About the Author
Glenn Cooper graduated with a degree in archaeology from Harvard and got his medical degree from Tufts University School of Medicine. He has been the Chairman and CEO of a biotechnology company in Massachusetts and is a screenwriter and producer. He is also the bestselling author of
Library of the Dead
Book of Souls
The Tenth Chamber
The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,
The Devil will come, and Faustus must be damned.
PROLOGUE
Rome, AD 1139
He kept his curtains parted to keep an eye on the night sky but the window faced west and he needed to look east.
The Palazzo Apostolico Lateranense, as the Romans called it, was vast – surely the largest and grandest building he’d ever seen. His native tongue was Irish, which was of no use in these parts. He found conversational Latin tough going so during his visit he and his hosts limped by with English. In English this was the Lateran Palace, the residence of the Pope.
He peeled away his thin blanket and fished in the dark for his sandals. He had bedded down in his simple monk’s habit, which he wore despite his right to grander attire. He was Mael Maedoc Ua Morgair – in English, Malachy, Bishop of Down, and he was here as the guest of Pope Innocent II.
It had been a long, difficult journey from Ireland, taking him through the untamed lands of Scotland, England and France. The journey had consumed the entire summer and now in late September the air was already carrying a chill bite. In France he had stayed for a while with the esteemed clerical scholar Bernard of Clairvaux, a man whose intellect clearly matched his own. But he’d fooled Bernard with his faked piety and earnestness. He’d fooled them all.
Malachy’s cell in the guest dormitory was a great distance from the high-ceilinged regal rooms of the Pope. He’d been in Rome for a fortnight and had only seen the old man twice: the first time for a perfunctory audience in his private chambers, the second as part of an entourage to tour the pontiff’s pet project, the rebuilding of his favorite church, the ancient Santa Maria in Trastevere. Who knew how long it would be before he was summoned again to conduct his main business – petitioning Innocent to grant the pallia for the Sees (the seats of ecclesiastical authority) of Armagh and Cashel? But that was unimportant. What was vital was that he had succeeded in being in Rome on the twenty-fourth day of September in the year 1139 with midnight approaching.
Malachy crept carefully down long bare corridors, coaxing his eyes to accommodate to the darkness. He fancied himself a slithering creature of the night, gliding silently through the sleeping palace.
There was a staircase leading to the roof. Malachy had seen it before but had never taken it. He could only hope that he’d be able to make it unimpeded all the way up into the night air.
When he could climb no higher he turned an iron latch and put his shoulder against the heavy hatch until it budged and then yielded outwards. The pitch of the roof was steep enough that he had to take great care to keep his footing. To be safe he removed his sandals. The slates felt cold and smooth against the soles of his feet. He didn’t dare sneak a look at the eastern sky until he’d pressed his back against the nearest chimney stack and jammed his heels against the slates.
Only then did Malachy feast his eyes on the heavens.
Over the great slumbering city of Rome the cloudless black firmament was perfect in every way. And just as he knew it would have, the lunar eclipse had already begun.
He’d spent years studying the charts.
Like the great astrologers before him, like Balbilus of ancient Rome, Malachy was a master of the heavens but he doubted whether any of his predecessors had ever had an opportunity like this. How disastrous, how catastrophic it would have been if the sky had been overcast.
He had to see the moon with his own eyes!
At the precise moment when he had to count the stars!
Complete eclipses of the moon were uncommon enough but was there ever one like tonight?
Tonight the moon was in Pisces, their sacred constellation.
And it had just completed its nineteen-year cycle, sinking once again below the sun’s ecliptic to its South Node, the point of maximum adversity – the Devil’s Tail, as astrologers called it.
This convergence of celestial events had perhaps never happened before and perhaps would never happen again! It was a night full of glorious portent. It was a night when a man like Malachy could make powerful prophecy.
Now all he could do was wait.
It would take almost an hour for the golden moon to slip into blackness, its orb nibbled away by an unseen giant.
When the moment came Malachy had to be ready, his mind had to be free of distraction. His bladder ached a bit so he pulled up his habit and let loose, watching in amusement as his urine streamed off the roof onto the Pope’s garden. Too bad the old bastard wasn’t standing there, looking up with open mouth.
The eclipse was a quarter done, then half, then three-quarters. He hardly felt the night chill. When the last of the moon’s light was gone a penumbra suddenly formed, glowing thick and amber. And then Malachy saw what he’d been waiting for. There were stars shining brightly through the penumbra. Not a few, not too many.
He’d have time enough to make his count and check it once before the penumbra disappeared.
