The Armageddon Conspiracy (42 page)

‘
That’s right –
our
mural.
Julius II was a
Grand Master of the Illuminati.’

So, she was right.
Lucy almost conjured
a smile.
‘What about the late Pope?’

‘
Julius IV was a fool:
a good Catholic to the end.
He refused to believe that any of his
predecessors could be a heretic.
He’d heard all the rumours
regarding Julius II and decided the only way to scotch them was to
give himself the same name.’

‘
And
Raphael?’

‘
He was paid well to
create the mural according to a very specific brief.
He didn’t
suspect anything, although he couldn’t understand why he was told
to leave one panel blank.’

Lucy looked up.
‘The panel that looks
like…’

‘
Well, it obviously
wasn’t painted by Raphael.’

‘
Then who?
I certainly
didn’t do it.’

‘
But you did, Lucy,
you
did
.’

52

L
ucy couldn’t
take it in.
Morson was insistent that she had painted the final
part of Raphael’s mural and said he could prove it.
He made her sit
at a small table with a paper and pen.

‘
Have you ever heard of
automatic writing?’
he asked.

‘
Psychiatrists use it.
It’s a technique to release the contents of a person’s unconscious
mind.’

‘
Exactly
, and that’s what we’re going
to do now.
I want you to close your eyes and concentrate on the
mural.
I want you to think of each panel in turn, starting from the
top left and working your way round clockwise.’

‘
And then
what?’

‘
For each panel, write
down anything that comes into your head.’

‘
But it will be
gibberish.’

‘
We’ll soon see.
Let’s
get started’

Lucy shut her eyes and thought of the
mural.
It was incredibly vivid, almost as if it were hardwired into
her brain.
A much crazier idea occurred to her: it was in her mind
from the moment she was born.
How was that possible?

Each of the panels was
so clear it was almost alive.
Words were swirling around each
panel.
Not sixteenth century Italian or Latin words.
Not English or
Spanish, but French:
old
French
.
She began moving her hand,
scribbling.
The words were pouring out of her at a tremendous speed
– words she’d known all her life, yet that meant nothing to
her.

In under a minute, she was finished.
She slammed down the pen and opened her eyes.
She had no idea what
she’d written.
In front of her was a neat list of comments in old
French.
When she handed Morson the paper, she expected him to be
disappointed.

‘
That’s not my
handwriting,’ she pointed out.
‘And I don’t know modern French let
alone old French.
I know I wrote it, but…I can’t have.’

‘
Yet you did.
Even
though I was expecting it, I can scarcely believe it.
It’s word
perfect.’

‘
Surely what I wrote is
gibberish.’

‘
Lucy, didn’t Sinclair
tell you about the attempts of the papacy to understand Raphael’s
mural?’

‘
He said they consulted
several people, including Nostradamus.’

Morson smiled.
He reached into his
breast pocket, and brought out two folded pieces of paper.
Placing
them on the table, he smoothed them out, then stepped back.

Lucy studied the first
piece of paper.
‘But this is what I wrote.
I mean it’s
identical
.’

‘
I’ve just given you
the notes on Raphael’s mural that Nostradamus presented to the
Vatican.
He was only seventeen at the time, but his unique talents
were already apparent, bringing him to the attention of all the
great courts of Europe.
The other page is the translation we made
into English.’

Incredulous, Lucy picked up the sheet
and read the translated list:

1.
The seed of destruction.
Light from
dark.
The creeping evil.
Grand illusion.
The Satan particle.

2.
Rebellion or revolution?
Eternal war
or assassination.
Death the only escape.
Only one.

3.
They are liberated.
They are
enslaved.
They have peace.
They have war.
Heaven and Hell.

4.
Temptation.
Resistance.
The road to
paradise.
The hardest road of all.
The sacred stone of heaven made.
The tree has no bark, no branches, and no fruit.
Look to the Stone
of Destiny.

5.
Son of freedom.
Take possession of
their most special weapon.
The original.
The progenitor of all
weapons.
Strike the first blow.

6.
Knowledge redeems.
Infamy’s stain is
the Redeemer’s sacred mark.
By this sign shall you know your friend
from your enemy.

