The Expected One (4 page)

Peter tossed restlessly in his bed, unable to sleep. The conversation with Maureen had disturbed him more than he let on to her. He was concerned about her, both as her closest living relative and as her spiritual counselor. He had known her dreams would come back with a vengeance, and had been biding his time, anticipating the day.

When Maureen first returned from the Holy Land, she had been disturbed by dreams of the regal, suffering woman in the red cloak, the woman she had seen in Jerusalem. Her dreams were always the same: she was immersed in the mob on the Via Dolorosa. Occasionally, a dream might contain minor variations or a stray additional detail, but they always featured the intense sense of desperation. It was this vivid intensity that disturbed Peter, the authenticity in Maureen’s descriptions. It was intangible, something that was triggered by the Holy Land itself, a feeling Peter had first encountered himself while studying in Jerusalem. It was a sense of getting very close to the ancient — and the divine.

After her return from the Holy Land, Maureen spent many long-distance telephone hours speaking with Peter, who at the time was teaching in Ireland. His confident and independent cousin was beginning to question her own sanity, and the intensity and frequency of the dreams was beginning to trouble Peter. He applied for a transfer to Loyola, knowing it would be granted immediately, and boarded a plane for Los Angeles to be closer to his cousin.

Four years later, he wrestled with his thoughts and with his conscience, unsure of the best way to help Maureen now. He wanted to take her to see some of his superiors in the Church, but he knew she would never consent to that. Peter was the last link she allowed herself to her once-Catholic background. She trusted him only because he was family — and because he was the only person in her life who had never let her down.

Peter sat up, giving in to the understanding that sleep would elude him this night — and he was trying not to think about the pack of Marlboro’s in the drawer of the nightstand. He had tried to stave off this particular bad habit — indeed, it was one of the reasons he chose to live alone in an apartment and not in Jesuit housing. But the stress was too much for him, and he yielded to this spot of sin. Lighting a cigarette, he exhaled deeply and contemplated the issues facing Maureen.

There had always been something special about his petite, feisty American cousin. When she had first arrived in Ireland with her mother she was a scared and lonely seven-year-old with a bayou drawl. Eight years her senior, Peter took Maureen under his wing, introducing her to the local children in the village — and providing black eyes for anyone who dared make fun of the newcomer with the funny accent.

But it didn’t take long for Maureen to assimilate into her new environment. She healed rapidly from the traumas of her past in Louisiana as the mists of Ireland enveloped her in welcome. She found refuge in the countryside. Peter and his sisters took her on long walks, showing off the beauty of the river and warning her of the pitfalls in the bogs. They all spent long summer days picking the blackberries that grew wild on the family farm and playing soccer until the sun went down. In time, the local kids accepted her as she became more comfortable with her surroundings and allowed her true personality to emerge.

Peter had often wondered about the definition of the word “charisma” as it was used in the supernatural context of the early church:
charism, a divinely bestowed gift or power.
Perhaps it applied to Maureen more literally and profoundly than any of them had ever dreamed. He kept a journal of his discussions with her, had done so since those first long-distance phone calls, where he logged his own insights on the meaning of the dreams. And he prayed daily for guidance — if Maureen had been chosen by God to perform some task related to the time of the passion, which he was increasingly certain she was witnessing in her dreams, he would indeed require maximum guidance from his Creator. And his Church.

Château des Pommes Bleues
The Languedoc region of France
October 2004

“ ‘M
ARIE DE
N
EGRE
shall choose when the time is come for The Expected One. She who is born of the paschal lamb when the day and night are equal, she who is a child of the resurrection. She who carries the Sangre-el will be granted the key upon viewing the Black Day of the Skull. She will become the new Shepherdess and show us The Way.’ ”

Lord Bérenger Sinclair paced the polished floors of his library. Flames from an enormous stone fireplace cast golden light upon an ancestral collection of priceless books and manuscripts. A tattered banner hung in a protective glass case that stretched across the full length of the enormous hearth. Once white, the yellowed fabric was emblazoned with faded gold fleurs-de-lis. The conjoined name
Jhesus-Maria
was embroidered on the buckram, but was visible only to the rare few who had the opportunity to get close to this particular relic.

