The Sanctuary

Chapter 13

Sebastian felt the chill of dampness seep out from the walls and smother his bones with its deathly embrace as he followed the guard down the narrow, winding steps.

He kept his eyes low, away from the flames of the guard’s torch. In the swaying, golden light, he noticed that a groove had been worn into the center of the treads. It had thrown him at first, before he’d realized it had been carved into the stone by the repeated passage of shackles.

Many prisoners had languished here, in Tomar. And many more would.

He followed the guard down a long, narrow passageway. Rough, wooden doors with forbidding steel locks lined it on either side. The guard finally stopped outside one of them. He fumbled with a large ring of keys and unlocked it. It shuddered on its hinges as it swung outwards. The opening was like the mouth of a cave, a doorway to a tenebrous abyss. Sebastian looked at the guard. The sweating man nodded with unsettling disinterest. Sebastian steeled himself, pulled a torch down from its wall mount, lit it against the guard’s, and stepped inside.

Despite the hellish surroundings, the silhouetted figure, huddled against a dark corner, was instantly familiar. Sebastian froze at the sight as a feeling of infinite sadness descended on him.

“It’s alright,” the old man told him. “Come.”

Sebastian couldn’t move. His feet felt as if they were bolted to the cold stone floor.

“Please,” the old man whispered again, his voice coarse and dry. “Come. Sit with me.”

Sebastian took a hesitant step closer, then another, his eyes unwilling to accept the heart-wrenching sight facing him.

The battered, demolished man raised a chained, twisted arm and beckoned him over. Two of the fingers, Sebastian noticed, weren’t moving at all. The thumb was gone altogether.

Isaac Montalto was a good man. He’d been a close friend of Sebastian’s father’s. Both were learned men, teachers and tutors to the elite, and had spent years working together in the great city of Lisbon, studying and translating Arabic and Greek texts that were long forgotten. A small invader had put an end to that. The virus, an unremarkable flu by today’s standards, had ravaged the city mercilessly that winter, taking Sebastian’s family with it. The baby boy had survived — his father had acted swiftly and placed him in the care of his friend Isaac, at his home in nearby Tomar, when the first signs of the illness had appeared in the family. Isaac and his wife had cared for the baby as best they could those first few weeks, before Isaac’s wife had gotten sick herself. The old man had no choice but to put Sebastian into the care of the friars at the monastery of Tomar. Isaac’s wife also hadn’t made it through that winter, but Isaac and Sebastian had survived.

Being a widower, Isaac hadn’t been able to keep the baby with him. The friars at the monastery would raise him, along with other orphans. But Isaac was never far away. He was a friend and a mentor, keeping a watchful eye as the baby grew into a boy and into the young man he was now. He’d waved him off with a heavy heart when the boy had been selected to pursue his duty to God at the cloisters of the Cathedral of Lisbon. But that was three long years ago. And now he was here, a victim of the Inquisition, a pale, battered reflection of the man he used to be.

“Isaac,” Sebastian said, his voice filled with sorrow and remorse. “My God…”

“Yes,” Isaac whispered with a pained chortle, his eyes narrowing with the pain in his chest. “Your God…” He swallowed heavily and nodded to himself. “He must be very proud. To see to what great lengths his servants are willing to go to ensure his word is followed.”

“I’m sure he never intended anything like this,” Sebastian offered.

Somehow, a hint of a smile found its way into the old man’s eyes. “Careful, my dear boy,” Isaac cautioned him. “Such words could land you in the next cell.”

The madness of the Inquisition had infected the Iberian Peninsula for over two hundred years. As with its more famous analogue in Spain, its main thrust in Portugal was to root out converts from other faiths — Muslims and Jews — who, despite claiming to have embraced the Catholic faith, were still secretly following their original beliefs.

