Jonathan Rabb - The Book of Q

Reaching the protective shadow of the great doors, he paused to reorient himself.

The collection of buildings he had seen earlier now appeared to meld into one another, a kind of flattened crescent, the moon offering just enough of a gloss to bring them into focus. Likewise, the water splashed in an ivory white, its lapping reflection trapped within the fountain walls, the area just beyond its reach somehow darker by contrast than the rest of the courtyard. Drawn in by the tranquillity of the scene, he began to feel far more attuned to the design of the monastery. Granted, he had only a small portion of it in front of him, but the discrepancies between Angeli’s map and the actual layout seemed to melt away, the spacing far less compact, readable, a growing sense that perhaps he might be able to locate the signposts specified in the scroll. Or maybe it was just faith. Or the fact that the mist had lifted. Either way, he retrieved the pages from his sleeve, glanced at the first few, and set off.

It was remarkable how much she had teased from the text, or rather, how much the Manichaeans had been able to hide within their prayer. Half the notes on Photinus detailed landmarks chosen for what was, no doubt, their staying power: bends in the outer wall, ancient pieces of stonework planted deep in the earth, rises and falls in terrain that no amount of building or digging could disrupt. Those things that they knew would endure.

And, of course, as Angeli had promised, the distances between them.

Following the line of the wall to his left, he counted off the prescribed thirty-five paces to an arched hollow directly across from a small olive orchard, just as the notes described. Truth to tell, it had been thirty-one, but given the likelihood that he was a good deal taller than his tenth-century counterpart, Pearse quickly reasoned away the disparity. With that in mind, he shortened his gait, and arrived at the next landmark with extraordinary precision-“time placed in stone”-the first of two sundials situated at opposite ends of a garden at the orchard’s center. Both sprouted an assortment of paths, only one of them leading up a short incline. It was the one he was meant to take, out beyond the orchard fence, past a natural spring, to the edge of the monastery’s outer wall.

It was there that he met his first setback. For several minutes, he couldn’t find a series of steps described as “notches in the great partition.” His hands traced the wall face as Pearse became more and more concerned that he was somehow overlooking something. Struggling with a thick matting of overgrown saplings, he finally unearthed the first step, then the second, the rest of them so cleverly imbedded in the wall that had he not known what he was looking for, he would have missed them entirely. Even as he climbed, he needed his hands to feel out each one in front of him, lantern light insufficient to the task. Halfway up, he slowly realized that if not for the steps, he would never have been able to find his way past a group of buildings-thirteenth- or fourteenth-century, by his estimation-situated along the wall. How the Manichaeans had known to avoid what must have been open land back in the tenth century was anybody’s guess. He continued to climb.

A gust of wind swept up as he reached the top of the wall, his hand quick to the stone face to steady himself. Momentarily staggered, he found it impossible not to stare out at the horizon, an explosion of stars so vast that he was forced to drop to one knee lest he lose himself over the edge. The Aegean swelled some three hundred feet below, its rhythm in strict counterpoint to the endless array of glitter quivering above. He tried to regain his feet, but his body refused, once again beguiled by the perfect synchrony of light and darkness. For all his doubts-his fears of a Manichaean ascetic-Pearse had, at least, come to appreciate its singular truth, palpable at a moment like this.

As close to heaven as they could get .

The echo of Angeli’s voice roused him from his meditation. He forced his eyes back to Photinus and spotted the second set of steps just on the other side of the buildings. His body low, he traversed the top of the wall, then made his way down.

A courtyard opened up at the base of the steps. Scampering across it, he came to a bridge no more than ten feet across, a tiny rill below-more rocks than water-its trickle heard, not seen. He checked the notes; there was no bridge mentioned. Evidently, this was a “recent” addition. Instructed to follow the water upstream, he placed his hand on the bridge’s stanchion and leapt down the five or so feet before making his way along the sod and mud, careful to keep his lamp high. The footing grew more and more tricky, slick rock causing him to keep one hand almost in the water so as to maintain his balance. Forty yards along, he pulled himself back up the bank.

What had appeared as a collision of trees and stonework from his cell window now opened up as the onetime heart of the monastery, the buildings retreating further and further into the past. And yet, the deeper in he moved, the more he sensed a loneliness from those he passed, too many of them abandoned, remnants from a time when Photinus had boasted five hundred monks within its walls. Now it held barely eighty, the rate of apostasy increasing with each year, the malady of “teddy-boyismos,” as Nikotheos had called it-the lure of Salonika-having grown to epidemic proportions. The old monks were dying off, the novices fleeing, leaving the buildings to stand empty and alone.

Pearse felt only token sympathy. The fewer monks around, the less likely he might run into one.

All such concerns quickly faded when, at the top of a steep rise, he came face-to-face with a double row of columns, the facade for a cloister peeking out through the gaps.

This time round, he needed no cats to set his heart racing.

“Twin rows of eight will guard the Vault.”

Somewhere within those walls waited the parchment.

Staring up at the building as a whole, he quickly understood why the Manichaeans had chosen it for their hiding place. He reckoned it stood almost at the center point of the three outer walls. More than that, it had been designed in such a way that, as far as he could tell, access to it was possible only from the route he had taken. The back and side walls seemed to grow out of the mountain, a half-chiseled sculpture tearing itself from the rock. Only the front colonnade was fully realized, the “twin rows” revealing an archway at the center. Pearse removed the last few sheets from his sleeve and started in.

Four portico walkways flanked a narrow quadrangle to form the interior, a courtyard of dusted earth and wild grass at its center. Unlike anything he had seen up to this point, the cloister clung to a late Roman past, a building that might very well have predated even the Manichaean presence at Photinus. Bringing his lantern to eye level-and relying on a suddenly lustrous moon-he followed the line of archways that extended to his left. The stone had softened over the centuries, but the rigid lines of each column could still be seen even in the half-light, the pedestals beneath linked in a continuous low wall. The arcade itself had not faired so well, the flagstones chipped and cracked, clumps of vegetation pushing their way through, odd mounds of dirt scattered throughout, the mark of animal scavenging. Every so often, a window or door would appear along the walled side of the arcade, the rooms within showing equal disrepair, some, though, with hints of long-faded mosaics-a partial crucifix here, the hand of the Virgin there-all shining back at him in the lantern light. From the varying sizes and shapes of the cells, it was clear that the place had once housed a virtually independent community within Photinus, far more than just the simple cloister it purported to be.