The Fifth Gospel(42)

            There were no sounds down here except from the titanic earthworms of ductwork on the ceiling, ventilated by a faraway mechanical lung. But in my ears was the watery drumming of my blood.

            “Dyed goatskin,” Ugo said nervously under his breath, “over papyrus boards. Pages made of parchment.”

            With a type of tool I didn’t recognize, he turned the first page.

            I gasped. Everything inside was too water-stained to read. But on the next page, the stains became smaller. And on the third, handwriting became visible.

            “You’re right,” I whispered. “It’s a diglot.”

            There were two columns on the page: the left one in Syriac, the right one in Greek. And this time, when Ugo turned the leaf, it was as if the fog of damage had begun to roll off. There, in all capital letters, with no spaces in between, was a line of Greek I could transform into something familiar.

            ΕΓΕΝΕΤΟΡΗΜΑΘΕΟΥΕΠΙΙΩΑΝΝΗΝΤΟΝΤΟΥΖΑΧΑΡΙΟΥ.

            “The word of God came to John the son of Zechariah,” I said. “That’s from Luke.”

            Ugo glanced at me, then back at the page. In his eyes there was now fire, too.

            “But look at the next line!” I said. “He confessed, ‘I am not the Christ.’ That verse is only in the gospel of John.”

            Ugo searched his pockets for something but didn’t seem to find it. He dashed back to the duffel bag and returned, panting, with a notebook.

            “Father Alex,” he said, “this is the list. These are the Shroud references we need to check. The first one is Matthew 27:59. The parallel verses are Mark—”

            Before I could scan the page, though, he frowned and stopped short. For a moment he turned and stared at the scanner.

            “What’s wrong?”

            He cocked an ear. Distantly there was the faintest sound.

            But he shook his head and said, “Air current. Carry on.”

            I wondered how he could be so focused on his small list of verses—or even on the Shroud—when an entire gospel lay before us. I would’ve stayed here a month, a year, until I had taught myself enough Syriac to read both columns together, every word.

            Yet the muscles of Ugo’s face were strained. All trace of jovial good humor had left. “Read, Father,” he said. “Please.”

            There were eight verses on the list. I knew them by heart. Each of the four gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—says that Jesus’ dead body was wrapped in linen after the crucifixion. Two of the gospels—Luke and John—also say that disciples returned after the Resurrection and saw the linen lying by itself in the empty tomb. But the Diatessaron, by merging the gospels into a single story, distilled all these references to only two moments: the burial and the reopening of the tomb.

            “Ugo, there’s a problem,” I said, finding the first of the quotations. “There’s too much rot here. I can’t make out some of the words.”

            Hazy black stains spotted the page, rendering words illegible. I had read about manuscripts destroyed by fungus but had never seen one firsthand.

            Ugo collected himself. Then as calmly as he could, he said, “Very well, scrape it off.”

            I blinked at him. “I can’t. That would damage the page.”

            Ugo reached over. “Then show me the word, and I’ll do it.”