It hadn’t always been that way. The Reconquista — the retaking of Spain and Portugal from the Moors that began in the eleventh century — had resulted in a tolerant, multiracial, and multireligious society. Christians, Jews, and Muslims had lived, worked, and thrived together. In cities like Toledo, they had collaborated on translating texts that had been stored for centuries in churches and mosques. Greek learning that had long been lost to the West was rediscovered, and the universities of Paris, Bologna, and Oxford were all based on their efforts. It was where the Renaissance and the scientific revolution had truly begun.

But this religious tolerance had displeased Rome. The questioning of man’s blind faith in God and in one set of strictures had to be stopped. The monarchs of Spain used this intolerance to make their move. The Inquisition was set up in 1478, with Portugal following suit just over fifty years later. As was the case in all conflicts that were based on religious differences, the true motivation behind it had a lot more to do with greed than with faith. The Reconquista and the Inquisition were no different. They were essentially land grabs.

The enforced baptisms had begun straightaway. The peninsula had to be cleansed — and pilfered. The Jews and Muslims who remained in Spain and Portugal were given a choice of conversion or expulsion. The converts became known as Neo-Christos — new Christians. Many of those who elected to stay were landowners and successful traders. They had a lot to lose. And so they accepted the cross, some of them grudgingly embracing their new faith, others refusing to give up the religion of their birth or its rituals, following the strictures of their faith in the confines of their homes, and, in the case of some of the more determined Marranos, actually attending covert synagogues.

The prisons of the Inquisition soon overflowed to other public buildings. Those taken in for questioning were stretched on the rack and had their arms and legs wrenched off. The inquisitors also seemed to have a soft spot for the soles of their victims’ feet. Some were beaten with cudgels while others were cut open, the cuts smeared with butter, then held over open fires. Falsified court decisions and forged denunciations led to forced confessions. Those who confessed voluntarily were allowed to pay a fine and repent in an auto da fé, “act of faith” public ceremony of penance; those who confessed on the rack had their property confiscated and were sentenced to imprisonment, often for life, or burned at the stake.

The Neo-Christos sent envoys to Rome to beseech — and bribe — the pope and his cronies to reign in the inquisitors. The king spent even more in keeping Rome on his side. And while the money flowed to the Vatican, the Marranos continued to live in fear, having to decide whether to leave the country and lose everything, or risk facing the torture chambers.

Isaac had decided to stay. And the torture chamber that stalked him for years was to become his final home.

“I didn’t know, Isaac,” the young man told him. “I didn’t know they were after you.”

“It’s all right, Sebastian.”

“No,” he flared up, his voice faltering with emotion. “They say they found books in your possession. They say they have written evidence, admissions from some who know you and who confirm their accusations,” he lamented. “What can I do, Isaac? Please. Tell me something, anything that I can use to overturn this horrible injustice.”

Sebastian Guerreiro had followed the path of his lord with an open heart. He hadn’t expected it to lead to this. He had been in the service of the Inquisition for just over a year. The grand inquisitor himself, Francisco Pedroso, a charismatic and forceful man, had selected him for duty. But with each passing day, with each witnessed horror, the questions in the young man’s mind had multiplied until he was finding it impossible to reconcile the teachings he had so embraced with the actions of his mentors.

“Shh,” the old man replied. “You know that nothing can be done. Besides, the accusations are true. My faith was handed down to me by my father, as it was to him. And even if they weren’t, thirty hectares of Tomar soil would make them so.” Isaac cleared his throat and looked up at Sebastian. His eyes, glistening with life, belied his shattered body. “That’s not why I asked for you to be brought here. Please. Sit with me.” He patted the straw-hewn ground beside him. “I need to tell you something.”

Sebastian nodded weakly and joined him.

“I was hoping I wouldn’t have to ask you this for many years, Sebastian. It’s something I was always planning to do, but”—he sighed heavily—“I don’t think I can wait any longer.”

Surprise and confusion flooded Sebastian’s face. “What is it, Isaac?”

“I need to entrust you with something. It could be a monstrous burden to bear. One that could get you killed or see you end up in gilded surroundings like these.” Isaac paused, seemingly studying the young man’s response, before adding, “Should I continue, or am I mistaken in my faith that you are still the Sebastian you always were?”

