The Testimonium

by Lewis Ben Smith

  As for the crew—he had put long thought into it before deciding who to call in. Father Duncan MacDonald was a no-brainer—any excavation from the early Christian era needed at least one representative from the Vatican present, or at least, that had been Guioccini’s policy from the moment he became director. He did not believe that archeology should pander to faith, but when the two worlds of faith and history intersected, as they frequently did in Italy, it was foolish to needlessly antagonize the world’s—and Italy’s—largest Christian denomination. And MacDonald made that kind of liaison much easier for the scientists involved, because he was a first-rate Biblical archeologist who never let religious bias get in the way of his quest for truth. Of course, as a Catholic clergyman, he also firmly believed that the historical record, when accurately interpreted and analyzed, would back up the claims of the Church—which, more often than not, it did. MacDonald was a master at treating and preserving ancient documents. After years of experimentation with various polymers, he had developed a preservative formula that could easily be sprayed onto any ancient document. With it, he could take a papyrus manuscript that was completely falling apart and stabilize it in a matter of hours; making it strong enough to handle and study without damage.

  Dr. Simone Apriceno was another natural choice. A paleobotanist, she specialized in analyzing pollens and spores from ancient sites, and had been instrumental in debunking a number of purported “Holy Relics” by showing they contained traces of plant life that did not exist at the time and place they supposedly originated. If anyone could determine whether or not the materials in the chamber had truly been there since the time of Tiberius, she could. Nearly sixty years of age and built like a fireplug, she had the strength, stamina, and enthusiasm of a woman half her age. She was also a remarkable chef in her spare time, whose knowledge of ancient herb-lore enabled her to come up with dishes whose flavors had to be tasted to be believed.

  The third team member, however, was one of the reasons that Guioccini was having trouble sleeping. He had wanted to include his American friend, Dr. Luke Martens, a widely respected historian and archeologist specializing in the early Roman Empire. However, when he called him, he was crushed to find out that Dr. Martens was in traction following a ski accident. The professor had recently married a woman named Alicia, some fifteen years his junior, who apparently was a bit of an adrenaline junkie. Her latest winter vacation idea had landed her husband in the hospital. “She does keep me young, Bernardo,” laughed Martens as he explained his predicament. “When she is not trying to kill me, that is!” The Italian archeologist had heard an outraged female voice in the background, and chuckled. His own wife would not be caught dead on a ski lift. But Martens’ injury made a journey to Capri out of the question for another week or two at least.

  “But I do have a replacement in mind,” said the American, “if you are willing to accept my judgment. He is young, but he is very sharp and trained under the best. I’ve been supervising his work at Ephesus, and he is very enthusiastic, but also a hundred percent professional. He’s on sabbatical right now, getting ready to return to Ephesus to write up the work he’s done there. But honestly, the other folks on the dig can handle that end of it just as well, and it sounds like you could use some youthful energy on this project. Also, he’s a pretty staunch Christian, so anything from the first century will hold particular interest for him. He did an excellent doctoral dissertation on the impact of the Emperor Domitian on the early church, and backed it up with some marvelous research and scholarship. Believe me, Joshua Parker will be a better asset to your team than I could.”

  Not wanting to disappoint, Guioccini had accepted, but he was a bit ambivalent about inviting someone onto the team that he had never met before. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to have some Protestant input to balance out the Catholic presence, and if the boy was half the field archeologist that Martens claimed he was, he could serve well. All in all, he decided, he had done the best he could in the short time available. He just hoped that Dr. Parker would call him back soon; he needed the team to be complete as soon as possible. Finally, about 1 AM, he closed his eyes and began to drift off. That was when his phone rang.

  * * *

  Back at the Villa Jovis, Isabella and Giuseppe had gotten their tents set up pretty quickly. Chief Rosario had brought the supplies up the steep trail on an ATV just before sunset, about an hour previously, and they had met him at the lower end of the ruin, where the trail head was located—and out of sight of the ancient chamber. He had a sturdy Army issue cot for each of them, with sleeping bag and pillow to go on it, two pup tents, and a grocery bag from which the wonderful aroma of fresh baked bread, butter, and garlic was issuing. Isabella thanked him, then grabbed her gear and headed back up the trail, leaving the two friends to chat a moment.

