The Quest: A Novel

at my office.”
    “Good.”
    “Have you written to Vivian?”
    In fact, he had after he’d left Mercado’s office that night and returned to the Hotel Forum. The letter had said, simply, “I am in Rome, staying at the Forum. Henry is here, working for L’Osservatore Romano, and we have met and spoken. We would like you to join us in Rome, before Christmas if possible. We are discussing the possibility of returning to Ethiopia, and we would like to include you in those discussions if you are still interested. Please telex me at the Forum either way. Hope you are well. Frank.”
    He’d felt that the letter, like his last, was a bit distant, and he wanted her to respond, so he’d added a P.S.: “I have been very lonely without you.”
    “Frank?”
    “Yes… I wrote to her. Posted it yesterday morning.”
    “Hopefully the Italian postal service is not on strike this week.” He joked, “Half of Paul’s letters to the Romans are still sitting in the Rome post office.”
    Purcell smiled. “I actually sent it from the Swiss post office here.”
    “Excellent thinking. It should be in Geneva today.” He stood. “Ready?”
    Purcell stood and they walked back to the library.
    Mercado informed Purcell, “There are over half a million printed volumes in this library, and over fifty thousand rare manuscripts, including many in the hand of Cicero, Virgil, and Tacitus.”
    “So no coffee allowed.”
    Mercado continued, “It would take a lifetime to read just the handwritten manuscripts, let alone the printed volumes.”
    “At least.”
    “In any case, after a month of research, I have no documentary evidence of how the Grail, which was bound for the Holy Land, wound up in Ethiopia. But I have a theory.” He said to Purcell, “If you know your history, you will know that the Council of Chalcedon was called in A.D. 451 to try to resolve some of the theological differences that existed in the early Christian Church.”
    “Right.”
    Mercado continued, “The pope, Leo I, and the Christian emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, Marcian, had a disagreement with the Egyptian and Ethiopian emissaries to this meeting because these emissaries refused to accept the complex doctrine of the Trinity and insisted that Christ was one and that he was wholly divine. These emissaries were expelled, and the dissenting churches came to be called Egyptic, and later Coptic, and this was the beginning of Ethiopia’s isolation from the larger Christian world, which persists to this day.”
    “I noticed.”
    “In any case, the missing piece of the journey of the Grail could be this—Perceval and Gauvain—”
    “Who we last saw sailing off in a fog.”
    “Reached the Holy Land, which was part of the Eastern Roman Empire, ruled by the emperor in Constantinople.” He continued, “Perceval and Gauvain would have given the Grail to the Christian bishop in Jerusalem, who was at that time a powerful figure in the church.” He informed Purcell, “There is some documentary evidence here in the archives that the Grail was circulated among the important Christian churches in Jerusalem over the next few centuries.”
    Mercado continued, “But in A.D. 636, Jerusalem was conquered by the armies of Islam, and many important Christian religious objects were lost or were spirited away to Rome, Constantinople, and Alexandria, Egypt, which was still part of the Eastern Roman Empire.”
    “How’d it wind up in Ethiopia, Henry?”
    “I’m speculating that the Grail wound up in Alexandria, or someplace else in Egypt, and six years later, in 642, Christian Egypt fell to Islam. I’m further speculating that the Grail, now in the possession of Coptic priests or monks in Egypt, was taken by Nile riverboat to Ethiopia for safekeeping in Axum.” He explained, “That would make sense, historically, geographically, and in terms of theology—the Egyptians were Copts, and they came into possession of the Grail from Christian refugees from Jerusalem who were fleeing Islam. Six years later, they themselves were conquered by Islam, and they needed to safeguard the Grail, so they took it by a safe route on the Nile to their co-religionists in Ethiopia.”
    “That’s an exciting story.”
    “And based on known historical events. Also, after this time, there are historical references to the Holy Grail in Ethiopia—and no references to it being anywhere else.”
    Purcell did not respond.
    “I’m not asking you to suspend belief. I’m trying to