serious, and had given him an unspoken promise. It was an agreement made years before, but it was reassuring to hear it repeated now, with their new lives.
His cell phone rang again.
In the nightmare that followed, he would look back often to this one moment in his life, the moment before he answered the call. He would see it frozen like a snapshot, play the last few seconds of normalcy over and over in his mind. Her hand in his. Before everything changed forever.
He didn’t reach for the phone, never broke eye contact with her. “I’ve got voicemail,” he said.
She playfully slapped his hands away. “You have to answer it, Nate. It’s part of your calling now—pun fully intended. I’m going to have to get used to it.”
He pulled the phone out reflexively, basking in the glow of the implied promise in her statement.
“Reverend Dinneck.”
Elizabeth whispered “
He smirked.
“Reverend, this is Brother Armand.” Something in the man’s voice told Nathan that the call was going to be a bad one, even before the monk said, “I’m afraid I have some terrible, terrible news.”
Part Three: Solomon’s Grave
Constantinople, 1204 A.D.
Sister Danelis Raoulaina emerged from the lower-level Chapel of Saint Mark with silent, hesitant steps. Voices of men, some distant, others frighteningly close, wound their way along the corridor from every direction. For a moment it seemed as if the laughter and angry shouts, sounds of breaking glass and other unidentified objects were almost upon her, only to recede again. Even from a distance, the tenor of the voices and savagery of their inflection made the small woman shake with terror. She and her sisters had watched, briefly, what transpired in the streets outside. When the crusaders arrived, the eighteen nuns in her order had been reciting late morning prayer in the main cathedral. Before that moment, there had been blessed silence, save the penitent whispers of the nuns, the occasional click of rosary stones against the marble benches and the background clop of horses along the main square outside.
Then
It happened as it had in her dreams, in the Lord’s vision. The devil had come to the Church of the Twelve Apostles. Sister Danelis berated her lack of faith, for she had hoped the visions were in truth only nightmares. Still, she’d taken the steps outlined for her by the Man of Light, the one who spoke to her in the Holy visions. He instructed her how to prepare. Two months, long enough to carry out His wishes and to hope that God’s will would not have to be done.
But they came, and the evil tempest now rampaged above her in the holy cathedral. Demons, taking everything within reach of their bloody fingertips. Defiling the women of Constantinople, sparing no one, not even blessed nuns. This they had seen from the large windows above the square, but only for a moment, until the Mother Superior’s face went rigid and she instructed them to move into the catacombs. They would follow the route known as the Path of Saint Peter toward a secluded dock on the rocky shoal below the church. It was a path taught to all sisters, in the event the Turks should attempt yet another siege of the city.
This time, God forgive them all, the invading hordes were their own soldiers in Christ.
Sister Danelis had twelve novices under her direct charge. Early on she chose five from their ranks who were most suited for manual exertion. When the soldiers moved into the square, she and her sisters, led by the Holy Mother, moved as one toward the Path of Saint Peter. Danelis held back, gesturing to the five to stay at her side. After sending the remaining novices along the Path with prayers for their safety, she moved along a different corridor. They needed to reach the Chapel of Saint Mark three levels below, retrieve two objects, then follow a path she had traveled only in her dreams.
At the moment, the hallway outside the Chapel of Saint Mark was deserted. She waved her sisters to follow, then heard the footsteps. She whispered, “Back, quickly,” and joined the five horror-stricken faces as they faded into the room’s darkness. The footsteps slapped along the corridor. Danelis prayed that whoever was coming would pass by and not see their shadows cringing in the doorway.
Bishop Georgios Palaiologos ran past so quickly he had nearly rounded the far corner before Danelis could step from the room and call, “Your Eminence!”
Georgios spun at the sound of her voice and almost stumbled. His large face was bathed in sweat, his very pores bleeding with the effort of escape. She noticed that his feet were bare.
When the bishop saw who had spoken, he managed a relieved but brief smile. The expression lifted her heart. He gasped, “Oh, thank God you’re still safe. Please, Sister, leave here now.”
She took a step toward him. “Father, there is something I need to tell you.” He was the bishop, after all. Certainly they were meant to cross paths in this moment. He would help them. The heavy man clutched something against his chest, stumbling sideways as he prepared to continue along his chosen path. Surely he would not leave them here alone?
“Your Eminence, wait. We need to—”
“You need to leave now!” he interrupted. “Come this way; you can reach the Path of Saint Peter if the way is not already blocked.”
Bishop Georgios Palaiologos did not wait to hear. He disappeared down the corridor, calling, “Forgive me, Sister, but I must go
She found it hard to breathe. They were alone again. Completely alone.
“Sister?” A voice behind her. Novice Rhea peered from under her pale blue habit. “Sister, what should we do?”
Danelis cursed her weakness. These were children of God. They needed her faith. They were not alone. They would
No longer whispering, she said, “Come, this way. You have the staffs?”
Two other novices stepped forward, each holding long smooth poles before them. Danelis had ordered them carved to the angel’s specifications weeks ago and laid them in the corner of the chapel, trusting they would not be tampered with. He had promised as much. Surely if this was possible, so too would be the rest of her task.
“Follow me,” she said, careful to show only confidence in her voice. “We have much to do for the glory of the Lord.”
She grabbed a torch from its sconce outside the chapel door and turned in the direction from which the bishop had come. She did not look back to see if the others followed. The sounds of their steps and the occasional rap of the staffs along the stone walls told of their obedience. Down more flights of stairs, the way at times so narrow they were forced to travel in single file, walking nearly sideways. They did not stop. She had seen this way dozens of times in God’s vision. The further they went, the more sure she became that they would succeed.
Even so, as they reached the end of one corridor and saw what lay beside a rock-filled entrance to a chamber that had not been in any of her visions, the shock was too much. The women froze. Like the crusaders whose bones lay crushed beneath the stones spilling into the passageway, they fell prostrate before the Ark. It was tilted at an awkward angle, as if carried into the narrow hall by the very stones themselves.
Slowly, Sister Danelis raised her face. She shouted at the novices to get up, move quickly. She knew where they needed to carry it, to the end of the next passage where one last boat was waiting for them at Saint Peter’s dock. There would be no one to steer it to safety but she and her sisters. After that their lives, and the safety of their burden, would be in God’s hands.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Elizabeth watched Nate turn sideways in his chair, phone pressed against his ear. Regardless of the rift which had opened between them in the past, she never failed to marvel at how strong his convictions were. The word commonly used was “faith”, but that was just a word. He
