The Surrogate, The Sudarium Trilogy - Book one

by Leonard Foglia

  “You’re saying these are photographs of someone being crucified?”

  “No, but somebody may be re-enacting the crucifixion.”

  A shrug of her shoulders underscored her bewilderment.

  “To me,” he continued, “it looks like that’s what’s going on in these photos, some kind of experimentation, you know, to show how the sudarium might have been wrapped around Jesus’ face. There seems to be a great deal of effort to duplicate the position of the head exactly. I think that’s what the mannequin seems to have been used for. No one is actually being tortured.”

  “Thank heavens. So it’s like…some kind of research?”

  “That would be my guess, yes.”

  The screen was now filled with the story of the sudarium. Surprisingly, the history of this “other shroud” was actually better documented and more straightforward than that of the Shroud of Turin. There were puzzling gaps in the history of the latter, during which its whereabouts and its ownership were unknown. The history of the sudarium, if what they were reading was to be trusted, stretched unbroken all the way back to Biblical times. After the crucifixion, it had remained in Palestine until 614, when Jerusalem was attacked and conquered by the Persians. For safe-keeping, it was spirited away to Alexandria in Egypt, then when Alexandria came under Persian attack, transported in a chest of relics across Northern Africa into Spain.

  By 718, it had come to rest in Toledo, but again, to avoid imminent destruction - this time at the hands of the Moors who were invading the Iberian peninsula - the chest was taken north and stored in a cave, 10 miles from Oviedo. In time, a special chapel, the Camara Santa, was built for it in the town.

  King Alfonso VI and the Spanish nobleman known as El Cid presided over the opening of the chest on March 14, 1075, when its contents were officially inventoried. The sudarium was chief among them, eclipsing in importance the fragments of bone and the bits of footwear that had accompanied it. Ever since, it had remained in Oviedo, where it was displayed to the public only on certain holy days. The Cathedral, in fact, had been a hugely popular stop for pilgrims in the middle-ages, although the twentieth century variety tended to go elsewhere.

  Lost in a world an ocean away, neither of them heard the rectory door creak open and Monsignor Gallagher plod wearily into the entryway.

  “Are you still up, James?” he called out.

  Hannah jumped at the sound of his voice. Father Jimmy put his finger to his lips, signaling her to remain quiet. “Yes, Father,” he answered. “I was just finishing up some work on the computer.”

  “Where do you get the energy? Tonight’s gathering did me in. Those women and their dreadful desserts! Don’t stay up too late.”

  “Not too much longer. Good night, Father.”

  “Good night, James.”

  The heavy footsteps went up the stairs. A door shut. Silence settled over the rectory. Father Jimmy remembered what the Monsignor had said to him the other day. Hannah shouldn’t be here with him in the rectory at this hour.

  “Is anything the matter?” Hannah whispered.

  “No,” Father Jimmy said, vowing inwardly to tell the Monsignor everything in the morning. “You can relax now. He sleeps like a log.”

  He punched a few more keys on the keyboard and suddenly a picture of the sudarium itself filled the screen. It was unexceptional in appearance, a piece of linen cloth that measured roughly 32 inches by 20 inches, with random stains the color of rust. But it matched one of the fuzzy Polaroids that Hannah had dismissed as a mistake of the camera.

  “Marshall and Jolene visited that cathedral,” Hannah said. “The must have taken pictures of the sudarium.”

  “They could have. Someone did.”

  “For her artwork? …” Her voice trailed off, as she tried to imagine other possibilities.

  Very little about the fabric had gone unscrutinized - from the weave of the fibers to the traces of pollen on the cloth, which came, according to one scientific study, from plants typical of Oviedo, Toledo, North Africa and Jerusalem, and thereby confirmed the historical route it was said to have followed.

  The most provocative pieces of evidence, however, were the various stains on the sudarium, which analysis showed to have been made by blood and a pale brownish liquid. From them, it had been deduced that the man, whose face the cloth had covered, had died in an upright position, “his head tilted seventy degrees forward and twenty degrees to the right.”