  “Giuseppe, you old fool!” said the Chief. “If you had let me know who you were sharing the mountaintop with tonight, I could have brought one tent—by mistake, of course!”

  Rossini growled back: “You know I am too old for that sort of thing, my friend—although I will agree, she carries that first-rate mind of hers inside a first-rate package! I’ve known Isabella since she was a teen, though—even if I was so inclined, it would not feel right. Not to mention I’m sure she’s had better offers than this old carcass of mine.”

  The Chief sensed he had offended, so he changed topics. “Any chance of getting a small glimpse of what you have found?”

  Rossini smiled sadly. “I would love nothing better than to give you the grand tour, but it is just not possible yet. We’ll have some VIPs here in the morning. After we talk to them, maybe I’ll be able to tell you a bit more.” After a bit more conversation, he saw the police chief off and walked up the steps to the level where the chamber was. Isabella already had her tent mostly up, and he began pitching his own a few yards away. Before he was half done, hers was finished and she joined him. There were two small folding chairs inside the bag with the tents, so when they were finished setting up camp, they sat companionably beside each other and shared the delicious stromboli and bread that he found inside the grocery bags, washing them down with the last of the brandy from the old monks.

  “Well, we have a writing table, a manuscript, a curule chair, and some implements so far,” he said. “Then there is the lamp up in the niche on the wall. What else do you think we will find?”

  “I must admit, I am very curious about that large boxlike item at the back of the chamber,” Isabella replied. “What do you think it could be?”

  “Placement, size, and shape would argue for a cabinet of some sort, or a storage chest. But will there be anything in it?” wondered Rossini.

  “That is the real question, isn’t it?” she replied. “What we have found is truly remarkable, but I cannot help but wish for more. I don’t know that I will be able to sleep tonight!”

  They chatted pleasantly for another hour or so as the stars came out and the moon began to sink in the west. Isabella caught Rossini up on her most recent work, and after a while began to speak, a bit hesitantly, about the loss of her husband five years before. Rossini had spent a good bit of time with her shortly after the loss, and had tried to comfort her as best he could, but it had been several years since they spent any time together. This troubled him, because Isabella had gone to some lengths to comfort him when Carlotta, his wife of forty years, had died a decade before. He thought of the raw, aching grief he had felt for weeks afterward, and was sad for his beautiful young friend, who had barely had time to fall in love with her gentle young husband before he was cruelly taken from her. Giuseppe could tell by the raw tone of her voice as she tried to talk about those awful days after the crash that she was still missing Marc terribly, and that the loss of her father had compounded that sorrow. He found himself hoping that, before her grief made her old and bitter, she would someday find another man to love.

  After a while, her voice trailed off and he began to speak in turn. He spoke of his son, a career Ital
ian army officer currently on duty in Sicily, and his only daughter, the wife of a rising young politician currently serving in the civic government of Turin. He did not see his children as frequently as he would have liked, but they were both fine young people and he was glad that they still enjoyed a close relationship. Whenever possible, he explained, he emailed them every night and kept them caught up on his life.

  Soon, however, their talk turned back to archeology and history, their mutual passion, and before long the moon had set and the stars blazed out in full glory. Then they both headed off to bed, still feeling wide awake.

  Surprisingly, though, the excitement of the day had left both of them drained and ready for slumber. Within a half hour of climbing onto their separate cots, the two archeologists were sound asleep, and did not wake until the first rays of the sun began to illuminate the eastern sky beyond the ruins of the ancient villa.

