Stone of Fire: An ARKANE Thriller (Book 1)

Chapter 10

Blackfriars. Oxford, England.
 May 19, 11.17am

      Father Ben Costanza knelt in the dim light of Blackfriars chapel, his white head bent in prayer as his fingers counted the wooden rosary beads tied at his waist, although his fingers moved more slowly now that arthritis had sapped his dexterity. The church was simple for a Catholic place of worship with white stone walls lit in the day by wide windows. There was no stained glass, only clear panels with decorative stonework. Ben watched as motes of dust floated in the light from the windows, streaming down to the altar of russet speckled marble. At night, candles in large silver candlesticks lit the corners of the church. There were wooden choir stalls and hard, straight backed chairs for the congregation, a modest place for a pure faith.
    Years of devotion had made Ben’s knees strong, but the joints still protested as he sat back into the pew. He sighed. In his head, he was still a young man but time had definitely taken a toll on his body. He had enjoyed this chapel for nearly forty years now, his passion for teaching and speaking earning him a permanent place at the Dominican College where they taught the ancient disciplines of theology and philosophy as well as history, social science and ethics.
     Ben was a tutor for the Angelicum, the Baccalaureate in Sacred Theology granted by the Pontifical University of St Thomas in Rome. He also lectured on inter-religious dialogue and had been heavily involved in the visit of the Dalai Lama to Blackfriars in 2008. He felt that the monastery should be a sanctuary in the bustle of the Oxford city and loved to tell people how it had survived for nearly a thousand years. The Blackfriars, Dominican monks, had established a priory in Oxford in 1221 when the Regent Master of the University joined the Order. There had been a working priory in the University up until 1538, when the monasteries were destroyed in the reformation of Henry VIII and the monks were scattered. Four hundred years later the current Blackfriars priory was set up on busy St Giles, a main road into the center of Oxford, between the Ashmolean Museum and Little Clarendon Street.
     Ben loved the central location of the College in the city, an area home to the University offices, ice cream parlors and bars frequented by students living in this end of town. Amongst these modern distractions, the Blackfriars were a working priory, dedicated to a common life of prayer, study and preaching. Their daily mass was open to the public and a small congregation had formed around the little community, as well as students who came in for weekly tutorials. Ben was content here.
     He crossed himself and left the church, glancing at his watch. He hurried across the quad, as he was expecting Morgan for their weekly catch-up. He smiled in anticipation, eager to hear about the gossip in the theological community. Morgan’s particular speciality meant she was often in the center of the latest storm of controversy. He enjoyed hearing about it but his age gave him a perspective that many others didn’t have. He knew the theological contentions they raged over had been debated for millennia and by far better scholars to no satisfactory conclusion. In God’s wisdom, he allowed men and women of faith to have diverse views on fundamental points but in Ben’s opinion, they didn’t matter anyway. Faith was of the heart and the head was a distraction, but he still enjoyed the gossip about who was feuding with whom. His time with Morgan also gave him an insight into a University that was moving away from old men like him. As she had found her way into college life, and begun to build her own psychology practice, they had met weekly for coffee and surreptitious sticky buns in his tiny office at Blackfriars. 
    As he rounded the corner, he saw Morgan was already standing outside his study, her brow furrowed with concern. She looked exhausted and she rubbed the stone around her neck like a charm. Ben worried about her like a father, acutely aware that he could never replace what she had lost, but given his monastic life, she was as close as he could get to having a family. When she saw him, a brief smile flickered over her face and he ushered her inside, concerned. Shutting the door, Ben listened as she told him what had happened with Faye, about the stones of the Apostles and the need to swiftly find the remaining items before Pentecost Sunday when the comet would be in ascendance.
