They had set up the smaller adjoining room as a work area, with a pair of chairs on either side of a simple desk. Amanda covered the desk with a white sheet and handed out rubber gloves she had purchased at the drug store. She had also purchased a humidifier, which had been running for the past hour to moisten the air and help keep the parchment from cracking. Using his pocket knife, Cam cut the wax seal and removed the lid from the canister as Amanda videoed the process.
“Put the wax in here,” Amanda said. She opened a sandwich bag with her free hand. Someday they would carbon-date the wax.
“Here,” Cam said, “you pull the parchment out. Your fingers are smaller. I’ll take the camera.”
“Ready then.” Hands shaking, Amanda gently tugged on the parchment. Hopefully, sealing it in the clay canister had maintained a constant humidity and preserved the animal skin. The scroll slid slowly toward her, a small cloud of dust and the scent of old leather escaping from the tube with it. She exhaled slowly, the dust wafting away from her. “Could this be real?” she breathed.
“The parchment looks like a Torah scroll.” Cam’s voice was thick and low behind the video camera.
She laid the beige-colored scroll on the desktop. It unrolled only slightly, unable to retake its original shape after an 800-year confinement. Gently she spread the parchment, working slowly as the humidifier moistened and softened the ancient animal skin. “I’m surprised it’s still so supple.” She didn’t force it completely flat, unrolling it only enough to view the writing. The black, block letters were neat and even, the scroll about the size of a tabloid newspaper.
“It’s Latin, like the stone,” Cam said.
“Uncle Jefferson could speak Latin,” Astarte said.
Amanda nodded. “I’m not surprised.” But she was on guard. In light of the Burrows Cave Isis piece anything associated with January needed to be examined critically—these scrolls might be fakes as well. The parchment looked—and smelled—ancient, and the cave hiding place felt authentic, but that didn’t mean the whole thing wasn’t an artful ruse. “Notice how the words extend all the way out to the margins. Parchment was expensive, so they wrote on as much of the surface as possible.” Would a hoaxster know this?
Cam peered at the Latin, which was the language of most religious orders during medieval times. “My Latin’s pretty rusty. But I bet we can translate it with the dictionary.” He turned off the camera.
Amanda handed Cam a pad of paper and a pen as he bent low over the scroll. He translated slowly, word by word. Finally he looked up. “The heading reads, ‘The True History of the Church, as Discovered in Jerusalem by the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon.’”
“That’s what the Templars called themselves,” she said. But what the document might reveal? “The true history of the Church? As in, no virgin births or resurrections or walking on water?”
“Apparently.” He studied the writing. “It’s dated 1129.”
“That’s the year the Templars left Jerusalem and returned to Europe. They had been digging and exploring for about ten years, then they came back to Europe and became instantly powerful and wealthy. At the time, there were only a few dozen of them. Nobody’s ever been able to answer what it is they found in Jerusalem that made them so bloody influential.”
Cam smiled and tapped the parchment. “Until now.”
“But this doesn’t sound like something that’s going to validate the Book of Mormon, does it?”
“Good point. I don’t think January knew exactly what was in the scroll. He assumed it was some kind of Holy Grail for the Mormon Church—that’s the term he used. But you’re right; it would be pretty ironic if the scroll had nothing to do with the Mormons at all.”
“Okay, I’ll hush up. You translate.”
Cam worked for ten another minutes, scratching notes on the pad, his body taut with concentration.
Amanda couldn’t wait any longer. “I need an update.”
He rubbed his face. “Sorry, this is hard with my head pounding. But I think I’ve got most of it. Apparently the Templars were brought to a burial chamber by some locals. This is in 1129, in Jerusalem. The Templars had helped rescue the locals from some hostile Saracens, and this was their way of thanking them. They knew the Templars were interested in finding ancient Christian relics. The chamber was about three miles south of Jerusalem. That’s as far as I got.”
Amanda grabbed for her laptop. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Um, what? I’m not really thinking at all right now.”
