| |
CARDINAL CELENT BROUGHT the ancient bits of torn cloth and rags to his face and breathed in the stale, raw aroma of the two thousand year old fabric. The dry desert air of New Mexico had kept the cloth from mildewing and rotting, and despite the more than sixty years that the cloth of ancient Judea had remained buried under the stones and rocks outside of Corona, the material had little deterioration. He carefully placed the bundle of cloth down onto the altar of the small chapel.
Dominic and Inspector Carrola each stood to one side of Cardinal Celent, like altar boys at mass, watching Cardinal Celent as he unwrapped the metal-like foil that had once lined the water pit surrounding the small brown building. It was the same foil that he had gathered from the brush of the desert after his return from ancient Jerusalem. He carefully pulled it back, piece by piece, revealing more of the rags of cloth. He set the cloth aside, then removed a small bundle of tightly twisted foil that had been hidden underneath. He slowly untwisted the end of the foil and poured out the contents onto the altar. A handful of pebbles and sand fell onto the polished wooden top of the altar, forming a tiny pile. Cardinal Celent looked up to the cross, then turned to Dominic and said, “The blood of Christ.” He reached out and picked up one of the rust colored, blood stained pebbles, took Dominic’s hand, and placed the pebble in the center of his palm. Cardinal Celent wrapped his own hand around Dominic’s, closing them both.
Dominic’s eyes closed, and his head fell back as his body shuddered. After a moment he opened his eyes and smiled.
Cardinal Celent unfolded his hand from Dominic’s and turned back to the altar and the bundle of foil and cloth. Removing another layer of foil, revealed a final wrapped object; he pulled the last piece from the foil and, with great care, began to fold back the layer upon layer of foil that had encased the object for more than sixty years. The last piece of foil was peeled back, revealing a folded square of papyrus paper. Cardinal Celent touched the papyrus with the tip of his first two fingers and was immediately taken back to the scene of the crucifixion. In his mind, he replayed the moments.
A commotion behind him caught his attention, and he turned to see the man he thought to be Pilate standing in a small chariot pulled by a team of heavily breathing horses. Several Centurions followed the chariot on foot, keeping up the best they could, as Pilate circled the plateau of Golgotha, screaming at the crowd, “Illic is exsisto jesus talea abbas. Vos certus!”
The crowd of thieves, peasants, and clergy parted in the wake of the chariot, and then, like a great ocean wave, folded back together as the charging horses and crazed man passed.
Pilate circled again, nearly trampling an older woman who could barely move quickly enough, and would have certainly been hacked to death by the pounding hooves, if a man hadn’t grabbed her by the waist pulling her out of the path of the oncoming chariot. Pilate passed her, with only inches separating the woman and the chariot’s wheels. He gave her no notice and continued shouting his rant, “Illic is exsisto jesus talea abbas. Vos certus!” His face red, veins pulsing in his neck, Pilate snapped the reins onto the haunches of the horses and urged them on into a frenzy. He circled again raising up the dust and throwing the crowd into a near panic as they tried to project the path of the chariot and clear a route. The centurions, who had been following the chariot on foot, had now given up the chase and stopped near the pathway, panting and sweating under the heavy cloth and armor of their rank. They watched in dismay as their commander screamed again to the crowd, and then turned the chariot in their direction.
Pilate headed directly for the centurions and the spot where William “Bill” Celent, the young scientist, who would someday be Cardinal, now stood. The crowd ahead of the chariot scurried out of the way of the galloping horses and the bouncing, nearly out of control, chariot. Pilate grabbed the reins with one hand and steadied himself with the other, taking hold of the rail mounted to the side of the chariot. He pulled the reins to the right, and the horse responded by turning onto the pathway and headed down the hill, following the same path Christ did on his way up to the sight of crucifixion. The chariot’s wheels hit a rut in the worn path as it turned, sending Pilate and the cart into the air. It landed hard. Pilate fell forward. The chariot skidded to the side, then righted itself. Pilate pulled back on the reins, leaning his body back as he did. The horses slowed and Pilate turned back to the crowd. And again, in a voice now rough and dry, yelled out in Latin, “Illic is exsisto jesus talea abbas. Vos certus!” There he should be. Jesus bar Abbas. Bar Abbas. You decided! “Vos certus! Vos certus!”
Pilate, with the Roman centurions, again in quick pursuit, continued down the path back through the gate and into the city of Jerusalem. The now crazed crowd turned their attention to the remaining centurions and the task at hand. The crucifixion.
Bill Celent adjusted the rags and bits of cloth around his face, making sure that only his eyes could be seen. He took a step forward, glancing down to check his footing, and there, not a foot and half in front of him, he saw the rolled sheet of papyrus. As the chariot that Pilot was commanding hit the rut in the path and jostled the cart into the air, the papyrus roll had also gone airborne and had landed there at the feet of Bill Celent. Unseen by others in the crowd, who were too concerned with their own wellbeing and the man who lay in a crumpled heap on the ground before them, Bill picked up the papyrus roll and tucked it into a fold in the jumpsuit, well camouflaged beneath the rags.