Sinclair recited the prophecy aloud and by rote, his slight Scottish accent rolling the “r”s in the sentence. Berenger knew the words of the foretelling by heart; he had learned them while sitting on his grandfather’s knee as a little boy. He didn’t comprehend the meaning of those lines back then. It was merely a memorization game he played with his grandfather when he spent the summers here on the family’s vast French estate.

He paused in his pacing to stand before an elaborate lineage, a family tree spanning the centuries that was painted floor to ceiling on the wide far wall. It was a massive mural that displayed the history of Bérenger’s flamboyant ancestors.

This branch of the Sinclair family was one of the oldest in Europe. Originally called Saint Clair, they had been driven from the Continent to take refuge in Scotland in the thirteenth century, when the surname was subsequently anglicized to its current form. Bérenger’s ancestors were some of the most illustrious in British history, including James the First of England and that king’s infamous mother, Mary, Queen of Scots.

The influential and savvy Sinclair family managed to survive civil wars and political upheaval within Scotland, playing both sides of the crown through the country’s tumultuous history. A captain of industry in the twentieth century, Bérenger’s grandfather had established one of the greatest fortunes in Europe with the founding of a North Sea oil corporation. A billionaire several times over and a British peer with a seat in the House of Lords, Alistair Sinclair had everything any man could ask for. But he remained restless and unsatisfied, a seeker after something his fortune could not buy.

Grandfather Alistair became obsessed with France, buying an enormous château outside the village of Arques in the rugged and mysterious southwestern region known as the Languedoc. He called his new home Château des Pommes Bleues — House of the Blue Apples — for reasons known only to an initiated few.

The Languedoc was a mountainous land filled with mysticism. Local legends of buried treasure and mysterious knights dated back hundreds, even thousands, of years. Alistair Sinclair had become increasingly fixated on the Languedoc folklore, buying as much land in the region as he could acquire and searching with increasing urgency for treasure he believed was buried in the region. The cache he sought had little to do with gold or riches, items Alistair already possessed in overabundance. It was something far more valuable to him, to his family, and to the world. He spent less and less time in Scotland as he grew older, happy only when he was here in the wild, red mountains of the Languedoc. Alistair insisted that his grandson accompany him during the summers, and he ultimately instilled his passion for the mythic region — indeed, his obsession — in the young Bérenger.

Now in his forties, Bérenger Sinclair paused once more in his circuit around the great library, this time before a painting of his grandfather. Seeing the sharp, angular features, the curling dark hair, and intense eyes was like looking into a mirror.

“You look so much like him, Monsieur. You are more like him every day, in many ways.”

Sinclair turned to answer his hulking manservant, Roland. For such an enormous man, he had uncommon stealth and often seemed to appear out of the air.

“Is that a good thing?” Bérenger asked wryly.

“Of course. Monsieur Alistair was a fine man, much loved by the people of the villages. And by my father, and myself.”

Sinclair nodded with a small smile. Roland would say so, of course. The French giant was a son of the Languedoc. His own father was from a local family with deep roots in its legendary soil and had been Alistair’s majordomo at the château. Roland was raised on the château grounds and understood the Sinclair family and their eccentric obsessions. When his father passed away suddenly, Roland stepped into his shoes as the caretaker of Château des Pommes Bleues. He was one of the very few people on earth whom Bérenger Sinclair trusted.

“If you do not mind me saying so, we were working across the hall and heard you — myself and Jean-Claude. We heard you speak the words of the prophecy.” He looked at Sinclair quizzically. “Is something wrong?”

Sinclair crossed the room to where an enormous mahogany desk dominated the far wall. “No, Roland. Nothing is wrong. In fact, I think things may finally be very, very right.”

He picked up a hardcover book that rested on the desk, showing the cover to his servant. It was a modern, nonfiction book cover, with a title that announced:
HerStory.
A subtitle read:
A Defense of History’s Most Hated Heroines.

Roland looked at the book, puzzled. “I don’t understand.”

“No, no. Turn it over. Look at this. Look at
her.
”

Roland turned the book over to reveal a back-cover photo of the author with the caption
Author Maureen Paschal.

The author was an attractive, red-haired woman in her thirties. She was posed for the photograph with her hands resting on the chair in front of her. Sinclair ran his hand over the cover, stopping to point out the author’s hands. Small, but visible on the right ring finger, was the ancient copper ring from Jerusalem, with its planetary pattern.

