The Source - Michael Cordy [15]
But that might change if what he'd heard at Yale was genuine.
As he reached the secretum secretorum, the Church's most sensitive archive, the curator was locking the door for the night. 'Don't close it yet,' Torino ordered. 'I need to check something.'
The old man, head down, continued to turn the large key in the lock. 'It's late. Can't you come back tomorrow?' He looked up, recognized Torino's black robes and his face flickered with fear. 'Father General, I'm sorry. I didn't realize it was you.'
Torino strode into the dusty, unprepossessing network of rooms and headed for the back chamber. Since the Vatican had opened the Inquisition Archives in 1998 most scholars had focused on celebrated trials, particularly that of Galileo, the scientist who famously shook the Church by claiming – and proving – that the Earth revolved around the sun and not vice versa. However, the obscure case that Torino wished to re-examine was potentially no less controversial.
A year after the reinstatement of the institute, he had despaired of finding a genuine miracle. In this media age, claimants had nothing to lose and everything to gain by falsifying them, so he had instructed the scholars charged with running the institute to look back into the past, to the Inquisition Archives, and seek out those who had braved torture and death to proclaim their miracles. One case they found had fired Torino's imagination: the testimony and trial of Father Orlando Falcon, a fellow Jesuit, who had not just experienced one miracle but discovered a wondrous and terrible place filled with them.
The file was tucked away in a corner. Until his scholars had found and photocopied it a few months ago, the contents had probably not been read for hundreds of years. Ignoring the watching curator, and the large sign forbidding the removal of original documents from the archive, the Superior General placed the four-and-a-half-centuries-old manuscript in his briefcase, left the room and headed for his apartment in the Curia Generalizia, the International Headquarters of the Society of Jesus.
7
The high ceilings, antique furniture and ornate rugs afforded the official residence of the Jesuit Superior General a faded splendour, but the ancient air-conditioning made it claustrophobically warm. Exhausted, Torino dismissed his staff, retired to his bedroom and opened the windows.
There were two framed photographs on the bedside table. One, of himself as a child at the Jesuit orphanage in Naples, reminded him of where he had come from, and the other of what he had achieved: in it, Torino stood in the black robes of his office beside the Holy Father. Above the bed hung a crucifix and beside the desk two gilt-framed diplomas: a medical degree from the University of Milan and a PhD in theology. He placed his laptop on the bed and emptied his briefcase beside it.
Torino's hand trembled as he poured himself a glass of cold water from the jug on the table. He gulped it, then sat at the desk and opened the ancient file.
As he turned the yellowed vellum, the Latin text seemed to greet him like an old friend:
On the day of Thursday 8th of the month of July 1560 in the presence of His Excellency, the Grand Inquisitor, Cardinal Prefect Michele Ghislieri. Being summoned to the Holy Inquisition, there appeared Father Orlando Falcon, a Jesuit Priest, charged with heresy.
. . . It was asked him, 'Father Orlando, what was the mission of the one hundred conquistadors?'
'To conquer new lands, Your Excellency, and discover Eldorado for King Charles of Spain.'
'What was your mission in accompanying them?'
'To save the souls of the conquered and to claim a share of the gold for the Holy Mother Church.'