The Book of Q

Her voice was hoarse when she spoke. “This is a surprise.” She seemed distracted. “Or perhaps not.”

He wasn’t sure how to respond.

Whatever strain he thought he had seen in her face now showed itself to be something far more unsettling. Concern. Perhaps even apprehension. She returned his gaze, intensity, not fatigue, staring back. “Why don’t you have a seat, Father.” A disconcerting echo from last night. He did as he was told, taking the nearer of the two chairs, watching as she gathered up the various pieces of paper that lay scattered around the dome. She glanced at each page, trying, it seemed, to divine some sort of order out of them. “I see you’ve recovered your collar,” she said, not bothering to look up, eyes darting from one passage to the next. Pearse said nothing. No reason to bring her up-to-date on the night’s events.

Reaching for her cup, she moved around the desk and sat on the front lip of the second chair. She took a sip; her expression told him the coffee had long since lost its edge.

“Why didn’t you tell me what the scroll was?” she asked.

Her tone surprised him. “I … didn’t know what it was. I still don’t.”

“It wasn’t found in San Clemente, was it?” Her response was no less accusatory.

“I was told it was.”

“Then you were misinformed.” She continued to stare at him. When he didn’t answer, she elaborated. “The prayer by itself, I could accept. Even that bizarre preamble from John. But not this,” she said, raising the papers in her hands.

Pearse followed the swirl of pages, unsure what she wanted to hear. After everything he’d been through last night, a grilling from Angeli was the last thing he needed. More than that, the attitude wasn’t like her at all. He found it hard to imagine that she could actually believe he had purposely misled her. What could he gain by that? If he had known what the scroll was, why would he have brought it to her in the first place? Why the charade?

When she finally spoke, her tone was far less severe.

“You really have no idea what it is, do you?”

“No, I really have no idea.” He was doing his best not to allow the last few hours to color his tone.

“Well, I suppose that’s a relief.”

When it was clear she was happy to leave it at that, Pearse prodded. “Any chance you might tell me what it is?”

She looked over at him.

He picked up the ashtray nearest him and placed it on the arm of her chair. “Does that help?”

At last a smile. “Ah, the art of seduction.”

“If I’d known it was that easy, I’d never have taken the cloth.”

Another tired smile.

“So what’s in the scroll?” he said.

“‘The scroll,’” she repeated. Looking across at him, she said, “Something I’ve never seen before.”

“That sounds promising.”

“Perhaps.” A long breath. She eased herself back into the chair, then began to speak: “Well … to start … it’s not a continuous scroll, which is what one would have expected. It’s a series of unsewn single sheets, rolled together. That, by itself, is strange, but not unheard of.” Before he could ask, she clarified. “Fire, decay, those sorts of things did, at times, leave groups of arbitrary single sheets lying about, which would then have been put together in a codex or scroll simply for storage’s sake.”

“And that’s what this is,” he asked. “One of those collections?”

“No. Which is even more surprising. In this case, each independent sheet is linked to the others in a very purposeful way, something, as I said, I’ve never seen. It starts out with a full text of ‘Perfect Light’-which, by itself, makes it unique-but then becomes a series of epistles. Letters.”

An image of Saint Paul wandering through Asia Minor fixed in his mind. “Apostolic?”

“Not at all.”

“So Augustine got it wrong? It’s not a collection of Jesus’ sayings?”

“Evidently.”

He allowed himself only a moment’s disappointment before asking, “So whom are they written to?”

“That’s a very good question.”

“Thank you.”

A smile. “To the ‘Brothers of the Light.’” She was almost flip in her response.

“Manichaeans?”

“Yes, Manichaeans.”

Silence. She seemed to be retreating again.

“How many ashtrays am I going to need?” he asked.

She peered over at him. “I’m not sure you’re going to want to hear this.”

“Now who’s teasing?” He waited. “So the epistles … can I assume they’re all written by the same scribe?”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But they’re not. They’re actually fifteen separate letters-not in Syriac, but Greek-that span a period of almost four hundred years.” She stopped, her eyes fixed on his.

“Four hundred years?” he said. “That doesn’t sound right.”

“No, it doesn’t, does it? But given the references to various emperors, Popes, and patriarchs, you can pretty much date the letters from somewhere in the middle of the sixth century, up through the end of the tenth. Considering that western Manichaeanism was supposedly wiped out by the end of the fifth, those are rather remarkable dates.” Again, she held his gaze. “Added to that, all of the letters are connected to the prayer-they all begin with their own transcription of it. Another odd distinction.”

“So where are they from?”

“All over. As far west as Lyons, northern Germany, Rome, Milan, Constantinople, Acre. The known world at the time.”

“That’s … incredible. There’s nothing like that in the canon.”

“I think I just said that.”

“So what do these letters say?”

Her eyebrows rose in anticipation. “Ah, now that’s where it gets interesting.”

“Good. For a minute there, I thought it was going to be as dull as last night.”

“Oh, really?” It was clear she was beginning to loosen up. “Well, compared to this, last night was-what did you always call it?” Pearse had no idea what she was talking about. “Minor-level? Minor-”

“Minor-league.” He smiled.

She nodded. “Yes. Minor-league. Last night, we were playing in the ‘bonies.’”

“Boonies,” he said, correcting her.

“Boonies. Whatever.”

“So what makes these letters so interesting?”

Again, she drew forward to the edge of the chair. “Each one is an apparent description of the writer’s personal ‘heavenly ascent.’”

“His what?”

“His tour of the divine realm, his ascent, where he’s made privy to esoteric knowledge. All very Manichaean. Except that each one of these is written as if from the pen of one of the five prophets. Now, that’s very strange.”

Happy as he was to see Angeli back in full swing, Pearse needed clarification. “Prophets? I’m not … Which prophets?”

“Adam, Seth, Enosh, Shem, and Enoch,” she answered, as if citing nothing more obscure than her own name. “The Manichaean prophets.” It was now time for the cigarettes to reappear. “You’ll also find Noah, Buddha, Zoroaster, and, of course, Jesus slotted into the list, but it’s primarily the other five. Each appearing in cycles, and each bringing us one step closer to redemption.” She lit one up. “Mani himself is the last of them, the Paraclete, ‘the seal’ promised by Christ.”

“Right,” he said, just to slow her down. “Why don’t you take a few puffs.” She was beginning to fly off; he needed to tie her down to something more tangible. “Let’s hold off on the prophets for a minute. What do the