Roland looked up from the book with a start. “Sacre bleu.”

“Indeed,” Sinclair replied. “Or perhaps, more accurately, Sacre rouge.”

Both men were interrupted by a presence in the doorway. Jean-Claude de la Motte, an elite and trusted member of the Pommes Bleues inner sanctum, looked at his comrades questioningly. “What has happened?”

Sinclair gestured for Jean-Claude to enter. “Nothing yet. But see what you think of this.”

Roland handed the book to Jean-Claude and pointed out the ring on the author’s hand in the back-cover photograph.

Jean-Claude removed reading glasses from his pocket and scrutinized the photo for a moment before asking in a near whisper, “
L’attendue
? The Expected One?”

Sinclair chuckled. “Yes, my friends. After all these years I think we may have finally found our Shepherdess.”

…I have known Peter since my earliest memories, as his father and mine were friends, and as he was very close to my brother. The temple at Capernaeum was near to the home of Simon-Peter’s father and it was a place we visited often as children. I remember playing a game there, along the shore. I was far younger than the boys and I often played alone, but the sound of their laughter as they wrestled with each other is something I can still remember.

Peter was always the more serious of the boys, his brother Andrew having a lighter heart. And yet there was humor in both of them when they were young. Peter and Andrew lost that lightness entirely after Easa was gone, and they had little patience for those of us who clung to it for survival.

Peter was much like my own brother in that he took his family responsibilities very seriously, and as he grew into manhood, he transferred that sense of responsibility to the teachings of The Way. He had a strength and singleness of purpose that was unmatched by any but the teachers themselves — this is why he was trusted so highly. Yet as much as Easa taught him, Peter struggled against his own nature more ferociously than most people would ever know. I believe that he gave up more than the others to follow The Way as it was taught — it required more of himself, more internal change. Peter will be misunderstood and there are those who bear him ill. But I do not.

I loved Peter and trusted him. Even with my oldest son.

T
HE
A
RQUES
G
OSPEL OF
M
ARY
M
AGDALENE,
T
HE
B
OOK OF
D
ISCIPLES

M
cLean, Virginia, is an eclectic place, an odd mixture of politics and suburbia. Off the Beltway, it’s a short drive past CIA headquarters to Tysons Corner, one of the largest and most prestigious shopping centers in America. McLean is not known as a suburban center for spirituality. At least, not to most people.

Maureen Paschal was not concerned in the least with sacred matters as she drove her rented Ford Taurus into the long driveway of the McLean Ritz-Carlton. Tomorrow morning’s schedule was packed: up early for a breakfast meeting with the Eastern League of Women Writers, followed by an appearance and book signing at a behemoth retailer in Tysons Corner.

That would give Maureen most of Saturday afternoon to herself. Perfect. She would go exploring, as she always did when she was in a new town. It didn’t matter how small or rural the place was; if Maureen had never been there, it held fascination. She never failed to find the jewel in the crown, the special feature of every place she visited that made it unique in her memory. Tomorrow, she would find McLean’s.

Check-in was a breeze; her publisher had handled all the arrangements, and Maureen had only to sign a form and grab her key. Then it was up the elevator and into her beautifully appointed room, where she indulged her need for order by unpacking immediately and assessing the wrinkle damage to her clothing.

Maureen loved luxury hotels; everyone did, she supposed, but she was like a child when she stayed in one. She thoroughly inspected the amenities, scoped out the contents of the mini-bar, checked for the sumptuous crested robe behind the bathroom door, and smiled at the extension phone next to the toilet.

She vowed she would never be so jaded that she ceased to enjoy these little perks. Perhaps those years of scraping, eating Top Ramen, Pop Tarts, and peanut butter sandwiches while her research devoured what was left of her savings had been good for her, after all. Those early experiences helped her to appreciate the finer things that life was beginning to bestow.

She looked around the spacious room and felt a brief pang of regret — for all of her recent success, there was no one to share her accomplishments with. She was alone, she had always been alone, and perhaps she always would be…

Maureen banished the self-pity as immediately as it came, and turned to the greatest of distractions to take her mind off such troubling thoughts. Some of the most tantalizing shopping in America was waiting right outside her door. Picking up her bag, Maureen double-checked that she had her credit cards and ventured out to celebrate the culture of Tysons Corner.

