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
