by C. M. Palov
“Alas, no, but the foundation of the Templar church is visible.”
“I’m guessing that’s all it took to fuel your youthful imagination.”
“The vicar, something of an amateur historian, was quite knowledgeable about the Templars.” He smiled, the memory a pleasant one. “That first summer I haunted the local library, reading everything related to the Knights Templar. The more I learned about their heroic exploits in the Holy Land, the more enamored I became. Aunt Winnie put her foot down when she caught me creeping about in the garden dressed in a white bedsheet, clutching a brolly in one hand and a butter knife in the other as I reenacted the Siege of Acre.”
Chuckling, Edie reached over and smoothed a lock of hair from his brow. “As an adult, do you ever, you know, fantasize about being a Knights Templar?”
“You mean do I still imagine myself swinging a broadsword at Acre? No, never,” he retorted, emphatically shaking his head. “The fact that the Templars didn’t shave, rarely bathed, and that they took a vow of celibacy doesn’t make for a lusty male fantasy.”
“Oooh, I want to hear more about the lusty stuff.” As she spoke, Edie provocatively shimmied her shoulders.
“There’s a reason why St. Bernard of Clairvaux famously wrote that ‘the company of women is a dangerous thing, for by it the devil has led many from the straight path to Paradise.’ ” He gestured to the small stack of books on the tabletop. “Since I’m on this blasted quest, I must refrain from the pleasures of the flesh.”
She scooted her backside off the edge of the table—landing squarely in his lap.
Unable to help himself, Caedmon slid a hand under her skirt.
Wrapping her arms around his neck, Edie leaned in close and whispered, “If you don’t tell St. Bernard, I won’t tell St. Bernard.”
CHAPTER 50
“Your dressing gown, milady.”
Edie languorously rolled onto her back and peered up at Caedmon, a red silk kimono dangling from his fingertips. Sprawled on the mussed bed, she felt like a castaway who’d washed up onto a warm, welcoming beach. Surrounded by a sea of colorful pillows.
“Thank you, Sir Peter.” She took the kimono from him. Their hands brushed. She loved Caedmon’s hands. Loved the fact that they were lean and strong. That his fingers were sprinkled with sun-bleached hair. She even loved the smattering of ginger-colored freckles. And she’d yet to tire of seeing his hands on her body.
She swung her bare legs over the side of the mattress. “Now that I’m rejuvenated, I’m ready to hit the books.”
Smiling, Caedmon brushed several damp curls from her face. “Would have taken you to bed hours ago had I known the restorative effect.”
“Magic elixir, what can I say.” She rose to her feet and slipped on the kimono.
“Actually, the seventeenth-century alchemists thought the very same thing, semen used as an ingredient in quite a few alchemical concoctions.”
“Now that is pushing the esoteric envelope. And not in a good way.” Belting her kimono, she peered over her shoulder. “Come on, Big Red. You need to get dressed. It’s time to burn the midnight oil.”
“Right.”
He padded, naked, to the other side of the room. Edie’s gaze zeroed in on the deep groove of his spine, the play of muscles in his back as he lifted his robe off a hook on the bathroom door. Donning the blue-checked robe, he winced slightly, his left arm still bandaged.
Seating herself in a wood chair with a carved quatrefoil back, Edie clapped her hands together. “Okay, ready to get to it.”
Caedmon handed her a blank sheet of paper and a sharpened pencil with an eraser. The Mylar-covered print was set between them. “As I said earlier, Bacon’s frontispiece is a damned labyrinth.”
She stared at the engraving. Struck with a sudden idea, she reached across the table and grabbed the magnifying glass, holding it within inches of her face as she examined the engraving. Noticing something odd, she handed the magnifying glass to Caedmon. “Take a look at the ladders, trees, and mulberries.”
Wearing a quizzical expression, he viewed the illustration through the magnifying lens.
A split second later, raising his head, he grinned. Einstein figuring out E, M, and C.
“It’s a numeric cipher! In the Athena box, the mulberry has thirteen drupelets, but next door in the Calliope box, the mulberry has five drupelets.”
“Same with the tree and the ladder.” She snatched the magnifier out of his hand. “As you move from box to box, the number of drupelets, leaves, and rungs changes.”