  The spots of blood came from wounds all over the head and the nape of the neck, made by “small sharp objects,” which, logic argued, were the thorns in the crown of thorns. As for the brownish, phlegm-like stains, they were left by a pleural fluid known to collect in the lungs of those who die of suffocation, the immediate cause of death in a crucifixion. Such liquid is ejected through the nose, when the body suffers a rude jolt, as it necessarily would when taken down from a cross.

  Extensive experiments had been undertaken by the Spanish Center for Sindonolgy in Valencia, to show how the cloth would have been folded and attached to the face in order for the blood and fluid to have produced this precise pattern of stains. One researcher had even superimposed an image of the sudarium upon an image of the shroud of Turin and concluded that there were 120 “points of coincidence,” where the stains on each cloth coincided. The conclusion: the two pieces of cloth had enveloped the same man.

  “But how do they know there were two cloths to begin with?” Hannah asked.

  “That’s easy.” Father Jimmy reached over to the bookshelf and picked up a Bible. “The Gospel of St. John. Chapter Twenty, where Simon Peter and a fellow disciple enter the holy sepulcher.”

  He found the passage and read it out loud, his voice barely a hush in the quiet rectory:

  “So they both ran together; and the other disciple did outrun Peter, and came first to the sepulchre.

  And he, stooping down and looking in, saw the linen clothes lying; yet went he not in.

  Then cometh Simon Peter, following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie,

  And the napkin that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself.

  He saw and believed.”

  “The napkin that was about his head, that’s the sudarium,” she said. “So it is real.”

  “Who can say for sure? All we know is there was one,” he answered, rubbing his eyes, which were growing tired from reading.

  He was reminded of the pilgrimage he had made to Rome as a young seminarian, every stop along the way awakening more powerful feelings than the one before. He had expected to be awestruck by St. Peter’s and the brief audience he and his fellow seminarians had been granted with the Pope. And he was. The timeless splendor of the city and its monuments had also overwhelmed him - coming as he did from Boston, where a few vestiges of the 18th century were held to be remarkable.

  But the biggest revelation didn’t happen until he and several of the seminarians made a side trip to Turin. There in a glass case in the cathedral, they beheld the shroud and the unmistakable image of Jesus imprinted on fragile fabric that had somehow survived nearly two millennia - survived fires, wars, the mockery of the incredulous and the assaults of scientists, alternately bent on certifying its authenticity or declaring it a forgery.

  The ongoing debates, Father Jimmy had decided, were unimportant to him. Relics didn’t give him faith; he brought his faith to the relics. They helped put him, mind and body, in touch with the saintly people who had gone before. In that respect, he considered them to be resonant metaphors. The image of Jesus on the shroud, genuine or not, spoke to him urgently. “Spread my word,” it said. “Don’t let my image fade any more than it has on this linen. Bring me to life for millions. Keep me vivid in their hearts.”

  He looked over at Hannah. “I guess I’ve always been fascinated by relics. What they do for me is serve as a reminder that the saints are not fictional characters. They were real people, who had real lives and came
into real contact with the divine.”

  She gave the idea some thought. “I wonder what that was like - to have contact with the divine.”

  “But you do. Whenever you take communion.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “That doesn’t count?” he chided gently, and she turned away out of embarrassment. She could see the parking lot from the window. All the cars were gone. The social hour had long since broken up. She would have to get home soon or Jolene would start fretting. Any absence at all, these days, was pretext for a scene. The later the hour, the bigger the scene.

  “Hannah, come look at this.”

  While she’d been looking out the window, Father Jimmy had stumbled on a bizarre footnote to the sudarium’s past, a newspaper account of an elderly priest who had died, while putting away the sudarium in the Camara Santa after special Good Friday services. He had been found on the stone floor by an attendant, and the sudarium had been promptly restored to its honored place in a locked cupboard, none the worse for wear, apparently.

