The Brotherhood of Book Hunters (22 page)

Federico checked one last time that the volumes were in good condition, then called a clerk and ordered him to wrap them. He walked Ficino to the door of the shop. The old scholar took off his hat to say goodbye to his host, then again pulled it down over his ears. The rain had stopped. The clerk arrived, holding the precious package at arm's length, and was already rushing outside, forcing Master Ficino to gallop after him. Federico watched them scampering toward the rainbow that crowned the end of the avenue. He half expected to see them fly away on the horizon and whirl around amid steeples and towers, gaily beating their wings beyond the orange roofs of the city.

F
rançois declaimed his verses at the top of his lungs to make sure of their sonority. His lively, almost teasing voice echoed off the walls of the cave. He wasn't displeased. The cadence was right, the melody pleasant to hear. But Aisha detected sharper, almost acerbic tones that troubled her. She was busy knotting her long black tresses at a small obsidian mirror hanging from the wall, and François could not see her face. He wondered if such a wild creature could ever be tamed. She seemed to have no allegiance except to the sun and the wind.

He was doubtless just as wild as she was. Were not the unruly verses he was reciting now, hastily composed this morning, proof of that? This journey through the Holy Land should have given rise to a splendid elegy. But all François had come up with were a few sarcastic stanzas that had no truck with lyricism. The imbroglio of schemes and intrigues, setbacks and tribulations, that had led him into the heart of the desert was not the pretext for any noble quest or painful calvary. It was a slow advance into enemy territory!

After the ballad of the hanged man, this was the ode of revenge. Whether with a knife or with rebellious verses, François had always fought head-on and paid a high price for his affronts. Now he had the opportunity to attack on the sly, to undermine the enemy's positions from the inside. It was not just a question of settling his accounts with the Church and the constabulary. Injustice did not wear only a miter or a cabasset. But whether it hid beneath a moneylender's cap, a judge's wig, or a caliph's fez, it had the same face. And François was determined to wipe out its hateful smile.

 

Eviatar appeared at the entrance of the cave. He had come to find François and take him to see Gamliel, who was waiting for him not far from here, in Qumran. François quickly pocketed the draft of his ballad, went to Aisha, and tenderly kissed her. This came as no surprise to Eviatar, who was unable to hold back an amused smile. Aisha refrained from playing the prude. The sheet stained with her blood still lay on the bed. She confronted Eviatar's smile as a fulfilled woman, guessing at his fantasies, guessing too that he would hasten to announce the news to those it most concerned. After all, although Gamliel might not oppose this relationship, he feared that Aisha might fail in her task as a beautiful jailer and change sides.

The two men climbed to the top of the plateau before the morning mist rising from the salty sea caught up with them. They walked along the ridge in a northerly direction. The terrain was flat, eroded, devoid of landmarks. No shrubs, no blocks of stone. After an hour's walking, Eviatar suddenly veered right, beginning the descent at a run. The rabbi appeared when they were halfway down. He greeted François with a warm handshake, making no attempt to conceal his emotion. Behind him, a man in shepherd's garb was barring the entrance to a narrow fault in the rock. He had leathery skin and frizzy hair, but his haughty air was not that of a poor herdsman. Gamliel introduced him to François. He was the commander of the guard in Qumran, and a direct descendant of the Essenes. His clan had ruled over this domain for centuries.

The war of independence waged by the Maccabees against the Seleucid occupiers had restored sovereignty to the Hebrew people. Although chased out of the Holy Land, the Macedonians had left a deep mark on it. From a distance, they continued to exert an enormous influence over Jerusalem. Sharing the taste of the Hellenes for things of the mind, for education and ethics, the Jews were eager to absorb the teachings of Socrates and the Stoics. Some Hebrew scholars went so far as to learn Greek in order to read the precious notes brought back from Athens by the book hunters. But others were fiercely opposed to this spiritual union that linked the chosen people with a pagan civilization. Cutting themselves off from the rest of the community, the Essenes formed a dissident sect of purists and ascetics who settled in the area around the Dead Sea. Fearing that the new currents of thought spreading to Jerusalem and Safed might corrupt the Torah, they hid it here, in these caves. To this day, they were its intransigent guardians.

