Silas awoke to the smell of fresh-baked bread, frying hardwood bacon, melting cheese, and strong coffee. The sensation was only outmatched by the restful sleep he had enjoyed in his tiny, abbey bedroom.
It was already well past early morning by the time he had climbed out of bed. He had crashed hard the night before. He needed it after what they had been through the past few days uncovering the Nous plot. Now that they were closer to solving the mystery, he needed every ounce of energy he could get. So he took full advantage that night, which did his body good.
The sun was already up and at work, waking the rest of the world below his small window. He stood and stretched, said his morning prayers, then went in search of the hot meal that had rudely awaken his deep slumber.
After the revelations and connections at Chartres, and the incident with Tulu and his men, Radcliffe had sent them to the Order’s Paris operations, the old Port-Royal des Champs Abbey complex southwest of Paris and just outside of Versailles. Silas and Celeste were to use the Order’s extensive library and research tools to solve the mysteries surrounding the Ark of the Covenant, as well as Nous’s plot against the Church.
Originally a Cistercian, female monastery built in the heart of the Chevreuse Valley in 1204 in the lineage of the Abbey of Clairvaux, the Port-Royal Abby launched a number of culturally important institutions, most notably the Little Schools of Port-Royal, which became famous for the high quality of the education they offered. Most people forget that the Church was the center of learning and knowledge during the so-called Dark Ages, a misnomer to be sure. And the abbey played their part in preserving the best knowledge Europe had to offer at the time through their pivotal education reforms.
Eventually, most of the complex was razed to the ground at the start of the eighteenth century following a series of papal bulls after it was caught up in a controversial, Catholic religious-reform movement primarily directed at the Jesuits. The Order of Thaddeus eventually reclaimed the property and rebuilt the abbey for their intellectual and theological pursuits.
Silas followed his nose to a large hall, where a hearty breakfast awaited him. The center was commanded by rows of heavy wooden tables. Hanging from the ceiling were large wrought iron chandeliers with modern light fixtures instead of the candles they had once borne. Celeste was halfway through a plate of bacon and cheese eggs when he sat down.
“Good morning, sunshine,” she said, taking a sip of her tea. “How did you sleep?”
“Like a rock. You?”
“Same. Which is good, because we have lots of ground to cover. So grab yourself a plate and fill up. The library awaits.”
He smiled at the thought of getting his hands dirty with a hardcore research project. Most of his days were spent teaching a load of classes and then dealing with his students' complaints, squeezing out precious research and writing time. He grabbed a plate, filled it with the goodness he had smelled from his room, filled a large mug of coffee, then sat down to enjoy his food before the day of research.
It had taken two decades to restore the original abbey complex to its former glory as a working monastery, but the complex was a sight to behold. Outside a large window, Silas could see an expanse of rolling, green hills punctuated by apple orchards and vineyards that were eventually pressed into apple cider and fermented into wine. Three stories of rooms housed the ecumenical coterie of scholars and students dedicated to retrieving and preserving the vintage Christian faith. A large chapel held the daily prayer services, for both the abbey itself as well as the surrounding village community. The largest of the buildings was an original one, which later served as a national museum: the library, which they headed to after breakfast.
The familiar smell of old paper and ink was dizzying, sending Silas into a drug-addict high that only bibliophiles could appreciate. The dark, walnut-lined walls and bookcases, and burnished-bronze light fixtures primed the senses even further. He thought about all that these walls had witnessed with the attempts at reforming the Church to bring it back in line with a historical understanding of the once-for-all faith entrusted to the saints.
“May I help you?” an aged, hunch-backed man with a kind smile and even kinder eyes said as he slowly approached the pair.
“Yes, thank you,” Celeste said. “We’re with the Order. Here on a temporary research assignment, having arrived yesterday.”
“Ahh, welcome. Welcome! And you are?”
“Celeste Bourne,” she said extending her hand. The man took it.
“And Professor Grey. Silas Grey.”
“Ahh, professor. Nice to have you both. I’m Brother Rémy, caretaker of this wonderful, literary establishment,” the man said, waving his arms around the lobby.
“And quite the establishment it is,” Silas said. “How many books do you have in this library?”
