The Thirteenth Apostle (27 page)

“What was his name?”

“Karol Wojtyla. The present Pope. The Pope whom I serve with all my strength.”

He finally lifted his eyes and fixed them on those of Nil.

“You are a true monk, Father Nil, just as Andrei was: you live in another world. In the Vatican, a web is woven around the Pope by men in whose interest it is that he should not know all that they do in his name. Never did Karol Wojtyla experience anything of the kind: in Poland, the clergy showed total solidarity, united against the common Soviet enemy. Everyone trusted everyone else blindly, and the Polish Church would never have survived any internal manoeuvrings. It was in this spirit that the Pope delegated his responsibilities onto men like Cardinal Catzinger. And here am I – the silent witness of many things.”

He rose with an effort.

“I will help you, just as I helped Father Andrei. But I'm taking a considerable risk: swear that you're not trying to harm the Pope.”

Nil replied gently:

“I am merely a monk, Father, nothing interests me other than the face and the identity of Jesus. The politics and the whole way of life of the Vatican are foreign to me, and I have nothing to do with Cardinal Catzinger, who knows nothing of my research. Like Andrei, I am a man of truth.”

“I trust you – the Pope is also a man of truth. What can I do for you?”

Nil handed Andrei's diary to him.

“When he was in Rome, Father Andrei consulted a book. He noted its classification number here. Does it mean anything to you?”

Breczinsky examined the diary page attentively, then looked up.

“Of course. It's a classification from these stacks. It indicates all the shelves on which are stored the minutes of the Inquisition's trial of the Templars. When he came by, Father Andrei asked if he could consult them, even though he had no authorization to do so. Follow me.”

In silence they walked past the table where Leeland, bent over a manuscript, did not look up. When they reached the third room, Breczinsky suddenly turned left and led Nil to a book stack in a recess.

“Here” – he showed him the shelves lining the wall – “you have records of the Inquisition's investigation into the affair of the Templars – the original records. I can tell you that Father Andrei spent most time looking at the minutes of the interrogation of the Templar Esquieu de Floyran by Guillaume
de Nogaret, and the correspondence of Philippe le Bel. I put them back in their place after he had left. I hope you can work as quickly as he did: I'll give you two hours. And remember: you have
never
been in this part of the stacks.”

He slipped away like a shadow. In this deserted nook, the only sound was the low hum of the air conditioning. A dozen or so cardboard boxes were lined up and numbered. In one of them, on a page written by the notary of the Inquisition in the presence of the prisoner exhausted by torture, could perhaps be found a trace of the thirteenth apostle that Andrei had discovered.

He resolutely pulled the first box towards him:
The Confessions of the Templar Brothers, Recorded in the Presence of Monseigneur Guillaume de Nogaret by Me, Guillaume de Paris, Representative of King Philippe le Bel and Grand Inquisitor of France
.

64

Shores of the Dead Sea, March 1149

“Keep going, Pierre, they're hot on our heels.”

Esquieu de Floyran flung his arms round his companion. They were at the foot of an abrupt cliff, a pile of rocky concretions through which goat tracks meandered. Black holes could be seen here and there: the entrances to natural caves looking out onto emptiness.

Ever since they had met in Vézelay three years earlier, the two men had never left each other's sides. Fired with zeal by St Bernard's preaching, they had donned the white tunic with the red cross and joined the Second Crusade in Palestine.
Here, in Gaza, the Templars had fallen into a trap laid by the Seljuk Turks. Esquieu wanted to clear the fortress: at the head of some fifteen or so knights, he made a sort of diversion in broad daylight – which did indeed lure some of the besiegers after them. As they fled eastwards, his companions had fallen one after another. Now only the faithful Pierre de Montbrison was left at his side.

When they reached the Dead Sea, their mounts collapsed under them. The two Templars leapt over a crumbling wall, and came into a ruined enclosure that bore the traces of a terrible fire. They ran on past a vast reservoir dug into the rock, then followed the line of irrigation canals heading towards the cliff. Here they would be safe.

Just as they were emerging from the cover of the trees, Pierre uttered a cry and fell. When his companion bent over him, he saw that an arrow had pierced his abdomen, near his loin.