“Keep translating—I’m going to check something.” Amanda typed ‘Talpiot’ into a Google search. “I knew it,” she whispered. The Talpiot site was 5 kilometers, or about three Roman miles, south of historic Jerusalem.
“What?”
“Nothing. Keep at it.” If her hunch was right, Cam would know soon enough.
A minute later he dropped his pen. “Holy shit.” He looked up and swallowed. “They found the bones of Jesus.”
CHAPTER 16
Georgia expected Trey and his henchmen to come marching back to the hotel victorious, smiles on their faces, artifacts in their satchels and a couple of dead civilians buried in some remote mountain ravine. Instead Trey’s jawbone pulsed in anger as he pushed by her in the hallway. Swallowing a smile, Georgia retreated to her room.
Amanda and Cam were safe, for now. But Trey and his team were skilled and tenacious. Georgia wanted to reach out to the young couple, to offer them help, to try to negotiate safe passage for them. And, yes, to learn what kind of amazing history they had uncovered. But they did not want to be found.
Georgia pondered the problem, staring at the distant mountains in the fading afternoon light. The solution crept up on her like the lengthening afternoon shadows: Trey Buckner and Jabil Hayek couldn’t find Amanda and Cam because they were thinking like men. A woman knew that sometimes the best way to pursue something was to let it come to you.
She opened her laptop and signed on to a medieval history discussion forum she belonged to. She clicked on the “new post” tab and crafted her message carefully. She read the message a second time and hit enter, transmitting the lifeline into cyberspace. But would Cam and Amanda grab for it?
Cam drank some water, careful not to drip onto the ancient parchment. Parchment that threatened to undermine 2,000 years of world history. If January only knew what he had unleashed….
Cam had finished translating the Latin—as Amanda had guessed, the scroll detailed the discovery by the Templars of the Talpiot Tomb outside Jerusalem. According to the Templar account, the tomb not only contained the remains of Jesus, but those of his family as well. His mother, Mary. His brother, Joseph. His wife, Mary Magdalene. Even a son named Jude, perhaps named after his brother. Collectively the discovery told the story of a wealthy man named Jesus who lived, married, had a child and died a very human though perhaps painful death, his bones secreted in a family tomb like many of his neighbors. Hardly a unique story. And surely not the story of a god, resurrected from the cross.
“Well,” Amanda said. “At least we know why they’re trying to kill us.”
“Stop us, yes. But kill us?” Cam massaged his forehead. Even with a clear head the ramifications of their discovery would have been difficult to comprehend. “Would proving that Jesus was mortal really be such a bad thing?”
“It’s not such a big deal to you or me because we’re not Christians. But the most powerful religion in the world is built upon Jesus’ immortality. And that religion shapes and influences our entire society and culture. When you yank on a thread—and this is a major thread—the entire tapestry starts to unravel. I suppose now we know why the Templars called Jesus the Thief on the Cross. They knew he wasn’t divine, knew he usurped the role of the messiah by letting his followers believe he was.” She paused. “And if the story of Jesus is fake, what about Moses and Abraham and Solomon? Are we to just throw out the Judeo-Christian ethos?”
Cam shrugged.
“I guess. It just seems like people are more resilient than they’re given credit for. The whole idea of Mary Magdalene being the wife of Jesus seemed earth-shattering a decade ago; now it’s not such a big deal.”
“Yes, but this is different. This is like saying God is not really God. It’s the type of revelation that could redirect history.” She swallowed. “I don’t think the authorities can allow this to just drop down and engulf the populace—it’s too risky. They will do anything to ensure the scroll remains buried. Including burying us along with it.”
Translating the scroll from Latin to English had taxed his injured brain. He turned the desk lamp off and sipped more water. “As important as the scroll is, there’s something even more momentous.”
“The bones themselves.” “Right.”
“Where do you suppose they are?”