“Half a million housed inside, with nearly as many more in climate-controlled vaults beneath.”
Silas whistled and craned his head down one of the hallways trying to get a glimpse of the literary wonderland.
The man chuckled, then cocked his head. “You wouldn’t happen to be the fellows Rowan Radcliffe sent, would you?”
She glanced at Silas, then smiled. “We are. Did he contact you about our arrival?”
“He did. I’ve made arrangements for you to use one of our larger research spaces. You should have all the privacy and resources you need. Come.”
The man hobbled along with a cane, leading them down a hallway narrowed by bookcases on either side. Silas hungrily eyed the books, trying to catch a glimpse of the Church thinkers he had fallen in love with over the years. They rounded a corner into a large, spacious room with high ceilings that took up the three floors of the building. At one end a fire cracked away in a stone fireplace the size of a person, tendrils of smoke escaping and mingling with the scent of the old tomes.
Silas stopped short. “Wait. Is that…” He quickly walked over to a table with an aged book opened, its pages stained with blue, red, and green marginals and text barely registering the script of its ancient knowledge. He whispered, “It is.”
“What’s that?” Celeste asked.
“The Summa Theologica,” Brother Rémy said. “The best-known work of Thomas Aquinas. One of the original reproductions, actually. Normally, it’s housed in the chambers beneath the library. But on occasion we let it roam free.”
“Can I touch it?” Silas asked, as if approaching a rare animal. The man nodded. He grinned and carefully caressed the page with an index finger, running it down the side and across the text. “Magical,” he whispered.
Celeste pulled at his arm gently, then nodded toward another hallway. “Shall we? We haven’t much time.”
He frowned slightly, then nodded. “Let’s see that research space, Brother Rémy.”
The old man took them to a modest room with large windows overlooking the vineyard. The sun was bright and cheery, which would serve them well as they pored over texts for the next several hours in search of answers. A computer terminal with a large monitor sat at one end of the room. Next to it was a cart with hot water and tea bags and a large carafe of coffee, as well as a platter of pastries. In the center of the table sat a large Bible and two e-ink tablets, with an assortment of notebooks and pens.
They sure did know how to treat their visiting researchers.
“Well, I'll leave you to it. Tea and coffee and some fuel for the research race ahead are yours to enjoy. As you can see, we've stepped into the twenty-first century, with the computer terminal and the full-sized e-readers. The computer gives you access to a catalog of everything we have housed in our facility. The e-readers give you access to an expanded billion-book catalog of books. You can even send articles from the terminal to the e-reader tablets. Feel free to use the notebooks and pens, which are provided for your convenience. Shout if you need anything.”
The two thanked the man, then got to work.
Celeste walked over to the carafe of water for a spot of tea and Silas walked over to the computer terminal. “Let’s see what this thing can do…” he mumbled.
He logged onto the powerful Boolean search engine to cross-search databases from hundreds of research institutions around the world, including the Vatican's own secure, digital records. He typed in the first obvious search string: the disappearance of the Ark.
“Right,” Celeste said as she filled her mug with steaming water. “So what do we know so far?”
Silas walked over to the coffee to pour himself his own cup of research fuel while the search engine finished working its magic. “That the Ark isn’t under the Temple Mount?”
She threw him a look of amusement as she added a lump of sugar to her cup, then walked back to the table and picked up an e-reader.
He walked back to the terminal. Predictably, it registered a number of entries. First on the list caught his attention, as it was titled, “The Disappearance of the Ark,” by a Dr. M. Haran of Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
“Might as well start there,” he mumbled. He selected the article and sent it to the e-reader tablets.
The two opened the article and began reading. Silas skipped to the end, learning from his experience as an academic to save time by just reading the conclusion. It read:
To sum up: Shishak and Jehoash did no more than empty the Temple treasures. It was Manasseh who set up vessels for Baal and Asherah in the outer sanctum and introduced the image of Asherah into the inner sanctum of the Temple. And it was probably through him that the Ark was removed. When Josiah cleansed the Temple, the ark was no longer there. Many decades after the ‘sin of Manasseh,' Nebuchadnezzar entered the outer sanctum of the Temple and ‘cut in pieces' its vessels (also plundering the Temple treasuries). Thus when the fateful moment of final destruction arrived, eleven years after the exile of Jehoiachin, the Temple was already deprived of most of its interior accessories.
