The Book of Love (4 page)

And then there was Peter.

Father Peter Healy was Maureen’s cousin and closest confidant. He was also the reason for the crack in the foundation of Bérenger’s relationship with Maureen. It was Peter who had stolen the Magdalene gospel and taken it to the Vatican. This betrayal had shocked them all, but Maureen had forgiven Peter quickly. She had defended him to the others, saying that he had only done what he felt in his heart was best for Mary Magdalene’s message. Still, Bérenger believed that the priest’s loyalties pointed far more clearly to the Vatican than to Maureen and the truth that she had uncovered.

The events that followed outraged Bérenger Sinclair. The Church tightened the restrictions on what Maureen was and was not able to reveal regarding her discovery of what they referred to as the Arques Gospel. Bérenger blamed Peter for surrendering the priceless document to the Vatican in the first place and putting Maureen in a position that forced her to compromise. Further, he was increasingly frustrated by the distance that separated him from Maureen and annoyed by what often felt like her blind loyalty to Peter. In the most heated argument of their relationship, a frustrated Bérenger accused Maureen of spiritual weakness for allowing Peter and his Church to walk all over her and suppress the truth. Maureen was shattered by his accusation. The crack in their relationship had become a chasm.

When Bérenger Sinclair met Maureen Paschal, he believed he had discovered something he had searched for yet despaired of ever finding: the woman who was his equal. Maureen was his one and only soul mate, the partner who could not only share in his visions of a better world but who had the passion and the courage to make those changes with him. There was tremendous strength in that petite body, and like
him, she possessed a Celtic warrior’s spirit that was an uncommon force of nature. Thus his accusation of weakness cut her to the core in a way that he was keenly able to understand. He often had reason to repent the Celtic aspects of his own nature, particularly when his passion manifested itself in the warrior’s approach favored by his Scottish ancestors. His DNA was a double-edged sword, as was Maureen’s. That they were so alike in their heritage and spirit was equal parts blessing and curse as they tried to forge a relationship. If they could learn to work together in harmony and harness their shared passions for the work and for each other, they could create an unstoppable energy toward positive change in the world. But those same passions had the power to be singularly destructive.

That Maureen had included his name most tenderly in the dedication to her book, alongside those of Tamara and Roland, was the only thing that had made Bérenger Sinclair truly smile since the argument that had separated them.

“I pray that we will see Maureen soon,” Roland said in his gentle way. “And something has just occurred that makes me believe that it might be sooner than we think.”

“What? What happened?”

Roland smiled at him. “Tamara has just received a strange package, addressed to you. Stay here. We will bring it to you. But while you’re here”—Roland pointed to the far library wall where the Sinclairs’ illustrious family tree, painted from floor to ceiling, spanned a thousand years of history—“take a close look at the mural of your family’s lineage.”

And so it was that the Queen of the South became known as the Queen of Sheba, which was to say, the Wise Queen of the people of Sabea. Her given name was Makeda, which in her own tongue was “the fiery one.” She was a priestess-queen, dedicated to a goddess of the sun who was known to shine beauty and abundance upon the joyous people known as Sabeans. Their goddess was known as “she who
sends forth her strong rays of benevolence.” Her consort was the moon god and the stars were their children.

The people of Sabea were wise above most others in the world, with an understanding of the influence of the stars and the sanctity of numbers that came from their heavenly deities. They were called the People of Architecture, and their structures rivaled those of the greatest Egyptians, so astonishing was their understanding of building in stone. The queen was the founder of great schools to teach such art and architecture, and the sculptors that served her were able to create images of gods and men in stone that were of exceptional beauty. Her people were literate and committed to the written word and the glory of writing. Poetry and song flourished within her compassionate realm.

A virtuous people were the Sabeans. Their fiery sun queen reigned in her kingdom with warmth, light, and love, and they were therefore possessed of every kind of abundance: love, joy, fertility, wisdom, as well as all the gold and jewels anyone could require. Because they never doubted the existence of abundance, they never knew a day of want. It was the most golden of kingdoms.