  The deceased, one Don Miguel Alvarez, was 79 at the time and had a history of heart problems, so authorities saw nothing suspicious about his demise. The writer of the newspaper account went so far as to note that “death came peacefully” to him and implied that such a blessing could be attributed to the holy cloth itself.

  “The Spanish papers made a big deal about him dying on Good Friday with the blood of Jesus on his hands,” Father Jimmy said. “Look here.”

  Hannah redirected her attention to the screen.

  “This is where the sudarium is kept. In that gold cupboard behind the cross with the two angels kneeling at the base.”

  “It’s a little spooky,” Hannah said.

  “What?”

  “All of it - the cloth, the people, the pictures.”

  Father Jimmy had to admit it was. The sudarium had given birth to a regular cottage industry, second only to that inspired by the shroud. The research was presumably undertaken in a spirit of scholarly excellence and special congresses were held regularly to announce significant findings. But he sensed in all the activity a worrisome note of fanaticism. Wasn’t there danger in pressing science into the service of a holy cause? Faith was faith, its own thing. Buttressed by science, it risked becoming something else, something more strident and aggressive. When, he wondered, did piety turn into zeal? When did inquiry harden into agenda?

  There were computer sites the world over. They’d barely made a dent in them. The Holy Shroud Society of Nevada gave as its address a post-office box in Reno, while the Italian Institute of Sindonolgy was located in Rome. The Center for the Investigation of Christ’s Burial operated out of Long Beach, California. An organization called the National Shroud Society was even located right there in Massachusetts.

  As a final gesture, Father Jimmy called up its web page and instantly recognized Oviedo Cathedral in the picture at the top. Beneath it was a message of welcome (he was the 603rd visitor to the site) and a statement of the society’s goals and purposes.

  The society’s founder, a cheerful-looking woman, appeared in a large color photograph, along with her personal invitation to become a member of the society. The caption identified her as Judith Kowalski. Prospective applicants could respond either by e-mail or by regular post; the appropriate addresses were given for each.

  “It’s not possible,” Hannah gasped, hypnotized by the face on the screen. “That’s the lady I told you about.”

  “Who?”

  “The one who runs Partners in Parenthood.”

  “Are you sure? I thought you said her name was——”

  “There’s a different name under the photo, but that’s Letitia Greene. I’m positive.”

  “How odd.”

  The doorbell to the rectory sounded a succession of sharp rings. Father Jimmy jumped up, glancing at his watch as he did. The time had slipped away without his knowing it. It was past eleven. No one called at this hour, unless it was an emergency.

  The front door was opened and in the exchange of voices that ensued, Hannah heard her name being mentioned. She rose and went into the hall to find Jolene, disheveled and wild-eyed.

  Dispensing with any greeting, the woman grabbed her by the arm. “Do you know what time it is? You’ve given me such a scare. You told us you were going to social hour and you’d be back at ten. When you didn’t come home, we feared the worst.” Jolene was unable to control the trembling in her voice. “Excuse me, father, but you can understand my feelings. I come out looking for her and find the church pitch black! Not a soul in sight! What am I supposed to think?”

  “I told Marshall I’d call if I needed a ride,” Hannah said with what she hoped was the proper tone of penitence. “I didn’t mean to worry you.”

  “It’s my fault, Mrs. Whitfield,” Father Jimmy intervened. “I apologize. We got talking. I would have seen her home.”

  The priest’s words seemed to calm Jolene down a little.

  “That’s kind of you, father,” she muttered begrudgingly. “But it’s not the issue. For now, the main thing is everyone’s alive and well. We should get home and let Marshall know nothing’s happened.” She tugged her toward the door like a disobedient child.

  “Just a second, Jolene,” Hannah said, breaking free. “I forgot something.” She darted back into the den and grabbed a note pad off the desk. On it, she scribbled:

  Dr. Erick Johanson!!!!

  Then she placed the notepad on the keyboard of the computer where Father Jimmy couldn’t fail to see it.

