The History Thief: Ten Days Lost (The Sterling Novels) (67 page)

Michael sat forward with interest. “How can you be sure, Colonel?”

“It was my job as head of the Swiss Guard to know intimately every square meter of the Vatican, including her history. In the middle 1500s, four Cardinals oversaw the actions of a print shop in Rome—they were deputati sopra la stampa.”

“The print police, eh?” asked Michael.

“For lack of better words, yes, but that didn’t last for too long. Sometime in the late 1500s, a papal bull was issued titled
Eam Semper ex Omnibus,
if memory serves me correctly. This dictated the creation of a Pontifical Printing Press. The Vatican wanted to better comply with the Council of Trent and brought control of any Roman publication onto Vatican grounds.”

Michael pulled the vellum closer, but it was Sonia who looked at it with more scrutiny. The words were not written by hand but were typeset.

Sonia’s face was twisted slightly in both confusion and recognition. “Michael, Colonel,” she interrupted, “I think that this isn’t ink. I think it’s blood.”

“Blood?” quizzed Michael.

“More precisely,” Sonia replied, “King Sebastian’s blood.”

Colonel Camini and York spun their heads in her direction; both instantly were curious.

“I’ve seen this before, when I was in medical school and doing my rotations. I took a course in medical forensics that put us in the hospital’s forensics lab. We studied a number of things, including blood stains on various materials and the effects from the elements and time. See the letters on this parchment? They are darker in the middle and, if you look closely, fade dramatically toward their edges. You can see that some of them have flaked slightly.”

Both the colonel and Michael looked more closely at one another and then at the parchment. Sonia was right. “But how can you be certain that this is blood and not some other fluid?” asked the colonel.

“Solubility and density,” answered Sonia. “Ink would soak into the material it was printed on and would hold fast to the fibers. It may fade, but not in this pattern. Blood is not as dense as ink and wouldn’t work as well. That’s why the edges of the letters are much lighter and show signs that the blood didn’t soak all the way into the material. And because blood is much more soluble than ink, any part not completely embedded into the fibers of the parchment will eventually dry, age, and flake.”

“You learned this during your internship?” asked the colonel.

“Yes, but what made me think of it was the realization that the crown and the shroud may have a genetic link. What if the Order wants this parchment because they know about the blood? What if the blood belongs to Sebastian, one of Christ’s descendants? What if you two were sent to find what the Order couldn’t and to help them create that link?”

Colonel Camini rubbed roughly the stubbles on his squared jawline. Michael stared at Sonia with a look of pride.

Instead of answering Sonia’s questions, Michael turned toward the colonel and asked, “Colonel, you recognize this document to be from the Vatican’s printing press, from their specific machine, is that right?”

“I do. It’s from the Vatican’s Gutenberg. To me it was quite obvious, but it wasn’t just the style of type, Michael, that made it clear.”

Michael, York, and Sonia all simultaneously leaned in.

The colonel had a devilish look upon his face that could almost be mistaken for a smile. He stood and held the parchment close to the bulb of the iron chandelier above the table.

Sonia gasped, and Michael smiled. The middle of the parchment appeared more translucent. A watermark appeared, but not just any watermark.

“The papal tiara and crossed keys,” whispered Michael.

“Framed by four concentric circles—the external one is pearled,” the colonel pointed out as he finished the description of the seal of the state of Vatican City.

The colonel sat down and replaced the parchment onto the table’s top. He removed his cup of coffee and took one long swallow that seemed to bring him a quiet enjoyment as it drizzled down his throat. Slowly, he set the cup back to its place on the saucer and looked across the table, not to Michael, but to Sonia. His voice was baritone, smooth even, when he suggested, “You think there’s more, too, don’t you?”

Sonia was almost embarrassed and felt out of place; she was afraid to answer and swallowed dryly. Finding her courage, she replied, “Even if there’s a genetic link between all three, it wouldn’t mean much without a body.”

The colonel tapped his thick index finger a few times heavily on the top of the wooden table. It was a gesture as if he were exclaiming agreement.

Michael’s eyes were wide when he said, “Let me guess—we’re off to your old stomping grounds, Colonel.”

Without taking his eyes off of Sonia, the colonel replied, “All matters seem to point that way, wouldn’t you agree? Besides, it’s been some time since I’ve visited the Vatican.” He then added, “I’d keep my eyes on this one, Michael; she’d make a good addition to your team.”

This time it was Sonia’s turn to blush.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO

REVELATION 14:9
CASTLE D’CAMINI

S
onia was the first to ask the question. “The Vatican? What’s there that can help us?”

The colonel’s voice boomed almost like a preacher’s when he recited, “The third angel followed them and said in a loud voice: if anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on the forehead…”

Michael finished the scripture, “…he, too, will drink of the wine of God’s fury. Revelation 14:9.”

“That’s what that means?” asked York as he pointed to the words
Revelation 14:9
written across the top of the parchment.

“It’s a passage from the Bible, kid.”

Sonia interrupted, “But what does it mean?”

“I’m not sure,” replied Michael to his wife. “Colonel, what does the rest of it say?”

The colonel took the parchment and began to read aloud and from the top, “Revelation 14:9—The line of the day loses ten; the wind no longer blows. A time forgotten.”

“That’s it?! That’s all that it says?” cried out York.

“Yes,” answered the colonel, “that is all. Unfortunately, most codes are designed to be difficult to solve.”

Michel pushed back from the table and stood. His leg was still quite sore and felt a bit stiff. Standing felt good. He rubbed his face as he thought. He was tired, and his body hurt. Putting both hands on his hips he stared almost blankly at the wall. It was filled with paintings—mostly oil. Some were rich landscapes, while others depicted violent acts of history. Some were biblical.

On he stared.

