For a moment she was silent, checking the immediate vicinity as she had done at random intervals ever since they had stolen the SUV. Judging by the dates on the gravestones-all in the eighteenth century-they had entered the oldest section of the cemetery.

"I'm hardly surprised."

"You're not?"

"Your father was someone different, special. He was far more than simply a member of the Haute Cour," she said slowly and deliberately. "But to understand this, I have to start from the beginning. As you know, the Gnostic Observatines were once Franciscans."

Bravo nodded. "The original Order was founded in the thirteenth century by followers of Francis of Assisi, and almost immediately upon his death there were those friars who believed that they should be living in apostolic poverty. This angered the pope no end because it was the Church that owned the riches accrued to its Orders. But it wasn't until 1517, almost three hundred years after the death of St. Francis, that the Order formally split into two separate factions, the Conventuals, who wanted to stay put, and the Observatines, who were convinced that St. Francis wanted them to remain itinerant-wanderers exploring far-flung territories so as to bring the word of Christ to those most in need of His gospel.

"Some Observatines knuckled under and even became the pope's envoys on forays to the Levant in order to gain troops and money for a crusade against the increasingly aggressive Ottoman empire. At the time, the Ottoman's powerful navy was taking the islands of the eastern Mediterranean and had begun to threaten even the Republic of Venice.

"But the Gnostic Observatines resisted the pope's edicts for them to renounce their apostolic poverty. They refused and, at length, they had no choice but to flee, going underground. The pope, angered, sent one of his military orders-the Knights of St. Clement, based in Rhodes-in an effort to once and for all bring them to heel."

"For those few of us academics who remember anything about the Gnostic Observatines at all, that is what passes for common historical knowledge. It is correct in the general, but false in its particulars," Jenny said. "Long before the official schism was recorded in history, an internal battle arose, leading to a horribly acrimonious secret rift in the Order. This was scarcely surprising. From the first, the Dominicans and Benedictines, the older and more established orders, aligned themselves against us."

"Why, exactly?"

"For the same reason I was drawn to the Order," she said. The trees left only small ovals of sunlight winking through the rich green of the leaves, through which they picked their way, side by side, like lovers on their way to a trysting place. "We had an advantage in being formed later than the other orders. We had the benefit of William of Ockham."

"Ockham's razor."

"A theory that followed an Aristotelian path different from Thomas Aquinas's faith-based doctrine. Aquinas had moved beyond Aristotle in saying that when we understand the laws of nature we begin to perceive God's plan. 'Ockham's razor' argued that Aquinas was dead wrong: by insisting that reason was the path to unlocking God's intentions, he had demystified God. So a split was formed that would exist forever more.

"The Order followed Ockham in believing in the basic separation of faith and reason, religious doctrine and scientific investigation. How can an astronomer deduce from the orbits of the planets God's design? How can man, using concepts created by the mind of man, possibly come to know God's will?"

Nearing its end, the path pitched gently down toward a low-lying field that bordered a placid-looking pond, drowsing in the heavy sunlight. A high stone wall, the farthest limit of the cemetery, was in sight. The gravestones were thin and flinty, with the bony shoulders of extreme age. Some were so obscured by lichen and moss that it was virtually impossible to decipher the inscriptions. Just beyond, where the path ended not far from the stone wall, hunkered a final mausoleum, quite plain. A jagged crack ran up the left side, as if at some time in the distant past it had been dealt a violent blow by vandals. The ancient stone was as rough as a carpenter's palm. The elbow of a tenacious weeping willow root had inveigled its way into the foundation, as if nature itself was making a bid to reclaim what man had sought to preserve.

A small dark bronze door presented itself to them, above which was a stone pediment, wide and low-pitched, blackened by the elements and acid rain, a triangle of sorts in the center of which, thrust into shadow, was etched a name: MARCUS.

As they stood looking up at the name, Jenny said, "What you may not know is that the rift had been predicted-some have said prophesied-by the twelfth-century abbot Joachim of Fiore. Fiore had written a number of compelling apocalyptic tracts which trumpeted a coming age of the Holy Spirit, when the Church would be reformed by two religious Orders, one living in apostolic poverty. Between 1247 and 1257, Giovanni Burelli of Parma was the Minister General of the uneasy Franciscans. He was summarily deposed because he was close to the Spirituals, a sect of Franciscans from whose ranks the founders of the Order would eventually come. The Spirituals were followers of Joachim of Fiore, whose writings echoed precisely their main doctrine and complaint against the rest of the Franciscans. In 1257, the pope ordered Giovanni of Parma to resign, exiling him to Greccio."

Bravo nodded. "I'm familiar with these facts. He was sent to La Cerceri, the Franciscan hermitage on Monte Subasio near Assisi. He was incarcerated there for the rest of his natural life."

"Or so it was reported to the pope." She took out a key, placed it into the lock on the bronze door. "This is where your knowledge ends, this is where the secret history begins."

She opened the door, and they stepped inside. They were greeted by the smell of must and air seeming as old as the mausoleum itself. At first, he thought the inside was clad in sheets of marble, but on closer inspection, he discovered that walls were in fact plaster, painted in a faux marble pattern as beautiful as it was cunning. A pair of bronze crypt doors were set flush with the wall. They were long and narrow to accommodate the caskets within which rested the remains of the dead. At intervals, just above eye level, there were old-fashioned wrought-iron sconces along the walls, some with lights, others obviously receptacles for flowers, for there hung from two of these the glass-encased withered remains of poppies and irises like skeletons in a haunted house.

"In fact, Giovanni was never a prisoner," Jenny continued as she lit the lamps. "As it happened, a number of the friars in charge of La Cerceri were Spirituals. They were not only sympathetic to Giovanni but were instrumental in installing him as the Magister Regens of the Order, which was even then gathering to it secret followers."

Bravo gestured. "But this is a Jewish cemetery, the family name on this mausoleum is Marcus."

Jenny gave him the ghost of a smile, her strong white teeth showing. "Giovanni of Parma had a sister, Marcella. She fell in love with a painter by the name Paolo di Cione, but it wasn't until after they were married that he told her that he was an Italian Jew, that his family name was Marcus."

She put the flat of her hand against one wall. "You see, Bravo, it wasn't simply our insistence on apostolic poverty that so angered the pope that he sent his private army to hunt us down. The Order has a secret-one so important, so potentially dangerous, that only the members of the Haute Cour knew of its existence.

"Consider the logic of it. The Order had taken a vow of poverty and therefore couldn't own anything, as the other orders did. How, then, were we to survive? It was Marcella, Giovanni of Parma's sister, who came up with the solution. It happened that before he was deposed, the pope allowed Giovanni to pick his successor. He chose Bonaventura Fidanza. It was widely believed that Giovanni chose this master at the university of Paris because they were friends, but in reality it was because Marcella knew that Bonaventura had violated his vow of chastity and fathered a child by Marcella's cousin. This secret she confided to her brother, and thereafter the acquisition of certain select secrets became the currency by which the Order continued their work.