Cardinal Molinari had no trouble finding the unmarked alley. Although it was his first visit to the jagged cobblestone corridor, he had known its exact location for the last three decades. It was one of the rare backstreets in the Eternal city that was still off the beaten path of all but the most determined tourists, a carefully preserved time capsule from the dawn of the Enlightenment and just a stone’s throw from the Vatican.
Thirty years was a long time to conduct business with someone without any sort of direct contact. Molinari felt that it was time he paid his respects, particularly in light of recent events. There was much to discuss; things were coming to a head.
Medieval stucco walls towered three stories on either side of him, punctuated by casement windows underscored with gaily-painted flower-boxes. The French doors of the Juliet balconies on the upper floors were shut tight against the winter chill. Laundry flapped overhead in the occasional breeze, but it would take forever to dry in this weather. The alley was always in shadow, even in summer, so that moss grew freely on the cobblestones, undaunted by foot traffic, scooters, and bicycles.
A brace of wrought iron stanchions had been installed across the alley entrance to discourage vehicular traffic. Molinari stepped up on the sidewalk, steadying himself with his walking stick, and cautiously made his way along the narrow concrete ribbon. It was only slightly less cockeyed than the old cobblestones.
Once he rounded the first turn, the white noise of the city muted to where he could almost believe he just stepped back five centuries in time. There were no scooters or bicycles to spoil the illusion, and the early morning air was too chilly for the residents to open their doors and windows and reveal their TVs and microwaves. He had the alleyway to himself for the moment, and cherished each unhurried step into the Italy of his youth.
He rounded the second turn and paused, finally laying eyes on his destination. It was a massive structure at the dead end of the alleyway, an enormous cube five stories high, built of hand-hewn granite blocks and minimal ornamentation. Its small, inset windows were fortified by wrought-iron grillwork on the exterior and backed by thick interior oak shutters. Like the rest of the structures lining the alley, the building had no address or plaque. There was no need for either one; anybody who needed to know was well aware of what the place was and who resided there, and knew not to come calling unless they were specifically invited, which they never were.
Molinari stepped onto the worn marble stoop and tapped the silver cap of his walking stick on the oak door. The thick planks of the door were banded together with three wrought-iron straps. From the look of it, the door, like the rest of the structure, had been fabricated by hand at some time in the early Renaissance, if not before.
The peephole in the door opened and quickly closed again. Molinari drew a nervous breath and slowly let it out to calm his jitters. Behind the door, a heavy iron bolt was slid free. Deep within the thick granite wall beside the door, he could hear a chain clattering as a counter-weight moved. The door slowly swung open on its three greased wrought-iron hinges.
There was no one standing on the marble floor inside to greet him, but it was clear that he was being invited to enter. Molinari crossed the threshold and the door closed behind him with a quiet thud.
Granite dust shook loose from the doorframe above, drifting down to the intricate brass inlay of the marble stoop. The handiwork there depicted the seal of the Knights of the Rose Croix – a medieval knight sitting on a horse and bearing a shield that featured a large cross with a red rose at its juncture. The image was rimmed with the Latin words Fraternitas Roseae Crucis. Inlaid in an arc above the seal were three royal crowns.
The Fortress of the Three Crowns was not quite what Molinari expected, but once he was inside it began to make sense. Its strength and beauty was in its enduring simplicity. The knights of the Rose Croix took vows of poverty, chastity, piety, and obedience, and in contrast to the organization that Molinari worked for they apparently took their vows to heart. From what he could see, the building was entirely functional, both inside and out.
The floors were marble, made to last, and the walls were unadorned plaster, as was the ceiling. There was one piece of art in the large rectangular foyer, but Molinari doubted that it was there for aesthetic effect. It was an enormous painting on canvas, hung on an otherwise blank wall. Over three meters high and two meters wide, the oil depicted St. Michael the Archangel vanquishing Satan at the point of a spear by the edge of the Abyss. Offhand, Molinari guessed that the canvas had been painted by Michelangelo, or by one of his students.
The knight who let him in was dressed in a simple white satin mantle, bearing a large embroidered cross with its signature red rose on the front, and the same on the back. As the young man escorted Molinari across the broad expanse of white marble floor, the cardinal reflected that, centuries ago, a medieval German inquisitor had nearly extinguished this secret Masonic society. Pope Innocent III dispatched the dreaded Konrad von Marburg to eliminate the heretical Albegensians living in the Thuringian Forest near the ancient city of Hesse. But according to legend, a young boy by the name of Christian Rosenkreuz was rescued from the inquisitor’s sword by the Albegensian monks of Langeudoc, who hid the lad away in their monastery.
Ah, those rascals from Languedoc, Molinari thought with a wry smile. The cardinal felt a kinship with them that reached across the centuries. The heretical monks of Languedoc had kept more than the fabled bloodline of Christ in their safekeeping. They shepherded St. Peter’s watchdogs into existence as well, for it was the young Christian Rosenkreuz, whose entire family had been executed by a Papal Inquisitor, who began the Rose Croix.
Molinairi glanced around at the cavernous vestibule. The Rose Croix had been able to keep the Shadow Vatican in continuous operation just around the corner from St. Peter’s for over five hundred years. Given the awesome power of the Mother Church, it was a remarkable accomplishment.
The young knight brought Cardinal Molinari to a pair of oak doors set in the wall opposite the entry. The doors were similar in style and construction to the front door and were flanked by a pair of armed Rose Croix guards. They wore a full set of body armor under their white satin mantles and held their assault rifles at the ready, trigger fingers poised.
Molinari knew they weren’t standing there for decoration. He worked around the Swiss Guards at the Vatican for over fifteen years, and had visited several embassies and government buildings in the course of his duties, with ample opportunity to see a variety of armed guards flanking any number of doorways. But these guards actually gave him pause. For one thing, they didn’t stare straight ahead like palace ornaments; they looked him right in the eye as he approached. He had no doubt that if he acted suspicious in any way, he would be in mortal jeopardy.
