The Artifact

by Quinn, Jack

  I walked with my family through the gates into the Court of Gentiles, an open space of five hundred cubits where goyim40, heretics, and Jews in the state of impurity were allowed, plus pilgrims of every disposition, all strolling about in serious talk or gossip. My family moved forward as I stood rooted inside the entrance in dazzled wonder, gaping at the throng of people in multi-hued robes at Solomon’s Porch with more than 250 columns 90 cubits high stretching along the eastern colonnade, and elegant porticoes of myriad colors extending from every wall as shelter from sun and rain. Yehoshua came back with a knowing smile to prod me gently forward toward the Royal Porch to the south, along the center isle rising almost 30 yards on stark white Corinthian columns from which we could see the panorama of the Mount of Olives and Kidron Valley, our ears pummeled by the sounds of temple priests arguing Torah law, peddlers of cooing sacrificial doves and pigeons shouting their price for quality birds, money changers bellowing low rates for the exchange of unclean pagan tender for negotiable Jerusalem shekels, the bleating and lowing of sacrificial animals adding to the cacophony that enveloped us.

  My family approached the Fifteen Steps within a throng of pilgrims shuffling slowly up the twenty yard incline above the lower courtyards, at the top of which was an inscription in Latin and Greek forbidding pagans to proceed farther under penalty of death. We continued up toward the magnificent bronze Nicanor Gate into the Court of the Israelites, a relatively narrow room where only Jewish men were admitted.

  Father and James entered that ultimate ritual sanctuary with our ewe as the remainder of the family found a large area designed to segregate women and children from religious services, where we found benches and waited. Yehoshua and I squeezed through the tightly packed group of females and boys at the balcony overlooking the sacrificial enclosure, amazed at the sight and wafting odors from below.

  Although James had described that sacred chamber where Father would present our lamb for sacrifice, we stared down in wonder at that somber place with a throng of bleating animals tethered to cedar posts, the high rough-cut sacrificial marble altar41 on which blood-spattered high priests with dripping knives awaited crying reluctant beasts, offering them up to Yahweh, slashing their throats as soon as they were pushed up the ramp to that broad marble surface whose gutters ran with deep red fluid to catch-bowls below. The large room reeked of fresh blood, the stench of burning fat, disemboweled goat, frightened lamb and excrement that overpowered the subtle incense. Our dead ewe was cut apart on a stone table and its entrails thrown in a roaring fire. The meat was then returned to Father for family consumption that same evening to be cooked with bitter herbs and unleavened bread as a reminder of our succor by God from the Egyptians.

  We spent the remainder of that Passover week in prayer in our rooms and at temple services, gathered with old and new friends, taking meals on the grassy slope behind our lodgings, wending our way through the crowded, noisy streets and merchant stalls, enjoying the warm sunshine in parks and gardens of the Holy City.

  I had attained my maximum growth that spring and had begun to sprout a spotty red beard, whose snail-pace thickening I observed daily in our single plate of polished metal. My status as the youngest male in the family caused their reluctance to accept me as an adult, particularly in light of the constant chiding in fun by Sarah and Mary. Having completed my schooling, and contributing

  to our family sustenance by working with Father, however, finally brought my parents to the realization that I would soon be of marriageable age and ready to take on more responsibility for myself--whether or not we could find a man who would wed his daughter to a boy of short stature with a crippled leg.

