The Magic Circle

by Katherine Neville

  We children gazed with new respect at the two weapons in their glass case. But I privately wondered how such a profound transformation might take place if all the other “ancient treasures” were so crumbling, fragile, and unimportant-looking as these.

  “If the time is nearly upon us,” said a soft voice from behind my shoulder, “then surely you must know what these other objects are that you seek?”

  We turned, and I saw that the speaker was Pandora’s young cousin, my violin master Dacian Bassarides, who’d been so silent throughout our entire trip that we’d nearly forgotten him.

  Lucky nodded his head in excitement. “I believe there are thirteen in all. Some are serving dishes, some garments, some tools or implements of war—and one gemstone, and a gaming board of sorts. Although my studies have told me how each might have been disguised throughout the ages, the last time I feel certain they were together was at the time of Christ: in other words, at the last New Age. That’s why I went to pursue my studies at Melk and then at Salzburg, for here on the river and high in the mountains of the Salzkammergut are the places in our land where the ancient peoples dwelt, and I knew the message I sought would be found near there. There is information there, written in the runes …”

  “The runes?” I said uncomfortably. I saw that Laf not only had paused but seemed to have drifted off into another world.

  “A manuscript written in runes. I suspect this is the ‘something’ your cousin Sam left you in his will,” said Laf, returning from the sea of his nightmare memories. “Lucky, or Adolf, was trying to assemble and decipher it even then, on the eve of World War One in Vienna—a task at which I feel confident he never completely succeeded. But someone else did.”

  “I don’t think I got that from Sam,” I said, though I could hardly reveal that Sam was still alive or that I’d spoken to him of it. “But I did get a different document made of runes from a friend of yours, though I haven’t had a chance to look at—”

  “A friend of mine?” said Laf. “What friend?”

  “Wolfgang Hauser—a fellow Viennese—”

  “Gavroche, what are you saying?” Even in the steam I could see Laf’s face grow pale beneath his leathery tan. “Wolfgang Hauser is no friend of mine. How could he obtain that manuscript? Where would he get it?”

  I don’t know if my expression revealed exactly how sick I felt, but when he looked at me Laf said, “Oh, Gavroche, what have you done?”

  I prayed the answer wasn’t going to be “fucked up royally,” though it was starting to look that way.

  “Uncle Laf, I want you to tell me exactly who Wolfgang Hauser is, and how you know him,” I said, choosing my words carefully even if I was pretty sure I didn’t want to hear the answer.

  “I don’t know him,” Laf said. “I’ve met him once or twice. He’s a minion of Zoe’s—one of those good-looking boys she likes to keep as ornaments on her wrist.”

  I applauded myself for not flinching at his callous description of the recent great lust of my life—and also for passing over the obvious fact that one might make the same observation of Uncle Laf and Bambi.

  “I do know your aunt Zoe, however,” Laf went on. “She was never the queen of the night as she liked to portray herself—far from it. That was clever salesmanship, a program of propaganda conceived and tailored for Zoe, the most famous dancer of her day, by the cleverest salesman of our century. She and this benefactor spent decades trying to get the manuscript from Pandora, the one who actually collected it. Perhaps by now you have guessed that Zoe’s own mentor, best friend, and closest confidant for twenty-five years was none other than Adolf Hitler.”

  Laf paused and looked at me. My heart was well below my stomach by now, and I felt I must get out of the steamy heat of the pool before I blacked out. Laf’s next words seemed to echo across the water.

  “There is no way on earth that either Zoe or Wolfgang Hauser could have a copy of that manuscript. Anything belonging to Earnest, he guarded all his life.” Then, after a pause, he whispered, “Gavroche, I pray you have not trusted Hauser with it—or even left him alone with it in the same room. If you have you’ve surely endangered everything Pandora and Earnest risked their lives for—what indeed may have cost them their lives, and your cousin Sam’s, too.”

  THE TRUTH

  If circumstances lead me, I will find

  where truth is hid, though it were hid indeed

  Within the centre.

  —Shakespeare, Hamlet

  JESUS:

  To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into

  the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone that is of the

  truth heareth my voice.

  PILATE:

  What is truth?

  —Gospel of John 18:37–8

  Therefore the effort to arrive at the Truth, and especially

  the truth about the gods, is a longing for the divine.

  —Plutarch, Moralia

  It’s sort of a hobby of mine: the truth.

  —Cary Grant, as master thief

  John Robie in To Catch a Thief

  Judea: Spring, A.D. 33

  THE FIRST APOSTLE

  Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene … and [his disciples], when they had heard that he was alive, and had been seen of her, believed not. —Gospel of Mark 16:9–10

  “But what is the truth?” Johan Zebedee asked his older brother James. “How can Joseph of Arimathea expect any of us to remember something that took place more than a year ago?”

  The brothers had left behind the port of Joppa and the ship on which James had just returned from his year-long mission abroad in Celtic Iberia. They took the rocky high road out of town.

