CHAPTER 6
The next morning, the Jewish Sabbath, and the last Sabbath but one before their Passover, a slave brought a message to us that Baruch ben Isaac had returned to Jerusalem, and hoped to see us that day or the next. He had been in Pamphylia on Roman business, and travelling before that for several months, as I have told you, and he wrote that he longed to see my mistress, and even that he longed to see me, "the small brown maiden" as he called me. It made me proud, that mention of me in his letter. No one in the whole world, I think, had ever written down my name on papyrus before. It was like setting a seal to my new standing as a Celebrant, as one of the important people in life, and no longer simply a handmaid. Even the fact that I had been so terribly beaten by my mistress added to that feeling. It was like a new and greater initiation into the things to come. No great things come without pain. Not birth. Not death. Not the progress of one's soul. I felt that I had taken a great stride forward in that same progress. Indeed, I did not know how long a stride it was, nor in what direction. I only felt the greatness of it. And when I thought, as I did think once or twice, of the hornet who had come to me, and settled on Mary of Magdala's blue robe, I smiled to myself at the simplicity of that old belief, and how pale and insignificant it seemed compared to what I knew now. What I was now. A priestess of the Cult. A Celebrant. A receiver of the God. I welcomed even the pain I had felt, and still felt if I moved too sharply. Would almost have welcomed it again.
We sent back a letter to Baruch by the same slave that we would visit him within an hour or so if he would wait for us in his office in the Treasury, and my mistress added to the letter (Philip wrote it for her, he had a better hand at Greek than yours, Simon, I can tell you that, and he could write Old Egyptian, and Hebrew and Aramaic as well as Greek and Latin. He was not only a pervert.) - my mistress had Philip the Steward add to her letter that she begged a great favour of Baruch. She must, must see the Governor, and see him this same day, on a matter of grave importance to the State.
She needed to write like that, and beg for the favour, because the Governor, Pontius Pilatus, if you have ever heard of him - must be long since be dead, and forgotten by everyone except the historians and the Roman archivists - the Governor was a difficult man to see, beyond the usual difficulties of seeing any high official. He did not like Jews, nor Jerusalem, nor Palestine, nor Greeks, nor the constant quarrels or the peoples that he governed for the Emperor, and Baruch told me that all he dreamed about was retiring to Rome, and his library, and a quiet life. He used to refuse to see delegations from the Sanhedrin for days on end. But he liked Baruch, because they were both scholars, and smiled at all superstitions, and held most of the things of this world, except money and a few other realities, as childishness.
So we dressed ourselves, or rather I dressed myself and my mistress as finely as I could, and I put on her best jewels for her, and redressed her hair in a style that might appeal to a Roman; rather severe and old-fashioned, with ringlets down her cheeks, and her mouth hidden by her shawl; and we went in a hired litter although it was only a few hundred yards, so that we would not get spattered by mud, or refuse from the markets.
We found Baruch enchanted to be home again, and to see Mary, but with an air of impatience and anxiety about the pleasure, as if he knew before he spoke to us that something was wrong, and needed setting right. He drew us at once into an alcove of his big room, overlooking the court of the Praetorium buildings. In the room itself three copyists and an Assistant Keeper of Treasury Archives were shuffling parchments and papyrus rolls, and there was a scratching of quills and a whispering of numbers. The room held all the Treasury Records for Jerusalem and Judaea going back to the time of Quirinus, if not before, and you could hardly move for the floor tubs and heavy baskets that held the rolls they were working on at that moment. The walls were a honeycomb of shelves and recesses, each of them stuffed with records. One could imagine, looking at them, that a time must come when the whole Empire will be filled with records, and there will be no room for anything else.
But Baruch was already talking of the thing, and the man, that had brought us there. "He is a madman" he was saying. "Everywhere I have been they are talking of him. Not the ordinary, people, but ours, of the Cult. What does he want? Why is he our enemy? And what gives him such power that we could feel it in Pamphylia, in Antioch, in Smyrna even?"
