The Tenth Saint (20 page)

Though this was not a difficult descent compared to others she had negotiated, she rappelled slowly, mentally cataloguing the darkening landscape. Considering how much had happened in the past weeks, she was cautiously upbeat, hopeful they would find this mysterious library.

When they reached the bottom of the canyon, they found themselves inside a fortress of cliffs. The face they had just descended looked like flat land compared to the sinister pitch of some of the others. Though the terrain was forbidding, especially under the dark cloak of night, Sarah felt safe and strong. She admitted to herself she appreciated Daniel’s company. He was coolheaded and wise to the quirks of the back-country, a friend in an unfriendly place.

The walk along the stream was the easiest part of the journey. Thanks to a schism in the rock, their path was illuminated by a shaft of moonlight.

For almost two hours they walked, until the ledge appeared. A thin shelf jutting from the sheer cliff face, it was barely big enough for one person to stand on.

Sarah knew it was the right place. She recalled Father Giorgis’ description of a pile of rocks stacked like bricks: the entrance to the tunnel leading to the library.

She turned to Daniel. “We’ll have to go up one at a time. I’ll go first.” She took a deep breath and placed her unbandaged hand into one of the holds, then kicked her toe into a crack and pulled herself up.

The climb wasn’t too bad, but she took it slower than she normally would have, the faint light and her injury putting her at a disadvantage. When she reached the shelf, about thirty feet above ground level, she had only one option: to grab the ledge and pull herself up.

Small pieces of rock crumbled down the precipice as she strained to hoist herself up to chest level. She gritted her teeth and pressed on, anchoring herself by holding on to the hairline cracks between the rocks. All that remained was to hurl her lower half up to the narrow lip. That was the easy part. Her legs were so long and flexible she was able to lift one knee, then the other, until she had solid purchase.

Standing on that precarious platform was far scarier than anything they had encountered earlier in the trek. One misstep on the narrow ledge would send her tumbling down the rock face. She stood still for a while, summoning all her confidence. Her thoughts turned to Apostolos and his last words.

“This is for you, my dear friend,” she said softly and carefully removed one of the stones.

Whoever had devised this system was a genius. The stones had been hewn to interlock perfectly yet still looked natural. Sarah could not help but think the people who had built this had also sealed the tenth saint’s tomb; the technique was so similar. With slow, deliberate movements, she removed a handful of the puzzle pieces until she could go no farther. She tried every stone within her reach, but none would budge.

“They won’t move,” she shouted down to Daniel. “I’m stuck.”

“There’s probably a combination,” Daniel offered. “I’ve seen this kind of thing before—in funerary chambers in Egypt.”

“The abbot said nothing about a combination,” Sarah said to herself as she felt around for a clue. She tried to pick out unusual shapes in the rock or hidden levers. There was nothing. She tried pushing on rocks to the north, south, east, and west, making the sign of the cross with her movements. When that didn’t work, she followed a triangle pattern, the symbol of the divine trinity. Again, nothing. “Come on, Sarah, think.”

Her thoughts were interrupted by a momentary flash, a streak of white light in the sky, neither lightning nor a shooting star. It was like nothing she had seen before. At that moment she felt the monk’s ice-cold hand in hers. His presence was tangible, encouraging.

Suddenly, she remembered. When they had tried to evade the intruder in the labyrinth, Apostolos had pushed on the stones in a distinct pattern. She didn’t realize then but now knew it was the five-pointed star. She mimicked the movements exactly.

The stone gate parted.

“Atta girl,” Daniel shouted.

“What are you waiting for? Come on up.”

The subterranean tunnel leading to the library was long and unwelcoming. Sarah and Daniel followed a series of stone steps—about a hundred of them, or so it felt—down to a tubelike chamber they could traverse only single file. It reminded Sarah of a prison escape route, which was probably not far from the truth. In any case, it looked like no one had been through in the recent past. Cobwebs hung from the low ceilings, and the moist ground crawled with rats.

Moving slowly, Daniel and Sarah silently made their way through the endless passage. Oxygen was at a premium in the catacomb, and they knew better than to waste what little they had. Many times Sarah wanted to stop, but her commitment to Apostolos and her own hunger for what she might find inside the vault kept her moving forward.

Eventually they came to a fork on the path. They stopped to look around and weigh the options.

Daniel took a coin out of his pocket. “Shall we toss for it?”

“I think we should follow this route.” She pointed to the right. “In the portion of the labyrinth leading to the Sheba Stone, we seemed to always be following a series of right turns. It may be random, but my hunch is that this was by design.”

“Jesus being the right hand of God?”

“Something like that.”

Daniel didn’t question Sarah but let her lead the way.

The tunnel grew a bit more spacious, allowing them to quicken their step. It wasn’t long before they came to an arched door whose wood planks were held together by rusty iron nails. Sarah parted the cobwebs and turned the handle. “Locked.” She tried Apostolos’ key, but it was obviously designed for a smaller keyhole.

Daniel tried his own luck. He alternately pulled and pushed at the door, hoping to dislodge any sediment keeping it shuttered. He looked inside the thumb-sized keyhole. “I can actually make out some stone aisles. It looks like a mausoleum in there.”

“Must be the place,” Sarah said, the excitement adding an octave to her voice.

“Yup. Now if we could only find the keys.”

They scoured every corner of the entrance vestibule for potential hiding places.

