Adam Palmer - The Boudicca Parchments

“They went to Judea” said Ted, disappointed.

They were now back in Monsignor Dubois’s private reception room, drinking tea, served by a young priest. Sarit was with them and Ted was filling her in on the details.

“After that, we know what happened to Bar Giora — assuming it’s the same one that Daniel was telling us about. But we don’t know what happened to Lanosea. So that’s as far as we can go.”

“Not necessarily,” said Sarit, with a gleam in her eyes.

She found herself, suddenly, the centre of attention. But it was Daniel who spoke for them all.

“What do you mean?”

“While you were in there, I was surfing the net and doing some searches with similar keywords. You’re not going to believe it, but it turns out there’s a parchment written in Hebrew script but in an unknown language and you’ll never guess where it was found!”

“Where?”

“Jerusalem… under the Temple Mount…”

The young priest’s ears pricked up when he heard this.

“We can eat the schnitzels as long as we leave the chips,” said one of the twins to the other.

The man had brought them a tray with mini chicken schnitzels and chips and several packets of ketchup, just as they had requested, as well as two plastic bottles of water.

“But I thought we need the oil.”

“Yes but the chips have more oil than the schnitzels. And anyway, I’m hungry.”

“Okay then I’ll eat mine too.”

They ate the schnitzels quickly and then set to work.

“I’ll do the floor,” said May, tipping out the chips onto the floor and squidging them around. Meanwhile Shir was tearing off the corners of the packets of ketchup. When they had finished Shir took up her position while May set up the skateboard and covered it with a blanket.

Then they looked at each other nervously.

“Ready?” asked May

“Ready” said Shir, closing her eyes.

May splashed some water from one of the bottles onto her face. Then she ran to the door and started banging frantically.

“Help! Help!”

She banged again.

“Help! Please help!”

They heard footsteps approaching the door.

“Stop that!” said a voice from the other side of the door. “No one can hear you!”

“ Please help! It’s Shir… she’s hurt.”

“What do you mean hurt?”

He sounded nervous.

“We were playing… and she fell and hit her head. I think she’s dead.”

They heard the key being turned in the lock and Shir — who had opened her eyes out of curiosity — closed them quickly before he entered.

The door flew open and the man with beard looked into the room and saw Shir lying on the floor, her head covered in blood. May was standing looking at her. But from the profile view of her face, he could see that she was crying.

Realizing that he had to check he strode briskly into the room, stepping on the raised blanket on the floor without really thinking about it. But as he took his next step he noticed something happening to his balance. He didn’t know that under the blanket was the skateboard or that under that the floor had been covered in oil and grease and squidgy chips. All he knew that his foot and leg were flying backward and his body was flying forward.

Hearing the noise, Shir opened her eyes and saw him about to fall on top of her. She quickly drew her knees up, curled up in a ball and rolled away just as the bearded man landed on the floor with a sickening thud and a blood-curdling cry of pain.

“Quick Shir!” said May, running out the door and holding the handle, Shir ran to the door in three steps and straight out. May closed the door behind her and locked it with the key that the man had left in the lock, while Shir wiped the ketchup off her face with her sleeve. Then they ran to the door and tried to open it, but it was locked. And they could hear the man shouting angrily from inside the room at the end of the corridor.

The world is going to hell in a hand basket and has been ever since the Second Vatican Council.

Of this the young priest had no doubt. The New World Order — orchestrated by the Jews — was being ushered into what had once been the bastion of God’s Holy Truth. And it was all being done in the name of expediency by those who cared nought for Truth and all for Power.

The Pope — Christ’s vicar on Earth! — had quoted the Talmud… that vile treatise that contained the most evil blasphemies against our Lord and our Lady. And he had done so more than once: both in France and in the United States, when visiting synagogues in those countries.

It was bad enough that the Church had cowered before the Russians when it fiddled the results of the Papal election of 1958 when the conservative, anti-communist Cardinal Giuseppe Siri was elected and then forced to resign, before his name could even be released, by Russian threats to his family and a thinly veiled nuclear threat against the Vatican itself. They had even gone so far as to release white smoke from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel to announce his election and he had already selected the papal name of Gregory XVII. Instead under Soviet threats and pressure from liberal French cardinals, he stepped aside. Two days later the more liberal Cardinal Angelo Roncalli was elected, taking the papal name of John XXIII.

And since then it had been capitulation after capitulation. Absolving the Jews of deicide for the Blood of Christ, Vatican II, Pope Paul VI kissing a copy of the Koran and now the Church was kowtowing to Zionism, with Pope Benedict XVI quoting from that blasphemous Jewish text.

What next? Embrace a Buddhist? Wicca? Satanism?

And now, these Jewish interlopers were in the sacred corridors of the Vatican, translating documents found in Rome and claiming them as their own… using them to justify their actions of the past and being greeted as honoured guests. And it seemed that they had found clues to other similar documents in Jerusalem — documents dating from the time of Christ or shortly thereafter.

He was glad that he had been contacted by HaTzadik and asked to keep an eye on the visitors from England. At least there was one Jew who, despite his lack of acceptance of Christ, at least showed the humility to respect the Church and her teachings. The priest prayed that God would open the heart of HaTzadik and his followers to the acceptance and love of Christ.

In the meantime, the priest would serve God by calling his allies and warning them of the plans of these vile people.

“It’s locked!” one of the twins screamed.

“But where’s the key?” shouted the other.

“It ought to be in the lock. It’s dangerous not having a key in the lock! What if there’s a fire and you need to get out quickly?”

“We do need to get out quickly!”

They could hear the nasty man banging on the door of the room at the end of the corridor and shouting at them, saying God was going to punish them for breaking their promise.

“Where is it?”

“It must be somewhere!”

They were panicking now.

“There!”

She was pointing at the wall. The other looked round and up.

“Where?”

“On the hook.”

She tried to reach it, but it was too high. The other one tried, but she couldn’t reach it either. They could hear banging on the door of the room where they had locked the man. And then the handle started rattling.

He was trying to get out. He was going to get out! Any minute now, he’d break the door down!

One of them tried to jump and grab the bunch of keys. She couldn’t reach it. The second tried… same result. The first one tried again, this time managing to get her fingers too it, but not to pull it off the wall. The second one tried and she too made contact, but failed to retrieve the keys. Finally, the first one tried, jumping with all her might and timing her grab perfectly.