“Let’s diagram the frontispiece and see what we get.” Snatching a clean sheet of paper, Caedmon quickly drew a blank frontispiece—ten squares around the perimeter of the sheet with a blank square in the middle. He neatly wrote the name of each muse in the appropriate box. “Now we fill in the blanks,” he said, his pencil tip hovering over the Athena box. “You count, I’ll notate. Let’s start with the spear shaker herself.”
For the next few minutes, they seesawed back and forth until all the ladders, trees, and mulberries had been counted.
“Okay, now what?” Although pleased with their progress, Edie had no idea where they were headed.
As he silently stared at their diagram, Caedmon rubbed a hand over his bristled cheek. “I found evidence in the historic record of Bacon using a twenty-four-letter simple replacement cipher. I suggest we begin with that.” He quickly scrawled a cipher chart on a sheet of blank paper.
“I’m guessing that we now work backward and assign a letter to each number.” When he nodded, she began assigning letters to numbers.
Caedmon examined her handiwork.
“Excellent. All we have to do is figure out the correct order in which to read the letters. I suggest we go clockwise, using Pallas Athena as our start point.”
Edie watched, her excitement mounting, as Caedmon next wrote out a long string of letters, thirty in total. She noticed that his hand quivered slightly, his excitement mounting.
“We must now determine where the word breaks occur.” His gaze narrowed as he stared at the string of thirty letters. Then, lips pursed, head cocked to one side, he made four slash marks. That done, he carefully placed his pencil on the table. A student finishing the exam.
“My God . . . it all makes sense now. The auto-da-fé of the fourteenth century. The witch hunts of the seventeenth century.” Lurching to his feet, Caedmon snatched the deciphered message off the table and strode to the other side of the room. With the sheet of paper clutched in his right hand, he furiously paced back and forth across the Aubusson carpet. “This is an absolutely astounding revelation and it certainly explains why the church and the monarchs of the day slaughtered anyone and everyone who had knowledge of the Templar secret. Even in our day and age, this could ignite a religious conflagration.”
Edie scooted back her chair and headed to where Caedmon stood at the window. Curious, she plucked the sheet of paper out of his hand.
moses/egypticus/mined/thoths/stone
“The only three words I completely comprehend are ‘moses mined stone,’ ” she said, wondering what all the hullabaloo was about. “I assume that refers to the fact that Moses carved the Ten Commandments on the stone tablets. Of which there were two, not one. That’s straight out of the book of Exodus, so no shocker there.”
“Well and good. However, the addition of the other two words radically alters the cipher’s meaning. The full message reads ‘Moses Egypticus mined Thoth’s stone.’ Same Moses, but different stone altogether.”
“And why is that significant? Or even shocking?”
“ ‘Thoth’s stone’ is a figure of speech, a metaphor for the Emerald Tablet. In his encrypted frontispiece, Francis Bacon is boldly claiming that not only was Moses, the patriarch of the Old Testament, an Egyptian, but he had the fabled Emerald Tablet in his possession.”
Caedmon walked over to the table and gracelessly plunked down on the Gothic monstrosity. Hunkering forward, he braced his elbows on top of his thighs as
he held his head in his hands.
“It’s truly astonishing. Breathtaking, in fact. My God . . . the Emerald Tablet . . . the Templars’ modus vivendi,” he whispered. “Not only did the Knights Templar have the Emerald Tablet, but Moses may actually have possessed the bloody thing—the most sacred relic in the whole of ancient Egypt.”
Edie rejoined him at the table. “The Emerald Tablet. Um, sounds familiar. Just having a little trouble accessing the correct memory bank.”
“In a nutshell, the mystery religion of ancient Egypt adheres to the premise that our physical reality is created by a Divine Mind. What you and I call ‘God.’ Through an extensive process of spiritual transformation, mankind can have direct knowledge of God and in so doing alter or re-create the material world.”
“Emphasis on the word knowledge.” She was finally beginning to understand the centuries-long hullabaloo. “And the knowledge that we’re talking about is the secret of creation. Wonder if Tonto Sinclair knows that Yawgoog’s Stone is really the Emerald Tablet.”
Caedmon snatched his cell phone off the table.
“Who are you calling?”