When they’d run out of options, she shook her head. “The monks wouldn’t make it so easy. They probably carry the keys only on their person.”

Daniel winked. “Lucky for you, I am an expert lock picker. It’s one of my many hidden talents.”

“How did you learn that?” She lifted her hands. “Never mind. I don’t think I want to know.”

“It comes with the territory. The trouble is, you can ruin the lock in the process. Very delicate business.” He reached inside his pack for an L-shaped metal gadget and a handful of pokers of varying lengths and thicknesses. “Now, which of these goes in first?”

Be serious.

“Lighten up. It was a joke.”

Daniel wiggled the poker in the keyhole to find the sweet spot. His expertise at breaking and entering was evident within thirty seconds, which was all it took to pop the lock. The door creaked as if it hadn’t been opened in centuries. He shone his flashlight at the church’s inner sanctum.

The complex was a maze of stone columns and open shelves built into the cave walls. Parchment codices and books filled every nook. At the far end was a wall of lockers sealed by heavy stone doors. An ancient plank table and two straight-backed wooden armchairs occupied the middle of the room.

“Get a load of this place,” he said in a hushed voice that trailed off
⁷
to a whisper.

Sarah had never seen anything like it. Perhaps a miniature version of the Library of Alexandria, or at least how she imagined it based on the multiple theories she’d researched. Though the place was fairly small—couldn’t have been any more than three hundred square feet—there was enough material, much of it probably dating back centuries, to give a scholar an entire life’s work. Fighting the urge to thumb through every tome, she focused on the task at hand.

“I think those vaults are what we’re after,” she said, nodding toward the back wall. She looked at Daniel and twirled the key in her hand. “Shall we try our luck, then?”

She inserted the key in every vault door, but it worked in none of them. She wasn’t surprised. If it contained such precious documents, the vault in question was probably not that conspicuous. She groped the perimeter for any sign of a removable stone or rotating wall while Daniel examined the floor. The herringbone-patterned tiles could easily disguise yet another secret passage constructed by monks, veterans at the art of hiding. Both came up empty.

Sarah glanced in every direction. “There has to be something we’re overlooking.”

“What about behind those?” Daniel pointed to the shelves piled with scrolls and stitch-bound books thick with the dust of the ages.

The two set about gingerly removing each volume and placing it on the table. They emptied shelf after shelf but still no luck.

While they replaced the documents on a low shelf, Daniel stopped. “Check it out. Look at that crack. The wall there looks superficial.”

“Spot on. Let’s see if it gives way.”

He placed the scrolls carefully on the floor beside him, inserted his fingers into the crack in the stone, and pulled the plaster toward him. It gave way too easily, confirming their suspicions. He clawed at it until all the plaster was removed, revealing a small door. With a contented smile, he said, “I’ll bet your key works now.”

“Why, Dr. Madigan, I do believe you’re a genius.” She bit her lip as she inserted the key. When it yielded a satisfying click, she gasped.

This was it. Apostolos’ vault.

She reached inside and felt a sculpted metal object. She carefully pulled it out.

A Coptic cross, a simple figure carved of solid gold.

“The crux ansata,” she whispered. “The original Coptic cross, begotten from the Egyptian ankh.” She recalled Apostolos’ mention of the saint’s cross. “He must have been buried with this.”

“Which explains the extra holes in the coffin. Whoever found him must have taken this out to protect it from looters.”

Sarah reached inside the vault again and pulled out a loosely bound, wax-sealed papyrus codex. The fragile paper almost came apart in her hands. She surmised by the quality of the papyrus that the text had been written in the early centuries of the Common Era.

To prevent the transfer of oils from her hands to the paper, she put on a pair of white cotton gloves. “Do you have a magnifying glass in your bag of tricks?”

Daniel reached inside his pack and handed her one.

She took a close look at the impression made by the seal. The ideogram was identical to the one that had marked the entrance to the tenth saint’s tomb.

“Take a look.” She handed him the glass.

He held the seal next to the Coptic cross. “They’re practically identical. The untrained eye would think they were one and the same. There’s obviously some connection.”

Sarah pointed at the outer circle of the ideogram. “I can’t believe I never saw it before. It’s the Greek letter omega. And inside it, the circle divided in four by a perfect cross—the ancient symbol for the lower heaven. Apostolos said the prophecies foretold the final doom that would befall the earth. It all makes sense.”

She bowed her head as she prepared to open the codex. She ran her thumb over the intersecting lines that formed the cross on the wax, took a deep breath, and broke the seal. As she turned the yellowed pages, she noted they were handwritten in ancient Greek script, one of the official languages in early Christian Ethiopia. The text was in all capital letters, in the same manner used to inscribe the stelae and thrones erected in the days of the Aksumite empire. Her guess was that it originated between the fourth and sixth centuries of the Common Era. These had to be the earliest, and perhaps the only, interpretations of the original writings. She was in awe.

She carefully opened each page of the codex and photographed it. She removed the first memory card from the camera, placed it in the inner pocket of her trousers, and photographed everything again. She wasn’t taking any chances. When she was satisfied with the documentation, she set about translating the text. She was fluent in ancient Greek, so it would not be terribly difficult. She paused to savor the moment and glanced at Daniel.

He was smiling. “This moment is all yours, Sarah Weston. God knows you’ve earned it.”