The false shepherd stood aside obsequiously to let Gamliel and Eviatar pass but gave the stranger who was with them a not very appealing look.

François had expected to find long corridors, their walls studded with torches. He was prepared to encounter sentries, to hear the creak of hinges, the clicking of locks. But there was nobody here. No gate separated this hiding place from the exterior. The cavity, which was not very deep, and low-ceilinged, was lit by a single oil lamp. And yet Gamliel seemed much more moved here than in Brother Médard's cellars or the lair of the secret Jerusalem. As for Eviatar, he placed two fingers on the wall then, having lifted them to his lips, recited a prayer in a low voice.

In a corner, a dozen large terra-cotta jars stood upright on the rocky ground. The rabbi hesitated for a moment, then made up his mind to reveal to François what they contained.

 

When the Romans burned the Temple in Jerusalem, the high priest of the Jews had appealed to the Brotherhood to save the Torah from the flames. The book hunters took the sacred scrolls and hid them in jars, which they then deposited in the caves lining the Dead Sea. The Brotherhood had received instructions not to reveal their location until the Jews regained possession of their land.

“Do you really think the Jews will come back here and reign as masters?”

“The texts buried in these jars state that very fact. Without them, Jerusalem would be only a heap of stones like any other. You've seen with your own eyes what she has become. Her destiny is not played out on battlefields or negotiated around the table. It is sealed in these writings.”

The three visitors sat down cross-legged on the ground. The guard, who had remained standing, extracted a scroll from one of the terra-cotta jars and handed it to Gamliel, who cautiously unrolled it.

“This too was saved from the flames, at the request of the high priest.”

Gamliel brandished the parchment. Its workmanship was primitive but François found it hard to believe how old it was. It had barely yellowed, and the text stood out clearly, in regular columns that ran parallel to the catgut seams. There was no punctuation to interrupt the continuous stream of letters.

Philo of Alexandria, Flavius Josephus, and Pliny the Elder had all mentioned the adventures of a Jewish preacher, nicknamed the “Master of Justice,” who forged a new covenant with God based on repentance and humility. He reproached his brothers for their pretentious arrogance, which he claimed had little in common with the true law of Moses. His harangues greatly displeased the elders of the chosen people, the Pharisees, whom he saw as vain usurpers. Rabbis and dignitaries chased him from the Temple. Rejected by the citizens of Jerusalem, he set off to preach on the roads, in the villages, in the lairs of lepers, among the poor and the abandoned, who soon came to regard him as their savior. Pursued by the authorities, who feared a rebellion, he was forced to escape to the desert with his disciples. It was here that he continued to dispense his light. Isolated, constantly harassed, he met a cruel end at the hands of his enemies. The name of this unfortunate Messiah was Osias, the third of that name, from the line of Zadok. The document that Gamliel held in his hands was the
Manual of Discipline
compiled by his followers, the Essenes.

François raised his eyes toward the guard. The man was scornfully avoiding his gaze, unaware that he too had carried the good word, denounced the greed of the mighty, sung of the misery of the common people, and been sentenced to death. Not that he was seeking the man's approval—far from it. On the contrary, he was pleased that his ballads were declaimed in taverns or whispered in boudoirs. That was better, surely, than rotting in some jar.

Gamliel declared solemnly that this manuscript had been used to mount the most audacious operation ever conducted by Jerusalem, the one with the most far-reaching consequences. The rabbi's suddenly tense features looked red in the flickering lamplight. Eviatar poured in more oil. The flame, now golden, traveled along the wick, casting the men's shadows on the walls of the cave. Gamliel spoke in a low voice, articulating each syllable, like a teacher forcing his pupils to listen carefully.

