Brother Peter continued. “He asks if you know of Communion, the bread and wine?”
Jack nodded. “The body and blood of Christ?”
Peter smiled. “That’s right. At the Last Supper Jesus broke the bread and offered wine, saying ‘This is my body which is given for you, and this cup is the new covenant in my blood’. So where is the broken bread, in this supper? Where is the wine? It should be central to the image and yet there is only a token amount on the table, and no wine at all before Jesus. Look to his hands, Frederico says. Jesus is making an empty gesture to his disciples, he has nothing to offer them. Also, look here...”
Frederico was pointing excitedly to the left of the image, “there is a knife held at a disciple’s chest, and the disciple is raising his hands in surrender. But look close, we can see that the hands of all the surrounding disciples are laid on the table. So whose hand is this? And why did Leonardo add such a thing when he knew it should not be there?”
Jack scoured the picture and remembered how MaryBeth had scoffed at the suggestion of subliminal messages. ‘And in centuries of study nobody else has picked up on them?’ She was right, nobody had. But they were definitely there. There was definitively an extra hand painted into one of the most famous works in history, and he for one had never heard any mention of its existence, let alone heard anyone put forth an explanation.
Then he realised what Brother Peter had said a little earlier.
“You said Jesus’ friends betrayed John the Baptist?”
Peter delivered the question and continued his translation. The heat of the sun was falling like embers and even the young monk was beginning to sweat. It made Jack wonder if it really was down to the heat alone. He had a guilty look on his face, as though he were adding a little more condemnation to his own soul purely by repeating Brother Frederico’s words in the sight of God.
“John the Baptist was removed,” Frederico says. “There were those who had stolen his power, but they could not control him. They knew that the Messiah was expected and that John, as son of Zacharius the High Zadokite, was the likely candidate. So they befriended him. Got close to him. They were correct that it would be he because John had indeed been granted eternal life. What they did was trick him into bestowing it upon them also. He trusted them, but they were no Children of God. Once they had his power they wanted to seize the will of the people. To do this they needed a Messiah that they could control. John would not pander to them so they slew him and found Jesus; another man of the line of David. He was perfect. He fulfilled the prophecy. They knew that John, as the true Messiah, would never do their bidding so they simply chose a substitute.”
“Marionette,” Frederico offered, dancing his fingertips across the table.
“He says that Jesus was a puppet; selected long before he was even born. History misinforms us as to how long John had been alive before The Christ was with us.”
Jack shook his head. It was becoming increasing apparent why it was that Frederico had been ‘severely criticised’ for his views, and little wonder that he had been compelled to live out his days in such a remote corner of the globe. Much as he admired the man’s spirit and enthusiasm, he could clearly see that Frederico would be little more than an embarrassment to any institution that bore the word ‘church’ in its title if the platform for his views was not pulled well and truly from beneath him.
Almost as soon as he had accepted that, the words of Simon came sliding into his head again. ‘Just because one version of history is widely accepted does not guarantee that it is the truth - no matter how extensive the belief’.
“So what does Frederico believe?” Jack asked. “That John the Baptist was the true Messiah?”
“He would have us all believe it,” Brother Peter said without thinking, then realised that he was here to translate, not add personalised commentary. He looked apologetically to his elder who threw a chastening smile in return.
Peter posed the question to the old man who said “Si,” numerous times and then continued again. “He says that John had been granted Eternal Life and the proof is in the question he will ask you. The same question that those who could not be trusted must have asked themselves; how could the Man of Eternal Life be killed?”
Brother Frederico narrowed his eyes, then leaned across the table and made a gesture of decapitation across Jack’s throat. He dug his bony finger in a little deeper than perhaps he should, as if to accentuate his claims and mouthed something very slowly and menacingly.
“Remuovete la sua testa.”
“You remove his head,” Brother Peter explained, though he looked embarrassed to do so.
Jack turned to Peter. “So Frederico believes that ultimately Jesus was what.... just a stooge to these people?”
