at him, determined to charm.

  ‘My honey is famous around here. It’s the flowers and herbs in the area, and it brings in a little money. Besides, my dear, bees are far more industrious than people, as well as trustworthy.’

  He was surprisingly energetic for his age and August had to stride to keep up with him. ‘I am particularly interested in whether there was an old maze on the estate,’ he said to the elderly aristocrat.

  ‘Maze? I’m afraid not, but we do have an old mosaic that is meant to have great historical value. It seems to have sparked a lot of interest all of a sudden – why, only a few weeks ago I had an English visitor asking to look at it, a woman … not a great beauty like yourself, Señorita,’ he told Izarra, with a flirtatious wink. ‘But a woman nevertheless.’

  ‘Was she about five-six, with red hair?’ asked August.

  The old aristocrat grinned. ‘The very same. You know her?’ Without waiting for a reply he turned to Izarra. ‘Seems your friend has been pipped at the post by a competitor!’ He swung back to August. ‘Perhaps you are too late, my friend!’

  ‘The mosaic?’ August prompted him; it was becoming apparent that the man was a little senile.

  ‘That’s right, through here, through here!’ He propelled them through the entrance hall of the villa. Inside, the marble floor was dusty and cracked. An old family portrait hung on one wall, opposite an array of animal horns – antelope through to stag – hunting trophies. At the other end of the entrance hall stood a glass door that led into another exterior courtyard, also enclosed by yet more floors of the villa. The whole courtyard was covered with a mosaic that looked extremely old, possibly even Roman. August recognised the distinctive motif immediately.

  ‘The Tree of Life,’ he murmured, in English.

  ‘What was that, you say?’ the old aristocrat barked, in Spanish.

  ‘My friend is overwhelmed by the beauty of the design,’ Izarra told him, soothing his suspicions.

  August stepped forward eagerly. ‘Can I see? The antiquity is extraordinary.’ The Marquis, pacified by August’s evident awe, pushed open the glass door.

  August walked out onto the mosaic. It felt like sacrilege to be standing upon it. The ten sephiroth were all clearly visible, as were the three vertical lines that made up the design of the Tree. Even more incredibly, in the three sephiroth of the three mazes August had already visited were tiny coloured mosaic pieces that clearly represented the designs of the plants he’d found in them. Vervain and lily in Malkuth at the base, then mandrake root and anise in Yesod, and bay and laurel in the centre sephirot Tiphareth. But what immediately struck August as truly extraordinary was the presence of a sephirot that had not appeared in any of the mazes. It hovered just below Kether, the crowning sephirot at the top of the mosaic. This is it, the key, the first observable trigger to the central mystery. Izarra, noticing August’s excitement, turned to the old man.

  ‘You know I would love to try some of your honey …’

  The old man looked delighted. ‘I can do better than that. I’ll have my maid Maria make coffee and we can have it with some of my honeycomb while your friend interviews me. I can tell you, I have stories that will embellish any historical account. I wrote one myself back in the twenties.’

  ‘Really, I’d love to read it some time,’ August lied, anticipation now thudding through his chest. Just go, so I can be alone with the mosaic, with the key. Go now! The old aristocrat beamed, thrilled to be the centre of his universe once again.

  ‘I’ll be back in a moment, my friends,’ he announced, then hurried into a doorway, his footsteps fading as he wound his way up a back staircase.

  As soon as he was out of sight August ran over to the design and kneeled on the path between Tiphareth and Kether, placing his hands on this new sephirot he’d never seen before. Unlike the other sephiroth, the background within the circle was black, the mosaic fragments glistening darkly, tiny fragments of metallic flake catching the light. It was beautiful and frightening. The imprint of Dominic Baptise’s bare footprints came into August’s mind. Had the monk ever seen this? Had he once stood upon the actual portal?

  ‘Izarra, it’s the Da’ath, the hidden sephirot that is so important to the occult. It has to be the final clue, it has to be.’

