by Mark Teppo
A connection came together in my head. It was something I had seen, but not like this. Not so naked. Usually there was a stone in the foreground. A tomb marker. And other figures too. Shepherds, clustered around the stone, inspecting the inscription.
"Et in Arcadia ego," I said. It was a painting by Poussin; the Louvre had it. Seventeenth-century pastoral piece, thought to be cryptically symbolic for a number of pseudo-historical conspiracies. This tapestry was the same view, minus the stone and the shepherds. The world, unmarked by man. Still pristine, still innocent.
My guide nodded, a glimmer of disappointment in her eyes, and stepped back from the mosaic. A breeze touched my cheek, a tiny caress of wind that wasn't the product of some HVAC system. A natural aroma of foliage and blooming flowers filled my nose and I turned toward its source. The tapestry fluttered, the wind coming from the other side, and the intoxicating scent of a pure land, untainted by exhaust or sewage, was a heady ambrosia. I realized the tapestry was nearly transparent. The landscape wasn't a picture detailed on the cloth hanging between the columns, but it was what lay beyond the curtain.
I stepped forward, and was about to touch the fabric when the Chorus sparked against my side, reminding me of the stone in my coat pocket. I stopped, and reached for the hot rock I had brought with me from the beach at Mont-Saint-Michel. "Here," I said, offering it to the daughter.
"What is it?" she asked, making no motion to take the stone.
"What's left of Jacob Spiertz," I said. "Lose it somewhere in here, will you? And never catalogue it."
When the Spear had shattered the skull, most of the pieces went into the water and most of Spiertz's soul had been harvested by the Chorus. But not all of it. A tiny nugget had remained, a twisted coal of an emotional resonance with the faintest hint of a malignant personality. It wasn't much; but it was the Architect. If there were other pieces, they would be devoured by the sea. This stone had fallen above the tide line, and I had picked it up. Just so it couldn't grow into something larger. Lost in the Archives, it would never have the chance to do so again.
A smile ghosted across her lips, and after she took the stone, she transferred it to her other hand so that she could hold out her right again. "Nuriye," she introduced herself when I realized what she was doing and took her hand.
"Michael," I replied.
"Vivienne warned me about you," she continued. "Said you were the worst sort of bull."
I glanced around at the stacks. "This being her china shop, I suppose."
The ghost of a smile stayed on her lips as she raised an eyebrow, and that was as much confirmation as I was going to get.
"I'll try to be careful," I said.
"Please do." She hefted the stone. "This grants you some respect, but don't assume my vigilance is lessened in any way."
"Of course not."
Nuriye nodded toward the tapestry. "The way is open to you now. Go."
Dismissed and divested of my burden, I reached out to touch the fabric, expecting to feel the tapestry squirm in my hand, but all I encountered was marble tile. The picture still moved, but all I touched was polished stone. I had been fooled by an illusion. One that could even be nothing more than an image projected from behind me.
Turning to rebuke Nuriye about the bad joke, I realized I wasn't in the stacks anymore.
The world had moved, and only as I became aware of the shift, did it actualize and become solid. The stacks became walls, the tall ceiling lowered until it wasn't more than a few feet over my head, and the mosaic of the garden became a different picture.
Inside the cube, the Chorus hissed. They were riled up, unhappy about the sudden transition from one space to another, but my trio of wise men kept them calm. They had been here before. They were familiar with the way the inner sanctum admitted visitors.
The walls of the small room were made from large blocks of granite hewn from the earth with little grace. The stone was old enough that it no longer absorbed heat; it was just the cold and dead flesh of the Land.
Each of the four walls held only one picture, a large portrait centered so that the subject could look directly at the small sculpture in the middle of the room. The lower portion of the sculpture was about three feet high, round and vaguely Venus-shaped—like the archetypal figure found at Willendorf—though it was so old, any similarity may well have been a suggestion of the shadows on its mottled sides more than actual representation. The top was a basin, as if the supporting figure balanced a concave bowl on its head, and it was filled with water and light.
