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XI

By the Virgin’s Holy Robe

Contrary to what their departure from London might have indicated, the next part of their voyage unfolded smoothly. Unrest shook the French capital around the still-smoking ruins of the Department of Finance, but despite this the Nord-Express left Paris on time and took them non-stop to St. Petersburg, and they managed to catch the Transsiberian on February 15^th as planned. We return to them on this day, two hours after the train rattled out of the Yaroslavsky Vokzal, the station in Moscow from which most trains departed for Siberia and the Far East.

The convoy was made up of seventeen cars and two wagons. On the outside, the coaches were made of teak darkened with bands of gold. All of the first-class compartments were decorated with mahogany and rosewood paneling and copper sconces. The beds, which could be converted into crimson velvet benches, were oriented in the direction of travel. Furnished with great care, the lavatories included small showers lined with Izmir tiles. In the marvelously tasteful central wagon was a restaurant whose walls, hung with red damask, rose to a ceiling painted with singeries. The adjoining car housed a smokers’ lounge illuminated by ten beveled glass windows; a grand piano stood among club chairs and low tables of varnished satinwood.

It was here that Martial Canterel, Holmes, and Grimod had chosen to sit and wait for lunchtime.

“Let’s go over it again,” said Holmes, enveloped in smoke from his cigar. “There is no doubt that the diamond is traveling with us on this train. The person charged with delivering it to Peking cannot know that we have deciphered the message, or even that we are looking for him. This leaves us with two possibilities: either we sit quietly for him to deliver it to the recipient, risking that it might melt away once again, or we try to intercept it during the journey, which would be preferable.”

“With the catch,” responded Canterel, “that we are not the only ones on the chase.”

“Yes,” said Grimod, “but the others don’t have the address that you managed to decipher. Even if they’ve followed us this far, we’re one step ahead of them. It’s up to us to make the most of it, and to remain vigilant.”

He fell silent, having noticed another passenger approaching them with the obvious intention of making their acquaintance.

“Hello, Messieurs. Allow me to introduce myself: Dr. Charles-Joseph Mardrus, en route to the Orient.”

He was a frail man whose long white hair—still quite thick for the seventy years of age that he later claimed, not without some pride—fell almost to his shoulders. A dapper old Liszt in need of conversation. Ten minutes later, they knew almost everything about his background and the reasons behind his journey on the Transsiberian. Born a Muslim into an illustrious Armenian family in Alexandria, he had converted to Coptic Christianity at a young age before dedicating his life first to Byzantine paleography, and later to medicine.

“But not just that,” he clarified, “because no one can hope to heal the body without first taking care of the soul.”

He had spent twenty years working on a Compendium Philosophycum Essentialis, a kind of abstract on clear vision and potions concocted to preserve it, as he himself explained it, promising to read them some excerpts once the monotony of the steppes had begun to infect the mood of the passengers, as he did not for a second doubt it would, even those who believed themselves to be well fortified against ill humors. He was on his way to Irkutsk, to the Znamensky monastery, where he was summoned by an appraisal of the greatest importance, since they had just found the Holy Robe of Mary, a relic that would relegate the Shroud of Turin to the rank of a common dishcloth. “Perhaps I exaggerate a little, of course . . .” He smiled at them all, displaying a set of teeth so white that they looked like an advertisement for a prosthetisist. The fact was that people were speaking about this linen as if it were a mandylion more precious than the Image of Edessa, and it was already drawing thousands of pilgrims eager to behold the direct testimony of their idol’s real existence. “Devotees of St. Thomas, more than Christ, if you want my opinion . . . A mandylion? Sorry, that’s a specialist’s term, jargon . . . The Greek word for ‘handkerchief.’ That’s what we call an imprint of Jesus’s face on cloth. Having learned that Jesus was preaching not far from the kingdom of Edessa, King Abgar supposedly had his painter do a portrait. When the artist proved incapable of copying his features, Jesus applied a cloth to his face, and the image imprinted itself onto it. That is known as acheiropoiesa, or otherwise an ‘icon made without hands.’ For example, the Shroud of Turin or the Veil of Veronica, relics that we now know to have been created several centuries after the death of Christ. The Virgin’s Holy Robe is doubtless also a medieval forgery, but looking at it, surprisingly, one hopes that it is not. I have a copy that was sent to me, would you all like to take a look? It’s one fiftieth the size of the original . . .”

