The Brotherhood of the Holy Shroud

by Julia Navarro

  “He’s Turkish, you can see that.”

  “All right, I’ll follow him, then.”

  “I don’t know—we’ll probably get more here. Listen, let’s just stick with the plan and talk to the porter; maybe we can get something out of him about his visitor.”

  Ismet opened the door, thinking that Bakkalbasi had forgotten something. He frowned when he saw the two men—cops for sure. The cops, he told himself, always look like the cops.

  “Buon giorno, we’d like to speak with Francesco Turgut,” Pietro said.

  The young man shrugged and shook his head as if he wasn’t sure what they wanted, and then turned and called back into the room in Turkish. Turgut came to the door, unable to control his trembling.

  “Buon giorno, Signor Turgut,” Pietro said. “We’re still investigating the fire, and we wanted to see whether you might have remembered anything else, any little detail that was out of the ordinary.”

  Turgut broke into a stream of Turkish, waving his arms at them. He seemed to be on the verge of tears. Ismet put a protective arm over his shoulder and answered for him in pidgin Italian mixed with English.

  “My uncle is old man, and he have suffered much since the fire. He is fearing that with his years they will think he not as good as before and kick him out, because was not watching enough. Can you not leave him alone now? He has told all what he remembers.”

  “And who are you?” Pietro asked.

  “I Ismet Turgut, nephew of my uncle here. I arrive today. I come to Turin looking for job.”

  “Where have you come from?”

  “Urfa…From Urfa.”

  “There’s no work there?” Giuseppe asked.

  “In oil fields, yes, but I, what I want do is get good job, save money, and go home to Urfa to have my own business. I have…not wife? Girlfriend?”

  The kid seemed likable enough, thought Pietro, even innocent. Maybe he actually was.

  “All right, that’s fine. Does your uncle keep in touch with other people from Urfa? How about that other guy that just left? Is he from there?” Giuseppe asked.

  Turgut felt a shiver. Now he was certain that the police knew everything. Ismet, once again taking charge of the situation, answered quickly, ignoring the question about Bakkalbasi.

  “Yes, sure, he does, and I believe I try to be friends with the people from my town too. My uncle, you know, half Italian, but Turks never lose our roots—is it not so, uncle?”

  The young man seemed determined not to let Francesco Turgut talk. Pietro asked, “Signor Turgut, do you know the Bajerai family?”

  “Bajerai!” Ismet exclaimed excitedly. “I went to school with boy named Bajerai! I think here in Turin are cousins or something like that…not cousins of boy, you know, but cousins of boy’s father.”

  “I’d like your uncle to answer my question,” Pietro insisted.

  Francesco Turgut swallowed hard and prepared himself to say what he had rehearsed so many times.

  “Yes, yes, of course I know them. It is an honorable family that has had a terrible disgrace. Their sons…well, their sons made a mistake and they are paying for it. But they are good persons, the parents. Very good. You can ask anyone, they will tell you.”

  “Have you visited the Bajerai family recently?”

  “No, my health is…not good. I do not go out much.”

  “Excuse me,” Ismet interrupted with an innocent expression. “What have done the Bajerai?”

  “Why do you think they’ve done something?” Giuseppe asked.

  “Because if you, who are the police, come here and ask about the Bajerai, then they have done something, is it not? You would not ask if they had not, I think.”

  The young man smiled, apparently proud of his reasoning. Giuseppe and Pietro looked at him, unable to decide whether he was really as innocent as he looked or was a very good liar.

  Giuseppe turned back to Turgut. “Let’s go back to the day of the fire,” he suggested.

  “I have told you everything I remember. If I had remembered something more I would have called you,” the old man answered, his voice unsteady.

  Pietro pounced again. “Signor Turgut, who is the man who just left?” he pressed. “Is he from Urfa?”

  The porter shook his head vehemently. “No, no! A friend, just a friend.” He leaned on his nephew for support. “I feel unwell,” he said shakily. “I must rest.”

