Читать книгу Sacred Bones - Michael Spring - Страница 13

TEN

• 805–806 AD •

I found my true calling the day I began selling the bones of saints and martyrs—not the real ones, of course, but substitutes, replacements. The actual relics, the originals, I moved to unmarked graves in the darkest corners of the catacombs, where they continued to perform miracles, safe from the grasping hands of popes and kings.

My timing couldn’t have been more opportune. Frankish missionaries were busy spreading Christianity among the Saxons and Avars, and no church or chapel could be sanctified until a relic was buried below the altar.

Of all the relics, none performed more spectacular miracles or attracted more pilgrim silver than the bones of early Christians—saints who lived for God, and martyrs who died for Him. A Frankish lord or abbot paid a king’s ransom to own one. It was a major investment, but it paid off long-term.

I spent the winter rummaging through the catacombs, digging up worthless bones I could sell as priceless relics. When Hildoin, the abbot of Saint Médard, asked for several of Saint Sebastian’s ribs, I brought him three worthless bones from a pauper’s grave, and threw in a few broken arrows for effect. The ignorant still believe Sebastian died from arrow wounds, when in fact he was bludgeoned to death with a club. But if they expected arrows, I wasn’t going to disappoint them. Arrow it would be.

Hildoin should have known he was getting fakes for another, more obvious reasion. All true relics assault our senses with the smell of exotic spices or the sweet perfume of roses, daffodils, and other heavenly flowers. The ribs I gave him had a musty smell. If they had been genuine, they would have pulsated in the dark with a soft, blue light. They wouldn’t have just lain there like old bones.

I found the ribs in less time than it takes to say, “in nomine patris et filii et spiritus sancti”—the father, the son and the Holy Ghost. You don’t have to go far for ribs in the City of the Dead.