The Source - Michael Cordy [100]
'I will,' Torino said. 'What else?'
'Speak to the nun. She knows most about this place. According to her, any living thing dies when it's taken out. Even the water goes stale.'
'It loses its power to heal outside the garden?'
'So she says.'
'How was Kelly going to heal his wife, then?'
'Last night I heard him and Zeb talking together. He showed her a strange rock that Sister Chantal gave him. It's in his backpack.' Bazin pointed into the caves. 'She got it from in there.'
Torino walked into the damp cave and his excitement increased. The pools, the waterfall and the tunnel of blood were exactly as they were in the Voynich. He peered into the gloom and saw white shapes flitting in the shadows. The Eves that Falcon spoke of in his manuscript and his testimony, he thought. As he had feared, this place presented problems for the Church as well as opportunities. He turned to the glowing tunnel and remembered the passage that described how the conquistadors had died.
Bazin pointed to the tunnel. 'When I came in here this morning Ross was up there.'
Torino didn't disguise his surprise. 'Up there? Are you sure?'
'I saw him climbing down. Said I wouldn't believe what he'd seen up there.'
Torino's eyes followed the glittering path until it disappeared and anticipation coursed through him. He approached the tunnel and studied the crystals encrusting the entrance. Then he bent down and put his hand into the rushing stream, noting the crystal rocks on its bed, the shards in the pools and the phosphorescent water flowing out of the cave into the lake. 'What did Dr Kelly see up there?'
'There wasn't time to ask him. But he said he was trying to find out what was behind this place's miraculous powers.'
'We know what's behind the garden's miraculous powers. God.' Torino thought of the mysterious radix in Father Orlando's testimony to the Inquisition. 'But it won't do any harm to understand the agent God might be using. I must talk with Dr Kelly and Sister Chantal. But first I want to make a few observations of my own.'
60
The next morning
'If we're trespassing, why don't they just kick us out?' Zeb demanded.
'I know,' said Hackett. 'They've no right to keep us here.'
'The Father General can't let us leave,' said Sister Chantal, bitterly. 'Not until he's decided what to do with this place – and us.'
Ross had slept fitfully, drifting into and out of consciousness. When he finally woke, the excruciating pain in his head had gone. The soldiers had corralled them within a copse of trees near to where Father Orlando's remains were buried. The trees and four boulders formed a natural enclosure, over which the soldiers had erected a tarpaulin. Within this makeshift pen, each had been laid out on the mossy ground, their ankles and wrists secured with plastic ties. The soldiers had fed them and allowed them to use the latrines they had dug in the corner of the garden, but there was no doubt that they were prisoners. When he opened his eyes Ross saw two soldiers unpacking and stacking an arsenal of weapons beneath another tarpaulin shelter.
'Christ, look at the stuff they've brought with them,' said Hackett, craning his neck for a clearer view.
'What are those things with fuel tanks attached to them?' asked Zeb.
'I think they're flame-throwers,' said Hackett. 'But what about those yellow parcels? One of their packs was full of them. Christ, what the hell did they expect to find here? They can't have thought we were that dangerous.'
'I don't think the weapons were meant for us,' said Ross, thinking of the Voynich and what had killed the conquistadors in the tunnel of blood.
'You okay? How's your head?' Zeb asked him.
'Fine.' Ross almost missed the pain. It had helped focus his rage and, right now, rage would have felt a hell of a lot better than despair.
'This place is amazing. Your swelling and bruising's already gone.' She cocked her head. 'There's Osvaldo – or whoever the hell the son-of-a-bitch really