The Alexandria Link

FORTY-SIX

LISBON

3:30 PM

MALONE STARED AT THE MONASTERY OF SANTA MARIA DE Belém. He, Pam, and Jimmy McCollum had flown from London to Lisbon then taken a cab from the airport to the waterfront.

Lisbon sat perched on a broad switchback of hills that overlooked the sea-like Tejo estuary, a place of wide symmetrical boulevards and handsome tree-filled squares. One of the world’s grandest suspension bridges spanned the mighty river and led to a towering statue of Christ, arms outstretched, which embraced the city from the eastern shore. Malone had visited many times and was always reminded of San Francisco, both in physical makeup and in the city’s propensity for earthquakes. Several had left their mark.

All countries possessed splendid things. Egypt, the pyramids. Italy, St. Peter’s. England, Westminster. France, Versailles. Listening to the cabdriver on the ride from the airport, he knew that, for Portugal, national pride came from the abbey that sprawled out before him. Its white limestone façade stretched longer than a football field, aged like old ivory, and combined Moorish, Byzantine, and French Gothic in an exuberance of decorations that seemed to breathe life into the towering walls.

People crowded everywhere. A camera-toting parade streamed in and out from the entrances. Across a busy boulevard and train tracks that fronted the impressive south façade, tourist buses waited in an angled line, like ships moored in a harbor. A sign informed visitors of how the abbey was first erected in 1500 to satisfy a promise made by King Manuel I to the Virgin Mary and was built on the site of an old mariners’ hospice first constructed by Prince Henry the Navigator. Columbus, da Gama, and Magellan had all prayed here before their journeys. Through the centuries the massive structure had served as a religious house, a retirement home, and an orphanage. Now it was a World Heritage Site, restored to much of its former glory.

“The church and abbey are dedicated to St. Jerome,” he heard one of the tour guides say to a crowd in Italian. “Symbolic in that both Jerome and this monastery represented new points of departure for Christianity. Ships left here to discover the New World and bring them Christ. Jerome translated the ancient Bible into Latin, so more could discover its wonder.” He could tell that McCollum understood the woman, too.

“Italian one of your languages?” he asked.

“I know enough.”

“A man of many talents.”

“Whatever’s necessary.”

He caught the surly attitude. “So what’s next in this quest?”

McCollum produced another slip of paper upon which was written some of the first excerpt and more of the cryptic phrases.

It is a mystery, but visit the chapel beside the Tejo, in Bethlehem, dedicated to our patron saint. Begin the journey in the shadows and complete it in the light, where a retreating star finds a rose, pierces a wooden cross, and converts silver to gold. Find the place that forms an address with no place, where is found an other place. Then, like the shepherds of the painter Poussin, puzzled by the enigma, you will be flooded with the light of inspiration.

He handed the sheet to Pam and said, “Okay. Let’s take a visit and see what’s there.”

They followed a thick swarm of tourists to the entrance. A sign indicated that admission to the church was free, but a ticket was required for the rest of the buildings.

Inside the church, in what was identified as the lower choir, the groined ceiling loomed low and produced an imposing gloom. To his left stood the cenotaph of Vasco da Gama. Simple and solemn, it abounded with nautical symbols. Another tomb, of the poet Luis de Camões, rested to his right along with a baptismal font. Bare walls in both niches added to both the austerity and the grandeur. People crowded the alcoves. Cameras flashed. Tour guides droned on about the significance of the dead.

Malone strolled into the nave and the initial dimness of the lower choir gave way to a bright wonder. Six slender columns, each a profusion of ornamentation twined with carved flowers, stretched skyward. The late-afternoon sun poured through a series of stained-glass windows. Rays and shadows chased one another across the limestone walls, gray with age. The vaulted roof resembled a sheaf of ribs, the columns like canopy supports, the mesh holding in place like a ship’s rigging. Malone felt the presence of Saracens who once ruled Lisbon, and noticed Byzantine fancies. A thousand details multiplied around him without repetition.

Remarkable.

Even more remarkable, he thought, given that ancient masons possessed the nerve to build something so massive upon Lisbon’s quivering ground.

Wooden pews that once accommodated monks now held only the inquisitive. A low murmur of voices echoed across the nave, periodically overshadowed by a calm voice through a public address system that requested silence in a variety of languages. Malone located the source of the admonition. A priest before a microphone, at the people’s altar, in the center of the cross-shaped interior. Nobody seemed to pay the warning any heed-especially not the tour guides, who continued on with their paid discourses.

“This place is magnificent,” Pam said.

He agreed. “The sign out front said it closes at five. We need tickets to the rest.”

“I’ll go get them,” McCollum said. “But doesn’t the clue lead us only here, to the church?”

“I have no idea. To be sure, let’s have a look at whatever else there is.”

McCollum made his way back through the clot of people to the portico.

“What do you think?” Pam asked, still holding the sheet of paper.

“About him or the quest?”

“Both are a problem.”

He smiled. She was right. But as for the quest, “Some of it now makes sense. Begin the journey in the shadows and complete it in the light. The entrance does that nicely. Like a basement back there, then it opens into a bright attic.”

The priest again quietly admonished the crowd to stay silent and everyone again ignored him.

“He has a tough job,” Pam said.

“Like the kid taking names when the teacher leaves the room.”

“Okay, Mr. Genius,” she said. “What about where a retreating star finds a rose, pierces a wooden cross, and converts silver to gold. Find the place that forms an address with no place, where is found another place.”

He was already thinking about that and his attention was drawn forward, to the chancel, where a rectangular floor plan led to a concave wall backdropping the high altar, all topped with a combination of hemispherical dome, barrel vault, and stone-coffered ceiling. Ionic and Corinthian pillars rose symmetrically on three sides of the chancel, framing vaulted stone chambers that displayed elaborate royal tombs. Five paintings wrapped the concave wall, everything drawing the eye to the majestic baroque sacrarium that stood in the center, elevated, above the high altar.

He wove his way around loitering tourists to the far side of the people’s altar. Velvet ropes blocked any entrance to the chancel. A placard informed him that the sacrarium, made entirely of silver, had been crafted by goldsmith João de Sousa between 1674 and 1678. Even from fifty feet away the ornate repository, full of detail, appeared magnificent.

He turned and stared back through the nave, past the pillars and pews, to the lower choir, where they’d entered.

Then he saw it. In the upper choir, past a thick stone balustrade, fifty feet above the church floor. High in the farthest exterior wall, a huge eye glared down at him. The circular window stretched ten feet or more in diameter. Mullions and traceries radiated from its center. Roof ribs wound a twisting path back toward it and seemed to dissolve into its shadowless radiance, bright as a stage lamp and suffusing the church’s interior.

A common adornment to many medieval churches. Named after its fanciful shape.

Rose window.

Facing due west. Late in the day. Blazing like the sun.

But there was more.

At the center of the upper choir’s balustrade stood a large cross. He stepped forward and noticed that the cross fit perfectly into the round of the window, the brilliant rays flooding past it into the nave.

Where a retreating star finds a rose, pierces a wooden cross, and converts silver to gold.

Seems they’d found the place.