Read Online The Fifth Gospel by Ian Caldwell - Free Book Online

Ages.
    â€œDoctor,” I said, “people’s hearts were broken sixteen years ago. Please don’t put them through that all over again.”
    But he was undaunted. He served us plates of food in silence, then rinsed his hands with bottled water and said, “Please, begin eating. I’ll return in a moment. It’s important that you see this for yourself.”
    When he disappeared behind a screen to fetch something, I whispered to Simon, “Is this why you brought me here? To listen to this?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œSimon, he’s a drunk.”
    My brother nodded. “When he blacked out in the desert, it wasn’t from heatstroke.”
    â€œThen what am I doing here?”
    â€œHe needs your help.”
    I ran a hand through my beard. “I know a priest in Trastevere who runs a twelve-step program.”
    But Simon tapped his head. “The problem’s up here. Ugo’s worried that he won’t finish his exhibit in time.”
    â€œHow can you be helping him with this? You really want to relive what happened to Father back then?”
    Every television in our country had been tuned to the news conference when the lab results were announced. That night, the only sound in the Vatican was of children playing in the gardens, because our parents needed time to be alone. The experience wounded my father in a way he would never recover from. Michael Black abandoned him. Phone calls from old friends—from Orthodox friends—dried up. Father’s heart attack came two months later.
    â€œListen to me,” I whispered. “This is not your problem.”
    Simon squinted. “My flight to Ankara leaves in four hours. His flight to Urfa isn’t until next week. I need you to keep an eye on him until he leaves.”
    I waited. There was something more in his eyes.
    â€œUgo’s about to ask you a favor,” he said. “If you don’t want to do it for him, then I want you to do it for me.”
    I watched Nogara’s shadow approach us down the hallway. It paused there, while his body was still out of sight, and like an actor preparinghis entrance onstage, he made the sign of the cross with one hand. In his other hand was something long and thin.
    â€œHave faith,” Simon whispered. “When Ugo tells you what he’s found, you’re going to believe in him, too.”
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    NOGARA REENTERED CARRYING A bolt of fabric. He unspooled it along the clothesline strung across the room, then said, in a reverent tone, “I’m sure this needs no introduction.”
    I froze. Before me was an image that had lain undisturbed in my memory for years: two silhouettes, the color of rust, joined together at the tops of their heads, one of a man’s front, one of his back. On top of the silhouettes were bloodstains: along the head, from a crown of thorns; on the back, from scourging; and under one rib, from a spear in the side.
    â€œA one-to-one reproduction of the Holy Shroud,” Nogara said, raising a hand to point, but never allowing his fingers to touch the cloth. “Fourteen feet long, four feet wide.”
    The image created a strange tension inside me. The ancient tradition of Eastern Christians, both Catholic and Orthodox, is that holy icons are portraits of saints and apostles that have been accurately copied and recopied for centuries. Of all these images, the Holy Shroud is king, the image at the heart of our faith.
    It is also our greatest relic. The Bible says that the bones of Elisha raised a dead man to life, and that sick people were healed by touching the garments of Jesus, so to this day every Catholic altar and every Orthodox antimension has a relic inside it. Almost none of these can claim to have touched our Lord, and only one—the Shroud—can claim to be his self-portrait. Never has so important a holy object been shunned.
    Yet even after the carbon dating, the Church never transferred the Shroud to a