In His Image

by James Beauseigneur

  The truck carrying the equipment finally arrived at the palace on Friday afternoon, five days behind schedule. There were no fork-lifts available to unload the truck so the team’s own brute strength was required to bring the eighty crates packed with some eight tons of equipment up the two long flights of stairs to the princes’ suite. As soon as everyone caught their breath, they went to work opening crates and unpacking equipment. Soon the public viewing of the Shroud would end and it would be brought to the test room for examination late Sunday evening. There were seven days of preparation to be done in little more than two. For the next fifty-six hours the team worked nonstop.

  Some of the tests required bright light, while others required total darkness. The first part would be easy but the latter required sealing off the eight-by-ten-foot windows with thick sheets of black plastic. Maze-like light baffles made of more black plastic also had to be built for the doorways. The testing table was set up in the Shroud room and the adjoining rooms were established as staging areas for testing and calibrating equipment. The bathroom, the only source of water, was converted into a darkroom for developing X rays and other photography. Equipment that malfunctioned had to be repaired on site with replacement parts the team had brought from the U.S. or by adapting locally available equipment. Quite a few square pegs would be forced into round holes over the next several days.

  Finally, on Sunday night at about midnight, someone in the hall said, “Here it comes.”

  Monsignor Cottino, the representative of Turin’s archbishop-cardinal, entered the Shroud testing room, followed by twelve men carrying a sheet of three-quarter inch plywood, four feet wide and sixteen feet long. Draped over the plywood was a piece of expensive red silk that covered and protected the Shroud. The men were accompanied by seven Poor Claire nuns, the senior of which began to slowly pull back the silk as the men lowered the plywood sheet to waist level. The testing table, which could be rotated ninety degrees to the right or left, sat parallel to the ground, awaiting the transfer of the Shroud.

  Silence fell over the room as the silk was carefully pulled back, revealing a sheet of off-white herringbone linen. Decker waited for a moment for this second protective covering to be removed, until it slowly dawned on him that it was not a covering at all. It was the Shroud itself. He squinted and stared at the cloth, barely able to make out anything resembling an image of a crucified man. One of the unusual features of the Shroud is that when it is seen up close, the image seems to blend into the background. The same is true when you move several yards back. The optimum range for viewing the image is about six feet, and Decker was much closer than that. He had also expected the image to resemble the photos of the Shroud. But most of the Shroud photos are actually negative images, which, because the Shroud is itself a type of photographic negative, result in a much clearer image than can be seen with the naked eye.

  Suddenly Decker felt drained. The anticlimax of seeing the Shroud, added to the weight of sleepless hours, rushed over him like the chill of cold water. The extent of his disappointment surprised him. Even though he believed the Shroud to be a fraud, he discovered that from a strictly emotional point of view he really wanted to feel something—closer to God, awe, perhaps just a twinge of the strangely religious excitement he used to feel when looking at a stained glass window. Instead he had just now mistaken the Shroud for nothing more than a protective drapery.

  He moved back from the Shroud. To his amazement, the image became much more distinct. For a moment he rocked back and forth, watching the strange phenomenon of the Shroud’s appearing and disappearing image. His curiosity went wild. Why, he wondered, would the artist who painted the image have painted it so that it was so hard to see? How could he have painted it at all, unless he used a paintbrush six feet long so he could see what he was painting?

  Few, if any, of Decker’s emotional drives were ever greater than his curiosity. The lack of sleep no longer seemed to bother him— he wanted to understand this puzzle. He watched as Monsignor Cottino walked around the Shroud, stopping every couple of feet to remove thumbtacks that held the Shroud to the plywood. Thumbtacks! Rusty and old, their stains rushed out in all directions to bear witness of their having been there. So much planning and effort had gone into keeping even the tiniest foreign particles away from the Shroud, only to find that the centuries, perhaps millennia, that preceded them had been far less careful.

  During the 120 hours allotted to the American team, three groups of scientists worked simultaneously, one at each end of the Shroud and one in the middle. The sound of camera shutters formed a constant background as nearly every action was recorded in photographs and on audio tape. Despite the sleep they had already lost, during the next five days few on the team would sleep more than two or three hours per day. Those who were not involved in a particular project stayed near to help those who were, or simply to watch.

  Thirty-six hours into the procedures, as husband-and-wife team members Roger and Marty Gilbert performed reflectance spectroscopy—a method of using reflected light to identify chemical structure—something very unusual happened. Starting at the feet and moving up the image, they began obtaining spectra. As they moved from the foot to the ankle, the spectra suddenly changed dramatically.

  “How can the same image give different spectra?” Eric Jumper asked the Gilberts. No one had an answer, so they continued. As they moved the equipment up the legs, the reading remained constant. Everything was the same except the image of the feet, and more specifically, the heels.

  Jumper left the Shroud room and found team member Sam Pellicori, who was trying to sleep on a cot in another room. “Sam! Wake up!” he said. “I need you and your macroscope in the Shroud room right away!”