  “I have just arrived,” Ismet broke in pleadingly. “I have not had time even to ask my uncle where I sleep—can you not return another time?”

  Pietro and Giuseppe looked at each other and seemed to reach a decision. “Give us a call when you’re feeling better,” Pietro said. “I think we have more to talk about.” They said good-bye and left.

  “What do you think of the nephew?” Pietro asked his partner as they walked away.

  “I don’t know, seems like a nice kid.”

  “They may have sent him to handle his uncle.”

  “Oh, come on!” Giuseppe protested. “Isn’t that a little far-fetched? Listen, I think you’re right—Sofia and Marco are blowing this case all out of proportion, although Marco doesn’t make mistakes often…. But this shroud, it’s like an obsession.”

  “Well, thanks for leaving me out there swinging in the breeze yesterday when I said that. Why didn’t you say something then?”

  “What was the point? And what are we arguing about now? We’ve gotta do what Marco says to do. And that’s fine by me. If he’s right, great, we’ve got our case; if not, big deal, at least we tried to find an answer to those fucking fires. Either way, we do what we’re told—but we don’t have to knock ourselves out, know what I mean?”

  “Stiff upper lip and all that, huh? You could be English instead of Italian, my man.”

  “It’s just that you take everything so seriously, and you’re so damn touchy. If I said the sky was blue you’d argue about it.”

  “It’s that things aren’t like they used to be. The team is going to hell.”

  “Of course the team is going to hell. You and Sofia tense up like two spitting cats when you’re together, and you’d think you get off fighting with each other. I swear, you both look like you’re ready to go for the jugular any second. Marco’s right: Work and screwing don’t mix. I’m being straight with you, Pietro—it’s your own fault things stink right now.”

  “Who asked you to be straight with me?”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve been wanting to talk to you about it, so there you go.”

  “So let’s say it’s all Sofia’s and my fault. What are we supposed to do?”

  “Nothing. It’ll pass—and anyway, she’s leaving. When the case is over she’s outta here, off to greener pastures. She wants to do more than chase down cat burglars.”

  “She’s really something…” Pietro said, a faraway look in his eyes.

  “What’s weird is that she’d hook up with you in the first place.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Come on! People are what they are, and they might as well accept it. You and I are cops. Neither of us is in her league, or Marco’s either. He’s gotten himself an education, and you can tell it. I mean, I’m happy to be what I am and to have gotten where I’ve gotten. Working in Art Crimes is good duty, and other cops look up to you.”

  “Your dedication moves me.”

  “Okay, I’ll shut up, but I thought you and I could always be up-front with each other—tell it straight out.”

  “Good. You’ve told me. Let’s drop it and get back to headquarters. We’ll get Interpol to ask the Turks to send us whatever they’ve got on this nephew who’s landed in Turin.”

  ELIANNE MARCHAIS WAS A SMALL, ELEGANT WOMAN with that unmistakable French flair. She greeted Ana Jiménez with a mixture of resignation and curiosity.

  She didn’t like reporters. They simplified everything one told them so much that in the end all they printed were distortions—which was why she didn’t give interviews. When people asked her opinion about someth
ing, her response was always the same: “Read my books. Don’t ask me to tell you in three words what I’ve needed three hundred pages to explain.”

  But this young woman was a special case. Spain’s ambassador to UNESCO had phoned on her behalf, as had two chancellors of prestigious Spanish universities and three colleagues at the Sorbonne. Either the girl was truly important or she was a bulldog who’d stop at nothing until she got what she wanted, in this case that Marchais devote a few minutes of her time to her—because a few minutes was all the professor had patience for.

  Ana had decided that with a woman like Elianne Marchais there could be no room for subterfuge. She would tell her the truth straight out, and one of two things would happen: The professor would either throw her out or help her.

  It took her no more than a few minutes to explain to Professor Marchais that she wanted to write a history of the Shroud of Turin and that she needed the professor’s help in order to separate the fantasy from the truth in the history of the relic.