"You have already felt it? I have been as close to him as I am to you now. Closer, and I tell you I will not like to go close again, until the day he is killed. He is worse than a madman He is filled with something that wants to destroy us all. Is determined on it. He hates us! I don’t know why. Why do the Gods do anything? I only know that it is true. He talks of love. He sent my fool of a cousin Mary of Magdala to me, drivelling about love. And she tried to steal her from me."
My mistress took hold of my face with her two hands. "Little imbecile. She was almost tricked into going, can you believe that Baruch? My Mary, my little brown egg. I will tell you something about it, afterwards, tonight. It came out very well in the end. But that he should try such a thing! To give him power over me. It was not for your sake, you fool, did you think it was? It was to get power, as we mean to get it from that creature of his, that Judas, if he comes to us. To break into our surround of power, to learn our secrets and how to destroy us utterly. I saved you from dreadful things, I tell you, both you and ourselves. That is why I want to see the Governor. I have tried to tell some of his people what all this means, or the part of it they could understand. Because he is a threat to them, as well as to the Cult. Truly, Baruch, I know it. There is nothing in the world that he does not mean to overturn. The Cult. Rome. The Jews' own Faith and Temple. Everything. There is no limit to what he means to do. But you can imagine what the people here have said."
"I know" Baruch said. "I know them too well. But at least the Governor will see you. He said one o'clock. It might be best if we went now, and he could see that we are waiting for him to be ready. He likes that."
We sat for almost an hour in an ante room outside the Governor's audience room. There were a great many people waiting there at the same time, and we could only talk of indifferent things because most of the Jews there would have known enough Greek to eavesdrop on us. So we spoke Aramaic instead, and talked of Baruch's journeys, and the news from Rome, and prices, and fashions, while everyone round us did much the same, in case another delegation should overhear something of value.
But we had no need of any more talk of why we were there. Even in the Praetorium we could feel it. You will not understand that, and it is useless trying to explain it. But in the Cult, as Celebrants, we felt the God's presence even on ordinary days and at ordinary times, As if His thoughts touched ours. And His were dark with forebodings. So that we knew that He foresaw a great struggle, and great pain, and greater danger.
Perhaps, if you know anything of the Cult, you may smile at that. A God with forebodings of danger from a carpenter? It does sound absurd as I tell it to be written down. A God whose worshippers were spread across all the world. Who held men's and women's passions like hounds on leashes, and slipped them at His will? Who gave wine and drunkenness and joy of our bodies to us? Whose worshippers adored Him as no worshippers ever adored such remote Gods as Zeus or Jehovah or Osiris? He did not make the blind see, nor the lame walk, nor the dead rise from their graves. He did not want to. But He made the blood dance and the flesh shiver with excitement and no man or woman who ever turned to Him with their whole being was sent empty away. What they were filled with was not virtue, I know that. Nor what the philosophers call "The Good". But it was Life, and the fury of life, and the rut and lust of Nature that drives the world on, and that is a kind of conquest over death, and over old age and the misery of the world. I have long ceased to follow Him. I think He is no longer there to follow. And that the carpenter destroyed Him, as he threatened. But I still have a tenderness, a feeling for that old belief of mine, and it would be false to deny it, if prayers can reach Gods who have fallen, I send mine after Him. He fought against One greater than Himself, and was thrown down and humiliated, riven by the lightning. But He was once my Master and I mourn for him in my old age. It is not the Good who need our prayers.
But enough. Our turn came to be called in before Pilatus. A wide, cool room with archways and balconies looking out towards those blue Judaean Hills to the north, (I remember them still, the hills I used to see every day. And how their shadows changed with the hours. There are no hills here to look at. Only the sky and the sun, and the palm trees, and the distant shimmer of the air above the River.)
