St Paul's Labyrinth

by Jeroen Windmeijer

  ‘The first grade is the raven, or corax in Latin,’ Fay said, continuing her explanation. ‘The raven is connected to the air element, and to the planet Saturn. You would have been a raven for quite a long time because you had to learn to completely identify with the raven, as it were. You were expected to leave your home and family during this stage, travel, go out into the world. After you were initiated, you became a sort of courier, you’d go back and forth as a messenger between the different Mithras temples, and stay with the other followers of Mithras.’

  ‘And the second?’

  ‘And the second grade is the bridegroom.’

  Peter and Fay walked through a chamber with a very high ceiling. A door brought them into the museum bookshop. They walked past the Temple of Taffeh which had been rescued from Egypt in the 1960s when large areas of the country were flooded during construction of the Aswan High Dam.

  The museum’s entrance barriers were closed, but Fay opened them with a magnetic swipe card.

  ‘Are there any cameras here?’

  ‘Yes,’ Fay answered. To emphasise her words, she gave one of the security cameras a thumbs-up. Peter put his head down and looked at the floor.

  ‘They know me,’ Fay told him reassuringly. ‘They’re probably not even watching …’

  ‘So, the bridegroom.’

  ‘Oh yes, the bridegroom. During the initiation rituals for the second grade, you sort of get married to Mithras, to the sun. A mystical marriage. They sometimes called Mithras sol invictus, the invincible sun. Not entirely uncoincidentally, there was a holiday on December twenty-fifth, three days after the winter solstice. To celebrate light’s triumph over darkness.’

  ‘Oh yes, I know that story. The pagan festival was so popular that they couldn’t eradicate it, so the Catholic church thought: fine, then we’ll celebrate the birth of Jesus on that date too. After all, he’s also the light that’s come to illuminate a dark world.’

  ‘Spot on!’

  They took the stairs to the first floor where the Roman artefacts were displayed.

  ‘You can find the remains of the Mithraea, the temples to Mithras, all over Europe. There are more than a hundred of them in Rome alone. They’re in London, in Tienen in Belgium … And here in Holland too, under the Reformed Church in Elst, and there’s one in Helden in Limburgh. There are tonnes of them in Germany, France, Spain, and in Eastern Europe as well, Egypt, Syria, just about anywhere you can think of. It really was a widespread cult. But back to the bridegroom. So, in this phase, you cut yourself off from the rest of the world, and you aren’t allowed to speak.’

  As they entered the first hall, Peter’s attention was immediately drawn to the bronze helmet mask that had been found on the site of the Roman fort of Matilo in the Roomburg area of Leiden.

  ‘So the third grade is the soldier …’ Peter said, looking at a mannequin dressed in Roman military gear.

  ‘Yep,’ Fay replied, ‘and where else in Leiden would you find a Roman soldier?’

  They stood in front of the model. Its copper-coloured armour glinted gently under the faint night light in the room.

  There was nothing to see.

  18

  Saturday 21 March, 1:40am

  Peter intuitively took a step back from Fay. He leaned away from her to create even more distance between them.

  Had he been set up? There was nothing to see here. Had she led him to a dead end on purpose?

  Either she was a damn good actress with a perfect poker face, or she had genuinely wanted to help him.

  Fay took a pen out of her pocket and used it to carefully lift up the long, horizontal, copper-coloured plates on the soldier’s armour. ‘What is it we’re looking for exactly, Peter?’

  ‘I wish I knew. At Quintus, I found a quote from the Song of Songs, hidden inside a book. That led me to the synagogue where I found a photo. I don’t know what we’re looking for now. This is a shot in the dark.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that,’ Fay said, without looking up from her examination of the ancient armour. Eventually she gave the mannequin a gentle shake, hoping it would give up its secret, but nothing happened.

  ‘The raven, the bridegroom and miles, the soldier … The initiate’s duty is a soldier’s duty. Your life on earth is a military campaign in the service of the conquering god. But it’s not about fighting with physical weapons. You’re fighting your own nature, your own carnal lusts and desires that are constantly dragging you down, nailing your soul to your body.’

