Secret of the Shroud

Secret of the Shroud

It was a dream, Wesley told himself. Only a dream. He reached across to the table beside his bed and turned on the lamp. But even as the bright light filled the room, the child’s eyes floated before him. He fell back upon his pillow and stared once again at the ceiling. Strange the things a mind can do, he mused. But those eyes. Where had he seen them before? After a moment he shook his head and rolled onto his side, preparing to rise. It was then the thought flashed through his mind; and suddenly, with terrible clarity he remembered those eyes and the grave little face. The realization jolted his nerves as an electric shock. Impossible! 

Somehow—although he knew this to be impossible—somehow, the child in the dream and the flower girl from the cathedral were one and the same. The flowers placed upon the dead man’s chest in the dream were the same as the flowers in the vase. And the flowers were all too real.

The name came to him all at once. Yeshua. Jesus. The dead man’s face was the image on the Shroud.

Pulling on his dressing gown, the archbishop hurried through the hall, walking softly so that Miss H would not awaken. Down the corridor he rushed and into the study where he flipped on the light and crossed to his desk. The articles containing pictures and illustrations of the flowers, their stems and stalks and leaves, their petals, lay open on top just where he’d left them.

Without taking time to sit, he grabbed the report and flipped through it, trying to ignore the growing fear. He found the photographs near the end of the article as he remembered, the flower images photographed from the Shroud. Running his eyes down the page, he found the pictures he sought. It couldn’t be. But as he stared, the archbishop confirmed what he already suspected. They were one and the same.Photographs of the rockroses, crown chrysanthemums, and bean capers displayed in the article were identical to the flowers still blooming in the vase by his bed and the flowers in the dream. His eyes stopped on the image of the bean caper, the one that bloomed only at Easter, only at Passover—at the time of the crucifixion of Jesus described in the Gospels.

He closed his eyes, picturing the bouquet in the vase by his bed. They were the flowers of the Shroud.

Wesley sank into the chair beside the desk and dropped the report onto his lap. The coincidence was too great. And those indigo eyes. Impossible! But he knew it was true. A menacing roll of thunder sounded in the distance. The flowers were living proof, a key to the truth that could destroy him. The thought exploded in his head. The Shroud was real. He knew at that moment beyond a shadow of doubt, almost as if he’d known all along, that the Shroud was real and that this could destroy him.

From THE SECRET OF THE SHROUD by Pamela Binnings Ewen.
© 2010 by Pamela Binnings Ewen.  All rights reserved.