  * * *

  Josh Parker cast his line out with an ease born of long practice, watching the lead sinker and the hook with a half-frozen shrimp on it go arcing out over the gently rippling waters of Lake Hugo before hitting the surface and sinking straight for the bottom about fifty feet from his father’s boat. He fed the line out until he felt the sinker hit the bottom, then flipped the bar of his reel over and turned the crank until he felt the line tighten. His dad already had two rods cast out by the time he got his own fully set—but then, Ben Parker had been fishing for about thirty years longer than his son. Josh kept one finger on the line, feeling the drift of the boat slowly pull the sinker across the clay and rock twenty feet below them. Before long, the channel catfish that loved this big, muddy lake in southeastern Oklahoma would smell the shrimp being dragged through their watery home and come out to investigate. He hoped.

  “Well, Dad, that was a real stem-winder you preached yesterday,” he said.

  “And how many times have you heard me go on about that passage?” his dad asked with a smile.

  “Oh, just a few,” Josh said. “But it’s an important truth, and too many people forget how foundational it is to our faith. That message drives it home in a way that few of them will forget anytime soon.”

  “You must need help paying off your student loan or something,” his father said with a laugh. “You normally are picking my sermons apart, verse by verse and illustration by illustration!”

  “I’m doing fine, Dad,” said Josh. “I guess it’s just that—well, I’ve missed you. It was good to listen to you preach again.” His voice caught a bit—he was incredibly fond of his dad, but it was hard for him to express it in words sometimes.

  “It is good to have you home again, son,” his father said. “Now, did you hear the one about the small-town preacher who looked just like Conway Twitty?” His father was about halfway through the joke—which Josh had heard before, but he would never admit it because he loved his dad’s lively comic nature—when he felt a tug on the line. Two light taps at first, then a hard jerk as the hungry fish grabbed the shrimp and ran with it. He jerked back on the rod hard and clean, and felt the hook set. Then it was off to the races. The panicked fish lunged and swam as Josh slowly reeled him toward the top. His rod bent nearly double as the fish tried to return to the deep water, but each time it gave up as he kept a steady pressure on the line, taking up a few feet of slack every time the fish changed direction.

  “Stay with him, bud!” his father shouted, reaching for the dip net. After a struggle of nearly ten minutes, Josh caught his first glimpse of his aquatic quarry—a flash of white belly reflecting the morning sun as the fish rolled in about four feet of water and dove for the bottom again. It was a big one, all right. He played it a moment or two longer, then his quarry ran for the surface and breached the ripples, scattering spray in all directions. No channel cat was this! It had the unmistakable color and high dorsal fin of a blue catfish, or a “high fin blue” as the local anglers called them. He let it run one more time, and then began cranking the reel to bring it to the surface. Ben Parker held the dip net ready. But the wily fish was not out of tricks yet—it shot straight out of the water, spinning in midair, and as it dove again, snapped the fifteen-pound test line it had wrapped around its body. A single flash of its white belly, and it was off to the depths to digest its hard-won shrimp breakfast.

  “Quod sugit et facit me vis iactare!!” shouted Josh. He had taught himself to swear in Latin long ago, so that on the rare occasion when he felt the need to say something profane, he would not embarrass his father by saying something vulgar—or at least, not something his father would understand.

  Ben Parker was not going to have it though. “And what does that little gem phrase mean?” he asked his son.

  Josh sighed. “Nothing too bad,” he said. “It’s Latin for ‘That sucks and it makes me want to throw up!’”

  His dad threw back his head and laughed. “Well,” he said, “I guess losing a twenty-pound blue does merit some sort of expletive. I wonder if I said that in front of my deacons whether or not they would bother to look it up?”

  At that moment Josh’s cell phone rang. He debated whether or not to answer, but the LED indicator showed that the call was from his mentor Dr. Martens, so he looked at his dad as if to say “What else do you do?” and answered.

  “Josh!” boomed the voice of his former thesis advisor. “Hope I didn’t wake you from some dreamy vacation nap!”

  “Hello, Dr. Martens,” Josh replied. “Has Alicia managed to put you in the hospital yet?” Like most of the grad students in the Biblical Archeology Department at Tulane, he had been shocked when the graying, bearded professor of Biblical Archeology had married a Marine Biology grad student fifteen years his junior. But the attraction between them was real, and after the amazement wore off, Josh could tell the two were good for each other.

