by A D Davies
Jules sat forward. “Sounds like you’re almost at the point.”
“Indeed. Trelius heard the description of the item stolen from Herodias—yes, the bangle—and he remembered seeing something similar years earlier. And Philip was the only man he knew who could possibly be interested.”
“Why?”
“To continue the work that Philip had made his life. Helping Jesus minister to his flock. Imagine an item of power in the hands of people opposing the Messiah. If Herodias worked out how to tap into that power, it would undermine humanity’s savior.”
“Almost interesting,” Jules said. “Not quite cool, but interesting.”
“Because Jesus’s mother wore an identical piece.”
Jules sat back and laughed. “Get outa here. The Virgin Mary stole the sky witch’s bangle?”
“No. And there is no record of someone retrieving the other bangle, but it would not be unusual for a lot of items from the same region to end up in marketplaces after a campaign. If Agrippa had one bangle, taken from a conquered tribe or people, maybe another soldier took a second?”
“Guesswork.” Jules did not seem impressed.
“Sometimes that’s all we have,” Bridget said. “Others, we get accounts that are more specific.
Toby nodded his thanks at Bridget’s intervention. “Evidence points at Philip as the instigator. Of the plan, at least, if not the actual theft itself. But he only went ahead with it because of what John the Baptist witnessed. Namely, Herodias consulting with great minds, linguists, poring over a manuscript that was brought back by her brother Agrippa from his exploits out in the Empire.”
Bridget added a high-def photograph of the Aradia bangle to the big screen, a close-up in which it was arranged on a polished wooden table. “This is what Agrippa brought Herodias as a gift. A bangle with metallic seams and flecks of green. Not gold, not a title. Agrippa took it and the manuscript from a primitive tribe who held the bangle in high esteem. It was considered an ‘ancient’ object even then, so it probably dates back more than the two thousand years you mentioned.”
As with Toby, when Bridget paused, it appeared to be so she could assess Jules’s degree of interest.
She said, “But Herodias was furious at what she saw as a snub. The manuscript wasn’t even written in a language she could understand. As wise man after wise man admitted defeat in translating it, though, she concluded there was more to this than she first thought.”
“Right,” Jules said. “So Philip hears about it, figures it might be important to his buddy Jesus, and organizes the theft. Where’d it go?”
“According to Trelius, and touched upon by a third chronicler named—”
“If it saves time, how about dropping the sources and just tell me what you found?”
“As you wish.” Toby shut his notebook with a snap. “Essentially, Philip and John the Baptist located someone to translate the pages, then got the two bangles together—Herodias’s and Mary’s—and what they discovered caused them to hide their finds from everyone, including Jesus. After Jesus’s death—his second death if you believe that sort of thing—”
“Wait, wait, wait, back up a sec,” Jules said. “What happened when the two bangles got together?”
“The translations are sketchy,” Bridget said. “But one interpretation is...” She swallowed. “Magic.”
“Another is ‘curse,’” Toby added. “Yet another is ‘power.’ But the real curiosity is why would an apostle of Christ take a heretical object as proof of the apostle’s own holiness? Proof he spoke on behalf of Christ?”
“They took them? Where?”
Toby welcomed the narrative baton. “Around the year 40 AD, the twelve apostles went their separate ways to preach the gospel to the world. And Christianity was born. They often took holy objects of power with them to prove their authenticity, and in two accounts, one apostle carried a handwritten translation of the manuscript, while apostles took the two bangles in other directions, hoping to return them to their rightful places in the world.”
Jules thought it through. “Which apostles took them? Philip, I guess, is one.”
“We think so. And he kept the original manuscript. But you know about the apostle called Thomas?”
“Doubting guy, yeah.”
“Correct, ‘Doubting Thomas’ is the modern term. Thomas is the disciple who refused to believe in Christ’s resurrection until he saw it with his own eyes. Which, in the opinion of the only other apostle to mention this doubt—this is the other John, by the way—indicated Thomas was less than faithful. Or—”
“Or more practical. Like Philip. Makin’ him a natural choice to trust with stuff that don’t jibe with Christian teaching. Sure.”
