The Blood Gospel

“Please touch nothing,” she called, fully expecting them to ignore her.

She entered, stepping past the ROV, and crossed to the stone sarcophagus. As she expected, it was carved from a single stone, the sides finely wrought, each corner perfectly angled, each side perfectly flat. She marveled anew at the workmanship of those ancient craftsmen. Their tools might be considered primitive, but the results certainly weren’t. She glanced at the polished top where it lay in one piece on the floor beside the grave it had covered for so long. Odd to see it intact, as grave robbers usually broke the lids of sarcophagi when they pulled them off.

She searched for the pulleys or rope that must have been used, but the plunderers had taken their tools back out with them. Also unusual.

She stepped forward—but a hand stopped her.

“What did I say about sticking close to me?” Jordan asked.

Together, she and Jordan neared the sarcophagus. When she was finally close enough to take some pictures, she dug out the only tool still in her possession: her cell phone. She took multiple shots of the sarcophagus’s side and the piles of ashes at the corners, wishing she had her Nikon, but it was back in Caesarea.

She risked a peek inside the coffin. Nothing. Just bare stone, stained deep burgundy. What would make a stain like that? Blood dried brown. Most resins ended up black.

She also took a few pictures of the empty clay jugs around the sarcophagus. They must have carried liquid down here. Usually they were used for wine, but why fill a sarcophagus with wine?

As she straightened, Jordan turned from the far wall. Even in the dim light, she could tell he was upset. “Doc, you want to explain this one?”

She looked over as the men parted to either side.

A macabre sculpture hung on the wall, like a blasphemous crucifixion. She moved past the corner of the sarcophagus. With each step, a growing horror rose in her.

It wasn’t a sculpture.

On the wall hung the desiccated corpse of a small girl, maybe eight years old, dressed in a tattered, stained robe. A handful of blackened arrows pinned her in place, a good yard off the floor. They pierced her chest, neck, shoulder, and thigh.

“Crossbow bolts,” Jordan said. “Looks like they’re made of silver.”

Silver?

She stood before the child, struck by one anachronism after another. The girl’s burgundy robes looked ancient, both in style and in the degree of decay. The ornamentation and pattern of weave dated from the same period as the fall of Masada. Probably made in Samaria, maybe Judea, but at least two thousand years old.

Long dark hair framed the sunken face. Her eyes closed peacefully, her chin hung to her thin chest, lips parted ever so slightly as if she had died in mid-sigh. Even her tiny eyelashes were intact. Judging by the amount of soft tissue still clinging to her bones, the girl had been dead only a few decades.

Decades. How could that be?

An object lay crumpled under the girl’s toes. Erin dropped to a knee next to it.

A doll …

Her heart ached. The tiny dried toy was crafted from hardened lumps of leather stitched with scraps of cloth and stained the same burgundy as the robes. The child’s slack arm seemed to be reaching for her plaything, forever unable to claim it.

The abandoned doll struck Erin deeply as she remembered another like it, handmade, too. She had buried it with her baby sister. She swallowed hard, fighting back tears, feeling foolish for it. Heinrich’s death continued to throw her off balance, and right now she had to pull herself together in front of the soldiers.

Still on her knees, she glanced up to the child’s other hand, half hidden behind her body, and saw a glint from between the curled fingers.

Odd.

She leaned one palm against the wall, feeling hard mortar extruding between the bricks. Though the body was the result of a recent murder, not an ancient one, she still treated the remains with respect. This child was once someone’s little girl.

She reached for that hand. The girl’s arm trembled, then jerked. The entire mummified body shook against the wall as if the child still lived.

Erin fell back with a gasp.

A hand gripped her shoulder, steadying her.

“Another aftershock,” Jordan said.

Fine dust sifted from the stone roof. Behind Erin, a brick thudded to the floor. She held her breath until the quake ceased.

“They’re getting worse,” Jordan said. “Nothing here for us. Time to go.”

She resisted the pull of his arm. This was her site now, and there were still things here for her to explore. She shifted closer to the wall and reached again for the girl’s hand.

Jordan noted her attention and dropped beside her. “What is it?”

“Looks like the child grabbed something before she died.”

Archaeological protocol dictated that nothing be touched before it had been photographed, but this girl had not been murdered that long ago, so Erin would forgo protocol just this once.