The Magic Circle by Katherine Neville (top 10 books of all time txt) 📕

The other line of my asterisk was even more interesting. It led to Olympia on the Alphaeus river, home of the Olympic games. I’d been there one weekend after a concert of Jersey’s in Athens. We’d hiked over broken stone beneath Mount Kronos. Aside from Olympia’s famous ruins like the temple of Zeus, there was a relic at Olympia that stuck in my mind: the Heraion, temple of the goddess Hera, wife and sister to Zeus. Though built of plastered wood and less impressive than the Zeus temple, the original Heraion was constructed as early as 1000 B.C. and is the oldest extant temple in Greece.

Then I knew why the name Hermione seemed so familiar (not just familial) to me. In the myths, Hermione was the place Hera and Zeus first landed when they came to Greece from Crete—the entry point of the Olympic gods to the continent of Europe.

Wolfgang, who’d been watching in silence as my finger traced the map beneath the glass, now turned to me.

“Astounding,” he said. “I’ve often walked by this map, but I never saw the connection you’ve seen at first glance.”

A uniformed guard arrived and secured open the high inner doors, and Wolfgang and I entered the gold and white Baroque library of the monastery of Melk. A wall of French windows at the far end overlooked a sprawling terra-cotta-colored terrace; beyond it lay the Danube, its surface glittering like crystals in the morning sun, filling the vast library with bouncing light. As a custodian wiped one of the glass display cases dividing the room, a wiry grey-haired man in a priest’s cassock adjusted leather-bound books on a shelf partway down. He turned as we entered, smiled, and came toward us. He seemed somehow familiar.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Wolfgang said, taking my arm. “I’ve asked someone to assist us.” We went forward to greet him.

“Professore Hauser,” said the priest, his English heavily flavored with Italian, “I’m happy you and your American colleague were able to arrive early, as I asked. I’ve already prepared some things for you to see. But scusa, signorina, I forget myself: I am Father Virgilio, the library archivist. You will excuse my poor English, I hope? I come from Trieste.” Then he added, with a somewhat awkward laugh, “Virgilio, it’s a good name for a guide: like Virgil in the Divina Commedia, no?”

“Was that who escorted Dante around Paradise?” I asked.

“No, that was Beatrice, a lovely young woman I imagine very much as yourself,” he added graciously. “The poet Virgil, I apologize to say, guided him through Purgatory, Limbo, and Hell. I hope your experience with me will be better!” He laughed and added almost as an afterthought, “But Dante had a third guide, as few seem to recall, one whose works are treasured here in our collection.”

“Who was the third guide?” I asked.

“Saint Bernard de Clairvaux. A most interesting figure,” Father Virgilio said. “Though he was canonized, many thought him a false prophet, even the Prince of Darkness. He initiated the disastrous Second Crusade, resulting in the destruction of the Crusader armies and the eventual return of the Holy Land to Islam. Bernard also inaugurated the infamous Order of Templars, whose mission was to defend Solomon’s temple at Jerusalem against the Saracen; two hundred years later, they were suppressed for heresy. Here at Melk we have illuminated texts of the many sermons Saint Bernard delivered on the Canticle of Canticles, and dedicated to King Solomon.”

But as Father Virgilio turned and headed off down the long room, distant bells started clanging in my head, and not for his mention of Song of Songs. As we followed our shepherd, I scanned the books lining shelves to my right and the contents of the imposing glass cases to my left. And I racked my brain, trying to figure out exactly what was bugging me about this black-clad priest. For one thing, Wolfgang hadn’t mentioned any spiritual guide on today’s agenda, nor any knightly orders I ought to be boning up on. I studied Virgilio as we followed him, and all at once I bristled with anger.

Without those priestly vestments—but with the addition of a dark, battered hat—Father Virgilio might well be the spitting image of someone else. Then I recalled that those few whispered words I’d heard in the vineyard last night had been in English, not German. By the time Father Virgilio stopped before a large glass case near the end and turned to us, I was seething with fury at Wolfgang.

“Is this not a great work of art?” he asked, gesturing to the richly detailed hand-colored manuscript beneath the glass as he glanced from Wolfgang to me with dewy eyes and fingered his crucifix.

I nodded with a wry smile, and said in my rusty German:

“Also, Vater, wenn Sie trun hier mit uns sind, was tut heute Hans Claus?” (So if you’re here with us now, Father, what’s “Hans Claus” up to today?)

The priest glanced in confusion at Wolfgang, who turned to me and said, “Ich wusste nicht dass du Deutsch konntest.” (I didn’t realize you could speak German.)

“Nicht sehr viel, aber sicherlich mehr als unser österreichischer Archivar hier,” I told him coolly. (Not very much, but surely more than our Austrian archivist here.)

“I think perhaps you’ve helped us enough for the moment, Father,” Wolfgang told the priest. “Could you wait in the annex while my colleague and I have a word?”

Virgilio bowed twice, said a few quick scusa’s, and bustled from the room.

Wolfgang had leaned over the glass case with folded arms and was gazing down at the gilded manuscript. His handsome, patrician features were reflected in the glass. “It’s magnificent, isn’t it?” he observed, as though nothing had happened. “But of course, this copy was executed several hundred years after Saint Bernard’s time—”

“Wolfgang,” I interrupted this reverie.

He straightened and looked at me with clear, guileless turquoise eyes.

“That morning back at my apartment in Idaho, as I recall, you assured me you would always tell me the