“Tradition has Thomas preaching most actively east of modern Syria, traveling as far as India, where the Marthoma and Kerala Christians, to this day, revere him as their founder. He was supposedly murdered by rival soldiers in an Indian town called Mylapore, with a spear, if memory serves. His bones allegedly lie in Santhome Church in Chennai, but as with many religious relics, no one is permitted to test them thoroughly. Other accounts suggest he survived his ordeal in Mylapore and traveled north to continue his mission.”
“What other accounts? How solid is this intel?”
Toby chuckled. “Now you want to know sources?”
“Two bracelets were taken outa the Middle East at the same time as a book that’s actually, what? An instruction manual?”
“Quite possibly, although I wouldn’t have put it so simply.”
“Nah,” Harpal said, “you’d have spent half an hour talking about it.”
“Shut up,” Charlie said. “We’re nearly done.”
Toby patted the air to break up the silliness. “You are correct, though. Sources in this case are important. If the Aradia bangle surfaced out of Africa as recently as the 1990s, and your mother knew of its special properties, it probably means she was aware of its true nature.”
“My mom wasn’t no witch.”
“Not a witch,” Toby said. “A chronicler. Like Josephus. The bangles disappeared around 40 AD, and Thomas the Apostle was last heard from sometime after 52 AD, which is when it is documented that he landed in India. While it is possible the Mary bangle has been destroyed or lost in some random place, one thing is certain: if it is possible to get them together, we may be party to something that... well, I don’t wish to get too excited, but it could be rather special.”
“Yeah? So how do we find it? Carthage?”
“Ah, you know your extended biblical history. Very good. Not many people do.
“Yeah, I guess I picked it up somewhere.”
“Well, yes, indeed. It’s part of the trail. Carthage was Philip’s ministry after Greece and Syria. One convert preserved much of Philip’s writing after his death, including his personal journal. The apostles apparently each carried a transcription of the original manuscript with them, translated of course. But Thomas was the only one to send word to unite the bangles. Thomas carried one already, and Philip duly arranged transport of the other.”
“Neither bangle is in Carthage,” Jules said.
“Thomas found what they were looking for. And although we don’t know what it is, if Valerio Conchin wants it, he must believe it is a source of either power or wealth.”
Jules felt his face slacken, and he could not temper his dismissive tone. “Seriously? Power?”
“Power, Jules,” Bridget said. “When you touched the bangle, it glowed. Me and Dan—nothing. Whatever the explanation, be it an unknown branch of science or straight-up magic, we have to get there before Valerio.”
Jules stood. “Man, you nearly had me for a while.” He headed for the door.
Toby stood too. “Where are you going?”
This time Jules didn’t stop. “Biblical myths I can handle. Magic? Nah. You guys are either cuckoo, or you’re playing me. Whatever it is, I’m gone. For real this time.”
His allocated room was more like a
hotel suite, with deep carpet and cream walls, a decent TV, a large desk, and a king-size bed. He hadn’t unpacked fully—just a change of clothes for after his planned shower—which he wouldn’t need now. Predictably, though, when he closed his backpack and moved to exit, Toby was waiting alongside Bridget.
“Are you really telling us there’s nothing strange about the bangle?” Bridget asked. “It glowed when you touched it.”
“Ain’t magic,” Jules said. “I’ve seen people go gaga over sculptures and books and even rings because they thought some spirit or another lived inside. They’re always wrong.”
“Always?”
“I once did a job for this guy out of Gabon, a tribal leader. Been elected to the ruling party’s parliament. He wanted their dancing head back from some breakaway region next door. This three-foot head and shoulders carved outa ebony. Pure black. And you know, when he got it back to the land he was born in, at the foot of this dormant volcano, guess what? It did dance. No one’d seen it do this before. Kinda levitated on its special altar sometimes. Wobbled others. So I stayed on. Had to figure this thing out, you know?”