  After the first few days in Jerusalem, I was allowed to wander through the city alone, thoroughly investigating the Temple and surrounding courts, the Lower City around our rooms, the Upper City to Herod’s Palace, and finally the courts and parks to the west of the Temple. As I approached the northern corner, I saw some legionnaires leaning over the parapet of Antonia’s Tower shouting and laughing at a group of boys below about my age who were throwing fruit and stones up at the soldiers, their aim falling short, hitting the wall below the Romans. I stood behind the boys for a while until a couple of them turned to me, speaking of their frustration at their failed intent to lob an orange against a Roman breastplate. I unwound my sling from my waist, pried a soft plum from one of their hands and whirled the fruit over my head as the other boys stood slack-jawed around me watching the fruit soar into the air, clear the parapet, and splatter into the face of one of the soldiers. We stood there laughing, pointing and yelling at the furious soldier in consort with his fellow legionnaires until the victim grabbed a spear without even wiping his face and flung it down quivering into the dirt a hands width from my stunted foot. The boys’ yells of victory turned to screams of terror as they scattered off across the courtyard behind us while I stood like a stone statue staring at the deadly pike, then up at its grim owner. I finally gained the sense to turn and bolt, immediately slamming headlong into the chest of my brother James.

  His voice was calm as he pushed me away to look into my eyes. “Is this a new ritual of our Passover observance?”

  “No.”

  “What, then?”

  “We were just having...fun.”

  “You nearly had your leg finished for good.”

  I looked down at my brace. “Will you tell Father?”

  James placed his arm around my shoulder and began walking us across the courtyard toward the Lower City. “Meet me after morning prayer at the Fish Gate in the north wall.” He was silent until we came to an arch in the Temple enclosure where he bid me farewell until the morrow.

  I do not believe I ever took advantage of James’ good nature, especially his forbearance toward me for my youthful transgressions. Yet he was always a shelter under which I could retreat from exigencies.

  On the following morning, which would be lodged in memory like a pressing thorn, his countenance was grim, nodding a somber greeting as he led the way out the gate, up a narrow, trammeled path bereft of sunlight in the long shadow of a high battlement of stone and mortar. I was forced to keep my eyes on my footing among the rocky ruts of the steep slope until almost to the crest. When I lifted my head, I stopped dead in the track at the sight of staggered lines of wooden crosses stretching out along the bleak hilltop almost beyond my vision.

  James continued climbing, and I forged on behind him until I could see blood-streaked dead and dying men with arms flung wide, their wrists tied or forearms nailed to stout branches of trees across upright posts under circling buzzards, the more aggressive swooping down to peck the eyes and chunks of flesh from dead and gasping figures. Several corpses lay by empty crosses in the background, mutilated by bold rodents and other wild carnivores gnawing inert bodies in the bright of day among human bones scattered throughout the area. Roman soldiers wearing helmets and light armor patrolled the place below their victims, keeping bereaved families at bay, occasionally accepting coins from wives or parents, then walking to the crucified brethren whimpering in agony. The legionnaire would then break the legs of the hanging man with a mighty swing of his scabbard, so the weight of the upper torso would crush the breath from the dying man and end his suffering. I fell to the side of the path on hands and knees to spew my breakfast into the tall weeds as James stood by observing me with a grim expression.

  “This place is Golgotha,” he told me, lifting an arm toward the dead and dying “where the enemies of Rome are punished thus.”

  Finding not a tuft of grass or fallen leaf upon that barren place, I wiped my mouth on the sleeve of my robe and stood on shaking limbs.

  “Some of them,” James continued, “no doubt began small acts of resistance at an early age. Others are Sicarii, Zealots, or belong to equally militant rebel groups.”

  My urge to run back down the hill was barely overcome by my curiosity. “Why do the families not prevent the animals from defiling their brethren?”

&n
bsp; “Crucifixion is in all probability the most horrible, ignoble death the Romans have devised. They reserve it for men convicted of crimes against the Empire. Murderers, thieves, adulterers. Lesser crimes against individuals are executed in other ways.”

  I felt my stomach churning again, and looked away toward the golden dome of the Temple below. James grasped my neck with a firm hand, turning my gaze back to the horrific death before us.

  “After going to all the trouble in scourging the guilty man, prodding him up the hill, affixing him to a cross and waiting for him to die,” he told me, “the Romans are not inclined to allow the dishonored man to receive a ritual burial, washed, anointed, wrapped in a clean shroud, laid in a protective ossuary, then placed in a quiet tomb or cave. In fact it is specifically forbidden.”