“Something like that,” Peter replied. He spoke to Frederico who re-commenced his excited ramblings. “But think, he says, how their new Saviour failed them. Few followed Jesus during his life and when he made his final ‘triumphant’ ride into Jerusalem on a colt already prepared for him, people did not even know who he was. He says you would do well to learn your New Testament.”
Peter took a sip of his water and wiped his brow with a white handkerchief. “But did Jesus’ staged act work? No, no, no, he says.” Jack had already heard Frederico stamping out the words. “Jesus did not free his people from the Romans, they stayed as oppressors for a great many years after he died. Nor did he rid them of sin. He ran the risk of being a failure. So when the time came for him to be crucified, they organised it that he might rise from the dead. Only then, after such a miracle, might people begin to worship and follow him. They pretended to crucify him, but even that did not work.”
Jack stared blankly for a minute, his mouth hanging open. Despite the strange theories being bandied around, he was still struggling to comprehend what he was quite certain he had just heard.
“What does he mean... pretended to crucify him?”
Brother Peter placed his glass on the stone table and laughed. “Oh dear, you’re balancing right on the apex of his favourite subject now,” he said shaking his head in good-humoured resignation.
“I only hope for Brother Frederico’s sake that Our Lord Jesus is just as merciful as he is so often portrayed in the Gospels, because I’m quite sure that our elderly friend here is testing His limits.” Checking the sun’s position in the sky, he rose to his feet and placed the empty glasses back onto the tray.
“Perhaps you will stay for dinner and we can...” he shook his head, “...discuss it then?”
he shall dwell alone
Leviticus 13:46
A little over twenty-five minutes after he had nudged his head through the window of his bright orange Volkswagen Beetle and bid goodnight to the guards on the gate, Dave Clearwater was pulling into his reserved space outside his Lancaster apartment. The town was thirty miles from the Mojave reservation that had been his childhood home. His family had remained there for as many generations as were in his history, though Dave himself had moved away within weeks of being offered the job at IntelliSoft. Unlike some of the younger employees from across the country he had resisted the urge to take one of the cheaper apartments the company owned near the campus, but still felt the need to exert at least some independence from his family. A home exactly halfway between Glendale and the Mojave settlement had seemed to offer the perfect answer.
The street was thrust into complete darkness as he flicked off the headlamps, rolled out of the car and walked wearily toward the main door to the complex. The timed lighting in the hallway was not set for nearly long enough and, after spending over a minute trying to find the right key in the darkness, he entered his own hallway and saw the message light flashing like a military warning on his answering machine. He hit the play button as he removed his patchwork jacket and heard his mother voicing dismay from the first syllable. She was claiming that he was a stranger; that he had not visited the family in over six weeks.
“Three weeks, mother,” he
despairingly informed the machine. “I was there three weeks ago.”
He walked into a kitchen still littered with the remnants of a few too many takeaway meals as his mother, like mothers the world over, struggled through the complexities of leaving a coherent message on a recording device. Almost by way of a timely warning she eventually stumbled into the age-old question of whether or not he was eating properly.
The apartment was warm. Too warm, and Dave began to sweat. It always amused him that whilst he could negotiate his way through some of the most complex technology the world had to offer, often hacked into protected mainframes and had crafted more than one computer virus in his wilder days, he still could not get his thermostat to maintain a comfortable temperature. The dial was so sensitive that a simple adjustment gave him the appearance of an accomplished safe-breaker.
He opened the cupboard and carefully lowered the setting. It seemed at first glance to have been set far higher than he remembered. Perhaps he had knocked it by accident at some point; he could not remember.
He opened the main window in the kitchen and stood in its wake for a moment, allowing the cooler night air to gather around his face. He turned and thought, eventually heading for the fridge and repeating, “Beer, beer, beer,” to nobody but himself. Then, suddenly realising what he was saying, he looked out into the hallway. “Did you hear that mother?” he asked the still rambling machine. “I said I fancy a beer. I’m twenty-three and I’m quite obviously an alcoholic and a traitor to my people because I’m hot and I have a craving for a white man’s beer.”
