St Paul's Labyrinth

by Jeroen Windmeijer

  ENTER.

  Nothing happened.

  Damn.

  He tried again, but removed the spaces this time.

  42°41’NL 15°58’EL.

  Nothing again.

  Then with spaces after all the numbers.

  42° 41’ NL 15° 58’ EL.

  Nada.

  Now he removed all the spaces.

  42°41’NL15°58’EL.

  Zilch.

  He removed both of the Ls and put a space in the middle.

  42°41’N 15°58’E.

  He hammered the enter key with his index finger, like someone trying to make a point in a debate.

  Bingo.

  The globe on the screen began to spin. The broad yellow lines that marked out the borders between the countries were moving towards Southern Europe, just as Peter had guessed. It slowed down when it reached Italy, and then, to Peter’s immense disappointment, came to a standstill in the middle of the Adriatic Sea, half way between the coasts of Italy and Croatia.

  Was Judith on a ship? If that was true, this had been an impossible task right from the start. Rage and panic welled inside him, making his throat feel as though it was being squeezed shut.

  I must have made a mistake, he thought. This can’t be right.

  Judith, Judith, Judith … where are you?

  How many combinations of those numbers were there? Four times three times two times one … twenty-four possible co-ordinates.

  He decided to start with the number 42, since that was the first number he’d found.

  42°41’N 15°58’E – middle of the Adriatic Sea

  42°58’N 41°15’E – the Black Sea in Georgia

  42°15’N 58°41’E – somewhere in the middle of Turkmenistan

  42°41’N 58°15’E – desert to the south of the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan

  42°58’N 15°41’E – the Adriatic Sea again

  42°15’N 41°58’E – Georgia, inland this time

  With a doggedness born from despair, he kept going, starting each set of co-ordinates with the number 41 this time. Although he was starting to lose hope that this would get him anywhere, he typed in 41°42’N 15°58’E.

  The globe started to turn again. It was heading towards Italy. The rotating image came to a standstill on what looked like a winding mountain road. Peter zoomed out until he saw the name of the mountain: Monte Sant’Angelo. The bright blue water of the Adriatic Sea appeared on the screen again. The co-ordinates pointed to a little town on the west coast, right on what was called the ‘spur’ of the Italian boot, the little jut of land above the heel.

  He knew that place! The recognition filled him with excitement. Many years ago, he had travelled across Italy on his way to Bari to catch the ferry to Patras on the Peloponnese, a peninsula on the Greek coast. He had spent two days in Monte Sant’Angelo, staying as he always did, in the cheapest, most out of the way hotel he could find.

  Something told him he was on the right track now. Monte Sant’Angelo was one of the most important pilgrimage sites in Europe because the archangel Michael was believed to have appeared there a number of times in the fifth century. An impressive church had been built on the site in his honour, the San Michele. But even more significant than that was the place that Michael had appeared: on top of a cave where, for centuries, another important place of worship had stood.

  The temple of Mithras.

  40

  Saturday 21 March, 11:20am

  Monte Sant’Angelo … Peter couldn’t imagine that after making him search the length and breadth of Leiden, they now wanted him to look for Judith in … Italy? This had to be about something else. He was convinced that he was on the right track, especially since there was an important Mithraeum there. But what did they want him to do?

  He typed ‘Monte Sant’Angelo’ into Google, but the results were mostly from Italian websites, so he clicked on ‘pages written in Dutch’. Wikipedia was at the top of the list as usual, but there were also links to travel blogs.

  He visited site after site, reading frantically, looking for something that he might be able to use.

  Monte Sant’Angelo

  The Monte Sant’Angelo or mountain of the holy angel, has been steeped in mysticism since the beginning of time. Archaeological excavations have produced evidence of religious activity taking place here as long ago as the Stone Age.

  In the month of May in 490, a local nobleman entered a cave on the mountain and saw a bull inside. Shocked to find the animal lying there, he shot an arrow at it. The arrow miraculously bounced off the bull’s skin and wounded the nobleman instead.

