The Testimonium (6 page)

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 like 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.

* * *

Bernardo Guioccini was feeling a good bit easier about his team as the chopper carried him across the deep blue waters that separated Capri from the Italian mainland. Josh Parker had called him at about one in the morning, and his quick answers and incisive questions made Guioccini realize why Dr. Martens had so much faith in the young academic. Clearly Parker had a strong working knowledge in his field, combined with a practical streak and a sense of humor as well. He was supposed to be arriving later that day, having reserved a seat on a flight to Italy that would be landing about the same time Guioccini and his team arrived at Capri.

Guioccini did not intend to stay on the island for long, once Parker arrived. “Too many cooks spoil the broth, and too many archeologists delay the dig,” was an adage one of his professors had passed on years before, and it was true. Archeologists as a rule tended to be a pretty strong-willed, territorial bunch, and when several of them worked in close quarters it was easy for tempers to fly. He knew that Rossini and Sforza had a good mentor-student relationship, and that MacDonald was an easygoing fellow who had worked with Dr. Rossini before. Dr. Apriceno could be testy, but only when it came to her specialty. Aside from her precious ancient spores, she was a warm and motherly figure. But with a find of this significance, even the most even-tempered professionals could develop hostile tendencies if their pet theories or field techniques clashed.

Dr. Simone Apriceno looked out the window intently, waiting to see the lovely island of Capri come into view. She had not been there in many years, but still harbored fond memories of the place, since she and her ex-husband had enjoyed a very happy honeymoon there thirty-five years before. Later on, events had come between them, and his infidelity had led to their divorce—but they had some awfully good years before then, and those years had started at Capri. In her mind, she tried to visualize the Villa Jovis as she remembered it from an afternoon hike they had taken during their stay, but she had been to so many old ruins in the years between that she was having a hard time picturing the place in her head.

Duncan MacDonald had no such difficulty—he had visited Capri many times, first as a student tourist during semester breaks, and later as a scholar of Roman history and archeology. The first century AD fascinated him, as did the late Roman Republic. It was not only one of the most important and influential eras in the history of the world, it was also the time in which the faith that he lived by had been born. He had studied the Gospels and the other books of the New Testament for years, and had also read and studied the works of the Apostolic Fathers, second-century Christians who had known the original Apostles or their disciples. He was familiar with (and somewhat contemptuous of) all of the Gnostic gospels as well—they were all composed in the second, third, and fourth centuries, although frequently attributed to the original apostles of Jesus. As a lot, they were so far inferior to the canonical gospels as to richly deserve the rejection the Church had dealt to them when they were written. It always amused him to see how various pop culture books or celebrities occasionally “discovered” the Gnostic works and tried to claim that they represented the “real” Christianity that the Church had covered up for 2,000 years. He wondered if any of these people had actually read and compared the two sets of works. If they had, he thought, then they were even more empty-headed than he had imagined. But his defense of the original Scriptures was just part of the Church’s two-thousand-year struggle against heresy of all sorts. Why should this century be any different from all the previous ones?

All three scientists were ready to hop out of the chopper the moment it began to hover over the ruins, but before they could disembark, the mobile lab it had been carrying beneath it had to be lowered into place. The level on which the chamber had been discovered also featured a large, flat floor area that had been cut directly from the mountain beneath it—once covered over with expensive marble, no doubt, most of which had been removed centuries ago to decorate some wealthy medieval Italian home. The floor was just the right size to accommodate the lab, and the two archeologists on the ground helped guide the pilot to set it down. Once that was done and the cable disengaged and reeled in, the chopper touched down briefly on the higher level in order to let the three eager academics hop out and grab their equipment and luggage. The chopper would be back with some other living amenities later that afternoon, but for the moment, they could commence work.

As the helicopter lifted off, Rossini and Sforza mounted the steps to greet the arriving team. “Only two?” Isabella asked Dr. Guioccini. “Could Dr. Martens not make it?”

“Luke is recovering from an accident at the moment and cannot travel,” he replied. “He is sending a surrogate, but Dr. Joshua Parker was on sabbatical in the U.S. and cannot arrive here until this afternoon. I’ve never met him, but Dr. Martens endorsed him with great enthusiasm.”

“I’ve heard the name,” Isabella said, “but that’s all. This must be Dr. MacDonald, then?” she asked, looking at the man whose khaki shirt was topped with a clerical collar.

“Doctor, Father, ‘that priest who calls himself an archeologist’—I’m like Gandalf in
The Lord of the Rings
: many are my names in many lands,” returned the cleric in a soft Scottish burr. “Delighted to meet you, Dr. Sforza. I had the pleasure of speaking with your late husband at a conference in London eight years ago.”

“I went to London with him,” said Isabella, “but wound up not being able to attend the conference due to a nasty bout of food poisoning. No wonder the British used to rule half the world—if they can survive on English food, they are made of sterner stuff than most of us!”

He laughed. “Just come up to Scotland, lassie, and I can show you what TRULY terrible food tastes like! My mother’s haggis is the main reason I haven’t gone home in over twenty years!” He then turned to Dr. Rossini. “Giuseppe, you old goat, I might have known I would find ye camping on an island with a beautiful young woman!”

“What is it about a clerical collar that automatically confers a dirty mind on those who wear them?” Rossini shot back. “I’ll have you know, Father Duncan, that Dr. Sforza is a model of womanly virtue, as the two tents folded by yon wall should have shown you!”

“You poor dear,” interjected Simone Apriceno. “Having to work alongside these two terrible old men for the next few weeks! Fear not, I shall protect you from their wicked ways!”

Isabella laughed. “I’ve known Giuseppe for years,” she said. “He is all bark and no bite. Compared to some of the archeologists I’ve worked with, these two are choirboys! You must be Dr. Apriceno. We’ve never met, but I’ve studied some of your work. The debunking of the Veil of Magdalene was a nice bit of forensic science.”

“The sisters were terribly disappointed to find out their most cherished relic was made in France in the 1300s,” said the paleobotanist, “but the Mother Superior said it was better to know the truth than to pass on a myth. I respected her greatly for that.”

“Now that we’ve all gotten acquainted,” said Guioccini, “Isabella, why don’t you show us what you and Giuseppe have found?”

“My pleasure,” she replied. “Follow me down the steps, my colleagues—and back in time two thousand years!” The team descended the steps of the Villa Jovis together.

This particular would-be Messiah of the Jews was a former carpenter who apparently claimed descent from their ancient King David—founder of a dynasty that was toppled by the Babylonians over six centuries ago! I first heard the stories and asked the centurions whom I have stationed in the various cities of Judea to keep me informed if this fellow gave signs of making trouble. However, he seemed to have no interest whatsoever in politics. He wandered about with a small band of farmers and fisherman—and, oddly enough, one Jewish publicani who chose to renounce tax farming and join him. His activities seemed to focus on long, rambling sermons commanding people to love one another, and describing a “kingdom of God” that would rule over men’s hearts rather than their bodies. Harmless mystical nonsense, it seemed to me. The other stories about him were so incredible that I ignored them at first, but they continued over so long a period that I eventually began to pay them heed. This man, Jesus of Nazareth, apparently had a remarkable power of healing that was widely witnessed. Indeed, one of my senior centurions told me that Jesus had healed a servant of his by merely saying a few words from miles away! I scoffed at that account, but he swore that it was true. But, as you will (I hope) agree, I saw nothing in this man that caused me any concern for the Empire or its control of Judea. However, the religious leaders of the Jews were adamantly opposed to this man’s teachings—he claimed some sort of direct relationship to their God that they said was blasphemous. As governor, I saw no reason to involve myself in a minor religious dispute.