The eyes of the figures in the paintings reflected back the golden glow. I was alone, so I took a few minutes to examine the pictures. Three men, one woman: all done in medieval style. Earlier than Poussin's painting, but not so far back as to be the same era as the subjects therein. Later. Probably mid-thirteenth century or so.
The woman was clearly a nun of some kind, and she sat in a gold chair, surrounded by a host of fearful priests. The background of the painting was a series of concentric mandalas, done in oranges and yellows. Hildegard of Bingen, most likely, done in her style, as I didn't recall her working in this size.
The paintings on either side of her were priests, and the portraits, while sporting stylistic differences, were too similar to be accidental. Their poses were mirror opposites, right down to the curvature and spacing of their gestures. The one on the left hid his head under a miter and he stood before the ghostly outline of a church. At first, I thought it was because the painting was unfinished, and then I realized it was the church itself that wasn't done. The right-hand man stood in a library, and the distribution of color in the books behind him suggested the same outline as in the painting opposite, a ghostly presentation of the church.
The priest on the right was St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the man most directly responsible for the Templars. I didn't recognize the man on the left, though if I were to guess, he was an architect—a priest who showed his devotion by building temples. Twelfth century. I corrected my assessment. Bernard and Hildegard had both flourished in the twelfth century. Right at the beginning of the Gothic period. Lots of churches went up at that time.
Abbot Suger, Cristobel identified the other man, narrowing the field of candidates to one. In front of the construction of Saint-Denis.
As I walked over to the last painting, I glanced in the basin. It was empty but for the water, and the golden light came from the inner lining, a beaten layer of gold.
Hildegard, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Abbot Suger. I ran the names around in my head as I looked at the last painting. Contemporaries, so it would follow that the last one was as well, but I couldn't come up with a name. Nor did Cristobel or the rest of the Chorus provide one.
The pose was the stance of the Magician—one hand up toward Heaven, the other pointed at the ground—but I couldn't place his face. I stepped closer, peering at the object in his hand. It was smaller than a traditional wand. A writing implement of some kind. He sat in a plain chair, between two columns, and the landscape behind him was similar to Poussin's. Was it the same?
I didn't know, and I stared at his face for a long time, trying to divine his secrets. There was something about his eyes, about his sad, sardonic smile that hinted at a key. Hidden there on his tongue. Waiting to be discovered.
One of Houdini's great secrets was that his wife always carried the skeleton key that he would use to pick the locks. Just before he was thrown off a bridge, she would rush in and give him one last kiss. In that moment, their mouths locked together, she'd pass him the key.
I imagined Houdini's expression was much like the one in the painting as he allowed himself to be led to the edge and thrown into the river. Old lover, cold mother: hide me, and let me divest myself of my secrets. Let me be reborn from your darkness.
What sort of magician was he?
XXIX
Have you identified them?" Vivienne asked.
She was standing beside the stone urn. The glow from the basin gave her skin a Med
iterranean warmth, making her look more like a true sister to the daughter who had escorted me than a spiritual one.
"I have, I think."
"Do you know what connects them all?" she asked.
I glanced back over my shoulder at the mystery man one more time. "Not entirely. Hildegard, Bernard, and Suger were all contemporaries, but I'm not sure who he is. Some noble, perhaps. A patron? I don't know my twelfth-century nobility that well." An image drifted up from the deep well of the Chorus. An empty boat, its oars missing. A single pole resting across its bench. Something that could have been a spear shaft. Or a fishing pole. "The Fisher King?"
Vivienne inclined her head an inch or so. "Perhaps. The Hierarch was more invisible in those days. Not many knew who he was." She indicated the others. "These are the first Architects. The original trinity. The Visionary. The Scryer. The Mason." She pointed at each as she named them. Bernard. Hildegard. Suger.
