Chosen Ch. 06

Working with Jose was something of a trial.

"Alan, may I ask what you are thinking you are doing with that torch and those tanks of gas?"

I closed the jeep door and frowned at Jose's shadowy figure, standing against the crumbled wall in the darkness.

"We have to get in somehow, don't we? The door is reinforced with iron and the lock will be corroded shut, but some work with a cutting torch and chisel should get us through."

"This is still technically church property-"

"We have to get in somehow, padre, and I don't think you'd do well climbing over the wall."

He sighed, softly. "You don't understand. This is church property and I am a historian with the backing of the church. The lock was badly corroded -- which is why I had it removed three hours ago..." He held up a piece of paper. "...with permission from the archdiocese."

"Oh."

+++

The small walled enclosure was badly crumbled, and climbing in would not have been that daunting for me, but it was the sort of thing I was used to. Once inside, a quick survey with flashlights told me others had not found it daunting either -- there were remnants of a picnic and several empty bottles of wine near the remains of a campfire. I picked up a bottle: cheap stuff, with a date two years ago.

"Young lovers can't resist a secluded spot," Jose said. "Though I'm not sure how anyone would convince a girl to climb down that crumbled wall."

I chuckled. "Padre, it's more than likely she dared him to come here and offered herself as a prize if he got her in."

He shook his head. "Unchaste creatures."

"You have noooo idea. Is that why the church kept it locked all this time? To discourage lovers?"

"No. It's just not safe. Crumbling stone everywhere... there's no interest in architecture this ruined and there are better examples of the building style all over Spain. It was just never important enough to unlock."

"The stone has held up pretty well, for seven hundred years. Wasn't there a big earthquake here in the sixteen hundreds?"

"Sixteen forty seven. But a good distance east of here." He ran the flashlight beam over the church and single outbuilding, both freestanding within the enclosing wall. "Both buildings burned. Whoever did the torching was desperate and didn't know where the records were."

"Setting fires takes time. Wouldn't some priest or friar grabbed the records at the first sign of trouble and escaped the flames with them?"

He swept his flashlight around the enclosing wall. "In some places yes. But this is fully walled with only one way out, and the people who came to do the burning would have been numerous enough to prevent escape. By legend, no one who lived here survived the fire, which means, of course, that anyone trying to escape was pitched back into the flames."

"Nice. How many lived here?"

"The records don't say. This isn't a large site. Less than thirty, certainly."

"So scarcely a large enough population to justify building the enclosing wall."

Jose shook his head, but in the darkness I only knew this because of the faint rustle of cloth. "You're thinking politically, not ecclesiastically. In the church, walls are built to protect and concentrate knowledge, not protect people. Or sometimes to keep secrets." He shifted the flashlight. "The smaller building was a library. It was separate from the church, so it was a place where information was kept that was not of theological importance -- profane writings, science, things of some value but not things of God. An excommunication gone wrong... the people of the time would have thought it was evidence of the power of darkness, opposing the will of the church. So an account of the event would have gone in there. But if we are right, this place was attacked to destroy that very record. And someone here wanted the record protected. So I'd assume it was removed and hidden in the church itself, before or during the attack."

"Instead of being taken far away?"

"Only if they had enough warning. Even then... whatever the secret was, they didn't want it getting loose. Maybe better to let it be destroyed than risk it on the open road? A priest would trust in the provision of stone and prayer long before he'd trust strangers on the road, or maybe even a priest in some other library. Thirteen ninety one ... It was not a time of trust and cooperation. The church itself was divided. Spain was rarely so bloody."

"Brilliant reasoning... which does us no good, since both buildings were burned. Who attacked this place?"

"History doesn't say."

"Just to know who is driving -- what a help it would be," I sighed.

"Alan Saint Laurent is fond of old, obscure progressive rock," Jose commented. "Who would guess such a thing."

"Not that obscure. And it's not as unlikely as a priest who knows there is such a thing as magic and keeps it secret from the world."

"I don't believe in magic. I believe in mysteries and Divine power, and powers that are not so Divine. That some mysteries and powers might have a physical form... it is not inconceivable to me."

