The Jerusalem Parchment

by Tuvia Fogel

  Yehezkel recalled the prophecy in Rav Moshe’s family and said, “I’ll tell you a cautionary tale on such predictions, be they of our Messiah or of your Second Advent. An old Jewish tradition claimed that when God freed the children of Israel from slavery in Egypt, he wanted that event to be at the center of history, from creation to the coming of the Messiah. Jews know the date of the Exodus, and doubling that date gave a year which, in your calendar, was one thousand two hundred and twelve.”

  “Oh, dear!” said Galatea with real sympathy. “That must have been awful for a lot of believers.”

  “Mmph! The fever and expectation survived nonetheless,” said Yehezkel. “The frenzy was such that eight years ago, a year before the prophesied date, three hundred rabbis uprooted their families and schools from England and France and moved to Jerusalem! You see, for them the Latins losing the city to Salah ad-Din—who allowed thousands of Jews to live there again—was nothing if not a sign that preparations were underway for the Messiah’s arrival!”

  “So what did they do when . . . when nothing happened?” asked Galatea.

  “Oh, most of them are still there; they simply decided that the date must have referred to the birth of the Messiah, not to his manifestation, so now they walk around Jerusalem, peering at the expression on the face of every seven-year-old they meet.”

  Galatea laughed out loud. Hussein raised his head and then let it drop again. After a while, she said, “You asked me for the secret of my good mood. Well, a big part is that I feel—thanks to the Lord, but also with your help—I feel like I am party to mysterious, epochal events that are unfolding. And you know what the strangest thing is? That I always knew I was destined to find myself in the middle of them. I knew it from my very first vision as a child! Oh, Yehezkel, it’s all so exciting it takes my breath away . . . and you wonder why I’m in a good mood?”

  NEAR GAZA, 5TH JANUARY 1220

  In early January of the year of our Lord 1220, the caravan was two days from Gaza and the end of its journey. Twalia decided to camp some five hundred yards from a wadi where water could be found, because the place was full of roughly dug, shallow graves that he found sinister, and for some years he’d preferred not to spend the night there. So at dawn, Yehezkel and a young Bedu took two camels and rode to the wadi to fill some goatskins with water before they moved on.

  The blessing from heaven was in minute detail: the fact that the wadi was east of the camp, so that when, halfway there, Yehezkel turned around, he saw the tips of the Templars’ weapons glint in the rising sun, just above the crest of the dune behind the Bedus’ camp.

  War made attacks on isolated Bedouin caravans by small groups of Templars and their sergeants a common occurrence. Yehezkel started breathing the folded breath, his mind racing through options. In a minute the knights would charge down the dune. There were twenty Bedus of fighting age in the camp, but even small squadrons of Templars had been known to overwhelm a hundred well-armed men.

  “It will be a massacre. Perhaps they won’t even spare Galatea,” he thought, horrified.

  Then it came to him. Arnald hadn’t been at Damietta, and a knight told Aillil his father was with a platoon patrolling Syrian routes.

  “God’s mercy knows no limits. If someone up there really is protecting us, my friend is one of those knights!” He was just turning his camel around, when the charge began.

  There was no time to ride back. In an instant, he understood what their last chance was. The distance was big but worth trying, and the windless dawn would help. He stayed on his camel to raise the source of the shout and deepened his breathing, as a fearful scene unfolded some three hundred yards from him.

  Four knights and five sergeants, white mantles flying behind the former, brown ones behind the latter, charged down the dune. Yehezkel kept breathing as he watched panic spread through the clan, everyone running, some jumping on camels and galloping away. The more breaths he took, the more powerful his voice would be, so he waited for the last moment before calling out to his friend.

  The first knight was a hundred feet from the nearest Bedu when the cry shattered the desert dawn. “AAARNAAAALD!!!”

  The commander of the platoon was Arnald Arifat of Montréal. On hearing his name and recognizing Yehezkel’s voice, he jerked on his reins and raised his swordless arm to stop his comrades. The animal dug its heels and a spray of sand rose over the head of the Bedu who had been about to lose it instead.