Without waiting for them to respond, he unrolled before them a sheet of Japanese paper upon which a woman’s naked body was drawn in blood. Her breasts, her rounded belly, her shaved pubis, and even her vulval vestibule were there, revealed as if by a thin, transparent, damp cloth.

“Magnificent,” said Holmes, spreading the drawing out on a chairback in order to examine it better. “This looks like nothing else I know of. You’d swear it was the stamp of a real body!”

“Indeed,” said Dr. Mardrus, “and, in addition to its anatomical details, it is also in keeping with an inversion of forms. I imagine you likely know that women’s left breasts are always larger than their neighbors to the right. In a painting, the left breast is therefore quite logically presented on the right.”

“While here,” said Grimod, “the larger of the two is on the left, as if the drawing resulted from the application of the paper to a real body.”

“Precisely.”

“And, if I may,” said Canterel, making a show of looking out the window at the countryside, “the dark line that runs from the navel to the pubis suggests that this woman was pregnant.”

“Bravo, dear sir, and of course that is what makes this relic so valuable: more than just an image of the Virgin, we are dealing with one of Christ in utero!”

Another passenger who was passing near them, accompanied by her ten-year-old son in a sailor suit, could not help but notice the drawing.

“How awful!” she exclaimed, trying in vain to turn her child’s gaze away. “How can you flaunt such smut? And in first class! It’s a scandal, I’m going to complain to the conductor!”

“I’ll go with you,” said Grimod, taking her by the elbow. “I do not understand how anyone can display such filth. If it were merely some actress, that would be one thing, but to dare to exhibit the Virgin Mary’s nightgown! It’s quite unacceptable!”

For an instant, the woman seemed bolstered in her indignation; it appeared she was about to follow Grimod, but then she raised her eyes to his face and winced in astonishment.

“Oh my god! Who do you think you are? Don’t touch me or I’ll scream! You don’t know who you’re talking to!” She fled, trailing her brat by the hand.

“Well played,” said Holmes.

Grimod cracked a smile.

“It’s amazing, the way women go mad for me . . .”

“Shall we go to lunch?” Canterel proposed. “Would you like to join us, Dr. Mardrus?”

“Absolutely!”

He folded his sheet of paper carefully and followed them into the dining car. The head waiter led them to an elegant round table. On a white linen tablecloth, large porcelain plates bore the symbol of the Sleeping-Car Company, a design that was also engraved into the silverware and embroidered into the napkins folded in a double Tafelspitz. Hexagonal crystal glasses added a noteworthy touch of refinement, or at least showed how much the decorator had wanted to evoke that sensation.

While they were being served Ukrainian borscht cooked with Chablis wine, Mardrus continued to expound upon the Holy Robe, including several details regarding certain Syriac texts that may have mentioned it.

“Do you know that not a single piece of the Virgin’s clothing has come down to us? There is the story of Galbois and Candide, two Arians who converted to Catholicism, who took the Mother of God’s Dress, which had been bequeathed to one of her two Jewish serving women, from Galilee. The relic was kept in Constantinople, in the Basilica of Saint Mary Major, at the same time as the Maphorion, or Mantle, of that same person. A concentration that made the sanctuary the holiest place in the Eastern Empire! A ‘regular miracle’ occurred there each Friday at vespers: the silk veil slowly rose up and floated in the air until that same hour on Saturday, at which time it would float back down in front of everyone, softly and promptly, onto an ancient icon. A procession would then take it from that church to the sanctuary of St. Mary Chalkoprateia, where the Cincture of the Theotokos was kept. Yes, yes, dear friends! Her girdle . . .”

