The Magic Circle Katherine Neville (top 100 novels of all time TXT) 📖

“How could dreaming of a better world be dangerous?” I asked him.

“It isn’t, as long as that world is truly better for everyone. And as long as it is a real world, not just a dream,” said Dacian. “Our present year, 1989, marks two centuries since the utopian ideals of Jean-Jacques Rousseau ushered in the French Revolution we were just speaking of. The sunrise at spring equinox at that time was within five degrees of the cusp—the point on the zodiacal circle marking the sun’s entry into the sign of Aquarius—close enough to feel the tug of the coming age. Yet twenty-five years of bloodshed later, the French monarchy was restored, followed by further decades of upheaval.

“Then 1933, the year that Hitler came to power, brought us within one degree of the countdown toward the new age. As of today, we are within one-tenth of one degree of the cusp of the Aquarian age: it is already happening.”

“You’re saying Napoleon and Hitler are connected with the new aeon?” I said. “They certainly wouldn’t fit anyone’s image of utopian idealists.”

“Would they not?” said Dacian with lifted brow. “And yet that’s exactly what they were.”

“Just a minute!” I said. “Please don’t tell me you admired those guys!”

“I am telling you,” said Dacian carefully, “just how dangerous idealism, even spirituality, can be, when nurtured in the wrong hothouse. Idealists who begin by wanting to create a higher civilization almost always find they must begin by trying to improve cultures and societies. And invariably, this ends where it must, with trying to cull wheat from chaff—by genetics, eugenics, whatever it may be—to create a better breed of human being.”

With these weighty words, we’d reached the Hofburg. Wolfgang got us tickets, and we all entered the Schatzkammer.

We walked through rooms of big glass cases chock-full of crown jewels, imperial regalia, costumes, and reliquaries: the octagonal jewel-crusted millennium-old crown of the Holy Roman Empire with the figure of Rex Salomon emblazoned on the side, the Habsburg crown and orb with AEIOU—Austriae est imperare orbi universo: Austria Has Sovereignty Over the Entire World—and other modest family trinkets. At last we reached the final chamber with the swords of state and other imperial ceremonial weapons.

There, on a bit of red velvet inside a small case against the wall, along with other items of seemingly greater value and interest, was a small dagger-shaped object, two pieces crudely made of some kind of iron, tied together with something that looked like catgut. The handle was designed to be fitted to a shaft, the center section surrounded by a thin collar of brass: the perfect image of the spear Laf had described from his childhood visit here nearly eight decades ago.

“It looks like nothing, really, doesn’t it?” said Dacian, standing beside me as we gazed down into the glass case.

Wolfgang, at my other side, said, “However, it is supposed to be the famous spear of Longinus. Many books have been written about it. Gaius Cassius Longinus was a Roman centurion who, it’s said, pierced the side of Christ with this very weapon. Beneath the brass collar, they say, is one of the crucifixion nails removed from the body of Christ. It is said, too, that Charlemagne’s sword in the next display case—thought to have belonged to Attila the Hun—is the same once wielded two thousand years ago by Saint Peter in the garden of Gethsemane.”

“All nonsense, of course,” Dacian said. “The sword here is a medieval saber, not an early Hebrew or Roman weapon at all. And this spear before us is only a copy. Books have been written about that, too. Everyone coveted it, right down to Adolf Hitler, because of mysterious powers it possessed. It’s reported that when Hitler took the true spear of Longinus off to Nürnberg, along with other such treasures he’d gathered, he had copies made of each—and those copies are what we see today. From then on, everyone interested in power or glory was looking for the real ones, including the Windsors during their long exile and the American general George Patton—who’d studied his share of ancient history, and who himself turned Nürnberg Castle upside down hunting for them as soon as he arrived there at the end of the war. But the authentic objects had vanished.”

“You don’t credit all those stories about Hitler living on after the war, and keeping the sacred hallows with him?” Wolfgang asked Dacian.

“As you see, my dear,” Dacian addressed me with a smile, “there are many stories afloat. Some even support the lengthy survival, well beyond death, of nearly everyone in history associated with these objects, from Hitler to Jesus Christ. Since religions and political movements—which I confess often are indistinguishable to me—have been widely based on such tales, I decline to comment. I find the topic neither of importance nor of interest. What is of interest, however, is why individuals like Hitler or Patton wanted the so-called hallows at all. Only one person can answer that question.”

“You don’t mean to say that you know where the sacred hallows might be?” said Wolfgang. Naturally, I wanted to hear the answer too, but Dacian didn’t bite.

“As I explained to Ariel earlier,” he said patiently, “it’s the process, not the product, of the quest that’s truly important.”

“But if the hallows aren’t the point,” Wolfgang said in frustration, “what is?”

Dacian looked grim and shook his head. “Not what,” he repeated. “Not who, nor how, nor where, nor when, but why: that is the question. However, since facts seem so important to you, I’ll share what I do know. Indeed, I’ve already arranged to do so just after we’ve finished here.”

He put one finger beneath my chin. “The moment I learned from Wolfgang what you might be carrying with you, I reserved a spot for us, by telephone from the restaurant. Our appointment is just one minute from now, at three o’clock, only a few steps from here on the Josefsplatz. We have the place to ourselves for an