Hearing this, Charlotte got choked up, and tears spilled down her cheeks. “Okay.”
They walked by two more rooms that had clear glass walls. Inside the third, Charlotte spotted Donovan propped up in a bed. With so many tubes taped over his mouth and nose, he was identifiable only by his hairless scalp and drooping eyebrows.
“Here we are.” The nurse stopped outside the door. “You may want to say a prayer for him.” She placed a consoling hand on Charlotte’s shoulder. “I truly believe it helps. If you need anything or have questions, my name is Maryanne.”
“I really appreciate everything you’ve done. Thank you, Maryanne.”
The nurse made her way back to the triage station.
For a long moment, Charlotte stood by the door, frozen in place. Finally she made her way to his bedside, pulled a chair close, and sat beside him facing the door. The tears came harder, and when she brushed them away, she stared long and hard at her glistening fingertips, thinking how the healing powers in her DNA had so easily transferred to Cohen’s son. But she kept wondering: would the boy’s genome have completely recoded to resemble her own . . . and Jesus’s? It couldn’t be that simple, or Joshua would’ve had no trouble coming into contact with the Ark.
At the genetic level, something has to be different inside me.
But how could such a distinction, such a genetic selection, be made? The concept set myriad scientific principles on end. The rabbi’s proposition seemed impossible—that she’d been among the “chosen.” But how could a box filled with stone tablets, a scepter, and bones distinguish her from any other? Then again, those were no ordinary bones, the way they glowed like moon rocks. And that incredible light on the Ark’s lid . . .
The all-powerful eternal light.
The idea that the ancient Egyptians had somehow stumbled upon the secrets of creation and God seemed far-fetched. Even modern genetic study couldn’t come close to unlocking those mysteries. But what if there was some truth to what Cohen had told her? Moses’s exodus. One supreme god somehow embodied in light?
Carefully, she placed her hand on Donovan’s forearm and studied the clear intravenous tubes snaking into his hand.
He felt cold, so cold.
From her bag, she pulled a small syringe one-third filled with her blood and uncapped it. She glanced back through the glass partition to verify that no one was watching. Concealing the syringe in her hand, she pierced the needle through the IV’s injection port. Uttering a silent prayer, she depressed the plunger with steady pressure until the cylinder emptied.
Another anxious glance at the corridor. No one watching.
She withdrew the syringe, capped it, and slipped it back into her purse.
Studying Donovan with hopeful anticipation, she found it hard to imagine what was happening inside him at the genetic level. Recoding of genes? Cells repairing themselves? But one thing was certain: the damage was being undone—dare she think, miraculously ?
“You’re going to feel some tingling,” she whispered, stroking his arm.
Epilogue
******
Belfast
Charlotte ambled beside Father Donovan, her hiking shoes swishing through Milltown Cemetery’s dewy grass. A chilly breeze rustled some yellow-tinted leaves off an oak tree’s branches, portending autumn’s early arrival. The sloping hillside provided a dramatic panorama of the city, just beyond the A501 motorway bordering the property. Lively jazz music echoed up from the Cathedral Quarter, where the Belfast Music Festival was kicking off its second day.
Donovan was wrapping up a very important call that he’d received on his mobile just as they’d gotten out of the car. Smiling, he slipped his cell phone into his pocket, then glanced over at her and flicked his eyebrows.
“So?” She swept her red curls back from her face. A bulky Blarney
Woollen Mills sweater kept her warm.
“The Swiss Guard apprehended him last night as he tried to leave Vati
can City.”
“What will happen to him?”
“Nothing good, that’s for sure. Father Martin falsified documentation
to allow those two men in . . . the deskman was killed, you were abducted—”
“And you were left for dead.”
“That too,” he humbly replied. “Being an accomplice to these things . . .”
He shook his head gravely. “Some serious charges. The commandante told
me there’ll be a trial in a few weeks. We’ll both need to testify, of course.” “Of course.”
“And when will you be returning to Israel?”
“A few days, maybe. Told them I’m still recuperating.”
