The old monk stirred in his bed. He had lived a long life, praise be, but the Lord was testing him in his dotage. It hurt when he moved nowadays, darts of agony pinging in his joints. And tonight they were playing up more than usual. There was only one thing for it: a slug of the sweet Gonder wine that was his only indulgence. The monk grinned and licked his lips.
Then he forgot about the wine.
The window of the chapel was illuminated. But this was no torchlight – there was something unsullied about the luminosity. The holy man strained to make sense of the vision; curse it, the world grew more blurred with every day. An American woman had told him there was something growing on his eyes that could be fixed by doctors. Yet the cure would cost more than he received as alms in five years, and besides, he knew the truth. He had been given a trial of faith, and this he would overcome. Even as the monk watched, the evanescence faded. He heaved himself up with a prayer stick, chuckling at his own senility.
Yet this was no figment of his imagination. The radiance was back, stronger this time, the window dappled with falling starlight. The holy man glanced at the holy of holies and began a series of obeisances – bowing and crossing himself, lifting one leg, murmuring in Ge’ez. Then he hobbled to the door of the chapel and peered outside. The light enveloped his eyes completely, cascading down upon him in waves. It occurred to him that he had died. Or, praise be, it was a miracle.
The eyes of the blind shall be opened.
The ears of the deaf shall be unstopped.
The starlight dissipated and with disappointment the monk realized the world was still filmy, as if impure glass separated him from the night. Then he saw the patch of light hovering between his feet. But when he looked at it the light zoomed off across the dirt, eddying away towards the ancient church. The holy man cried out, dropping his prayer stick and hobbling after it. The beam reached the church, rose up the walls, came to rest on the Messiah himself. Blood dripped from Christ’s feet, oozed from the wound in his side, trickled from both hands. The monk threw himself to earth.
Stigmata.
In that moment the aged one knew true beauty.
*
The moon seemed bigger up here in the mountains and the air was thin, with fewer particles to adulterate its glow. Jake and Florence had mirrors angled to the lunar surface, and the distillation of moonlight they had brewed converged on the statue in a nimbus of white. The monk was in ecstasies, pressing his forehead into the earth, jabbering in that arcane language. By Jake’s side lay two empty bottles: wine that had become the blood of Christ. The journalist left Florence to maintain the illuminations and stole towards the chapel.
It was a dreamlike moment, dashing up the overgrown path and heaving the door aside to enter the forbidden place. The room was clogged with the holy man’s personal effects – rags, empty wine bottles, a dozen prayer sticks leaning against the wall. Jake felt a shadow of guilt. They had played a shabby trick on an old man.
The chapel was bisected by a wooden wall, diabolic imagery swarming across it. A purple devil whipped a naked man strung up by his hands; another demon led a white-clad figure into the desert by the chin. The angels above were winged heads with Afro-style hair, peeping down at the hellions in their frozen dance. A velvet curtain hung over a door in the partition, and Jake paused to compose himself. Through that wooden screen might lie the Book of Thunder, guarded for more than a thousand years. Or the Ark of the Covenant, though it was insane to think it.
As Jake squeezed through the aperture his throat tightened.
A stone chest stood in the middle of the chamber.