I walked towards the church. The door wasn't inset, and being exposed to the elements for a few centuries left it rotted. When I pushed on it, it crumbled. Inside, the once-wooden floor had rotted entirely away and there was greenery growing in many spots. The ceiling had been destroyed in the fire, and the stone walls were sagging and leaning at points.

Moonlight peeked over a wall, but the light was very dim. I swept it with a flashlight, but the additional light didn't make me feel more confident.

"The fire weakened the foundation and took off the roof. Centuries of rains have made things worse." I said. "This really is unsafe. I'm surprised the walls held up this long."

"Then let's stop and think before going inside. Pick the best areas to explore in case it all collapses, and we can't finish."

I nodded. "The book had to have been here at one time. My guess is it somehow recorded the events that caused all this; it somehow remembers things. I am making a leap of faith here, padre. I am believing that God, or an angel, or whatever you believe in that dispenses powers, wanted the memory of events preserved, and that is what the book has become. A memory. And if some such being wanted that, the book must still exist."

"For you that must be quite a leap of faith, indeed."

"I'd never believe it if I didn't own a candle as old as this building. Things have been preserved that cannot have survived on their own. So the book must still exist. It exists even though someone politically powerful enough to do all this burning, wanted it destroyed very badly. Who? You said the excommunication was political. Were the political leaders of the day strong enough to run around and destroy churches?"

"I'd have said no, but..." he shrugged, gesturing at the ruins.

"There was a church burned in Seville, sixty years later. So the book survived this, went there, and someone tried later."

Jose nodded. "Perhaps. But sixty years is a long time. Assume someone powerful did something politically inconvenient to the church. He's unjustly excommunicated. The excommunication somehow goes awry, creating these... three artifacts, but some rumors still get out. This church is later burned to hide the evidence of his wrongdoing, and my best guess is that it happened perhaps ten years after the excommunication."

"So many guesses."

He nodded. "I know. It's a stretch, but I can believe all that is possible. But the Seville fire happened sixty years later. Whoever he was, he was dead by then. He'd have been at least ninety. People did not live that long in those times, not often anyway. And yet the account of his sins still mattered enough to burn another church. That's where the theory fails for me. Political events can seem terribly important at the time. But they rarely are to the next generation."

"So the Seville fire was unrelated?"

"I am not certain. The tale there is different. Not everyone died; very few did. But two church burnings in southern Spain... it's not that common that anyone tries it, let alone succeeds. I smell some connection."

I shook my head. "But we're still making crazy assumptions. Maybe the Seville fire was set to destroy evidence of the bell, book and candle. People might have starting investigating rumors of magic... I ran across a letter that condemned the investigation of forbidden mysteries. An account of where the book and bell were sent to might have become dangerous."

"I am having trouble accepting the church would burn an entire library to destroy a few of its own records. Libraries are nothing today, but in these years they were important and serious undertakings, a labor spanning decades of collecting and organizing. Say what you want about the church, but it preserved knowledge when the rest of Europe was chaos. But still what you say is true. We know nothing. All we have are guesses."

I sighed, and looked over the floor of the church, now an irregular tangle of half-starved greenery.

"Place needs a gardener."

He nodded, settling against a wall carefully. "The climbing vines are jasmine. You can smell traces of it. Those vines can be rough on stone walls, over time. Most of the rest is Esparto grass. The larger plants by the puddle are Cistus."

"Botany expert?"

"No. But I visit ruins a lot, and I keep a garden. The grass gets into everything."

"And it doesn't grow in sandy soil or strong sun?"

"It doesn't mind either of those. Why?"

"Look at this bare spot just in front of us. Isn't this the north side of the narthex? With the roof gone the sun would have beaten down strongest here."

"You're a little turned around. North is more to the left. And the grass is very hardy..."

"So why is that spot bare? I don't see anything else this barren."

He paused. "Because... the soil is shallow there. Know your New Testament, Alan. That which has no root, withers in the sun." He stepped in and knelt. "Shallow in a square area, so there must be stone underneath -- but there was never a pillar here. Help me dig!"