Pilatus was a tall, thin man, with a balding head, and fringes of grey curls above his ears and at the nape of his neck. He dressed in a Senator's colours when he was not on official duties; crimson tunic and white toga, and Roman sandals. Bare headed of course, as all Romans are unless they are soldiers. It gave him an air of indifference, as if he did not really care about the City, nor the Jews, nor Palestine. As indeed he did not. But very courteous, with a word to Baruch about his journeys, and welcoming him back, and a word of petting for my mistress, and even a glance towards myself although he did not speak to attendants. Nor to anyone else very much, beyond that first courtesy. There were slaves in the room, busy at various tables, but very quietly, and in wall niches there were busts of the Emperors, Tiberius, and the Divine Augustus, and the Divine Julius. Nothing else. A chair for the governor when he might choose to sit, which in itself was a mark of favour. But no chairs for anyone else, no stools, no couches, no books nor ornaments nor flowers, nor bowls of fruit, nor statues of goddesses, nor bronzes. Nothing. A room for business, and the briefest of business at that.
Baruch began it, by saying that my mistress had news of grave importance. Pilatus waited, already looking over my mistress's head at a distant corner of the room. A brazier was burning near to where he stood - he did not sit for us, which meant he expected us to be done with our business and gone within five minutes - and he held his hands out over the charcoal to warm them. Long white hands with a huge Senatorial gold seal ring on one finger, a blood red stone set in it. When he did not look into the shadows above my mistress's head, he looked down into the brazier. Never at her. I wondered if he disliked women. A great many Romans do.
My mistress told him of Jesus, of the miracles or charlatanry that had caught the people's imaginations, and made them his followers, Of the incident in the Temple. Of the fears of the rich and substantial people of the City. Of the possible uprising.
A room full of silence and emptiness. It made it difficult for visitors to he talkative. They found their words and their petitions dying away in the chill silence.
"And what is your interest in all this, lady?" He spoke Greek quite well, very well in fact, but with a harsh accent that made it sound like Latin, and unpleasant. His tone suggested that she had already begun to waste his time with woman's hysteria.
"My interest, Governor? I love Rome. And the Emperor."
"As who does not?" He was looking above her head again, as if he was wondering how soon he could reasonably send us away.
"The man I am talking of does not. He calls himself the Son of God -" The white hands lifted in a gesture of impatience.
"- and of David."
"You mean the Jewish King? Solomon's father?"
"Yes, my lord."
"King David lived a long time ago, lady." He sighed as he said it, the sigh suggesting that he was well used to the local passion for remembering things that happened in King David's time, and growing furious about them.
"It is not only the long ago that is involved, sir. It is today. And tomorrow. There are legends -"
Baruch intervened, coughing a courtier's deference. "This lady knows the man, sir. And his followers. She has good sources of information."
But Pilate's attention was already far away. He was looking now towards the doorway, where an official was making discreet signs to him that another delegation was urgent to be presented.
"You have done right to tell me, lady. The Empire is grateful to you." We were dismissed.
Baruch had warned us to expect no better treatment from him, but my mistress was still furious. We went from the Praetorium to visit the houses of the other Celebrants, here and there in the City. She made the litter bearers sweat for their pay that day, I can promise you. A double litter, and four bearers, since I rode with her. And at each house we stayed only ten minutes or so. Long enough to tell the Celebrants to pray to Dionysus to influence Pilatus, and to make special sacrifices. If it was needed we must think of making the Great Sacrifice, which had not been done for fifty years or more. But somehow Pilatus must be influenced. Must. Because only he had the real power to put an end to the carpenter.