  When Yehezkel returned to the camp, Aillil/Ahmed had already met his father and told him of his life-changing decision. Another Templar, with a less curious mind than his, might have wept over the loss of a son, but Arnald had last seen his boy aged three and fragile as a bird, so the mere sight of the strong, sunburned, freckled teenager filled his heart with joy. He embraced him and blessed him and his new wife. Then he thanked his Jewish friend profusely for Aillil’s miraculous recovery.

  “If only my poor Esmeralda could see him now! Oh, Yehezkel, how will I ever repay you?”

  “Mmh, I may have one or two ideas on that,” said the rabbi as Galatea grinned knowingly.

  On being introduced to her, Arnald performed the same heart-lips-forehead homage the abbess had now received thrice, but her reaction, though struck by how handsome Aillil’s father was, was muted, as she was still recovering from seeing a dozen knights charging down a desert dune directly at her, easily the most frightening sight she had ever beheld.

  By now Twalia’s clan were convinced that whatever blessing Allah bestowed on his teacher had been passed on to Yehezkel ibn Yusuf, who had just saved the clan single-handedly . . . and with one word!

  Arnald decided to stay with the Muzziena clan, say goodbye to his son in Gaza, and escort his friends north to Château Pélerin. Had the Old Man been there around the fire that evening, he would surely have appreciated the sight of Templar knights breaking bread with a Bedu clan.

  Arnald asked Yehezkel to teach him the Templar battle cry in Hebrew, since it came from a Psalm that King David had certainly not written in Latin.

  “With pleasure, my friend!” said the rabbi. “Your cry is: Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed tuo nomini da gloriam. The Hebrew original is: Lo lanu, Adonai, lo lanu, ki le-shimcha ten kavod.”

  Arnald thanked him and repeated the phrase until he’d memorized it.

  Considering the horrific tales she’d heard about desert dwellers in Torcello, by the end of the journey the abbess found the Muzziena an honorable people, if with a slightly aggrieved sense of what honor is. In any case, she felt sure that Aillil’s life with them would be richer than among his Cathar peers. As she sat by the fire reflecting on this, Yehezkel tapped her shoulder.

  “Here is a question to put your kabbalistic skills to the test, Galatea. We didn’t stay in al-Kahira for forty days, like we did in Crete, Cyprus, and Damietta. Can you tell me why?”

  “This is a tough one,” said Galatea. “How many days did we stay in al-Kahira, then?”

  “Let’s see, we arrived on the 28th of September and left on the 28th of November, that makes . . . sixty days! Can you find a symbolic meaning in that?”

  “Mmmh . . . no, I can’t,” said she. “But now tell me, instead, when the fortieth day in al-Kahira was.”

  “That’s easy. It was . . . the 7th of November!”

  She smiled and said, “That’s the day Aillil first met Yasmine. It’s not always about us, Yehezkel!”

  ROME, 5TH JANUARY 1220

  That same night in early January, as Aillil was finally reunited with his father, Domingo of Guzman had just arrived in Rome and was lying in state in his coffin, listening to a De Profundis.

  Lying in a custom-made casket when his mood was dark was a habit he’d picked up from a pious nobleman in King Alfonso’s court, a certain Count of Olivarez who, since also being made Duke of San Lucar, was known to Spaniards as El Conde Ducque. When he wanted to remind himself of his mortality, Olivarez would summon a choir, have forty big church candles lit all around his c
offin, and stretch out in it. Then he would meditate on transience while the choir sang the De Profundis.

  Domingo tried it, and his Spanish soul was enraptured with the experience. On this night he felt certain he didn’t have more than a year to live. Where better to reflect on the imminent revelation of all Truths, including where he’d gone wrong and sinned, than in his grave?

  From the outside, even according to his critics, his mission was an unmitigated success. He was conferred the title of Master General of the Order of Preachers by Honorius, and as master, he had just sent letters to all convents announcing the first general chapter of the order, to be held in Bologna on the next Pentecost. True, soon he would be in the arms of his Creator, but his work was done and was, God willing, irreversible! So why was he lying in this coffin, eyes closed, and arms crossed on his chest?

  “Because there is no news from Brother Roberto!”