     “What do you think, Ben? Are these stones real? Have you heard of them before? My father gave me mine and Faye has one, but that doesn’t mean they belonged to the Apostles. It just seems crazy,” she said, rubbing her tired eyes.
    “The stones are clearly a matter of faith for the people who want them, therefore it doesn’t matter what we think.” Ben spoke in a soft voice, trying to to calm her. “Faith can indeed move mountains but it can also destroy lives.”
     Morgan paced his office, only managing a few steps in the small space before turning the other way. Father Ben sat back, pondering his bookshelf, the ancient tomes perhaps containing some wisdom they could use now. He wrestled with the many thoughts that teemed in his head. There were many dangers in this quest, but he couldn’t send her off without trying everything. He had been a friend of her parents, meeting them on an archaeological dig. He hadn’t agreed with how they had managed the divorce but he had promised Marianne he would always help her daughters. There were aspects of those times he wished he could forget, that continued to haunt his nightmares but now Ben knew he must help Morgan.
    He looked up at a quote inscribed on his bookshelf from one of the Master Generals of the Order, ‘Divine wisdom is like a spring that comes down from heaven through a pipeline of books.’ Somewhere there was always a book that would help. He made his decision. Reaching up to the heavy bookshelves, Ben pulled down an antique tome. He opened it at a map of the ancient world at the time of Christ.
“Little is known of many of the Apostles after the book of Acts. They went their separate ways after Pentecost, and Christian tradition only gives hints of where they went after leaving Jerusalem. But it would seem best to focus on where the Apostles died, or where their primary place of worship is now. In that way, we might find clues as to whether the Keepers are still alive, or where the stones are hidden.”
“You mean follow the corpses?”
“It’s a place to start and there are some here in Europe. If Faye is in danger, you have no choice but to undertake this quest, even though I fear it could be for nothing. I guess you haven’t involved the police?”
     “There isn’t time, and anyway I have the help of a group who specialize in retrieving religious artifacts, the ARKANE Institute. You must have heard of them?”
     Ben’s heart pounded in his chest as he heard the name. The secrets they kept were the demons that crept under the battlements of prayer he tried to strengthen each night.
     “Ben, are you OK?”
     He had gone white with fear as he realized how far in she already was. He grasped her hand and leaned forward, his voice husky with concern.
     “There are things you should know about ARKANE, people you need to be very careful of.”
She frowned. “But I need them to help me get Faye back.”
     “At what cost? I’ve knowledge of this group, Morgan, the secrets they seek throughout the world. I worked with their men once, a long time ago, after the war. They have information that can bring down governments and change the world order. There are shadows behind their shining public face. You must be careful of them. They’re not doing this for your benefit. You’re nothing to them.”
     Morgan laid a hand on his arm.
     “Of course, Ben, but they have the resources I need to get Faye and Gemma back and then I won’t be working with them anymore.”
     He laid a hand over hers and said in earnest.
“If they’re interested in these stones, then perhaps they are more than they seem. ARKANE only become involved when they know something is powerful and there are miracles on this earth, some indeed from the divine but others from the deceiver.”
Morgan leant forwards in her chair.
     “Tell me what you know about them. Why are you so …”
     Her question was cut off by the sound of breaking glass as an object came hurtling through the window behind Ben’s head, and the sound of gunfire erupted in the quadrangle beneath them.