The Jews would talk about it day and night for a year, and still do nothing even though their own Law and the Roman laws allowed them to put a Jew to death for certain crimes. They did not like executions, unless it was of some poor wretch of an adulteress who had cuckolded one of them. They would stone her quick enough. But they did not like killing Jewish men, even if they were heretics. And the carpenter was clever. He might never give them the chance to bring him to Jewish trial. They had already tried to trap him, again and again, and failed every time. No. If he was to be brought to trial and condemned, and put out of the way once and for all, it must be before Pilatus, under Roman Law. The Romans were not afraid of miracles, or miracle workers. They did not believe in them. A good, solid Roman gallows would put an end to all our troubles.
He might raise others from the dead, but he could hardly raise himself, once he was dead. Or so we thought then. But man's thoughts and certainties are like autumn leaves before the storms of october. Only Eternal God is certainty.
From the last of the Celebrants' houses we went home to our own house, to make our own sacrifice, and pray, before we ate, or did anything. My mistress meant to take two of the black cockerels that she loved, and kill them before the Fresco, with myself to help her.
But there was no need, The Fresco was making its own Sacrifice. When we went in the figures in the painting had come alive.
I have told you what it was like in ordinary moments. The figure of the God, Dionysus, sitting on a moss-grown rock, his legs tucked under him, playing his pipes for the Frenzied Women. And the faun they were hunting, and the forest trees. The torch light. The shadows. The terror of the faun. Now all was a living scene. The trees whispered in the first stirrings of a storm. Leaves rustling. Soft, soft rustling. The pipes were playing music we could barely hear, but that we did hear, inside our heads. The sky beyond the trees was dark not only with the night, but with gathering thunder. A violet, purple darkness of storm clouds building towards thunderheads, promising lightning. The God looked savage with his pleasure in the hunt, longing to see the faun caught and torn, the blood spurt from its burst skin, the pale flesh opened.
The women were alive. They ran screaming, laughing, their hands reached and caught and clawed at the faun's body, their hair writhed like Gorgons' hair, like living serpents. Their faces twisted with madness, with lust for blood and warm flesh and killing. We could feel their screaming. And the faun. The faun's terror was a living thing. Its eyes cried out. Huge, and dark, and fathomless. And suddenly I knew, The faun was the carpenter, and the God was slaying him. It had the carpenter's great eyes, and this was his tenor, his flight from the God and the God's devotees. And he was to be killed in front of us. There was no need for sacrifices. No need for fears. The God had taken it unto Himself, and would avenge Himself. And as we looked the faun was killed.
I heard its scream. As if my head was ringing with its agony. I saw the blood gush out of its side where a hand clawed it open, tearing back the soft skin from flesh and bone. I saw the blood run down onto the marble floor. Saw the faun lifted up by a dozen hands, legs wrenched apart, its body bursting. Saw it dying, torn into fragments, eaten, its heart offered to the God. Saw Him throw down His Pan pipes, reach out His hands, take the still beating heart, put it to His lips. And as His mouth touched the heart the lightning came. Such a flash of it as blinded me, seared the trees, the maddened, screaming women, seared the heart in the God's hands. I saw the heart burning, crowned with fire. Could see nothing more.
I must have fallen with the shock of it. My mistress was driven back against one of the pillars of the room, her shoulders against a tapestry hanging there. She too looked as it she had been blinded for a moment. I looked at her, and then at the Fresco. I thought that the wall must have been riven with the lightning, burned with it. But there was nothing. Only the Fresco as it had always been. A painting, nothing more. The faun still flying from the painted women, before the painted God.
I stayed for a whole minute on my hands and knees, staring. "What does it mean?" I whispered.
"I don't know" my mistress answered, her voice shaken. She came forward and touched the wall. And then, her voice stronger, but as if she was forcing herself to be strong, "it means that He has conquered. He has killed the faun. He has burned its heart as it must be burned. All is well with Him. Amen."
After that we sat down together on a couch and could say nothing for a long time. I had seen many Ceremonies. I had seen the light of the God. I had become a Celebrant, the God had taken me. But I had never seen Him face to face like that. Seen His power naked. I do not think my mistress had either. Perhaps no one had, since the Cult began. When Anna brought in our meal we ate in silence, slowly, not tasting what we ate. We scarcely knew what to do, or if there was any need to do it. And went on sitting together until dark fell. It was then that Judas came, and we realised what the Living Fresco had meant, and had meant to tell us. The God had been showing us the way.