  In October he’d heard of how Master Ezekiel brilliantly escaped Cardinal Pelagius’s clutches in Damietta. Then, of course, once out of reach, he’d simply stayed in the sultan’s camp!

  Sure, he’d be hunted down for treason and desertion in Christian lands, but the Jew knew that. What was more, as Brother Roberto conveyed to him by trusted messenger, the Jew wanted to go to Egypt because of a document about the Parchment that was hidden in a synagogue there!

  “I’m in my coffin because that Christ killer is ahead of me and might find the confession before me. Worse, I could be dead by the time the rabbis of Europe set about using it!”

  Domingo knew that the Old Man, whoever might be hiding behind the honorific, had been looking for the Parchment for years. He’d pressed Honorius to force the Templars to give up the old chaplain to his preachers, but there were limits to the pope’s power over the Temple—as he knew only too well.

  Cencio was in wandering exile—O tempora!—but as soon as he was back in Rome, Domingo would have to see him and find a way, with Roberto’s help, to stop the Jew before he got to Jerusalem!

  Unless he was already there. ¡Madre de Dios! Where was Brother Roberto?

  CHAPTER 26

  VE-YIRDU

  And Let Them Have Dominion

  CHTEAU PÉLERIN, 27TH JANUARY 1220

  Near the end of January, after a week in Gaza and a leisurely ride up the coast, stopping in Askelon and Jaffa on the way, the three friends reached the fortress on the sea. The abbess—trotting between the two men, quietly happy to be on a horse again—was soon charmed by Arnald’s earring, blond curls, and sunny smile. His lighthearted troubadour manner made her feel like a countess wooed by a handsome knight, rather than the visionary nun on an enchanted pilgrimage she really was.

  In Gaza, Arnald took leave of his son, after promising to seek out the clan whenever he was in the Sinai. In light of the Old Man’s struggle for a synthesis of the three faiths, the irony of his own son embracing Mahomet’s religion had not escaped him. On the way north, he’d discussed it with rabbi and abbess and found himself in total agreement with their Averroist outlook—in fact he’d wondered aloud if it wouldn’t be a good thing for everyone, as the Old Man claimed, if Jews and Mohammedans were proved right about the Resurrection, after all.

  During the journey, Yehezkel and Arnald exchanged accounts of events in the ten years since they’d last seen each other. Galatea heard Yehezkel relate to his friend, as delicately as he could, of Esmeralda’s illness and death at the siege of Carcassonne. She avidly listened to the tales of their respective adventures, all the more enjoyable for the disenchanted light the two shone on the characters they’d met.

  “Oh, Yehezkel” said Arnald, “you must tell the Old Man of your disputatio with Domingo of Guzman! The Spanish monk is his sworn enemy, his nemesis, and the only thing he still fears—his words—is dying before beating him to the real Parchment.”

  Neither Jews nor Cathars believed that Jesus was resurrected, so Arnald didn’t hesitate to tell Yehezkel what the Old Man discovered, hoping Galatea would not be too distressed to hear of the confession. The strange couple’s reaction confounded him. They already knew what he thought was the best-kept secret in Christendom: that the Order of the Temple blackmailed the church, pretending to have found a document they did not in fact possess. To explain their knowledge, they told him of Sancio’s deathbed revelations and of the letter from the Jerusalem rabbis they read in Fustat.

  “Our purpose in seeking out the Old Man,” said Yehezkel, “isn’t just to help him find the Parchment; it is to decipher the map and find the confession!”

  Arnald was shaken. He stammered, “I feel caught in events much bigger than my puny little life.”

  “Welcome to the company, Arnald!” jested Galatea. “That’s how I have felt all the time since April!”

  Yehezkel pressed for every last bit of information. “So you heard no more from the Old Man after he told you in September that he would look for Baldwin’s diary in the Royal Treasure?”

  “No, nothing. I was in Askelon all the time, and he said he couldn’t trust anyone with information on the Parchment, because Domingo’s men were everywhere.”

  “He was right about that!” said Yehezkel. “In the camp outside Damietta, your master told me that the Spaniard has even infiltrated an agent in your order.”

