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Holy God, we praise thy Name Lord of All, we bow before thee!

I stood staring at them, dazed. The pain in my left eye socket seemed worse but what could be changing there, except that with each passing hour I felt the depth.

"You're fools, all of you!" I shouted. "Christianity is the bloodiest religion that ever existed in the world. I can bear witness!"

"Hush now, and do as I tell you," David said, pulling me along, so that we vanished amongst the ever-shifting people on the icy side-walks before anyone could have turned to look. Over and over he had restrained me this way. He was weary of it. I didn't blame him.

Once, policemen had laid hands on me.

They had caught me and tried to pull me out of the cathedral as I was trying to talk to her, and then when they had me outside, slowly they had all backed away. They had sensed I wasn't alive, the way mortals do. They had sensed, and they had muttered about the Veil and the miraculous, and there it had been, my impotence.

Policemen were all over. Policemen everywhere stood on guard to help, to give out the warm tea, to put their pale shivering hands out over the flames in the drums.

Nobody noticed us. Why should they? We were just two men, drab, part of the crowd, our gleaming skin was nothing much in this blinding whiteness of snow amid these ecstatic pilgrims, wandering from valley to valley of song.

The bookstore windows were piled with Bibles, books on

Christology. There was a huge pyramid of a lavender-covered book called Veronica and Her Cloth by Ewa Kuryluk, and another stack of Holy Faces, Secret Places by Ian Wilson.

People sold pamphlets on the street, or even gave them away. I could hear accents from all parts of the country¡ªfrom Texas, and Florida and Georgia and California.

Bibles, Bibles, Bibles, being sold and given away.

A group of nuns gave out holy pictures of St. Veronica. But the hottest items were the color photographs of the Veil itself, snapped in the church by photographers and then reprinted by the thousands.

"Amazing grace, amazing grace. . . . " sang one group in unison, rocking back and forth as they held their places in line.

"Gloria, in excelsus deum!" burst from a long-bearded man with his arms outstretched.

As we drew nearer the church, we could see little clusters and crowds engaged in seminars everywhere. In the midst of one, a young man spoke, rapid, sincere:

"In the fourteenth century, she was officially recognized as a saint, Veronica, and it was believed that the Veil was lost during the Fourth Crusade when the Venetians stormed Hagia Sophia. " He stopped to push his glasses back on his nose. "Of course the Vatican will take its time to rule on this, as it always does, but seventy-three icons have already been derived from the original icon, and this before the eyes of countless witnesses who are prepared to testify before the Holy See. "

In another place, there were several dark-clad men, priests perhaps, I couldn't tell, and around them rings of those listening, eyes squinting against the snow.

"I'm not saying the Jesuits cannot come," said one of the men. "I just said that they aren't coming in here and taking over. Dora has asked that the Franciscans be the custodians of the Veil, if and when it leaves the cathedral. "

And behind us, two women rapidly concurred that tests had already been done, the age of the cloth was beyond dispute.

"They don't even grow that kind of flax anymore in the world; you couldn't find a new piece of such fabric, the fabric itself in its newness and cleanness is a miracle. "

". . . all bodily fluids, every part of the image, derived from fluids of a human body. They have not had to hurt the Veil to discover this! This is. . . this. . . . "

". . . enzyme action. But you know how these things get distorted. "

"No, not The New York Times. The New York Times isn't going to say that three archaeologists have ruled it authentic. "

"Not authentic, my friend, just beyond present scientific explanation. "

"God and the Devil are idiots!" I said.

A group of women turned to stare at me. "Accept Jesus as your Savior, son," said one of the women. "Go look for yourself at the Veil. He died for our sins. "

David pulled me away. No one paid us any mind. The little schools continued far and wide, the clumps of philosophers and witnesses, and those waiting for the spellbound to stumble down the steps from the church, with tears running down their faces. "I saw it, I saw it, it was the Face of Christ. " And back against the arch, cleaved to it, like a tall spidery shadow, the figure of the vampire Mael, almost invisible to them perhaps, waiting to step into the light of dawn with his arms outstretched in the form of a cross.

Once again, he looked at us with sly eyes.

"You too!" he said, under his breath to us, sending his preternatural voice secretly to our ears. "Come, face the sun, with your arms outstretched! Lestat, God chose you as his Messenger. "