Tess felt increasingly overpowered by what she was seeing.
And increasingly fearful.
Bulls. Like flames and crosses, so much of this nightmare had to do with bulls, and while her gaze pivoted along a wall, across the brilliant multi- colored bulls, she suddenly froze at the sight of one bull that was larger than all the others. Instead of having been portrayed in red, black, and brown, it was monochrome, the white of chalk, like the bull in the statue, and its head was raised in agony, a spearlike barbed line projecting through its neck.
Tess followed the direction of the white bull's anguished expression and whimpered when she saw another locked iron door.
What had Gerrard just said? We have a sacred responsibility. At any cost, the sickness of the planet must be reversed. And earlier, Fulano had said that this chamber was the next-to-ultimate revelation. What was behind the door?
'This is the only example of a violent image in the cave.' Fulano interrupted her urgent, panicked thoughts. 'But my ancestor wasn't puzzled. He understood the necessity for the violence in the painting, and he also understood that the color of the bull, its whiteness, was a sign. He knew precisely what he had to do.'
Tess gripped Craig's hand, watching Fulano unlock the door, then shove it open, the shriek of its hinges making her spine quiver.
'Somehow I don't think we're going to see more paintings,' Craig said.
'You assume correctly,' Fulano said. 'What you're going to see is the truth.'
Tess gripped Craig's hand much harder. In dismay, she hesitated. But Hugh Kelly and the guards urged her onward. With dread, her stomach cramping, she had to step through the door.
TWELVE
The cavern was dim, illuminated sparsely not by lightbulbs but by torches. The cavern became darker when Fulano shut and locked the door, blocking the light from the bulbs in the chamber of the bulls.
'The floor is damp but level. You shouldn't have trouble maintaining your balance,' Gerrard said, reassuringly. Their footsteps echoed. As Tess approached the first of the torches, she saw that it was made of stone and anchored into the cavern's floor. At the top, a basin was filled with flaming oil. The tongues of fire wavered as if her approach had caused a subtle breeze.
She stepped toward a second torch, and beyond in the darkness, she heard Gerrard and Fulano walking. Something scraped. A match flickered. She saw Gerrard lower it toward another torch, from which flames soon rose. Fulano did the same, lighting a farther torch. The two men moved around the chamber, continuing to light more torches until the darkness was almost completely dispelled. Even so, when they passed the torches, their shadows wavered eerily.
Fulano had described the cave paintings as the Sistine Chapel of paleolithic art. But now, in shock, Tess found herself staring at a true chapel. She tried to retain her presence of mind, to analyze what she was seeing. The chapel's design, its columns and vaulted ceiling, looked Roman, but given what Fulano had said about the cave having been discovered in the eighteen hundreds, Tess suspected that no matter the chapel's design, it wasn't ancient but instead had been built within the past hundred years.
It was chiseled from limestone and divided into three sections. To the right, three steps led up to an arched entrance and then an aisle with a bench carved out of the wall. On the left, three other steps led up to an identical aisle and bench. In the middle, a more lofty arched entrance provided access to a long open area, lower than the aisles and visible from the benches. The design was intended to focus attention toward a prominent object on a large square altar at the rear of the central area, and that object – Tess's heart faltered – was a bas-relief statue of Mithras straddling a white bull, slicing its throat. She wanted to scream. Her mind swirled. She feared that she'd go insane.
The statue was twice as large as the one she'd seen in Joseph's bedroom. Its white marble was weathered, cracked, and chipped, and she knew in her soul that this wasn't a copy, as Joseph's had been. No, this was the original. This was the statue that the small determined group of heretics had managed to take with them when they used ropes to escape down the mountain the night before the massacre at Montsegur.
'As I promised,' Fulano said. The truth.'
'Come. Look closer,' Gerrard said. He shifted between Tess and Craig, spread out his arms, and conducted them toward the chapel's central area. Before he entered, he stopped at a basin mounted on a pedestal and dipped his right hand within it. Water glistened on his fingers as he touched them to his forehead, his chest, then his left and right shoulder, making the Sign of the Cross.
But not the cross of Christianity, Tess knew. This cross was that of the sun god.
'A holy-water basin?' Her fear gave way to bewilderment.
'No doubt, it reminds you of Catholicism,' Gerrard said. 'But the ritual predates Catholicism. Like so many of our rituals, this one was borrowed – stolen - from us after Constantine converted from Mithraism to Christianity during the fourth century. After they persecuted us, the hypocrites then pretended that they'd also invented communion, the consecration of bread and wine, the sharing of the sacred meal. But unlike their false religion's bread and wine, which supposedly represents the body and blood of Christ, our bread and wine represents the fertility of, the bounty of, the earth. Similarly this water – which doesn't need to be blessed because simply by being water it's already holy – represents the glory of the rains and rivers that satisfy nature's thirst.'
'Or used to,' Fulano said, 'before poisons in the atmosphere turned the rain into acid. That water comes from a stream in this valley that hasn't yet been polluted.'
They neared the altar. Tess shuddered at the sight of the dog, the serpent, and the scorpion trying to stop the sacrifice that would bring life back to nature. On the left of the dying bull, the blood of which was supposed to fertilize the soil, a torchbearer's flame pointed upward while that of the torchbearer on the right pointed down. Good and evil in conflict.
'So now it's time,' Gerrard said.
Fulano joined them.
The vice president continued, 'I'm sure that despite the carefully constructed sequence of our revelation, the revelation itself is not a surprise. It was obvious to me that when you boarded Air Force Two, you suspected I was one of the heretics – to use the term you prefer – although for us Christianity is the heresy. It was also obvious to me that you suspected that I knew you suspected. So we engaged in word-games, clever dialogues in which each tried to fool the other. But neither of us was convincing. Even so, the things you said affected me, Tess. Your profound environmental concerns, your obvious commitment to the planet. In Washington, when I heard that you threatened us, I agreed with a plan to have you guided toward me so I could personally arrange your death. At José's estate, your execution could easily have been accomplished. However, I'm no longer convinced that you ought to be killed. I see possibilities in your attitude. I think that your passionate skills as a journalist could be a help to us. You feel justifiably furious about your mother's death. As do I. That murder was senseless. Clumsy. Needless. But it happened. It can't be undone. So the question I need to ask is, To preserve your life, are you prepared to subdue your grief and work with us? Think carefully. It's the most important question you've ever been asked.'