The Poet Prince (5 page)

Then there was this curious phrase within the description: “The lightly drawn features of the face of Christ are modern. The original was removed and is now in the Vatican.” There was evidence of destruction to the banner: a patch covered the cut where the face of Christ had been on the crucifix, ostensibly the original piece that was surgically removed and taken to Rome in. But why? Why would anyone deface a rare and exquisitely beautiful painting by an Italian master?

If there was one thing Maureen had learned in her search for the truth about the secret aspects of Christian history, it was to never take anything at face value—and never trust the first and most obvious explanation, particularly in the symbolic world of art history. Removing her cell phone from her bag, she switched it to camera mode and photographed the painting in segments, storing them for future reference.

The digital readout on her phone was a harsh reminder that her time at the Met was coming to a close. Maureen slipped the phone back into her bag and stood before the painting in quiet appreciation. The questions that had run through her head so many times while following the clues left in religious art repeated themselves with resounding force.

What stories can you tell me, Lady? Who painted you like this and
why? What did you really mean to those who carried this banner?
And finally, the question that haunted Maureen every day of her life:
What do you want from me now?

But today Mary Magdalene was silent, gazing back at her with quiet authority and an enigmatic expression that would have made Leonardo da Vinci weep with envy. The Mona Lisa had nothing on this Magdalene.

Maureen returned to the official description again and gasped. In the second reading, she caught this reference to the banner’s origins: “commissioned . . . by the Confraternity of Saint Mary Magdalen in Borgo San Sepolcro.”

Borgo San Sepolcro. An easy translation from Italian. It meant the Place of the Holy Sepulcher.

Maureen glanced down at the ancient ring on her finger, the one from Jerusalem with the seal of Mary Magdalene. It was the symbol of the Order of the Holy Sepulcher—the Order that gave Matilda to the world, the Order in which the purest teachings of Jesus and the Book of Love were preserved, and the Order of which Destino was the
Master—and into which she was about to be indoctrinated. Was it possible that there was an entire town in Italy devoted to the Order of the Holy Sepulcher with Mary Magdalene at its center?

Maureen had often described her research and writing as similar to the process of creating a collage. There were many different little pieces of evidence, which individually didn’t amount to much. But when you began to arrange the pieces together, see how they all could fit, which complemented the other, then you began to develop something beautiful and whole. And here was what appeared to be a central piece of the stunning mosaic Maureen was crafting.

She looked around at the visitors wandering the gallery. Only a few passed by to give the processional banner a cursory glance before continuing on. Part of her wanted to scream at them:
Don’t you see this? Do you have any idea that this painting may hold one of the keys to history and you’re walking right past it?

But she wasn’t sure of that yet. Where was Borgo San Sepolcro?
What other attachments did this artist, Spinello, have that might connect him and this masterpiece to the heretical cultures of medieval Italy? After doing her own due diligence, she would call the experts in France and Italy to get their take on it. Beginning, of course, with Bérenger.

After all these weeks apart, the thought of Bérenger Sinclair suffused her body with warmth. Maureen missed him so much. She closed her eyes and allowed herself to get lost in that rich, delicious sense of remembering the last time they were together. She sighed heavily and then shook it off. There were new discoveries looming here, and sharing them with him would make them that much sweeter.

She bid farewell to the artistic glories of the medieval gallery and made her way to the front of the museum, stopping briefly in the gift shop to see if there was a postcard of the fantastic Magdalene banner. There was not even a mention of the rare work in the Met visitor’s guide. Searching through a vast assortment of art books, she found one that contained a brief mention of the banner’s artist, referring to him as Spinello Aretino. The passage explained that “Aretino” indicated that he was from the town of Arezzo. In Tuscany.

Tuscany. If there was one place Maureen was certain was rife with heretical secrets in the early Middle Ages, it was Tuscany. She smiled, knowing it was not a coincidence that she was currently in possession of a plane ticket to Florence and the following week would be on her way to the heart of the heresy.

Nothing.

There was nothing on the Internet about the rare and wonderful Magdalene banner at the Met. Even on the Met’s own website it took a concerted effort to find information, and there was nothing other than the description Maureen had read earlier at the museum.

Two hours of searching through Magdalene art pages were fruitless. No amount of googling brought up anything new on the piece itself, so
Maureen went after it from a different angle, looking up other details from the description: the artist, the locales. She found some general information online about the artist and also on Borgo San Sepolcro that might prove helpful later. She made the following notes:

SPINELLO ARETINO—given name Luca (Luke), as was his father’s, also a painter, after the saint for whom the painter’s guild was named. The name “Aretino” means “from Arezzo,” which is a province in Tuscany. Primarily a fresco painter, he worked in Florence at Santa Trinità.

Maureen paused. Spinello painted at the church in Santa Trinità, which was a sacred location for the Order of the Holy Sepulcher and had been one of Matilda’s strongholds. This was a good sign that she was on the right track. Her mosaic was beginning to take shape. She read on.

