"So let's you and I eat. It's on me."
"No, I'll treat."
They ordered dinner and a bottle of Barolo and measured each other.
"Sofia, there's one episode in the history of the shroud that seems very confused."
"Just one? I'd say they all are. Its appearance in Edessa, its disappearance in Constantinople…"
"I read that in Edessa there was a very well established and influential Christian community, and it was so fierce that the emir of Edessa battled the Byzantine army rather than be forced to turn over the shroud."
"Yes, that's right," Sofia confirmed. "In 944 the Byzantines stole the shroud in a battle with the Muslims, who at that time ruled Edessa. The emperor of Byzantium, Romanus Lecapenus, wanted the Mandylion, which is what the Greeks called it, because he thought if he had it he'd have God's protection and be invincible. He sent an army under his best general and offered a deal to the emir of Edessa: If the emir turned over the shroud, the army would withdraw without doing the city any harm, he would pay generously for the Mandylion, and he would free two hundred Muslim captives.
"But the Christian community in Edessa refused to turn over the Mandylion to the emir, and since the emir, even though he was a Muslim, feared that the shroud had magical powers, he decided to fight. The Byzantines won, and the Mandylion was taken to Byzantium in August of the year 944. The Byzantine liturgy celebrates the day. The Vatican archives contain the text of Pope Gregory's homily on August 16 when he received the cloth.
"The emperor sent it for safekeeping to the Church of St. Mary of Blachernae in Constantinople, where every Friday it was worshipped by the faithful," she continued. "From there it disappeared and it wasn't seen again until it appeared in France in the fourteenth century."
'And that's what I've been trying to figure out. Did the Templars take it?" Ana asked. "Some authors say that it was the Knights Templar that stole the shroud from the Byzantines."
"It's hard to say. The Templars are blamed for everything-they're pictured as these supermen who could do anything. They may have taken the Mandylion, or they may not have. The Crusaders sowed death and destruction-and confusion-wherever they went. Or it may be that Balduino de Courtenay, who became emperor of Constantinople, pawned it, and after that it was lost."
"He could pawn the shroud?"
"It's one of many theories. He didn't have enough money to maintain his empire, so he went begging to the kings and princes of Europe and wound up selling off all sorts of religious relics brought back by the Crusaders from the Holy Land-in fact, his uncle Louis the Ninth of France bought a number of them. It's also possible that the Templars, the most powerful bankers of the time, who also were constantly trying to recover sacred relics, paid Balduino for the shroud. But there's no document to support that."
"Well, I think the Templars took it." Ana's eyes were defiant.
"Why?" Sofia didn't understand this leap of reasoning, which turned out not to be reasoning at all.
"I don't know, just hints in what I've read. You yourself pointed to that possibility. They took it to France, where it finally reappeared."
The two women continued talking for quite a while, Ana speculating about the Templars, Sofia reeling off facts.
Marco and Giuseppe bumped into them on the way to the elevators.
"What are you doing here?" asked Giuseppe in surprise.
"We had dinner together and had a great time, right, Ana?"
Marco greeted the reporter warmly but he asked only Sofia and Giuseppe to have one last drink with him in the hotel bar.
"What happened, what are you doing home so early?" he asked when they sat down.
"Oh, Bonomi pissed me off. He fell all over me and made us both look like fools. I felt really uncomfortable, and when the opera was over I came back here. I mean, honestly, Marco, I don't want to be where I don't belong-I was totally out of place there, and it was embarrassing."
"What about D'Alaqua?"
"He was a total gentleman, and surprisingly enough, Cardinal Visier was too. Let's leave them alone, shall we?"
"We'll see. I don't intend to close off any line of this investigation, no matter how far-fetched it may seem. This time I'm running down every possibility."
Sofia knew he meant what he said.
Sitting on the side of the bed-the rest was covered with paper, notes, and books-Ana Jimenez turned over in her mind the conversation she'd had with Sofia.
What, she wondered, had Romanus Lecapenus, the emperor who stole the shroud from Edessa, been like? She pictured him as cruel, superstitious, power-mad.
Really, the history of the shroud had not been a happy one: wars, fires, thefts… and all for the thrill of possession and out of the conviction, rooted deep in the heart of men, that there are objects that are magical.
She was not Catholic, at least not a practicing Catholic. She'd been baptized like almost everyone else in Spain, but she couldn't remember ever having been back to Mass since her first communion.
She pushed the papers aside. She was sleepy, and as always before going to sleep, she picked up a book by Cavafy and looked absentmindedly for one of her favorite poems:
Voices, loved and idealized,
of those who have died, or of those
lest for us like the dead.
Sometimes they speak to us in dreams;
sometimes deep in thought the mind hears
them.
And with their sound for a moment return
sounds from our life's first poetry-
like music at night, distant, fading away.
She fell asleep thinking about the battle fought by the Byzantine army against the emir of Edessa. She heard the voices of the soldiers, the crackling of the burning wood, the crying of children who held tight to their mothers' hands as they frantically sought refuge. She saw a venerable old man surrounded by other old men, and a throng of the devout, on their knees, praying for a miracle that didn't happen.
Then the old man approached a small, simple wooden casket, took out a carefully folded piece of cloth, and gave it to a massive Muslim soldier who could hardly contain his emotion at taking these people's most venerated treasure.
The general leading the Byzantine army received the Mandylion from an Edessan nobleman and, victorious, rode swiftly off toward Constantinople:
Smoke obscured the walls of the city's houses, and the Byzantine soldiers who were swarming through the streets looting the city carried off their booty in large mule-drawn wagons.
Later, in the stone church that still, somehow, remained standing, beside the cross, surrounded by priests and the most faithful of the Christians, the bishop of Edessa swore-and they swore with him- that the Mandylion would one day be recovered, though it cost them their lives to do it.