  As Hannah and Jolene pulled into the driveway, Jolene attempted to minimize her outburst in the rectory.

  “You have to know we have your welfare at heart. It’s just that I got so nervous, when you didn’t come home. I didn’t know what to think.”

  “There’s nothing to think. Father Jimmy is my confessor, that’s all. I’m safe with him.”

  Jolene’s mouth drew inward into a barely perceptible pout of displeasure. “Confessor? Are they really necessary in this day and age? What could you possibly have to confess that’s so important, a sweet thing like you?”

  “Oh, all of us have some secret or other to confess. Don’t we, Jolene?”

  Hannah turned and entered the house, leaving the woman standing in the driveway.

  1:31

  Hannah slept fitfully that night. At times, only the thinnest of membranes seemed to seal her off from the outside world, and a car backfiring on Alcott Street or a dog howling in the woods behind the house, neither uncommon occurrences in East Acton, was sufficient to pierce it.

  The discussion that broke the membrane yet again sounded as if it were being conducted at the foot of her bed. As she relinquished her last claim on sleep, Hannah realized that it was coming from the floor below and that Jolene and Marshall were actually doing their best to hold their voices down. At least Marshall was. Jolene’s voice being higher and her mood being agitated, her words carried easily though the floorboards.

  Hannah checked her bedside clock, saw it was 3:32. What could have them up at this hour?

  “In her name, that’s what she said. Her name.” (That was Jolene’s voice.) “She distinctly told us someone would come in her name. It’s so clear to me now what she meant.”

  Marshall’s response was unintelligible, but it exasperated Jolene, because she came back louder than before. “He’s the one she meant, Marshall. That’s why she led me there. So I could see for myself.”

  Again, something from Marshall that Hannah couldn’t understand.

  Then Jolene. “She promised she would guide us. Well, didn’t she, Marshall? Didn’t she?”

  “Yes, she did, Jolene.”

  “It’s obvious to me that’s exactly what she’s doing? She’s has alerted us. She’s shown us the danger. Why do you have trouble believing that?”

  The voices died down and were soon supplanted by the sound of Jolene and Marshall retreating down the stairs, then opening and shutting the kitchen door. Hannah kne
w what was happening. They were going out into the garden again. As she had done the last time, Hannah lifted up her bedroom window a crack and concealed herself behind the curtains.

  There was no moon tonight and the blackness was all-enveloping. It took a while before Hannah’s eyes adjusted and she could begin to make out vague shadowy shapes in the garden. If she was not mistaken, that was Jolene on her knees by the birdbath, her hands arms outstretched. Marshall stood back, keeping his distance. He was a passive presence in these nighttime vigils, a witness to his wife’s activities. She was the one in charge. She was mumbling now in sing-song, but the stridency in her voice was gone, so it registered as little more than a faraway drone.

  Then all movement, all sound, came to an end. And without movement and sound to orient her, minimal as they had been, Hannah lost track of the bodies in the darkness. After a while she wasn’t even sure if the Whitfields were still there. The garden was so silent she could hear the sound of her own breathing.

  Finally, a rustle.

  A whisper. Someone walking.

  They were there, after all.

  Jolene spoke. “We have to leave. It’s time to prepare the way.”

  Autumn had a solid hold on Eastern Massachusetts. The trees had exploded with color, most of which would be gone in a matter of weeks. But mounds of pumpkins and pyramids of rust and burgundy mums still fronted the roadside produce stands, and even the skies managed to put on a respectable show at sunset.

  No one disputed that winter was on its way, only when it would make its appearance. In a single day, a north wind could strip the trees of their leaves and turn the skies gunmetal gray. For now, the seasons appeared to be observing a cordial truce.

  Hannah was sorry for the dwindling hours of daylight, but grateful for the colder temperatures. Now that she was in her eighth month of pregnancy, she was feeling big. Well, she was big - fleshy and bulbous from head to toe, rather like a female version of the Michelin tire man.