A Treasure Deep (28 page)

“I’m right . . . right?” Brent said. “I mean
the hair, the skeleton is smaller, and the hands are tiny by
comparison.”

“Let’s take the rest of the lid off,” Perry
said eagerly. The flat metal pry bar did its work efficiently, and
the planks that made up the remaining lid were placed on the ground
in the order they were removed. Perry dropped to his knees and
peered into the long box.

Curtis squatted by Perry. “What do you think,
Doc?” Perry asked.

“I think the young man is right. The hair
itself isn’t proof, but it’s a good indicator. The proof will be in
the shape of the pelvis and in the DNA. Still, my first guess is
that this is a woman of . . .” he trailed off as he examined the
skull more closely. “Teeth are all mature and show wear. She had
reached her middle years. I’d guess that she was in her
mid-thirties.”

“Not very tall,” Gleason said.

“Neither were the soldiers,” Perry said. “I’d
be surprised . . . more surprised if their height was comparable to
ours.”

Something caught Perry’s eye: scratch marks
just above the head of the corpse. “What’s this?” He leaned forward
and strained his eyes, but the marks were too faint to make out.
“Chalk,” Perry said. “I need some chalk.”

“We have the chalk powder we used to mark the
survey grid,” Gleason said. “I’ll grab a handful.” He was gone
before the sentence was finished. Two minutes later he held the
white powder in a paper cup.

Perry reached into the cup and pinched the
substance between his fingers. He sprinkled the powder over the
scratch marks.

“Perry, we shouldn’t be contaminating . . .”
Curtis began, but Perry waved him off.

Slowly, as if he could will each flake of
chalk into the right place, Perry sprinkled the dust, then he
leaned over, his head just an inch from the head of the dead woman,
and gently blew the excess away.

“You getting this, Brent?” Perry questioned,
his voice bouncing off the coffin.

“I’m on it, boss. Move your head so I can
zoom in a little.”

Perry did, but his eyes remained fixed on the
image before him. The white chalk had settled into the grooves
contrasting with the age-darkened wood.

MA
R
I
AE
M
AGD
AL
ENAE

“Is that a sentence or something?” Gleason
asked. “It looks like three, maybe four words. I don’t know Latin,
but it doesn’t look like any Latin sentence I’ve seen.”

“Some of the letters are still unclear,”
Perry said. “Let me see that cup of chalk.” Perry took the cup from
Gleason and sprinkled more of the fine powder on the area. This
time he rubbed gently before blowing away the excess. It achieved
little.

MA
R
I
AE
M
AGDA
L
ENAE

“One additional letter, that’s not much help.
I’m sorry, Doc,” Perry said, his eyes still fixed on the enigmatic
sentence. “I’m afraid I contaminated the artifact for nothing. Have
you got any ideas as to what we’re looking at?”

There was no answer.

“Dr. Curtis?”

Nothing.

Perry turned and saw Dr. Curtis sitting on
the ground, his knees up and his head resting on his crossed arms.
It looked like he was taking a siesta.

“You okay, Doc?” Jack asked.

Curtis lifted his head, and Perry saw that
his skin was as white as the chalk he held in the cup. Perry rose
from his place by the coffin, stepped to where Curtis sat, and
joined him on the ground. “You know what it says, don’t you?”

Curtis nodded. “I know everything you’ve told
me should have prepared me for this, but my mind wouldn’t accept
it. How can any of this be? It can’t, it’s impossible. The treasure
you seek is just too remarkable to believe. No scientist would
accept it. I’ve been telling myself that it’s all a hoax, or a
colossal misinterpretation of the facts. But this . . . this . .
.”

“What’s it say, Dr. Curtis?” Perry prodded
gently. “We need to know.”

“It’s Latin, and it’s not a sentence; it’s a
name—MARIAE MAGDALENAE—Mary Magdalene.”

PERRY HAD BEEN face-to-face with one of the most
famous people to walk the earth, and the significance wasn’t wasted
on him.

The shock of the find fired through the
gathered group like multiple lightning strikes. The light banter
had evaporated under the heat of witnessing the impossible. The men
stood huddled around the coffin, the group immersed in silence,
each man lost in the forest of his own thoughts. Only Dr. Curtis
was distant. He remained seated on the grass, staring across the
distance like a blind man might stare into his darkness.

