The Testament of James (Case Files of Matthew Hunter and Chantal Stevens) (17 page)

“Richard?”

“Fourth century, give or take a hundred, from one of the desert monasteries in the Sinai, on the old road to Heliopolis. Is that sufficient, or do you want to know what month of the year, which would require shaking for pollen samples? Though even this will likely be a copy of something earlier, of course.”

“There can’t be many that old.” Chantal was suitably impressed.

“Of codices — books with spines — from that era there are about 500 known, probably dozens more hidden away in the storerooms of Rashid’s family and other of Matthew’s disreputable friends, avoiding the taxmen and waiting for the right price. Which I assume will make this another one of your million-dollar ledger entries, Matthew.”

“Quick cash still trumps some museum that has to spend months explaining it to their committee. I doubt it’ll bring anywhere near a million, given the kind of rush Rashid appears to have been in. Unless someone figures out it’s really what it’s supposed to be, in which case either it’s worth considerably more or else it moves quickly into the category of ‘Help me get rid of this thing before I find a knife in my back.’”

“It’s old. Though a forger could dream something up out of thin air ten centuries ago, as easy as last month.”

“Can you read it?”

The old man sighed. “This single page of Greek is easy enough. ‘Brothers, we have all discussed the thirty-ninth letter of our Bishop Athanasius…’ Ahh.”

“Ahh,” Matthew agreed.

“Ahh?” asked Chantal, though hearing the words from her vision spoken aloud still caused a little shiver to run up her neckbones.

“Just before Easter in the year 367 Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, who’d been quite a loudmouth at the Council of Nicaea, sent out his famous thirty-ninth pastoral letter, naming the 27 books acceptable to be read in church, the first time anyone listed the 27 books of your current New Testament, alone and with no others. Dumped the Gnostics in the trash bin, basically. So — assuming this isn’t a fake — it’s like a Christmas gift inscription. He doesn’t list the date, but he doesn’t need to. The reference dates the writing, if we accept it on face value. Now, if we run a Carbon-14 and it’s anywhere near …”

“Richard: There’s more here?”

“Yes, yes. ‘… Now none can … doubt?’ Make it ‘doubt the abbot will order the destruction of many texts not accepted into the … canon,’ probably. ‘Therefore of my own … authority’? Only part of the word there, could be … ‘volition, without the complicity of any other, I make and conceal this true copy of our most precious writing,
The Testament of James the Just
.’”

“Jesus.”

“A well chosen epithet.”

“I don’t think that was an epithet. It might have been an ejaculation.”

“Matthew, there are ladies present.”

The old man gingerly flipped the book so he could read from the beginning, which would have been the tail end in any language but Hebrew.

“You’re lucky our Arab friends didn’t destroy this one on sight, you know. They get very nervous about anything that seems to prove there were Jews in that part of the world before their precious prophet showed up. Like your Baptist fundamentalist trying to explain how a fossilized trilobite can’t be more than six thousand years old.”

“These are not Muslim zealots. You can’t read it?”

“I can read parts of this; we’ll get more out of it when we’ve photographed with some lovely filters where these sections are faded. Ultraviolet, X-ray, numerous tricks of the trade. But simultaneous translation is a separate skill, you know. Hmm.”

“Hmm?”

“This scribe was no amateur. He seems to have devised an ink with staying power but not enough acid to eat right through the papyrus, which can frequently be a problem.”

“How handy. The language?”

“Hebrew.”

“Not conversational Aramaic?”

“We’re going to play Twenty Questions?”

“OK, Hebrew.”

“We know Jesus could read the scriptures, so there’s no reason his brother couldn’t have written in formal Hebrew. Though this does have a colloquial feel… . James would have been from Galilee, and this is written almost like a transcription of the spoken Galilean language.”

“Which would be nothing like Aramaic,” Matthew smiled.

“Shut up.”

“And it says?”

“Be patient. I’m not a rabbi, you know.”

“I thought you were.”

“You think any Jew who’s not running a delicatessen is a rabbi.”

“So … that’s not true?”

“Stop it, I’m concentrating.”

Richard rolled his shoulders, took a deep breath.

“‘This is the Testament of Ya’akov, called the Just, brother of Yeshua Ben-Yosef,’ hm.”

“Hm?”

