The Expected One Page 4

  The author was an attractive, red-haired woman in her thirties. She was posed for the photograph with her hands resting on the chair in front of her. Sinclair ran his hand over the cover, stopping to point out the author’s hands. Small, but visible on the right ring finger, was the ancient copper ring from Jerusalem, with its planetary pattern.

  Roland looked up from the book with a start. “Sacre bleu.”

  “Indeed,” Sinclair replied. “Or perhaps, more accurately, Sacre rouge.”

  Both men were interrupted by a presence in the doorway. Jean-Claude de la Motte, an elite and trusted member of the Pommes Bleues inner sanctum, looked at his comrades questioningly. “What has happened?”

  Sinclair gestured for Jean-Claude to enter. “Nothing yet. But see what you think of this.”

  Roland handed the book to Jean-Claude and pointed out the ring on the author’s hand in the back-cover photograph.

  Jean-Claude removed reading glasses from his pocket and scrutinized the photo for a moment before asking in a near whisper, “L’attendue? The Expected One?”

  Sinclair chuckled. “Yes, my friends. After all these years I think we may have finally found our Shepherdess.”

  …I have known Peter since my earliest memories, as his father and mine were friends, and as he was very close to my brother. The temple at Capernaeum was near to the home of Simon-Peter’s father and it was a place we visited often as children. I remember playing a game there, along the shore. I was far younger than the boys and I often played alone, but the sound of their laughter as they wrestled with each other is something I can still remember.

  Peter was always the more serious of the boys, his brother Andrew having a lighter heart. And yet there was humor in both of them when they were young. Peter and Andrew lost that lightness entirely after Easa was gone, and they had little patience for those of us who clung to it for survival.

  Peter was much like my own brother in that he took his family responsibilities very seriously, and as he grew into manhood, he transferred that sense of responsibility to the teachings of The Way. He had a strength and singleness of purpose that was unmatched by any but the teachers themselves — this is why he was trusted so highly. Yet as much as Easa taught him, Peter struggled against his own nature more ferociously than most people would ever know. I believe that he gave up more than the others to follow The Way as it was taught — it required more of himself, more internal change. Peter will be misunderstood and there are those who bear him ill. But I do not.

  I loved Peter and trusted him. Even with my oldest son.

  THE ARQUES GOSPEL OF MARY MAGDALENE,

  THE BOOK OF DISCIPLES

  Chapter Three

  McLean, Virginia

  March 2005

  McLean, Virginia, is an eclectic place, an odd mixture of politics and suburbia. Off the Beltway, it’s a short drive past CIA headquarters to Tysons Corner, one of the largest and most prestigious shopping centers in America. McLean is not known as a suburban center for spirituality. At least, not to most people.

  Maureen Paschal was not concerned in the least with sacred matters as she drove her rented Ford Taurus into the long driveway of the McLean Ritz-Carlton. Tomorrow morning’s schedule was packed: up early for a breakfast meeting with the Eastern League of Women Writers, followed by an appearance and book signing at a behemoth retailer in Tysons Corner.

  That would give Maureen most of Saturday afternoon to herself. Perfect. She would go exploring, as she always did when she was in a new town. It didn’t matter how small or rural the place was; if Maureen had never been there, it held fascination. She never failed to find the jewel in the crown, the special feature of every place she visited that made it unique in her memory. Tomorrow, she would find McLean’s.

  Check-in was a breeze; her publisher had handled all the arrangements, and Maureen had only to sign a form and grab her key. Then it was up the elevator and into her beautifully appointed room, where she indulged her need for order by unpacking immediately and assessing the wrinkle damage to her clothing.

  Maureen loved luxury hotels; everyone did, she supposed, but she was like a child when she stayed in one. She thoroughly inspected the amenities, scoped out the contents of the mini-bar, checked for the sumptuous crested robe behind the bathroom door, and smiled at the extension phone next to the toilet.

  She vowed she would never be so jaded that she ceased to enjoy these little perks. Perhaps those years of scraping, eating Top Ramen, Pop Tarts, and peanut butter sandwiches while her research devoured what was left of her savings had been good for her, after all. Those early experiences helped her to appreciate the finer things that life was beginning to bestow.

  She looked around the spacious room and felt a brief pang of regret — for all of her recent success, there was no one to share her accomplishments with. She was alone, she had always been alone, and perhaps she always would be…

  Maureen banished the self-pity as immediately as it came, and turned to the greatest of distractions to take her mind off such troubling thoughts. Some of the most tantalizing shopping in America was waiting right outside her door. Picking up her bag, Maureen double-checked that she had her credit cards and ventured out to celebrate the culture of Tysons Corner.

  The Eastern League of Women Writers held their breakfast in a conference hall of the McLean Ritz-Carlton. Maureen wore her public uniform — a conservative designer suit with high heels and a spritz of Chanel No. 5. Arriving in the hall precisely at 9:00 A.M., she declined food and requested a pot of Irish breakfast tea. Eating before a question-and-answer session was never a good idea for Maureen. It made her queasy.