It came to pass that the great King Solomon learned of this unparalleled Queen Makeda by virtue of a prophet who advised him, “A woman who is your equal and counterpart reigns in a faraway land of the South. You would learn much from her, and she from you. Meeting her is your destiny.” Solomon did not, at first, believe that such a woman could exist, but his curiosity caused him to send an invitation for her, a request to visit his own kingdom on holy Mount Sion. The messengers who came to Sabea to advise the great and fiery Queen Makeda of Solomon’s invitation discovered that his wisdom was already legendary in her land, as was the splendor of his court, and she had awareness of him. Her own prophetesses had foreseen that she would one day travel far to find the king with whom she would perform the hieros-gamos, the sacred marriage that combined the body with the mind and spirit in the act of divine union. He would be the twin brother of her soul, and she would become his sister-bride, halves of the same whole, complete only in their coming together.

But the Queen of Sheba was not a woman easily won and would not give herself in so sacred a union to any but the man she would recognize as a part of her soul. As she made the great trek to Mount Sion with her camel train, Makeda devised a series of tests and questions that she would put to the king. His answers to
these would help her to determine if he was her equal, her own soul’s twin, conceived as one at the dawn of eternity.

For those with ears to hear, let them hear it.

T
HE LEGEND OF
S
OLOMON AND
S
HEBA,
PART ONE, AS PRESERVED IN THE
L
IBRO
R
OSSO

Château des Pommes Bleues
Arques, France
present day

B
ÉRENGER
, R
OLAND, AND
T
AMMY
sat around the large mahogany table in the library. The object of their scrutiny was what appeared to be an ancient document, a long scroll on a type of parchment that was badly deteriorated with age. The scroll was sandwiched between two panes of glass in an effort to preserve it and to hold together the crumbling segments of what looked like a medieval jigsaw puzzle.

The box containing the fragile document had been delivered in the early morning to the château, addressed to Bérenger Sinclair in care of the Society of Blue Apples, and left by an anonymous courier who did not wait to be identified. The housekeeper who received the package said she believed the courier may have been Italian because of his clothing, car, and accent, but she was uncertain. He was most assuredly not local.

“It’s a family tree,” Tammy commented first, as she ran her hand from the name at the top of the glass. “There’s some Latin here at the top, and then it starts with this man. Guidone someone or other. Born in 1077 in Mantua, Italy.”

Bérenger, gifted with an aristocrat’s classical education, squinted to read the fading Latin at the top of the scroll. “It looks like it says ‘I, Matilda…’ At least, I think it says Matilda. Yes, it does. It says, ‘I, Matilda, by the Grace of God Who Is.’ Strange phrasing, but that’s what it says. The next sentence says, ‘I am united and inseparable with the
Count Guidone and his son, Guido Guerra, and offer them the protection of Tuscany in perpetuity.’ And it says that this son Guido Guerra was born in Florence at a monastery called Santa Trinità. Why would the son of a count be born in a monastery? It’s…odd.”

“It’s not the only thing that’s odd,” Roland commented. As he did so, he pointed out a name on the lineage. “Look at these names, Bérenger.”

Bérenger stopped short as he followed Roland’s finger on the glass. On a line from the thirteenth century, there were names he recognized. A French knight by the name of Luc Saint Clair married a Tuscan noblewoman. The same names were listed in his own family genealogy as his own ancestors. But this would not be common knowledge outside their immediate and protected circle. Whoever sent this package knew, at the very least, that it had relevance to Bérenger Sinclair and that somehow these family trees intersected.

