When the research project had ended, Bérenger returned to France and Vittoria to Italy. He had no interest in pursuing a relationship with the girl, as that was what she was—a girl. He appreciated her beauty and spirit, but she was half his age at that time. He had watched with interest as her career in the fashion industry catapulted her to the covers of magazines worldwide, but he did not see her again until that fateful meeting in Cannes almost three years ago.
He was thinking about that encounter as his phone rang.
“What the hell are you playing at, Vittoria?” Bérenger snapped as he recognized the phone number. He had been trying to get her on the line for hours and had barraged her with messages since his upsetting conversation with Maureen.
“I’m not playing at anything. It’s true. Dante is your son.”
“I am not an idiot. The dates don’t match. He was born on the first of January, two years ago. The last time you and I were together was that previous May in Cannes. Nice effort, but it doesn’t add up. It means you were already pregnant when you seduced me.”
Vittoria clucked at him, completely unfazed. “Seduced you? Come now, Bérenger. You make it sound like it was a strategy, an effort. Difficult even. Don’t pretend there hasn’t always been chemistry with us.”
“Stop avoiding the issue. Dante was born too early to be my son.”
“You’re right about one thing. Dante was born early. He was premature. I have the birth certificate that proves it by showing his birth weight at four pounds. But the real proof will come when you see him, Bérenger. There’s not a person with eyes who would not recognize the Sinclair blood in this child instantly. I have protected you from it for as long as I can. But he is getting older and he will begin asking questions about his father. It was time for you to know, and for him.”
“Then why didn’t you come to me in a civilized way? Why drag Maureen into this? Do you have any idea what you have done to her?”
Vittoria sniffed. “She is the reason I did it this way. I did you a favor. She is all wrong for you, Bérenger. She isn’t like us. She wasn’t born to the life and world that we share. You and I are the same. We belong together.” She lowered her voice to a purr. “If you remember, we have had some very good times. My family adores you and always hoped we would marry. There is no reason we can’t try to make this work and raise Dante together.”
“There is a very good reason. I’m in love with somebody else, regardless of what you think of her, and I will never let her go. Vittoria, if Dante is my son, I will take responsibility for him. But you are going to have to prove it. I want DNA tests, and I want them outside of
Italy.”
“Why?”
“For the same reason you want to have them within Italy. Results can be bought. And in Italy, your family can buy anything.”
“I don’t need to buy results. I know Dante is your son and I will prove it. But when I do, Bérenger, what then? Has it occurred to you that a child of ours brings all three of the holy bloodlines together? Hapsburg, Buondelmonti, Sinclair. Our son has the bluest blood in Europe at this moment in time.”
Bérenger stopped, momentarily speechless at the potential implication. He asked his next question carefully. “What are you saying? Are you telling me that this was intentional? That you set out to create a child who would combine our bloodlines?”
“Stop pretending you didn’t enjoy it. You weren’t exactly complaining at the time of conception. Think, Bérenger, think. Dante is a very special child. He is both beautiful and brilliant. And he is a prince.”
She waited for a moment before delivering her final piece of news. “In fact, he is a Poet Prince. That is why I named him Dante, after our great Tuscan poet. Check your mail, Bérenger. I sent you something via FedEx from New York. Call me after you’ve had a chance to look at it.”
Bérenger was rarely speechless, but Vittoria had stunned him into silence with this final piece of news. She lowered her voice to the honey-dripping growl that the Italian media devoured. “You do know what that means, don’t you, my darling? A Poet Prince who is the son of another?”
She did not pause long enough for him to answer. “Now if you will excuse me, I have to go and feed our son, whom you may hear shrieking in the background. He may look like a Sinclair, but in terms of temper, he is all Buondelmonti—and every inch a prince.”
Bérenger sat in his study with his closest friend, Roland Gelis. Roland loved Bérenger like a brother, but he was clearly irritated with him as he ran one giant hand across his forehead in exasperation. “So in addition to everything else happening here, you lied to Maureen.”
Bérenger nodded lamely. God, he hated this.
“Why?”
“Why? Because I love her beyond reason and I am terrified of losing her. I knew that the dates couldn’t match and the child was born too early to be my son. So because I was certain that DNA would vindicate my position, I decided that the best strategy to take with Maureen was to tell her I never had sex with Vittoria. She didn’t need to know if it couldn’t be proven. It would hurt her unnecessarily. Besides, now we are solid, together, and I will never cheat on her again. Never.”
“But you did have sex with Vittoria.”
“Yes. And . . . if she is telling the truth about Dante being premature, then he could actually be mine. She says he looks just like me, but I haven’t seen photos yet. No doubt Vittoria is saving photos as one of her aces with the press. God only knows when and where those will surface.”
Roland glared at his friend as he gestured to the table. “And now . . . we have this to deal with.”
Laid out between the two of them on the study table were the contents of Vittoria’s FedEx package. It contained the birth certificate confirming the baby’s low birth weight, ostensibly from premature arrival, and an astrological chart for the baby with an analysis attached. Bérenger cringed when he saw the heading at the top of the page: “Birth Information for Dante Buondelmonti Sinclair.”
