Something unusual, judging from James’s reaction.
“Sending this crate to me from the Vatican saying it contained my personal effects meant it wasn’t stopped by customs, either in Italy or here in New York. It came overnight by air freight, delivered here directly from JFK. Since I thought it was a birthday present, I had it placed in here with the rest of my personal items. As he promised, Shawn showed up yesterday right from JFK, shortly after the crate arrived. He was in a very strange mood, kind of tense with excitement. He was very impatient to open the box, as was I, to see if the contents had arrived safely. So we came down here and cut the metal strips and unscrewed the top of the wooden crate. Initially, all we saw was foam board, as the object had been extremely well packed. When the top piece of foam board was removed as I will do now, this is what I saw.” James insinuated his fingers between the rough wood and the packing material and lifted the latter.
Jack leaned forward. The light in the basement was not the best, but he could plainly see a tarnished, rectangular stone with a flat, scratch-covered surface. He wasn’t impressed.
He’d expected something eye-catching like a gilded cup, or a statue, or maybe a heavy gold box. “What is it?” Jack asked.
“It’s an ossuary. Around the time of Christ, give or take a hundred years, Jewish burial practices in Palestine involved putting corpses in cavelike tombs for a year or longer to permit the body to decay. After that the family would return, collect the bones, and place them in a limestone box of varying size and decoration, depending how wealthy the family was. The box is called an ossuary.”
“Wasn’t there a controversy recently about an ossuary that supposedly had an inscription saying James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.”
“Absolutely. In fact, there were some recently discovered ossuaries with inscriptions claiming they contained the remains of Jesus Christ and his immediate family. Of course, the whole troublesome incident was proved to be pure chicanery by some unscrupulous forgers. Thousands of first-century ossuaries have been found over the last twenty years as a result of the building boom in Jerusalem. It’s hard not to find ossuaries when you dig in that city. I am confident this ossuary here will turn out to be a similar fake, as to whose relics, if any, are supposed to be inside.”
“Whose remains are supposedly involved?” Jack asked curiously.
“Holy Mary, Mother of Christ, Mother of God, Mother of the Church, second only to Jesus himself, the most holy person to have walked this earth,” James said, finding it difficult to get it all out.
For almost a full minute Jack and James stared at each other. Jack’s disappointment concerning the contents of the box edged upward. He wasn’t interested in a box of bones; treasure held more allure for him than historical objects. James, on the other hand, was overwhelmed. Simply talking about the supposed contents only made him more desperate to find a solution.
“Okay,” Jack said at length. He broke off staring at James and his brimming eyes and looked back down at the lid of the ossuary. He’d expected James to continue, but the man was too distraught to speak.
“I must be missing something here. If there are lots of ossuaries and lots of forgers, which it seems there are, what’s the problem?”
James had his lips pressed together, and a single tear fell in a rivulet down his right cheek. Without speaking, his eyes momentarily closed, he raised his palms toward Jack and gently waved them in a narrow arc. He shook his head, as if apologizing for not being able to explain his feelings. A moment later, he gestured for Jack to follow him.
Upstairs, as they passed back though the kitchen, Mrs. Steinbrenner took one look at His Eminence and instantly recognized his emotional state. Although she didn’t say anything, she glared at Jack, whom she suspected was the source of her boss’s tears.
James took the seat at the head of the dining table and gestured for Jack to take the one to his right. Between them was the vegetable platter. The moment they pulled themselves to the table Mrs. Steinbrenner appeared with a large tureen in her hands.
While the intimidating woman ladled out the soup, an excellent eggplant bisque, Jack kept his eyes focused on his bowl.
When the housekeeper finished serving and had closed the swinging door to the kitchen behind her, James used his cloth napkin to blot his eyes, which had become significantly red. “I sincerely apologize for my maudlin behavior,” he said.
“That’s okay,” Jack responded quickly.
“No, it isn’t,” James answered, “not in front of a guest, and especially not in front of a good friend I am about to ask for a serious favor.”
“I disagree,” Jack said. “This shows me how important this is to you, whatever it is you’re going to ask me.”
“You are too kind,” James said. “Now permit me to say grace.” After James had voiced his final amen, he glanced up at Jack and said, “Please start. I’m sorry we don’t have much time, as I mentioned earlier, but I have to be at Gracie Mansion at two p.m.”
Jack picked up the heaviest silver soup spoon he’d ever had the opportunity to use and took a taste of his soup. It was sublime.
“She’s a good cook. Not the most pleasant personality, but definitely a good cook.” Jack nodded, glad that James had recovered from his emotional outburst.
“As I said, I believe the ossuary downstairs will eventually be proved to be just another unfortunate forgery. I say ‘unfortunate’ because before it is proved to be a forgery, it can cause a good deal of harm to the Church, its followers, and to me personally. The problem is that proving it a fake is not going to be easy and may ultimately rely mostly on faith.”
Jack silently acknowledged that in science, proof that relied on faith was hardly proof at all. In fact, it was an oxymoron.
“The biggest problem we face is that the ossuary was discovered by one of the most renowned archaeologists in the world.”
“You mean Shawn?”
“Yes, I mean Shawn. After we opened the crate and looked at the top of the ossuary, Shawn pointed out two things. Among all those scratches are a date and a name. The date is in Roman numerals and is 815 AUC, which in a Gregorian calendar is AD 62.”
“What the hell is AUC?” Jack asked, then blushed. “Excuse my French.”
“I remember your French, as you call it, was significantly more colorful in college. No need to apologize, I’m as immune to it now as I was then. But AUC stands for ab urbe condita, referring to the supposed date of the founding of Rome. In other words, it’s a date appropriate to such a find. And when the date is combined with the name, it becomes truly disturbing—the name Maryam, written in Aramaic characters, which when translated into Hebrew is Mir iam or the English Mary.”
“So Shawn is convinced the ossuary contains the bones of the Virgin Mary, Jesus’
mother?”
“Precisely. Shawn is an extremely credible witness and can prove that this ossuary has not seen the light of day since the time it was interred almost two thousand years ago.
He found it nestled next to the tomb of Saint Peter. Furthermore, the ossuary is sealed.
All other ossuarys as far as I know have not been sealed.”
“Wasn’t Mary a common name back then? Why does he believe it’s the Mary who was Jesus’ mother?”
“Because Shawn has discovered an authentic second-century letter that claims the ossuary contains the bones of Jesus’ mother. And it was the letter that led Shawn to the bones.”
Jack raised his eyebrows. “I see your point. But what about the letter? Couldn’t that be fake?”
“Although it is somewhat tautological, finding the ossuary where the letter says it will be proves the authenticity of the letter, and vice versa. Both are such extraordinary finds that that fact alone will convince people that the bones in the ossuary are the Holy Mother’s.”
Jack thought about the issue while using a pair of silver tongs to help himself to some of the raw vegetables that had been waiting on the table. He could see James’s point. But then he had another idea. “Did you see the letter?”
“I did. I saw it yesterday.”