“But you will do it?” he asked with insistent eyes.
She sighed. “I’d be a fool not to. Besides, they seem to be having trouble
opening it. And when they found out I have the magic touch . . .” A playful shrug.
He smiled. “I must admit I’m quite envious. To be able to study the
Ark of the Covenant?” It was difficult for him to grasp the profundity of
the story she’d told him about the events following her abduction from
Vatican City. But the very notion that she’d likely touched the Bible’s
most legendary relic? He shook his head in disbelief. “An incredible opportunity.”
“You know, if I agree to this, I will be needing some help—theologically
and otherwise. I’ve already made a couple friends in Israel—an archaeologist and an Egyptologist. I recruited them for the project. But I was thinking, if you have some time, maybe you can accompany me . . . lend some
support?”
Beaming, Donovan eagerly replied, “You think the Israelis will allow
it? I mean, I don’t suppose they’ll fancy me being a Catholic priest and
all.”
“As I see it, if they want these puppies to open that box”—she splayed
out all her fingers and wiggled them—“they won’t have much choice now,
will they?”
Donovan chuckled. “I suppose you’re right. Well then, I am honored
and you can count on me.”
“I knew I could.”
He led her through a maze of gravestones and monuments dominated
by tall crucifixes—traditional and Celtic alike—crafted from marble and
granite.
“I don’t remember much after I hit the floor,” Donovan explained to
Charlotte. “But I had a strange vision of this place right before I went
unconscious.”
“It’s beautiful,” Charlotte said, looking out to the distant rolling hills. It wasn’t the view he was referring to. “There’s a quarter million
souls buried beneath us,” he said. “Barely any space left for newcomers.
But luckily, some years back, my mother convinced my father to buy
a couple of plots. He wasn’t keen on it, of course,” Donovan said with
a smile. “The man celebrated life, didn’t want to speak a word about
death. Though I remember he’d toast the old-timers at the pub by
saying, ‘May you be in heaven a half hour before the Devil knows you’re
dead.’ ”
Charlotte laughed.
“Right over here,” he said, pointing to a humble cross-shaped gravestone. “You would have gotten on marvelously with my parents, Charlotte.
Good people with big hearts. Now see here.” He pointed to the symbol
etched in his father’s gravestone:
Ch
“Do you know what this symbol stands for?”
Growing up Catholic, she had seen the overlapping P and X many times before—mainly on priests’ chasubles and on altar linens. But its meaning escaped her. She shook her head.
“Chi and rho are the first two letters of the Greek word for ‘Christ’—X and P. But as they’re pronounced, they correspond to C and H in our alphabet. Christ,”
he repeated. “ ‘The anointed one,’ or ‘the chosen one.’ ” Now he looked at her and smiled.
Stunned, Charlotte looked down at the new grass that had sprung up from the plot. “Jesus’s bones are here?”
Donovan smiled and nodded. He explained how his father’s oversize casket included a smaller coffin inside it—an ossuary. “The safest place I could think of. So now you know. Just you, me, and Him.”
She was speechless.
“There’s something else you’ll need now.”
Charlotte watched him dip into his pocket and pull out some very oldlooking paper sealed in clear plastic.
“Remember our discussion about how the Gospel of Mark originally ended with the empty tomb, how the ending had been amended?”
She nodded.
“Here’s the real ending,” he said. “The world’s only copy. Taken from the first Gospel, written by Joseph of Arimathea—the man who interred Jesus’s body in that ossuary you studied.” He’d cut the shocking epilogue from the journal of secrets just before shipping it back to Jerusalem.
She accepted it. “Why are you giving this to me?”
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that your initials are C-H.” He tipped his head back toward the gravestone. “I believe you were meant to have it.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
******
Special thanks to my wife, Caroline, my fountain of inspiration. To D. Michael Driscoll’s keen eye. Once again, my hat goes off to Doug Grad for his incomparable editorial skills. To my friend and agent, Charlie Viney, for his unwavering encouragement and market savvy. Thanks, Julie Wright, Ian Chapman, and everyone at S&S UK. And cheers to the fabulous team at ILA—Nicki Kennedy, Sam Edenborough, Mary Esdaile, Jenny Robson, and Katherine West—for enabling me to share my stories in so many languages.