The two men read through the results again. Within the ancient prophecies of the Order, the astrological qualifications for a Poet Prince were specified:
He who is a spirit of earth and water born
within the complex realm of the sea goat
and the bloodline of the blessed.
He who will submerge the influence of Mars
And exalt the influence of Venus.
To embody grace over aggression.
According to this document, if anything from Vittoria was to be believed, Dante fulfilled every requirement of the prophecy in exactly the same way that Bérenger did. He was born under the astrological sign of Capricorn, the sea goat, and his chart was a mixture of earth and water elements. The planet Mars was “submerged” in the water sign of Pisces, and Venus was in an “exalted” position at the time of Dante’s birth. And he was born on the first day of January, as was the greatest of all known Poet Princes—Lorenzo de’ Medici.
“Bérenger, I don’t have to tell you how serious this is. You are a servant of the Grail. You cannot ignore this, no matter what it costs you personally.”
Bérenger Sinclair shook his head miserably. He could not possibly ignore a child of his own blood under any circumstances. But if Dante indeed proved to be his son and if this birth chart accurately reflected the position of the planets when the baby was born, matters were complicated in a new and unexpected way. Bérenger Sinclair was the heir to more than a huge oil empire; he was also the heir to a powerful spiritual tradition that dated back to Jesus and Mary Magdalene and ran through the greatest families in European history. His devotion to the teachings of the bloodline was absolute, and he had sworn to protect and defend those traditions with his life when he took the vows of a Grail knight under the guidance of his grandfather. It was a vow he had taken in this very castle as he knelt beside Roland when they were both teenagers.
If baby Dante was a child of this prophecy, Bérenger would need to be actively involved with raising the boy
to fulfill his promise. His involvement would be a moral and spiritual imperative.
Was it possible that he was being asked to make the sacrifice of his own happiness in order to do the right thing? He wasn’t even sure he knew what the right thing was at this point. But the churning in his stomach was leading him to a wretched realization: that it was quite possibly his duty to marry Vittoria and raise Dante to fulfill his destiny as a Poet Prince.
Because there was one more thing at play here that had not been discussed—an element that Vittoria was clearly aware of and that Bérenger feared more than anything else. There was a second part to the prophecy of the Poet Prince, an additional prediction about how the future of mankind rested upon the shoulders of this little boy—and upon Bérenger Sinclair.
Bérenger didn’t have time to contemplate the wretched possibility further, as his phone rang. He instantly recognized the number of his family seat in Scotland and picked up the phone.
The Marais district
Paris
present day
THE CARD WAS standard-issue Destino—the stationery he preferred was embossed with the A&E design in celebration of Asherah and El—as was the message, which was something of a riddle. In a scrawling hand the Master had written
Are you as wise as Solomon?
If so, the Golden Age awaits you. Come to Florence, one and all, while the Primavera is at its most beautiful.
Come one and all, he said. Peter had no doubt that his cousin, Maureen, and all her comrades in this grand adventure that life had become would heed Destino’s call. Maureen’s role was clear and central, and Bérenger’s as well. They had much to explore together and separately about their destinies. Each was the child of an ancient prophecy in a modern world; each had a great desire to unveil the truth and improve the state of humanity through their work. Tammy and Roland shared those passions, and the four of them had become a dynamic force of research and exploration together.
But Peter was still a little uncertain where he belonged in this adventure.
Destino, in his remarkably intuitive way, addressed Peter individually in the next line, knowing that he might need additional encouragement to join in this particular gathering.
Come, Peter, and walk in the footsteps of Lorenzo, and see where his path may take you.
Where, indeed, would his path take him?
His life had changed drastically in the last two years, and he was still in a state of uncertainty. After a lifetime devoted to his work in the Church and as a teaching Jesuit, Peter was now a refugee from the Vatican. Two years earlier, he and a small team of Italian cardinals had stolen the Arques Gospel of Mary Magdalene from the vaults of their own Church. They feared that the current forces in Rome would attempt to discredit Mary Magdalene’s gospel or, worse, try to destroy it. Peter had been present when it was discovered and was the first to translate it. He knew it was authentic and he knew what it contained. Most of all, he understood exactly what Maureen had endured to discover the gospel and bring its message of love and forgiveness to the world. In good conscience he could not stand by and allow yet another cover-up, not as long as he was physically capable of doing something to stop it. So he took a vow to preserve the truth no matter the cost, as did the other men who joined him.
And it cost them plenty.
Peter had spent eighteen months in a French prison for grand theft. His companions in the crime, much older men whom Peter revered, did only six months; Peter had agreed to take the harshest charges solely upon himself to save the others. The sentences had been much heavier initially. There had been intense negotiating, and perhaps a little bit of implied blackmail, to reduce their punishment. Peter knew where quite a few bodies were buried around Vatican City. And while the Church had been determined to make him pay for his crime, it ultimately did not dare to push him too far. Most important, the Arques Gospel of Mary Magdalene was safe, currently under the quiet protection of a family in Belgium with ties to the Order going back a thousand years.