  Lorenzo Maiorana, the Bishop of Siponto, was informed of the miracle, and shortly afterwards, the archangel Michael appeared to him. Michael told the bishop that he himself, disguised as the bull in the cave, had wounded the nobleman. Michael told Lorenzo Maiorana that the cave was to become a sacred place of worship. There would be no more shedding of bulls’ blood. The bishop immediately understood that the archangel was speaking of the blood of the bulls that had been sacrificed there to the god Mithras. There had once been a Mithraeum in the cave, a temple to the ancient cult of the sun god Mithras.

  After 490, the archangel appeared twice more to the Bishop of Siponto. The third and final time was during the consecration of the cave. Just as the bishop was about to pronounce his blessing, Michael appeared and told him that no blessing was necessary: he had already consecrated the cave himself. A procession made its way up to the cave to see the miracle that had taken place: the believers discovered that an altar had appeared, and beside it was the footprint of the archangel, embedded in the rock.

  This wasn’t what Peter had been looking for, and yet, at the back of his mind there was a loud, insistent voice telling him he was missing something.

  He scanned the search results. Every few seconds he stumbled on something that made him think he was closer to finding the solution and a glimmer of hope ignited inside him. It reminded him of playing ‘hot and cold’ as a child, when his friends would hide an object and shout ‘warm, warm, warm’ as he got closer to finding it.

  I’m nearly there, I’m nearly there … he thought, but as quickly as the hope had ignited, it faded again when he found himself at another dead end.

  He knew that he didn’t have time to read all of these webpages, but what else could he do? If he got up and walked away from this computer now, he would still have no idea where to go next.

  Everything kept coming back to the battle between light and darkness. He read about the four archangels – Michael, Gabriel, Raphael and Uriel – who fought against darkness and against the fallen angels who were spurred on by their leader Lucifer, which meant ‘Lightbearer’. He had once been one of God’s most high-ranking angels, before he lost the battle against his own inner darkness …

  Peter went back to the sites about Monte Sant’Angelo.

  The Route of the Angel

  The road that leads from Mont Saint-Michel – the shrine to the archangel Michael in Normandy – to the cave in Puglia, was called the Route of the Angel. Before long, the route had become an important strategic connection between the Channel in Normandy in the west, and the Adriatic Sea in the south. It partly overlapped with the Via Francigena, an even older pilgrimage route that stretched from Canterbury to Rome.

  Over time, a small village grew around the cave on Monte Sant-Angelo. The large number of pilgrims who flocked to the site at the beginning of the second millennium made the construction of inns and other dwellings increasingly necessary. A small local economy began to develop, fuelled by the visiting pilgrims, which eventually led to the creation of a permanently inhabited town. Monte Sant’Angelo was added to Unesco’s list of World Heritage Sites in 2011.

  The cave, the cave … There had to be something there that would help him.

  The Cave

  A growing number of pilgrims and devoted believers visited the cave, including the Byzantine emperor Constantine II, Holy Roman Emperor Henry II, and a si
gnificant number of popes and famous monks. Some of them claimed to have seen the archangel themselves. In the year 867, a monk by the name of Bernard the Wise travelled to the holy cave from Northern France. His own monastery, Mont Saint-Michel, was built on a peninsula where a bull had been seen in a cave by a bishop. From this moment on, inspired by the remarkable similarities between the two sites, many pilgrims from the north carried on to Monte Sant’Angelo after visiting Mont Saint-Michel.

  And now the cave itself …

  The entrance consists of a double arcade with a statue of Saint Michael displayed prominently above. To the right of the entrance is the sanctuary’s bell tower. The tower’s shape recalls the towers at Castel del Monte (which appears on the Italian 1 eurocent coin). The 86-step staircase leads down to the cave below and ends in a nave containing a number of tombs. Once inside the cave itself, the altar comes into view, dominated by a statue of the archangel as warrior. A passage leads to the Cappella dell’Altissimo at the rear, which features a larger, baroque altar. This is the place where the bull once lay, but now the angel stands watch here, guarding the gate of heaven.