“Leave me, Esquieu, I'm wounded!”

“Leave you in their hands? Never! We'll take refuge in this cliff, and escape under cover of night. There's an oasis nearby, Ein Feshka: it's the road westwards, the road to safety. Lean on me, it's not the first arrow that's got you: we'll pull it out once we're up there. You'll see France again and your commandery.”

The incandescent words of St Bernard still resounded in his ears: “The knight of Christ can deal out death in all security. If he dies, it is for his own good; if he kills, it is for Christ”. But right now the important thing was to escape a gang of enraged Turks.

Allahu Akbar!
Their cries were now very close. “Pierre can't manage. Lord, help us!”

Helping each other along, they started to climb the steep wall of the cliff.

They stopped at one of the cave mouths, and Esquieu glanced downwards: their pursuers seemed to have lost sight of them, and were discussing what to do. From their perch up here, he could see not only the charred ruins they had just come across, but also the cove of the Dead Sea glinting in the morning sun.

To his right, Pierre was leaning against the rock wall, deathly pale.

“You need to lie down, and I'll get this arrow out. Come on, let's wriggle into this hole, we can wait for nightfall.”

The opening was so narrow that they had to enter feet first. Esquieu helped his groaning, bloodstained companion. Curiously, the interior of the cave was quite bright. He made the wounded man lie down on the left of the entrance, his head against a kind of terracotta bowl emerging from the sand. Then, with a swift tug, he pulled out the arrow: Pierre screamed, and lost consciousness.

“The arrow has pierced him right through the stomach, the blood is streaming out: he's not going to make it.”

He poured the last drops of water from his gourd between the dying man's lips. Then he peered down into the valley below: the Turks were still there; he needed to wait until they had gone. But Pierre would be dead by then.

Esquieu was a man of letters, a scholar; he had allowed a priory of white-robed monks of the new order created by St Bernard to settle on his lands. He spent his free time reading the manuscripts they had gathered in their scriptorium, and studied the medicine of Galen in the original Greek: Pierre's lifeblood was draining away, forming a dark puddle under his body. He had maybe an hour to live, perhaps less.

At a loss, he glanced round the floor of the cave. All along the left-hand wall there were terracotta bowls sticking out of
the sand. Choosing at random, he lifted the third one from the cave mouth: it was an earthenware jar, perfectly well preserved. Inside, he saw a thick scroll surrounded by rags, all of them soaked in oil. Against the wall there was a smaller scroll, kept well away from the other one. He took it out, without any difficulty. It was a good-quality parchment, tied by a simple linen cord that he easily untied.

He glanced across at Pierre: he was immobile, hardly breathing, and his face already had the ashen hue of corpses. “My poor friend… dying on foreign soil!”

He unwound the scroll. It was in Greek, perfectly legible. Elegant handwriting, and words that he recognized without difficulty: the vocabulary of the apostles.

He went over to the cave mouth and started to read. His eyes widened, and his hands started to tremble slightly.

“I, the beloved disciple of Jesus, the thirteenth apostle, to all the Churches…” The author related how, on the evening of the last supper in the Upper Room, there had not been twelve, but thirteen apostles, and he had been the thirteenth. He protested in solemn terms against the deification of the Nazorean. And stated that Jesus had not risen from the dead, but had been transferred after his death to a tomb, which was located…

“Pierre, look! An apostolic letter from Jesus's day, the letter of one of his apostles…
Pierre!”

His friend's head had rolled gently to the side of the earthenware bowl sealing the first jar in the grotto. He was dead.

An hour later, Esquieu had taken his decision: Pierre's body would here await the final resurrection. But this letter by one of Jesus's apostles of whom he had never heard was something he
must
reveal to the Christian world. Taking the parchment with him would be too risky: made brittle by time, it would
quickly crumble away into pieces. And would he himself escape from the Muslims that night? Would he reach Gaza safe and sound? The original would remain in this cave, but he would make a copy. Immediately.