The trinity. I let that sink in. Was it an accident that I had been directed to the Visionary when I had first arrived? That the Mason had been holding—though, in some ways, it could be argued that he had been, in fact, guarding—the Spear? That the one Architect still manipulating me was the Scryer?
Too many coincidences. This was the key to Philippe's master plan. Re-creating the cosmology. Recasting the original players. Which meant—
"You're part of the plan," I said.
Vivienne inclined her head. "We are all part of a 'plan,' Michael."
"No, I mean, this one. Philippe's succession. You knew what he was planning." The wheels turned in my head. "And so did Marielle."
Vivienne looked away, gazing into the golden water, and the light reflected from her eyes. "We are daughters," she said. "It is not our place to participate in the games of our fathers. In the games of men."
"Bullshit," I said, recalling something Lafoutain had tried to tell me before the poison had taken him. "You're just as capable as any of them."
A faint smile creased her lips. "That's very flattering of you to say so, but you are—if I may remind you—Venefice. Your vote of confidence carries little weight with your brothers."
I indicated the picture of Hildegard. "But she was one of the original Architects. Doesn't that count for something?"
"Not for a few hundred years, it hasn't."
"But aren't the Archives run by women? Les Filles de Mnémosyne. You said as much to me earlier. You are as close to pure knowledge as I will ever find. How is that not recognition of your roles within the organization?"
"We are nuns, Michael. Cloistered here, with all the other treasures. We can't leave."
An involuntary shiver raced up my back. To be trapped inside this building for the rest of my life. It wouldn't take long before the Archives—seemingly infinite—shrunk down to a room like this one. Ever-present walls and ceiling. No natural light. Not being able to feel the wind or the rain. I wasn't claustrophobic; rather, I was accustomed to having a sky overhead.
I had been raised on a farm in rural Idaho. We could see the Grand Tetons from the back porch of my grandfather's ranch. Every summer, I had slept outside, under the stars, more often than in my own bed. As soon as I had been strong enough to lift my own weight, I had started climbing. The apple trees in my grandmother's tiny orchard. The outbuildings of the ranch. The rocky bluff on the other side of the river; and later, when I was in high school, any cliff I could drive to, climb, and return from by nightfall. It was part of my upbringing, a facet of who I was that was so integral that I assumed everyone had the same access, had the same desire to explore and participate in the natural world.
After we had lost the farm and Dad had moved us to Seattle, I discovered otherwise, but I always felt sorry for those people who let themselves be trapped by the rigors of the city. They had chosen to be part of a system, a construct bent on self-perpetuation that spent more of its energy and fuel on keeping itself alive than on improving its world.
Maybe that had been part of my fascination with Katarina in the beginning. She was a city girl who wasn't afraid of the woods. We had met at REI, and even though she later confessed that her main interest in learning about rock climbing had been to meet me, she still went camping. We had even climbed the East Ridge of Buck Mountain together. She had looked up at the night sky and not been afraid; she had lain down beneath a talk oak and listened to it creak in the wind; she had seen dawn transform a black horizon into a field of fire and light.
But all of that was forbidden to Vivienne and the other daughters. It wasn't that they had no interest in the world untarnished by our hand; that world was a world they could never touch. Cloistered. Kept. Caged. Locked away. I thought of the sensations that had assailed me when the Chapel of Glass had been cut off from the leys, or the panic and fearful claustrophobia inflicted upon Spiertz in his oubliette in Notre-Dame-sous-Terre. Were these even in the same class as a lifetime of being kept inside a glass tower?
All the knowledge in the world and she wasn't free.
"I'm sorry." I didn't know what else to say.
She nodded absently. Her eyes were unfocused, staring into the water of the basin. "We have never needed for anything. My father, and the others assigned by him, are—were—kind jailers, but they were still allowed to come and go. No matter how much we bent our wills and our minds to the tasks given to us, we could never forget that tiny fact: when they were done, they could leave. We never could.