Toby and Bridget stood transfixed, and Jules then understood why they talked so much. They were story junkies. They lapped this stuff up like cats did cream.
“Long story short, it turned out to be magnetized ball bearings, all negatively charged. Inside the statue. I got a portable X-ray machine out there. Geological survey revealed the volcano wasn’t completely dormant, just stable. The magma beneath still flowed around a system of tunnels, and the ground was rich in iron.”
Toby and Bridget shrugged as if accepting bad news. They clearly yearned for a magical explanation even though he’d telegraphed there wasn’t one.
“One thing I didn’t solve,” Jules said, offering a crumb of mystery. “How they got the ball bearings in there. Who made it? No seam in the sculpture, so maybe they were already there. Maybe they saw a rock moving funny and carved a face in it. Million guesses, but we won’t ever know the answer.” He felt warmer in his gut at their smiles. “I’ve even seen plenty of stuff glow when the light catches it right.”
Bridget offered a sympathetic glance. “You know it wasn’t reflecting light.”
Jules stared at the floor. “And you know more about these bangles. And you wanna hide it in all that ancient text stuff. Means I can’t trust you.”
Toby nodded. “We think the Aradia bangle and its counterpart are made of materials that are... not entirely uninteresting to science.”
“What materials?”
Bridget shook her head. “I only handled it briefly, so it’s hard to tell. Possibly quartzite. But there was metal in there. Those flecks. Possibly ionized copper. And it was magnetic, which is odd.”
“A seam running through it?”
“Maybe. But if it was an antique when Herodias received it, they would have assumed it was supernatural.”
“Or God’s will,” Toby said.
“Let me get the history straight since it’s so important to you.” Jules did not want to admit his fascination, having shown his defiance so firmly earlier, so he kept his tone even. “Agrippa brings the bangle back from Africa, gives it and some coded manuscript to his sister Herodias. She works out it has power they can’t explain, and Saint Philip—”
“Just Philip,” Bridget said. “Wasn’t a saint at the time.”
“Whatever. He steals it, and when the two bangles get together, they see something that scares ’em. After Jesus dies, the apostles make copies of the manuscript before heading out into the world. Only Thomas checks back in. He don’t like what he finds, and sends Herodias’s bangle back to Philip, splitting ’em up with a warning to stay away. Then what happened?”
Toby wobbled his flat palm back and forth. “No one can be sure. Between Philip forwarding the Aradia bangle to Thomas and Thomas returning it, Philip was killed. The other bangle, Mary’s, is lost to wherever Thomas hid it.”
“Or he destroyed it,” Jules suggested.
“If it belonged to Jesus’s mother, I do not believe for one moment he would do that.”
“Plus,” Bridget said, “why destroy one and not the other?”
Two bangles.
Together, apparently, they do more than just glow.
A manuscript was written to accompany them.
“It vibrates as well as glows.” Jules dropped his bag and met Toby’s eye. “There’s more to it. But it ain’t magic. ’Kay?”
“Okay.” Toby approached with Bridget a step behind. “We’ll get it back. We’ll find out what it’s made of and why it does the things you say.”
Jules scooped up his bag and tossed it on the bed. “To do that, we gotta find the one Thomas hid, draw this Valerio guy out. How do we do that?”
Bridget grinned. “We?”
“Thomas’s last known location is India. His manuscript still there?”
“Thomas wrote a great many things. But we’re most concerned with a manuscript sacred to Christians of the Kerala region—”
“You’re lecturing again,” Jules said.
“Sorry. Yes, what I mean is... many of India’s treasures were raided during British rule, including a repository of works from Christians in Kerala.”
“British rule?”
“Queen Victoria accepted many curiosities into her personal collection and passed them down through her descendants.” Toby’s smile widened, a mischievous child anticipating excitement. “We need to pay a visit to my former employer.”
“We gotta rob a museum?”