  Pellicori and Jumper positioned the macroscope over the Shroud and lowered it until it was just above the heel. Pellicori focused, changed lenses, focused again, and looked, without saying a word, at the heel image on the Shroud. After a long pause, he said dryly, “It’s dirt.”

  “Dirt?” asked Jumper. “Let me look.” Jumper looked through the macroscope and refocused. “It is dirt,” he said. “But why?”

  Decker watched as Professor Goodman, too, examined the heel and reached the same conclusion.

  No one had an answer.

  As the next shift of scientists came on everyone met for a review and brainstorming session to determine the direction and priorities for the next set of tests. “Okay,” Jumper started. “Here’s what we know. The body images are straw yellow, not sepia, as all previous accounts indicated. The color is only on the crowns of the microfibers of the threads and does not vary significantly anywhere on the Shroud in either shade or depth. Where one fiber crosses another the underlying fiber is unaffected by the color.

  “The yellow microfibers show no sign of capillarity or blotting, which indicates that no liquid was used to create the image, which rules out paint. Further there is no adherence, meniscus effect, or matting between the threads, also ruling out any type of liquid paint. In the areas of the apparent blood stains, the fibers are clearly matted and there are signs of capillarity, as would be the case with blood.”

  “What about the feet?” asked one of the scientists. For those who had just come on duty, Jumper explained what had happened with the reflectance spectroscopy test.

  “Of course there’s dirt,” one of the female team members said after Jumper’s explanation. “What could be more natural than dirt on the bottom of the feet?”

  “Yes,” said Jumper, “but that assumes that this is indeed an authentic image of a crucified man, somehow transferred to the cloth.” Personally, Jumper did not discount the possibility, but he knew that it was bad science to start from an assumption.

  Still, the obvious was becoming harder and harder to deny, for not only was there dirt on the heel, but the amount of dirt was so minute that it was not visible to the naked eye. Why, they wondered, if the Shroud was a forgery, would the forger go to the trouble to put on the image dirt which no o
ne could see? The question would remain unanswered.

  As the meeting broke up, Goodman, who continued to be the greatest skeptic, remarked, “Well, if it is a forgery, it’s a good one.” Decker was struck by the tremendous allowance that Goodman had made in that little word if.

  It had now been three and a half days since Decker had slept and he resolved to return to the hotel. Before retiring, though, he sat in the lobby with team members Roger Harris, Susan Chon, and Joshua Rosen, unwinding with a slowly stirred cup of coffee heavily laced with Irish cream liqueur. Decker entertained little thought of interviewing anyone. Over the past three days, he had begun to see himself much less as a reporter and much more as a member of the team. Habitually, though, he continued making mental notes.

  One of his companions, Dr. Joshua Rosen, was a nuclear physicist from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory working on laser and particle-beam research for the Pentagon. Rosen was one of the four Jewish members of the team and Decker could not resist the opportunity to ask him about his feelings on examining a Christian relic.

  Rosen smiled. “If I weren’t so tired I’d lead you on a bit,” he said. “But if you really want an answer on that you’ll have to ask one of the other Jewish members of the team.”

  “You don’t have an opinion?” Decker queried.

  “I have an opinion, but I’m not qualified to answer your question.” Rosen paused, and Decker’s brow tightened in puzzlement.

  “I’m Messianic,” Rosen added in response. Decker didn’t catch his meaning. “A Christian Jew,” Rosen explained.

  “Oh,” said Decker. “This isn’t something that happened in the last few days, is it?”

  Rosen chuckled.

  Roger Harris, too tired to even talk, barely managed to force down a mouthful of coffee as he began to laugh with Rosen. Decker’s remark had not been that funny, but the pained look on Roger’s face set Susan Chon to giggling and soon the four over-tired, punch-drunk team members were laughing uncontrollably, each member’s inability to control himself fueling the others’ merriment.

  On the other side of the dining room, a woman had been sitting since before Decker and the others came in. On the table before her were the remnants of a long-finished cup of tea and a half-eaten hard roll. She held a red hotel napkin, pulling it in one direction and then the other. She had been watching Decker and the other team members as they talked, building up her courage to go over to their table. Their laughter made them seem somehow more approachable and human, while its infectious nature seemed to brighten her own dark mood. She rose from her seat and walked slowly but decisively toward them.

  “You are Americans?” she asked when their laughter began to pass.

  “Yes,” Joshua Rosen responded.

  “You’re with the scientists examining the Shroud?”

  On the woman’s face Decker saw lines of worry; in her eyes, the evidence of recently blotted tears.

  “Yes,” he answered. “We’re working with the Shroud. Is there something we can do for you?”

  “My son—he’s four—is very ill. The doctors say he may not live more than a few months. All that I ask is that you allow me to bring flowers to the Shroud as a gift to Jesus.”

  No one at the table had gotten more than twelve hours sleep in the previous four days and it seemed to Decker that the tears of laughter were joined by tears of sympathy for the woman’s plight and her modest request. All agreed to help but Rosen was the first to offer a plan. It would be impossible for the woman to bring flowers to the Shroud herself. However, Rosen told her that if she would bring the flowers to the palace the next day around one o’clock, he would bring them to the Shroud himself.