“Am I to understand,” said Canterel, raising his right eyebrow, “that your archaeologists have put together the Virgin Mary’s entire wardrobe, down to the implements that protected her chastity?”

“That would be saying a great deal,” whispered Dr. Mardrus, “especially since the church in question and all its contents were destroyed by a fire in 1070 and, after its reconstruction, once again in 1434 . . .”

“Good, we can rest easy, then,” said Holmes, opening his eyes wide at the covered dish their server was bringing over.

“Roasted fowl with Piedmontese seared quail,” he announced, lifting the sparkling domed cover. “Would you like a little mustard?”

Confused by this unseemly proposition, then disappointed, Canterel glared at the waiter. This slight error of taste made the whole edifice crumble. Mustard . . . One might as well suggest a glass of vinegar to accompany the tasting of the Château Lafite that they were about to be served!

The wine had been poured and he was just enjoying its bouquet when the French doors separating the restaurant from the lounge crashed open, making everyone jump. Annoyed, Canterel could not help but turn around to identify the vulgar individual who was capable of so arrogantly displaying a lack of education.

Clawdia Chauchat was advancing between the tables, smiling and imperial. She was wearing a brownish-pink suit of wool serge, with a belted jacket, a skirt that narrowed at the ankles, and a hat with a wide, raised brim decorated with a double knot of umber silk in front, oversized and jauntily tilted to the side like a propeller.

She came straight toward them, carried by a wave of tense looks containing a mixture of naïve admiration from the men and annoyed suspicion from their wives. Holmes was the first to react, rising to greet her.

“Lady MacRae, what a surprise!”

“I would say, rather, what a landing . . .” scoffed Canterel, clapping slowly and silently. “Such finesse, well done, bravo!”

“May I ask what you are doing here?” Holmes asked gravely.

“You didn’t really think I’d let you head off to the ends of the earth without me, did you?”

“This is a mistake. I told you how dangerous this expedition could prove . . .”

“Don’t listen to him, dear madam,” said Mardrus, genially. “Look around you: we are in a five-star restaurant on wheels, the only danger you could meet here is boredom . . . or indigestion,” he said, leaning back to let the server slip a Lobster en Bellevue onto his plate.

“Dr. Charles-Joseph Mardrus,” said Holmes, with a pointed look at Clawdia. “He is traveling with us to Irkutsk.”

Grimod waved to the head waiter to set a place at their table for Lady MacRae.

“How did you do it,” he asked, “I mean, get here at the same time as us?”

“A train from Glasgow to London, a boat to Ostend, and a mail-coach to Moscow. We arrived two days before you.”

“We?” asked Canterel.

“My daughter and I, of course. She is the compartment next to mine. Kim keeps constant vigil over her.”

“This is madness,” said Holmes, bringing a huge mouthful of Siberian sorbet to his lips. “I don’t understand how you could have done such a thing!”

“But what could be the problem with her traveling with her child?” said Dr. Mardrus. “On the contrary, it can only aid in her education, pique her curiosity, contribute to the development of her character. Really, I don’t see what is making you so anxious, you’re doing her a great service!”

Clawdia took a sip of wine and looked at Mardrus with that kind of studied coldness, the feigned insensitivity that misfortune forges.

“It so happens that my child, Verity, is the victim of a mysterious illness that has kept her asleep for the last eight years, two months, and fourteen days. I very much doubt whether she will be able to enjoy the voyage other than in her dreams, or even whether she is aware of any of it.”

Dr. Mardrus looked at her fixedly, tucked his hair behind his ears, and responded in a tone that chilled them, despite or perhaps because of its mildness.

“Once the pleasure centers have been damaged,” he said, “it is impossible to know anything but segmented joys. But rest assured they are joys nonetheless, Madame, real, deep joys.”