The Sacred Bones and The Sacred Blood feature hardy infusions of theology, science, and history. Since I’m a control freak when it comes to research, I take full responsibility for any unintended errors.
Multiple manuscripts of the oldest known gospel, Mark (circa 60–70 c.e.), did indeed close with the empty tomb. The confusion and disappointment this presented for Christianity’s early pagan converts is believed to have spawned Mark’s multiple addendums. Most scholars contend that Mark is the common source—aka the Quelle or Q—for the synoptic gospels of Matthew and Luke. Some also suggest that Q is comprised of both Mark and an even earlier undiscovered gospel—the “lost gospel.” I’ve fictionalized this lost gospel’s discovery, what the text might tell us, and its authorship by Joseph of Arimathea—in my estimation, the only likely broker for procuring Jesus’s body from the cross.
I’ve stretched the current parameters of genetic research, though only time will tell if a more refined genome might be discovered or engineered. The ethical issues surrounding these breakthroughs should prove challenging for religion and humanity. Though I strongly believe that faith itself will remain strong, as it always has.
The religious squabbling and bloodletting over Jerusalem’s Temple Mount is scarily real, as it has been since King Solomon supposedly laid its first cornerstone over three millennia ago. In its modern incarnation, this bitter turf war exemplifies Israeli and Palestinian discord over land rights and national sovereignty. Though the Mount resides wholly within Israel’s borders, it is tacitly controlled by a Muslim trust, or waqf. Therefore, an act of terrorism committed there could easily ignite a third world war.
Josephus and Philo provide the most definitive accounts of the highly secretive Jewish community, the Essenes, who inhabited Qumran. The Essenes’ obsession with the purity of body and soul present many tantalizing parallels to Christ’s ministry and the emergence of Christianity. Most intriguing are their elaborate and ambitious plans for reshaping Jerusalem into a grand temple city that would herald the earthly Messianic Age. Many scholars credit the Essenes for transcribing and preserving the world’s oldest copies of the Old Testament and Jewish apocryphal texts, collectively known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. The hunt for more scrolls is still under way.
Theories abound as to the fate of the Ark of the Covenant, most maintaining that a foreign empire invaded Jerusalem and claimed it as booty. In antiquity, however, sieges against heavily fortified cities like Jerusalem took months—not hours or days. So suffice it to say that the temple priests would have hidden the Ark—the centerpiece of Jewish faith, the relic that symbolized the Israelite nation—well before any combatant could have pillaged the temple. Once in hiding, the vulnerable Ark would likely have been clandestinely moved around. Inevitably, the safest hiding place would have been within a fortress’s keep, behind walls, and protected by an army. Enter Josephus’s chronicling of Onias’s Jewish temple city in ancient Egypt’s Heliopolis, complete with a homegrown army ...and imagine the possibilities.
Finally, on navigating the minefield of the three Judaic religions . . . I recently met a very wise and pious Muslim who attributed his impressive optimism in the fate of all things to “The Higher Power.” I sensed that he avoided a more decisive label so as not to create a barrier between us. I must confess that I liked his approach. Because though most religions seek to build community based on rigid—many times, exclusionary—doctrine, faith is a very personal journey that reflects a universal need in each one of us to connect with the mysterious, indefinable power(s) responsible for our world and our mortality—in other words, something bigger, or “higher,” than ourselves. In my stories, I explore the various paths along which this most remarkable quest might take us.
About the Author
MICHAEL BYRNES attended Montclair State University in Montclair, New Jersey, and earned his graduate degree in business administration at Rutgers. Byrnes lives in Florida with his wife, Caroline, and daughters, Vivian and Camille.
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The Sacred Bones
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE SACRED BLOOD. Copyright © 2009 by Michael Byrnes. All rights reserved
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