I moved the book away from him.
His temper flashed. “Father, you know how important that one word is.”
“What word?”
He shut his eyes and collected himself. “Three of the gospels say Jesus was buried in a linen cloth. Singular. But John says cloths. Plural.”
“I don’t understand.”
He looked incredulous. “Singular means we have a burial shroud. Plural means we have something else. If John was right, then all of this has been a grand mistake, hasn’t it? The man who wrote the Diatessaron had to choose. And if he really saw the Shroud in Edessa, then he would’ve chosen cloth, singular.”
This newfound intensity repelled me. “You told me we were here to prove the Shroud was in Edessa when the Diatessaron was written.”
He shook his list of Bible verses in the air. “Eight Shroud references. Eight. Four from Mark, Matthew, and Luke. Four from John.” He pointed to the manuscript. “The fellow who wrote this book—”
“Tatian.”
“—had to break the tie. He couldn’t use both words, so which did he choose? The battle begins here, Father. So let’s have it.”
Yet no matter how I squinted, the rot was impenetrable. “I’ll check the other reference,” I suggested. “The empty tomb.”
But there, too, the word was hidden by black splotches.
Ugo removed a plastic kit from his breast pocket. “I brought swabs and solvent. We’ll begin with saliva. The enzymes may be enough.”
I placed a hand on his arm. “Stop. No.”
“Father, I didn’t bring you—”
“Please, tell the Cardinal Librarian what you’ve found. The restorers will do this the right way. We don’t have to risk damaging it.”
He became incensed. “The Cardinal Librarian? You said I could trust you! You gave me your word!”
“Ugo, damage these pages and you’ll have nothing. Neither will anyone else. Forever.”
“I didn’t come here to be lectured. Father Simon told me you had experience with—”
I lifted the manuscript up in the air.
“Stop!” he cried. “You’ll set off the alarm!”
When the book was level with my eyes, I said, “Move the flashlight at an angle. Maybe I can see the indentations of the pen strokes.”
He stared at me, then patted his pockets and produced a small magnifying glass. “Yes. Okay, good. Use this.”
One hundred years ago, a lost book of Archimedes had turned up in a Greek Orthodox convent, hidden in plain sight. A medieval monk had erased the treatise by scraping the ink off the parchment and had written a liturgical text on the blank pages instead. But under the right light, from the right angle, it was still possible to see the old indentations, the tracks of that ancient pen.
“Stop,” I said. “Keep the beam just like that.”
“What do you see?”
I blinked and looked again.
“What is it?” he repeated.
“Ugo . . .”
“Speak! Please!”
“This isn’t rot.”