The Book of Love Read online

  For those with eyes to see.

  In your reflection, you will find what you seek…

  Hail Ichthys!

  “Art will save the world,” Tammy repeated. “We’ve seen this concept in action a few times.” In their search for Mary Magdalene’s lost gospel, the four of them had deciphered a series of maps and clues found within European paintings from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and Baroque periods. It had been a map painted into a fresco by Sandro Botticelli that led Maureen to find the priceless documents written in Mary Magdalene’s own hand. In the complex world of Christian esoterica, searching for symbols in art was the starting point for many a great journey. When the truth could not be told in writing for fear of fatal persecution, it had often been encoded in symbolic paintings.

  Bérenger picked up the mirror and looked in it briefly before repeating the third sentence of the poem. “In your reflection, you will find what you seek. Hmm.” He did not have time to consider this further, as Roland interrupted him, uncharacteristically animated by what had caught his eye.

  “Look at this!” Roland was pointing to the bottom of the document. “The last name on the lineage. Am I seeing this clearly?”

  Tammy put her arm around him as she leaned in to see what generated the excitement in the gentle giant. But it was Bérenger who verified it for all of them as he peered carefully at the final name at the end of the family tree, arguably the greatest name in the history of the art world.

  “Michelangelo Buonarroti.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  New York City

  present day

  “Maureen! Ms. Paschal…”

  Maureen entered through the revolving door off Forty-seventh Street and into the lobby of her hotel where Nate, the bell captain, recognized her. Her publisher and publicist often left packages for her here and vice versa, so she and Nate had become fast friends on a first-name basis. Maureen tipped well and Nate was vocal in his appreciation for redheads; it was a good combination for a working relationship in New York City.

  “There was a package delivered for you this evening. I just got in and noticed it in the back room.”

  Nate emerged from the back, balancing an elegant gift box in both hands. It was easily two feet long, flat and deepest red in color. Affixed to the box with wide scarlet satin ribbon was a huge bouquet of white flowers, fragrant Casablanca lilies mixed with long-stemmed white roses.

  Maureen looked over the box carefully before taking it from him. “Was there a card?”

  Nate shook his head. “No, nothing. Sorry.”

  Maureen smiled at Nate and thanked him, anxious to get upstairs and see what the red box contained.

  She was still smiling as she entered her room, intoxicated by the heavenly scent of the lilies. There was only one man in the world who knew that these were her favorite flowers, because lilies and roses were symbolic of Mary Magdalene. There was only one man who would have sent such an elaborate display.

  Bérenger Sinclair.

  In spite of herself, Maureen felt that nearly indescribable electric thrill that runs up the spine and covers the skin with goose bumps. God help her, she was still madly infatuated with him, if not in love, and who would blame her? He was good-looking in that darkly charismatic Celtic way, charming, brilliant, and extraordinarily wealthy and powerful. But he was also infuriating in his arrogance and had displayed a propensity toward being harsh and judgmental. Bérenger had wounded her deeply, which was something she could not allow to happen again anytime soon.

  Still, after all they had been through together, he understood her more than any other man on earth.

  Throughout Maureen’s quest, Bérenger had protected her, sheltered her, and even educated her in the folklore and traditions that surrounded the Magdalene mysteries in France. There was no doubt that he had dramatically influenced and altered her life, no doubt that they were inextricably connected in their destinies. However, everything about him was potentially dangerous. Bérenger was a notorious European playboy and a confirmed bachelor. At the age of fifty, he had never been married and had never been inclined toward a serious commitment of any kind that she was aware of. He explained his years of bach-elorhood as not wanting to settle for any woman who was not expressly made for him. Upon meeting Maureen, he said, he was certain. She was the one, the reason no other woman had ever held his interest.

  It was a pretty explanation. Perhaps too pretty. There were a lot of warning signs with a man like Bérenger, even prior to their terrible argument. He had apologized, but Maureen remained wary.

  And yet her stomach turned over at the thought that these flowers had come from him.

  Untying the ribbon carefully, Maureen removed the blooms and lifted the lid on the box. There was a card in a sealed envelope that read “Miss Paschal.” Strange, Bérenger would not address her that way. Perhaps it was simply the florist’s formality. Maureen looked back down into the box and removed the tissue paper that covered the contents. She wasn’t sure what she had expected, but it was most certainly not this. Contained within was what appeared to be an ancient document. Whether it was real or a replica was impossible to tell at first. However, it was carefully encased between panes of glass: some effort had been taken to protect it. Gently, Maureen lifted it out of the box. It was nearly two feet long, terribly yellowed with time or else a very good copy, and frayed around the uneven edges.

  The text of the document, written in a flowery yet exacting Latin script, filled three quarters of the page. Glancing through it, noting the ancient form and the elaborate handwriting, Maureen didn’t think she would be able to decipher it. Her Latin was serviceable, but this was a challenge for a scholar with skills far beyond her rudimentary vocabulary.

