The Quest: A Novel (24 page)

And on this basis, he was going back to Ethiopia.

T
hey walked the short distance to the commissary, where they got coffee and biscotti that they took outside to a bench. The barracks of the Swiss Guard was across the lane, and Purcell watched them forming up for some occasion. The Vatican post office, too, was run by the Swiss, and he said to Henry, “Swiss efficiency and Italian biscotti. Truly a blessed place.”

Mercado responded, “The Italians are the only people on earth who have monumental egos
and
an inferiority complex.” He added, “I find it charming.”

“So you’re staying here?”

“I will die here or in Ethiopia.”

“Can I ask… do you have a lady here?”

He hesitated before replying, “I… have a lady of my own age whom I see whenever I’m in Rome.”

Purcell didn’t pursue that. He lit a cigarette and watched the people.

There were no tourists in this part of Vatican City, and everyone on the streets here was employed by the Vatican in one way or another or they were official visitors like himself. There were, he knew, about a thousand actual residents of this sovereign city-state, mostly clergy, including the pope’s staff or retinue, or whatever they were called. The art and the architecture here were without parallel in the world, and he understood, sitting there, why the popes and the cardinals and the hierarchy believed that this was the one true church of Jesus Christ. This was where the bones of Peter, the first pope, were buried somewhere beneath the basilica that bore his name, and Peter had taken the cup from Jesus’s hand and drunk his Lord’s blood. And so, the argument would go, this was where that same Holy Grail, if it existed, belonged. Case closed.

But even Father Armano had second thoughts about that. And so did Frank Purcell.

Mercado asked, “Are you thinking about what you’ve just learned?”

“No. I’m thinking about Father Armano and the black monastery.”

“We will get to the black monastery.”

Purcell didn’t know if Henry meant get to it in the next library seminar or get to it in Ethiopia. Hopefully the latter. He said, “Good coffee.”

“Made from holy water.”

Purcell smiled.

“And Ethiopian coffee beans.”

“Really?”

“The Italians still own and run some coffee plantations in Ethiopia. Though they’ve probably been seized by the bloody stupid Marxists.”

“Right.”

“There’s a chap lives in Addis. Signore Bocaccio. Owns coffee plantations around the country. Visits them with his airplane.”

Purcell nodded.

“They may have kicked him out, of course, or put him in jail, but if he’s still in Addis, we may want to look him up when we get there.”

“What’s he fly?”

“I don’t know. Never been up with him, but a few journalists have.”

“Would he rent the plane without him in it?”

“Ask.”

Purcell nodded. His piloting skills were not great, but he thought he could fly nearly any single-engine aircraft if someone gave him an hour or so of dual flying instructions.

Also, he realized that Henry had already thought some of this out. They couldn’t just head off into the jungle and expect to run into the black monastery. Few people had been so lucky, and those who had, like Father Armano and his army patrol, had discovered that their luck had run out at the monastery—or before then, when they met the Gallas. And now General Getachu was also interested in the monastery.

So, yes, they should do aerial recon to see if they spotted anything that looked like a black monastery—or like something they didn’t want to run into on the ground.

Mercado glanced at his watch and said, “We’ll go back to the library, then over to the Ethiopian College.”

“Are you taking the day off?”

“No. I’m working. And so are you.”

“Right. I work here.” Purcell asked, “When do I get my creds?”

“In a week or two. Or three.” He smiled. “This is not Switzerland.” He said, “After you left my office the other night, I sent a telex to the British Foreign Office, who have taken responsibility for the repatriation of Colonel Sir Edmund Gann. I asked them to have Gann call or telex me at my office.”

“Good.”

“Have you written to Vivian?”

In fact, he had after he’d left Mercado’s office that night and returned to the Hotel Forum. The letter had said, simply, “I am in Rome, staying at the Forum. Henry is here, working for L’Osservatore Romano, and we have met and spoken. We would like you to join us in Rome, before Christmas if possible. We are discussing the possibility of returning to Ethiopia, and we would like to include you in those discussions if you are still interested. Please telex me at the Forum either way. Hope you are well. Frank.”

He’d felt that the letter, like his last, was a bit distant, and he wanted her to respond, so he’d added a P.S.: “I have been very lonely without you.”

“Frank?”

“Yes… I wrote to her. Posted it yesterday morning.”

“Hopefully the Italian postal service is not on strike this week.” He joked, “Half of Paul’s letters to the Romans are still sitting in the Rome post office.”

Purcell smiled. “I actually sent it from the Swiss post office here.”

“Excellent thinking. It should be in Geneva today.” He stood. “Ready?”

Purcell stood and they walked back to the library.

Mercado informed Purcell, “There are over half a million printed volumes in this library, and over fifty thousand rare manuscripts, including many in the hand of Cicero, Virgil, and Tacitus.”

“So no coffee allowed.”

Mercado continued, “It would take a lifetime to read just the handwritten manuscripts, let alone the printed volumes.”

“At least.”

“In any case, after a month of research, I have no documentary evidence of how the Grail, which was bound for the Holy Land, wound up in Ethiopia. But I have a theory.” He said to Purcell, “If you know your history, you will know that the Council of Chalcedon was called in A.D. 451 to try to resolve some of the theological differences that existed in the early Christian Church.”

“Right.”