  “When I visited with Joseph in the isles of Britannia,” said James, “he told me it was his belief that some key element was missing from the story of the Master’s last days. You know the Master always said his legacy would be to share his ‘mysteries’ with his truest disciples. It occurred to Joseph that maybe the Master, realizing his time on earth with us was short, actually did impart these secrets, but because he spoke in parables none of us grasped the hidden meaning in his words. That’s why I’ve hurried here from Celtic Iberia, to bring Joseph’s letter asking Miriam of Magdali to look into this matter. And he hopes that we—you and Simon Peter and I, as the Master’s three chosen successors—will lend her our support.”

  James and his younger brother Johan Zebedee, along with their business partners, Simon Peter and his brother Andrew, had been the first disciples recruited by the Master for his mission. When he’d found them along the shores of Lake Galilee, he’d told them to put down their fishing nets and follow him: he would teach them to become “fishers of men.” So the Zebedees, as first-chosen, had come to expect preferential treatment. And they’d always received it—until recently. This year had cost them everything, Johan thought bitterly. His older brother had stayed away too long and there was much he needed to learn.

  “Perhaps you can explain to me what Miriam of Magdali has to do with any of this?” he asked James. “Why should she be the official messenger?”

  “Joseph has always supported Miriam’s claim that she was the first apostle: first to see the Master after death, risen from his tomb that morning in Joseph’s garden at Gethsemane,” said James. “Whenever Joseph refers to Miriam, he still calls her the First Messenger—apostle to the apostles. And whether or not we want to believe the Master really honored Miriam so greatly, in all honesty we must recognize such a thing was not wholly out of his character. The truth is, it would be no different from the honors the Master constantly bestowed on Miriam throughout his life.”

  “Honors and kisses!” snapped Johan. “The world knows I was the Master’s most beloved disciple. He treated me like his child and embraced me even more often than he did Miriam. Didn’t he entrust me with his mother’s care when he died, as if I were her own son? And the Master said you and I
would sip from his chalice when the kingdom of heaven came—as great an honor as any he gave Miriam.”

  “I fear that cup, Johan,” James said softly. “Perhaps you’d be wise to fear it too.”

  “Everything has changed since you left Judea, James,” said the younger man. “Even our triumvirate no longer exists. Peter says that only one ‘rock’ can be a foundation stone, and that he was chosen by the Master. There’s factionalism, jealousy, resentment, friend against friend. If you’d stayed here in Jerusalem this past year, things might not have arrived at such a sorry state.”

  “I’m distressed to hear that,” said James. “But surely things haven’t changed so much that they can’t be salvaged.”

  He set his hands on his younger brother’s shoulders just as the Master used to do. Johan felt a pang of sorrow. How he missed the Master’s simplicity and strength!

  “You don’t understand, James,” said Johan. “Miriam has become Peter’s particular thorn. She’s been sequestered with her family in Bethany these many months, and no one ever sees her. Peter resents her more than he ever did me, for her special closeness to the Master. He’s changed everything because of her: the women don’t preach or heal—or even go abroad on missions now, unless they’re accompanied by a male apostle. And they must cover their hair, for it’s said that the temptation of such openness and liberties as were permitted when the Master was alive is too great, and will turn most women to wantonness—”

  “But—do you mean to tell me Simon Peter has created such rules by his own decision?” James interrupted.

  “With the support of others—though I assure you I’m not among them! James, you must understand that while you and Joseph may want the truth, there are those who believe they already have it. A saga is being spun to explain the Master’s every word and deed, and often by those who never understood him or even knew him at all. These stories are confusing, contradictory, and sometimes totally baldfaced lies! It’s been suggested, for instance, that those ‘seven devils’ the Master cast out of Miriam were not merely sins of pride or vanity in her education or beauty, but something far worse—something venal—”

  “But how can they say such things?” cried James. “How can Peter permit it? Doesn’t he fear the Master will shut him out of the kingdom altogether?”

  “Please remember,” said Johan with a bitter little smile, “it is Simon Peter himself who holds the keys to that kingdom. They were given him by the Master, as he permits no one to overlook. As you see, my dear brother, you have returned not a moment too soon.”

  Brigantium: Summer, A.D. 34

  THE WORDS

  For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom … false Christs and false prophets shall rise … the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars of heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken …

  But the gospel must first be published among all nations … Heaven and earth shall pass away. But my words shall not pass away.

  Jesus of Nazareth

  —Gospel of Mark 13:8–31

  Joseph of Arimathea stood high on a cliff above the Bay of Brigantium, watching in the last waning western light as James Zebedee’s ship moved into the fog and slipped out to sea. Brigantium, once the center of worship of the great Celtic goddess Brighde, was the last Celtic seaport on the continent still in existence since ancient times. Most of Iberia had been in Roman hands for hundreds of years since the Punic Wars. But this remote northwestern section had been taken, in bitterness and bloodshed, only as recently as Augustus’s time, and the spirit of the natives was far from obliterated.