  “And why are you interested in the shroud? Are you Catholic?”

  “No…I mean…I guess I am, in some sense. I was baptized, although I don’t go to Mass.”

  “You haven’t answered my question. Why are you interested in the shroud?”

  “Because it’s a controversial object that also seems to attract a certain degree of violence—fires, robberies in the cathedral….”

  Professor Marchais raised an eyebrow. “Mademoiselle Jiménez, I’m afraid I can’t help you,” she said disdainfully. “My specialty is not esoteric gobbledygook.”

  Ana didn’t move from her chair. She looked fixedly at the professor and tried another tack, resolving to proceed carefully.

  “I think I may have misspoken, Professor Marchais. I’m not interested in esotericism, and if I’ve given that impression I apologize. What I’m trying to do is write a documented history, the furthest thing imaginable from any magical, esoteric interpretations. I’m looking for facts, facts, just facts, not speculation. Which is why I’ve come to you, so that you can help distinguish what’s true in the interpretations of certain more or less recognized authors. You know what happened in France in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries as though it were yesterday, and it’s that knowledge that I need.”

  Professor Marchais hesitated. The explanation the young woman had given was at least a serious one.

  “I don’t have much time, so tell me exactly what you want to know.”

  Ana breathed a small sigh of relief. She knew she couldn’t make another mistake or she’d be thrown out like yesterday’s fish bones.

  “Well, specifically, I’d like you to tell me everything you can about the shroud’s appearance in France.”

  With a bored gesture, the professor began a detailed recitation.

  “The best chronicles of the time say that in 1349, Geoffroy de Charny, seigneur of Lirey, announced that he possessed a grave cloth bearing the impression of the body of Jesus, to which his family paid great devotion. Geoffroy sent letters to the pope and the king of France, asking for authorization to build a collegiate church in which to display the shroud so that it might be worshipped by the faithful. A collegiate church—in case your Catholic upbringing didn’t clarify that point—is a church very like a cathedral, with an abbot and a ‘college’ of priests, in this case called ‘canons.’ It’s that college of canons from which the term derives. So, to continue: Neither the pope nor the king replied to his request, which meant the collegiate church couldn’t be built. But with the complicity of the clergy of Lirey, who saw an opportunity to increase their influence and importance in the seigneury, the shroud nevertheless began to be an object of public worship.”

  “But where had the shroud come from?”

  “In the letter de Charny wrote to the king of France, which can be found in the royal archives, he assured the king that he had kept his possession of the shroud a secret so as not to inspire disputes among various communities of Christians, since other shrouds had appeared in places as far-flung as Aixla-Chapelle and Mainz in Germany, Jaén and Tolosa in Spain, and Rome. It was in Rome, in fact, beginning in 1350, that a shroud, believed of course to be authentic, was displayed in the Vatican basilica. Geoffroy de Charny swore to the king and the pope, on the honor of his family, that the shroud that he possessed was the true one, but what he never told either man was how it had come into his power. Was it a family inheritance? Had he bought it? He never said, and thus we simply do not know.

  “He had to wait years for authorization to construct the collegiate church and never lived to see the shroud displayed, since he died in Poitiers saving the life of the French king, whom he shielded with his own body during a battle. His widow donated the shroud to the church in Lirey, which contributed to the wealth of the city’s clergy while at the same time inspiring the envy of the prelates of other towns and cities—and that, of course, created tremendous conflict throughout France.

  “The bishop of Troyes ordered an exhaustive investigation into the Lirey shroud. An important witness was even brought forward to discredit its authenticity—a painter swore that he had been commissioned by the seigneur of Lirey to paint the image, and with that, the bishop prohibited its further display.

  “It was to be another Geoffroy, Geoffroy de Charny the Second, who years later—in 1389, to be exact—persuaded Pope Clement the Seventh to authorize him once again to display the shroud. And once again, the bishop of Troyes intervened, alarmed by the influx of pilgrims to worship the relic. For a few months he managed to force de Charny to keep the shroud in its coffer and not actually display it, but meanwhile, de Charny reached a further agreement with the pope: He would be allowed to display the shroud on the condition that the clergy in Lirey be required to explain to the faithful that it was a painting done to represent the grave cloth of Christ.”