  In the centre of the circle was the mosaic of a single eye – fringed with gilded eyelashes made of tiny gold fragment – underneath, written in tiny pieces of pale blue against the black, was a single Hebrew word.

  ‘There it is, the eye of God, el ojo de Dios,’ August found himself whispering, as if he were in church. Why did he feel this sudden wave of reverence, as if in the presence of a higher power? Was it the sheer antiquity of the mosaic or the sheer adrenalin of discovery?

  ‘But what does that mean?’ Izarra pointed to the Hebrew word.

  ‘Adonai, the unnameable name of God.’ He leaned across and ran his fingers over the mosaic, over the design of the sephirot. It was flush to the floor. There was nothing different about it from the rest of the mosaic, no secret trapdoors or hidden compartments. ‘There has to be a key somewhere,’ August murmured.

  They heard a sharp crack behind them. Both August and Izarra recognised the sound immediately. Horrified, they looked up. There was a crash, then the sound of running footsteps. They saw the old man tottering for a second at the second-storey window, clutching a tray of coffee cups and honeycomb, his face a blank map of surprise as blood spread through his shirt. Then he toppled over, gone from sight.

  In seconds both August and Izarra had bolted for cover behind the pillars that fringed the courtyard, their guns drawn. They waited, breathing hard. A moment later Damien Tyson’s face appeared in a ground floor doorway on the opposite side. Izarra crouched and fired at him, the bullet missing by millimetres, ricocheting off the pillar in front of him. Tyson ducked down.

  ‘Why, if it isn’t Andere’s little sister!’ he yelled out. ‘I was wondering who your little helper was, August!’

  ‘Surrender! I’ll make sure you have a fair trial!’ August yelled back, trying to distract him.

  A bullet thudded into the pillar behind which August was hiding.

  ‘Surrender? Oh boy, you really are deluded. Interpol is just behind me and MI5 think you’re a Soviet spy – you won’t make it through to lunchtime and you want me to surrender?’ Another bullet clipped the pillar where Izarra had been crouching, but she had already moved to the next, around the corner of the courtyard and closer to Tyson.

  ‘Izarra! You should have seen your sister beg for her life, the great lioness on her knees!’ Tyson shouted.

  ‘I will kill him!’ Izarra hissed under her breath.

  ‘Izarra!’ August whispered, urgently, and signed to her to hold her position and cover him, while he moved in the other direction to pincer Tyson.

  ‘She was a whore with Jimmy, a real whore. You know I could have had her if I wanted,’ Tyson continued to taunt Izarra, who responded by taking another shot at the pillar by the doorway. August took the opportunity
to shuffle quickly around the opposite corner of the courtyard to Izarra. A bullet flew behind him as he settled behind the pillar now just a few feet from Tyson. He looked across at Izarra, who signed that she would move forward next. August shook his head furiously, just as Tyson called out once more.

  ‘She offered herself to me then, you know, Izarra, but I told her I’d rather have you. Are you ready for me now?’

  Izarra’s face had set in grim fury, but she just nodded back at August and stepped out from behind her pillar to run the short distance to the next at the corner nearest Tyson, firing a shot as she went.

  August shot twice at Tyson’s pillar, to keep him pinned down, but then watched in silent horror as Izarra carried on around the corner, walking between the pillars, now with her arm outstretched, firing three times at Tyson, to whom she presented an open target. Halfway across the yard, August heard the empty click of the chamber as the small clip in her Walther pistol was exhausted, and, praying that one of her bullets had struck its target, he stepped into the open courtyard.

  For a second a terrible silence filled the space, then as if time had magnified, August became aware of a single bee dancing across a single shaft of sunlight between Izarra and the column where Tyson remained hidden. The sound of another gunshot ripped through the stillness, Izarra’s torso jolting back as she was hit, her body crumpling to the ground with slow fatal grace.