  It was the signature at the bottom that was most arresting. Bold and elaborate, it was clearly hand-drawn with ink, and yet it resembled a seal of some type, with a Latin cross drawn between the letters:

  Maureen took out her Moleskine notebook and wrote out the letters from the medieval signature in a linear way. It read

  MATILDA DEI GRA SI QUO EST

  It appeared to say “Matilda, by the Grace of God Who Is.”

  Beneath the letters there were two additional symbols: one looked like a stylized version of the letter H, if the vertical lines were wavy; the other looked immediately familiar to Maureen. Her hand flew to the necklace she was wearing, a gift from Bérenger on her last birthday. It was a delicate diamond-encrusted symbol, a spiral of ram’s horns—the astrological glyph for the sign Aries. Maureen was born on the twenty-second day of March, in the first degree of the first zodiac sign on the edge of the vernal equinox, as the sun passed through Pisces and entered Aries. The symbol of ram’s horns had been emblematic of the vernal equinox since antiquity. But what could it mean on this document? And the more pressing questions, who sent this to her and why?

  Maureen opened the card carefully. The elegant paper was em-bossed with a strange monogram at the bottom. A capital letter A was tied to a capital letter E, the letter E facing backwards as in a mirror image. The card was handwritten:

  As you travel through the Land of Flowers,

  You will come upon the Vale of Gold.

  Do you seek the Book of Love?

  Then here you will find what you seek…

  Hail Ichthys!

  Maureen sighed, half with relief and half with agitation. This was how her search for Mary Magdalene’s gospel had begun—with a strange gift and a mystery to be solved. She had prayed for clues, and now they were appearing. Clearly, whoever sent this knew something of her personal history, which was a little disconcerting. That the phrasing on the card was identical to the words spoken by the little madonna in her dream was downright disturbing. She shuddered at the strange intimacy of such a note. While she had faith that she would be guided by God on her path, as she had always been, there was something unmistakably ominous about an unknown correspondent who could see into her dreams. Was it possible that someone was a
ctually influencing them? She wasn’t sure which of those scenarios was more menacing, but both worried her.

  She did the only thing she could think of to do. She got down on her knees and prayed for protection and guidance on the journey that was about to commence.

  Maureen did a quick mental inventory. There were only three people in the world she could consult with on this immediate mystery, all of them in Europe. The first was her cousin, Peter Healy, the Jesuit scholar who was currently based in the Vatican. Peter would be able to translate the document and perhaps even identify it. Maureen was willing to bet that whoever sent the mystery package was well aware of her relation to such a resource. Otherwise, they likely wouldn’t have left her to her own devices to translate something so elaborate. She would call Peter, of course, although she knew that his first reaction would be to worry. Better to do a little more investigation before dumping this on him quite so blindly.

  That left Bérenger Sinclair and Tamara Wisdom, both currently in residence at the Pommes Bleues headquarters in the Languedoc. Bérenger, like Peter, would immediately worry and demand that she come to France while he investigated. That was not the reaction she wanted or needed at the moment.

  That left Tammy.

  Tamara was Maureen’s closest friend, confidante, and partner in heresy. A brilliant and acerbic independent filmmaker from L.A., Tammy had lost her heart while making a documentary about the Magdalene legends in France—both to the magnificent landscape and to the gentle Languedoc giant named Roland Gélis, to whom she was now engaged. Tamara, Roland, and Bérenger all lived in the magnificent Château des Pommes Bleues, the French estate of the Scottish Sinclair family that served as headquarters to their beloved society of the same name. While a call to one was a call to all, perhaps Maureen could get Tammy on her own by ringing her cell phone first.

  Midnight in New York. That made it six a.m. in France. It was early, but this was important. She dialed Tammy’s cell number and heard the international double ring on the other end. Then a click as Tammy answered, not sounding the least bit sleepy as she quipped, “Hail Ichthys!”

  “You got one too?”

  “Addressed to Bérenger. It arrived last night.”

  “An ancient document about someone named Matilda?”

  “That would be the Countess Matilda of Tuscany.”

  “You know this Matilda?”

  “Yes, and so do you. She shows up in esoteric legends throughout Europe. A type of warrior queen who ruled half of Italy. And most important for our purposes, she was the founder of the Abbey of Orval.”

  Maureen gasped. There were two major revelations in Tammy’s last sentence. She would deal first with the one that pertained to the clue in her card. “Orval. Or-Val. It means Golden Valley, right? As in, ‘You will come upon the Vale of Gold’?”

  “Yes. You realize that this means we have half the puzzle and you have the other half. Clearly somebody wants us to work on this together. Or perhaps I should say that someone wants you and Bérenger to work together, given that the packages were addressed to the two of you. Significant?”

  Maureen ignored Tammy’s implication momentarily and returned her attention to a more pressing issue. “Orval. As in…the Orval prophecy?”

  Tammy laughed. “But of course, my petite Expected One. It looks like someone wants us to go to Belgium to get a closer look at your own personal prophecy. How fast can you get here?”

  Maureen sighed with the realization that the call to adventure must be heeded. There would be no turning back. First she would call Peter in Rome and fill him in on the events of the last twenty-four hours before making arrangements to ship the document to him overnight. Then she would call Air France and get a flight out to Toulouse.