Sebastian caught his scrutinizing gaze, then dropped his eyes to the ground in shame. “I am as you remember me, but I am not certain that I am worthy of your trust,” he said ruefully. “I have seen things, Isaac. Things no man should allow to happen, and yet I have stood back and said nothing.” He glanced up at Isaac, wary of the older man’s castigating stare. He only saw warmth and concern radiating back from the prisoner. “I have shamed my father’s memory. I have shamed you.”

Isaac reached out, his mutilated hand trembling as it landed on the young man’s arm. “We live in evil times. Don’t blame yourself for the vile actions of those who have it in their power to do otherwise.”

Sebastian nodded, his heart still suffocating with regret. “No burden would be too great, Isaac. Not after what I have been party to.”

Isaac seemed to weigh one last time his decision to tell Sebastian. “Your father wanted you to know,” he finally said. “I promised him I would tell you when the time was right. And I fear that if I don’t tell you now, I may never get that chance. And then it would all be…lost.”

Sebastian’s eyes lit up. “My father?”

The old man blinked a nod. “We found something, he and I, many years ago. Here, in Tomar. In the crypts of the monastery.” He fixed Sebastian with a fervent stare. “A book, Sebastian. A most wondrous book. A book that once might have contained a great gift.”

Sebastian’s brow furrowed. “‘Once’?”

“The monastery, as you know, holds a veritable trove of knowledge in its crypts, chests, and crates of old codices and scrolls dating back centuries, spoils of foreign misadventures and crusades, all of them waiting to be translated and catalogued. It’s an arduous and endless task. Your father and I were fortunate enough to be invited to work with the monks on translating them, but there are so many of them, and a lot of them are mundane records of disputes, personal correspondences of trivial importance…banalities.

“In a dusty crate, one book captured our interest the instant we saw it. It was lost among more worthy books and old scrolls. It was partially damaged by water at some point in its long history, and its last pages and its back were missing. Its cover, however, was relatively unscathed. On it was a symbol we had never seen before, that of a snake, coiled into a circle, feeding on its own tail.

“The book was written in an old Arabic, one that was rather difficult to translate. Its title, though, was clear.” He paused to clear his parched throat and darted a wary glance at the doorway, making sure they were not overheard. “It was named Kitab al Wasifa—the book of prescriptions.”

The old man leaned in conspiringly. “Your father and I decided to keep the book’s existence secret from the monks. We smuggled it out of the monastery one night. It took us months to translate it properly. The Naskhi script it was written in was ancient. And although it was Arabic, it was scattered with Persian words and expressions, which wasn’t unusual when dealing with scientific documents, but it made it harder to read. But we did read it. And the four of us — your parents, myself, and my dear departed Sarah — we made a pact. To try its teachings ourselves. To see if it worked. And if so, to let the world know of our find.

“At first, it seemed to hold its promise. We had stumbled on something marvelous, Sebastian. Then, gradually, with time, we became aware of the flaw. A flaw which, if it wasn’t overcome, meant that no one could ever know about our discovery, as that would lead to a different kind of upheaval, one that would turn the world on its head in a way no sane man would want. And so, it had to remain our secret.” His face winced with sadness. “And then fate intervened, with pitiless cruelty.”

The old man’s thoughts seemed to drift back to a painful time, to the winter when he’d lost his wife and his friends. His years had seemed bleak ever since.

“What was in the book?” Sebastian asked.

The old man looked at him, then, with a vehement glow in his eyes, he simply whispered, “Life.”

Isaac’s revelation wrestled Sebastian’s mind and pinned it mercilessly to the ground for days. He could think of nothing else. He couldn’t sleep. He drifted through his work inattentively. Food and drink lost its taste.

He knew his life would never be the same.