Mercado continued, “The pope, Leo I, and the Christian emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, Marcian, had a disagreement with the Egyptian and Ethiopian emissaries to this meeting because these emissaries refused to accept the complex doctrine of the Trinity and insisted that Christ was one and that he was wholly divine. These emissaries were expelled, and the dissenting churches came to be called Egyptic, and later Coptic, and this was the beginning of Ethiopia’s isolation from the larger Christian world, which persists to this day.”

“I noticed.”

“In any case, the missing piece of the journey of the Grail could be this—Perceval and Gauvain—”

“Who we last saw sailing off in a fog.”

“Reached the Holy Land, which was part of the Eastern Roman Empire, ruled by the emperor in Constantinople.” He continued, “Perceval and Gauvain would have given the Grail to the Christian bishop in Jerusalem, who was at that time a powerful figure in the church.” He informed Purcell, “There is some documentary evidence here in the archives that the Grail was circulated among the important Christian churches in Jerusalem over the next few centuries.”

Mercado continued, “But in A.D. 636, Jerusalem was conquered by the armies of Islam, and many important Christian religious objects were lost or were spirited away to Rome, Constantinople, and Alexandria, Egypt, which was still part of the Eastern Roman Empire.”

“How’d it wind up in Ethiopia, Henry?”

“I’m speculating that the Grail wound up in Alexandria, or someplace else in Egypt, and six years later, in 642, Christian Egypt fell to Islam. I’m further speculating that the Grail, now in the possession of Coptic priests or monks in Egypt, was taken by Nile riverboat to Ethiopia for safekeeping in Axum.” He explained, “That would make sense, historically, geographically, and in terms of theology—the Egyptians were Copts, and they came into possession of the Grail from Christian refugees from Jerusalem who were fleeing Islam. Six years later, they themselves were conquered by Islam, and they needed to safeguard the Grail, so they took it by a safe route on the Nile to their co-religionists in Ethiopia.”

“That’s an exciting story.”

“And based on known historical events. Also, after this time, there are historical references to the Holy Grail in Ethiopia—and no references to it being anywhere else.”

Purcell did not respond.

“I’m not asking you to suspend belief. I’m trying to fill in the blanks between when the Grail left Glastonbury and when it is mentioned in primary source documents as being in Ethiopia.”

A far simpler explanation, Purcell thought, was that the cup used by Christ at the Last Supper had never left Jerusalem. But the Brits liked their story of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table and the Holy Grail, and people like Mercado worked it into the legend. In the end, it didn’t matter how it got to Ethiopia, assuming it did, and assuming it existed.

Purcell said, “You understand, Henry, that we are not trying to locate the Holy Grail or even figure out how it got to Ethiopia. We have been told by a credible source—Father Armano—that it’s sitting in the black monastery. Now all we have to do is go find this place.”

“And I’ve explained to you that our journey—spiritual and intellectual—begins here.”

“I’m not arguing with you, Henry. I just want this part of the journey to end before lunch.”

“If we do find the Grail, it would be important if we could establish its provenance, as you would do with any ancient object—to establish its authenticity.”

“If we find the Grail, Henry, we will know it is authentic. Especially if it has a lance dripping blood into it. And even if it doesn’t, we will know it when we see it. We will
feel
it. That much I believe. And that’s what
you
should believe. So it doesn’t matter how it got there, and
we
don’t have to prove anything to anyone.” He said, “Res ipsa loquitur. The thing speaks for itself.”

Mercado looked at him and said, “I didn’t know you spoke Latin.”

“Neither did I.”

Both men stayed silent. Then Mercado asked, “But did I make my case?”

“You did an excellent job.” He asked Mercado, “Did you do all this on company time? Or are you doing it
for
the company?”

Mercado did not reply.

Purcell closed his notebook and said, “Well, I have enough to write the story. Now let’s find the black monastery so I can write the end.”

Purcell stood, and Mercado said to him, “For a writer, a journey of a thousand miles begins in a library and ends at the typewriter.”

“We should be so lucky as to end this journey at a typewriter.”

They left the room and Mercado said something in Italian to a monk, who walked toward the reading room with a large key in his hand.

They walked out into the December sunshine, then headed into the Vatican gardens toward the Ethiopian College, where Purcell hoped they’d find a map with a notation saying,
Black monastery—home of the Holy Grail
.

They should be that lucky. Or not.

P
riests and nuns strolled the garden paths, and Purcell thought that wherever they had come from, they had arrived here at the center of their world and their faith. Their spiritual journey would never end, until they were called home, but their physical journey had ended and they seemed at peace with themselves.

He and Henry, on the other hand, had a ways to go to find whatever they were looking for. And Vivian, too, who had seemed happy just to be out of Ethiopia and to be with him, had not gotten Ethiopia, Henry, or Father Armano out of her head. But if everything went right, three troubled souls would come together in Rome and make their peace and begin their journey.

Mercado spoke as they walked. “The next significant mention of the Grail in Ethiopia is dated 1527.”

“Are we back in the library?”

“Yes. I found a report, written in Latin by a Portuguese Jesuit named Alvarez, written for Pope Clement VII. Father Alvarez says to Pope Clement that he has just returned from Ethiopia and while there he met another Portuguese gentleman, an explorer named Juscelino Alancar, who had reached the Ethiopian emperor’s court at Axum with his expedition forty years earlier. Father Alvarez further states that Alancar had been treated well, but he and his men had been put under house arrest by the Coptic pope for the remainder of their lives.”