  ‘That’s what I was talking to Awram about.’

  ‘When they began the third stage, the fighter, the soldier, was given a sword and a crown. He had to accept the sword, as a symbol of his mental struggle. But he had to refuse the crown, with the words: “No, Mithras is my crown.”’

  ‘No wonder the soldiers of the Roman legions were attracted to Mithras. All that military symbolism.’

  ‘Soldiers were the ones who spread Mithraism across the whole empire. And merchants too, actually … But if we just knew what we were looking for.’

  Peter thoroughly examined every inch of every display cases, but he couldn’t find any evidence that their contents had been disturbed. He looked into the dark holes on the helmet mask, but it stared blankly back at him with the same expression that had been cast in bronze by its maker two thousand years ago.

  He crouched down and twisted his upper body, trying to see the back of the mask, but it looked exactly as it had done twenty years ago, when he’d picked it up from the wooden floor of the finds tent on the Matilo dig.

  ‘This is all there is here, right?’ Peter asked. ‘There’s nothing else?’

  ‘Yes, this is all there is,’ Fay said, sounding disappointed. ‘I really thought this would be it, Peter, that you’d find your next clue here.’

  They stood next to each other.

  ‘So what’s the next grade?’

  ‘The fourth grade is the lion. That one might be tricky. Leiden is full of lions. The entrance to the Burcht, gable stones on houses, the Doelengracht gates, ornamentation on bridges. It would be like finding a needle in a haystack. You really need something more concrete. Then after that, there’s the Persian.’

  ‘The Persian? As in, from Persia, what used to be Iran?’

  ‘Exactly. Mithraism came from Persia originally. Look, Peter, you need to understand this. Because if you do, you’ll stand more chance of making sense of whatever you’re about come up against. In Mithraic doctrine, there are two great powers in opposition. There’s Ahura Mazda, the good god who reigns over the kingdom of light, and Ahriman, the bad god who reigns over the kingdom of darkness. A sort of devil. Mithras is a mediator. He takes the middle position between the two worlds, good and evil. A bit like what the role of the Holy Spirit was thought to be in some of the early Christian sects. He’s a warrior for good who helps to fight the battle against evil, but until evil is defeated, he’s the link between the pure light and the human who is trapped in matter.’

  ‘An intermediary between God and man.’

  ‘Right, a sort of middleman. And the god Mithras that the Roman soldiers worshipped comes from Persia, but he’s probably not the ancient Persian god Mithra.’

  ‘There was something to do with a bull too. Didn’t it play an important role?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right, the bull slaughter. See,’ she said, as though she was giving an encouraging compliment to an unconfident student, ‘you always know more than you think you do. Every temple to Mithras has an image of a man slaying a bull.’ She got down on one knee. ‘It shows Mithras forcing the bull to the ground, holding its head up by the horns or the nostrils, and …’ She pulled back her right arm then brought it down violently with her hand balled in a tight fist. ‘… stabbing the bull in the heart with a dagger. And as the bull lies dying on the ground, the blood pouring from its wound turns into ears of corn. A dog and a snake try to lick the blood up, and scorpion grabs the bull’s genitals in its claws.’ She stood up again.

/>   ‘And what does all of this mean?’ Peter asked.

  ‘Well … we don’t know exactly. Some people think that Mithras is the bull as well as the bull slayer. The bull is God’s alter ego, as it were. He makes a ransom sacrifice that redeems everyone who believes in him. But the blood is the source of new life. In fact, that’s at the heart of all the ancient mystery religions. They all attach great importance to the cycles that go on repeating in nature. Taking part in these mysteries assured you of eternal life, because you died with the deity and it was with the deity that you rose again. Another interesting thing is that their rituals took place in underground spaces, and at the door, you dipped the index and middle finger of your right hand into a bowl of water and made the sign of a cross on your forehead.’