  ‘No!’ August ran to her, only to feel the sting of a bullet hit his right arm and the sound of his own gun, flung by the violence of the shot, falling with a clatter onto the mosaic several feet away from him. Before he had a chance to pick it up, Tyson had stepped out from the pillar and trained his gun on August.

  ‘Don’t move.’ Tyson kicked August’s Mauser away.

  Ignoring him, August kneeled over Izarra, slipping his good arm under her. Her head fell back, her hair cascading over his arm one last time. Staring down, he couldn’t assimilate the reality of the moment; it was as if a parallel life had peeled away when the old man had gone to make coffee and somewhere Izarra was still alive, they were still staring down at the mosaic. I’m in shock. I have to get back into my skin. I have to survive.

  ‘Such a shame, she was beautiful. Not quite as beautiful as her sister, but pretty enough. Get up!’ Tyson pushed his gun into August’s back.

  August laid Izarra’s body gently down, then stood, his hands up. Close-up, Damien Tyson looked utterly benign, ordinary, his perfectly symmetrical features pleasant yet forgettable. There was nothing definably evil about his persona and yet that in itself was deeply disturbing. Beware the smiling assassin. It was something that had once been said to August when training with the SOE, but he’d never imagined it would be in peacetime that he would actually encounter him.

  ‘I’ve killed but I’ve never murdered. How does it feel, Tyson?’

  ‘Omnipotent. Such an interesting concept, don’t you think? There is an art to murder, just as there is an art to dying. This …’ he gestured towards Izarra, ‘… was an expedient necessity. She deserved something a little slower, a littler grander. But you lie, you’ve murdered – what about Charlie, August?’

  Charlie? How do you know about Charlie? Those last seconds in that forest clearing slammed into his mind and body as if Tyson had already killed him; Charlie turning, something glinting hidden in his hand, Charlie smiling as if he knew. Did I kill Charlie or did Charlie kill himself? August stared at Tyson, wondering if he threw himself on the man, how long it would take before Tyson’s bullet reached his heart. Bluff, spin him out, it will give you time. Time for what?

  ‘That’s between me and Charlie and our gods.’

  ‘Whatever gives you moral redemption. Personally, I prefer stark realism. Anyhow, I should thank you personally for doing such a thorough job on translating the alchemist’s chronicle. Even if your motivation was naive, you still managed, where many have failed, to follow Shimon Ruiz de Luna’s cryptic map. And provide me with the last pieces of the puzzle that had eluded me all those years, you could say, even if you were missing the last pivotal one.’

  Tyson pulled out something from inside his jacket. He held it up.

  ‘The last page of the chronicle, August, the last piece of the puzzle Shimon Ruiz de Luna gave his readers, the final letter of his message to the future. But I guess you realised it was missing.’

  August stared at the page: it was an illustration of a herb, one he’d never seen before. Was this, was this what Izarra died for? The reality of her death had now begun a slow burn up from his heart, clawing his chest and eyes. Stay focused. You must defeat him, for her, for them all. Tyson waved the page tantalisingly in front of him then pulled it away before he had a chance to read it.

  ‘Put your hands on your head and turn around!’

  Trying to ignore the tickle of blood running from his chipped wrist and gritting his teeth against the pain of the gunshot wound, August obeyed. The next thing he felt was the cold steel of Tyson’s gun in the small of his back.

  ‘Start walking.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Out, out toward the gate.’ Tyson pushed the gun harder into August’s back, propelling him towards an iron gate set in the far corner of the courtyard that appeared to lead out to fields behind the property.

  ‘You see, August, you really learned nothing on this journey, did you? Because you were looking for something that was material, something that you thought would be recognisably powerful. The ultimate weapon perhaps, the ultimate treasure?’

  Tyson pushed August through the gate. August stumbled on the stony path, his hand throbbing, his mind working desperately to catch Tyson off-guard, but the gun was always there, now held to the back of his head.