Tammy’s attention was drawn to a card that was enclosed with the document and tied to a tiny, gilded hand mirror. The paper on the card was elegant, a heavy parchment, embossed with a strange monogram at the bottom center. A capital letter
A
was tied to a capital letter
E
by a tasseled rope that knotted in the center of both letters. That in itself was not so unusual; what made the monogram strange was that the
E
was facing backwards, almost as a mirror image of the
A
. The card was inscribed with a handwritten poem of sorts:

“Art will save the world,” Tammy repeated. “We’ve seen this concept in action a few times.” In their search for Mary Magdalene’s lost gospel, the four of them had deciphered a series of maps and clues found within European paintings from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and Baroque periods. It had been a map painted into a fresco by Sandro Botticelli that led Maureen to find the priceless documents written in Mary Magdalene’s own hand. In the complex world of Christian esoterica, searching for symbols in art was the starting point for many a great journey. When the truth could not be told in writing for fear of fatal persecution, it had often been encoded in symbolic paintings.

Bérenger picked up the mirror and looked in it briefly before repeating the third sentence of the poem. “In your reflection, you will find what you seek. Hmm.” He did not have time to consider this further, as Roland interrupted him, uncharacteristically animated by what had caught his eye.

“Look at this!” Roland was pointing to the bottom of the document. “The last name on the lineage. Am I seeing this clearly?”

Tammy put her arm around him as she leaned in to see what generated the excitement in the gentle giant. But it was Bérenger who verified it for all of them as he peered carefully at the final name at the end of the family tree, arguably the greatest name in the history of the art world.

“Michelangelo Buonarroti.”

New York City
present day

“
M
aureen! Ms. Paschal…”

Maureen entered through the revolving door off Forty-seventh Street and into the lobby of her hotel where Nate, the bell captain, recognized her. Her publisher and publicist often left packages for her here and vice versa, so she and Nate had become fast friends on a first-name basis. Maureen tipped well and Nate was vocal in his appreciation for redheads; it was a good combination for a working relationship in New York City.

“There was a package delivered for you this evening. I just got in and noticed it in the back room.”

Nate emerged from the back, balancing an elegant gift box in both hands. It was easily two feet long, flat and deepest red in color. Affixed to the box with wide scarlet satin ribbon was a huge bouquet of white flowers, fragrant Casablanca lilies mixed with long-stemmed white roses.

Maureen looked over the box carefully before taking it from him. “Was there a card?”

Nate shook his head. “No, nothing. Sorry.”

Maureen smiled at Nate and thanked him, anxious to get upstairs and see what the red box contained.

She was still smiling as she entered her room, intoxicated by the heavenly scent of the lilies. There was only one man in the world who knew that these were her favorite flowers, because lilies and roses were symbolic of Mary Magdalene. There was only one man who would have sent such an elaborate display.

Bérenger Sinclair.

In spite of herself, Maureen felt that nearly indescribable electric thrill that runs up the spine and covers the skin with goose bumps. God help her, she was still madly infatuated with him, if not in love, and who would blame her? He was good-looking in that darkly charismatic Celtic way, charming, brilliant,
and
extraordinarily wealthy and powerful. But he was also infuriating in his arrogance and had displayed a propensity toward being harsh and judgmental. Bérenger had wounded her deeply, which was something she could not allow to happen again anytime soon.

Still, after all they had been through together, he understood her more than any other man on earth.

Throughout Maureen’s quest, Bérenger had protected her, sheltered her, and even educated her in the folklore and traditions that surrounded the Magdalene mysteries in France. There was no doubt that he had dramatically influenced and altered her life, no doubt that they were inextricably connected in their destinies. However, everything about him was potentially dangerous. Bérenger was a notorious European playboy and a confirmed bachelor. At the age of fifty, he had never been married and had never been inclined toward a serious commitment of any kind that she was aware of. He explained his years of bach-elorhood as not wanting to settle for any woman who was not expressly made for him. Upon meeting Maureen, he said, he was certain. She was the one, the reason no other woman had ever held his interest.

It was a pretty explanation. Perhaps too pretty. There were a lot of warning signs with a man like Bérenger, even prior to their terrible argument. He had apologized, but Maureen remained wary.

And yet her stomach turned over at the thought that these flowers had come from him.

