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find information, and there was nothing other than the description Maureen had read earlier at the museum.
    Two hours of searching through Magdalene art pages were fruitless. No amount of googling brought up anything new on the piece itself, soMaureen went after it from a different angle, looking up other details from the description: the artist, the locales. She found some general information online about the artist and also on Borgo San Sepolcro that might prove helpful later. She made the following notes:
    SPINELLO ARETINO—given name Luca (Luke), as was his father’s, also a painter, after the saint for whom the painter’s guild was named. The name “Aretino” means “from Arezzo,” which is a province in Tuscany. Primarily a fresco painter, he worked in Florence at Santa Trinità.
    Maureen paused. Spinello painted at the church in Santa Trinità, which was a sacred location for the Order of the Holy Sepulcher and had been one of Matilda’s strongholds. This was a good sign that she was on the right track. Her mosaic was beginning to take shape. She read on.
    BORGO SAN SEPOLCRO—now known as Sansepolcro, it was founded in the year 1000 by pilgrims who had returned from the Holy Land with specific reverence for the Holy Sepulcher and with priceless relics. One of these pilgrims was known as Santo Arcano. It is in the province of Arezzo and is the birthplace of the master fresco painter Piero della Francesca.
    Maureen squirmed with pleasure at this discovery. She was right! There was an entire town in Tuscany dedicated to the Holy Sepulcher. But there was one sentence that gave her a more immediate rush of excitement:
    One of these pilgrims was known as Santo Arcano.
    Santo Arcano.
Maureen laughed out loud. It appeared here that the Church was saying that there was a saint named Arcano. Her Latin wasn’t fluent, but it was serviceable, and she had certainly used it toread between the lines many times in her research. Santo Arcano was not a reference to an obscure Tuscan saint. It meant “Holy Secret.” If she were to translate all this into English and make sense of it, what the description really said to Maureen was,
This town, named after the Holy Sepulcher, was established based on the Holy Secret!
    Now she was getting somewhere.
    She contemplated the rest of this discovery for a moment and made notes. Maureen was familiar with the work of Piero della Francesca, as his iconic Magdalene was among her favorites. He had painted her for the duomo in Arezzo, a very strong and majestic image from which her power and leadership emanated. There was nothing penitent about this Magdalene. It was not painted by a man who believed for one minute the sixth-century propaganda of Mary Magdalene as repentant sinner. It was a fresco created to emphasize leadership. Maureen had a framed copy of this image hanging in her office. She had studied Piero della Francesca during her art research and always found him interesting. His frescoes in Arezzo were very alive, very human and full of narrative. When she looked at his art, she felt kinship with him; Piero was a storyteller. He painted
The Legend of the True Cross
in rich and elaborate detail, he infused
The Coming of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon
with profound sanctity, and all his artwork represented the most sacred teachings of the Order of the Holy Sepulcher.
    Reading about the Order reminded Maureen that she needed to make arrangements for her return to Europe, as she had meetings with her French publisher in Paris to prepare for the release there. Paris was never a hardship; she loved the city and her best friend, Tamara Wisdom, an independent filmmaker, had been hounding her to spend some time there with her. Maureen’s cousin and spiritual adviser, Peter Healy, was also living in Paris at the moment. He had once been known as Father Peter Healy, but he was a refugee from the Vatican at the moment, possibly forever, and was no longer referring to himself as a priest