The Eastern League of Women Writers held their breakfast in a conference hall of the McLean Ritz-Carlton. Maureen wore her public uniform — a conservative designer suit with high heels and a spritz of Chanel No. 5. Arriving in the hall precisely at 9:00
A.M.
, she declined food and requested a pot of Irish breakfast tea. Eating before a question-and-answer session was never a good idea for Maureen. It made her queasy.

Maureen was less nervous than usual this morning as the event’s moderator was an ally, a lovely woman named Jenna Rosenberg with whom she had been in touch for several weeks in preparation for the event. First and foremost, Jenna was a fan of Maureen’s work and was able to quote from it extensively. That alone won Maureen over. In addition, the event was set up in an intimate setting of small tables clustered together so that Maureen didn’t need a microphone.

Jenna began the Q-and-A session herself, with an obvious but important query.

“What inspired you to write this book?”

Maureen put down her teacup and replied.

“I read once that early British historical texts were translated by a sect of monks who didn’t believe that women had souls. They felt that the source of all evil came from women. These monks were the first to alter the legends of King Arthur and what we think of as Camelot. Guinevere became a scheming adulteress rather than a powerful warrior queen. Morgan le Fey became Arthur’s evil sister who deceives him into incest, rather than the spiritual leader of an entire nation, which is what she was in the earliest versions of the legend.

“That understanding shocked me and made me ask the question: had other portrayals of women in history been written from such an extreme bias? Obviously, this perspective extends throughout history. I started thinking of the many women it might have applied to, and my research went from there.”

Jenna allowed the questions to rotate around the tables. After some discussion of feminist literature and issues of equality in the publishing industry, a question came from a young woman wearing a small gold cross over her silk blouse.

“For those of us who were raised in a traditional environment, the chapter on Mary Magdalene was very eye-opening. You present a very different woman than that of the repentant prostitute, the fallen woman. But I’m still not sure I can buy into it.”

Maureen nodded her understanding before launching into her response. “Even the Vatican has conceded that Mary Magdalene wasn’t a prostitute and that we should no longer be teaching that particular lie in Sunday school. It has been more than thirty years since the Vatican formally proclaimed that Mary was
not
the fallen woman of Luke’s gospel, and that Pope Gregory the Great had created that story to further his own purposes in the Dark Ages. But two millennia of public opinion is hard to erase. The Vatican’s admission of error in the 1960s hasn’t really been any more effective than a retraction buried on the last page of a newspaper. So essentially, Mary Magdalene becomes the godmother of misunderstood females, the first woman of major importance to be intentionally and completely altered and maligned by the writers of history. She was a close follower of Christ, arguably an apostle in her own right. And yet she’s been excised almost entirely from the Gospels.”

Jenna interjected, obviously excited about the subject. “But there is so much speculation now about Mary Magdalene, like that she may have had an intimate relationship with Christ.”

The cross-wearing woman flinched, but Jenna continued. “You didn’t address any of those issues in your book, and I was wondering how you felt about those theories.”

“I don’t address them because I don’t believe there is any evidence to back up those claims — a lot of colorful and possibly wishful thinking, but no proof. Theologians agree on this across the board. There is certainly nothing that I, as a self-respecting journalist, could feel comfortable supporting as fact and publishing with my name on it. However, I might go so far as to say that there are authenticated documents that hint at a possibly intimate relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. A gospel discovered in Egypt in 1945 says ‘the companion of the Savior is Mary Magdalene. He loved her more than all the disciples, and used to kiss her often on her mouth.’

“Of course, these gospels have been questioned by Church authorities and may have been the first-century version of the
National Enquirer,
for all we know. I think it’s important to tread carefully here, so I wrote what I was certain of. And I am certain that Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute and that she was an important follower of Jesus. Perhaps she was even the most important, as she is the first person whom the risen Lord chose to bless with His appearance. Beyond that, I am not willing to speculate about her role in His life. It would be irresponsible.”