He smiled.
When he pulled the fridge door open he heard a strange popping sound. He thought about it for a moment then shrugged. Then, as his hand reached inside, he saw a gold plaque taped to the top shelf. It had not been there when he had left for work that morning.
As he started to read the words his nose and mouth began to stream with thick fluid and he felt a sudden tightness in his chest. His vision narrowed as his pupils contracted to the size of pinholes. He began to sweat even more. He panicked. Something was wrong. Desperately and frighteningly wrong. He needed to get to the door, to get out of the apartment. He started down the hallway but his legs started to buckle beneath him. His mind told them to run but they rebelled. It begged them and they laughed in its face.
With an overwhelming nausea he collapsed to the floor, hitting and upending the telephone desk on his way down. The phone landed beside his head, his mother still asking her concernedly-maternal questions. Seconds after he hit, every muscle in Dave’s body began to spasm erratically. As his head fell limply to one side, vomit started to run down his cheek and a dark wet patch appeared in the crotch of his stonewashed jeans.
In his last few moments of consciousness, Dave twitched and jerked as his head felt the worst aching he had ever known. He still wanted to lift himself to his feet, to run for help, but it was no use, his muscles had no respect for his brain’s commands. As the paralysis progressed, he lapsed into severe convulsions followed by a deep coma. Had he survived - unlikely in the extreme - he would almost certainly have suffered permanent damage to his central nervous system.
Forty minutes after leaving IntelliSoft, with his mother’s voice still inquiring about his welfare at the side of his crumpled body, Dave Clearwater’s heart took the last laboured beat it would ever take.
The last thing he had seen had been the plaque hanging above the bag of nerve agent inside his fridge; the bag which had popped open when the specially designed plug, attached by a simple copper thread, had been removed. Whilst Zebulun had placed the bag and turned up the heating thermostat, Dave himself had chosen the time of his death simply by opening his refrigerator door. Though his death had been slow enough to allow him the time to read the words on the panel, he did not understand their meaning. Acid etched into the quarter inch thick solid gold and darkened with tainting agents to increase legibility, the message was short and simple:
~ KNIGHT TAKES ROOK ~
children of the resurrection
Luke 20:36
They ate well. Very well, Jack thought. For monks.
Ascetics.
The long wooden table, occupied by Jack, Brother Peter, Brother Frederico and two much younger members introduced as Brother Marco and Brother Francis, was heavily laden. Fine meats, fish, and chicken nestled in the centre of numerous fresh salad vegetables and an inordinate amount of olives. All were served on modest wooden plates and all were complimented by an abundance of red wine served from unlabelled bottles.
“Cold food only I’m afraid,” Brother Peter apologised. “We have no...”
“No electricity?” Jack interrupted. His host smiled. “So where do you get the money for food?”
“The church supports us a little,” Peter said, “we also accept charitable donations and we have these....” He offered Jack an olive from one of the bowls.
“You sell them?”
“We trade them,” Peter said. “for meat, vegetables and wine. A long time ago Brother Frederico used to get cigarettes as well,” he rolled his eyes in the older man’s direction. “But thankfully he’s given up now.” Suddenly his face took on a slightly mischievous nature, as though he were going to do something he knew he shouldn’t. “He used to get ash all over his clothing.., it was disgusting…” he added and there was a long pause.
The younger Brothers, Marco and Francis, giggled into their napkins. Jack was obviously missing something.
“Filthy habit,” Brother Marco sniggered under his breath and they both began laughing uncontrollably.
“That was my joke, Marco,” Brother Peter chastised. “Please do not steal my jokes.”