BORGO SAN SEPOLCRO—now known as Sansepolcro, it was founded in the year 1000 by pilgrims who had returned from the Holy Land with specific reverence for the Holy Sepulcher and with priceless relics. One of these pilgrims was known as Santo Arcano. It is in the province of Arezzo and is the birthplace of the master fresco painter Piero della Francesca.

Maureen squirmed with pleasure at this discovery. She was right! There was an entire town in Tuscany dedicated to the Holy Sepulcher. But there was one sentence that gave her a more immediate rush of excitement:

One of these pilgrims was known as Santo Arcano.

Santo Arcano.
Maureen laughed out loud. It appeared here that the Church was saying that there was a saint named Arcano. Her Latin wasn’t fluent, but it was serviceable, and she had certainly used it to
read between the lines many times in her research. Santo Arcano was not a reference to an obscure Tuscan saint. It meant “Holy Secret.” If she were to translate all this into English and make sense of it, what the description really said to Maureen was,
This town, named after the Holy Sepulcher, was established based on the Holy Secret!

Now she was getting somewhere.

She contemplated the rest of this discovery for a moment and made notes. Maureen was familiar with the work of Piero della Francesca, as his iconic Magdalene was among her favorites. He had painted her for the duomo in Arezzo, a very strong and majestic image from which her power and leadership emanated. There was nothing penitent about this Magdalene. It was not painted by a man who believed for one minute the sixth-century propaganda of Mary Magdalene as repentant sinner. It was a fresco created to emphasize leadership. Maureen had a framed copy of this image hanging in her office. She had studied Piero della Francesca during her art research and always found him interesting. His frescoes in Arezzo were very alive, very human and full of narrative. When she looked at his art, she felt kinship with him; Piero was a storyteller. He painted
The Legend of the True Cross
in rich and elaborate detail, he infused
The Coming of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon
with profound sanctity, and all his artwork represented the most sacred teachings of the Order of the Holy Sepulcher.

Reading about the Order reminded Maureen that she needed to make arrangements for her return to Europe, as she had meetings with her French publisher in Paris to prepare for the release there. Paris was never a hardship; she loved the city and her best friend, Tamara Wisdom, an independent filmmaker, had been hounding her to spend some time there with her. Maureen’s cousin and spiritual adviser, Peter Healy, was also living in Paris at the moment. He had once been known as Father Peter Healy, but he was a refugee from the Vatican at the moment, possibly forever, and was no longer referring to himself as a priest or wearing his collar. Maureen was anxious to catch up with him.

She decided she would fly into Paris, do her business there, then drive down with Tammy to where both of their beloveds awaited them
at Bérenger’s Château des Pommes Bleues in the southwest of France. Tammy was also blissfully in love, engaged to the gentle Languedoc giant Roland Gelis, who was the childhood best friend of Bérenger. They all lived together in the beauty of the Aude river valley, a magical part of the Languedoc region where the château was located, just outside of Arques. Bérenger, the heir to a Scottish oil fortune, had inherited the château from his grandfather. It had been built in the Languedoc as the exclusive headquarters of a secret society that protected dangerous and heretical secrets. Bérenger had inherited these secrets along with his French castle.

It was too late to call Bérenger tonight, but first thing in the morning—her morning, his afternoon—she would talk to him about accompanying her from Arques to Florence. Destino sent her a letter advising them that he was leaving Chartres to return to Florence, stating it was “once and for all.” The letter had felt very final, as if he were preparing to die in Italy. It had upset Maureen immensely at the time. Destino was ancient—literally—and his death was inevitable. But to lose such a treasure, now that she understood and accepted what he was and the extraordinary wisdom he had to offer the world, would be hard to take.

Destino’s letter indicated that he had much to teach Maureen in a limited time and that it would be her responsibility to be conversant in the Libro Rosso prior to her arrival. He did not have time to teach the basics of the Order’s tenets. He had very specific lessons for them and tasks that must be carried out in preparation for the mission they would all embark upon together. Destino was emphatic when referring to “the mission.”

In preparation for her trip to Florence, Maureen reaffirmed her commitment to study the teachings of the Libro Rosso, which she currently had in her possession, as Destino had given all of them a translation as a gift: Maureen, Bérenger, Tammy, Roland, and Peter were all currently studying the English translation of the sacred red book that held the greatest secrets of Christianity.

She had used these sacred pages to craft
The Time Returns: The Leg
end of the Book of Love
. But it was time to study them and commit certain passages to memory. Maureen pledged to start from the beginning and work all the way through, studying a few segments a night.

It wasn’t a chore. Maureen had thought from the first moment she had been exposed to the Libro Rosso teachings that they were the most beautiful words she had ever read. She recognized them as truth, and it had been a celebration for her to write a book about the brave souls who risked everything to preserve these astonishing teachings for two thousand years.

Maureen settled into bed with her book. The teachings always returned to the understanding of love as the great gift given to us by God. But as simple as such an idea should be, it was here that the controversy began. For within the Book of Love, God was not viewed as a patriarch; he was not simply Our Father. God was Our Father in perfect union with Our Mother. The first pages contained Maureen’s favorite passage:

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. But God was not a single being, he did not reign over the universe alone. He ruled with his companion, who was his beloved.