  ‘Move!’ Tyson commanded, pushing August in the direction of a small field not much bigger than a vegetable patch. ‘The reason you saw nothing was because the treasure wasn’t gold or some extraordinary weapon but a simple plant … a very rare herb found only in one particular area of the Iberian Peninsula, originally planted by Elazar ibn Yehuda, the court physician of Caliph Al-Walid centuries ago, then rediscovered by Shimon Ruiz de Luna in the seventeenth century.’ They were now nearing the little meadow, an absurdly idyllic patch of almost luminous green, flooded by sunlight. It looked like heaven itself, August thought wildly, aware that his mind had started to free associate wildly due to blood loss. Don’t faint, don’t faint, fall down now and you die. Behind him Tyson’s voice continued like a red-hot prod to his back.

  ‘When Shimon rediscovered the plant, he sought ways of cultivating and protecting the secret for it had extraordinary qualities when digested, ones that could be extremely powerful in the right hands.’ They stopped in the middle of the little field. Tyson faced August and he held out the page again.

  ‘Look at the page, then around you,’ Tyson commanded.

  August peered at the page; the distinctive feathering of the leaves, the curious seed pod that looked like a spiky dandelion but heavier, the plant was one he’d never seen anything like before. Then he realised they were standing in a field of the very same plant.

  ‘You mean this was where —’

  ‘Exactly. This was Shimon’s gift to the occult world, whether he intended it or not. And it still survives, centuries later. August, this is a living gateway to the eyes of God. Not that you will ever experience it. Kneel!’

  August kneeled, fully prepared to die. In some strange logic, now that Izarra was gone, it felt almost redemptive, like there was a curious moral symmetry to being murdered in a beautiful field by a man who had perpetuated a massacre, when August himself had once given the command to another unnamed firing squad. He wanted to destroy Tyson, but he’d lost the will to keep living himself. Did he feel fear? With that gun pointing down at his head, he was aware of the terror of the body, the uncontrollable shaking, the loosing of the bowels, the great vertigo of the possibility of life and time falling away. August feared pain, he feared a loss of dignity, but he was ready. He clo
sed his eyes and breathed in the scent of that extraordinary plant, a curious sweet scent – lemony undercut with musk – and waited to die. And suddenly there was Charlie kneeling beside him, the sense of him, his very presence crisp and sharp in its reality.

  ‘It wasn’t you,’ Charlie whispered, his proximity so tangible that August forgot everything, that he was about to die, that Charlie was dead, Izarra, his past, the war, everything except the fact that he was kneeling beside his friend and they were together, like they used to be, in ageless innocent youth. ‘It was never you, August, I killed myself.’ And August felt a great weight lift. Was this death? he marvelled, waiting.

  Instead there was the sound of a single short scream from Tyson and the thudding of a body falling to the ground.

  August opened his eyes. Tyson lay writhing in agony on the ground, clutching a wound in his side, blood gushing from it, his gun on the ground inches away. Gabirel crouched nearby, a bloodstained scythe at his feet, his eyes wide with both anger and terror. The youth reached for Tyson’s gun and pointed it, hand shaking, at Tyson.

  ‘Gabirel!’ Stunned to see the boy, August stood, for a moment in total disbelief, then Tyson’s groans bought him sharply back to reality. He took the gun from Gabirel, who, trembling violently, had gone into shock. ‘How are you here? How did you know where to find me?’ August shook him, trying to make his wide eyes focus.

  Before Gabirel had a chance to explain, Tyson, now white-faced, his bloody hand clutching his wound, spoke from where he lay dying. ‘He knew where to find you because he has eaten the herb.’ Tyson chuckled dryly. ‘Tell him, Gabirel, tell him how you’ve always had second sight!’ August looked at Gabirel, who nodded solemnly, his face now a blank mask.

  Tyson groaned loudly, struggling to draw breath. ‘This was the alchemist’s great treasure, los ojos de Dios, the gift of prediction – almost faultless. Elazar ibn Yehuda, the Caliph’s physician, cultivated the plant to save humanity from continuing to make historical mistakes …’ His voice faded into a whisper.