“I’m ringing Rubin.” Their host maintained a private residence two floors above the bookshop. The guest suite was one floor above Rubin’s apartment.
Edie glanced at the bedside clock. “It’s kinda late for—”
“Wakey, wakey,” Caedmon boomed in an obnoxiously loud voice. Activating the speaker feature, he put his cell phone back on the table.
“Who the hell is ringing at this hour?” a very irritable Rubin barked back.
“It’s the town crier.” Caedmon grinned. “Put on the kettle. We deciphered the frontispiece.”
CHAPTER 51
Garbed in dressing gowns and bedroom slippers, Caedmon and Edie trudged down the steps to Rubin’s private residence on the second floor. Caedmon had the Mylar-encased frontispiece and the decoded encryption clutched in his right hand.
As they approached Rubin’s flat, the door flung wide open.
“Comrades! The battle is joined. Time to gin up the troops.” Rubin, wearing a black velvet smoking jacket, complete with monogrammed breast pocket and silk ascot, handed each of them a full martini glass. If one ignored the spiky punk coif, he looked like the lead character in a Noel Coward play. At seeing Caedmon’s askance expression, Rubin sheepishly smiled. “I couldn’t locate the teakettle.”
“It’s usually found on top of the Aga.” Caedmon ushered Edie through the doorway. Stepping inside the ultramodern flat, he pointedly directed his gaze toward the kitchen, a sleek chrome kettle in plain sight.
Rubin walked over to the built-in bar and retrieved a third cocktail glass. Raising his glass in their direction, he cheerfully said, “I’m absolutely over the moon that you deciphered the frontispiece. Well done, Sir Peter. And kudos to the lovely Edie as well. Mazel tov.”
Edie’s eyes opened wide. “Boy, he is in good spirits,” she murmured under her breath.
“Dear Peter, I’m about to collapse with anticipation. Do tell! What is the encrypted message that Sir Francis left for posterity?”
Barely able to contain a triumphant smirk, Caedmon handed Rubin the sheet of paper with the decoded encryption.
Moses Egypticus mined Thoth’s stone.
The other man’s eyes narrowed. “You’re certain?”
Caedmon wordlessly nodded.
“Unbelievable. Francis Bacon actually had the sacred Emerald Tablet in his possession.” Rubin’s left hand noticeably shook, gin and vermouth sloshing over the side of his martini glass. “I am utterly staggered.”
Yes, it is staggering, Caedmon thought, still marveling at the revelation. Sought after by pharaohs. Confiscated by Moses. Uncovered by the Knights Templar. And rediscovered by Walter Ralegh. The damned thing had been secretly bandied about for centuries.
The Emerald Tablet.
Nearly fourteen years after the disgrace at Oxford, he’d discovered a missing link actually existed that connected the Knights Templar to ancient Egypt. A missing link that would validate his derided dissertation.
He had only to find the relic.
Visibly agog, their host motioned them toward a low-slung white divan. Mounted on the wall directly behind the settee was a triptych by the twentieth-century abstract painter Francis Bacon. A ghoulishly ironic homage to the famed artist’s namesake. In the near corner a white baby grand piano took center stage.
Bustling over to the kitchen, Rubin retrieved a cerulean blue serving plate piled high with coconut macaroons. “A celebration is in order.” All smiles, he gallantly extended the plate in Edie’s direction.
“Gosh, thanks.” If she thought martinis and macaroons a curious pairing, she hid it well. “And one for the road,” she added, plucking a second macaroon off the plate.
“The only pleasant memory that I have from childhood,” Rubin confided as he set the plate of confections on the glass-topped Noguchi cocktail table, “is Aunt Tovah’s Passover macaroons. Being a smart lad with a voracious sweet tooth, I charmed her out of the recipe before she met her just desserts.” As he sat down on the armchair opposite, he giggled at the tactless pun.
Seating herself on the divan, Edie tucked one leg under her bum, the silk kimono a splash of color against the white leather. A vibrant red poppy in impish full bloom. “I’m still confused as to why the Emerald Tablet is considered a sacred object. If it’s a big emerald, then, yeah, I can see why it’s priceless. But that’s not the same thing as being sacred.”