  France. Bérenger. Complicated.

  Restless sleep came to Maureen that night, and brought with it another dream. It was the recurring theme that had been haunting her for some time. But tonight it was longer and more complete than ever before.

  A figure in shadow huddled over an ancient table, the scratching of a stylus as words and images flowed from an author’s pen. As she watched over the shoulder of the writer, an azure glow seemed to emanate from these pages. Fixated on the illumination shining from the writing, Maureen didn’t see the writer move at first. As the figure arose and stepped forward into the lamplight, Maureen caught her breath.

  She had been given glimpses of this face in previous dreams, fleeting moments of recognition that were over in an instant. He now fixed the full force of his attention on Maureen. Frozen in the dream state, she stared at the man ahead of her. The most beautiful man she had ever seen.

  Easa.

  That was the name by which Mary Magdalene referred to him in her gospel, and therefore the name which Maureen felt most comfortable with. It was in finding Easa through the eyes of Mary Magdalene that she discovered her own faith. To the rest of the modern world, he was Jesus.

  He smiled at her then, an expression of such divinity and warmth that Maureen was suffused with it, as if the sun itself radiated from that simple expression. She remained motionless, unable to do anything but stare at his beauty and grace.

  “You are my daughter, in whom I am well pleased.”

  His voice was a melody, a song of unity and love that resonated in the air around her. She floated on that music for an eternal moment, before crashing down to the sound of his next words.

  “But your work is not yet finished.”

  With another smile, Easa the Nazarene, the Son of Man, turned back to the table where his own writing rested. Light from the pages grew brighter, letters shimmering with indigo light, blue and violet patterns on the heavy, linenlike paper.

  Maureen tried to speak to him, but the words would not come through. She could only watch the divine being before her as he gestured to the pages and spoke with gentle precision.

  “Behold, the Book of Love. Follow the path that has been laid out for you, and you will find what you seek. Once you have found it, you must share it with the world and fulfill the promise that you made. Our truth has been in darkness for too long. Try to remember that destiny and destination come from the same root.”

  Although his speech was definite, his words were a mystery.

  Easa held her gaze for an eternal moment before rising to glide effortlessly across the space that separated them. He came to stand directly in front of Maureen, paralyzing her with his intense, dark eyes.

  “The time returns. If you remember nothing more when you awaken, remember those three words.”

  Maureen was struggling in the dream, desperate to hold on to everything he was saying. She tried to repeat the three words. This time, speech did not elude her. She managed to whisper in response, “The time returns.”

  Easa rewarded her by leaning forward and placing a single, paternal kiss on the top of her head.

  “Awaken now, my child. You must awaken while in this body, for everything exists within it. And be not afraid, for I am with you always. Now go forth without fear and do all things with love. Be ye therefore perfect.”

  Maureen awakened with a start, gasping for air as she reached for the bedside lamp to bring light into the room as quickly as possible. Her heart was pounding in her chest as she reached for her notebook where it lay on the nightstand. She scribbled his words as quickly as they came, starting with his reference to the Book of Love, and praying that she wasn’t forgetting anything. She underlined the sentence “Destiny and destination come from the same root.” What could that possibly mean? She shook her head at the near absurdity of it: Jesus was giving her a lesson in etymology.

  There, again, was mention of a promise. Keeping a promise she made? When? In this lifetime? Another? She was relatively certain that she didn’t believe in reincarnation, and more certain that such a concept was contrary to Christian teachings. What else could it mean? A promise made before she was born?

  Maureen reflected on the blue light for a moment. It was shining from the
pages, as if Easa’s words had a life of their own and it was contained within this gorgeous, shimmering indigo-violet color. Something pulled at Maureen’s consciousness: this light, this color was important somehow. It was something she needed to understand, but the meaning was a mystery to her in this time and place.

  She wrote, “Be ye therefore perfect.” This sounded like scripture. She’d turn that over to Peter; he’d know instantly if it was or not. But the line that preceded it certainly did not appear typical of scripture: “You must awaken while in this body, for everything exists within it.”

  She turned another page and wrote in large, emphatic letters

  THE TIME RETURNS.

  She looked at her notes again, realizing that she had forgotten one sentence. While Easa’s other words puzzled her, these—which he had spoken to her in a previous dream—were completely disconcerting. Ominous. Inescapable.

  “But your work is not yet finished.”

  Her work, it would seem, was just beginning.

  Makeda, the Queen of Sheba, arrived in Sion with a very great retinue, a train of camels the length of which had never been seen, bearing spices and very much gold and precious stones, all as gifts to the great King Solomon. She came to him without guile, for she was a woman of purity and truth, incapable of pretense or deception. Such things as lies and falsities were unknown to her. Thus it was that Makeda told Solomon all that was in her mind and her heart and asked if he would answer the questions she had for him. They were not, as some have told, riddles to test his wisdom. Rather they were questions of the heart and soul. His answers would allow her to determine if they were truly born of the same spirit and destined to celebrate the hieros-gamos together. And yet in the end, she did not need these questions. She knew upon coming into his presence and looking in his eyes that he was a part of her, from the beginning to the end of eternity.