“I don’t think they were in that cave—the Templars wouldn’t have just stuck Jesus’ remains in a hole in the wall. They would have built some kind of tomb or monument, someplace to keep them dry so they wouldn’t decay or be dragged off by animals. Jesus may not have been a god in their eyes, but he was still considered a prophet and a king. Not to mention the bones gave them incredible leverage over the Church.” He lifted the IN CAMERA stone. “So we’re back to this. The carving must be a clue.”
“I like your idea that the Roman numbers are latitude and longitude coordinates.”
“If so, it would make the stone more modern than medieval times. Longitude readings weren’t used until the 15th century.”
“Okay then. So the stone wasn’t carved by our Templar friends. But it still might be important. Maybe the bones were moved at a later date—say during Colonial times—and whoever moved them left the stone as a signpost where to find them.” She turned the stone toward her. “Reading left to right, we have latitude 45 degrees, 30 minutes north and longitude 75 degrees, 53 minutes west.” Amanda typed the coordinates into Google Earth. “It brings us close to Ottawa, a bit northwest of downtown. Looks like a wooded area, with a lake.”
Cam peered at the satellite image. “I’ve never heard of any Templar sites out there. The Templars were in Quebec, and New England, but not Ottawa as far as I know.”
“Again, perhaps someone retrieved the bones at a later date and moved them to Ottawa, maybe some early settlers.”
“But why Ottawa? If you’re right, and some of the early settlers had Templar roots, they would have brought the bones to an important Templar site—maybe the Newport Tower, or near the Westford Knight carving, or maybe Montreal. Ottawa just doesn’t fit.”
They stared at the stone for a few minutes, each trying to decipher some meaning hidden within the carvings. It was a good distraction—a puzzle to piece together, a riddle to solve. Unlike the ramifications of proving Jesus’ mortality, which made Cam’s head throb when he thought about it….
Suddenly Amanda jumped off the bed. “Of course it doesn’t fit.” She clapped her hands. “How long has Greenwich been the prime meridian?”
“Maybe a couple hundred years.”
“Exactly. And whoever carved the IN CAMERA stone probably did so long before 1800.”
Cam nodded. “You’re right. We need to adjust the coordinates. They would probably have been using Paris as the prime meridian.”
Amanda tapped at the keyboard. “Okay, Paris is two degrees, twenty minutes east of Greenwich. So if we make the adjustment we end up…” She stared at the screen, her eyes wide.
“What?”
“You’re not going to believe this. When I typed in the coordinates, an image popped up.”
She turned the screen toward him. The ornate Basilica of Notre Dame, in Montreal’s Old City, peered back at him. “Of course,” he whispered. The Basilica was one of the most majestic religious structures in North America. An ideal repository for the bones of Jesus.
Amanda spent twenty minutes researching the history of the Notre Dame Basilica in Montreal, built originally in 1672, while Cam rechecked his translation of the Latin scroll.
Amanda felt Astarte’s eyes on her and turned to the young princess. The girl had sat silently for the past hour, listening to Cam and Amanda translate the scroll. Her cobalt eyes were wide and sad. Finally she swallowed and spoke. “Are you certain Jesus is not the son of God?”
Damn. They should have been more careful about what they said in front of her. Just what the little girl needed to hear after losing the father figure in her life. “Not certain, honey. But the Templars may have found his bones, which would mean he wasn’t resurrected as Christianity teaches.”
“And the Templars were smart men. My Uncle January said they knew all the secrets. They knew about the Mandan people and the bloodline and everything. That’s why they came to America.”
“I think your uncle was correct about that.”
“But if Jesus was not God, then how can I be the Fortieth Princess?”
How indeed. “Well, just because Jesus was not God does not mean he was not a king. Which he was—he was the King of at least some of the Jews and later of course of the Christians. That’s actually what the word ‘messiah’ means. It does not mean god, it means king. And you still have Jesus’ family blood in your veins, along with that of King David and Cleopatra and Mohammed and even Joseph Smith.” She took the girl’s hand. “So you are still the Fortieth Princess.”
“But it’s not the same. The Book of Mormon says Jesus is the son of God. It says he is our savior. And I am supposed to bring his word to the peoples of the world.”