Jack smiled and accepted a plate onto which Brother Peter had already placed a selection of food. Once grace had been delivered he spent almost a minute making his choice, eventually deciding upon a mouthful of chicken. It tasted strange, different in a way he would not have been able to describe if asked. Despite his wealth and the fine foods he could afford for himself, it was quite probably the most delicious chicken he had ever tasted.
Brother Peter saw his face. His smile. “No chemicals, no additives,” he explained. “Just as Our Lord intended.”
Jack nodded and smiled. Food without greed.
They talked as they ate, the English speaking trio taking it in turns to draw Brother Frederico into the conversation. They offered their histories, talked of their beliefs and Jack talked a little of his. He did not give the full details of who he was, only that he was ‘in the computer business’ and that he enjoyed ‘the odd game of chess’. Everything was very informal. They did not care that he was Jewish any more than he cared that they were Christian because, as Brother Peter explained with a shrug and a mouthful of dry bread, they were all on the same side when it came to moving their respective pieces in the game of life.
Brother Francis did cruelly suggest at one point, however, that Brother Frederico was sitting somewhere on the sidelines, waiting to be permanently kicked off the team.
When the meal was over, Brother Marco cleared the plates from the table and left the room. The light outside was starting to fade rapidly and, with a sneaky look, Brother Francis retrieved a match from a packet of Swan Vestas that had been hidden in his garment and used it to ignite the candles which hung from the walls on metal holders. As the flames took hold the room changed from cold azure to a warm coral glow which danced on an imperceptible breeze, causing rich shadows to flit erratically across the walls.
He took his seat again, only to be chastised by Brother Peter. “Use the master candle next time please. We have a reputation to uphold.”
Brother Francis apologised with a naughty smile as Brother Marco reappeared with three cups of herbal tea and the younger and presumably more impressionable monks respectfully retreated.
“I shall ask Frederico to give you his theories on the crucifixion then, shall I?” He looked at Brother Frederico, shaking his head in good-humoured dismay, then back to Jac
k. “I will also warn you that I am pleased that you are sitting down.”
He smiled again.
He spoke to his elder and Frederico’s earlier passion came flooding back with a vengeance. Once again Peter tried to keep up, slowing Frederico when he was getting ahead of himself. “They say Jesus died on the cross, but Frederico believes that it is not so. He believes that Jesus lived long after and he believes that even the Gospels make an attempt to tell us this...”
He filled his own cup and continued. “You see, as a race, the Romans were in no way averse to inflicting pain on unruly subjects. As such, crucifixion was death by torture. Extreme torture, usually drawn out over a number of days.”
He made a face that indicated how horrific such a death must be. “Some victims lived, suspended by their arms and legs, for as long as a week. But, he says, the Romans did bow to local pressure that no Jew should be crucified on the Sabbath. As such, condemned men went up on Monday and, if they were not dead by Thursday night, they had their legs broken whilst still on the cross. This increased the hanging weight and accelerated death. The Jews could therefore be assured that all their criminals would be dead and removed for burial before Saturday; the Sabbath. Not so with Jesus and his two companions, however. They went up and came down the same day; a Friday. They all achieved the impossible and died within a day. Brother Frederico is nodding now because he is saying that, in his view, some explanation may be offered in the way that during that time on the cross Jesus was given ‘vinegar mixed with gall’...”
There was a pause. “He asks if you know what gall is?”
Jack shook his head.
“In the Palestine of Jesus’ time it was merely another name for snake venom. You see, in Frederico’s world, Jesus was given soured wine and snake venom which acted as a poison so that he appeared to be dead. Meanwhile the Romans broke the legs of Simon the Cyrene and Barabbas before piercing Jesus’ side with a spear. The fact that the wound bled was taken as proof that he had died, but vascular bleeding is surely a sign that someone is still very much alive, no? Once they had removed all three men from their respective crosses, Jesus was taken to his private tomb and, according to John 19:39 Nicodemus arrived, bringing with him ‘a mixture of myrrhs and aloes, about a hundred pound weight’...”
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