The Cana Mystery

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Daybreak. Pope Pius II watches a fiery orb crest the Tiber. His mind drifts. He recalls that Aristotle’s student Callippus once computed the seasons’ duration, measuring the sun’s movement within its ethereal sphere. While the pontiff ruminates, his valet methodically extinguishes the candles that had illuminated a long, busy night. Pius smiles. An educated man, he’d known it would be difficult to glean the secret. Nevertheless, anticipation grows in him. On this blessed day they may unlock the great enigma, a message concealed for a millennium.

One artifact has remained hidden in the catacombs since the Vandals’ attack in 455. He’d retrieved the second from Scotland twenty-five years ago. Now he prays the cryptic knowledge these objects contain would avail his church in its desperate campaign against the Turks, who are occupying Constantinople.

Pius turns away from the window and crosses through a cleverly masked portal. Emanating from his private library, wondrous voices speak incomprehensible words. Inside, a dexterous young acolyte transcribes the mysterious cipher. Pius watches the boy ink words onto a scroll. Gradually, words form into couplets; couplets become quatrains. “It must be the lost prophecy,” the pope thinks, “just as Bessarion and Regiomontanus described.” Pius understands not a syllable.

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