  Maureen was less nervous than usual this morning as the event’s moderator was an ally, a lovely woman named Jenna Rosenberg with whom she had been in touch for several weeks in preparation for the event. First and foremost, Jenna was a fan of Maureen’s work and was able to quote from it extensively. That alone won Maureen over. In addition, the event was set up in an intimate setting of small tables clustered together so that Maureen didn’t need a microphone.

  Jenna began the Q-and-A session herself, with an obvious but important query.

  “What inspired you to write this book?”

  Maureen put down her teacup and replied.

  “I read once that early British historical texts were translated by a sect of monks who didn’t believe that women had souls. They felt that the source of all evil came from women. These monks were the first to alter the legends of King Arthur and what we think of as Camelot. Guinevere became a scheming adulteress rather than a powerful warrior queen. Morgan le Fey became Arthur’s evil sister who deceives him into incest, rather than the spiritual leader of an entire nation, which is what she was in the earliest versions of the legend.

  “That understanding shocked me and made me ask the question: had other portrayals of women in history been written from such an extreme bias? Obviously, this perspective extends throughout history. I started thinking of the many women it might have applied to, and my research went from there.”

  Jenna allowed the questions to rotate around the tables. After some discussion of feminist literature and issues of equality in the publishing industry, a question came from a young woman wearing a small gold cross over her silk blouse.

  “For those of us who were raised in a traditional environment, the chapter on Mary Magdalene was very eye-opening. You present a very different woman than that of the repentant prostitute, the fallen woman. But I’m still not sure I can buy into it.”

  Maureen nodded her understanding before launching into her response. “Even the Vatican has conceded that Mary Magdalene wasn’t a prostitute and that we should no longer be teaching that particular lie in Sunday school. It has been more than thirty years since the Vatican formally proclaimed that Mary was not the fallen woman of Luke’s gospel, and that Pope Gregory the Great had created that story to further his own purposes in the Dark Ages. But two millennia of public opinion is hard to eras
e. The Vatican’s admission of error in the 1960s hasn’t really been any more effective than a retraction buried on the last page of a newspaper. So essentially, Mary Magdalene becomes the godmother of misunderstood females, the first woman of major importance to be intentionally and completely altered and maligned by the writers of history. She was a close follower of Christ, arguably an apostle in her own right. And yet she’s been excised almost entirely from the Gospels.”

  Jenna interjected, obviously excited about the subject. “But there is so much speculation now about Mary Magdalene, like that she may have had an intimate relationship with Christ.”

  The cross-wearing woman flinched, but Jenna continued. “You didn’t address any of those issues in your book, and I was wondering how you felt about those theories.”

  “I don’t address them because I don’t believe there is any evidence to back up those claims — a lot of colorful and possibly wishful thinking, but no proof. Theologians agree on this across the board. There is certainly nothing that I, as a self-respecting journalist, could feel comfortable supporting as fact and publishing with my name on it. However, I might go so far as to say that there are authenticated documents that hint at a possibly intimate relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. A gospel discovered in Egypt in 1945 says ‘the companion of the Savior is Mary Magdalene. He loved her more than all the disciples, and used to kiss her often on her mouth.’

  “Of course, these gospels have been questioned by Church authorities and may have been the first-century version of the National Enquirer, for all we know. I think it’s important to tread carefully here, so I wrote what I was certain of. And I am certain that Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute and that she was an important follower of Jesus. Perhaps she was even the most important, as she is the first person whom the risen Lord chose to bless with His appearance. Beyond that, I am not willing to speculate about her role in His life. It would be irresponsible.”

  Maureen answered the question safely, as she usually did. But she had always speculated that perhaps Magdalene’s downfall came because she was too close to the Master, therefore inspiring jealousy in the male disciples who later attempted to discredit her. Saint Peter was openly disdainful of Mary Magdalene and berated her, based on those second-century documents that were discovered in Egypt. And the later writings of Saint Paul appeared to methodically eliminate all reference to the importance of women in Christ’s life.

  Maureen had spent a fair amount of research time ripping apart Pauline doctrine as a result. Paul, the persecutor turned apostle, had shaped Christian thought with his observations, despite his philosophical and literal distance from Jesus and the Savior’s own chosen followers and family. He had no firsthand knowledge of Christ’s teachings. Such a misogynistic and politically manipulative “disciple” was hardly going to immortalize Mary Magdalene as Christ’s most devoted servant.

  Maureen was determined to avenge Mary, viewing her as the archetype of the reviled woman in history, the mother of the misunderstood. Her story was, in essence if not in form, repeated in the lives of the other women Maureen had chosen to defend in HerStory. But it had been essential for Maureen to keep the Magdalene chapters as close to provable academic theory as possible. Any hint of a “new age” or otherwise unsubstantiated hypothesis about Mary’s relationship with Jesus would potentially invalidate the rest of the research and damage her credibility. She was far too careful in her life and work to take such a chance. Despite her instincts, Maureen had rejected all alternative theories on Mary Magdalene, making the choice to hold to the most indisputable facts.

  Shortly after she made that decision, the dreams had come in earnest.