  I felt a cold shiver run up my spine.

  “The last thought that your body will be eaten by animals,” he continued, “your bones strewn about the countryside is part of the penalty for challenging Rome. Anyone caught removing a corpse from these grounds is also considered a rebel and receives the same fate.”

  “Why are some nailed and others roped to their cross?” I asked.

  “The nailed victims committed the least offensive crimes, the ones that are tied, the worst.”

  Despite my revulsion, my curiosity forced me to persist. “Shouldn’t it be the opposite?”

  “When nailed to a cross, the condemned man will usually die quickly from loss of blood,” James answered. “Transgressors roped to the wood will suffer longer: buzzards picking out their eyes, stripping flesh from their bodies, predator carnivores jumping up to take a bite out of their legs at night.”

  “I wish never to observe this godforsaken place again.”

  James nodded, apparently satisfied that I seemed to have gotten the point. He placed his arm around my shoulder and led me back down the path.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Rowe, MA

  December 2004

  Public reaction to the first reading of Shimon’s story broadcast on Monday evening entailed largely passive demonstrations in non-Christian countries, although disruptive incidents flared in predominantly Catholic nations that quelled them with pleas for restraint by government officials and religious hierarchy. Callaghan feared that the second segment scheduled to be broadcast on Tuesday night, however, could provoke violent riots throughout the world. The worst displays of enmity were made by the large congregation of Southern Baptists and evangelical adherents in the U.S., second only to Catholics and other Christian denominations worldwide, plus ardent fundamentalists and smaller Christian sects whose divergent beliefs were vaguely understood by the majority. Christian anger would be fueled not only by Shimon’s often dispassionate contradiction of the New Testament, but the absence of a clear and present target to rail against.

  As in many such mass disturbances in the past, looters and frenzied groups of disenfranchised urban dwellers would embrace the opportunity to set fire to businesses, homes and vehicles, rampaging through city streets uninhibited by wary police, pummeling, stabbing and shooting anyone in their determination to vent their seething umbrage on authority and peaceful citizens.

  As it was, outraged individuals inundated radio talk shows and blogged the Internet to protest the content and dissemination of the document until the telephone lines and the World Wide Web were congested almost beyond operation. The afternoon of the second momentous broadcast to be aired on Tuesday night brought increased violence and agitation to cities, towns and rural areas around the globe. Newscasters marveled at the first time in memory that most factions of the two-plus billion Christians throughout the world had banded together against a common cause. Even the recent decline in attendance at church services, pedophile priests and ministers, the conflict regarding gay clerics, and the basic cynicism of modern men and women seemed to have been forgotten in their unified denunciation of the First Century autobiography. Commentators, columnists and other pundits derided the fact that neither famine, genocide, poverty, war nor natural catastrophe had brought the diverse religions of the world together in such unanimity since the beginning of time.

  When the results of research polls and on-the-street interviews were tabulated, it seemed that 57% of Christians had grudgingly accepted the authenticity of the document as verified by the independent experts who had subjected representative sections to the latest scientific tests; although 87% either disputed the credibility of the author or his motives and opinions, and 93% were violently opposed to the universal dissemination of the ancient treatise.

  Jewish respondents, knowledgeable of the history of their religion and ancestors, believed the Shimon document to be highly credible in almost every aspect. Most other non-Christians, agnostics and atheists saw little reason to become perturbed by the simple story of an ancient Jew, and gave evidence of a subtle glee regarding the disputation of New Testament lore. Conversely, the entire planet anticipated further revelation about Shimon’s brother Jesus and his younger sibling’s phlegmatic doubts regarding Biblical events.

  Cassandra made a conscious effort to conceal her amazement at Andrea’s appearance: her sallow cheeks, hair merging the band of gray and previous brunette to white. The tall AmerAsian woman paused on the bedroom threshold of the acerbic reporter who lay fully clothed, propped up on top of the coverlet of the rented hospital bed. Sammy’s adjustment of the pillow behind her head provoked a whispered response.

