The Doomsday Key
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"Starved to death, that is plain," Girard said. "But the boy starved with a full belly."
Martin stepped back, his limbs going cold. Here was his proof. They would have to examine others to be certain. But the deaths here seemed to be the same as those on the island, a place marked in red ink as "wasted" in the Domesday Book.
Martin stared at the gutted boy. Here was the secret reason the survey had been undertaken to begin with. To search for this blight on their homeland, to stamp it out before it spread. The deaths were the same as on that lonely island. The deceased appeared to eat and eat, yet they still starved to death, finding no nourishment, only a continual wasting.
Needing air, Martin turned from the table and stepped out of shadows and into sunshine. He stared across at the rolling hills, green and fertile. A wind swept down and combed through the fields of barley and oats, wheat and rye. He pictured a man adrift in the ocean, dying of thirst, with water all around him but unable to drink.
This was no different.
Martin shivered in the wan sunlight, wanting to be as far away from this valley as possible, but a shout drew his attention to the right, toward the other end of the village green. A figure dressed all in black stood before an open door. For a moment, Martin feared it was Death himself, but then the figure waved, shattering the illusion. It was Abbot Orren, the final member of their group, the head of the Abbey of Kells in Ireland. He stood at the entrance to the village church.
"Come see this!" the abbot shouted.
Martin stumbled toward him. It was more a reflex than a conscious effort. He did not want to return to the smithy. He would leave the boy to the care of the French butcher. Martin crossed the village green, climbed the steps, and joined the Catholic monk.
"What is it, Abbot Orren?"
The man turned and headed into the church. "Blasphemy," the Irish abbot spat out, "to defile the place in such a manner. No wonder they were all slain."
Martin hurried after the abbot. The man was skeletally thin and ghostly in his oversized traveling cloak. Of them all, he was the only one to have visited the island off the coast of Ireland, to have seen the wasting there, too.
"Did you find what you were seeking?" Martin asked.
The abbot did not answer and stepped back into the crude church. Martin had no choice but to follow. The interior was gloomy, a cheerless place with an earthen floor covered in rushes. There were no benches, and the roof was low and heavily raftered. The only light came from a pair of high thin windows at the back of the church. They cast dusty streaks of light upon the altar, which was a single slab of stone. An altar cloth must have once covered the raw stone, but it had been torn away and cast to the floor, most likely by the abbot in his search.
Abbot Orren crossed to the altar and pointed to the bare stone with a trembling arm. His shoulders shook with his anger. "Blasphemy," he repeated, "to carve these heathen symbols upon our Lord's house."
Martin closed the distance and leaned closer to the altar. The stone had been inscribed with sunbursts and spirals, with circles and strange knotted shapes, all clearly pagan.
"Why would these pious people commit such a sin?"
"I don't think it was the villagers of Highglen," Martin said.
He ran his hand over the altar. Under his fingertips, he sensed the age of the markings, the worn nature of the inscribed shapes. These were clearly old. Martin remembered his driver's assertion that this place was cursed, that it was hallowed ground to the ancient Celtic people, and that their giant stones could be found hidden in the misty highland forests.
Martin straightened. One of those stones must have been hauled to Highglen and used to form the altar of the village church.
"If it's not the people here who did it, then how do you explain this?" the abbot asked. He moved to the wall behind the altar and waved an arm to encompass the large marking there. It had been painted recently, and from the brownish-red color, possibly with blood. It depicted a circle with a cross cutting through it.
Martin had seen such markings on burial stones and ancient ruins. It was a sacred symbol of the Celtic priesthood.
"A pagan cross," Martin said.
"We found the same on the island, marked on all the doors."
"But what does it mean?"
The abbot fingered the silver cross at his own neck. "It is as the king feared. The snakes who plagued Ireland, who were driven off our island by Saint Patrick, have come to these shores."
Martin knew the abbot was not referring to true serpents of the field but to the pagan priests who carried staffs curled like snakes, to the Druid leaders of the ancient Celtic people. Saint Patrick had converted or driven off the pagans from Ireland's shores.
But that had been six centuries ago.
Martin turned to stare out of the church toward the dead village. Girard's words echoed in his head. The boy starved with a full belly.
None of it made any sense.
The abbot mumbled behind him. "It must all be burned. The soil sowed with salt."
Martin nodded, but a worry grew in his breast. Could any flame truly destroy what was wrought here? He did not know for sure, but he was certain about one thing.
This was not over.
Present Day
October 8, 11:55 P.M.
Vatican City
Father Marco Giovanni hid in a dark forest of stone.
The massive marble pillars held up the roof of Saint Peter's Basilica and sectioned off the floor into chapels, vaults, and niches. Works of the masters filled the hallowed space: Michelangelo's Piet`a, Bernini's Bald-acchino, the bronze statue Saint Peter Enthroned.
Marco knew he wasn't alone in this stone forest. There was a hunter with him, lying in wait, most likely near the rear of the church.