The site had taken on a surrealistic feel:
Yellow light rained down from the work lights high on their
aluminum stands, the sound of the backhoe’s diesel engine idling
nearby, the oak-scented breeze wafting through, and the lifeless
remains of one of history’s best known people lying in a fragile
box.

“I hate to be the stupid one of the group,”
Brent said, his voice a single level above a whisper, “but I need
to ask. Exactly who is Mary Magdalene? She’s mentioned in the
Bible, right?”

“Yes,” Perry said. “Mary Magdalene is a key
personality in the ministry of Jesus. Everything about her is
unique, and she has been the source of inspiration for many; she’s
also been the subject of the wildest speculation.”

“Such as?” Brent prompted.

“Such as Jesus didn’t die on the cross but
lived to an old age with Mary as His wife, such as she is the
author of the Gospel of John, such as she presented a threat to the
pride and position of the disciples, and other nonsense.”

“If she was none of that, then what was she?”
Brent asked.

“Her name is Mary, which is the Greek form of
the Hebrew Miriam. The Bible refers to her as Mary Magdalene. Most
likely the Magdalene refers to a town in Galilee called Magdala.
The first time she’s mentioned in the Bible two things are noted:
One, she was possessed of evil spirits which Jesus cast out of her;
two, she provided support for Jesus’ ministry from . . . I think
the passage says personal means.”

“Private means,” Curtis said. “She and the
other women supported Jesus and the disciples through their private
financial resources.”

“Thanks, Doc,” Perry said, glad that Curtis
was still with them in mind as well as body. “Jesus was an
itinerant preacher going from town to town with His message. Some
of the monetary support for the ministry came from people like
Mary.”

“Wait a minute,” Brent interrupted. “Evil
spirits? Demons? That was just a convenient way for the ancients to
describe illness they couldn’t explain . . . right?”

“No,” Perry explained. “The Bible uses other
words for diseases. It distinguishes between demonic activity and
human disease.”

“So you really believe that Mary was
inhabited by non-human, intelligent forces?” He laughed and looked
for support from the others. No one else was laughing. He shuffled
his feet then said, “Sorry. You were saying . . .”

“Mary and other women traveled with Jesus and
the disciples. They heard what the men heard, saw much of what they
saw. They were there from the early days of Jesus’ ministry, and
they were there when Jesus was nailed to the cross. In fact, Mary
watched Him die.

“The following Sunday morning, she went to
the tomb and found it open. The sight crushed her already injured
heart. As she wept, an angel told her that Jesus had risen from the
dead and that she should go tell the disciples, which she did.
Later she came back to the tomb and Jesus—back from the
dead—appeared to her. As would be expected, she was overcome with
emotion and began clinging to His feet. He had to tell her to let
go. Her place in history is unique because she is the first person
to see Jesus after his resurrection.”

“What’s she doing here?” Brent asked.
“California is a long way from the biblical lands.”

Perry looked down at the body, amazed and
humbled at what he was seeing. “I don’t know, Brent. I’m as
surprised as you.”

“Man, you weren’t kidding when you said this
project would change everything,” Brent said.

“We have to treat this differently,” Curtis
said. Perry looked over his shoulder and saw the scientist rising
from his place on the ground and walking toward him. “I can’t send
this to just anybody. I want to handle it myself.”

“I was hoping you’d say that,” Perry said.
“I’ll have it moved out of the way and let you examine it . . . er,
her . . . for as long as you like. In the meantime, we have some
more digging to do.” Perry’s words were strange and even, the words
of a natural leader with a mission to complete. On the outside he
was rock solid; on the inside he felt like Jell-O.

AFTER LEAVING O’TOOL’S, Anne had driven around town
for an hour. Perry’s words reverberated in her mind and heart.

“You owe God an apology.”

At first the comment galled her, eating at
her insides as if she had downed acid. Anger had raged in her like
waves in a stormy sea crashing against the hull of her fragile
emotions. But there was another emotion flowing in her, and unlike
her anger and bitterness, this emotion was cool and promised a
refreshing release.

