Michael Cordy - The Source

He pressed a number on speed dial: 'Marco, it's me. There's something the Church needs you to do.'

Ross Kelly didn't know what to think. What Sister Chantal had told him before Torino arrived was so ludicrous, so insane, that he couldn't believe it. When he had challenged Torino, he had expected the Black Pope to confirm his scepticism, but the priest's veiled threats had done the opposite. They had bolstered the nun's credibility.

Immediately Torino had left, Ross checked on Sister Chantal, who was asleep on the couch. He draped a blanket over her, took the opaque plastic bag from her hands and went up to Lauren's office. He powered up Lauren's computer, input her password and opened her private Voynich folder. Before he went into any files, however, he found himself staring at the nun's bag. He wanted to believe the story she had told him, recalling their earlier conversation, because it offered him hope where there was none…

'Ross, do you know who wrote the Voynich?'

'No idea. No one does, do they?'

'A Jesuit priest, Father Orlando Falcon, wrote it in the latter half of the sixteenth century, some years after the Spanish conquistador Pizarro conquered the Incan Empire of what is now Ecuador and Peru. It chronicles an ill-fated quest to find Eldorado, the legendary city of gold, for King Charles the Fifth of Spain. And it tells of what Father Orlando and the conquistadors discovered instead.'

'I thought the Voynich was an allegory – a piece of fiction.'

The nun shook her head. 'It was an account of what Orlando Falcon found. When he returned from the New World, the papal Inquisition was at its height. No less than three Grand Inquisitors became pope during the second half of the sixteenth century. The second, Pius the Fifth, was in power when Father Orlando returned to Rome, claiming to have found a miraculous garden that challenged the story of Genesis. Obviously this disturbed the pope and his cardinals. The story went against the prevailing dogma and undermined the scriptures. It threatened everything they and the Church stood for. There could only be one Eden and that must be in the Holy Land, or in Christendom. A second Garden of God couldn't exist in the New World among heathens and savages unless it was the Devil's work. They couldn't ignore Father Orlando, though, because he was a respected Jesuit, a one-time protege of the great Ignatius Loyola. So they pronounced him a heretic. A once fine priest who had become possessed while in the New World.'

'What did they do to him?'

'They demanded he recant. When he refused they handed him over to the torturers, who burnt his feet on hot coals. The next morning his feet had healed. He claimed this miracle was proof of his discovery, but it only confirmed the Grand Inquisitor's conviction that Satan had possessed his soul. The torturers then placed his feet in a wooden vice and crushed the bones. This time his body didn't heal and the Grand Inquisitor concluded the Devil had been driven out. But Father Orlando still refused to recant. For many months they held him in a cell while they decided what to do with him. He was not idle during that time.'

She paused to sip some coffee. Despite his scepticism, Ross was impatient for her to continue.

'When he realized that even the Church couldn't be trusted, and his miraculous discovery might die with him, he decided to record it for a time when it would be better appreciated and understood.' She stared into her cup. 'You must understand one thing. Father Orlando Falcon was an exceptional man. To record his discovery and protect it from those who would exploit it, he created a hybrid language, complete with its own characters. Apart from a few meaningless symbols, which he inserted to confuse those trying to decipher his work, most of his text and illustrations described the wonders he witnessed. And he did all this from memory, while lying in a tiny cell, crippled by torture, using materials smuggled in to him.

'Of course, they eventually found the manuscript, which sealed his fate. They called it The Devil's Book because of its unintelligible writing and pictures of a perverted Eden. He was sentenced to be burnt at the stake, the manuscript with him.'

'What happened?'

'He was executed, but an accomplice hid the manuscript in one of the Jesuit libraries. Father Orlando wanted the book hidden in plain view so that one day it would be found, deciphered and his miraculous garden rediscovered.'

'You really believe it existed?'

She looked at him as a patient teacher might at a slow pupil. 'It exists.'

'But what's this got to do with Lauren?'

'Father Orlando wrote most of the manuscript in a hybrid language of two existing tongues so it could eventually be translated. But only by a scholar who was intelligent, dedicated and wise enough to understand his mind and grasp the significance of his discovery. Someone worthy of the garden.'

Ross remembered the night of Lauren's talk at the Beinecke when she had recited the final words of the Voynich: 'Congratulations, fellow scholar, you have read my story and so proved your dedication, intelligence and wisdom. Whatever your faith, God has now chosen you to do what I cannot: to keep His garden safe and ensure its miraculous powers are used for His glory.' He was overcome by wistful yearning. Earlier that day he had resigned from Xplore and been told of Lauren's pregnancy. His only problem then had been his career. Oh, happy days. 'Someone like my wife?' he said.

'Exactly. But Father Orlando always intended one key section of the manuscript to be impossible to translate. Although he used the same text characters as the rest of the document, its language was invented. Without knowing his grammar or vocabulary it could never be translated.'

Ross nodded. 'So, though she didn't realize it, my wife had already completed as much of the translation as anyone possibly could?'

'Yes.'

'So we'll never know what's in the last section.'

She seemed unsure how or whether to continue, but eventually said, 'When Father Orlando returned to Rome, he vowed to tell only the pope of what he had found. But when he discovered he couldn't trust even the highest authority with his secret he told the Inquisition he had burnt his chronicles. But he hadn't. He had placed them for safekeeping in a box with his personal effects, and before he was killed he told his accomplice where this box could be found. In it, a notebook gave detailed directions to the garden and outlined the natural hazards that protected it.'

'A separate notebook?'

'A separate notebook, written in his own tongue.' Her unblinking eyes didn't leave his. 'He also gave the accomplice a translation of the last section of what you call the Voynich.'

'What was in it?'

'An account of something even more mysterious than the garden. Something Father Orlando called the source and claimed was the power behind the garden.'

Ross sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. 'How can you possibly know this?'

'Because I am the Keeper,' she said, as though her statement needed no explanation.

'The Keeper?'

'The Keeper of the Garden. My duty is to watch over Father Orlando's discovery until someone dedicated, intelligent and wise enough to understand what to do with it deciphers the main part of his manuscript. When this happens I am to seek out the scholar responsible, confirm that they are worthy, then deliver the book to them and pass on my burden. Father Orlando prophesied that this would come to pass when the garden was under its greatest threat – and it's never been under more threat than it is now.'

Her voice grew more impassioned. 'Every year mankind gets closer to abusing the garden and its source. Each month on the news I see that loggers, farmers, roads and oil companies are encroaching on what was once remote, virgin jungle. I despaired of the document's ever being deciphered until I read about your wife's translation on the Internet, researched her background and discovered her love of conservation. I knew she was the one.' Sister Chantal reached into her case and pulled out a vacuum-sealed plastic bag. As she did so a leather pouch fell on to the floor. It was dusted with fragments of crushed rock. Their metallic iridescence reminded Ross of the Schreibersite rock sample he had given Lauren on his return from Uzbekistan, but their crystalline translucency was different – unique. He studied the fragments but couldn't identify which rock they came from – and he knew most rocks.