They had finished going over it all, and Ferguson was now sitting at the table in the main room, configuring his laptop for her wi-fi.
Ava was looking at her phone. “It’s from Drewitt,” she called out, dropping down onto the sofa as a snippet of preview text appeared on her screen.
She clicked the message open.
“He hasn’t wasted any time,” Ferguson looked up. “Do you think he’s going to be trustworthy?”
“We’ll soon find out.” Ava had been wondering the same thing herself. “There are some photos coming through. He says they’re of something on Malchus’s desk.”
She scrolled down, as two images appeared on her phone’s screen, one after the other.
Looking at the first photograph, she immediately recognized the central image.
It was the Jewish Menorah—the sacred seven-branched gold candelabrum cast by the Hebrews in the desert along with the Ark, the Altar of Incense, and the Table of Showbread. Together, they made up the sacred objects they kept first in the holy Tabernacle tent, then inside King Solomon’s Temple.
Although it was now famous as a worldwide symbol of Judaism, she knew that replicas of the Menorah were also widely used by Christians—especially in Orthodox and Catholic churches. Yet another reminder, she thought, that Christianity was originally a heretical sect of Judaism.
But as she took in the rest of the photograph, she realized the writing around the Menorah was like nothing she had ever come across before.
She gazed at it with incredulity.
It was quite one of the most extraordinary inscriptions she had ever seen.
She exhaled a long slow breath, and watched as Ferguson walked over and sat down on the sofa beside her. He looked over her shoulder at the phone’s screen, staring at the images for a few moments. “What do you make of it?” he asked.
“I’m really not sure.” She frowned, feeling at something of a loss. “There are a lot of odd contradictions.”
“But you know what it is?” he sounded hopeful.
She did not answer, but peered more closely at the screen, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. “There are two images,” she explained. “The front and back of an object. One side is easy—we don’t have to waste much time on it. But the other is truly bizarre. And together, as two sides of the same piece, they are ... well … I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Intrigued, she sent the photographs to her printer, then stood up and headed across the hall into the study, where she printed them out onto photo paper.
“Fortunately, Drewitt has a decent camera on his phone,” she said, re-entering the sitting room and dropping the large colour photographs down onto the coffee table. “They enlarge pretty well.”
She sat back on the sofa beside Ferguson, poring over the full-size images, trying to reconcile the striking anomalies she was seeing.
“The second one is easy,” she pointed to the picture of the two bearded heads. “It’s unquestionably from an old seal, and its meaning is very straightforward.”
“It is?” Ferguson sounded surprised. “I can’t make head or tail of it.”
She smiled, reminding herself this was not second nature to everyone. “Well, there’s no mystery about what it is. Although what it’s doing here is not at all clear.”
“Go on,” Ferguson was looking at the image closely. “We’re not all ninja archaeologists.”
She smiled. He had been particularly impressed at her description of how she had got away from Malchus’s bodyguard at Drewitt’s country house, wincing as she gave a detailed account of putting two rounds into the thug’s inner thigh.
She pulled the photo of the two faces closer to the front of the table. “This image was traditionally used by popes.”
Ferguson looked surprised. “You can tell that just from the picture?”
Ava nodded. “It’s unmistakeable.”
“To you maybe,” Ferguson murmured.
“It’s the obverse, or front, of a papal bull,” Ava explained—but could instantly see from Ferguson’s expression that she would have to explain further.
“In the olden days,” she continued, “the Vatican sent riders all over Christendom with written orders and letters from the pope. The most important documents were called ‘bulls’.”
“Like the animal?” he asked, surprised.
She nodded. “Except the word comes from the name of the seal attached to the document—the bulla, from the Latin word meaning to boil.”
Without pausing, she took a large envelope from the coffee table in front of her and scribbled on one side of it. “Imagine this is the pope’s letter.” She folded the bottom inch of paper forward and over to make a flap.
“Now,” she picked up a pen and poked two holes through the flap and the paper behind it. “They threaded multicoloured silk cords through small slits in the bottom of the document.” She pulled a piece of soft twine off the plant that was sitting in a bowl in the middle of the table and threaded it carefully backwards through the holes so that two equal lengths of twine hung down a few inches below the back of the paper.
“Then they cast the seal around the ends of the cords, so it dangled off the document.” She took a small book of matches from the table and wrapped it around the twine ends so that only half an inch or so of the twine protruded from the bottom of the packet of matches. “That’s how it worked.”
Ferguson looked down at her improvised papal bull, then back up at her. “You’re a bit obsessive about this stuff, aren’t you?”
She felt the colour rise to her cheeks. “No … I just … .” But she knew he was right. She always had been.
“The point is,” she continued, “bulls made papal letters instantly recognizable all over Christendom. So when one arrived at its destination, perhaps thousands of miles from Rome, the recipient immediately knew who had sent it, and just how important it was.”