7.
In all his glory.
Name him and he
must answer the summons.
The immutable law.
Deliverance is
possible.

8.
The wise man.
The holy man.
The
fool.
The snare.
The killing house.

9.
He who is greater comes after.
The
saviour.
The prophet.

10.
Betrayal.
Assassination.
The
conspiracy.

11.
The double death.
The death of
hope.
The promise of deliverance.

12.
Which the betrayed and which the
betrayer?
The silver calculation.

13.
They killed God.
They collected his
blood.
They showed the way.

14.
The tomb.
The descent into a deeper
hell.
The defeat of death.
Life everlasting promised.
The threat of
return.

15.
The mount of salvation.
The mount
of damnation.
The treasure of heaven.
The holy stone.

16.
My face.
The Redeemer’s face.
The
face of Abaddon.
A moment will decide all.
In the blue.
Decision
Point.
Salvation.
Damnation.
Choose.
Destroyer or Messiah.

17.
Arthur’s conception.
Only the
chosen one can do what no other can.
The suffering place.
The death
plunge.
Death of one, or death of all.

18.
Beware the carrion birds.
Hope
vanquished.
Killed by lance or sword?
Which lance?
True or false?
Mordred’s bane.

19.
Bring me his head on a plate.
The
wrath of God.
The hard path to paradise.
You must go under the
earth to find the truth.
Beneath the water that freezes.

20.
Rebuilt.
A second chance.
Correct
the eternal wrong.
Your soul.
The false chalice.

21.
The Question.
For eternity.
Your
soul.

22.
In all guises.
The message spreads.
Choose.

23.
The Cainite Destiny.

24.
Look in the mirror.
Salvation or
Damnation.
The Last Judgment.

****

A
t first, the
cryptic comments were nonsensical to Lucy, almost random, but the
more she looked at them, the more they made some sort of mad
sense.

‘
You’re beginning to
believe now, aren’t you?’
Morson stood over her.
‘I ought to tell
you another thing.
On 30 April 1520, a day after Raphael’s funeral,
it was Nostradamus who painted the final panel of the
mural.’

53

L
ucy stared at
Morson, trying to absorb what he’d said.
If he was right, there was
only one conclusion.

‘
Reincarnation is a
reality,’ Morson said.
‘We’ve all been reborn many times, and
unless we achieve Gnosis, we’ll keep on being reborn.
Until 30
April, that is.’

‘
You can’t seriously be
suggesting I’m Nostradamus.’

‘
Is it really so
difficult to accept?’

Difficult?
– it
was
impossible
.
Lucy didn’t know what to say.
Morson started explaining it to her
again, but his words washed over her.

‘
The reason you know
what Nostradamus wrote is that they’re your own words: those you
wrote when you lived as Nostradamus.
In your convent, you simply
repainted the same picture you painted five hundred years earlier.
The mental problems you’ve been having weren’t caused by your
parents’ deaths.
Perhaps those were the trigger, but the real cause
was that your past life as Nostradamus was coming back to you,
forcing its way into your consciousness.
It would have seemed like
voices in your head; another personality taking shape within
you.’

‘
Reincarnation,’ Lucy
mumbled.
‘There’s no such thing.’

‘
No?
Hundreds of
millions of Hindus believe in it.
The ancient Greeks did too.
The
Cathars believed in it.
Every Gnostic sect did.
It’s the oldest
rule of all – any soul that doesn’t achieve Gnosis will come back,
and keep coming back.

‘
What you have to
understand, Lucy, is that we each have a soul-line as well as a
bloodline.
Our bloodline is the list of physical ancestors
genetically related to us.
The soul-line has nothing to do with
genetics.
Each time our body dies, our soul must find a new host.
Most of us forget our previous soul incarnations, for the sake of
our sanity.
Only the highly sensitive, or those in deep trauma,
gain access to their soul pasts.
That’s what’s been happening to
you for these last months.
Nostradamus is the most powerful of your
previous soul incarnations.
All of his life experiences have been
flooding into your subconscious, and finally your conscious mind.
There was no multiple personality syndrome, no Dissociative
Identity Disorder.
All of your symptoms related to your soul’s
memories of its time as Nostradamus.’

‘
I can’t accept
that.’

‘
Many powerful people
have had no problem with this.
In fact, they rejoiced in it.
General Patton was certain he was Hannibal in a past life.
It
provided an instant explanation for why he was such a brilliant
general.
Forget West Point, it was his soul-line that made Patton a
military genius.