“‘Ben-Yosef’ is Hebrew, if this were Aramaic we’d look for ‘Bar-Yosef.’ In fact, this could be read either way. Curious. Anyway, since you insist on something ‘quick and dirty,’ let’s read it as ‘brother of Yeshua Ben-Yosef, descended of the lines of David the King and the high priest Aaron, known to the Romans as …’ and here it’s Romanized with vowel marks, though of course they had no letter ‘J,’ so it really does look like … ‘known to the Romans as Iesus, who opened the way that was…’ no, that would be a perfect tense, ‘… who opened the way that had been kept secret, who made us one in the sacrament, who was crucified by Pilate the prefect in the twenty-second year of the reign of the Emperor Tiberius, and who…”

“And who?”

“… and who survived.’”

“Wow,” said Chantal, after a moment.

“You say there’s disputed ownership?” asked the professor, thoughtfully.

“Several misguided fellows seem to be prowling around with guns.”

“The Society of Jesus?”

“The air hangs heavy with the sulfurous scent of Dominicans.”

“Ah, the Holy Office, I’m not surprised. I don’t think the Pope is going to be reading from this to the crowd on Easter Sunday. We have a safe in the rare book room. Humidity controlled, all that.”

“Where you’d have to sign it in. Which means if the gentleman who called on us claiming to be with the Egyptian Ministry of Culture, Antiquities, and Burning Down Christian Churches showed up with the proper Foggy Bottom paperwork …”

“Yes, there is that. Of course the Egyptians would claim it as some kind of cultural treasure, as though they’d do anything but hide it in the basement. Though I believe I could sneak it in under a false identity for a week or two, label it as some impenetrable Mormon genealogy. Besides, how long can you keep it under your pillow?” The old man turned to Chantal now. “I assume you’re aware that our valuable young colleague here insists on risking his health, placing himself in some form of dangerous drug-induced stupor as part of his pursuit of his most valuable finds.”

“How do you think we found this one?” she smiled.

“Richard,” Matthew sighed. It was the old discussion between them. “How many times have you asked an authenticator to explain how they knew a piece everyone else was dismissing as a fake was the real thing? And how many times have they said ‘I don’t know, I just felt that book was talking to me’”?

“Matthew, it’s a figure of speech.” The old man rolled his eyes. “We do not live in a Walt Disney cartoon, where books stand up and start to sing to us in the voice of Jimmy the Cricket.”

“Jiminy Cricket.”

“Whatever. At least not unless we take debilitating doses of loco weed, or whatever it is you eat when you descend into these pharmaceutical wet dreams.”

“They won’t admit it even to themselves, but in the end it’s a matter of sitting in a quiet place with that object, allowing their subconscious — their right brain — to run a kind of catalogue of the legitimate against the fake, to feel for the vibes.”

“Oh, the vibes!” Richard moved his arms in undulating waves, like two sea serpents about to mate.

“Then they go looking for some reproducible evidence, couch it all in proper technical jargon so they won’t have to admit what really tipped them off was an intuition, they don’t want to end up sounding like your hillbilly grandma talking about haunts and spirits. I’m saying there’s nothing unscientific about throwing your mind out of focus and waiting for an epiphany. How else do you explain someone driving to his mountain cabin at night with his girlfriend asleep in the seat beside him, his mind wandering, and suddenly he says ‘Wait a minute: What if we didn’t have to sequence the whole DNA strand, what if we just copied a part of it …?’”

“We’ve had this conversation many times, Matthew. We each have to follow our own path. Just remember that if you eventually turn the left hemisphere of your brain to jelly, I’ll be happy to come by on Sunday to read you the funny papers and feed you peach puree and wipe where it dribbles down your chin.”

“Thank you.”

“Our affection for you is unbounded. Perhaps Chantal can focus your mind in a more worldly direction.”

“You sure about that date?” Matthew asked.

“For the thirty-ninth pastoral of Athanasius? Gee, I guess it could have been 1066, or maybe 1492. As I get older, all these dates get so mixed up in my head. Is this Wednesday? Have the Turks taken Constantinople? Is it time for my medicine?”

“No, the year in the reign of Tiberius. Most sources put the Crucifixion in the sixteenth year, A.D. 30.”

“The twenty-second year of the reign. Not likely to be a typo, doesn’t look anything like ‘sixteenth.’ How soon can we start getting some good quality copies of these pages?”

“How long will it take?

“There are more than thirty sheets here, about seventy pages. If the Huns were breaking down the door I could take a set of pictures in less than half an hour. But to do it right, adjusting contrast and filters and checking our work as we go along, I’d like a full day.”