“So that’s the front of an official papal seal?” Ferguson sounded disappointed. “It doesn’t look very … well … impressive, does it?”
It was true. It was nothing like the grand and elaborate seals used by medieval kings. “Bulls have always been very simple,” she explained. “Something to do with looking humble.”
“And what does that mean?” Ferguson asked, pointing to the writing above the faces.
Ava dismantled the bull she had made. “In medieval times, people almost never wrote things out in full,” she explained. “Like the word ‘Xmas’, for example, derives from a medieval abbreviation for Christmas. The word ‘SPASPE’ here,” she pointed to the writing above the two heads, “is actually two names. SPA is short for Sanctus Paulus, or Saint Paul—and SPE is short for Sanctus Petrus, or Saint Peter. You can see the relevant letters directly above each of the faces. On the left, Paul has the straight beard, and on the right Peter has the tight curly beard, which is how they were always shown in early art.”
Ferguson looked at the grey colour of the metal in the photos. “What’s it made of? Lead?”
Ava had come to the same conclusion. “Most were simple. Gold was saved for very special occasions.”
He nodded at the other photo. “What about the other image.” He pointed to the first photograph “Why is it baffling if you know this seal is a papal bull?”
It was a good question.
“Four things,” she replied, picking up the first picture and putting it in front of them.
“Just the four?” he asked. She could hear a note of good-natured mockery in his voice.
“I can probably come up with more if you don’t mind waiting.” In fact, the longer she looked at it, the more anomalies she was beginning to see.
“Four’s just fine,” he answered quickly with a smile.
She decided to keep it brief.
“First. If it was a normal bull, the reverse would be totally plain—with just the pope’s name. But this one has text and multiple images—the Menorah, crosses, and stars.”
“S
econd. There are no silk threads running through the seal. Even if they had been trimmed off, we should still see some remains of them.”
“Third. It’s much too big for a bull. Do you see the pen on Malchus’s desk in the corner of the shot? Its size suggests this seal is about four inches across. That’s over twice the size of a normal bull.”
“So it’s not a bull?” Ferguson sounded deflated.
Ava shook her head. “Not like any I’ve ever seen.” She sat back in the sofa, deep in thought, genuinely mystified by the object. It simply did not fit into any category of artefact she knew. “You see, the fourth problem is the biggest of all. Not only does the first image have a lot of text where it should just be the pope’s name—but it’s in a muddled variety of languages, when it should just be in one: Latin.”
“Seriously?” he asked, picking up the photo and staring at it. “What does it say?”
“That’s just the point,” she answered. “The words are clear enough. But they don’t really mean anything.”
She continued to stare at the strange object, unable to make sense of it.
It had been a long time since an artefact had stumped her quite as completely as this one.
What on earth was it?
She stared at the image of the Menorah and the strange wording around it.
It made no sense.
It was a complete mongrel. Normally the problem she faced with the writing on an ancient artefact was that sections of it were broken off or missing, and she had to reconstruct what the original may have said.
But this was completely intact. There was nothing missing that she could see. Yet it still did not make any sense.
It was a total mystery.
She started running through the options in her mind, trying to find reference points—other artefacts she had seen that had any similar characteristics.
But she was drawing a blank.
There was simply nothing like it. Everything about the design seemed odd. There was nothing ordinary or straightforward … .
Then suddenly an idea hit her.
As she let the thought develop, she shook her head in disbelief.
Could it really be that?
She stared at it, increasingly convinced she was onto something, seeing it in a whole new light.
Was that what this was about?
She could not prevent a broad smile from breaking out across her face.
“What’s the matter?” Ferguson asked. “Is it a trick of some sort? A meaningless modern joke?”
“Quite the opposite,” her face was deadly earnest again.
He stared across at her, baffled. “What then? What is it?”
She looked at him with rising excitement. “I can’t tell you what it means, yet. But I’m willing to bet you any money that it’s very old, and was cast by an extremely powerful and secretive organization with something highly important to say.”
“You’ve lost me completely,” Ferguson shook his head.
Ava could feel her eyes shining. “It’s not a bull or a seal. It was never attached to a document.” She paused breathlessly. “Don’t you see? The message is on the object itself. The words on the front. They’re a puzzle. A clue. A code. A centuries-old riddle. And whatever the hidden message is, it comes straight from the heart of one of the world’s most secretive and shadowy organizations—the medieval Vatican.”
——————— ◆ ———————
56
10b St James’s Gardens
Piccadilly
London SW1
England
The United Kingdom
Ava was leaning forward in the sofa, poring over the images Drewitt had sent.
“If it’s not a seal,” Ferguson asked, “then what is it?”
Ava was still unclear in her own mind “At a guess, it’s a religious medal.”
Ferguson looked quizzically at her. “The Vatican gave out medals?”