The escorting knight swiped a card in a security panel set in the wall, and then held his palm against the black glass screen. A set of lasers behind the screen scanned his print. As a last measure, he positioned his right eye before a lens in the panel.
Once his retinal scan was crosschecked against his palm print and ID card, something mechanical clicked inside the door latch. It was followed by the muffled sounds of a chorus of steel mechanisms smoothly working in concert, but Molinari couldn’t tell where the sound was coming from or what it was. The busyness concluded with a quiet thunk, and the pair of ancient oak doors whispered open.
Except they weren’t oak doors at all. The burnished wood and the wrought-iron straps were a decorative veneer that cloaked a massive pair of vault doors silently operated by hydraulics. The edge of each door showed the butt ends of a dozen retracted stainless steel bolts that aligned with holes in the surrounding doorframe and threshold. Beyond the open doors lay a vast, dimly lit room.
The escort turned to Molinari, and with a deferential nod he gestured for the cardinal to enter the room alone. Molinari complied, and the doors whispered closed behind him. He heard the bolts smoothly slide back into their holes, and with a final thunk he was sealed inside.
The rotunda was twenty meters across with walls three meters high and capped with a domed ceiling. The points of the compass were inlaid with brass in the white marble floor. A pair of identical oak and wrought iron doors was positioned directly opposite from where Molinari stood in the circular room. According to the floor compass, the far set of doors lay to the east.
Two black marble pedestals occupied the center of the otherwise empty rotunda. One pedestal was tall and slim, about the height of a man’s eye, and set closer to the western doors where Molinari stood. The other pedestal was lower, about a meter high and a meter in diameter. It sat in the precise center of the room.
A small crystal pyramid was on display atop the tall pedestal, discreetly ringed by security lasers. Three ancient royal crowns of gold were displayed atop the low pedestal. They rested on a bed of crushed purple velvet and were protected by a thick crystal dome.
Molinari’s eyes roved the walls, and gazed up at the domed ceiling. Every surface was covered with frescos done in the Renaissance style, indirectly lit by hundreds of low-voltage lights arrayed behind a simple crown molding that rimmed the entire room.
The ceiling was a depiction of a cloudless night sky. Individual fiber optic threads were buried in the plaster. Their twinkling ends depicted thousands of stars, dim and bright and of various hues. The constellations were overlaid with representations of the gods of the Zodiac, arranged in the twelve houses and aligned with the compass on the floor.
The fresco on the curved left wall told the story of Evolution, from the primordial soup through the dinosaurs to the primates and the rise of Man. The fresco on the right wall told the Bible story of the Three Kings seeking the Christ Child. One of the Kings was sighting the Eastern Star through a crystal pyramid he held in the palm of his hand.
Molinari approached the crystal pyramid atop the tall black pedestal. At just about at eye level, it seemed to be inviting him to come closer and have a look. He couldn’t resist. He steadied himself with his walking stick and leaned in close, careful not to touch the treasure and set off the security lasers. Squinting one eye closed, he peered into the pyramid with the other one, exactly like the King in the fresco.
The pyramid concentrated the soft ambient light of the rotunda into a single bright ray that traced a straight line through the three stars of Orion’s belt in the ceiling above. The stream of guiding light shined down upon a manger depicted at the far end of the fresco.
Molinari stepped back from the pyramid and gazed in revelation at the Nativity scene. Centered above the far set of doors, the birth of the Christ Child was the ultimate destination of not only the Three Kings in the fresco on his right, but also of the procession of creatures crawling out of the primordial swamp in the fresco on his left.
In one transcendent moment, Molinari understood that the lesson of the rotunda lay in the harmony of science, mythology, and religion. There was no conflict, no contradiction, and no blasphemy, no repudiation of truth, denial of fact, or dependence on blind faith or superstition. All of it was resolved into a singularity of the Divine made manifest on Earth. Though he couldn’t articulate it if he tried, it all made perfect sense to him now. It all made perfect sense. Breaking into a wry smile, he realized that more than anything, what it actually reminded him of was an athletic young rabbi splashing through a primordial swamp on Christmas morning, following a star in the east.
The doors below the Nativity scene were opened from within by a nurse in a white uniform pantsuit and a stethoscope draped around her neck. She smiled and beckoned for him to come. He was standing behind the pyramid, his eyes aglow. She had seen the look before. She understood.
Molinari returned her smile and walked around the two pedestals, the silver tip of his walking stick clicking on the marble floor with every other step. Behind her, he could see a sun-filled suite of rooms, all done in smooth plaster and white marble and trimmed in rose red.
In the far room, a large bed sat on a low dais facing an arc of French windows that overlooked a manicured garden. Peacocks wandered beneath an orange tree and among the rose bushes. Beyond the garden wall was a sweeping vista of Rome.
Sir Reynard was propped up on his pillows, resting comfortably on pure white sheets under a quilted down comforter. The old black gentleman was well over one hundred years old, but his mind was still sharp. Reynard smiled kindly at his visitor and bade him to come to his bedside.
Molinari was deeply honored to finally meet the Grand Master. He entered the bedroom and approached the bed with diffident steps, sinking to one knee upon the dais and steadying himself with his walking stick. He lifted Sir Reynard’s lean, wrinkled hand and kissed the master’s Rose Croix ring. A pure white diamond glinted in the center of a rose formed by tiny, faceted rubies.
“Sir Reynard,” Molinari said with a respectful bow of his head.
Reynard grasped the cardinal’s hand in thanks, and Molinari looked into his eyes. “So good of you to come, my friend. At long last.”