  ‘Seriously?’ Peter exclaimed.

  ‘Listen,’ Fay said, smiling now. ‘I know this all sounds incredible when you hear it for the first time, but it’s really true. The cross symbol is very old, an archetype. The followers of Mithras believed that your animalistic nature, your bull nature, needed to be crucified. Man’s soul is trapped in the physical world. It’s held captive, it doesn’t belong here at all. It belongs with God, but it’s become separated from God because it’s ensnared in matter. Man’s spirit is trapped like a prisoner in the cage of his body. Our life’s purpose is to return to God. And God’s death, whether it’s on a cross or not, symbolises the death of our animalistic nature, our carnality, and it frees our soul. It triumphs over the sin that caused the separation from God, so that the spirit can be reunited with God.’

  ‘There are far more elements of Christianity in this than I thought.’

  ‘Oh yes, and there are a lot more. They had a ritual with bread and wine, where the bread represented the bull’s body, and the wine represented its blood.’

  Peter was speechless.

  ‘And what about this: “He who does not eat of my flesh and drink of my blood, so that he remains in me and I in him, shall not know salvation.”’

  ‘Did Mithras say something similar?’

  ‘Similar? That’s taken directly from the Mithraic service! All the mystery religions, including Mithraism, were about gaining eternal life, the hope of a hereafter, being reunited with loved ones. It’s—’

  ‘You know what, Fay?’ Peter stopped her, overcome by a sense of pessimism and defeat. ‘I don’t think we’re going to find anything here. Do you?’

  Fay didn’t reply.

  Suddenly, like a signal from a satellite reaching earth after a long delay, Awram’s words came back to Peter. ‘Maybe the sheet is the clue,’ he’d said.

  ‘I have to go, Fay, sorry.’

  ‘You’re going? Where? Can’t I help you?’

  ‘You’ve already helped me enormously, truly, probably more than you realise. Coming here was a good idea though. It was the obvious place to look, but I think I have a better idea.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  Peter hesitated. ‘You know what, I’ll let you know, okay? I’ll call you tomorrow.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Bye!’ Peter ran to the stairs without looking back and bounded down them, three at a time. He’d been abrupt, he realised, and possibly even ungrateful, but he had to move on.

  His next target was the Lakenhal, the municipal fine art museum. It was housed in a former guild hall for the cloth merchants in the textile trade, Leiden’s main form of industry until well into the twentieth century. They were currently showing an exhibition of work by Leiden’s most famous son, Rembrandt, and the famous triptych altarpiece The Last Judgement by Lucas van Leyden. The Lakenhal also held a large collection of schutterstukken: military portraits and war paintings, the subjects of which were usually soldiers.

  The Lakenhal. The Cloth Hall. Or the Sheet Hall.

  The sheet itself had been the clue.

  The mobile phone buzzed as he reached the exit door. He had almost forgotten about it.

  He took it out as he walked along the Papengracht.

  A photo message appeared, but it took a while for the whole image to load. Peter hovered his finger above the screen, impatient to see what it would show.

  It was a blurred photo of a woman lying on a makeshift bed in a dimly lit room. Her eyes were closed as though she was sleeping.

  He brought the phone closer to his eyes. Just before the image disappeared in an explosion of pixels, he saw who the woman was. He recognised the skirt she had been wearing on Friday when they’d had lunch together in the LAK.

  19

  Saturday 21 March, 2:15am

  Quarter past two. Only twelve hours left. Less than that, eleven and three-quarter hours. And he had only found two clues.

  Why had they sent him a photo of Judith, he wondered. Her eyes had been closed and she looked as though she was sleeping, but who knew if that was true? She could be dead already … No, no, no! He tried desperately to banish the thought from his mind. He had to find her, that was the task he had been set. By whoever was behind all this … Murdering Judith made no sense. But it was clear that they wanted to put pressure on him. If only he could be with her now … Dear, dear Judith …

  He walked briskly along the Papengracht, making sure to stay close to the buildings.