Osias the Essene soon fell into oblivion. Fifty years after his death, in the reign of Tiberias, the procurators of Judea made the regime of Rome even harsher, plunging the country into deep poverty. The “invisible Jerusalem” decided to urge the people to passive resistance. But a clear call, spread by the men of the Brotherhood, would soon have been stifled, gatherings dispersed, the envoys arrested on the spot. It was then that the Brotherhood remembered the “Master of Justice.” The plan was a simple one. The Brotherhood chose several young Jews from among those who came to Jerusalem to finish their religious education, as was then the custom. The oldest was eighteen, the youngest only twelve. The book hunters taught these adolescents the story of Osias and made them learn the
Manual of Discipline
by heart. Once they were priests, the new recruits went off across the country to arouse the crowd, gaining its sympathy from village to village, just as Osias had done.

As long as they kept to a cautious awakening of consciences, under the cover of allegories and parables, the authorities were not alarmed by these barefoot preachers. But when the young men returned to Jerusalem, they made a tragic mistake. Unable to vilify the emperor himself, they attacked the rich Jews who worked hand in hand with the oppressor, just as Osias had attacked the Pharisees of his day. The agitation that one of them caused within the capital forced the Roman guard to intervene firmly. A witness of the incident, which took place beneath his windows, was the high priest of the Temple, Annas ben Seth. He drew the young fugitive into his house. But an informer had glimpsed the agitator climbing the steps of the Temple and taking refuge in the priest's dwelling. The governor of the city, Pontius Pilate, threatened to accuse the whole Sanhedrin of complicity if the culprit was not given up immediately. After several hours, Annas had to give in—and do his best to disassociate the community from this insult to Caesar. He handed the prisoner over to the soldiers, swearing that he disapproved of his outrageous conduct. Pilate was unconvinced by this belated mark of loyalty and, to show that he was not fooled, had the words “King of the Jews” written on the cross to which the man, whom he saw as a dangerous provocateur, was tied. Sadly, most of the young men involved in this affair were arrested and executed in their turn. There were twelve of them.

François laughed and clapped his hands. The apostles, agents of the Brotherhood? It was a good joke. But Gamliel, unfazed, pointed to the walls of the cave. It was here that Jesus and John the Baptist had stayed during their time in the desert. The Essene hermits of Qumran had granted them hospitality so that they could familiarize themselves with the life and precepts of the Master of Justice. Jesus had held in his hands the scroll of parchment that now lay across Gamliel's knees.

“Think, Villon. The gospels tell the story of Christ's birth and childhood and then they suddenly lose track of him as soon as he arrives in Jerusalem, when he is still quite young. A whole period of his life remains deliberately in the dark. And none of the apostles ever betrayed the secret of it. Jesus only reappears some fifteen years later, ready to undertake his long walk across the Holy Land.”

In the end, neither the Jews nor the Romans had taken much notice of this affair, thinking that Iesous the Nazarene would soon be forgotten, just like Osias the Essene. But his words took root in the mind of another young Jew, Saul of Tarsus, known as Paul, who laid the foundations for a new faith. Paul was beheaded at the foot of the Capitol. Three years later, the great revolt of the Hebrews took place. It was suppressed and the Temple destroyed by Titus's legions. But, against all expectation, a small group without weapons or shields continued to resist the tyranny, answering the call of Yeshua and obeying the precepts laid down by Paul. In spite of constant repression, the sect of the baptized spread throughout the Empire, until it fell. It was these soldiers of the faith, these first Christians, who, over time, achieved the victory over Rome that Jerusalem had been unable to obtain.

 

Judging that he had said enough, Gamliel gave Eviatar a discreet nudge with his elbow. The young man cleared his throat, and in a perfect French that startled François, said firmly, “The Nazarene shook Rome, Master François. With parables. Now it's your turn.”

Dumbfounded, François looked around at the cave and the mysterious jars. He was outraged to learn that Christ had been manipulated like that. He had only one idea in his head. To repair that insult! And to fool these people in his turn. Yes, he would lend himself to their game, he would be their hack, if that was what they wanted. Against Rome once again. But nobody would ever again misappropriate the holy word!

It struck him in a flash. It was the word he had come to rescue! That was the reason for his presence here. To free the word from those who had been keeping it hostage in their chapels and cellars for centuries. The scheming of the priests was just as deceitful as Rabbi Gamliel's. They were all part of the same swindle. François was jubilant. He would be able to defend the song of mankind better than anyone, just as he had always done—under the very noses of the censors and the clerics.