almost clogged with cars, vans and motorcycles. The Swiss Guard on duty waved them
through. A second guard on the inner gate took greater care. O’Malley wound down his window and held out a small pass. The guard nodded, saluted, and let them through.
They headed straight along the Via del Belvedere and through a short tunnel into a courtyard where dozens of cars were parked, most of them bearing plates with the letters SCV, standing for Sacra Citta Vaticano. O’Malley drove into a space on the left.
‘Have you ever been in the Vatican before, Patrick?’
Patrick shook his head.
‘Oh, that’s a pity. It’s a great place. Maybe we’ll have time for a proper tour another time. For your present information, you’re in the Cortile del Belvedere, the Belvedere Court. That door on your right takes you into the Vatican Library. But the door on the left is the one for us. It leads to the Secret Archives.’
Patrick raised his eyebrows.
‘Ah, you needn’t look so surprised,’ said the priest. ‘There’s precious little secret in there these days. Indeed, I don’t think there ever was. If they don’t want you to see something in this place, you can be sure they don’t leave it lying around somewhere you might stumble across it. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t nice little discoveries to be made from time to time by them as knows where to look.’ He glanced at Patrick. Tour friend Eamonn De Faoite knew where to look. More’s the pity for the man.’
They got out of the car, leaving it unlocked. Theft was almost unknown here, and the Vatican gaol enjoyed the reputation of being the least used in the world.
Inside the main door, a stern-faced custodian sat behind a large mahogany table. He looked as though he was aged somewhere between fifty and one hundred and ninety. With a look of irritation, he glanced
up from the improving book he was reading and adjusted a pair of bifocals heavily clouded with specks of dandruff. Looking first at Patrick, then at O’Malley, he drew himself up straight in his high-backed chair.
‘Yes? May I help you?’
‘My name is Father O’Malley. I’ve come to look at some manuscripts. I take it you still keep some manuscripts here.’ His Italian was strangely perfect, not tainted in the least by the heavy brogue that coloured his English.
The custodian stared at him as though he had just claimed to be the Pope.
‘I see. You have a tessera of course.’
‘Sure, what would I need one of them things for? I’ve better things to do than spend half my life among dirty old books. God knows what I might catch.’
The custodian’s face, already the colour and texture of faded parchment, turned several shades paler.
‘I regret that...’
‘But I’ve got something better than a tessera, if it’s a permit you’re after. Here, take a sniff at this.’
O’Malley took a heavy envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket and passed it to the man behind the table. The custodian picked it up and glanced at it as though it had rabies.
‘What’s this?’
‘Open it and see.’
The custodian hesitated, guessing he had been outmanoeuvred, then opened the envelope and took out a sheet of thick, letter-headed paper. Less than a minute later, he was bowing and scraping as he escorted Patrick and Father O’Malley to seats at one of the huge black desks in the main reading-room.
O’Malley bent towards Patrick as they walked, whispering in his ear, ‘After twenty-odd years,
Patrick, even a man like me gets to know some people in high places. Would you believe that was a letter from the Pope’s private secretary? A man called Foucauld. We were friends a long time ago.’
Once they were seated, the custodian approached the prefect, a sort of gargoyle with jaundice who sat upright on a tall, throne-like chair surveying his little, ageless realm, and spoke with him briefly before leaving. The room was empty save for the prefect, his assistants, and a handful of privileged scholars hunched over heavy black volumes as desiccated as themselves. On one wall, a huge clock ticked loudly, a reminder to everyone that, in the end, the pendulum and the calendar take care of everything, even learning.
While an assistant scurried off to fetch the file O’Malley had requested, the priest bent close to Patrick and whispered quietly in his ear.
‘The Church has had some sort of archive in Rome since the sixth century. Most of what was in its keeping then was held in the Lateran, but it’s said it was all destroyed in fighting at the beginning of the thirteenth century. However, it’s my opinion that what I’m about to show you came from there.
‘In any case, after that the archives were kept either in the Vatican or with the Pope himself whenever he travelled about the country. Later on, the whole lot was moved to the Castel Sant’ Angelo for safe-keeping. The really important stuff- things like privileges and papal charters - was held in what they called the Archivium Arcis.
‘Then, in 1611, Paul V founded the Secret Archive, the Archivium Secretum Vaticanum. He had eighty armaria, great wooden chests, filled with material from different sources - the Biblioteca Segreta, the Camera, the Archivium Arcis. Until 1879, the archive
really was secret, but it was then that Leo XIII decided to let reputable scholars in to study the documents. Some of them look as though they’ve been here ever since. As you can see, I’m not all that reputable; but I’m not without a little influence either. In my experience, there’s nothing in the Vatican that a little bottle of Black Bush in the right hands won’t arrange.’
He paused as the assistant returned, carrying a small book in his hands. Without a word, he set it down on the desk in front of them and left.
‘Now, Patrick, listen carefully. You’ll see that the call number on the back of this file reads AA Arm. I-XVIII 6725. All that means is that it comes from the Archivium Arcis, that it’s stored in the lower set of armaria, series one to eighteen, and that its item number is 6723.’
‘What is it?’
‘Now, don’t go getting impatient. If you’ll just open it...’
There was a hissing sound from the direction of the prefect’s chair. They looked up to see the old buzzard holding a bent finger to his lips. O’Malley lowered his voice even further.
‘If you look inside, you’ll see that it’s a copy of a Gnostic Gospel written in Coptic. According to a little note in Latin pasted in at the front, it was found among the contents of the Archivium Arcis when everything was transferred to the Secret Archive. Of course, Gnostic Gospels weren’t exactly popular in those days, so the book sort of rotted away here in its wee box without anyone ever taking a proper look at it.’
He looked down at the worn leather cover, the curious Coptic binding tied with thongs.
‘Eamonn De Faoite was the first person in centuries
to do more than glance at it. And what do you think he found?’
‘Suppose you show me.’
‘Be my guest.’
Patrick untied the thongs and opened the little volume. Page after page of crabbed Coptic script in black ink with the capitals in red. It looked dreary and quite unreadable.
‘I can’t read Coptic’
‘Can’t you? That’s a terrible pity. Neither can I. But look here.’
The priest opened the book again, leafing through it until he came to two leaves near the middle. Carefully, he peeled one away from the other. Inside lay a third sheet, unbound. O’Malley lifted it out and spread it on the table in front of Patrick.
“You can read Aramaic, though, can’t you?’
Patrick looked down. Unfolded, the sheet was a large piece of papyrus, covered in fine Aramaic writing. Aramaic: the language of much of the Old Testament, the language of Palestine at the time of Jesus.
FORTY-FOUR
‘At times trumpets blow on the high towers. Now on the tower of Psephinus, now on the tall pinnacles of Hippicus and Phasael and Mariamme. They chase the birds from the sky, and we think the end is come. Simon bar Goria and his men hold the Upper City and much of the Lower also. The Temple and Ophel are in the hands of John of Gischala and his followers. All that lies between has been burned to the ground. There is smoke everywhere.