He came like a bridegroom. Anna or Euphrosine must have let him in, we did not hear his knock or anyone going to the gate to open for him. He was suddenly there, and I made a sound half of fright at seeing him. I thought for an insane moment that it was Pilatus, the Governor, come to visit us. He had something of the look of Pilatus about him. The same height and thinness, the same narrow head. And the same crimson tunic, or so I thought for a second. Then I saw the absurdity of the mistake, and there was no similarity at all. It was not a tunic he was wearing, hut a red robe, down to his feet. And over it not a toga, of course, and not white, but a dark cloak, dark purple, almost black. Only his sandals were white, and rather like a Roman's.
But how splendid he had made himself, since the day we saw him in Bethany in that palm-thatched hut of Simon the Leper's! He wore ear rings and finger rings, and smelt of perfume as though Mary had emptied her vase on him and not on the carpenter. Exactly like a bridegroom. His hair and beard curled and scented and shining with pomades. Although his beard was still thin and insignificant. as if he constantly plucked at it. He had fine eyes. although they were too deep set, and too close together, above a narrow, long, chiselled nose. Only his mouth gave him away, and it was his mouth I remembered afterwards when I knew him fully. Not his eyes, although they say that all murderers have eyes like that, and all betrayers. In a long life I have known many men with close set sunken eyes who were neither of those things, and as good men as any. But no one with that mouth.
It was small and cruel and greedy, and at that moment wet and trembling with desire. I hated it. I had not noticed it in Bethany. But now I did, and I think that if I had had the authority I should have sent him away and had nothing more to do with him, no matter what it might cost us. But my mistress was holding out her hands towards him as if he was already a dear friend. "Judas ben Simon!" she said, in her most welcoming, warm voice. "I had hoped to see you, but I scarcely dared to hope. Our last meeting -"
"I would have flown to you on wings, my lady" he said, that small mouth simpering, the eyes watching her as if the mouth meant to devour. "But my duties held me elsewhere."
"Ah duties, duties. You men are slaves to them. Come and sit by me, and Mary here shall serve you with something. Will you take wine?" She knew he did not, from Bar Abbas. He was a kind of Nazirite, as the Jews call abstainers. Abstainers from not only wine, but women. But if he was a Nazirite he meant to give up being one that night, as anyone could see. And he began by taking wine.
My mistress had nodded to me in a particular way and I knew what she meant. I mixed his wine with spices that we kept in a particular box on a table by the far wall. They were spices for the Wine of Sacrifice, and they make the Celebrants close to the God at the Ceremonies. We only take a pinch, less than a pinch, to a full cup of wine. I mixed half a handful in his wine, and it was much less than full. And while I waited for the powder to dissolve I drew the red curtains over the Fresco. It was only a painting again, and one such as you might see in any house that had had a fine painter decorate it. But it was best to take no chances. He probably did not know who Dionysus was, but if he had eyes to see he would see that He was a God, and might see too much. His eyes were close set, but keen.
While I was busy with those things he was paying stupid, simpleton's compliments to my mistress. On her appearance, on her house, on her furniture. As if he had never seen a decent house before. Perhaps he never had. There was a country snobbery about him, and at the same time a fierce, Jewish pride in his poverty. At one minute he was talking of the property he had bought; "a little place in the City, my lady, nothing so fine as this, but pleasant, pleasant. For a single man." And the next he was telling her that he despised fine things. That his father had never drunk or eaten from anything but unglazed earthenware in all his life and nor had he himself until a few months ago.
"Since then I have bought some silver pieces here and there. A few. But gentlemanly things. I have a taste for art, I do not know where I got it."
