The Boudicca Parchments (27 page)

Daniel remembered something else.

“But wasn’t there also some story that Nero himself blamed the early Christians?”

“More than a story. He had Christians arrested and tortured and when they gave in to the torture and confessed, their coerced statements were used as a pretext to arrest others. However, the modern view is that the fire was
probably
accidental.”

“But now this document would seem to contradict that.”

“If it’s true.”

Daniel was surprised by this response from Dubois.

“You think it’s a
forgery?
”

“Oh no, I’m sure the document is authentic. But that doesn’t rule out the possibility that it contains a propaganda element. Taking credit for an accident that has befallen ones enemies is as old as human conflict itself.”

They noticed that Ted had been silent for a while. Daniel looked at him and saw the almost catatonic look on the Cambridge professor’s face.

“What is it?”

“I’ve been thinking about those words on the map. She shall be aroused.”

“What about them?”

“Well first of all, although there was an arrow pointing to Rome, I assumed that the words referred either to Boudicca or to her daughter… referring to whatever she did in Rome. But from the lack of a neuter pronoun and the use of she, in this context, to refer to Rome. I’m wondering if that too was a reference to Rome.”

“You mean it was saying that
Rome
shall be aroused.”

“No Daniel, that’s
not
what I’m saying. I’m saying that aroused is only
one
way of translating the word. It could also be rendered as…
ignited
.”

Daniel latched on to this.

“And the map was found in England. So, the implication would be that they
intended
to start a fire or fires in Rome!”

Dubois pursed his lips and then nodded approvingly.

“You have a point there. Shall we continue?”

Daniel scrolled up and started to transliterate again.

Ted resumed this transcription and hesitant translation.

“ ‘After the fire… there was much… anger towards… those who… kept faith with the one true God… and we were… hunted and killed… where they found us.’ Next bit please Daniel.”

Daniel transliterated the next sentence. Ted translated.

“ ‘And Simon… begged or urged or beseeched me to come with him to his homeland and I did obey.’ ”

At this point, Ted looked at Daniel expectantly.

“What’s next?”

Daniel looked blank.

“That’s it.”

“What do you mean?”

“That’s where the manuscript ends.”

“But why? I mean why not continue after that?”

“Well whatever continuation there was,” said Daniel, “presumably took place in Judea. I mean we know that if this is
the
Simon Bar Giora, he fought against the Romans in Judea between 66 and 70.”

“Yes, but if she went with him, then why did she leave this manuscript here?”

“There could be any number of reasons,” said Dubois. “It they were planning to escape from Rome, then they would have been mindful of being captured and they would not have wanted to be caught in possession of such an incriminating manuscript. Also, it is possible that some of their faction decided to stay behind and they left the manuscript with them to continue recording their activities.”

“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.

Chapter 61

“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.

Chapter 62

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.

Chapter 63

“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.

This time she succeeded, but dropped the key on the floor, unable to support its weight in her fingers. The other scooped it up off the floor.

“Quick we’ve got to find the right key!”

Several of the keys were obviously the wrong size or shape and wouldn’t even fit the lock. Eventually they found one that fit. But it didn’t turn. They tried another, with similar lack of success.

By now the banging and rattling and shouting was becoming so loud that the girls were terrified. They were sure he was going to get out and if he did they didn’t know
what
he would do, he sounded so angry. Finally the third key went into the lock and turned. They managed to get the door open just as they heard something break in the other room.

Not waiting to discover if that meant that the man had got out, they raced out of the flat, into the corridor and down the stairs. From there they raced into the street, turned one way – without even caring which way it was – and started running down the pavement.

“Stop those girls!” A man’s booming voice called out behind them. They looked back to see the man running after them. Several people looked at them but no one stopped them. Then a man blocked their path and they were filled with terror.

In desperation, the one who was in front darted out into the road. A car screeched to a halt and the driver leaned to shout at them for being so stupid. Ignoring him, the girl waved her arms in the air as if waving at some one in the distance. She turned to her twin who was still on the pavement and called out: “It’s a police man!” Then she turned back the way she had been facing and shouted “over here!”

By the time she looked back to her twin, she saw that the man who had been chasing them had turned round and was now running in the opposite direction.

Chapter 64

“Is there not
one
of you capable of performing a simple task without getting it wrong? You are
shamed
in the sight of
Hashem
if you cannot even do
one
thing write when the survival of the
true Jewish people
is at stake!”

Once again HaTzadik had been let down by those whom he trusted. And once again he was furious.

“It wasn’t my fault. They were cunning little vixens and they tricked me!”

This did nothing to assuage HaTzadik’s anger.

“Tricked you!
Tricked you!
They were
eight-year-old girls!
How could they have tricked you?”

“They
lied
to us! They promised that they would not try to escape… and then they set a trap for me.”

The man’s tone was pleading. It was not that he feared HaTzadik. He feared only the wrath of God. But he was ashamed. And he wanted to hide his guilt. But he couldn’t blame the others. He was in charge… and he was alone with them at the time.