“Starting when?”

“Only you know if the wolf’s at the door, Matthew. I was looking forward to a nice lunch, but I’ve gone without, before. We could start now, if you like.”

“I told Lance he could have a look. And I’d like to set up some security. Go have your lunch. Are you leaving town? Can we reach you later?”

“I’ll await your call.”

After seeing them out, Richard padded carefully back to his desk, not wanting to stir the air. On his desk was a small pattern of yellowed papyrus fragments, flaked from the old book as he’d read. Laying hands on a stiff clear plastic envelope — not one of those limp and dreadful baggies — he used a plastic straightedge to sweep up all the fragments and seal them. He then applied a paper label, on which he wrote “Hunter Unident’d Coptic MS,” the date, his name and affiliation, and the words “Carbon-14 ASAP.”

Arriving back at the store, Matthew and Chantal found Skeezix standing at the front counter as Marian unpacked a box of books he’d hauled up the street for old Clarence.

“Any good?”

“So far all the Elmer Keiths are signed;
Drums Along the Mohawk
is a signed first. And wait till you see who
They Fought with What They Had
is signed to.”

“Douglas MacArthur?”

“You peeked.”

Matthew never looked shocked when such finds showed up. Partly it was years of practice keeping a poker face at auctions and estate sales, when a single “Holy Shit!” could jack to the stratosphere the price of what had previously been a five-dollar book; partly he had simply developed a philosophy that such treasures eventually found their way out of the weak hands of the careless and the ignorant and into the strong hands of those who could appreciate what they were, like the day the homeless guy had found himself in the gravy, hauling in the box he’d found set out for the garbage man with the books signed by Tasha Tudor and the books signed to — not by, but to — Julia Marlowe, and the presentation copy of that science book by some woman no one had ever heard of, Mary Baker Glover.

They’d pay old Clarence at least 50 apiece for most of these, assuming they’d bring better than 200 apiece online. Skeezix would get a finder’s fee, even though he hadn’t had to risk his bankroll. But a MacArthur copy? That would take a little homework, maybe a few calls to dealers who specialized in militaria — at which point old Clarence’s remaining years might get just a little easier.

They saw Marian already had Les busy shelving — an exercise never improved upon as a way to learn the stock and where things could be found.

“
The White Company
,” Les said, holding up a book, “Fiction under ‘D’?”

“No, the Sherlock shelf under mysteries,” Marian replied.

“I don’t think
The White Company
is a mystery.”

“People looking for Conan Doyle start at the Sherlock shelf,” Marian explained. “Books go where the most likely buyers will look. Just like non-fiction by Asimov goes in science fiction.”

“Right.”

“Did you ever find Quinn?” Matthew asked as they passed. “Did he manage to keep his mouth shut?”

“I thought he’d choke on his onion soup when Jackson named his price. Told me later it was four times what he was going to ask.”

“Good. He’ll sell?”

“Damned right.”

“How was the onion soup?”

“Always good at the Red Stripe.”

“Good choice.”

“The Reverend White was around,” Marian informed Matthew just before he and Chantal disappeared into the back room with The Book.

“And where is he now?”

“I sent him down the street to Three Rivers for a bite. Told him I’d call him when you were back. Are you back?”

“To Lance, yes. He carries a cell?”

“Matthew, everyone but you carries a cell. Everyone but you and Richard.”

“Tell Lance I may have something interesting to show him.”

“Will do. Les?”

“Marian?”

“I think that’s Chauncey coming up the walk.”

“Oh God. I’ll go hide under the bed.”

“He’ll just keep coming around, dear. Give him 10 minutes, then I’ll put through an urgent call from Chaz Bono.”

“You can do that and keep a straight face?”

“OK, no. From Orson Scott Card, then.”

“OK.”

Young Chauncey, who was accompanied by what appeared to be an alarmingly skinny 15-year-old Japanese peg boy of indeterminate gender, had hair down to his shoulders — he must have slept in rollers the size of tin cans to get that curl. Chauncey was dressed today in a dark green velvet frock coat with wide lapels and shiny black silk facings, green velvet pants with black silk stripes down the sides that ended just below the knee, and white silk stockings, although they could have been acetate or heavy nylon. On his head was a matching dark green hat which was at first hard to describe; Les finally figured out it was a miniature green velvet cowboy hat, probably held in place with an actual hat pin.