Julia Navarro - The Brotherhood Of The Holy Shroud

Ana got up and inspected the cavity they were trapped in. It was not very big, and she could see not the smallest chink in the wall of rock that had buried them. She shouted, and her voice boomed back at her within the small space. Nothing else. It struck her then that indeed she might not get out of there alive.

She propped up the light and sat down beside the priest. Realizing that he had accepted his fate, she decided to play her last card as a reporter. In the shadows that surrounded them, Padre Yves didn't see her take her cell phone out of her purse. The last call she'd made had been to Sofia. God, she hoped she'd answer this time. And she hoped there was a signal that could take their voices out beyond the walls of this otherwise mortal cave they were in. All she had to do was hit the redial button……

With a kitchen towel she'd taken from Turgut's apartment, she pressed hard against a wound she saw just below Yves's rib cage. The priest grimaced and looked up at her with glassy eyes.

"I'm sorry, Ana."

"Yeah, so you said. Now tell me why -what's behind all this insanity?"

"What do you want me to tell you? What difference does it make, if we're both going to die?"

"I want to know why I'm going to die. You're a Templar, like those friends of yours."

"Yes, we are Templars."

'And who were the others, the ones that looked like Turks, the ones with the porter?"

"Men sent by Addaio."

"Who's Addaio?"

"The leader, the pastor of the Community of the Shroud. They want it…"

"Want the shroud?"

"Yes."

"Want to steal it?"

"They think it belongs to them. Jesus sent it to them."

Ana thought he was delirious. She brought the light to his face and could see the hint of a smile on his lips.

"No, I'm not crazy. In the first century a.d. there was a king in Edessa, King Abgar. He had leprosy, but he was cured by the shroud Jesus had been buried in. That is what the legend says. And that is what the descendants of that first community of Christians believe, the Christian community that came together in Edessa. They believe that someone brought the shroud to Edessa and that when Abgar wrapped himself in it he was cured."

"But who brought it?"

"One of Jesus' disciples, according to tradition."

"But the shroud has been through so much since then-it left Edessa hundreds and hundreds of years ago."

"Yes, but since the shroud was stolen from the Christians in Edessa by the troops of the emperor of Byzantium-"

"Romanus Lecapenus."

"Yes, Romanus Lecapenus-they swore they would not rest until they'd recovered it. The Christian community in Edessa was-is-one of the oldest in the world, and they have not spared one day in trying to recover their sacred legacy, as they see it, just as we have never stopped trying to prevent them from doing that. The shroud no longer belongs to them, and we are sworn to protect it for all the faithful."

'And these men without tongues-they're part of this community?"

"Yes, they are Addaio's soldiers, young men who consider it an honor to sacrifice themselves in order to recover the shroud. They have their tongues cut out so they can't talk if they're captured by the police."

"That's horrible!"

"They believe that was what their ancestors did, to protect the shroud in their time. They've been after it for centuries, and we've been there to stop them. It's funny-we could wipe them out overnight, but we never have…… They're Christians, too, devout in their way, and we ourselves know too well the evils of such persecution… and now our fates have become intertwined." De Charny's head was spinning, and he could barely see Ana's face in the darkness.

He sighed with pain and went on. "Marco Valoni was right. The fires, the accidents in the cathedral-all staged… mostly by the community to cause confusion when they go after the shroud, sometimes by us to attract the authorities before they can succeed. We've always stopped them, but we try to protect them too. They know too much about us now……"

Ana had propped the cell phone next to him. She didn't know whether Sofia had answered, whether someone was hearing their words. She didn't know anything. But she had to try-she couldn't let the truth die with her.

"What do the Templars have to do with the shroud and this community?" she pressed him. "Why do you care about it so much?"

"We bought it from Emperor Balduino-it's ours. Many of our brothers… many… died to protect it."

"But it's a fake! You know that carbon-fourteen dating has proven that the cloth dates only to the thirteenth or fourteenth century."

"The scientists are right, the cloth is from the late thirteenth century, to be exact. But what about the pollen grains stuck to the cloth-grains exactly like those found in two-thousand-year-old sediment in the area of Lake Genezaret? The blood is authentic too-both venous and arterial. Oh, and the cloth, the cloth is Eastern, and on it scientists have found traces of blood albumin around the outline of the marks where Jesus was scourged."

"So how do you explain that?"

"You know how, or have been about to discover it. You went to France, you were at Lirey."

"How do you know that?"

'Ana, do you think there is anything you've done that we don't know about? Any of you? We know it all, everything. You're right-I am a descendant of the brother of Geoffroy de Charney, the last precept of the Temple in Normandy. Mine is a family that has given many of its sons to the order."

Ana was fascinated. Yves de Charny was making a sensational confession-one that might well die with them in their stone tomb. But whether or not she would ever publish it, at that moment she felt a surge of pride, knowing that she had managed to disentangle the mystery.

"Go on."

"No… No, I will not do that."

Ana felt a rush of power and utter certainty as she clasped the priest's hands, almost as though someone else was speaking to the Templar through her. "De Charny, you are about to stand before God. Do it with a clear conscience; confess your sins, bring the light to bear on the shadows you have lived behind, the mysteries that have cost so many lives."

"Confess? To whom?"

"To me. I can help you unburden your conscience and give sense to my own death. If you believe in God, He will be listening."

"God has no need to listen to know what is in the hearts of men. Do you believe in Him?"

"I'm not sure. I hope He exists."

Padre Yves said nothing. Then, grimacing, he wiped the pearls of sweat off his forehead and squeezed Ana's hand.

"Francois de Charney, spelled with an e at that time, as you've discovered, was a Templar knight who lived in the East for many years, since the time he was a young man. There is no need for me to tell you all the countless adventures of this ancestor of mine-just that a few days before the fall of Saint-Jean d'Acre in the Holy Land, the Grand Master of the Temple charged him with safeguarding the shroud, which was kept in the fortress along with the rest of the Templar treasures.

"My ancestor wrapped the shroud in a piece of cloth very similar to that of the shroud itself, and he returned with it to France as he had been ordered. To his amazement and the amazement of the master of the Marseilles Temple, when they unwrapped the original shroud, they found that the cloth it had been wrapped in also had the figure of Christ imprinted on it. Maybe there is a, shall we say, 'chemical' explanation for this, or we can believe that what happened was a miracle- whatever the case, from that moment on, there were two holy shrouds, with the true image of Christ on both of them."

"My God!" breathed Ana. "That explains-" "That explains that the scientists are right when they say that the cloth in the cathedral in Turin is from the thirteenth or fourteenth century-even if they can't understand the appearance of those pollen grains or blood residue-but it also means that those who believe that the shroud contains the true image of Christ are correct as well. The shroud is sacred; it contains residues, 'remains,' if you will, of Jesus' calvary and his image-that is what Christ looked like, Ana; that is His true image. And that is the miracle with which God honored the House of Charney, although later another branch of the family took our relic-history records this-and sold it to the House of Savoy. And now you know the secret of the Holy Shroud. Only a handful of the elect in the entire world know the truth. This is the explanation of the inexplicable, of the miracle, Ana, because it is a miracle."