It’s a trick of the imagination, she told
herself. She was tired, upset, hurt, angry, and in need of
emotional freedom, but there was no freedom. Sorrow and hatred were
two coals that refused to go out, two embers that burned hotter
with the passage of time, and they burned right in the center of
Anne’s heart.

She drove up and down the streets of Tejon,
her adopted town, and tried to regain her fury. She wanted to stay
mad, wanted to feel the blaze of anger in her. It made her feel
alive and, ironically, in control. When she was angry, she was not
heartbroken. It was an odd, illogical fact, but one she had learned
to live with. Anger drove away other emotions, those emotions that
hurt too much to ignore.

The anger wouldn’t hold this evening. Perry’s
words about owing God an apology were pervasive, wheedling out of
her thoughts she didn’t want to have.

Once she considered herself a friend of God,
His child, His servant, but after her husband’s brutal murder, she
could no longer see herself that way. She had tried going back to
church, but it seemed a hollow gesture. People looked at her
through eyes of pity; some even avoided her, perhaps to avoid
having to face the fact that bad things happen to good people. The
pastor had been kind and supportive, but there were no words in his
vocabulary, no techniques in his training that could sponge away
the black veil of sorrow from her mind.

Her faith collapsed like stacked dominoes
clattering around her feet. Her family had rocks of faith, wounded
by the searing heat of the event, but still unshaken. Of course,
they had only lost an “in-law,” where she had lost the one true
love of her life and not by disease or accident or anything that
might be considered “normal.” No, John had been shot in the face,
his life of lesser value to the murderer than the money carried in
her husband’s wallet.

God let it happen, Anne had reasoned. If He
was God, if He is omnipotent, then He could have—should have—done
something. But He didn’t, and that meant He was either a powerless
pretender or criminally apathetic. Either way, He was not the God
she had believed in since childhood, and not a God she wanted to
associate with.

The old emotions rose to the surface like
magma up a volcano’s flue, pushing, pressing, expanding until
something had to give and the inevitable eruption would take place.
Most eruptions came in silent tears as she sat in her dark home;
sometimes the anger won, and those closest to her became the
victims of catastrophe. It was why she left Ridgeline. It was why
she had not spoken to her sister more than a handful of times over
the last half-decade.

“An apology!” Anne said. She had uttered the
phrase a score and more times. The words were spoken hotly, awash
in the bile of long pent-up animosity aimed at the Divine. But each
time she spoke the word, the indefinable emotion made itself known.
The anger was cooling, the magma receding, and she felt
puzzled.

Something rattled in the back of her mind,
like an indistinguishable sound heard in the dead of night that
awakens one from deep slumber. Instead of fear, the thing, the
emotion, the presence was making itself welcome. Anne tried
repeatedly to push it from her thoughts, preferring to wallow in
the misery that had been her constant companion for five years. The
feeling wouldn’t be evicted. Instead, it quietly pushed forward,
expelling the bitter darkness with the glow of its own life.

It was an impossible task, Anne had decided
as she steered her car home. It would be easier to empty the ocean
with a teaspoon than expunge the sorrow she carried with her, but
with each mile that passed under the tires of her car, more
blackness dissolved. By the time she returned home, parked the car,
and entered the house, she was dangerously close to feeling
good.

She turned on no lights, fixed no refreshment
for herself; instead she dropped her purse on the floor by the door
as she shut it and turned the latch and walked through the dark
room which was lit only by the front porch light as it pressed into
the room though the glass panes of the front door. A few steps
later she sat upon her sofa, eyes closed and mind confused. The
anger was ebbing like a tide.

“Apology!” she said to the darkness. “Not as
long as I live.”

The warmth had spread now, filling each brain
cell and trickling down to her heart.

“I refuse to apologize to a God who let my
husband . . . let someone kill . . .” She couldn’t finish the
sentence; the words choked in her throat. “What does Perry know
about it . . . Mr. Righteous Man . . . He can’t understand . . .
doesn’t care . . .” She knew the thoughts were lies, each one,
every one a fabrication meant to shield her from the truth.