January sure had burdened the little princess with a Tiger Mom’s load of responsibility—no pressure, honey, just grow up to unite the world’s religions, and then reign over them. And now for the first time it was dawning on Astarte, at the ripe old age of eight, that she might fail in her quest. “Listen, you can still spread the word of Jesus to the peoples of the world. In fact, they will need it more than ever if the truth comes out. Jesus may not have been God, but he was a great man, and the things he taught us—to take care of the poor, and to love our neighbors, and to heal the sick—are lessons that are very important still today. You can still be the princess who brings righteousness to the world.”
The girl offered a doubtful smile. “But it won’t be the same.”
“No, it won’t.” Amanda looked deep into ocean-blue of the girl’s eyes. “But it’s the truth. And it might be even better.”
The girl stared back at her, her dark blue eyes a mystery.
Amanda and Astarte had gone out in search of Thanksgiving dinner, leaving Cam alone in the hotel room. He lay down on the bed and turned the lights off. But his mind was revving too fast to even consider napping.
His initial reaction had been that the discovery of the bones of Jesus would be hugely significant from a historical perspective, but he didn’t agree with Amanda’s conclusion that it could destabilize the Middle East and perhaps even Western society. But the more he mulled it over, the more he was coming around to her way of thinking. The Middle East was already a powder keg, a house of cards, dominoes ready to fall—pick your cliché. The last thing the world needed was something to trigger more turmoil and uncertainty in the area.
Cam recalled a YouTube video of a Texas evangelical church choir belting out a country version of Hava Nagila, the Israeli national anthem, at a rally to raise money for Israel. The main American supporters of Israel, in addition to the Jews, were the fundamentalist Christians, who often took pilgrimages to the Holy Land and wanted the area—and its numerous Christian shrines—secure and in friendly hands. This mirrored the primary justification for the Crusades during medieval times—to keep the Middle East safe for religious pilgrims. But if the story of Jesus was revealed to be a ruse, how devoted would Christian groups be toward safeguarding religious sites in Israel?
Even more fundamentally, Islamic extremist groups had become increasingly successful in attracting adherents from among the pool of disillusioned young males in both American and European inn
er cities. Especially in America, the primary counterbalance against Islamic spread was the inner city Christian churches. Again, undermining the foundation of these churches would only empower recruitment efforts of the Islamic extremists. Hardly a recipe for stability, either in the Middle-East or the Western democracies.
Cam rolled out of bed. He did a Google search and found an article arguing that the roots of modern-day Islamic hostility toward Christianity took hold in the 19th and 20th centuries, when Protestant leaders began questioning Christianity’s core teachings. If, the argument went, even Christian leaders conceded that the words of the Bible were not to be accepted literally, the religion itself must therefore rest on a false foundation. As a false religion, it should be destroyed and replaced by the “true” word of God, as set forth in the Koran. In fact, the article continued, the perceived fallibility and weakness of Christianity is what has fueled the push by radical Muslims to replace democracy in Europe today with Sharia religious law.
Cam stared out the hotel window at the lights of New York. The Twin Towers had fallen not far from where he stood. Clearly, anything that might empower Islamic extremism threatened Western security. And calling into question Jesus’ divinity might do just that. Was it a sure thing, would these revelations topple the precarious balance of geo-political factors that kept a modicum of peace in the Middle-East? Perhaps, perhaps not. In the fog that was the Mid-East it was impossible to see across the street, never mind around the corner. But the stakes were too high, the danger too extreme. Nobody would want to risk it. Those charged with arresting the spread of Islamic extremism would think nothing of sacrificing a couple of busybodies like Cam and Amanda—it would be like paying pennies for a million-dollar insurance policy.
If Cam and Amanda wanted to survive, they needed to face reality. The stability and security of the Western democracies was at stake—apparently because Jesus wasn’t really resurrected after dying on one.
Thief on the Cross: Templar Secrets in America (Templars in America Series Book 2) Page 23