  Peter clicked on one of the photos on the site, the double arcade that led to the cave. He read the Latin text that was chiselled into the stone. This couldn’t be real …

  Terribilis est locus iste …

  The first part of the text meant: ‘This is a fearsome place.’ But it was the second half of the sentence that jumped out at Peter:

  Hic domus dei est et porta coeli.

  ‘Here is the house of God and the gate of heaven.’

  The seventh grade was the Father, pater, just like …

  He shoved his chair back wildly, sending it toppling to the floor, to the irritation of some of the other museum visitors who gave him annoyed looks. He picked up the chair and leaned on the back of it with both hands to regain control of his breathing. This was it! He knew where he had to go.

  He managed to walk calmly through the museum, but once he was outside, he picked up his pace and ran.

  Porta Coeli.

  The Coelikerk.

  41

  Saturday 21 March, 11:45am

  ‘Hic domus dei est et porta coeli, hic domus dei est et porta coeli, hic domus dei est et porta coeli.’ Peter whispered the words over and over as he left the museum grounds and headed towards the Morspoort.

  Here is the house of God and the gate of heaven.

  These words, carved into the stone above the entrance to the Mithras temple in Monte Sant’Angelo centuries ago, were the very same words written above the imposing columns on the front of the Hartebrugkerk on the Haarlemmerstraat. That was why everyone called it the ‘Coelikerk’. Many people weren’t even aware of its official name. And even Hartebrugkerk wasn’t its real name. Officially, it was called Onze Lieve Vrouwe Onbevlekt Ontvangen or the Church of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, in honour of Mary who was born free from all personal sin and preserved from the stain of original sin on her soul.

  But would they have dared? Dared to openly choose this, of all texts, as the motto for the church? Had no one ever made this connection before?

  Above the gilded letters, painted in the centre of the triangular tympanum, there was even an all-seeing eye. To the layman, this was a Christian symbol of God’s omniscience, but it was in fact the eye of Horus. God sees everything, a sort of Big Brother before the concept even existed, making sure that people behaved themselves even when they thought no one was looking. Hadn’t that been a concept in the famous story about the French philosopher Voltaire? He himself criticised those who had faith in an all-knowing God, but as the story went, after dinner one evening, he was lingering at the table with friends, discussing whether God was real or not. When the servants came in to clear the table, he asked his friends to pause the conversation until they were gone. ‘Because,’ he said furtively, ‘if they hear that God does not exist, how am I to stop the footmen from stealing my silverware?’

  However, the all-seeing eye is originally Egyptian, a representation of the eye of Horus, the sun god.

  It would be so obvious to anyone who took the time to look into it. But Peter was still shocked by this blatant statement, out in the open where the public walked past it, day in, day out. He was on his way to ‘the Father’, the pater … The priest in a Catholic church was a father too, after all, so he knew that this was where he was supposed to go. But he didn’t know what, or who he would find inside the church.

  When he got to the Morspoort, he forced himself to slow down to avoid attracting attention. He walked through the gate’s archway. As he began to catch his breath, a small door flew open in a building on his right. Before he realised what was happening, someone had pulled him inside with considerable force, dragging him through the door like a rag doll. He was too taken by surprise to offer any resistance. Whoever it was stumbled backwards into the narrow hallway and crashed into the steep staircase behind him, as though he hadn’t expected it to be so easy.

  Peter landed on top of him and drew back his fist to retaliate, but with an agility that caught him off guard, the man manoeuvred himself out from underneath him. The man stood up and left Peter lying on the floor. Without taking his eyes off Peter, he pushed the door shut with his heel.

  Only then did Peter see who he was dealing with.

  ‘Da …’ The shock closed Peter’s throat before he could say the rest of the name.