  Whether they were called Celts, Keltoi, or Galtoi, Galicians, Galatians, Galli, or Gauls, these tribal pagans, as the Romans considered them, had left their mark on civilizations from here to far-flung Phrygia, indeed they themselves had founded many of these civilizations. Brilliant Celtic craftsmen still influenced artisans from Scandinavia to Mauretania; wild Celtic warriors had harried the continent with so many invasions over the years that, just to hold them back, the Romans had designed the system of legions that today controlled most of the world. And the lot of preserving their history and faith, keeping alive their words, fell to the Celtic druid—men like the one who at this moment stood beside Joseph on the cliff.

  The ship below was swallowed into the bank of cold, dark fog that always encased this coast, even, as now, in summer. But from up here, Joseph could still make out the beach, its surface unmarred but for the lapping waves, each narrow silken line disappearing beneath the next—much like the Master’s words, he thought. Though the Master had always told them not to carve his words in stone but to hold them in their thoughts, perhaps those words had already vanished from the minds of men—because there was no drui, like his companion, who was trained to keep them alive in his heart.

  If this were so, then the only remnants of the Master’s words might be those gathered by Miriam of Magdali over the past year, which now lay sealed within the clay amphorae here in the fishing net at his feet: the memories of those who’d seen and heard the Master in his final week on earth.

  Joseph and the drui had climbed from the dark, dank summer fog below to this isolated lookout to watch the ship depart before discussing their own mission. Now for the first time Joseph turned to his companion.

  In the slanted light of the setting sun, the drui’s rugged, angular face took on the hard cast of burnished copper. His red-gold hair was plaited into many complex knotted braids that tumbled over his broad shoulders and powerful chest. Though he wore the same loose Celtic tunic as Joseph wore himself, over one shoulder and held by a golden brooch was a throw made entirely of the soft, thick pelts of red foxes, the badge of a high official of the fox clan. His muscular neck and upper arms were encircled by the thick, intricately wrought gold torques he always wore, which marked the status of a prince or a priest: as a drui, he was considered both.

  He was Lovernios, Prince of Foxes, a man Joseph had trusted all his life—and, except for the Master, the wisest man he’d ever known. Joseph prayed that his great wisdom would bring them through the crisis he felt impending.

  “It is nearly over, Lovern,” Joseph said.

  “Over—perhaps,” Lovernios replied. “But each ending is a new beginning, as Esus of Nazareth told me when you brought him to live among us when he was but a boy. He said during his travels with you he’d learned everyone resists change.” Lovernios added with a questioning smile, “I wonder if you understand exactly what that means?”

  “I’m afraid it means,” said Joseph, “that just like Miriam of Magdali you believe the Master is really alive: that he went through the transformation of death, yet somehow he still walks among us.”

  The drui shrugged. “Recall his statement: ‘I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.’”

  “In spirit, yes, that’s possible,” agreed Joseph, “but hardly by taking off and putting on flesh like a cloak, as some would have it! No, my wise friend, it wasn’t primitive superstition that brought me here. I’m after the truth.”

  “What you seek, my friend,” Lovernios said, shaking his head, “you’ll never find in these clay vessels at your feet: they contain only words.”

  “But it’s you yourself,” objected Joseph, “who first told me of the magic with which the druid invest words. You said words alone have the power to kill or to heal. I pray some of these memories will reveal the Master’s last message to us—just as he prayed his words would not be forgotten.”

  “Writing does not aid memory but destroys it,” said Lovernios. “That is why our people restrict the use of our written language to sacramental functions: to protect or sanctify a spot, destroy an enemy, raise the elements, work magic. Great truths cannot be put into writing, nor ideas be set in stone. You may open your clay vessels, my friend, but you’ll find only memories of memories, shadows of shadows.”

  “Even from boyhood the Master had the memory of a drui,”
said Joseph. “He knew Torah by heart and could recite from it hour after hour. During long sea voyages I used to read him stories, and he committed those to memory too. His favorite was the Pythian Odes of Pindar—especially the phrase ‘Kairos and tide wait for no man.’ In the Greek tongue, there are two words for ‘time’: chronos and kairos. The first means time as the sun passes through the heavens. But kairos means the ‘necessary moment’—the critical instant when one must catch the tide or be swept under and utterly destroyed. It was this second meaning that was so important to the Master.

  “The very last occasion when I saw him—when I went to tell him I’d arranged for the white ass he’d requested to ride on his entry into Jerusalem the next Sunday—he said to me, ‘Then all is done, Joseph, and I go to meet my kairos.’ Those were the last words he spoke to me before he died.” Joseph blinked tears from his eyes and swallowed hard. “I miss him so much, Lovernios,” he whispered.

  The Celtic prince turned to Joseph. Though the two were of the same age and of nearly equal height, he put his arms around Joseph and rocked him like a child, as the Master used to do when words seemed inadequate.

  “Then we can only hope,” Lovernios said at last, “that these glimpses of words, even if they are not all of them true, will at least take some pain from your heart.”

  Joseph looked at his friend and nodded. Then he stooped to the net and extracted the amphora that bore Miriam’s mark as the first of the series. Breaking the seal of the clay container, he pulled out and opened the scroll, and he began to read aloud: