“That was not what I was asking, but I am glad for you nonetheless.”
Alexander looked at him sharply. “Why do I detect a note of condemnation in your voice?”
“I do not seek to condemn,” Gregor replied.
“Criticize then. It is there clear as day.”
Gregor sipped at his tea before replying quietly, “We are told in Proverbs not to boast about the day. The Hebrew word is hellal, which means praise when applied to God, but boast when applied to man. Do you see? When we place ourselves in the spotlight, we assume a strength we do not have. We are indulging in self-worship, or self-praise. We have robbed the Master of what He gave to us only on loan, and claimed it for ourselves.”
“I do not think I seek to praise myself,” Alexander protested, his voice lacking its customary strength. “And neither does the bishop. I have spent considerable time with him recently. He is a most admirable man, and he speaks of God in terms which are much easier for me to follow than those of others whom I do not care to name.”
“My dear cousin,” Gregor replied. “I seriously doubt that the Lord will deem to speak to your heart through the bishop.”
Alexander looked genuinely peeved. “Why on earth not? Besides you and Jeffrey here, the bishop is the person with whom I feel most comfortable discussing this whole affair.”
“Precisely for that reason do I think He will select another.”
Alexander showed alarm. “You don’t suggest I contact one of those glossy television pundits, do you?”
“I think you should do away entirely with the thought of finding God through those who have achieved worldly fame.”
“And pray tell, why should I? I am simply seeking to meet people in keeping with my own nature.”
“It is not your nature that we are discussing here.”
Alexander swatted at the words. “I will have none of your vague hints and mysterious wanderings.”
“All right, then. What if God has something else in mind?”
“Why should He? The bishop speaks a language I can understand.”
“What if God chooses to use a different voice?” Gregor persisted. “The cry of a lonely child, for instance. Will you hear that in a bishop’s chamber? Or what if He speaks through a woman of the streets? What if He calls to you from the bitter cold of an old man’s empty hearth, or the shameful solitude of a prison cell?”
Alexander shifted uncomfortably. “Why is it that your questions tear at me, Gregor?”
“Perhaps because God may choose to speak through me just now, though that is only something you and He can tell. In any case, I hope it is not just me behind these words.”
Alexander gave his cousin a hard look. “I suppose the next thing you’ll be saying is that I should tell others about this mystery called faith.”
Gregor gave him an easy smile. “Where would you be today if someone had not told you about Christ?”
Alexander remained silent for quite some time. Finally he stood, turned toward the door, and said over his shoulder, “I shall think upon what you say.”
“Search for your answers within God’s Word,” Gregor said. “And in prayer. Remember it is His voice you should be listening for. His word to you is something only you will hear, and only within the depths of a hungry heart.”
Jeffrey waited to speak until he could hear Alexander’s measured tread upon the lower floor’s landing. “I feel so uncomfortable sitting here while he talks with you like that.”
“Don’t let it trouble you,” Gregor replied. “He needs you just now, you see, especially when meeting with me. He is afraid of facing the Lord alone. He needs a friend. Someone he can trust. Someone who will share the quest with him.”
“I like to think I’m his friend,” Jeffrey said.
“Of that you need never doubt,” Gregor assured him. “Alexander himself speaks of you in those terms, and he is not one to bandy such a word lightly about.”
“I wish I could help him more.”
“Always remember that the very nicest compliment you could pay my cousin is to declare him a patriot,” Gregor replied. “He is struggling with the utterly alien concept of a faith that calls for him to trust in the unseen, and he is trying to place it into terms that he can fathom. So, he is seeking to reach God through actions tied to his patriotism and his desire to rebuild the artistic heart of his homeland.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever understand you,” Jeffrey declared. “You praise Alexander for making the same mistakes as I do, or at least that’s how it seems. Then you turn around and tell me to reach for the stars.”
“I urge you to reach higher than my beloved cousin,” Gregor replied calmly, “because that is the call I hear within my heart. I look at Alexander and see a man doing all that he can to come to grips with his newfound faith.”
Jeffrey asked dispiritedly, “And what do you see when you look at me?”
“Once a mason showed Michelangelo a block of marble and said, it’s of no value; there’s a flaw right the way through it. Michelangelo replied, it’s of value to me. You see, there’s an angel imprisoned in it, and I am called to set the angel free.” Gregor’s eyes shone with a burnished light. “When I look at you, my friend, I see a man striving to grow wings.”
* * *
Once at their hotel, Jeffrey bade Alexander a good-night, only to call his room an hour later. “Sorry to bother you, but I’ve received an urgent fax from Katya.”
“Wait a moment.” There was the sound of Alexander sitting up and turning on the light. “All right. I’m ready.”
“I’m not sure I understand what she’s saying,” Jeffrey began tentatively.
“Then let us apply two heads to the problem,” Alexander replied.
“ ‘My research has turned up important information pertaining to the chalice,’ Jeffrey read. “ ‘Nothing conclusive, but it is perhaps another piece in the puzzle.’ ” He paused, not sure of Alexander’s reaction to the remaining portion.
“Is that all?”
“No,” he said slowly. “There’s a little more.”
“Well, read it, Jeffrey, read it. It is far too late for dramatics.”
“ ‘I have received a call from our lawyer colleague in regard to the room decorations which we recently discussed. It appears that events are developing at a rather rapid pace. Because of what she said, I have moved my departure up to tomorrow morning. Perhaps you would prefer to postpone your own meeting until after we have had a chance to speak.’ ”
“She was right to be discreet,” Alexander said, fully awake now.
“Is this about—”
“It must be. There is nothing else that might justify such a move on her part. Thank you for this little gift, Jeffrey. I shall certainly repose with a lighter heart, thinking that perhaps I might have some good news to pass on to Rokovski tomorrow.”
“She said it was not conclusive,” Jeffrey reminded him.
“I was not speaking of the chalice,” Alexander replied. “Good-night.”
CHAPTER 30
Winter’s fierce grip held the morning in a blanket of frigid stillness. Jeffrey walked alone through the darkness of a late-coming dawn. He took a longer way despite the cold that bit hard through his clothes, savoring the solitude and the alienness of this medieval city.
The warmth of Gregor’s building came as a welcome relief, as did the old gentleman’s smile. “Look at the frost on your scarf. How long have you been out there?”
“Long enough to need a glass of tea,” Jeffrey replied. “I hope I’m not too early.”
“My dear young friend, I have been up for hours.”
“Me, too.”
That brought him back from the kitchen alcove. “You did not sleep well?”
“I never do, my first couple of nights here or in eastern Germany,” Jeffrey replied. “There’s so much hitting me.”
“A new world,” Gregor agreed. “And a world of new challenges.” He returned behind the curtain, asked
, “What do you do with your time, then, during those sleepless hours?”
“Read,” Jeffrey replied. “Think. Pray. Or try to.”
“Your perspective on faith remains unchanged?”
“Far as I can tell.”
Gregor limped back into view bearing two steaming glasses. “Here, my boy. That should put the warmth back into your bones.”
“Thanks.” Jeffrey accepted the bell-shaped glass and held it carefully around the upper edge. As with most glasses used to serve tea and coffee in Poland, the glass had no handle. Curving thumb and forefinger around the rim, above the level of the steaming drink, was the only way he could keep from scalding himself.
“Tell me, Jeffrey.” Gregor eased himself down. “Do you still doubt the existence of God?”
“No, I don’t guess so. Not anymore.”
“And yet you have failed to find whatever it is that you search after. How can you therefore hold on to this newfound assurance that God is truly there for you?”
“There’s too much going on that I can’t just explain away.” Jeffrey took a gingerly sip from his glass, sighed a steamy breath. “I look back over these past five or six months, and I see changes I could never have made myself. A relationship more peaceful and filled with love than anything I’ve ever had in my life. A job that absorbs me and brings me satisfaction. A sense of purpose. An honesty with things really deep inside myself, facing up to things I’ve always run away from before.”
Jeffrey lifted his glass, sipped carefully. “Things are changing. I can’t stop and say that this minute, this hour, I feel God’s presence. But if I look back over the past weeks and months, I can feel something there. It’s as though an invisible hand is guiding me toward something. What, I don’t know. But I do think I can see God at work in what is happening.”
Gregor shook his head. “My boy, if only you could hear your own words. They are such a declaration of the path you have chosen.”
“You make it sound simple.”
“No, I make it sound straightforward. There is a very great difference. As the blessed Mother Theresa once said, it is not how God calls you that is important, but rather how you reply.”
“But now that I’ve recognized this need in me, I’m afraid. I’m afraid of making a mistake, of doubting too much, and maybe of doubting too little as well.”
“Afraid not to find and afraid to find,” Gregor murmured. “Both prospects can be terrifying.”
“Everywhere around me I see signs of how this new religion has redesigned my life.”
“Not religion. Call it by its true name.”
“Faith, then,” he conceded.
Gregor nodded. “Religion is external, faith is internal. And it is not the external that calls for change, but the internal.”
“But change for what? Where am I going? I’m looking for something, and I can’t find it. I don’t even know what to call what it is I’m after.”
“What do you truly want?” Gregor demanded. “An explosion? Do you seek a thunderbolt? What if God chooses to come to you in a whisper, or a soft call to a listening heart spoken with the first breath of a new dawn breeze? What then? If your ears are tuned only to the great and brilliant, will you miss the beauty of a tiny songbird, a whisper of divine joy meant only for your own questing heart?”
Jeffrey remained hunched over his glass. He sipped, waited, sipped again, taking the words in deep. “All my life I’ve worried about finding something that mattered enough to really care about having it and keeping it. Now that I’ve found it, or at least I think maybe I have, I don’t know where to look.”
“If you don’t know where to look, don’t keep searching,” Gregor replied. “It is that simple. Wait and let it come to you. Learn the strength of patient expectation. Learn the joy of knowing you are a cup for God to fill, a vessel intended to bear His divine fruits of life and love to a thirsty world. Be patient and know He will find you.”
Gregor paused for a silent moment before adding, “And He will, my boy. He will.”
* * *
Jeffrey returned to the hotel so that he and Alexander might go out together to meet Katya’s plane. She greeted Jeffrey with a fierce hug and the older gentleman with, “I hope you’re not upset that I changed my plans without asking.”
“My dear young lady,” Alexander replied, “anything that might even possibly inject a hint of good news into my meeting with Dr. Rokovski deserves to be shared without delay. This is why I insisted on imposing upon your reunion.”
“You’re not imposing,” Jeffrey and Katya said together.
“Thank you both. So let us return to our vehicle and hear what you have to say.”
Once beyond the airport grounds, Katya said, “I suppose you want to hear about the chalice first.”
“You are correct.”
“I don’t have anything certain,” she began, “and Andrew reports nothing new on his front.”
“Then let us hear what you do have, so that we may draw our own conclusions,” Alexander said, pointing. “Left here, Jeffrey.”
“The university library has a fairly extensive historical arts collection.”
“More than extensive,” Jeffrey added, skirting around a pothole of unknown depths, pulling back sharply to avoid losing his door to a barreling truck. “Vast is a better word. I’ve gotten lost in their arts section half a dozen times. More.”
“I searched their records of the Vatican collections and found a picture of the chalice,” Katya reported. “It is claimed to be a reliquary.”
“In the Vatican,” Alexander said. “How fascinating.”
“I thought so, too. So I called the cultural affairs department of the Vatican embassy in London and told them I was a student doing research.”
“All true,” Alexander murmured. “And all brilliant, I should add.”
“Thank you. I said I was just wondering if such an item had ever been loaned out, or might be. The man was positively shocked. Certainly not a reliquary, he replied. It would never leave the vaults beneath the Vatican. No reliquary has ever been released. Never. It has been centuries since any outsider has viewed a fragment from the crown. All such reliquaries are most carefully guarded, very seldom shown, and never allowed outside the Vatican.”
Save for Alexander’s directions, silence reigned through the remainder of their drive back to the hotel. Jeffrey pulled into the parking lot, turned off the motor, declared, “This doesn’t add up.”
“I quite agree,” Alexander said, opening his door. “Come, we shall be much more comfortable pondering the impossible inside.”
They selected Alexander’s room as a gathering point once Katya had checked in. When the old gentleman opened his door to permit them entry, Jeffrey said, “The curate must have made a mistake.”
“Come in, both of you.” Alexander stood aside. “Please forgive the lack of space. My dear, take that comfortable chair in the corner. Would either of you care for tea?”
“No, thank you.”
“The drawing he showed you was for the Vatican’s reliquary,” Jeffrey persisted. “Not the chalice he gave you.”
“That is certainly a possibility,” Alexander replied, settling onto the second straight-backed chair. “However, I am not convinced.”
“The curate was very certain,” Katya said.
“Precisely. The man was absolutely positive that the chalice he gave me was not the one he received in return.”
Jeffrey shook his head. “You’re saying the Vatican only thinks it has the reliquary?”
Alexander leaned back and mused to the ceiling, “If they were to discover its absence, they certainly would be keen to have it back.”
“Wait, wait,” Jeffrey protested. “How did it get to Poland in the first place?”
“As to that,” Alexander said, still speaking to the ceiling. “I have no answer. And to many other questions besides.”
“I discovered something else,” Katya announced.
“M
y dear, your researches have been indeed phenomenal.”
“Just by chance,” Katya went on, flushed by the praise. “Eleven years ago, Pope John Paul made an announcement that, in celebration of the beginning of the third millennium, the Vatican’s reliquaries would all be placed on display.”
Alexander sat up straight. “What?”
“The exhibit is scheduled to begin in the year 2000,” Katya went on. “And to last for three years.”
“If the reliquary had indeed found its way to Poland,” Alexander said, “this would put extreme pressure on the Vatican curators to see it returned.” He was on his feet. “You must excuse me. Rokovski needs to hear about these findings.”
“And Gregor has business for us to attend to,” Jeffrey added.
Alexander looked down on Katya. “My dear, you have done excellent work. I thank you. From the depths of a despairing heart, I thank you for the work you have accomplished.”
She raised a timid hand. “There is one thing more.”
“The other item in your fax,” Jeffrey remembered.
She nodded. “Frau Reining called. The people Jeffrey and I met in Dresden are ready to deliver the sample.”
Alexander slowly sank back into his chair. “When?”
“The day after tomorrow.”
He pondered the news, then shook his head. “Tempted as I am to remain, this you must do yourselves. We do not have evidence that these findings about the chalice are anything more than simple conjecture, and Andrew should not be left without an immediate contact. I shall therefore report this possible development to Rokovski and urge him personally to accompany you to, where did you say this meeting was to take place?”
“Czestochowa,” Katya replied. “At a hotel near the Cathedral of the Black Madonna.”
CHAPTER 31
Winter appeared to vanish with the dawn. The sun rose in a pristine sky and banished the bitter cold as though it had never existed.
“A glorious morning,” Gregor said in greeting. “Let us hope it is truly the arrival of spring.”
The Amber Room Page 24
