Part 3
12
Santo Cristo del Tesoro, Caribbean Sea, present day
The door to the antechamber swung shut, blocking out the sounds of the sea and the helicopter that was powering down outside. The man who had just arrived smoothed back his hair where it had been ruffled by the wind and walked toward a second door at the end of the passageway ahead, past pyramidal stacks of black-painted cannonballs that had been there since the days of the pirates. Beside him a ramp led to the upper revetments, the embrasures encased now in glass but the cannons still thrusting their muzzles out to sea. He looked up at the massive lintel above the door, a slab of austere white marble brought all the way from the shores of the Mediterranean, and saw the date carved into it: ANNO DOMINI MDCLXXX — THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1680. Below that was the Seal of the Inquisition, the gnarled cross with the sword on one side and the olive branch on the other, and on either side of that a hand carved in jet with three fingers curled and the forefinger pointing to heaven, the same symbol that he and the others he would meet here had tattooed on the palms of their hands, as had their predecessors for countless generations before that.
He crossed himself and pushed open the heavy metal door, hearing it clang shut behind him as he carried on into the audience chamber. It was high-ceilinged like the great hall of a medieval castle, modeled on the chamber of the Patio da Inquisicão at Coimbra in Portugal. Above him were slits near the top of the walls for the sunlight to shine through, their angle concentrating the beams on a raised dais in the middle of the floor, with channels cut into the masonry surrounding it that dropped into a drain. At Coimbra they had the benefit of a courtyard outside, a place where the auto-da-fé had been conducted in full view of the heavens; here they had no such luxury, with the buffeting of the wind making fires impossible; instead the builders had opted for an interior design where the sentence of the court could be carried out swiftly and cleanly in front of the eyes of the tribunal.
Beyond the dais was a long oak table with chairs behind it where the priests had once sat. Today they were occupied by the five other men of the Altamanus. His arrival had made their number complete, a number that had been fixed since the days of the Roman Empire. The man in the center gestured toward an empty chair at the end.
“Professor Salvador,” he said, speaking English with an eastern European accent. “We hope you had an uneventful flight.”
“To Colombia from London was restful, but the helicopter ride to the island was less easy. There is a storm brewing on the horizon.”
“Yes indeed.” The man leaned forward. “A storm in more ways than one, a storm from heaven itself. For more than three hundred years the Altamanus has been waiting for this day. For more than a thousand years before that we stalwartly served our Lord, strengthening the Church as we once strengthened the emperors. And now at last we are close to the time for exaltation. We await your news eagerly.”
Salvador eased himself onto his chair and leaned forward, nodding at the others around the table. He pulled a small felt-lined box from his jacket pocket and opened it, taking out a shiny silver coin and holding it out for the others to see.
“In May of 1684,” he began, “a ship arrived in Jamaica from Portugal, an English naval transport named the Black Swan. She was destined to become the personal vessel of one of the most notorious pirates of the day, Henry Avery. But for our purpose now, all that matters is that she was carrying on board Lopo Rodriguez Brandão, a Jewish converso fleeing the Inquisition in Portugal with a supply of coin from his father João. That itself would have been enough for the Inquisition to send the Altamanus in pursuit, but our intention was not to apprehend a heretic. Our intention was to take something the boy had with him, a package containing the greatest lost treasure of Christendom: the Holy Chalice. Three hundred and thirty years ago, we failed in our endeavor. But now the trail has opened up for us once again.”
The man beside Salvador spoke, his English strongly accented. “But we did capture the boy and bring him here. And he did confess.”
Salvador nodded. “By the time we had extracted a confession from his father at Coimbra, the Black Swan was too far ahead for our ships to catch up with it. But our spies had already been following João for months, watching his movements in his adopted city of Tangier, waiting for him to return to Portugal where we could take him. His family was part of the Christian Jewish community who had sheltered the Roman Proselius and hidden the Chalice in the mountains of Spain, but we knew that it had gone to the Knights of Malta when the Jews were expelled from Spain. The Knights then had more strength than us, and we could not contrive a way to break into their fortress. But when we got wind that the English in Tangier had been offered an extraordinary treasure by the Moors, and that the Knights had some time earlier given up the Chalice in return for the freedom of hostages, we convened a meeting just such as this one. And when we learned that the Englishman responsible for negotiating with the Moors had been in secret discussions with João Brandão, and that together they had devised a scheme for secreting the Chalice away in a new hiding place, one far beyond the bounds of the Old World, we sent out our men. It was only a chance betrayal that prevented us from snatching the treasure there and then.”
“It was no betrayal,” the man beside him said, looking around the table for agreement. “When our men confronted the Englishmen, our men were both killed, one outright and the other dying soon afterward, but not before he was able to send word on to Portugal. We must acknowledge our failures and not seek excuses. Only that way shall we grow in strength.”