Untying the ribbon carefully, Maureen removed the blooms and lifted the lid on the box. There was a card in a sealed envelope that read “Miss Paschal.” Strange, Bérenger would not address her that way. Perhaps it was simply the florist’s formality. Maureen looked back down into the box and removed the tissue paper that covered the contents. She wasn’t sure what she had expected, but it was most certainly not this. Contained within was what appeared to be an ancient document. Whether it was real or a replica was impossible to tell at first. However, it was carefully encased between panes of glass: some effort had been taken to protect it. Gently, Maureen lifted it out of the box. It was nearly two feet long, terribly yellowed with time or else a very good copy, and frayed around the uneven edges.

The text of the document, written in a flowery yet exacting Latin script, filled three quarters of the page. Glancing through it, noting the ancient form and the elaborate handwriting, Maureen didn’t think she would be able to decipher it. Her Latin was serviceable, but this was a challenge for a scholar with skills far beyond her rudimentary vocabulary.

It was the signature at the bottom that was most arresting. Bold and elaborate, it was clearly hand-drawn with ink, and yet it resembled a seal of some type, with a Latin cross drawn between the letters:

Maureen took out her Moleskine notebook and wrote out the letters from the medieval signature in a linear way. It read

MATILDA DEI GRA SI QUO EST

It appeared to say “Matilda, by the Grace of God Who Is.”

Beneath the letters there were two additional symbols: one looked like a stylized version of the letter
H
, if the vertical lines were wavy; the other looked immediately familiar to Maureen. Her hand flew to the necklace she was wearing, a gift from Bérenger on her last birthday. It was a delicate diamond-encrusted symbol, a spiral of ram’s horns—the astrological glyph for the sign Aries. Maureen was born on the twenty-second day of March, in the first degree of the first zodiac sign on the edge of the vernal equinox, as the sun passed through Pisces and entered Aries. The symbol of ram’s horns had been emblematic of the vernal equinox since antiquity. But what could it mean on this document? And the more pressing questions, who sent this to her and why?

Maureen opened the card carefully. The elegant paper was em-bossed with a strange monogram at the bottom. A capital letter
A
was tied to a capital letter
E
, the letter
E
facing backwards as in a mirror image. The card was handwritten:

Maureen sighed, half with relief and half with agitation. This was how her search for Mary Magdalene’s gospel had begun—with a strange gift and a mystery to be solved. She had prayed for clues, and now they were appearing. Clearly, whoever sent this knew something of her personal history, which was a little disconcerting. That the phrasing on the card was identical to the words spoken by the little madonna
in her dream was downright disturbing. She shuddered at the strange intimacy of such a note. While she had faith that she would be guided by God on her path, as she had always been, there was something unmistakably ominous about an unknown correspondent who could see into her dreams. Was it possible that someone was actually influencing them? She wasn’t sure which of those scenarios was more menacing, but both worried her.

She did the only thing she could think of to do. She got down on her knees and prayed for protection and guidance on the journey that was about to commence.

Maureen did a quick mental inventory. There were only three people in the world she could consult with on this immediate mystery, all of them in Europe. The first was her cousin, Peter Healy, the Jesuit scholar who was currently based in the Vatican. Peter would be able to translate the document and perhaps even identify it. Maureen was willing to bet that whoever sent the mystery package was well aware of her relation to such a resource. Otherwise, they likely wouldn’t have left her to her own devices to translate something so elaborate. She would call Peter, of course, although she knew that his first reaction would be to worry. Better to do a little more investigation before dumping this on him quite so blindly.

That left Bérenger Sinclair and Tamara Wisdom, both currently in residence at the Pommes Bleues headquarters in the Languedoc. Bérenger, like Peter, would immediately worry and demand that she come to France while he investigated. That was not the reaction she wanted or needed at the moment.

That left Tammy.

