How many scrolls had been in the sealed jar?  Two sounded right but he couldn’t be sure.  He didn’t remember.

Two copies: one here in Kesev’s possession, and the other in America.  That thought would have panicked him if he hadn’t known it had been branded a forgery.

He had a sense that events were spinning out of control.  An odd progression of incidents—the errant SCUD, the theft of the scroll, the copies, the destruction of the original.  Especially unsettling was the last incident.  An unnatural wind had whirled the scroll fragments into oblivion, but only after they had been copied.  After.  Unfortunate happenstance, or design?  He sensed a power at work, a deft hand moving behind the scenes.  But what power?  And to what end?

He had to stay on guard.  The scroll in America was probably rolled up and sealed in a glass case, just like Tulla Szobel’s.  A curio.  Something to be looked at but not touched.  And besides, how many Americans knew Aramaic?  Highly unlikely that anyone would realize what it was about.

But something was happening.  Once again he was overwhelmed by the sensation of giant wheels turning, ready to crush him if he stepped the wrong way.

Increased vigilance was the key.  He’d have to find a way to keep a closer watch on the Resting Place.  And be ready to deal swiftly and surely with any curious Americans he found wandering in the area.

So here sit I, alone, a filthy cave for a home and only locusts, wild honey, a few goats, and figs for sustenance.  I who once dwelt in luxury, who once wore the striped blue sleeve and had free access to the Temple.

I am alone and mad.  And sometimes I imagine I am not alone.  Sometimes I see her walking.  Sometimes she speaks to me.  But it isn’t her.   Only a fever-dream of my madness.

I pray that each day is the Last Day, but each ends like the one before it.  When will it end?  Dear Lord, when will you allow it to end for me?

--from the Glass scroll

Rockefeller Museum translation

TEN

Manhattan

Dan awoke with a start—bright light in his eyes and an excited voice in his ear.

“Dan!  Wake up!  Wake up!”

He blinked.  Carrie...leaning over him...dark hair falling about her face...bright eyes wide with excitement.  God, she was beautiful.  She made him want to sing though he knew damn well he couldn’t carry a tune.  How had he spent his whole life without this woman—not any woman...this woman?  Celibacy was an unnatural state for a human being.  He didn’t care what the Church said, he was a better person—a more compassionate, more understanding, more fully rounded man—and therefore a better priest because of Carrie.

He’d never been in love before.  Grade school and high school puppy loves, sure.  But this went beyond physical attraction, beyond infatuation.  If Carrie were a lay person he’d leave the Church for her—if she’d have him.  But Carrie had no intention of leaving her order.  Ever.  So he’d have to settle for things the way they were.

Of course, if she’d been laity, the relationship never would have begun.  He wouldn’t have let her within arm’s reach.  His guard would have been up, his defenses primed at all times when he was around her.  But Carrie, being a nun, being a member of the club, so to speak, had slipped past his guard without even trying.

That first afternoon in her brother’s condo had awakened a long-dormant hunger in him.  Along the course of his years as a priest he’d learned to structure his life without regard to sex.  Excruciatingly difficult at first.  He’d found it went beyond avoiding thoughts of sex.  It meant avoiding thinking about avoiding thoughts of sex.  You did that by cramming your days full of activity, by hurling yourself headlong into the never-ending hustle and bustle of a downtown urban parish, by sublimating your own needs to those of your parishioners.  After all, that was what it was all about, wasn’t it?  That was why you joined the priesthood.  And if you did your job right, at the end of the day you collapsed into bed and slept like the dead until dawn when it was up and out for early Mass and back again into the parish whirl.

After a while you got pretty good at it.  After a while, the lusty parts of the brain atrophied and became too weak to bother you with much more that an occasional, feeble nudge.

Unless something kick-started them with a steroid charge and pumped them up to strength again.

Something like making love to Sister Carrie.

Now he was like a randy teenager.  He wondered where the guilt had gone.  Overwhelmingly awful at first, especially when she’d told him about her father and what he’d done to her.  Dan had almost despaired then, wondering if he might be aiding and abetting some dark, self-sabotaging compulsion within Carrie.  She’d run to the convent to escape a sexually molesting father; she’d become a model nun, a paradigm of virtue and saintliness except for the fact that she was having a sexual relationship with her parish priest...a man everyone called “father.”

Dan had always been skeptical of facile parlor psychoanalysis, but the doubts nagged at him when he was apart from Carrie.  When he was with her, however, they melted in the warmth of her smile, the glow of her presence.  Carrie seemed perfectly comfortable with their relationship; it had taken him a while, but now he was just as comfortable.

Dan loved her as he had never loved another human being, and that love let him see the world in a whole new light, brought him closer to the rest of humanity.  How could that be wrong?

He loved Carrie completely, and he wanted her—all the time.  Every moment they were together at Loaves and Fishes was a struggle, a biting agony to keep his hands off her.  He’d learned to freeze his emotions at those times, confine his thoughts to the instant, force his brain to regard her as no more than a pleasant coworker and to leave her clothes on whenever he looked at her.

But God, it was hard.

But more than wanting Carrie physically, he wanted her emotionally.  Just being near her was a thrill.  But being near her in bed was Heaven.  Like now...

He noticed her bathrobe hanging open, exposing the rose-tipped globe of her left breast.  He reached for it but she brushed his hand away with a sheaf of papers.

“What is this?” she said, shaking them in his face.

“Wha—?”  Dan propped himself up on his elbows and stared at the papers in her hand.

“Where did you get this, Dan?”

He couldn’t remember ever seeing Carrie this excited.

“Oh, that.  Harold’s back from Jerusalem.  It’s the translation of a scroll that somebody turned in to the Rockefeller Museum over there.  He gave it to me as part of a little gift.”

She laughed.  “A gift?  He gave this to you as a gift?  But this is fabulous!  Why hasn’t the world been told?”

“There’s nothing to tell, Carrie.  The scroll is a fake.”

She stared at him in silence, the glow of excitement slowly fading from her eyes.  She shook her head.

“No.”  Her voice was a whisper.  “That can’t be.”

“It’s true.  Hal said the carbon dating showed the ink is twelve years old tops.”

Carrie was still shaking her head.  “No.  There’s got to be a mistake.”

Dan leaned forward and kissed her throat.  “What’s so important about it?  It’s paranoid, jumbled, and seems deliberately obscure.  The forger was probably some nut who—”

“It’s about Mary.”

Now it was Dan’s turn to stare.  “Mary?  Mary who?”

“The Blessed Virgin Mary.”

Dan knew from Carrie’s expression that he’d better not laugh, but he couldn’t repress a smile.

“Where on earth did you get an idea like that?”

“From this.”  She held up the translation.  “The dead woman he’s talking about, the body he’s supposed to guard—it’s Mary’s.”