Salvador eyed him. “I stand corrected. You are right, Don Pedro.” He turned back to the others. “We were too late to catch up with the treasure before it left Tangier and then Portugal, but from the father’s confession we knew where it was going: to Port Royal in Jamaica, where he had brothers and cousins. We did not reach the island in time to prevent the boy from dispatching the package on the next stage of its journey, but that did not save the boy from our men. We brought him here, and under torture he broke. The Chalice had been sent to the heretic Father António Vieira deep in the Amazon of Brazil, where he was establishing his community of the like-minded, all of them enemies of the Church and in the sights of the Inquisition.”
“Whom then we destroyed.”
“We were only six, then as now, but just as we do today, we recruited others to do our bidding. We organized an expedition among the pirates of Port Royal, paying them enough to make it more worthwhile than any voyage of plunder they might have undertaken themselves. After months of searching, after half had died of disease and exhaustion, they discovered the place and ravaged it, killing everyone they could find and burning the buildings to the ground. But Father Vieira and a few chosen companions had managed to escape. The Chalice had disappeared back into history.”
“And the boy?”
“He was a heretic, like his father, and deserved the same fate. But as long as Vieira was still at large, there was a chance that he might try to make contact with his followers among the Jews of Port Royal. We let the boy go, but kept our eyes on him constantly for the rest of his life. In return for leaving his family alone, he paid us half of his profits from brokering plunder for the pirates, allowing us to fill our coffers and refortify this island. We have been watching and waiting ever since.”
“And now?” the man at the center of the table said. “Are you able to tell us of progress?”
Salvador turned the coin round, showing the obverse. “This is one of the coins that the boy had with him when he was captured. It carries the trademark of the Brandão family, the Star of David. It was the discovery of another such coin three weeks ago on a shipwreck off England that led me to call this meeting.”
“Go on, Professor.”
“As you know, for years I have made the study of early Christian and Judaeo-Christian symbols my speciality, something that was encouraged when I was first presented as a novitiate to the Altamanus by my father. B
y the time a place became vacant for me among the six at this table, I had already completed my doctorate and had taken up my position at the seminary. For years I have searched for any further evidence that might help us in our quest for the Chalice, but to no avail. And then last week I was attending a conference at Oxford when one of my more junior colleagues flashed around an image of an identical symbol that had just been found underwater, wondering if any of us had seen anything like it. Naturally, I kept quiet, but I immediately called on our friend Dr. Henriques to make some discreet inquiries of the director of the excavation team, Dr. Jack Howard.”
“The man who searched for the Jewish Menorah,” one of the others murmured. “We well remember that.”
“Indeed. It was that story that particularly raised my interest. That search also took Howard to the Caribbean, to the Yucatán, about as unlikely a place to find the Menorah as South America is to find the Holy Chalice. It revealed Howard’s knack for following many disparate, apparently disconnected threads over a wide geographical area and then tying them together. The search for the Holy Chalice will be a similar process, and I already know of the existence of several such threads. Not only did Howard find one of these coins, and then more of them, but the coins came from the wreck of the Schiedam, the ship that sailed with the Black Swan to Portugal when Tangier was abandoned. That could only pique his interest. And then, after a little delving, I discovered that Howard’s own background includes being descended from none other than João Rodrigues Brandão. Where there is a connection of that nature, you can be certain that Howard will be sniffing out the trail.”
“And you have now reached a point where we can act; the justification for calling a meeting?”
“There are others searching with him, in Portugal, in the National Archives there. A colleague of mine named Dr. Maria de Montijo is one of them. She and I were graduate students together working on the epigraphy of the catacombs in Rome, and we continue to maintain cordial relations. I knew she was the one who researched the Brandão family in the Inquisition archives for Howard because she put a history of the family online. I called her last week and she told me that she is again in Lisbon for more research. A few further inquiries revealed that Howard is there with her as we speak.”
“Have they made the connection with Vieira and South America?”
Salvador leaned forward, looking at the other man intently. “I don’t know. But I think it is likely. Howard is traveling on to Jamaica tomorrow, for a scheduled visit to a project at Port Royal funded by his university. But I would be astonished if he was not also going there in search of the Brandão connection. And as for Maria de Montijo, I remembered something from our encounters in Rome when we were students. On one occasion she was flying off to Bolivia because she was volunteering for a remote mission community somewhere in the mountains beyond Potosi. She told me that her family had done it for generations, and that it was because of her Sephardic Jewish roots. The mission was founded by a Jesuit in the late seventeenth century. She would not say more.”
“A Jesuit?” the man beside him said. “Could that be the heretic Vieira, where he went after fleeing our attack?”
The man in the center of the table turned to one of the others. “Hernandes, we need to find someone from that community we can interrogate.”
“As soon as we leave, I will be on to it.”
He turned to the man on his left. “And Howard? Jamaica is your territory.”
“I can arrange for him to visit us here,” the man said. “I have already been to Port Royal to try to find out more, after Professor Salvador contacted me several days ago. And we have a boat that monitors activity there every day.”
“Do not pick him up until he has had time to visit the site. It is possible that he will find further clues there that will be useful to us.”
“Understood.”
