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

revealed exactly how sick I felt, but when he looked at me Laf said, “Oh, Gavroche, what have you done?”

I prayed the answer wasn’t going to be “fucked up royally,” though it was starting to look that way.

“Uncle Laf, I want you to tell me exactly who Wolfgang Hauser is, and how you know him,” I said, choosing my words carefully even if I was pretty sure I didn’t want to hear the answer.

“I don’t know him,” Laf said. “I’ve met him once or twice. He’s a minion of Zoe’s—one of those good-looking boys she likes to keep as ornaments on her wrist.”

I applauded myself for not flinching at his callous description of the recent great lust of my life—and also for passing over the obvious fact that one might make the same observation of Uncle Laf and Bambi.

“I do know your aunt Zoe, however,” Laf went on. “She was never the queen of the night as she liked to portray herself—far from it. That was clever salesmanship, a program of propaganda conceived and tailored for Zoe, the most famous dancer of her day, by the cleverest salesman of our century. She and this benefactor spent decades trying to get the manuscript from Pandora, the one who actually collected it. Perhaps by now you have guessed that Zoe’s own mentor, best friend, and closest confidant for twenty-five years was none other than Adolf Hitler.”

Laf paused and looked at me. My heart was well below my stomach by now, and I felt I must get out of the steamy heat of the pool before I blacked out. Laf’s next words seemed to echo across the water.

“There is no way on earth that either Zoe or Wolfgang Hauser could have a copy of that manuscript. Anything belonging to Earnest, he guarded all his life.” Then, after a pause, he whispered, “Gavroche, I pray you have not trusted Hauser with it—or even left him alone with it in the same room. If you have you’ve surely endangered everything Pandora and Earnest risked their lives for—what indeed may have cost them their lives, and your cousin Sam’s, too.”

THE TRUTH

If circumstances lead me, I will find

where truth is hid, though it were hid indeed

Within the centre.

—Shakespeare,

Hamlet

JESUS:

To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into

the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone that is of the

truth heareth my voice.

PILATE:

What is truth?

—Gospel of John 18:37–8

Therefore the effort to arrive at the Truth, and especially

the truth about the gods, is a longing for the divine.

—Plutarch,

Moralia

It’s sort of a hobby of mine: the truth.

—Cary Grant, as master thief

    John Robie in

To Catch a Thief

Judea: Spring, A.D. 33

THE FIRST APOSTLE

Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene … and [his disciples], when they had heard that he was alive, and had been seen of her, believed not

.  —Gospel of Mark 16:9–10

“But what is the truth?” Johan Zebedee asked his older brother James. “How can Joseph of Arimathea expect any of us to remember something that took place more than a year ago?”

The brothers had left behind the port of Joppa and the ship on which James had just returned from his year-long mission abroad in Celtic Iberia. They took the rocky high road out of town.

“When I visited with Joseph in the isles of Britannia,” said James, “he told me it was his belief that some key element was missing from the story of the Master’s last days. You know the Master always said his legacy would be to share his ‘mysteries’ with his truest disciples. It occurred to Joseph that maybe the Master, realizing his time on earth with us was short, actually did impart these secrets, but because he spoke in parables none of us grasped the hidden meaning in his words. That’s why I’ve hurried here from Celtic Iberia, to bring Joseph’s letter asking Miriam of Magdali to look into this matter. And he hopes that we—you and Simon Peter and I, as the Master’s three chosen successors—will lend her our support.”

James and his younger brother Johan Zebedee, along with their business partners, Simon Peter and his brother Andrew, had been the first disciples recruited by the Master for his mission. When he’d found them along the shores of Lake Galilee, he’d told them to put down their fishing nets and follow him: he would teach them to become “fishers of men.” So the Zebedees, as first-chosen, had come to expect preferential treatment. And they’d always received it—until recently. This year had cost them everything, Johan thought bitterly. His older brother had stayed away too long and there was much he needed to learn.

“Perhaps you can explain to me what Miriam of Magdali has to do with any of this?” he asked James. “Why should she be the official messenger?”

“Joseph has always supported Miriam’s claim that she was the first apostle: first to see the Master after death, risen from his tomb that morning in Joseph’s garden at Gethsemane,” said James. “Whenever Joseph refers to Miriam, he still calls her the First Messenger—apostle to the apostles. And whether or not we want to believe the Master really honored Miriam so greatly, in all honesty we must recognize such a thing was not wholly out of his character. The truth is, it would be no different from the honors the Master constantly bestowed on Miriam throughout his life.”

“Honors and kisses!” snapped Johan. “The world knows I was the Master’s most beloved disciple. He treated me like his child and embraced me even more often than he did Miriam. Didn’t he entrust me with his mother’s care when he died, as if I were her own son? And the Master said you and I would sip from his chalice when the kingdom of heaven came—as great an honor as any he gave Miriam.”

“I fear that cup, Johan,” James said softly. “Perhaps you’d be wise