He finally managed to find an opening in his duty roster when his absence wouldn’t raise suspicions and traveled to the hills outside Tomar. He knew Isaac’s land well. It had been seized since the old man had been incarcerated, its vineyards left to rot untended while the Inquisition’s court schemed its way to its inevitable verdict.

Sebastian rode out to the hillock Isaac had painstakingly described. He reached it as the last of the day’s light clung obstinately to the darkening sky. The blossoming olive tree was easy to find. The tree of sorrow, Isaac had called it. In another place, at another time, it would have been the opposite, Sebastian thought.

He dismounted and took twenty paces towards the setting sun. The stone outcropping was there, exactly where Isaac said it would be. Sebastian’s nerves throbbed with anticipation as he knelt down and, using a small dagger, started to dig into the dry soil.

Within moments, the blade struck the box.

His hands dug into the ground, feverishly clearing the soil around the small chest before lifting it out carefully, as if it would crumble under his grasp. It was a simple metal box, perhaps three hands wide and two hands deep. A sudden flurry of crows took flight farther down the hill, cawing as they circled overhead before disappearing into the valley beyond. Sebastian glanced around, making sure he was alone, then, his skin tingling with excitement, he pried the box open.

In it, as Isaac had described, were two items. A pouch, wrapped protectively in an oiled leather skin. And a small, wooden box. Sebastian put the box down and unwrapped the skin, exposing the book and its tooled cover.

He stared at it, his eyes drinking in the curious, mesmerizing symbol on its tooled cover. He opened it. The first pages were made of smooth, strong, and burnished paper. They were filled with beautiful, richly rendered, full-length illustrations of the human body and of its inner workings. Numerous labels of writing swamped them. Other pages were covered with careful and precise Naskhi script, in black ink, with elaborate rubrications throughout. He tore his attention away from the pages and turned it over and saw what Isaac had spoken of. The back cover of the book was missing. Its torn binding indicated that some of its last pages were also lost. The last couple of pages that remained were shriveled and rough, the ink washed away long ago and leaving behind nothing more than an intelligible, bluish smearing.

With a burning ache in his heart, Sebastian understood.

A key part of the book was missing. At least, that was what Isaac and Sebastian’s parents had hoped, once the flaw had revealed itself: that the missing pages would hold the secret, the key to overcoming it. But they couldn’t be sure. The flaw was, perhaps, insurmountable. Perhaps there was no cure. In which case the book was of great danger, and the whole venture was doomed to failure.

He put the book down and picked up the small box. It also had the symbol carved into its lid. Hesitantly, he unhooked its copper clasp and opened it.

The box’s contents were still there.

And on that lonely hill, Sebastian knew what his destiny would be.

He would continue their work.

He would try to overcome the flaw.

Even though doing that, he knew, would place his life at great risk.

Tracing the book’s origin wasn’t easy. Sebastian’s father and Isaac had worked on it for years. The most they’d been able to ascertain was that the book was part of several crates of codices and scrolls that had made their way to Tomar after the fall of Acre in 1291.

The texts had been collected by the Templars during their forays into the Holy Land, when the knights were known to have explored the mysticism and knowledge of their Muslim enemies, long before the order had been suspended by Pope Clement V in 1312. Following the arrests of the Templars in France, their possessions across Europe were ordered to be transferred to the Knights of the Order of St. John of the Hospital — the Hospitallers. Provincial councils, however, were allowed to judge the Templars locally, and in Spain, the Tarragonese Council, led by Archbishop Rocaberti, a friend of the Templar warrior-monks, convened and decreed the innocence of the Catalan-Aragonese Templars, as well as those of Mallorca and of the Kingdom of Valencia. The order would be dissolved, but the brethren would be allowed to remain in their monasteries and to collect a pension for life.

James II, the king of Aragon, who didn’t want the Templars’ riches to end up in the coffers of the increasingly powerful Hospitallers, created a new order, the Order of Montesa, and effectively folded the old Templar order into it. The members of the new order, now known as montesinos, would submit to the rule of the established Order of Calatrava, which was also Cistercian and followed similar ordinances to those of the Templars. They would keep their belongings, and they would protect the kingdom from the Granada Muslims, the last remnants of Islam in the Iberian Peninsula.