There was very little digging to do. We brushed back a thin coating of soil and found a stone support with a flat top. "Oh. It's just a pillar support, after all," I said.

"No. Look at the other pillar supports. They are raised a good twenty centimeters above this one. This would have been below the level of the wooden floor. It was meant to look like one, to be certain..." He dug around the side of the support. "Look! Just an inch down, a crack... give me your crowbar!"

Mineral deposits had formed in the crack, and it took us a few minutes to work the stone top free. Underneath was a tiny chamber, with a book inside.

"Found you!" I said, reaching in.

Jose slapped my hand aside. "That was never used in an excommunication, Alan. They are public rituals, done in front of crowds. The book would be sizeable, not this tiny thing. And after all this time I'm certain it's very fragile. I am no expert but I clearly know more about handling old books than you seem to. Allow me."

From his pocket he took out a square of leather, and few small pieces of wood, a pair of white gloves, and tweezers. In a few moments he donned the gloves and assembled the wood into a small book stand, then carefully placed the book on the stand, and opened it with tweezers.

"It's just a hymnal," he said in disappointment.

"Perhaps it's a code!"

He looked at me and rolled his eyes. "You watch too much drama. Spare me your badly written modern 'historical' mysteries. The Freemasons were never planning to rule the world, no one ever wrote a message in code in a piece of music, and the Voynich manuscripts were not given to us by aliens. Do you need clarity on any other conspiracy theory? I promise you, as a Catholic historian, I know them all."

"So the Da Vinci Code wasn't real?"

"My vows as a priest prevent me from beating you with this crowbar."

I looked at the book. "Then why-"

"Wait. What have we here? A few pages in the middle that are not hymns."

I crowded in, but the discolored old writing was in Spanish, and not modern Spanish. I chuckled at my impatience. "Perhaps I'll let you translate."

"That might be best. So. It starts out with an apology to God for resorting to the deception of hiding his writing in a book of hymns. I like him already. He has respect for the sacred and a disdain for lies... this is grim reading. He stumbled on a book he was not meant to find, in the library. It contained... this is hard to translate. No, he simply didn't know how to say it. 'A confusion of ever shifting letters that said one thing and whispered another, and then I awoke with unclear memories.'"

"Meaning?"

"I don't know. I'd have assumed a dream, but he goes on. The book told him men were coming to destroy both books and men, and the book needed to be sent away, with as many men as possible. A book that can predict the future? Now that is a terrible thought."

"Could be useful at the casinos. And a huge help with the babes. And then what happened?"

"He tried to persuade the head priest to move men and books, and was laughed at. The library had been founded by the order of the pope himself... I wonder if he meant Clement seven or Boniface nine? Anyway. They had no intention of deserting a library founded by a pope just because of a dream had by a young priest. He stresses over and over that he had no authority and could not get himself believed. In the end he smuggled the book out himself. No! He doesn't say where he took it to! By all the saints, why?"

"Is that it?"

"No. The last entry is rather terrible. There's a group of horsemen advancing on the church from the northwest, and he knows they are coming to kill. Sacred mother! The marauders are of the church, he gives the name of the priest leading them! We can forget this squabble between church and state we'd come up with, Alan. This was internal to the church... He commits this account of his actions to this hiding place and his soul to God, and will go out and take up arms with the rest... and there it ends. A few blank pages and then more hymns."

He folded the book into the leather he'd brought, crossed himself, and got up.

"We've done well, Alan. We can leave." Grunting, he pushed the heavy stone plug back into place. It settled with an echoing thump.

"I think there is far more searching to be done. They built one hiding place, there could be others. We can split up-"

Behind me there was another thump, much louder. I swung the flashlight around -- that large chunk of stone had not been there before...

"Run!" we both screamed, and bolted through the doorway.

We had a few seconds to spare, but not many. Three more stones fell, and then a large mass... and then the stone over the doorway collapsed suddenly into ruin. The collapse slowly cascaded until a quarter of the building was spilled over the ground.