"It has been argued that the outside world offers nothing that we don't already have. That it is a pit of perversion, and all of its influences are foul. By keeping us here, our jailers are, actually, protecting us from the sin and degradation of human existence. By remaining true to our studies, we are closer to the divine. This life isn't a punishment, but rather a gift."
"But a gift you didn't ask for," I said.
"Exactly." Vivienne raised her head. "As I'm sure you noticed, the Archives are larger than the building they are housed in, but there are still boundaries. You recall that office we met in originally? It's part of the outer ring, a façade we maintain to look like any other multinational corporation housed in this building. Those offices are as close to the outside world as I am allowed, and even then, the wards are so strong that all I want to do is flee back to the inner sanctum of the Archives."
The shiver ran through my back again. No wonder she had been so emotionally tense in that room, especially when I mentioned her father. I wondered if I was wrong about the cemetery. Would she want him that close? So near and yet so inaccessible? Would it be worse to see the plot of land where he was buried, and yet never be able to visit it?
She looked at the picture of Hildegard. "She was cloistered too. Did you know that? She was supposed to spend her life in a tiny chamber not much bigger than this, contemplating God. Her parents offered her up to the Church, and I'm sure the idea was completely palatable in the twelfth century, but—" She took her hands off the edge of the basin and her tone hardened. "—it's hard to swallow such malfeasance now.
"Luckily, Hildegard turned out to be a gifted child. She had visions, and perhaps that is why her parents got rid of her. A daughter filled with the weirding light of Satan. Hildegard managed to rise above such abandonment. She recognized the power of her gift."
Vivienne took a piece of paper out of her pocket and offered it to me. I unfolded the page and looked at the color photocopy of a medieval drawing. A figure meant to represent God sat on the top of a tall mountain, and the mountain was filled with tiny windows from which people looked out at the sparks and rays of light emanating from His being. At the base of the mountain stood two figures, a child whose head had become a stream of light rising up to the foot of the angelic being at the peak. The other was a figure made entirely of eyes—
The Chorus flinched, and I crumpled the page.
Vivienne nodded. "I thought you might recognize it."
I shoved it back at her. When I inhaled to speak, I felt like I was breathing glass splinters. "What is that?" I
gasped.
"Hildegard's first vision. She wrote about it in her book, Scivias. She recorded twenty-six visions, and wrote commentary on them all. Her record of this one mentions much of what you see here, and of the individual at the base, she writes: ' . . . At the foot of the mountain, stood an image full of eyes on all sides, in which, because of the eyes, I could discern no human form.' Does this sound familiar to you?"
Portland. The tower with the bloody eye. The shining light of the theurgic mirror. The darkness that followed, sweeping across downtown. The wave of cold hunger, rushing down to the river, wiping out all the lights. The Chorus, shrieking and burning as they were torn from me. An image full of eyes on all sides. What was I but a confusion of identities, a proliferation of desires and needs held together by a singular foul purpose. What was I but a being with no shape of its own. Only a Will.
Does this sound familiar to you?
How could she know?
I cleared my throat. "It depends," I said, equivocating. "On how you interpret the image."
"Well, that's the question I'm asking, isn't it?"
She still hadn't taken the page from me and I let it fall to the floor.
"I'll take that as a 'yes,' " she said.
"That was over eight hundred years ago. I don't believe in prophecy. I've seen too many of them twisted to suit the needs of the oppressor."
"The Watchers have been waiting for more than eight hundred years. You can imagine how, after a few hundred years, they started to get a little frustrated. No one really enjoys being a footnote to history. No one wants to be one of the innumerable generations who—stoically, of course—kept the faith." She bent and picked up the page. "You don't have to believe in prophecy. For the record, neither do I. But you do recognize the importance of symbolism and ritual, don't you? You have to concede that power is nothing more than the energy of those who are realizing their desires. There is always strength in numbers. What does it matter if it happens to be a picture drawn last week or eight hundred years ago?"