  In the same monotonous tone, Professor Marchais went on down through history, explaining that the daughter of Geoffroy II, Marguerite de Charny, decided to keep the shroud in the castle belonging to her second husband, the Comte de la Roche.

  “Why?” asked Ana.

  “Because in 1415, during the Hundred Years War, pillaging was rampant. So she thought the relic would be safer in her husband’s castle, in Saint-Hippolyte sur le Doubs. She was an inventive woman, and when her second husband died, she added to the small income he had left her by charging a fee of a few pennies to anyone who wanted to see the shroud up close or pray before it. And it was her financial straits that led her several decades later to sell the relic to the House of Savoy, on March twenty-second, 1453, to be precise. The Lirey clergy protested, of course; they considered themselves the owners of the shroud, since the widow of that first Geoffroy de Charny had ceded it to them. But Marguerite ignored that. She lived in Varambom Castle and enjoyed the rents from the seigneury of Miribel, which were granted her by the House of Savoy. There is a contract to that effect, by the way, signed by the duke of Savoy, Louis the First. Since then, the shroud’s history is transparent.”

  “I wanted to ask you whether it’s possible that the shroud came to France through the Templars.”

  “Ah! The Templars! So many legends, so unfairly they were treated, and all out of ignorance! It is rubbish, pure rubbish, that pseudoliterature on the Templars. Many organizations—some Masons, for instance—claim to be the heirs of the Temple. Some of them were, to put it in the popular parlance, ‘on the good side,’ during the French Revolution, for example, but others…”

  “So the Temple has survived?”

  “Well, of course there are organizations that, as I say, claim to be its heirs. Remember that in Scotland, the Temple was never dissolved. But in my opinion, the Temple died on March nineteenth, 1314, on the bonfire on which Philippe le Beau ordered the Grand Master Jacques de Molay immolated, along with the other knights who were with him.”

  “I’ve been in London. I found a center for Templar studies.”

  “I told you there are lodges and orga
nizations that claim to be heirs of the Temple. I have no interest in them.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Mademoiselle Jiménez, please. I am a historian.”

  “Yes, I know, but—”

  “There are no buts. Anything else?”

  “Yes, I’d like to know whether the de Charny family has come down to our own day, whether there are any descendants.”

  “The grand families intermarry. You should consult an expert in genealogy.”

  “Forgive me for pressing, professor, but where do you think this Geoffroy de Charny got the shroud?”

  “I do not know. I’ve explained to you that he never said. Nor did his widow or the descendants who were its possessors until it passed into the hands of the House of Savoy. It could have been bought or received as a gift. Who knows? During those centuries, Europe was full of relics that had been brought back from the Crusades. Most of them were false, of course, which is why there are so many ‘holy grails,’ shrouds, saints’ bones, pieces of the True Cross….”

  “Is there any way to know whether the family of Geoffroy de Charny had any relationship to the Crusades?”

  “As I said, you’ll have to see a genealogist for that. Of course…”

  Professor Marchais became more pensive, tapping the end of her pen on her desk. Ana sat silently, expectantly.

  “It is possible, of course, that Geoffroy de Charny, whose name was spelled without the final e, may have had something to do with Geoffroy de Charney, with an e, the precept of the Temple in Normandy who died at the stake alongside Jacques de Molay and who also fought in the Holy Land. It’s a question of the spelling of the name, and—”

  “Yes, yes, that’s it! They’re from the same family!”

  “Mademoiselle Jiménez, don’t let yourself be led astray by what you wish the facts were. I said only that the two names might come from the same line, so that the Geoffroy de Charny who possessed the shroud—”

  “—had it because years earlier the other Geoffroy brought it back from the Holy Land and kept it in the family home. That’s well within the realm of possibility.”