Maureen answered the question safely, as she usually did. But she had always speculated that perhaps Magdalene’s downfall came because she was too close to the Master, therefore inspiring jealousy in the male disciples who later attempted to discredit her. Saint Peter was openly disdainful of Mary Magdalene and berated her, based on those second-century documents that were discovered in Egypt. And the later writings of Saint Paul appeared to methodically eliminate all reference to the importance of women in Christ’s life.

Maureen had spent a fair amount of research time ripping apart Pauline doctrine as a result. Paul, the persecutor turned apostle, had shaped Christian thought with his observations, despite his philosophical and literal distance from Jesus and the Savior’s own chosen followers and family. He had no firsthand knowledge of Christ’s teachings. Such a misogynistic and politically manipulative “disciple” was hardly going to immortalize Mary Magdalene as Christ’s most devoted servant.

Maureen was determined to avenge Mary, viewing her as the archetype of the reviled woman in history, the mother of the misunderstood. Her story was, in essence if not in form, repeated in the lives of the other women Maureen had chosen to defend in
HerStory.
But it had been essential for Maureen to keep the Magdalene chapters as close to provable academic theory as possible. Any hint of a “new age” or otherwise unsubstantiated hypothesis about Mary’s relationship with Jesus would potentially invalidate the rest of the research and damage her credibility. She was far too careful in her life and work to take such a chance. Despite her instincts, Maureen had rejected all alternative theories on Mary Magdalene, making the choice to hold to the most indisputable facts.

Shortly after she made that decision, the dreams had come in earnest.

Her right hand was cramping ferociously and her face was in immediate danger of cracking from a nonstop smile, but Maureen continued to work. Her bookstore appearance had been scheduled for a two-hour slot, which was to include a twenty-minute break. She was now well into the third hour, with no break taken, and was determined to continue signing until the last customer was satisfied. Maureen would never turn away a potential reader. She would not scorn the book-buying public that had turned her dream into a reality.

She was gratified to see a reasonably large number of men in the crowd today. The subject matter of her book suggested a predominantly female audience, but she hoped that it was written in a way that would appeal to everyone with an open mind and some common sense. Although her primary goal had been to avenge the wrongs endured by powerful women as victims of male historians, her research had revealed that the motivation behind committing history to paper in such a selective fashion was overwhelmingly political and religious. Gender was a secondary factor.

She had explained this during a recent television appearance, citing Marie Antoinette as perhaps the clearest example of that socio-political theory because
the dominant accounts of the French Revolution were written by revolutionaries.
Whereas the beleaguered queen was widely blamed for the excesses of the French monarchy, she really had had nothing to do with the creation of such traditions. Marie Antoinette had, in fact, inherited the practices of the French aristocracy when she came from Austria as the betrothed of the young dauphin, the future Louis XVI. Although she herself was the daughter of the great Maria Theresa, that Austrian empress had not been a practitioner of royal excess and indulgence. If anything, she was remarkably dour and thrifty for a woman of her position, raising her many daughters, including little Antoinette, with a very strict hand. The young dauphine would have been forced as a matter of pure survival to adapt to French custom as quickly as possible.

The palace of Versailles, the great monument to French extravagance, had been built decades before Marie Antoinette was born, yet it became an essential monument to
her
legendary greed. The famous retort to “The peasants are starving — they have no bread to eat” was actually uttered by a royal courtesan, a woman long dead before the young Austrienne had arrived in France. Yet to this day “Let them eat cake” is cited as a stimulus to revolution. With that one quote, the Reign of Terror and all of the bloodshed and violence that followed the fall of the Bastille have been justified.

And the tragically doomed Marie Antoinette never uttered the bloody phrase.

Maureen felt extraordinary sympathy for the ill-fated queen of France. Hated as a foreigner from the day of her arrival, Marie Antoinette was a victim of vicious and pointed racism. It was entirely convenient for the radically ethnocentric French nobility of the eighteenth century to attribute any and all negative political and social circumstances to their Austrian-born queen. Maureen had been stunned by this prevailing attitude during her research visit to France; the English-speaking tour guides at Versailles still spoke of the decapitated monarch with no small degree of venom, ignoring the historical evidence that exonerated Marie Antoinette from many heinous deeds she was said to have perpetrated. And all this despite the fact that the poor woman had been brutally mutilated two hundred years ago.