The man stood up, and the others shifted back their chairs and did the same, all of them bowing briefly and crossing themselves. Salvador put the coin back in the box and looked around him. He had only been here once before, when he had been inducted into the Altamanus, and he had not yet properly studied the place. He knew that nothing had been removed since it had been the secret Casa for the Portuguese Inquisition in the Caribbean, and that even after the Inquisition had been formally abolished in 1821 it had continued to serve its original purpose, only this time solely in the hands of the Altamanus. Many had died here; few brought to this place had left it alive. In contrast to the days of the Inquisition, no records had been kept of more recent tribunals, and there was no cemetery to mark their numbers; the bodies were simply fed to the sharks.
He looked around the walls, seeing leg irons and chains, gibbets and nooses, hooks and shears, as well as a rack, the companion of one that he had been shown in the torture chamber below them. That one, still in use, had smelled of blood and fear, and seeing it had given him a strange sense, as if he understood what had driven the men of the Inquisition over the centuries, and what drew him and the others to it now. It was not so much about the Church, about some higher spiritual good; rather it was about control, about keeping order in a world of chaos, about chaining men’s minds for their own good, about cleansing their thoughts and making them see the true light.
The man who had convened the meeting picked up his briefcase and walked toward the shaft of light, where he turned to face them. “We will find this man Howard,” he said, his voice echoing in the lofty chamber. “But we have left too many loose ends in the past, had too many failures. This time, it will be different. We will bring him here, and he will tell us what we want to know. And then we will destroy him.”
13
Pátio da Inquisição, Coimbra, Portugal
Jack Howard walked round the corner into the square in the center of Coimbra, with Rebecca and Jeremy close behind. A flock of pigeons erupted from the patio, disturbed by a group of students going between classes in the old buildings of the university that surrounded the square. It was a brilliant day, sunny and warm, the buildings white and stark against the blue of the sky, and Jack felt refreshed after their quick coffee in a bar on the way. He glanced at his watch, then saw a familiar figure with her arm raised hurrying through from a large colonnaded building to the right.
Maria had dark hair and eyes, features of her Mediterranean background that she shared with Rebecca, and was wearing jeans and a loose top. She came up to Jack and embraced him, and waved at Rebecca and Jeremy. “How nice to see you all. I hope the last-minute change from Lisbon to Coimbra for our meeting wasn’t too much of a problem. I’d finished at the archive, and wanted you to see this place. It’s part of our shared history, Jack, and yours too, Rebecca.”
Jack smiled, very pleased to see her for the first time in several months. “We’ve got a car picking us up in three hours to take us back to Porto to catch our flight to Jamaica. I thought that should give us enough time. Not enough for dinner, though.”
“Huh. You owe me, you know.”
“I promise. When this is all over.”
“When have we heard that before?” Rebecca said, eyeing them. “You two really should get your act together.”
Maria smiled at Jack, and then linked her arm through his. “One day you should listen to your daughter. Meanwhile, let’s have a little tour before we settle down. The rector of the university is an old friend of mine and I’ve managed to arrange for us to be alone inside, outside normal tourist hours. Come on.”
For the next half an hour Maria took them through the rooms and passages within the colonnade, the Casa of the Inquisition in Coimbra from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, and now part of the university. “So,” she said, as they came back into the audience chamber, a cavernous space with a tower on top. “This was where your Brandão ancestors were brought to trial, and my grandmother’s ancestors too, and Jason da Silva’s, and countless others around the world who are descended from Sephardic Jews. We’ve seen the cells where they were held, the
probable torture chamber, the audience chamber here for the tribunals, and outside in that pretty square the place where the burnings took place.” She turned to Jack. “There’s something I have to tell you. I looked everywhere in the Archives for further records of your ancestor João. There’s nothing beyond his basic processo record, either in the Inquisition archive or elsewhere. If he’d been reprieved at his auto-da-fé, there’d be some record of him somewhere, given that he was such a prominent merchant. I’m afraid it points to only one conclusion. There was no homecoming.”
Jack nodded. “I’d suspected as much.” He looked around, trying to imagine what it must have been like for João on that day, walking out into the courtyard and seeing the pyres already stoked up and smoldering, quite conceivably with the remains of a previous victim burning within. Jack had a vivid historical imagination, but this time it failed and he shook his head. “The horror of it is hard to take in.”
“How often did that happen?” Rebecca asked, her voice subdued. “I mean, the burnings?”
Maria glanced at the brochure she had been carrying. “At Coimbra over the years of the Inquisition there were two hundred and seventy-seven autos-da-fé, resulting in three hundred and thirteen people being burned at the stake, most of them Jews, men, women and children.” She lowered the brochure. “Coimbra was not the only court of the Inquisition; overall the figure for burnings in Portugal is well over a thousand. And that’s only part of the story. The number who were penanced—that is, condemned but at the last minute reprieved, usually while they were standing in front of the pyres thinking they were about to be burned—was over thirty thousand. All those people had been in these cells, sometimes for years, whole families living under the shadow of the terrible end that might await them, smelling the burning flesh from the pyres, hearing the sounds of the torture chamber, enduring the anguish and screams of those in the cells around them who could take it no more. It hardly bears thinking about, and all of that in a beautiful place such as Coimbra.”
Inquisition Page 15