"Exploration is over. I believe we've been invited to leave," Jose said. Shaking a little, I nodded.

"All this for nothing though," I said. "We find a book, but it is useless."

"Always the thief you are Alan, and never the historian. We got something of great value." He gingerly patted the pocket that held the tiny book. "In this is the name of the priest that wanted the book we seek destroyed. Finally we have a name to research. That could be of more value than maps and gems."

More stone collapsed behind us. We exited quickly through the arch of the enclosing wall, before it got similar ideas.

+++

I looked in the mirror. Every time I did, I remembered the girl looking into the water... and seeing my face.

"I'm me. My name is Adrienne. I am not an Adriana."

The last twenty four hours had not been... good. My sleep had been punctuated by disturbing dreams, of being chased by angry men shouting at me in ways I didn't understand. During the day I'd had weird moments of... they were like blackouts. I'd just come to, in a different room, with nothing in my head and ten minutes gone. After one of them, the kitchen had been left a mess. I was nowhere near the book, so I wasn't having visions.

"I live now. What happened long ago isn't anything to do with me."

I was afraid to go out; a blackout as I was driving would be a disaster.

"I... books can't be magic, I'm hallucinating... books can't talk. It's just a dream. But I can't wake up? I..."

My fingertips touched my face.

"This is her face not mine. Mine is... underneath...?"

The phone rang.

Phones were too... easy. Anyone can talk to anyone, anywhere. So much would have been different if I'd had a phone.

Wait, that made no sense...

My fingernails caressed my cheeks.

Ring. With a confused half sob, I answered it. "Ring ring, Adri- uh, hello?"

"Addy, have you signed that paperwork yet? The insurance company is on my ass."

I was going to Spain. Someone wanted me photographed, naked, in chains. Chains, why was that familiar? "Steve. Sorry, no. I don't have a printer here, you shouldn't have emailed them-"

"For Pete's sake! Addy, this is the biggest job of your career, can you please get on this?"

I bridled. "If it was so fucking important you could have driven over with the papers! I'm what, ten miles away? But since that's not your style I'll hike down to the library and get them printed!"

I punched End Call, snarled at the phone, and wandered out to the living room. I fished a thumb drive out of my purse, copied the paperwork with a skill that belied too many years in front of a computer, and fussed around for a pair of shoes. The library was only three blocks away, I hoped I wouldn't black out on the way.

Maybe I needed a doctor. No. Doctors were bad. Leeches.

I gave a little half-sob again. Something was very wrong. But I needed to get to the library. It was important. The library was very important...

I grabbed the thumb drive and walked out, leaving the book behind. Maybe the blackouts would stop if I got away from it.

+++

Libraries are surreal places.

All those printed books. Why? The internet knows everything, and any e-book reader can hold a thousand books in a space thinner than one single printed one. A vast collection of printed material, and no way to search it? Why bother? I know there are people who love the feel of pages, the smell of old books... I knew that because I'd read about people like that in a story on my e-reader. How did research and learning ever happen when everything was on paper? And once upon a time even books had been rare. No wonder the dark ages had been so... dark.

Profound, I thought. Dark is dark. And water is wet, too.

I paid the small fee to have my paperwork printed, and signed and faxed it. I generally didn't have other reasons to come here. They had a section with computers, mostly deserted. A newspaper rack; who reads newspapers anymore? A little music and video library. Those were becoming irrelevant too... everything was online.

This place really didn't need to exist. Overwhelming walls of books, mostly out of date... things that people once believed were true, or once found entertaining. Really, who even reads anymore? Some of my friends stuck to videos.

I could read and write; the priest had insisted I learn. I was an exception. The other children there had not been taught. They'd laughed at me, or pitied me, for having to learn. But I was proud of my skills. I was not ignorant.

Wait... what?

I wandered the shelves. How much of what was printed here was lies? People in authority, writing things down they knew weren't true. Genealogies. I knew now...

My eyes snapped open. I was at a desk, staring at nothing. Fists clenched.

"Miss?"

I looked over. Older women, gray hair, concerned eyes. Librarian.

"Yes?"

"Are you... ok?"