But all the time he was talking his eyes were stripping my mistress naked, and every now and then he ran a pointed red tongue over those pale wet lips as if he was tasting something. And what he was tasting was cruel, cruel. Not pleasure, not joy. He was tasting death. He did not want to make love, he wanted to kill, and I think that in his narrow heart the two were the same thing. But he went on talking about silver and fine furniture, and jewels, showing her the bezel of his seal ring, a carved black stone with a head on it that I could not see.
"If you like jewels" my mistress said, and I could hear and sense her voice shaking, and her heart beating, and I was afraid for her; "If - Mary could fetch - or no, the box is too heavy, I will - I will go up and open it, and - and in a moment Mary could show you upstairs to - where I keep my few pieces of jewellery and you could - "
She stood up as she spoke, and I saw her trembling. Not with fear of any-thing, but with desire. Both of them trembling. He was sweating, and I could smell it above the perfumes he was wearing. A thin, vile, acrid smell. She went, and made a sign to me from the archway that said, "Five minutes, no more."
They were endless minutes. He took more wine, and was already drunk. I could see that although I do not think he knew it. He had never drunk any-thing but water in all his life if it was true about him. Nor touched a woman. Nor a boy. Although I think that may have been at the heart of his cruelty, that he wanted boys, not women, and hated women because of his own perversity. Only Eternal God can know that now.
I took his empty cup from him and led the way out to the courtyard and the stairs, and he followed me, drawing his cloak round him. That saved his life. I had forgotten Shaitan, or rather had never thought of him. Why should I? Shaitan asleep in his kennel by the stairs. He let me go by him without a sound. And the next thing I heard was his deep growl, and the rattling of his iron chain, and Judas screaming, and the tearing of cloth in Shaitan's jaws.
He had Judas by the arm, and was pulling him down as I turned. I screamed myself, not knowing what to do, and the cloak tore away and muffled Shaitan's great black head for long enough, and I dragged Judas out of the dog's reach. But Judas's arm was torn, and I saw the blood glittering as I helped him up the stairs.
Below us Shaitan howled in fury, leaping upwards again and again to the full length of the chain, falling back with a great thud against his kennel, to snarl, and worry the cloak, and tear it into ribbons as he had wanted to tear its owner.
"Are you mad to keep such a beast?" Judas was shouting. "Give me something to kill it, give me an axe, anything. Kill it! Kill it!"
When I got him up the stairs to my mistress, who had run out at the noise, he was pale with terror and anger, the sweat shining on him like grease, and his mouth trembling like his hands.
"It must be killed!" he kept on crying. "Hang it with a rope. Let me see you hang it now."
We got him inside the bedroom and sitting down, so that we could look at his arm. It was almost nothing of a wound. Barely the scratches of Shaitan's fangs, thanks to the folds of the cloak. But for that he must have lost his arm at least. And he knew it, and went on trembling, while we bathed his arm, and fussed over him, and quietened his fears, promising to bring Shaitan to the other side of the courtyard and chain him there when it came time for Judas to go down again.
"But that time is not yet" my mistress said, holding his wrist in both her hands. And very slowly she lifted his arm to her mouth and sucked the blood from the scratches, looking at him over his forearm as she did it. I could see the shivering of his body grow still. She laid his arm in her lap and began passing the palm of her left hand over the scratches, as we did at the Ceremony, to heal our wounds. "You see?" she whispered. "The pain is going. We have our own power in this house. You will not be sorry that you came here."
I knew it was time to leave them, and went down to do as we had promised, to bring Shaitan away from the stairs and chain him up on the other side of the courtyard.
It was not easy. He would not come with me, and as he was heavier than I was there was no way of forcing him. Philip was out as always, and even my mother and the two young girls combined with me could never have forced him away from those stairs if he had not wanted to come. And I did not want to wake them. It must already have been nine or ten o'clock. Instead I went to the kitchens and fetched all the meat I could, and laid a trail of it across the courtyard, l let him sniff a piece, and threw it a few yards off, and gradually his growling changed its tone and became a whining after food.
