'Jenny-'
'She must have enjoyed tearing us apart.'
Bravo nodded sadly. 'That was her plan all along, I can see it now.'
With a soft groan, Jenny rose. 'What a supreme bitch.'
A gorgon, Jordan had called her. In this, too, he wasn't wrong, Bravo mused. But she had been even more than that. He rose at last to stand with his arm around Jenny, looking down into the face of the devil seen and recognized by Father Damaskinos.
Chapter 33
Sunset shrouded them in its cool embrace. The sky was on fire, layered with tiers of pink clouds. It was a relief to be free of the cavern, of the horrors that had awaited them there.
'The cache,' Jenny said. 'What happened, Bravo? Did your father lead you astray?'
'On the contrary,' he said. 'I never read you or Camille his last cipher, because he warned me against it.'
'What do you mean?' In the soft swirl of shadows in the small meadow, she turned. 'Wait, he knew you wouldn't be alone, didn't he?'
'Well, it was a supposition, one that makes good sense when you think about it,' Bravo said. 'You see, the moment the Knight attack began, he'd taken the precaution of moving the contents of the cache out of its original container. But he was adamant that if I was with anyone-anyone at all-I go to the original burial site. This way, I could draw out whoever was against me. Over the centuries, the power of the Quintessence has had the ability of corrupting even those who thought themselves steadfast. My father was told that it was the origin of all the traitors within the Order.'
Jenny looked at him with the sun in her eyes. 'He was told? By whom?'
'Fra Leoni.'
An early evening wind had sprung up. All around them, the wildflowers bobbed, bent their heads as if in obeisance.
'He's still alive.' Jenny's voice was an awed whisper.
'Against all logic, it would seem so.'
'Logic has nothing to do with it,' Jenny said. 'It's all about faith.'
He nodded. 'I understand that now.'
'It's here,' he said, kneeling by the Cauldron, the sacred spring of the Orthodox Greeks. From the reddish earth in front of him rose the cracked plinth of an ancient pillar. Jenny leaned on his shoulder as she lowered herself beside him. Bravo cleared away a layer of pine needles and leaf mold. Beetles and centipedes scuttled for safety. The smell of decay that fed new life rose up to them like the aroma of a cool morning.
'Are you all right?' Bravo asked. 'You can do this?'
She smiled, and all the pain was erased from her face. 'I can do this, I have to do this.'
Together, they dug down, lifting handfuls of earth, piling it higher and higher until there appeared beneath the worked stone plinth a small wooden chest. Painted with primary-colored boats, fish and birds, it was wholly unlike the original container she had unearthed in the cavern.
Bravo sat back on his haunches and laughed. 'It's the toy chest I had as a kid.'
'Oh, Bravo.' Jenny put a hand on his shoulder.
Silently, reverently, they went back to work, brushing the last of the earth off the top of the chest, digging out the sides. At last, it was revealed, and they lifted it out.
As Bravo reached out to open it, Jenny said, 'I don't think-' Then her eyes rolled up and she collapsed. At once, he laid her flat, listened for her breath, took her pulse. She was alive, but his hand came away covered in blood. Quickly now, he took off his shirt, ripping it into strips. With a rising sense of urgency, he unwound the tourniquet she'd fashioned out of her own shirt. He was appalled to see the wound. He wiped away the blood seeping out of it. There was no doubt, the wound was far more serious than she'd made it out to be. He bound her again, using two of the strips he'd made of his shirt, making a double layer, tying them both tighter in an effort to cut down on the rate of blood loss. He looked around. Of course there was not a soul in sight. It was at best a kilometer to the Sumela Monastery, and from there a twenty-minute ride to the clinic at Macka. He took her pulse again and was alarmed to discover it slower than it had been before. If it became erratic… Even so, he might not get her back to civilization in time.
He wiped his sweating face, turned to face his toy chest. He knew what lay within. With a trembling hand, he opened the chest. Here were the secrets the Order had been amassing for centuries-documents, secret treaties, clandestine histories, suppressed memoirs, incriminating financial records. And there, among them, was the Testament of Jesus Christ. He touched it, but did not pick it up. Funny, now that he had found it, he had no time to read it. His attention was elsewhere: the small clay phial with its stone stopper.
The Quintessence.
All he had to do was open it, apply the tiniest amount to Jenny's wound. She would be healed, her life saved. How could he not do it? He picked it up, cupped it in his two palms. It was almost without weight, as if its contents were lighter than air, like angels' wings.
Open it, apply a small amount to her wound. She would live-absolutely, no question. If he didn't, there was only faith to go on, faith that he could get her to the clinic, that he could save her.
His fingers curled around the stopper.
And then what? What would happen to her afterward? Would she live to be 150 years old? two hundred? four hundred, like Fra Leoni? Would she want that? Had he the right to do it, to change the natural order? Surely, his father had had the same agonizing decision to make when Steffi grew gravely ill…
And then his father appeared beside him.
'Dad, what should I do?'
'It's your decision now, Bravo.'
'I love her, I don't want her to die.'
'I loved Steffi, I didn't want her to die.'
'But you betrayed her, you slept with Camille.'
'I'm human, Bravo, just like everyone else.'
'But you're not like everyone else, Dad!'
Dexter smiled. 'When you were a child, it was good for you to see me that way, it gave you comfort and security, that's the way of the world. But now you're an adult, you have to accept me as I really was, you have to provide your own comfort and security…'
Bravo, blinking away tears, found himself once again alone by the seething Cauldron, Jenny beside him. He heard her labored breathing, looked down again at the vessel that held the Quintessence.
Faith. Was his faith strong enough?
He carefully replaced the Quintessence in the chest. But it was as if the phial were alive, it was so difficult to let it go, to pull his hand away. With an extreme effort he did, closed the lid and lowered the toy chest back into the hole his father had made for it.
The buried Quintessence nevertheless beat like a telltale heart as he replaced the soil, tamped it down, replaced the bed of pine needles and forest detritus. Then, with a fervent prayer to the Virgin Mary, cradling Jenny in his arms, he began the trek back to Sumela.
Eight hours later, in the middle of the night, Jenny awoke in terrible pain. She cried out. Then Bravo had her hand, was bending over her. She could see his face in the soft lamplight.
'Where am I?'
'Macka,' he said. 'Next door is the clinic's surgery.'
'The cache?'
'It was just where my father buried it,' he said. 'Breathe easy, Jenny, it's safe.'
'I want to get out of here.' She tried to rise, moaned. With a rattle of tubes that ran into her, carrying blood and saline, she sank back against the rough pillow.
