The Cana Mystery

Prologue

Daybreak. Pope Pius II watches a fiery orb crest the Tiber. His mind drifts. He recalls that Aristotle’s student Callippus once computed the seasons’ duration, measuring the sun’s movement within its ethereal sphere. While the pontiff ruminates, his valet methodically extinguishes the candles that had illuminated a long, busy night. Pius smiles. An educated man, he’d known it would be difficult to glean the secret. Nevertheless, anticipation grows in him. On this blessed day they may unlock the great enigma, a message concealed for a millennium.

One artifact has remained hidden in the catacombs since the Vandals’ attack in 455. He’d retrieved the second from Scotland twenty-five years ago. Now he prays the cryptic knowledge these objects contain would avail his church in its desperate campaign against the Turks, who are occupying Constantinople.

Pius turns away from the window and crosses through a cleverly masked portal. Emanating from his private library, wondrous voices speak incomprehensible words. Inside, a dexterous young acolyte transcribes the mysterious cipher. Pius watches the boy ink words onto a scroll. Gradually, words form into couplets; couplets become quatrains. “It must be the lost prophecy,” the pope thinks, “just as Bessarion and Regiomontanus described.” Pius understands not a syllable.

“What language is that, Jacopo?” he asks his most trusted cardinal.

“An ancient tongue, Holiness. Few in Christendom speak it. It’s beyond my ken, but my young scribe can translate.”

The pope is not surprised. Cardinal Jacopo Piccolomini-Ammannati is ever surrounded by an entourage of brilliant students. Over the years, he’d guided countless priests’ careers. The shrewd academician could be elected pope himself someday, supported by this army of admirers and protégés.

“Very well. What does it say?”

The Gallic child smiles. He is eager to win favor with the Holy Father — and he is secretly pleased he will be able to report the prophecy to his true master, the brilliant Spider King. Having transcribed several quatrains into Latin, he begins to read aloud.