READ EXCERPT: 'The Secret Supper,' by Javier Sierra
March 27, 2006 — -- Like the controversial best-seller "The Da Vinci Code," "The Secret Supper" takes on Leonardo Da Vinci's famous painting of Jesus Christ eating with his disciples the night before he was betrayed and turned over to the Romans to face death. "The Secret Supper" is a novel full of intrigue, religious zeal and murder. The author, Javier Sierra, suggests Da Vinci's painting is full of hidden heretic messages -- and that the book is the key to unlocking them.
Read an excerpt of the book below.
I cannot recall a more dangerous and tangled puzzle than the one Iwas called upon to solve in the New Year of 1497, when the duchyof Ludovico il Moro lay in its painful death throes, while the PapalStates watched on.
The world was then a dangerous, fast-changing place, a hellishquicksand in which fifteen centuries of faith and culture threatenedto collapse under the onslaught of new ideas imported fromthe Far East. Suddenly, from one day to the next, Plato's Greece,Cleopatra's Egypt and even the extravagant curiosities of the ChineseEmpire that Marco Polo had discovered seemed to deservegreater praise than our own Scriptural stories.
Those were troubled days for Christendom. We were ruled by asimoniac Pope (a Spanish devil crowned under the name ofAlexander VI who had shamelessly bought his own tiara at the latestconclave), governed by several princes seduced by the beautyof all things pagan, and threatened by Turkish hordes armed to theteeth, waiting for an opportunity to invade the Western Mediterraneanand convert us to the faith of Islam. In all truth, it can besaid that never before, in almost fifteen hundred years of history,had our own faith stood so utterly defenseless.
And there, in the midst of it all, was this servant in God,Agostino Leyre, the very same who is writing to you now. I foundmyself at the threshold of a century of transformation, an epoch inwhich the world was shifting its borders daily and demanding fromus all an unprecedented effort to adapt. It was as if, with every passing hour, the Earth became larger and larger, constantly obliging
us to update our store of geographical knowledge. We, men of thecloth, had already begun to realize that there would no longer beenough of us to preach to a world peopled by millions of souls whohad never heard of Christ, and the more skeptical among us foresawa period of imminent chaos that would bring into Europe awhole new tide of pagans.
In spite of such terrible things, those were exciting years. Yearsthat I look upon now with a certain nostalgia, today, in my old age,from this miserable exile that slowly devours both my health andmy memories. My hands barely obey me, my eyes grow dim, theburning sun of southern Egypt melts my brain and only in the hoursbefore dawn am I capable of ordering my thoughts and reflecting onthe curious fate that led me to this place -- a fate from which neitherPlato, nor Alexander VI, nor even the pagans were excluded.But I must not run ahead of my story.
Suffice it to say that now, at last, I'm alone. Of the secretaries Ionce had, not a single one remains, and today only Abdul, ayoungster who doesn't speak my tongue and who believes I am aneccentric holy man who has come to die in his land, looks after mymost basic needs. I eke out my life in an ancient tomb hollowed inthe rocks, surrounded by sand and dust, threatened by scorpionsand almost prevented from walking by my two weak legs. Everyday, faithful Abdul brings into my cubicle some unleavened breadand whatever leftovers he finds at home. He is like the raven thatfor sixty years would carry in his beak half an ounce of bread toPaul the Hermit, who died in these same lands, more than a hundredyears old. Unlike that ominous bird, Abdul smiles when hedelivers his burden, without quite knowing what else to do. It isenough. For someone who has sinned as much as I have, every momentof contemplation becomes an unexpected gift from the CreatorHimself.
But, as much as solitude, pity too has come to gnaw away at mysoul. I'm sorry that Abdul will never learn what brought me to hisvillage. I would not know how to explain it to him by signs. Norwill he ever be able to read these lines, and even in the remoteeventuality that he might find them after my death and sell themto some camel driver, I doubt whether they will serve any purposeother than fueling a bonfire on a cold desert night. No one hereunderstands Latin nor any of the romance languages. And everytime that Abdul finds me in front of my pages, he shrugs in astonishment,knowing full well that he is missing something important.
Day after day, this thought fills me with anguish. The intimatecertainty that no Christian will ever read what I am writing cloudsmy mind and brings tears to my eyes. When I finish these pages, Iwill ask that they be buried with my remains, hoping that theAngel of Death will remember to collect them, and carry them toOur Everlasting Father when the time comes for my soul to bebrought to Judgment. It is a sad story. But then, the greatest secretsare those that never see the light.
Will mine manage to do so?
I doubt it.
Here, in the caves they call Yabal al-Tarif, a few steps awayfrom the great Nile that blesses with its waters an inhospitable andempty desert, I only pray God that He give me enough time to justifymy deeds in writing. I am so far removed from the privileges Ionce enjoyed in Rome that, even if the new Pope were to forgiveme, I know I would be unable to return to God's fold. I would findit unbearable to hear no longer the distant cries of the muezzins intheir minarets. And the longing for this land that has so generouslywelcomed me would slowly torture my final days.
My consolation lies in setting down those past events exactlyin the order in which they took place. Some I suffered in my ownflesh. Others, however, I only heard of long after they had happened.And yet, told one after the other, they will give you, hypotheticalreader, an idea of the enormity of the puzzle that changedmy life forever.
No. I cannot continue to turn my back on my fate. Now that Ihave reflected on all that which my eyes have seen, I feel irrevocablycompelled to tell everything ... even if the telling will servenobody's purpose.