In Portugal, the king, Dinis, hadn’t forgotten the Templars’ great contribution in defeating the Moors. He cunningly championed the order’s legacy. After calmly confiscating all their belongings, he waited for Clement V’s successor to be voted in, then convinced the new pope to allow the creation of a new order that he would name, simply, the Order of Christ. The Templar order basically just changed its name. The Castilian-Portuguese Templars weren’t even interrogated, much less tried. They simply became members of the new order, also accepted to follow the rule of the Order of Calatrava, and carried on unscathed.

The castle of Tomar had been the headquarters of the Templars in Portugal and remained so under the new order. A towering edifice of startling architectural beauty that has lost none of its splendor, it was famous throughout the peninsula for its elaborate Gothic, Romanesque, and Manueline carvings and motifs and for its distinctively Templar round church, where many of the Templar masters were buried. Over the years, a convent and cloisters had also been added, and it became known as the Convento de Cristo.

Isaac had told Sebastian that the Templar records showed that the chest that had housed the damaged codex had come from the Levant. Further detail of its provenance was hard to pin down, as Portuguese Templar documentation was difficult to unearth. A concerted effort had been made to bury any written evidence that the Templars had brazenly morphed into the Order of Christ. The Portuguese Templars — and, eventually, the Order of Christ — had also absorbed most of their French brethren who had managed to escape King Philip the Fair’s persecution. Their distinctly French surnames had to be cloaked to avoid potential challenges from the Vatican.

Still, there were crypts and libraries that Sebastian’s father and Isaac hadn’t been able to access. Sebastian, on the other hand, as an officer of the Inquisition, could. And so the young man began, with great care and discretion, to explore the hidden archives of the Church, in the hope of learning more about the codex’s clouded origin.

He spent hours at the archives of Torre de Tumbo in Lisbon. He visited the old Templar churches and castles at Longroiva and Pombal, wading through ancient records of donations, concessions, disputes, and codes of law, searching for clues that would either elucidate the contents of the missing pages or tell him where he might find another copy of the book. He rode out to the castle of Almourol, built by the Templars on a small island in the middle of the Tejo River and rumored to be haunted by the ghost of a princess who yearned for the return of her lover, a Moor slave.

He found nothing.

He kept Isaac informed of his movements, but the old man was getting progressively worse. An infection had settled into his lungs, and Sebastian knew he would not survive the winter. But his inquiries caught the attention of his superiors.

He was soon summoned to appear before the grand inquisitor. Francisco Pedroso knew of the young man’s visits to the dying Marrano and had heard of his inquiries across the land. Sebastian excused his trips as the overzealous pursuit of heretic texts, making sure he didn’t taint anyone with his actions. He also shrugged off his visits to Isaac’s chamber as the final, vain attempts to save the man’s soul.

Through bloodless, aged lips, the sinister priest told Sebastian that God kept a close eye on all of his subjects, and he reminded the young man that speaking on behalf of victims was regarded as more criminal than the accused.

Sebastian knew that his efforts in Portugal had come to an end. From here on, he would be watched. Any misstep could lead to the dungeons. And with the death of Isaac that winter, he realized there was nothing left for him in the land of his birth.

His parents’ legacy, and Isaac’s, had to be safeguarded. More than that, their work needed to be completed, their promise fulfilled.

On a brisk spring morning, Sebastian guided his solitary horse across the Ponte Velha and into the eucalyptus forests of the surrounding mountains. He was headed for Spain and to the Templar commanderies at Tortosa, Miravet, Monzón, Gardeny, and Peniscola. If need be, he would continue his search at the very seat of learning and translation, in Toledo.

And when those inquiries would yield little result, he would follow the trail of the snake-eater back to its source, across the Mediterranean, by way of Constantinople, and all the way to the very heart of the old world and to the veiled secrets it sheltered.