“According to legend, the Emerald Tablet isn’t made of emeralds but was instead fashioned from a green crystalline substance. Thus the confusing moniker.” Caedmon crossed his legs at the knee. Noticing a hairy shin, he frowned. While Edie and Rubin both seemed perfectly at ease, he felt slightly ridiculous gadding about in his bedclothes.
“Which doesn’t answer the lady’s query,” Rubin said around a chewy mouthful, the man already on his third macaroon. “The Emerald Tablet is not considered sacred; it is sacred. One does not have to believe in a god to respect the sanctity of creation. Oh, for God’s sake! Drink up!” He jutted his chin at their untouched martini glasses. “You’re acting like a pair of Calvinists at a prayer meeting.”
Edie obediently raised her glass. “Earlier, when we were upstairs, Caedmon also mentioned something about the secret of creation. Do you guys mean the Creation with a capital C?”
Rubin spread his arms wide as he gazed at the ceiling, his expression theatrically pious. “ ‘In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.’ Yes, my dear, capital C.” He lowered his arms and smiled. As pleased as Punchinello after he’d committed a truly heinous act. “The Emerald Tablet contains the code to set the whole of Creation into motion.”
“Unlock the code and one can create the primeval atom from which the fabric of time and space comes into existence,” Caedmon explained.
At hearing that, Edie’s jaw nearly came unhinged. “Whoa! You’re talking about the Big Bang, right? Admittedly, quantum physics isn’t my strong suit, but according to the theory, the universe was created when one incredibly dense atom exploded.” No sooner were the words spoken than her brow furrowed. “Now I’m really confused. Is the Emerald Tablet a device of some sort?”
“No, it’s not a device. It is a relic. And as Rubin so aptly put it, the relic contains the code for creation. Sequenced steps to put the process into motion.” Caedmon raised the martini glass to his lips. “A Genesis code, if you will.”
“Okay, we know from the frontispiece that Moses mined the Emerald Tablet, but who made it? How did it become, well, the Emerald Tablet?” Edie’s gaze ricocheted between Caedmon and Rubin, signaling she’d take an answer from either court.
Rubin was the first to hit the ball. “References to the Emerald Tablet have turned up in several Egyptian source materials, most notably the Book of the Dead, which dates to 1500 B.C. And while it’s true that the relic’s authorship is unknown, the honor is most often accorded
to the Egyptian god Thoth whom the ancients considered the originator of all forms of knowledge, hidden and seen.”
Edie’s eyes opened wide. “Thoth? How can that be? I thought that Thoth had the body of a man and the head of an ibis. How could a bird-man have created the Emerald Tablet?”
Lurching to his feet, Rubin strode across the room to the baby grand piano and seated himself at the keyboard. “The aforementioned Book of the Dead records that in the Zep Tepi, that being the epoch before the Great Flood some twelve thousand years ago, mysterious visitors appeared in Egypt, the sole survivors of Atlantis. These visitors, who were deemed gods by the more primitive Egyptians, introduced the hidden stream of knowledge to the Nile valley. Thoth, the preeminent visitor of the group, became known as the vehicle of all knowledge, the word made manifest. For it was Thoth who created language, science, and medicine. Thus he was deified as Thoth the Thrice Great.”
Pronouncement made, Rubin wiggled all ten fingers, then launched into a Schubert piano lied. Winterreise, unless he was greatly mistaken. Caedmon wondered at the musical selection, one of those dreary pieces that harkened to the pain of love lost.
As abruptly as it began, the recital ended.
“There are numerous ancient writers who claim that Thoth hid a number of sacred relics and esoteric texts inside a massive pair of magnificently crafted columns,” Caedmon said, untangling a few more strands. “The cache, which included the Emerald Tablet, remained concealed for centuries.”
Still seated at the piano bench, Rubin swiveled in their direction. “Which brings us to the great Egyptian heretic, the pharaoh Akhenaton who ruled during the Eighteenth Dynasty.”
“The charge of heresy was leveled when Akhenaton insisted that there was not a central god in the Egyptian pantheon; there was only one god, the Aten,” Caedmon informed Edie, the conversation having veered to a topic that had long fascinated him. “Aten was declared the Supreme Being of Radiant Light, his divine essence embodied in the rays of the sun disk and manifested in the creative process.”
