Chapter 26
Adrian shuts the door behind us when we enter.
The office gives the impression of being smaller than it actually is, mainly because every wall is lined with bookshelves, and every flat surface buried under more books, scholarly journals, and other papers.
Warm light glows from the green-shaded lamp on his desk.
“Dr. Robert Werner, this is my colleague, Sterling Caine,” Adrian says, and Werner shakes my hand enthusiastically.
“Always good to meet a friend of Mr. Evans. Here, just let me clear off this second chair—I didn’t realize we’d be joined by another investigator.”
Neither of us disabuses him of the notion.
I gaze around the cluttered office as he settles back into his comfortable-looking leather chair, and am struck by a sudden pang.
I can envision myself someplace like this, not that it was ever an option.
My father and older brothers all work at the Springfield Armory factory, and I’d been expected to follow in their footsteps whether I wanted to or not.
University was for other people, not hard-working men like us, or so they told me whenever I brought it up.
Then the war came, and I was drafted and issued a weapon built in that very factory.
After, I was less concerned with what my family thought of me—it seemed so unimportant, compared to the things I’d seen and done.
James had spoken of his dream of owning a bookshop when we met near the end of the war, so I joined him in New York and never looked back.
“It’s been a while since your firm had any need of my particular brand of expertise,” Werner goes on, settling himself. “You said your current case involves some sort of cult stealing fine art?”
“I’m afraid so.” Adrian leans forward. “Their symbol is an hourglass with a death’s-head hawkmoth superimposed over it.”
Werner pulls a clean sheet of paper out of his desk and passes it over. “Can you sketch it for me?”
Adrian is no artist, that’s soon very clear. “Here—let me,” I say, and manage to draw something that’s no work of art but at least resembles something the human mind can comprehend.
Werner studies it solemnly for a long moment, then shakes his head. “I’m sorry, gentlemen, but I don’t recognize it.”
Damn it. My shoulders slump, and Adrian sighs. “Thanks anyway, Dr. Werner,” he says.
“That doesn’t mean I can’t help you at all.” Werner sits back. “Can you tell me anything of their practices?”
“We saw one of their…meeting chambers?” I say, uncertain of the correct terminology. As I describe the place Davis took us to beneath his pharmacy, Werner’s brows crease in thought.
“It sounds familiar, but there have been many religions throughout history that conduct at least some of their rituals underground. Is there anything else you can tell me?”
“They stole a painting, The Wheel of Aion by Bianca Giuliani,” Adrian says. “And a rare book, the Key of Mithras.”
“Oh!” Werner’s eyes light up. “Now that is interesting.”
Perhaps this hadn’t been a waste of time after all. “What is?”
Werner hops up and begins to go through one of his bookcases while he talks.
“Aion was a god of time, first worshipped by the Greeks, then Romans. Now, you may have heard of Chronos as being the god of time, and he was—of linear time. The march of history and all that. But Aion was the god of cyclical time.”
Adrian and I exchange a look. “I’m not sure I follow,” he says.
“Aion had dominion over the wheel of the year and the zodiac—repeating patterns in time. He’s usually represented as standing in a circle, often with the signs of the zodiac on it.”
I recall the painting in Hart’s Leap, the nude youth holding a hoop, flanked by the rising sun and setting moon.
“As such, he became a god of renewal, the new year replacing the old, the crops sprouting and dying, only to sprout again. That sort of thing.” Werner finds the book he’s looking for and begins to flip through it.
“In the late Classical Era, he became associated with other gods like Cronus—you might know him as Saturn, the titan who devoured his children—and Mithras.”
Adrian leans forward, like a hound on the scent. “And Mithras was…?”
“A god popular among Roman soldiers in the first century. He was born from a rock and slew a sacred bull, from which the world was created. Including day and night, and the cycle of the seasons—cyclical time, once again. His mysteries were revealed to worshippers gradually, as they moved up through the seven ranks of initiation. They gathered underground and sat by rank, much as you described happening in the ritual room you saw.”
He lays the book on the desk in front of us, displaying a photographic plate of a bas-relief of a young man in a cap cutting the throat of a bull. A dog, snake, and scorpion are also attacking the bull, which seems rather excessive.
“This is Mithras,” Werner says, then flips a few more pages. “And this sketch is a reconstruction of what we think the layout of a Mithraeum—an underground temple dedicated to Mithras—was like.”
I can see the resemblance to the room below the pharmacy, though it has an altar in place of the throne I’d sat in, and benches instead of tables.
Werner flips some more, then stops again, showing us photographs of a mosaic with different symbols on it. “These represent the seven levels of initiation, from the initial rank of Corax, symbolized by a raven, to Pater, symbolized by a shepherd’s staff.”
My blood goes cold. Davis had called me “Shepherd Caine” when talking to Gabrielli. Just more proof I’d somehow not only gotten mixed up with the cult, but was actually a high-ranking member.
“Given all of this,” Werner goes on, taking the book back to the shelf, “I’d guess your cult is obsessed with time, specifically repeating cycles.”
“Interesting,” I say, when it seems he’s done talking, “but what does it all mean?”
Werner shuts the book and gives me a smile. “Well now, that is your and Mr. Evans’s domain, not mine.” He glances at his watch. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have an appointment elsewhere and really must go.”
We thank him and take our leave. As we walk down the stairs, turning over everything Werner told us, I say, “There must be a reason they stole that particular painting. The book seems obvious, it holds some kind of knowledge they were looking for, but the painting…?”
Adrian slows, foot hovering over the next step down. “For the same reason. Could there be something hidden in it? A prophecy, a…shit, I don’t know, a spell, since magic seems to be real?” He shakes his head.
“We need to find out more about that painting.” An idea surfaces from my murky thoughts.
“One of our customers at Forgotten Folios was a fiend for any books concerning Italian Renaissance art. She was a painter herself, I believe. At any rate, we’d set aside any books that came in on the subject, and three or four times a year she would come to New York and buy the whole lot, minus any duplicates already in her library.
She lives in Salem, I remember that much.
We should be able to look her up in the city directory if we go there. ”