On the altar, unwrapped from the foil and exposed, the papyrus that had once been rolled, was now a flattened square, compressed by the years hidden beneath desert rock, but still remained quite supple. The edges had frayed and one corner had broken away, crumbling into near dust and collected at the bottom of the foil wrapping.
Cardinal Celent pulled gently on the edge of the papyrus. The sheet came away from the underlying sheet. Even though the papyrus had been folded, it did not bond into the sheet below. Now, using both of his hands, Cardinal Celent held the top of the scroll with one hand, pressed firmly down on it, and with the other hand pulled the sheets apart. As the sheet uncoiled, letters became visible: IES. The lines of text were not written left to write, but ran from the top to the bottom of the scroll. Cardinal Celent unfolded another, the center piece of the papyrus roll, and now a more of the text could be seen: IESUS.
Cardinal Celent looked into Dominic’s eyes and smiled. He continued to watch Dominic’s expression as he unrolled the scroll completely, pressing it flat to the altar, revealing the complete text.
IESUS NAZARENVS REX IVDAEORVM
ישו והמתנזרת מלך היהודים
Ο Ιησούς του βασιλιά των Εβραίων
Dominic’s eyes grew wide. He brushed the hair from his forehead, glanced at Cardinal Celent, then traced the letters of the first line of the text with his finger, and read the words aloud, “Jesus Nazarene King Jews.” He looked back to Cardinal Celent, then back to the papyrus scroll, as the understanding of what he was reading—what he was looking at and what he was touching—struck him with as much force as a bolt of lightning surging from the clouds above could have. He read the line again, “Jesus the Nazarene King of the Jews.”
Cardinal Celent smiled as he watched the man next to him; the Key had just come to the understanding of the task that God had handed him. Just like himself, God had chosen a non-believer to carry the truth and the unimaginable burden that knowing the truth would bring. He had, with the aid of only the trusted few, been able to shoulder this holy burden for the past sixty years. And now, he was just a moment away from passing it on. An odd sense of loss, tremendous freedom mixed with regret, welled up within him. It had been an unexpected journey. His life had been in science, not the occult, and religion had little effect upon him. Yet, God had taken him from the books of fact to a book of faith. He had learned that he did not need faith to carry this burden. He had been shown the truth. A truth that he quickly learned, that must be kept for the few. It was a truth too dangerous to reveal to the world. Governments and people had set up their lives around their systems of beliefs and faiths. And the revelation to the world of what had happened in the New Mexican desert sixty years ago would have caused the world,—that had at the time just come out of a war that involved to many governments, countries and people—to slip back into chaos.
Cardinal Celent fought to release the information. He wanted to show the world what he had found. Show them that God did exist. He was convinced that it would heal the wounds of war. Other’s, however didn’t agree. The Soviets would never have accepted the church or Jesus, nor would the Japanese, the Chinese, or any other country and government that had already established its power and authority. There were far too many who would rise up against the truth. “My numbers are legion.” The words of Satan crept into his thoughts. Cardinal Celent had come to understand what the consequences of revealing the truth to the world would mean. And when the Vatican had ruled on the matter, in a secret synod chosen by the Pope, and had decided that the time was not right. Cardinal Celent had then, reluctantly, obliged to be of the few to bear the burden of this truth. It was his hope that during his lifetime, that truth could be revealed and the world would come together in it. But as he now knew, there had not been, nor would there ever be a time when the truth could be told.
Cardinal Celent let his hand slide away from the bottom of the papyrus scroll that he had pressed flat against the altar, revealing the few remaining inches of the papyrus and the wax seal there.
“Pontius Pilate,” Dominic said the words a loud. He touched the cracked darkened wax lightly with the tip of his finger. He could feel the rounded, smooth edges and the indentation of the seal into the wax. The profile of a man and the words Pontius Pilatus had been pressed into the wax while it was molten over two thousand years ago. The impression remained clean and clear. The wax seal was encircled by a legend that read in Latin: Praefectus Judea. “This is the seal of Pontius Pilate?”
“When the Governor of Judea rode through the crowd, excitedly screaming that he had offered Barabas to them in order to spare Jesus’ life, this scroll fell to where I was standing. I picked it up, but did not know at the time what it was. And when I returned to the desert in New Mexico, I was surprised that I had it. But, like everything that happened that day in Roswell, we were not in control,” Cardinal Celent said, then looked into Dominic’s eyes. “These are the words that Pilate wrote,” he said, then added. “What I have written I have written,” quoting the words of John from the New Testament. “Pilate responded with those words when the chief priest’s made a request to him to change the titilum, ‘What I have written I have written.’”
Dominic touched each line of the text on the scroll and spoke, quoting John further, “Pilate also had an inscription written and put on the cross. It read: ‘Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.’ Many of the Jews read this inscription, because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew, in Latin, and in Greek.”