Tamara was Maureen’s closest friend, confidante, and partner in heresy. A brilliant and acerbic independent filmmaker from L.A., Tammy had lost her heart while making a documentary about the Magdalene legends in France—both to the magnificent landscape and
to the gentle Languedoc giant named Roland Gélis, to whom she was now engaged. Tamara, Roland, and Bérenger all lived in the magnificent Château des Pommes Bleues, the French estate of the Scottish Sinclair family that served as headquarters to their beloved society of the same name. While a call to one was a call to all, perhaps Maureen could get Tammy on her own by ringing her cell phone first.

Midnight in New York. That made it six a.m. in France. It was early, but this was important. She dialed Tammy’s cell number and heard the international double ring on the other end. Then a click as Tammy answered, not sounding the least bit sleepy as she quipped, “Hail Ichthys!”

“You got one too?”

“Addressed to Bérenger. It arrived last night.”

“An ancient document about someone named Matilda?”

“That would be the Countess Matilda of Tuscany.”

“You know this Matilda?”

“Yes, and so do you. She shows up in esoteric legends throughout Europe. A type of warrior queen who ruled half of Italy. And most important for our purposes, she was the founder of the Abbey of Orval.”

Maureen gasped. There were two major revelations in Tammy’s last sentence. She would deal first with the one that pertained to the clue in her card. “Orval. Or-Val. It means Golden Valley, right? As in, ‘You will come upon the Vale of Gold’?”

“Yes. You realize that this means we have half the puzzle and you have the other half. Clearly somebody wants us to work on this together. Or perhaps I should say that someone wants you and Bérenger to work together, given that the packages were addressed to the two of you. Significant?”

Maureen ignored Tammy’s implication momentarily and returned her attention to a more pressing issue. “Orval. As in…the Orval prophecy?”

Tammy laughed. “But of course, my petite Expected One. It looks like someone wants us to go to Belgium to get a closer look at your own personal prophecy. How fast can you get here?”

Maureen sighed with the realization that the call to adventure must be heeded. There would be no turning back. First she would call Peter in Rome and fill him in on the events of the last twenty-four hours before making arrangements to ship the document to him overnight. Then she would call Air France and get a flight out to Toulouse.

France. Bérenger. Complicated.

Restless sleep came to Maureen that night, and brought with it another dream. It was the recurring theme that had been haunting her for some time. But tonight it was longer and more complete than ever before.

A figure in shadow huddled over an ancient table, the scratching of a stylus as words and images flowed from an author’s pen. As she watched over the shoulder of the writer, an azure glow seemed to emanate from these pages. Fixated on the illumination shining from the writing, Maureen didn’t see the writer move at first. As the figure arose and stepped forward into the lamplight, Maureen caught her breath.

She had been given glimpses of this face in previous dreams, fleeting moments of recognition that were over in an instant. He now fixed the full force of his attention on Maureen. Frozen in the dream state, she stared at the man ahead of her. The most beautiful man she had ever seen.

Easa.

That was the name by which Mary Magdalene referred to him in her gospel, and therefore the name which Maureen felt most comfortable with. It was in finding Easa through the eyes of Mary Magdalene that she discovered her own faith. To the rest of the modern world, he was Jesus.

He smiled at her then, an expression of such divinity and warmth that Maureen was suffused with it, as if the sun itself radiated from that simple expression. She remained motionless, unable to do anything but stare at his beauty and grace.

“You are my daughter, in whom I am well pleased.”

His voice was a melody, a song of unity and love that resonated in the air around her. She floated on that music for an eternal moment, before crashing down to the sound of his next words.

“But your work is not yet finished.”

With another smile, Easa the Nazarene, the Son of Man, turned back to the table where his own writing rested. Light from the pages grew brighter, letters shimmering with indigo light, blue and violet patterns on the heavy, linenlike paper.

Maureen tried to speak to him, but the words would not come through. She could only watch the divine being before her as he gestured to the pages and spoke with gentle precision.

“Behold, the Book of Love. Follow the path that has been laid out for you, and you will find what you seek. Once you have found it, you must share it with the world and fulfill the promise that you made. Our truth has been in darkness for too long. Try to remember that
destiny
and
destination
come from the same root.”