James Becker - The Messiah Secret

‘But he was writing a book about magic, so you’d expect him to say something like that, wouldn’t you?’ Bronson objected.

‘Well, the text of the grimoire was written in Latin, so when I did a search I had to use a Latin term, obviously. I tried thesaurus mundi first.’

‘A thesaurus? I thought that meant a word list.’

‘That’s what it means today, yes, just a list of synonyms and antonyms, but back then it meant a treasure or possibly a treasury. Anyway, that didn’t produce any results, so I tried a different Latin noun — arcarum — and that did find a reference.’

Bronson looked interested. ‘Go on.’

‘The word arcarum is more of a catch-all term than thesaurus , and to find out what the word means you have to analyse the context, which involves studying the sentence in which it occurs. One of the meanings was “money” and another one was “strong-box”, but there was a third meaning that hadn’t even occurred to me until then.’

‘Which was?’

‘“Ark”,’ Angela replied simply.

For a second or two Bronson just looked at her. ‘“Ark” as in Noah’s Ark, or “Ark” as in “Ark of the Covenant”?’ he asked.

Angela raised her hand. ‘ Arcarum could mean “Noah’s Ark”, I grant you. But I don’t think we’re looking for the remains of a wooden boat on top of a mountain somewhere, Chris, do you?’

Chris leaned back in his chair and whistled. ‘Are you sitting here in this small Italian restaurant trying to tell me you might be looking for the Ark of the Covenant?’

‘And there’s something else. The authors of grimoires and other “magick” texts were very fond of using analogies to obscure the meaning of certain passages. It was a kind of rudimentary code — you needed to be educated in the craft to some extent before you could understand what they were talking about. For example, a very simple code would be for the writing to include something like “a box without hinges, lock or lid, yet golden treasure inside is hid”.’

Angela looked at him expectantly, but Bronson just shook his head. ‘No idea,’ he said.

‘It’s an egg, you idiot. What else could it be?’ Angela shook her head. ‘Anyway, somebody a lot brighter than you would look at the rhyme and correctly identify the object as an egg, so that when the author of the work later referred to an egg, because of the words used in that rhyme they’d realize he was talking about a treasure chest. The egg would be the analogy for the treasure chest.’

‘I follow that,’ Bronson said, ‘stupid policeman though I undoubtedly am. But what’s that got to do with the Ark of the Covenant?’

Angela sighed. ‘My point is that there were two references in the grimoire that used almost the same words. But in the second one there was a misspelling — the author had substituted the letter “n” for the second “r” of arcarum .’

‘So instead of arcarum mundi it read arcanum mundi ,’ Bronson said. ‘Gutenberg didn’t invent the printing press until the fifteenth century, if I remember my history correctly. So, if you’re right about the date of the grimoire, the first version must have been handwritten. Those two letters are very similar. Are you sure he didn’t just write the “r” with a slightly elongated down-stroke?’

‘I don’t think so. The two phrases were so similar that I’m certain it was done deliberately. And you haven’t asked the obvious question.’

‘I know,’ Bronson replied. ‘What does arcanum mean?’

‘I’d have thought you’d have guessed it, because it’s so similar to a modern English word. Arcanum means a sacred secret, a secret known only to a very few people, or a secret of nature, the kind of thing the alchemists spent their time searching for. It’s usually found in the plural form — arcana — and it’s the origin of the word “arcane”.’

‘So let me get this straight. In the grimoire you found, this hidden treasure is called both the arcarum mundi — meaning the “treasure of the world” — and the arcanum mundi — the “sacred secret of the world”.’

‘Precisely. There can’t be that many relics that could be considered to be both a treasure and a sacred secret, but without any doubt the Ark of the Covenant has to be one of them.’ Angela took his hand again. ‘Shall we continue this conversation at my flat?’

The night was warm and the streets still relatively busy as Bronson and Angela walked up Ealing Broadway.

‘You said there were two things you’d found. Obviously one was the grimoire, so what was the other?’ Bronson asked.

‘The other was the box of papers we found under that revolting stuffed fox. I’ve gone through them all now. In the main, they comprise notes of Bartholomew’s abortive expeditions, but they also contain his thoughts and conclusions. On his very last expedition to Egypt he writes that he is now certain that he is on the trail of the sakina , and that someone he refers to as “Sq” took it to Sinat.’

‘And that means exactly what?’ Bronson asked.

‘Well, he obviously didn’t want to write down his thoughts in plain language,’ Angela said. ‘Maybe he was worried about somebody reading them and stealing a march on him. The “Sq” is almost certainly his own pet abbreviation for Shishaq — he’s the only pharaoh I can think of whose name begins and ends with those letters.’

‘What about “Sinat”?’

‘Look,’ Angela said, taking his hand, ‘I think Bartholomew used a very simple code here. The word “Sinat” is “Tanis” spelt backwards, and that was where the Pharaoh Shishaq had his capital city, so if he did seize any prize or treasure, that would obviously be where he’d take it.’

‘And the “sakina”?’

‘It’s an Arabic word that derives from sakoon , meaning “peace” or “tranquillity”. But it has a more obscure secondary meaning as “the Chest in which the tranquillity of the Lord resides”. In other words, that sentence says that Shishaq seized the Ark of the Covenant and took it with him to his capital at Tanis.’

‘And we both know, from the time we spent together in Israel, that both the Ark of the Covenant and the tablets of stone it protected, actually existed,’ Bronson said slowly.

‘Absolutely,’ Angela agreed. ‘Anyway, according to one story in the Bible, Shishaq seized the Ark in about nine hundred and twenty BC. In another account, the Ark was looted from the First Temple, also known as Solomon’s Temple, in Jerusalem in five hundred and eighty-six BC, by King Nebuchadnezzar and his army. But nobody actually knows, and there’s nothing in the historical record to support or deny either suggestion.’ She paused. ‘However, I have got a theory of my own.’

They turned the corner towards the Common and Angela’s apartment block came into view.

‘I think we need to find out what the original Persian text said before we go any further,’ Bronson said. ‘And unless you’ve found it in that box from Carfax Hall, I’ve no idea where we’d start looking for it.’

‘It wasn’t there, Chris. If it had been, I’d already have told you. But there was something that suggested where we should start looking for it.’

Angela stopped suddenly, looking startled.

‘What is it?’ Bronson said, his hand on her shoulder.

‘I think there’s someone in my flat,’ she said.

Bronson stopped short and stared at the apartment block, seeing immediately what she meant. The lights in her lounge windows were blazing away, and he knew she always switched everything off whenever she left home.