No one spoke.

York took another sip of his coffee; the bitter taste was growing on him, but he wouldn’t tell the colonel.

Michael’s eyes darted from one painting to the next. His mind was moving fast.

The crown.

The shroud.

The Vatican.

Revelation 14:9.

Sebastian.

The year 1578.

Then he stopped. All thoughts ceased. Michael’s eyes opened wide.

“Colonel,” he shouted, “read it again!”

Obligingly, the colonel read, “Revelation 14:9—The line of the day loses ten; the wind no longer blows. A time forgotten.”

It was obvious. Michael dropped his head and laughed slightly.

“What is it, Michael?” Sonia asked. “What do you know?”

“Time,” retorted Michael as he thrust his hands outward. Turning aboutface, he looked directly into the colonel’s eyes and stated again, “Time. The year 1578. The Gregorian calendar.”

The colonel’s face contorted slightly as his mind searched history. It didn’t take long. “Of course! A time forgotten!” shouted Colonel Camini as he slapped the wooden table heavily with the meat of his thick hand, making Sonia and York both jump. He, too, knew.

The two men stared at one another. The colonel sat erect, and his voice boomed, “How could I have not seen it?”

“Seen what?” questioned York. “You guys want to include us in on your little secret and tell us what a calendar has to do with this?”

“Kid,” began Michael, “in 1578, King Sebastian went missing; his body was never found. He was the master of the Order of Christ.”

“It was also in 1578 that the shroud was given to the Vatican by its owners,” added the colonel.

“You two ain’t sayin’ anything that we haven’t already learned,” interjected York.

Michael was clearly growing a bit frustrated at the impetuous manner of his underling and was ready to snap at him, but one look from his wife told him otherwise. So, instead, he held up his hand in a paternal fashion, asking for patience from the young Green Beret. “The year 1578 was one helluva year for the church; that year, the Vatican made a startling decision, but took four years to bring it into effect. In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII issued a papal bull forcing the Holy Roman Empire, and, thus, the rest of the world, to eventually to remove ten days from the calendar. When October fourth finished, instead of the next day becoming the fifth…”

Sonia leapt to her feet. “It became the fifteenth! Ten days lost, Michael! That’s what the inscription on the medallion means: four into fifteen, ten are lost forever! The ten that are lost refers to the days!”

A time forgotten,
thought Michael.

Michael was finding a new energy. His chest hurt and his leg still burned, but he was on fire with adrenaline; he was in a swirl of thoughts and replied, “That’s what the first line of the parchment alludes to! The line of the day loses ten. The line refers to a real line—to a meridian line.”

The colonel’s voice boomed as he read the second sentence once more, “The wind no longer blows. That has to refer to the anemoscope, Michael.”

The two men smiled at one another.

“And, a time forgotten?” asked Sonia.

Michael offered, “My hunch is that from the fourth to the fifteenth was the time the Vatican had Sebastian in their control, the time between when he was last seen alive…”

“And the time he was killed,” conjectured the colonel.

“Okay, okay,” interrupted York, “I’m getting tired of all these riddles. Would you two please clue us in to just what in the hell you are talkin’ about? What are an anemoscope and a meridian?”

“Kid, in 1578, the Julian calendar was the calendar that marked the passage of the days, as it had done so for the previous sixteen centuries. But it had one slight flaw: it assumed that the time between vernal equinoxes was static, when in fact it was longer by eleven minutes. About every century or so, a bit less than a day would be lost relative to the return of the equinox; the equinox returned sooner. Barely noticeable for the first few hundred years, but over a longer period of time, it became a problem. The church couldn’t have this, since the equinox was tied to the celebration of Easter. Pope Gregory corrected this by issuing a change to the calendar—hence the Gregorian calendar.”

Colonel Camini added, “In order to properly mark, record, and accurately follow the passage of the year, the pope had a tower built alongside the place where the Secret Archives would be located a few years later.”

“When was it built?” asked Sonia.

The colonel slowly turned his head toward Sonia and lowered his eyes as he replied matter-of-factly, “Fifteen-seventy-eight. Like Michael said, it was one
helluva
year for the church.”

“The same year that King Sebastian—the master of the Order of Christ—went missing, and the very same year that the shroud was given to the Vatican,” inserted Michael.

The colonel added, “What most don’t know is that at the death of every master of the Order of Christ, each was covered with the same heavy shroud, by tradition and as an honor. In 1314, the first to be covered by the shroud was Jacques de Molay who was the master of the Order of the Knights Templar. The Knights were destroyed but in name only; they reemerged as the Order of Christ and are simply called today the Order. Along with Geoffroi de Charny, a preceptor for the Knights, both were burned on the Isle des Juifs. The Isle is now part of the Ile de la Cité, the island where Notre Dame stood. It is believed that for safekeeping, the nephew of Charny was given the shroud that had covered Master Molay.”

“The same shroud that was stolen?” questioned York.

“The same,” responded the colonel.

York offered another question: “How did the Vatican get it then?”

“In 1453, a descendent of Charny gave the shroud to the House of Savoy, and in 1578, the shroud was transferred to Turin.”

Michael scratched his chin. “That would imply that, if King Sebastian was the last master of the Order, the Vatican was allowing the final honor to the dead master. They covered his body with the shroud.”

“That would mean something else as well,” added Sonia.

All looked at her.

“The Vatican had something to do with his death,” Sonia concluded.

“She’s right, Colonel,” inserted Michael. “The image on the shroud is of a man who appears to have been tortured. The body shows multiple wounds consistent with such a conclusion. If that image were Sebastian’s, it would mean that the holder of the shroud would have had something to do with his death. Sebastian was last seen in Africa, but the shroud was in Italy, given to the Vatican. He must have been captured and brought to the Vatican.”