With great respect, he turned over his friend's body, opened his tunic and tore a long strip off his shirt. Then he whittled down a piece of wood to a fine point, and placed the cloth on a flat stone. Dipped his improvised pen into the pool of blood gleaming red on the ground. And started to copy the apostolic letter, as he had so often seen monks do in the scriptorium of their priory.

The sun was setting behind the cliffs of Qumran. Esquieu got up: the text of the thirteenth apostle was now inscribed in letters of blood on Pierre's shirt. He rolled up the parchment, tied the linen cord around it and gently placed it back in the third jar – taking great care not to touch the greasy scroll. He replaced the lid, carefully folded up the copy he had just made, and slipped it into his belt.

From the cave mouth, he glanced down: there were already only half as many Turks. Now that he was alone he would be able to evade them. He needed to wait for night, and pass across the plantation of Ein Feshka. He would succeed.

Two months later, a vessel whose sail was blazoned with the red cross cleared the narrows of Saint-Jean-d'Acre, and headed west. From its prow, a Knight of the Templar in a great white robe took one last glance at the land of Christ.

Behind him, he was abandoning the body of his best friend. It lay in one of the caves overlooking Qumran, a cave containing dozens of jars filled with strange scrolls. As soon as possible, he would have to go there. Collect the parchment
from the third jar on the left from the cave mouth and take it back to France, with all the precautions that such a venerable document deserved.

Pierre's death would not have been in vain: he would hand his copy of an apostle's letter that nobody had ever heard of to the Grand Master of the Temple, Robert de Craon. Its contents would change the face of the world. And would prove to everyone that the Templars had been right to reject Christ and instead love Jesus passionately.

On his arrival in Paris, Esquieu de Floyran asked to see Robert de Craon alone. Once he was admitted to his presence, he brought out from his belt a roll of fabric covered with dark brown characters, and held it out to the Grand Master of the Temple, the second to hold that title.

Without a word, the Grand Master unrolled the strip of fabric. Still in silence, he read the text. It was perfectly legible. He sternly imposed absolute secrecy on Esquieu, on the blood of his friend and brother, and dismissed him with a mere nod.

Robert de Craon spent the whole evening and the whole night alone, at the table on which the scrap of cloth lay extended, covered with the blood of one of his brothers. On it could be read the most incredible, the most overwhelming lines that he had ever read.

The next day, grave-faced, he sent out across the whole of Europe an extraordinary summons to a general chapter of the Order of Templars. Not one of the capitulary brothers, seneschals or priors, titulars of illustrious fortresses as much as the smallest commandery, should be absent from this chapter meeting.

Not one.

65

When Nil joined his friend, still bent over the table in the stacks, his face was impassive. Leeland looked up from his manuscript.

“Well?”

“Not here. Let's go back to the Via Aurelia.”

Rome was preparing to celebrate Christmas. Following a tradition peculiar to the Eternal City, every church, throughout this period, makes it a point of honour to display a
presepio
, a crib adorned with all the attributes of the baroque imagination. Romans spent their December afternoons strolling from one church to another, comparing the shows that each one had put on and appraising them with eloquent hands.

“It's impossible,” thought Nil as he saw entire families crowding in through the church porches, “impossible to tell them that it's all based on an age-old lie. They need a god in their image, a child god. The Church can only protect its secret – Nogaret was right.”

The two men walked on in silence. When they reached the studio, they sat next to the piano, and Leeland brought out a bottle of bourbon. He poured a slug out for Nil, who raised his hand to stop him.

“Come on, Nil, our national drink bears the name of the kings of France. A few sips will help you tell me what you were doing, alone all morning, in a part of the Vatican stacks to which in principle you have no access…”

Nil did not pick up on the allusion: for the first time he was going to hide something from his friend. The confidential remarks of Breczinsky, his terror-stricken face, had nothing to do with his research: he felt that he was the possessor of a
secret that he wasn't going to share with anyone. He took a big sip of bourbon, pulled a face and coughed.

“I don't know where to start: you're not a historian, you haven't studied the minutes of the Inquisition's interrogations that I've just seen. I found the texts consulted by Andrei when he went into the stacks, and they immediately spoke to me: they said something both clear and obscure.”