“Well, that explains why the Ark wasn’t in the Temple,” he said, setting down the tablet.
Celeste finished the article, as well. “Right. Insightful historical and biblical overview of the Ark, but where did it go?”
Good question.
“Wait,” Silas said turning to Celeste. “Did you read the whole article?”
“Of course, didn’t you?”
He mumbled, “I skipped to the conclusion.”
She shrugged. “What can I say? I’m a speed reader.”
He smirked. “Show off.” He returned to the article. “Haran’s conclusions pretty much mirror the tradition surrounding at least one of the possibilities of the Ark’s disappearance.”
“What are the other traditions?” she asked blowing on her tea.
“Well, we know the one about Shishak is bunk after our jaunt to Luxor.”
“Bunk?” she said, raising her brow and smiling. “Is that the technical term?”
“After what we went through, yes. Now, much of the legend surrounding the Ark’s disappearance has held that it and all of the Temple treasures were placed in a chamber underneath the Temple. Some have insisted the priests moved the sacred articles during the reign of Manasseh, as this article suggests.”
“Why Manasseh?” she asked, taking a sip of her tea.
“Because he corrupted the temple with pagan idols and altars. But there’s some confusion over whether or not the treasures were indeed moved based on an account in 2 Chronicles.”
“And what does it say?”
He reached for the Bible, then turned to the passage in chapter thirty-five and read it: “He said to the Levites who taught all Israel and who were holy to the Lord, ‘Put the holy ark in the house that Solomon son of David, king of Israel, built; you need no longer carry it on your shoulders. Now serve the Lord your God and his people Israel.’”
He closed it and set it back in the center of the table. "The account seems to indicate the priests had the Ark in their possession, which means Manasseh hadn't destroyed the Ark. Then they returned the Ark to the purified Temple, per King Josiah's instructions. So the alternative theory is that the Ark and the treasures were removed either during or just before the Babylonian invasion between 605 and 586 BC. Some believe the Babylonians themselves removed the Ark from the Temple along with the other vessels when they looted it, carrying them back to Babylon. Others suspect the Ark was destroyed when the Temple itself was destroyed during the invasion."
“But not all scholars agree?”
He shook his head. “Not at all. The main issue comes from the biblical text itself. The recorded lists of captured Temple articles in 2 Kings 25 never mention the Ark. And, actually, they don't mention the capture of any of the Temple treasures from the inner sanctuary. Most people who have spent any time researching the Ark, myself included, believe the scriptural silence on the issue is a significant statement against the Ark having been taken by the Babylonians. And the fact that the Persians later returned all of the vessels taken by the Babylonians, yet the Bible doesn't mention the most famous one of them all in the list in Ezra 1, pretty much seals the deal.”
Celeste took another sip of her tea. “So then the Ark was removed from the Temple before the Babylonian invasion. Is that right?”
“That's what many biblical historians believe. If the Ark wasn't stolen or destroyed by the Babylonians, then it must have already been removed before they invaded Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple. The Levites could have moved it secretly at any time before that invasion. And, fearing more invasions of their sacred space and the potential for their central religious object falling into the hands of the pagans, they could have kept it hidden for a future time of unveiling.”
“Of course, the million-dollar question is where.”
“Sure is.” He yawned loudly and rubbed his face with his hands. “But I don’t think we’re any closer to finding the blasted thing!”
Celeste set down her tea and playfully punched him in his left shoulder. “Cheer up, Charlie. You forget we've got a powerful, secret weapon at our disposal.”
She drained her tea and stood, then walked over to the cart of hot water to pour herself a fresh cup.
He smirked, both amused and taken aback by her playfulness. “Oh yeah? And what’s that?”
She returned, handing Silas a fresh mug of coffee, and said smiling, “Why, us, of course.”
He took the mug and smiled, liking the sound of that. He raised it toward her and replied, “To us…the secret weapon to finding the Ark.”
They clinked mugs, then got down to business.