***

    Morgan saw the grenade as it landed. Her years of military training kicked in and she yanked Father Ben out of the tiny office into the stone corridor just before it exploded. The force knocked them both to the ground, the old man coughing and wheezing. The thick college walls contained most of the blast but Morgan realized it may have been a ploy to flush them out.
     “Are you OK Ben? We’ve got to go.”
     Ben looked up groggily, then back at his office door. Smoke poured out as fragments of paper and ash floated on the toxic breeze. They could hear increased gunfire in the quad, people screaming and trying to escape. Then the echo of footsteps could be heard on the staircase below, running up towards them.
     “It must be about the stones,” Morgan said. “We have to get away before they find us. Is there another way out?”
 “Over there.” Ben pointed towards the end of the corridor. “It’s a back staircase the abbot constructed in the time when mistresses were tolerated. Few know it’s here.”   
He seemed to pull himself together then and Morgan found herself rushing to catch up with him as the old man hurried down the passage. He pulled back one of the tapestries on the wall to reveal a narrow doorway and fumbled at his waist for a key.
     “I’ve used it a few times over the years. The last abbot gave me the key as my office is so close to it. Here we go. Bother, it’s sticky. Give me a minute.”
     “We don’t have a minute, Ben. Hurry.”
     Morgan had no weapon on her, so she stood facing the stairwell, listening to the running feet coming ever closer. She moved into a Krav Maga fighting stance, slowed her breathing and began to focus completely on the energy to fight. She would not go easily, even in the face of firepower.
     “It’s open. Let’s go.”
     Ben’s voice broke her concentration. She turned and edged through the tiny doorway after him, pulling the tapestry down and the door almost closed just as feet hammered up the stairs. She dared not pull it shut completely as the creaking would give them away. So they waited, hardly breathing. They could hear voices outside the door muffled by the heavy tapestry.
     “They’re not here. There must be another exit. Search the other rooms.”
A pause, then they could hear the frantic voice of a petrified monk as he was dragged from his hiding place down the hall. Ben’s hand found Morgan’s in the dark and he squeezed it, neither daring to move. She knew that they would hurt the man and she felt torn between her need to escape with Ben but also not to let this monk suffer for her sake. The monk began to pray aloud.
“Where are they?” the voice said.
There was a thud as something connected with the monk’s body and he coughed with a cry of pain. The fleshy thuds began again. Ben was gripping her hand tighter now, seemingly urging her not to move. But Morgan couldn’t listen to it any longer, she needed to get the men’s attention.
     “Get ready to run,” she whispered.
     She pushed against the door, sending the tapestry billowing into the corridor, clearly showing the hiding place and then she pulled it shut again, slamming it hard behind them.
     “That door will hold them for a few minutes” Ben said. “It’s so thick they can’t blast through it easily.”
     Morgan held out her cell phone to light the small stairwell and they raced down the two flights to the bottom. Ben was doing well, but she knew he wouldn’t be able to keep up once they were out of the building. She needed a plan to hide him so she could escape alone.
     “Where does this come out?”
     “Behind the Ashmolean Museum,” he panted. “There’s a service entry at the back.”
     “OK, I need you to get inside the museum and stay somewhere public. Make sure you’re safe. They’re after me, so I’ll make sure I’m followed and not you.”
     They reached the bottom of the stairs as they heard the top door slam open and feet begin to descend. Morgan heard the first man radio for backup, so she knew there would be others coming. One of the first rules of Krav Maga was that running away was always more preferable to fighting. Sometimes she had railed against the truism, but this was indeed a battle she needed to run from, not try to fight. Pushing open the door, she pulled Ben out into the bright day, propelling the tired old man across the gravel to the back entrance of the Ashmolean.
     “Go, I’ll find you later.”
     He briefly touched her face. “Be careful.”
     Then he scurried into the museum, a haven of academics, tourists and security guards. She hugged the side of the building and turned to look back into Blackfriars quad. There were a couple of bodies lying on the grass, and two men were standing there with guns. The sirens of the Oxford police could be heard in the distance and would soon arrive. She knew the men had already been there too long. She could avoid them for now but she had to stay away from the police as well as there were too many questions and there was no time to waste with bureaucracy. This was her turf, she knew the labyrinth of the college back entrances.
    Keeping low, she ran around the back of Blackfriars, through the thick trees and into St Cross College, which adjoined it to the north. She had escaped for now, but the men from Thanatos would soon be after her again. Morgan thought back to Ben’s words about ARKANE and wondered if she was making a deal with the Devil in order to save her sister.

***

      Father Ben eventually returned to his office, after running the gauntlet of the police and the questions of his superiors in the Order. He had clutched his chest and wheezed at them, indicating that he needed to rest. Age was always a convenient excuse, as people expected him to be weak and unable to cope but his body was a shell for a mind sharper than most around him. Ben had hidden his abilities well over the years, relaxing into this Order of life, camouflaged by habit and ritual.
    As he stepped into the room, he clutched the doorframe in horror. The room was torn apart, both from the grenade which had shredded most of the books, but also from human hands that had ripped through his belongings, clearly looking for something. But it was the image nailed to the bookcase that made him gasp in recognition. It was a pale horse’s head, drawn in thick black lines and colored chalky white. A flash of memory and he was back in the ancient ruins of Ephesus half a lifetime ago, an archaeology student watching as a man on the edge of insanity sketched this very symbol. A man who must surely be dead but whose past was entwined with ARKANE and whose heart was black with murder. 
     “Thanatos,” he whispered. “Be careful Morgan.”

***

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