  “Funny you should mention that,” Martens chuckled. “I’m, well, kind of recovering from a ski accident at the moment.”

  “Wow!” Josh said. “I was only kidding! What did she do, talk you into some sort of extreme ski jump competition?” Alicia’s fascination with high-risk acrobatics was a subject of some campus gossip long before she and Professor Martens had married.

  “If you must know, I swerved to avoid an eight-year-old on the bunny slope and hit a tree,” growled his old mentor. “But I think I’ll tell your version from now on!” Josh laughed at this sally, but then Dr. Martens’ voice grew more serious. “Look, Josh, my disability may turn into a major professional opportunity for you if you are interested,” he said. “Are you still up on your first-century Latin and Greek?”

  Josh was all ears. “Been reading Cassius Dio in my spare time,” he said. “Now tell me what’s going on.”

  “I don’t know a lot of the details,” said Martens, “but it appears that they have made what may be a major document discovery at the Villa Jovis on Capri. Some documents, or at least one document, dating to the reign of Tiberius Caesar—maybe even written by Tiberius Caesar! They need a first-century Latin specialist with a strong background in New Testament archeology. I praised you to the high heavens when the Director of the Italian Bureau of Antiquities called me a couple of hours ago, and he has agreed to include you on the team that will excavate and study the ruins if you are up for it.”

  Josh was excited beyond words. “When do I need to leave?” he asked.

  Martens said: “The sooner the better, but I don’t know the details. I have Dr. Guioccini’s number here. Got a pen?”

  “I’m in the middle of Lake Hugo holding a rod and reel,” said Josh. “Can you text me the number?”

  “Sure,” said the professor. “But don’t waste any time before calling. He’s trying to get this team assembled and on-site ASAP. Good to talk to you again. Now get over to Italy and make me proud!”

  Josh looked at his dad after he said goodbye to Dr. Martens and hung up. His father was already reeling up his first line, and Josh reached for the other rig and began reeling it in too. “Well,” said Ben Parker, “looks l
ike the fish are safe for now. So where are you off to this time?”

  Before Josh could answer, his phone chirped to let him know the text had arrived.

  * * *

  Isabella Sforza stretched and yawned as the morning sun peeked over the stone staircase that had hidden the ancient writing nook for two thousand years. She had slept well enough, but the army cot was far from comfortable, and in her excitement the day before, she had forgotten to pack her toothbrush. Between the stromboli, the garlic bread, and the brandy, her mouth tasted like a homeless vampire had crawled in it to die. She had a small hairbrush in her purse, which she ran through her unruly black tresses a couple of times before giving up. She was an archeologist in the field, after all, not a schoolgirl going to a dance. She looked over to see Giuseppe Rossini limping toward her with a distinct grimace.

  “You look like you could use some ibuprofen,” she said. “I keep a small bottle in my purse.”

  “Some morphine, a bottle of Chianti, and an affectionate Swedish masseuse would be more like it,” Rossini said in a croaking voice. “But ibuprofen will have to do.”

  She gave him a couple of the small brown pills and he swallowed them with a sip of bottled water. She looked at her watch and then began to carefully roll up her sleeping bag and pack up her few personal effects. “I imagine they will set the mobile lab up here on this level, next to the chamber,” she said. “We’ll need to get our tents out of the way. I can’t wait to continue our work when they get here!”

  Giuseppe joined her and they quickly broke down both tents and moved them, along with their other gear, over to the foot of the staircase that had concealed the writing nook for two thousand years. She had used the flat tarp that was meant to go under the tent to cover the entrance of the ancient chamber the night before. A better protective cover would be coming with the mobile lab, but in the meantime, she wanted to keep as much modern pollen and dust out as she could. They had used some of the original masonry blocks to weigh down the tarp at top and bottom—it was long enough to reach from the ground and lap over the top edge of the staircase, if they positioned it just right. They had barely finished stowing their gear when they heard the sound of the chopper approaching in the distance.