James Becker - The Messiah Secret

‘If it was parchment, handling it all the time wouldn’t have been such a sharp idea, though, would it?’

Mayhew took a breath that sounded — even to him — like a sob. ‘But if he sealed the parchment in a plastic bag or mounted it between a couple of sheets of glass, and kept it away from moisture and sunlight, it would have lasted quite well. And he would also have made a copy of the text and kept that to hand. And I still think he would have kept it here, somewhere. It wouldn’t have been convenient to keep it in a bank, and it was a very precious and important relic for Bartholomew.’ Mayhew sighed. ‘But I’ve no idea where you’d start looking.’

‘That’s not bad,’ the man said, looking at Mayhew keenly. ‘Oliver told me the parchment did fall apart, several years ago. He also told me his father made a copy of the text before that happened.’

‘Oliver Wendell-Carfax told you ?’ Mayhew whispered, an appalling realization suddenly crowding into his brain.

The man nodded, a slight smile playing over his lips. Then he picked up the whip and walked across to the chair Mayhew was sitting in. This time he stepped behind the chair. The wooden back was tall and reached almost up to Mayhew’s neck.

‘Bend forward,’ he ordered, ‘or I’ll whip you twice.’

Mayhew muttered something inaudible, then bent forward, his whole body trembling in anticipation of the agony to come.

Instantly, the man swung the scourge down, opening up a line of new wounds on his prisoner’s back.

Mayhew screamed again, as the man lashed his back a second time.

‘You said you’d only hit me once,’ Mayhew protested, between sobs of pain.

‘I make the rules,’ the man said simply, sitting down again, his voice still calm and controlled. ‘Now I need to know what else you found here. You’ve had all week to explore this place. What did you discover?’

Mayhew shook his head, the pain of the lashes across his chest and back still clouding his mind. ‘We didn’t-’ he began, but the stranger again picked up the whip.

‘Wait, wait,’ Mayhew stammered desperately. ‘We did find something. It wasn’t much, but-’

‘I’ll be the judge of its value. Just tell me what it was.’

‘The vessel. The first-century pottery jar that the parchment had been sealed inside. We found that — at least we think we did — up in the attic. It was in pieces. Bartholomew broke it when he tried to remove the parchment.’

‘Who found it? And where is it now?’

‘One of our ceramic specialists — Angela Lewis — took it away with her.’

‘Tell me about her.’

Sobbing, Mayhew described Angela and told the man where she lived and worked, and then fell silent. He’d apologise to her when he next saw her, he told himself. For now it was a matter of survival.

‘Did you find anything else?’

Mayhew nodded miserably. ‘Chris Bronson — Angela’s former husband — found a small leather box full of papers, mainly notes Bartholomew had written. Angela said they were expedition records, that kind of thing, and a few bills and receipts.’

‘And she took them away with her?’

‘Yes.’

There was silence as the man stared at Mayhew. ‘Anything else?’ he asked at last.

‘No, nothing to do with Bartholomew’s treasure hunt.’

The man nodded and picked up the scourge again.

‘No more, please,’ Mayhew begged him. ‘No more. I can’t take it.’

The man walked over to the kitchen sink, ran the cold tap and washed away the sticky drying blood from the leather thongs. He dried the scourge carefully on a tea towel and tucked it away in his jacket pocket, then shrugged the garment on to his shoulders.

‘Thank you,’ Mayhew croaked.

The man turned back and looked down at him. ‘You have done your best to help me, I think, and so I shall be merciful.’

He pulled a small bottle from another pocket of his jacket and unscrewed the stopper.

‘What’s that?’ Mayhew asked, his voice trembling with fear.

‘It’s holy water, nothing more.’

The man dabbed a little of the water on to the tip of his right forefinger and traced the sign of a cross on Mayhew’s forehead. Then he replaced the bottle in his pocket and strode back to the table.

He turned to face Mayhew, crossed himself and softly intoned ‘ In nomine padre, filii et spiritu sancti .’ Then he picked up the pistol and aimed it at Mayhew’s chest.

‘No, no! Wait! Please wait! I’ll do anything. Don’t kill me. Please.’

The man shook his head. ‘Begging is undignified, and, in any case, I have no option. You’ve seen my face.’

‘No! I’ll do whatever you want me to do. Please! I’ll never tell anyone anything about you. And why didn’t you wear a mask?’

The man shook his head again. ‘I would never hide my face. I believe God’s work should always be done openly.’

‘God’s work?’ Mayhew whispered incredulously, as the man took careful aim and squeezed the trigger.

Mayhew’s body shook with the impact of the bullet. He remained upright for a couple of seconds, then slumped forwards lifelessly.

The man walked over, felt for a pulse but found nothing. Then he turned and looked out of the window. His next step was clear. He’d go to London and find the woman who was also hunting for the treasure. His treasure.

For a few seconds, Angela stared at the page of text displayed on the computer screen in front of her, then glanced down at the copious notes she’d made on her laptop. She stood up, stretched her arms above her head and rotated her shoulder joints, trying to work the kinks out of her muscles.

She realized she’d been working on the computer for almost four hours without a break — once she got her teeth into any project, she tended to become remarkably single-minded about it. She needed to take a short walk, let her eyes relax for a few minutes and maybe grab a cup of coffee.

Twenty minutes later she sat back at her desk, put down her mug and took another bite of the salad sandwich she’d bought at a delicatessen a few dozen yards down Great Russell Street, across the road from the museum.

She still wasn’t entirely certain, but the references she’d uncovered were beginning to make sense, and a tantalizing hypothesis was starting to take shape. The ‘treasure of the world’ seemed to be almost a code phrase that had echoed through the last two millennia, and appeared to refer to something quite specific. Exactly what was meant by the expression, Angela still didn’t know, but there were one or two hints, and it did seem to be an ancient relic of considerable importance.

She also started to search backwards. Instead of looking for further first-century references to the ‘treasure of the world’, she’d started at the other end of time, trying to find much more recent documents that contained the expression. Her rationale was that if she found a reference to that expression in a later book or manuscript, there might well be a note about where the author of the work had found the phrase, and that would enable her to establish a trail back through the historical record, to back-track the references to the relic. Hopefully, each mention of the expression would amplify her knowledge and narrow down the search area — always assuming there was still something left to search for.

She’d consulted a wide range of late-medieval books without finding any reference to the phrase, and almost as an after-thought she’d decided to check the contents of a number of grimoires — a grimoire was essentially a textbook of magic. She wondered if that might be worth doing simply because, although such books mainly contained nonsensical spells, curses and incantations, they also often drew on a wide range of earlier sources.