Bridget was not smiling. The opposite, in fact. “Toby used to be the head curator for the British royal family. Technically, he worked for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Before she fired him.”
“Yes, yes, don’t bore the lad with details,” Toby said. “The manuscripts and books from Kerala are part of her personal collection in the catacombs of Windsor Castle. If Saint Thomas’s documents are with the royals, that’s where they’ll be.”
“Great. We’re gonna rob the Queen of England.” Jules pulled open his bag. “Mind if I shower first?”
Part Two
We become just by performing just action, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave action. —Aristotle
Great thoughts speak only to the thoughtful mind, but great actions speak to all mankind.
—Theodore Roosevelt
Chapter Nine
London, England
The following day, LORI’s less-than-luxurious Learjet landed at Luton Airport north of London at seven a.m. While the others had mainlined coffee and sugary energy drinks on the short hop from Brittany, Jules restricted himself to oat-based bars and pure fruit juice; he also looked way better than any of them and suspected he was the only one who managed a full seven hours sleep.
He had reluctantly agreed to stay at the chateau but ate in his room rather than join the team. After spending all afternoon and most of the evening finalizing the task ahead, he needed a longer-than-usual meditation to clear his mind of all future plans. In his early days, it had been this constant reworking of proposed transactions, thefts, and other raids that robbed him of sleep and threatened to derail the good work he put into his health. Since meeting a yogi in Indonesia, though, he never experienced such problems.
In a rented minivan—or “people carrier” as the literal Brits called them—they took ninety minutes to reach the town of Windsor, mostly via gray motorways, but these eventually gave way to the lush greens of spring lining the country roads on their way to what was still a quintessential English town. Although there was a quicker route, directly through the town, they entered the grounds via a route aptly named “the Long Walk,” a path aiming straight at the sprawling walls of Windsor Castle itself, stationed atop a rise in the landscape. Designed to fend off sieges for months at a time, the tree-lined trail cut through a park where mist drifted over the ground. A herd of deer roamed, ghostly figures venturing out at this break in the cold spring
weather. Likewise, dozens of visitors trekked onward in short sleeves, carrying jackets instead of wearing them.
“That must be two miles long,” Bridget said.
Dan shielded his eyes from the low sun. “More like two and a half.”
Jules spent a second longer assessing. “Two point six. Maybe two point seven.”
“Pedantic.”
“It’s two-point-six-five miles.” Toby looked up at Jules. “When we get a moment, you are going to have to tell me how you do that.”
They proceeded onward, Toby and Jules up front.
“Can’t we just tool Dan up with a bunch of Uzis and RPGs?” Jules asked. “Full-frontal assault. He’ll look real cool running up there, guns blazing.”
Dan gave a sideways smile. “We don’t do full-frontal assaults. Much as I’d love to some days. But Toby doesn’t approve.”
“Okay, people, back to the matter at hand,” Charlie said. “Trackers?”
“Got mine,” Bridget replied, tapping the side of her jaw.
All except Jules responded the same.
Charlie’s hand landed on her hip. “Jules? You set up yet?”
“I ain’t being pegged with a tracker,” he replied.
“It just means we can come get you if there’s a problem,” Dan said.
“Look.” Charlie produced a curved tube the size of an M&M but flatter. “Take this. Bite on it to activate. You don’t have to turn it on unless you need us.”
Bridget took it from Charlie and held it up for Jules. “Please. It’ll mean we worry less.”
“Fine.” Jules accepted the tracker and secured it in the back of his mouth against his gums. Addressed Toby. “You sure about the safe? Still can’t believe there ain’t a computer system, handprints, pass codes.”
“For the fiftieth time,” Toby said, “the tunnels and catacombs are eight hundred years old. How do you think they’d get a modern system down there? And who would be trusted to install it?” He pulled himself up, reverting to a less impatient tone. “The vault was a Mancunian-Warner 83 during my time and still was as of two years ago. Barring possibly a few low-tech upgrades, the only modern features are on the outskirts of the tunnels. No one would dream of our access point.”