Ava nodded. “But not like military ones for gallantry or service. The Roman world was obsessed with magical talismans, amulets, and charms. When the early Church was born among the bazaars of pagan Rome, the first Christians still wanted all the comforting trinkets they were used to. So the Church tolerated and even encouraged them. They soon created Christian talismans and medals for every need—to ward off the devil, to protect from disease, to mark pilgrimages, and everything else you can think of. People wearing crosses around their necks today is a direct continuation of that ancient pagan tradition.”
“But if it’s a medal,” he countered, “why would it have a puzzle on it and not a clear open meaning?”
She had been asking herself the same question, but needed pen and paper to think clearly.
She got up and went to her study, where she picked up a pad of clean paper and a packet of felt tip pens.
Returning to the sitting room, she sat down on the sofa and began carefully copying out the words from the medal, writing them on a sheet of white paper in big capital letters, leaving a large space beneath each line.
“Can you translate it?” Ferguson asked.
“See the first sentence?” She took a red felt tip pen. “It’s basic medieval French.” She pointed at the line:
and underneath it quickly wrote out the translation:
“Which fits with the Vatican theory,” Ferguson noted, squinting at the photo more closely. “But what are the little crosses between every word?”
“They’re common on medieval seals,” she answered without looking up, “usually just stylistic, for decoration.”
She turned back to the photograph. “The next line is even easier. ‘CLEMENS III’ is a pope’s name, in Latin.” She wrote it out in English underneath:
CLEMENT THE THIRD
“Could we date the medal?” Ferguson asked. “By knowing when Clement was pope?”
Ava had never been good at remembering the order of popes. She recalled once looking through a list of them and realizing that, including the disputed popes, there had been around three hundred of them—or one every six-and-a-half years for the last twenty centuries.
She had better things to do with her time than memorize them all.
She pointed to the far side of the room, to a set of thick white wooden bookshelves running the length of the wall. They were filled with books of every colour, shape, and size. “That large blue book on the left of the bottom shelf will tell you.”
Ferguson walked over to the bookshelf and pulled out the volume she had indicated, and returned with it.
“This next line is also straightforward.” She pointed to it:
HAM OF ÞE HOOLY BLODIG BULLE
“It looks like very old English,” Ferguson said, “like something out of The Lord of the Rings. But what’s that?” He pointed at the sixth letter.
“Ah,” Ava nodded. “Ye olde monke’s habite.”
Ferguson frowned. “Sorry?”
“It’s a thorn,” she explained. “An old Nordic rune that survived in written English until several hundred years ago. It’s a ‘th’ sound. When printing started, early typesetters often used a ‘y’ instead because it was all they had in their box of largely Roman letters. So whenever you see a teashop called Ye Olde Creame Bunne or a pub called Ye Olde Cuppe and Mitre, it’s just an old-fashioned way of writing ‘the’.”
“You mean all those people earnestly saying ‘yee oldee’ are off the mark?” Ferguson looked amused.
Ava nodded. “Way off.”
“How disappointing.” He began flicking through the book.
Ava started writing again. “Anyway, it’s straightforward medieval English.” She wrote out the translation:
HOME OF THE HOLY BLOODY BULL
“A bloody bull?” Ferguson paused. “Like a papal bull, soaked in blood?”
Ava shrugged. She was not at all clear what it meant. She turned back to the photo. “And the last line, ‘SUB TUTELA STELLARUM’ is Latin.”
She added the translation underneat
h it:
UNDER THE PROTECTION OF THE STARS
Ferguson put his finger on a line in the book. “Clement the third was pope from 1187 to 1191. Apparently there was also an anti-pope called Clement the third, but he was a hundred years earlier, 1080 to 1100.” He frowned. “What’s an anti-pope? A cure for the first one?”
“Something like that,” she smiled, holding up the sheet and standing back. “So if we put it all together, we get: ‘THE HOLY CHURCH OF ROME, CLEMENT THE THIRD, HOME OF THE HOLY BLOODY BULL, UNDER THE PROTECTION OF THE STARS’.”
“I see what you mean,” Ferguson frowned, slipping the book of popes back onto the shelf. “The meaning’s no clearer in plain English.”
She looked at the sheet.
He was right.
But why?
She read the lines again.
Why was it so mysterious?
What was it trying to hide?
She stared at it, letting it wash over her.
But it still made no sense.
What was she missing?
Her phone buzzed to life again, interrupting her thoughts. “It’s another message from Drewitt,” she said, glancing down at it. “He’s been busy.”
As she clicked the image open and peered at it, a wave of nausea passed over her.
Oh God.
The blood drained completely from her face and ran cold.
Although it had taken her a moment to recognize, it was unmistakeably a photograph of Drewitt.
The image only showed his top half. But it was enough.
His head was lolling impossibly to one side, leaving no doubt his neck had been violently snapped. His mouth was gaping open, and his jaw was dangling at an ugly angle. With a rush of horror, she could see from the amount of blood inside his mouth and from the jagged stump visible in his throat that his tongue had been hacked out.
The Sword of Moses Page 33
