Fatal Voyage

McMahon's eyes finally met mine.

“On a grand scale. When Cortes and his men entered Moctezuma's capital, Tenochtitlan, they found mounds of human skulls in the city square, others impaled on spikes. Their estimate was over one hundred thousand.”

Silence. Then, “Saturn ate his children.”

“Polyphemus captured Ulysses and dined on his crew.”

“Why the pope?”

“I'm not sure.”

McMahon disappeared, returned in a moment.

“Rayner's looking him up.”

He looked at a note, scratched a clump of hair.

“Rayner found the Gericault painting. It's based on the 1816 wreck of a French frigate, La Meduse. According to the story, survivors ate the dead while stranded at sea.”

I was about to show McMahon my own findings when Rayner appeared in the doorway. We listened as he read from scribbled notes.

“I don't think you want the old boy's entire resume, so I'll give you the highlights. Pope Innocent III is best known for organizing the Fourth Lateran Council in twelve fifteen A.D. Anyone who was anyone in Christendom was told to get his butt to this meeting.”

He looked up.

“I'm paraphrasing. With all the honchos convened, Innocent decreed that henceforth the words hoc est corpus meum were to be taken literally, and the faithful were required to believe in transubstantiation. That's the idea that, at Mass, the bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of Christ.”

He looked up again to see if we were with him.

“Innocent decreed that the act isn't symbolic, it's real. Apparently this question had been debated for about a thousand years, so Innocent decided to settle the issue. From then on, if you doubted transubstantiation, you were guilty of heresy.”

“Thanks, Roger.”

“No problem.” He withdrew.

“So what's the link?” McMahon asked.

“Innocent defined the most sacred ceremonial act of Christianity as true God-eating. It's what anthropologists call ritual anthropophagy.”

A childhood memory. A nun in traditional habit, crucifix on her breast, chalk on her hands.

“Do you know the origin of the word host?”

McMahon shook his head.

“Hostia. It means ‘sacrificial victim’ in Latin.”

“You think we're dealing with some fringe group that gets high on cannibalism?”

I took a steadying breath.

“I think it's much worse than that.”

“Worse than what?”

We both turned. Ryan stood in the spot recently occupied by Rayner. McMahon gestured at a chair.

“Worse than drooling over myths and allegorical paintings. I'm glad you're here, Ryan. You can verify what I'm about to describe.”

I pulled Jim's photos from my briefcase and handed the first to McMahon.

“That is the reconstructed leg bone of a red deer. The gashes were made with a sharp instrument, probably a stone knife. Notice how they cluster around the tendon and ligament attachment points, and at the joints.”

McMahon passed the photo to Ryan, and I handed him several more.

“Those are also animal bones. Notice the similar distribution of cut marks and striations.”

Next picture.

“Those are fragments of human bone. They were recovered from the same cave in southeastern France where the animal bones were found.”

“Looks like the same pattern.”

“It is.”

“Meaning?”

“Butchery. The bones were stripped of flesh and cut or twisted apart at the joints.”

“How old is this stuff?”

“One hundred thousand to one hundred and twenty thousand years. The site was occupied by Neanderthals.”