  Calling Fay had been a knee-jerk reaction. Not an entirely rash one, she was an expert … And then there were the associations that Awram had made which had also led to ‘the soldier’. The antiquities museum had been the obvious place to look next, but there was nothing there.

  You’ll only see it when you understand it, as Johan Cruyff would say.

  He hurried over the empty Breestraat and went into the little Kabeljauwsteeg. The next part of his route was dangerous, past the Boommarkt. He looked to the right and saw students leaving Quintus, without their parents now.

  Eventually, he took his chances and ran onto the Prinsesskade, with its Grand Café floating in the canal. He marched ahead with his head down, hoping he wouldn’t pass anyone on the way.

  When he turned right at the narrow Caeciliastraat, his shoulders relaxed. He hadn’t noticed how tense they had been. Warm pain from his taut muscles radiated down his spine.

  He went left into the Lange Lijsbethsteeg. At the end of it was Museum De Lakenhal, like an indomitable fortress complete with a moat and a bridge in front of it.

  He went over the slender footbridge and onto the Lange Scheistraat that ran in front of the museum. At the end of the street, he turned left onto the Langegracht, only stopping when he reached the demolition site at the back of the Lakenhal.

  Daniël had invited him to come along for a guided tour here a fortnight ago. A planned extension of the Lakenhal had led to the removal of four of the nearby houses. An artist had been asked to ‘do something’ with the buildings before they were knocked down. The resulting project had been called ‘Verwoest Huis Leiden’ or ‘Damaged House Leiden’.

  The tour had been conducted by the artist herself. She saw it as a requiem for the demolished buildings, and a celebration of a new beginning. She had talked about death and new starts, terms that were usually reserved for sentient creatures, but which in her opinion could also be used for inanimate things like buildings. They also had a ‘life’, with birth, growth and death, and in some cases, a new beginning.

  She’d had floors lowered, set at an angle or dropped down vertically so that they became walls. Everything had been done with the material that was already present in the buildings themselves, nothing came from outside.

  A sign on the door said: NO ENTRY. WORK IN PROGRESS.

  Peter grabbed the handle and rammed his shoulder against the door. It cracked then gave way almost instantly. He went inside, closing the door behind him as quietly as he could.

  It was quite dark inside, but his eyes soon adjusted to the gloom, and a little light came in through the windows from the streetlamps outside.

  The building had been almost completely stripped bare. Tools were scattered about on the ground, and there was a big s
ledgehammer leaning against a wall. A long workbench was strewn with leftover food and empty beer cans.

  The artist had mentioned something during the tour … Peter racked his brains, examined the wall that formed the back of the Lakenhal, but couldn’t find what he was looking for.

  He went upstairs.

  It took him just a few minutes to find it.

  Red and white tape was strung about half a metre away from the wall, along its entire length.

  He went back down to the lower room, picked up the sledgehammer, and dragged it up the stairs. It looked like the hammer he’d found at Quintus, but much more impressive.

  The artist had said that she had been given free rein to do whatever she wanted with this building and the houses next to it as long as she took the load-bearing walls into account. The wall he was standing in front of now had also been left untouched because its single layer of bricks connected directly with the Lakenhal.

  Daniël had looked at Peter and joked, a little too loudly, that you could get into the museum for free if you knocked a hole in this wall. The artist had overheard him, but only smiled painfully, as though she instantly regretted mentioning it.

  But it would be very convenient for me right now if Daniël had been right, Peter thought, as he swung the hammer back and brought it down on the wall with a mighty crack. A dull thud echoed through the room.

  Whatever he had to do to find Judith, he would do it. He let the hammer fall over and over on the same spot. With each violent blow, he tried to smash away his fear.

  The wall was indeed only the thickness of a single brick and it didn’t take long for Peter to create a hole in it about the size of a football. A few more well-aimed blows easily made the hole bigger. He put the hammer down on a large sack of cement next to the wall, and got on his knees to remove some more bricks by hand. They came loose surprisingly easily.