  Her right hand was cramping ferociously and her face was in immediate danger of cracking from a nonstop smile, but Maureen continued to work. Her bookstore appearance had been scheduled for a two-hour slot, which was to include a twenty-minute break. She was now well into the third hour, with no break taken, and was determined to continue signing until the last customer was satisfied. Maureen would never turn away a potential reader. She would not scorn the book-buying public that had turned her dream into a reality.

  She was gratified to see a reasonably large number of men in the crowd today. The subject matter of her book suggested a predominantly female audience, but she hoped that it was written in a way that would appeal to everyone with an open mind and some common sense. Although her primary goal had been to avenge the wrongs endured by powerful women as victims of male historians, her research had revealed that the motivation behind committing history to paper in such a selective fashion was overwhelmingly political and religious. Gender was a secondary factor.

  She had explained this during a recent television appearance, citing Marie Antoinette as perhaps the clearest example of that socio-political theory because the dominant accounts of the French Revolution were written by revolutionaries. Whereas the beleaguered queen was widely blamed for the excesses of the French monarchy, she really had had nothing to do with the creation of such traditions. Marie Antoinette had, in fact, inherited the practices of the French aristocracy when she came from Austria as the betrothed of the young dauphin, the future Louis XVI. Although she herself was the daughter of the great Maria Theresa, that Austrian empress had not been a practitioner of royal excess and indulgence. If anything, she was remarkably dour and thrifty for a woman of her position, raising her many daughters, including little Antoinette, with a very strict hand. The young dauphine would have been forced as a matter of pure survival to adapt to French custom as quickly as possible.

  The palace of Versailles, the great monument to French extravagance, had been built decades before Marie Antoinette was born, yet it became an essential monument to her legendary greed. The famous retort to “The peasants are starving — they have no bread to eat” was actually uttered by a royal courtesan, a woman long dead before the young Austrienne had arrived in France. Yet to this day “Let them eat cake” is cited as a stimulus to revolution. With that one quote, the Reign of Terror and all of the bloodshed and violence that followed the fall of the Bastille have been justified.

  And the tragically doomed Marie Antoinette never uttered the bloody phrase.

  Maureen felt extraordinary sympathy for the ill-fated queen of France. Hated as a foreigner from the day of her arrival, Marie Antoinette was a victim of vicious and pointed racism. It was entirely convenient for the radically ethnocentric French nobility of the eighteenth century to attribute any and all negative political and social circumstances to their Austrian-born queen. Maureen had been stunned by this prevailing attitude during her research visit to France; the English-speaking tour guides at Versailles still spoke of the decapitated monarch with no small degree of venom, ignoring the historical evidence that exonerated Marie Antoinette from many heinous deeds she was said to have perpetrated. And all this despite the fact that the poor woman had been brutally mutilated two hundred years ago.

  The first trip to Versailles had spurred Maureen on in her research. She had read numerous books, from the most academic descriptions of eighteenth-century France to elaborate historical novels that offered perspectives on the queen. The overall picture varied, but not too dramatically, from the accepted caricature: she was shallow, self-indulgent, not terribly bright. Maureen rejected this portrait. What about Marie Antoinette as a mother — a grieving woman who mourned a dead infant daughter and later lost her beloved son as well? Then there was Marie the wife, traded like an object on the proverbial political chessboard, a fourteen-year-old girl married to a foreigner in a strange land and subsequently rejected by his family, and later by his subjects. Finally, there was Marie the scapegoat, a woman who waited in captivity while the people she loved most were butchered in her name. Marie’s closest friend, the Princess Lamballe, was literally torn to pieces by a mob; chunks of her body and various limbs were stuck on pikes and paraded past Marie’s cell window.

  Maureen had been determined to paint a sympathetic yet entire
ly realistic portrait of one of history’s most despised monarchs. The result was powerful, one of the sections in HerStory that had received a tremendous amount of attention and engendered much debate.

  But for all of Marie’s controversy, she would always be first runner-up to Mary Magdalene.

  It was the supernatural pull of Mary Magdalene that Maureen was currently discussing with the animated blonde standing before her.

  “Did you know that McLean is considered a sacred spot to the followers of Mary Magdalene?” the woman asked suddenly.

  Maureen opened her mouth to speak and then closed it again before managing to stammer, “No, I didn’t know anything about that.” There it was again, that electrical pulse that ripped through her every time something strange was on the horizon. She could feel it coming again, even here under the fluorescent lights of an American übermall. Maureen gathered her composure with a deep breath. “Okay, I give up. In what way is McLean, Virginia, relevant to Mary Magdalene?”

  The woman held out a business card to Maureen. “I don’t know if you will have any free time while you are here, but if you do, please come and see me.” The business card was for The Sacred Light bookstore, Rachel Martel, proprietor.

  “It’s nothing like this, of course,” the woman who Maureen assumed must be Rachel said, indicating the huge bookstore where they were talking. “But I think we have a few books that you may find very interesting. Written by local people and self-published. They’re about Mary. Our Mary.”

  Maureen gulped again, verified that the woman was indeed Rachel Martel, and then asked for directions to The Sacred Light.

  There was a discreet cough to Maureen’s left, and she looked up to see the bookstore manager gesturing emphatically that she needed to keep the line moving. Maureen gave him a look before returning to Rachel.