  ‘Daniël, yes,’ the man said, finishing the name for him.

  Peter lay on the floor, stunned, not knowing what to expect. ‘But what … what are you doing?’

  ‘I’m involved in it too.’

  Peter stared at Daniël, at the face he knew so well. The city’s archaeologist, the man whose hand he had shaken only yesterday to wish him luck at the start of his big project in town.

  ‘Listen,’ Daniël said. ‘We don’t have—’

  ‘I don’t have time for this, Daniël. Where’s Judith?’ Peter shouted as he tried to get up.

  Daniël pushed him back down with such authority that Peter fell backwards, slamming his back into the stairs. ‘We don’t have much time, I know,’ Daniël said. ‘But you need to know who you’re up against. Then you might have a better idea of what you’re about to get into.’

  ‘How did you know I was here?’

  ‘I knew you’d find your way to the sundial, the sixth clue … I saw you there, talking to that woman. Then I followed you to the museum, and waited outside until you came back out. And then you started running towards me …’

  ‘And you just happened to have the key to—’

  ‘This building is ours, Peter. It has been for centuries. It was ours before there was even a wooden church here. We’re small, always have been. At least, in terms of how many of us there are. But we’re powerful. We’re everywhere. We have people in high places, men with money and influence … And for a group of our size, we own much more than you’d expect: mansions on the canals, houses near the Burcht and the Pieterskerk, houses in hofjes, housing associations …’

  ‘Just tell me what it is you want to tell me,’ Peter snarled at him through clenched teeth.

  ‘I work for the Father,’ Daniël said. ‘He’s chosen you to … The Father thinks that the hour has come for us to go public, to share our group’s knowledge with the wider world. Christianity as we know it … so much has been covered up, as I’m sure you know, there’s so much more going on under the surface than people think. The real story of Christianity is the one our group has been passing down for centuries.’ The words tumbled out of him as though he was trying to tell two or three stories at once. ‘But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light,’ he said suddenly.

  Peter recognised the words, a verse from the Gospel of Mark, the speech that Jesus had given to his disciples on the evening before the Feast of Pesach or Passover, the day of his arrest.

  ‘The Father has been planning this for a long time. When
he saw that there would be a solar eclipse in 2015, and then another one on the twentieth of March, the day before the equinox, he took it as a sign from God. “Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven,” as Mark’s Gospel says. Nobody knows the day or the hour that the moment will come, only the Father … He’s been able to convince me that he’s right, and I think that the world ought to know about us. We don’t need to hold big services in public, but we should pass on some of our knowledge. It doesn’t mean the end of Christianity as we know it: it’s more of an enhancement of it. When you know how old the story is, about God’s son dying and being resurrected in the spring, when you know it has a profound truth at its heart … then you appreciate other beliefs even more because everyone is telling the same story. It doesn’t change anything about the story that people have always been told. That’s why our Father still celebrates the Eucharist with his congregation, breaking the bread and sharing the wine. You could say that Paul repackaged our story as Christianity. The meal of bread and wine, the life-giving sacrifice, death and resurrection, being cleansed by the blood of the lamb, a reward in the hereafter, being reunited with loved ones, the battle between darkness and light … It’s the Mithras story, all of it. And I agree with the Father that it’s time to return our Lord to his rightful place.

  ‘But …’ Peter said, wanting to end the conversation and find Judith.

  ‘But … some of our members are opposed to the plan and yesterday they started actively working against us. They’re doing everything they can to derail it … You saw what happened to Raven for yourself. But now that you’ve made it this far it looks like the Father was right after all.’

  ‘About?’

  ‘That you really are the chosen one, the intermediary, the one who will tell—’

  ‘An intermediary … A messenger, like Raven? Are you finished talking now?’ Peter was ready to explode with impatience. ‘I need to keep going. You said I’d made it this far. So do you know if I’m supposed to go to the Coelikerk next? Is that where they’ve got Judith?’