I loosed him from the kennel then, holding the end of his chain in both hands, and for a moment I thought he was going to go straight up the stairs and burst in on them and kill Judas. It might have been well if he had done it. But he followed the trail of meat as I had wanted him to and I tied his chain to an iron ring set in the outside of the kitchen wall where we sometimes set torches to light the courtyard. Then I went back to the stairs to wait.
But I had none of that shivering excitement that I felt when Baruch was there. Only a heaviness of spirit, a fear of I did not know what. A sickness at what my mistress was doing, and at the man she was doing it with, and all that we were plotting. I had seen the carpenter and I could not believe that he was evil, or an enemy. I had seen Mary of Magdala and I knew that she could not be anything but good.
How could a wicked man heal the sick and the blind? How could he defeat death, and raise the dead if he was wicked The Jews said that he had a Devil, that he was in league with Beelzebul and that it was by His means that he worked his miracles. Could that be? Does the Devil raise the dead again to free them from Hell? Does He want the blind to see and the lame to walk? Does he love the poor and tell the rich to give away their riches?
I looked up at the stars but they could not answer such questions, or if they could I could not read what they told. I went back into the Fresco room, to make myself busy clearing away our dishes, and the wine cups, and to look at the Fresco again, pulling back the curtain until I could see the faun. Now he was still just free of the women's hands, as he had always been. But I could remember the moment when he died, only a few hours ago, when the Fresco came alive, and I could see his eyes again. If there was wickedness it was not in him.
I was still thinking of that when I heard my mistress scream.
Not the screams of pleasure she sometimes gave with Baruch, half laughter, half pain, half begging to be hurt again, half begging to be spared, "a moment, a moment, no more for a moment, I implore you, Baruch, I kiss your feet." Not that kind of scream. This was agony.
I ran up the stairs, my heart pounding. And heard the sound of the whip. And she screamed again as if she was dying, as I must have screamed when she was beating me. I burst the door open, they had only latched it, and saw him standing over her, still half dressed, his face like a demon's.
My mistress lay naked on the bed, her body twisting, long lash marks curling scarlet round her back and breasts, blood running from them. He struck her again, laying a crimson girdle round her waist, over one buttock. I threw myself at him, and without turning his head he pushed me away so hard that I went staggering back and struck my head against the wall. I struck it so hard that I think I fainted for a second, and fell in a heap on the floor, still hearing the whip hissing, and searing my mistress's flesh, and her screams of pain.
She threw herself off the bed at his feet, clasped her arms round his legs, and I knew as I came to my senses that even in her agony she wanted this, had always wanted it, as I had wanted the kind of love-play that Baruch gave to her, and that was not enough for her. Like a drunkard who must drink more and more, until he dies of it. I knew in that second, without thinking of it, everything that there was to know about myself and her and what we did and why we did it, and the vileness of it. Seeing her white body hunch and crouch and shudder under the lash, and the blood running, and the white flesh ruined, as she had ruined mine.
I came crawling, caught his bandaged wrist in both my hands, and hung on it with all my force as I had hung on Shaitan's chain. Gradually I forced him away. He seemed to wake out of a trance, a nightmare. He let the whip fall at his feet, and put his other hand to his eyes.