  “Trust me, that wouldn’t be hard to do, these days,” said Arnald. “Did he know who the traitor is?”

  “If he did, he kept it for himself,” answered Yehezkel.

  “You know, Pedro’s relationship with the Old Man—I mean which one bows to the will of the other,” said Arnald, “is what I never understood. After all, how come Pedro didn’t do anything about the Old Man in the year and a half he has been master?”

  “You forget that Pedro wants the Parchment, too,” said Yehezkel, grinning. “He told me it leads to ‘something of great importance to the order,’ so since the chaplain’s chances of finding it are greater than his own, Pedro probably thinks he is the one manipulating the Old Man.”

  “Mmh . . . I told you how easily the master of Provence humiliated my ambition to become a spy,” said Arnald. “Sometimes my head hurts just trying to keep up with everyone’s lies and plots. I’m a simple knight, Yehezkel, and the clash between the Old Man and Domingo goes right over my head.”

  “I know just what you mean, Arnald,” smiled Galatea. “I often think Divine Providence must have slipped up when it chose me to solve the enigma in Jerusalem . . .”

  Arnald laughed. “The Old Man says the Templars dug under the esplanade for eight years looking for the Parchment and found nothing.” He turned to Yehezkel. “What makes you think that ghost of a man and the three of us are going to find it?”

  That gave Yehezkel an idea. “Listen. Could you find out if the order has maps of the tunnels they dug a hundred years ago? That would be enormously helpful.”

  “I never heard talk of such maps, but then I’ve only been a Templar for nine months. I asked myself how to repay you for saving my son and bringing him here, my friend, and now I know: if such maps exist, rest assured that I’ll find them and copy them for you!”

  “If they do exist,” murmured Galatea, “I bet the Old Man knows where they are.”

  “But of course!” said Arnald, impressed. Yehezkel grinned at the newcomer’s reaction to the nun’s astute conclusion.

  Arnald had told them that no one deserved the epithet “Old Man” more than this chaplain, yet when they entered the scriptorium and saw him, they were amazed at his decrepitude. Yehezkel was reminded of the vision he’d had of his teacher a few months before his death.

  “Oh, so this is your ‘kabbalist’ friend,” said the Old Man, a residual trace of hope in his raspy voice. “Welcome, Master Ezekiel, welcome to my lair. Arnald says you’ll be an invaluable aid to my quest. But first tell me, please, who is the fetching noblewoman with you?”

  Galatea introduced herself and complimented the Old Man on the most powerful castle she’d ever set eyes on, as if the rickety old figure before
her were its commander and not its chaplain.

  “My friends have found the letter from the rabbis on the Parchment!” said Arnald excitedly.

  “Have they really?” said the Old Man, smiling wistfully. “I do hope they can help me understand the Parchment of Circles before I leave this frustrating, overlong life.”

  Yehezkel couldn’t believe his ears. “You have it?” he cried.

  “Yes, I have it. It’s been in my hands for a week, but its cipher escapes me . . . and sleep, now, too.”

  “How did you find it?” asked Arnald. “Did King Baldwin’s diary lead you to it?”

  “Yes, but Divine Providence had a role in how I finally laid my hands on it, after all these years. Even a man who is a heretic in the eyes of most heretics, as I am, has to admit that much.”

  The disappointment of finding the map but failing to decipher it soured the chaplain’s expression. He sat down and explained, “When Damietta fell two months ago, the king of Jerusalem and Cardinal Pelagius quarreled over possession of the city, until two weeks ago, when John of Brienne, enraged, left for Acre with his barons and the Teutonic master.”

  The Old Man paused to catch his breath. Arnald thought his voice trembled in a way it hadn’t done before. The chaplain knew better than anyone else that his time was up, and his bitterness showed. “The king’s chancellor denied me access to the treasure, but when John arrived in Acre—despite the strain on this wreck of a body—I went to the palace and, with a scholarly pretext, obtained permission to look at Baldwin’s diary. It was easier than I’d hoped. Everything was right there, black on white. Anyone could have read it in the hundred years since he died, had they only cared to do so.”

  The other three didn’t need to ask him what the king had written; their eyes spoke for them.