  In his room, Decker fell quickly to sleep and felt totally rested when he awoke fourteen hours later, at noon the next day. When he arrived at the palace an hour later, Rosen was talking with the woman from the hotel. Decker noticed that the cloud of depression that had covered her the night before had been replaced by a peaceful look of hope. She smiled in recognition at Decker as she started to leave.

  Rosen started up the stairs with the vase of cut flowers but, spotting Decker, turned and waited.

  “Pretty neat, huh?” Rosen said.

  “Pretty neat,” Decker responded. But to himself he wondered what would happen to the woman if her son died.

  3

  Body of Christ

  Ten years later

  Knoxville, Tennessee

  IT WAS COLD OUTSIDE. The usual warm autumn weather of East Tennessee had given way to a cold snap that sent the local residents scurrying to their wood piles for added warmth and atmosphere. Decker and his wife Elizabeth lay a bit more than half asleep, snuggled together before a waning fire, dreaming to the sounds of the crackling hardwood embers. The fire’s warmth and glow offered more than enough reason for not getting up when the phone rang. One-year-old Hope Hawthorne lay sleeping soundly in her crib in the bedroom. Though he knew she wouldn’t likely be awakened by it, on the third ring Decker finally lifted himself slowly from the floor and moved toward the offending instrument. On the eighth ring he answered.

  “Hello.”

  “Decker Hawthorne?” responded the voice from the other end of the phone.

  “Yes,” Decker answered.

  “This is Harry Goodman. I have something you’ll want to see.” Goodman’s voice was excited but controlled. “It’s a story for your newspaper. Can you come to Los Angeles right away?”

  “Professor?” Decker said, a little dumbfounded and not yet fully awake. “This is quite a surprise. It’s been …” Decker paused to count the years, “seven or eight years. How are you?”

  “I’m fine,” Goodman answered hastily, not the least bit interested in small talk. “Can you come to Los Angeles?” he asked again, insistently.

  “I don’t know, Professor. What exactly is the story about?”

  “If I tell you over the phone you’ll think I’m crazy.”

  “Maybe not. Try me.”

  “I can’t. Not over the phone. All I can say is it has to do with the Shroud.”

  “The Shroud?” Decker asked in surprise. “Of Turin?”

  “Of course the Shroud of Turin.”

  “Uh … Professor, I hate to bring this up, but I’m afraid the Shroud is old news. They did Carbon 14 dating of the Shroud and found out it wasn’t old enough to be the burial cloth of Christ. Didn’t you read about it in the newspapers last month? It was on the front page of The New York Times.” 7

  “You think I live in a shell or something? I know all about the Carbon 14 dating,” Goodman said, obviously not pleased at having to explain himself.

  “Well, so what more is there to say about it?”

  “I really don’t think I can talk about this on the phone. Decker, this may be the most important discovery since Columbus discovered the New World. Please, just trust me on this one. I promise you won’t be disappointed.”

  Decker knew that Goodman was not given to gross exaggeration. Obviously, whatever it was must be something pretty important. He did a quick mental check of his schedule and agreed to fly to Los Angeles two days later.

  “Who was that?” Elizabeth asked after he’d hung up.

  “Professor Goodman,” Decker answered.

  Elizabeth gave Decker a puzzled look. “Goodman?” she asked. “Henry Goodman, your old professor, the one you went with to Italy?”

  “Yeah,” said Decker without much enthusiasm. “Only it’s Harry, not Henry. I’m afraid I’m going to have to skip the drive up to Cade’s Cove on Saturday. I have to fly out to Los Angeles to see him about a story.”

  Elizabeth’s disappointment showed on her face, but she didn’t say anything.

  That night Decker and Elizabeth lay in bed talking about what it could be that Goodman had found. Decker had not even talked to Goodman since the fall three years after the Shroud team had formalized the findings of their 140,000 hours of work in a published report. In short, the report said that the image
on the Shroud is clearly not the result of a painting or any other known method of image transfer. Based on thirteen different test measures and procedures, the scourge marks and blood around the nail holes and side wound are, indeed, the result of human blood. Fibrils beneath the blood show no evidence of oxidation, indicating that the blood was on the cloth prior to whatever process caused the image. Finally, the report said that while the material of the Shroud may be old enough to be the burial cloth of Jesus of Nazareth, it is impossible to even guess at its age without Carbon 14 dating, and that could not be done without destroying a large portion of the cloth.

  But that was old technology. As science advanced it became possible to perform accurate Carbon 14 dating using a sample the size of a postage stamp. And soon afterward the Catholic Church announced that Pope John Paul II would permit the Shroud to be Carbon 14 dated by three laboratories. The Church announced the findings later that year. The labs found that, with a combined certainty of 95 percent, the Shroud was made of flax grown sometime between 1260 and 1390, and therefore, the cloth is simply not old enough to have been the burial cloth of Christ.