  “I’m not sick, for Christ sake, I’m just dying.”

  “Great distinction,” he said. “Can I get you anything?”

  “Beat it, Sam.”

  “Are you up for a visitor?” Cassandra asked.

  “Girl talk,” Andrea answered derisively. “Anything, after being stripped, scrubbed and manhandled by the Hulk, here.”

  Sammy pinched Andrea’s cheek. “At least one of us enjoyed it.”

  Cassandra stood at the foot of the hospital bed. “I can come back if you want to rest.”

  “No, no. Maybe you can cure the grouch, if nothing else.”

  Cassandra sat in the padded armchair facing Andrea’s elevated upper body. “The reception to the broadcasts is about what we expected.”

  “No wonder you’ve been so secretive.”

  “It has disturbed many good Christians.”

  “The virgin birth?” Andrea asked.

  “It’s an important issue of Catholic dogma.”

  “Fucking religion. Your sister had the right idea.”

  “You are not a believer?”

  Andrea laughed. “In what, Christianity? God?”

  Cassandra waited for her answer.

  “I dismissed the entire concept in my teens. Haven’t thought much about it lately.”

  “It must be on your mind, now.”

  “Some,” Andy admitted. “Probably halfway between hopeful agnostic and pragmatic atheist.”

  “It must feel lonely without a Supreme Being to call on when decimated by irreversible circumstances. Without the expectation of eternal life.”

  Andy was pensive for several moments. “Sometimes I think I have an alter ego with whom I engage in internal dialogs. She helps me solve problems, come to decisions, judges my thoughts and actions. Not a god, though, who reaches down from heaven to grant or deny our prayers.”

  “In the army, they say there are no atheists in foxholes.”

  “Yeah. Well, I’m not in the army.”

  Jerry Roland called North Carolina Air National Guard flight dispatch in Charlotte with the badge number of his FBI I.D., and three hours later was riding the rear seat of an F-86 trainer to Hanscom Field in Bedford, twenty miles west of Boston, an hour before the regional airport closed down at the onset of the raging blizzard. Jerry stamped the snow from his street shoes before getting into the hardtop jeep Paula had turned in for the Honda rental she had been using in Washington.

  Paula lit an unfiltered Camel with a butane lighter before pulling out of the short-term parking lot towa
rd Route 2, a four-lane blacktop that would take them into the northeast corner of Massachusetts.

  “Harrington is standing at the same brick wall we were this morning. I know the Madigan woman’s doc wouldn’t or couldn’t give him a peep unless he could convince some federal judge to give him a warrant.”

  “Unlikely.” Jerry adjusted his seat and reclined, closing his eyes. “The document’s half out of the bag already. What are we going to accomplish by finding them now?”

  “Save our asses,” Paula reminded him. “If we don’t bring them in we’re out of the Bureau, probably facing hard time in some federal pen for disobeying orders, obstructing justice, whatever.”

  “If this GPS location from Madigan’s phone doesn’t pan, we must be getting close to the Guinness Book of Records for dead-ends.”

  “It ain’t funny, McGee.”

  “I sure hope Harrington and company hasn’t tracked her cell, too.”

  “That man has a one-track mind, concentrating on Callaghan. I don’t think he’s put Madigan in his sights.”

  “According to the media,” Paula mused, “Callaghan’s endgame is broadcasting the document simultaneously on every network and local radio station in the world via satellite.”

  “All Harrington would have to do is find the location of their uplink transmission, shut them down, land a couple of SWAT teams in their backyard.”

  Jerry sat erect to wipe the condensation from the windshield with the palm of his hand. “Those transmissions take only a second or two. Could he find it?”

  “With every federal agency in the country looking? Need a bit of luck maybe. Damn right he could.”

  “They could knock their signal out, but I doubt they could get a chopper up in this weather.”

  The wind was buffeting the thick flakes against the Jeep, taking all of Paula’s concentration to keep the vehicle in the right-hand lane.