Since his release from prison, Peter had spent the last six months working to help Maureen and Bérenger as a researcher while they continued on their quest to uncover and preserve the truth of the lost teachings of Jesus. He had thrown himself into this task, playing watchdog for Maureen in preparation for the release of the controversial new book. He smiled as he thought of his cousin, who was more like a sister to him. She was sometimes so naïve. Did she think she would really get away with publishing a book that claimed to contain secret teachings of Jesus and not feel the repercussions? It was at times one of the things that he loved most about her: she was so singularly dedicated to telling the truth, no other option ever occurred to her. Maureen wasn’t capable of comprehending why someone would find such teachings to be dangerous or offensive. They were beautiful lessons about love, faith, and community. Why would anyone find those ideas
harmful?
Why indeed. But Peter had been a priest all his adult life, and he knew the answer personally and viscerally in a way that Maureen could never fully grasp: because those ideas challenged more established values. They represented a potential earthquake that could serve to tear down two thousand years of empire founded on money, power, politics, superstition, ego. And Maureen’s work threatened everyone who had a stake in such institutions—institutions like the Vatican.
As a result, Maureen was threatened, far more than she even knew herself. Peter had tracked nineteen separate death threats against her just in the last six months. Most appeared to be hoaxes without merit, but there were a few that needed further investigation.
He was relieved that she was on her way here, happier still that they would likely all be heading off to Florence together. If Maureen was flanked at all times by Peter and Bérenger, chances were they would have an easier time keeping her safe. And while the greatest threats seemed to be coming from the United States at the moment, Maureen was never really safe in Italy, and everyone knew that.
Peter had the television tuned to the CNN broadcast in English. He had not been paying much attention to it until he heard the commentator utter the name “Sinclair.” Looking up, he saw video footage of a man in handcuffs being led away from what appeared to be an elegant office building.
“It has been a difficult week for the Sinclair Oil family in Scotland,” the announcer said. “Today Alexander Sinclair, the president of Sinclair Oil, was arrested on charges of corruption in the United Kingdom. This is a breaking story and details regarding the alleged criminal activity are scarce. We will fill you in as we follow this one. You may remember that the elder of the Sinclair brothers, Bérenger, found himself in hot water yesterday when Italian supermodel Vittoria Buondelmonti announced that he was the father of her baby boy.”
Peter couldn’t move for a moment; he was stunned. Bérenger worshipped Maureen, would die for her. Or so he had thought. Peter, who had committed to a life of celibacy, didn’t always understand the affairs of men in such matters. He had his cell phone in his hands within seconds, but he could not reach Maureen. He tried Bérenger next, but the call went immediately to voice mail.
He went to pick up Destino’s invitation again, contemplating the question “Are you as wise as Solomon?” His immediate answer was an unqualified no. At times like this, he was at a loss about what to do and how to be of help to the people he loved. The priesthood had not prepared him for many of life’s most complicated problems, including those surrounding relationships and sexuality.
But Peter also knew that where Destino was concerned, every question was a trick question.
The Confraternity of the Holy Apparition
Vatican City
present day
“THE HOLY VIRGIN Mother allowed her only child to die in pain! And he died for all of you, in that pain!”
Felicity screeched at the packed crowd in the confraternity’s meeting hall. There was higher attendance tonight than there had ever been. It was so full that the confraternity had to turn people away
for fear that the fire brigade would come and shut down the meeting. She extended an arm and pointed at the assembly. “How many of you would do the same? How many of you would suffer for God?”
There was no time for audience response. As Felicity screamed the last question, her eyes began to roll back in her head. The crowd was silent, waiting to see what would happen next. This was what they had come to see—this great drama of possession by the saints and the Holy Spirit.
Felicity began to babble in a strange, harsh type of gibberish.
“She’s speaking in tongues!” someone shouted in the crowd but was hushed by the rest, who waited for what would come next. In their anticipation of the spectacle, no one noticed that the voice came from Sister Ursula, the elder nun responsible for the Confraternity of the Holy Apparition. She, alongside Felicity, had resurrected the organization after Girolamo de Pazzi proved incapable following his illness. Sister Ursula had been Felicity’s guardian since the day she returned to Italy. She had protected the girl and nourished her visions under careful supervision for a decade now. At the public appearances, she played a key role in ensuring that the crowd was steered in the right emotional direction. Other members of the confraternity were well placed in the room for the same purpose.
A visceral growl rose from Felicity’s throat, followed by a scream so heart-wrenching and full of agony that it rattled the windows of the meeting hall.
“My children!” she wailed again, and the excitement within the hall was growing. Here is what they came for, here was the arrival of the holy Santa Felicita, speaking through the vessel she had chosen for her message.
“My children did not die in vain! I gave my children to God as sacrifices to his holy name. Each one suffered and bled for the honor of being martyred to the name of Jesus Christ!”
She fell to her knees, wailing, ripping her hair out now from the scalp as she continued her tirade.