"What have I done?" he whispered. "Oh my God, oh my Lord and Saviour, oh my Messiah." And then, shouting, his voice hoarse with rage, "You harlots, you filth, you vileness of corruption! What have you done to me?" He shook me away and went to the door, snatching up his robe, feeling for it with his hand stretched out as if he had gone blind. I heard him stumbling across the roof and down the stairs. For myself I ran to my mistress and tried to lift her. She clung to me, sobbing. Pain, rage, humiliation. The blood running from her shoulders, from her legs, staining the floor, the bed coverings that she had dragged down with her, my white gown. So much blood. He had beaten her as she had beaten me, or almost as badly, but I did not think of that. Or feel any kind of malice. Thank God I did not. I have enough on my soul without that sort of vileness,
I got her onto the bed at last, lying face down, and I bathed her back, and laid gauze on it. But even the touch of the gauze bandages made her scream again. I tried to heal her with my hands, that had begun to have the power of healing. But it was useless in such a case, "Fetch Baruch" she said, her fingers tearing at the silk covers of the pillows. "Fetch him!"
I ran. Judas had let himself out of the courtyard, leaving the wicket door in the gate swinging, and I left it open myself, and ran like the wind. It was not far, and Baruch was awake, He had told my mistress that he could not come to her that night, he had reports to write for the Governor, and the chief of the Treasury, and half a dozen others, and he was sitting at the window of his room, dictating to two clerks, when one of his slaves let me into his courtyard. He did not need any explanations, but threw on a cloak and came with me, bringing his medicine box when I told him it would be needed.
Within half an hour we were with my mistress, and he was attending to her. While he was doing that I went to fetch warm water and oil. And it was then I saw that as he ran from the bedroom and the house Judas had vomited. At the top of the stairs. Again in the courtyard, and by the gate under the archway. Great pools of vomit that stank of wine gone sour. I do not know why I remember that stupid detail from such a night, but I do, As if it symbolised the man, and his self-loathing, and his hatred of our house, and my mistress, and all that she stood for in the world. He must have been so close to holiness, and instead he was a devil, And his vomit lay on the court-yard stones like the wet footprints of his soul.
CHAPTER 7
It was that night that they completed the plan. I did not have any part in it, and now I thank the Lord God for that, and my true Mistress. I did many things, and terrible they were, and still seem to me terrible after sixty years. More terrible now, I think, than when I first realised what I had done, and helped to do. But I did not help them in their planning. Indeed, how could I, what did I know of such things? I only brought them more warm water, and oil, and sponges. And when my mistress lay more easy against the pillows I brought them wine, and fruit, and knelt and served them as I used to do in the old days. Only now I had more privileges as I knelt there, and the bed was in a sense mine as I knelt by it, and I had the right to lie there beside them if I chose to. Baruch propped on one elbow, eating dried figs and dates from a silver dish that I held for him, and my mistress easing herself against the down pillows, and crying with the pain, and cursing Judas, and his master, and promising herself a swift revenge.
I hardly listened to her. For me it was as if the room, the whole house had been defiled, and I wanted only to escape from it. As if I had seen Hell opening beneath my feet, and wanted only to run, only to be saved. But run where?
But I did not need to listen very carefully to understand what they were planning. It was very simple. If the Romans would not pay heed to words, but only to actions, and things they could see and touch, then let those come. Let there be a Rising. Jesus had told the whole of Judaea and Galilee that he was a King. That he was David's heir, and Solomon's. That he was the Messiah, and that with him Israel would be born again. That there would be no more famines, no more foreign rule, no more wretchedness and poverty. That he was to bring the Kingdom. Or if he had not said exactly that, everyone thought that he had, which came to the same thing.
Then let there be a Rising in Jerusalem to bring all that about. To make him King. To overthrow the Romans, and the Temple, and the Jewish authorities, and create the new Israel with King Jesus on its throne. It need not be a very serious Rising. A few hundred men that Bar Abbas could whip into a frenzy with the promise of loot. A few murders, a few houses burned, The Romans might not care about legends and history, but they would care about burning buildings, and dead men, and rioting in the streets. Even Pilatus would care then. And it was a thing that could he arranged for a few hundred shekels, and a few hours, perhaps a few days but no more, to arrange everything to perfection.
"And if it all goes as you say" Baruch asked my mistress, "and this carpenter claims that he had nothing to do with it? He has done the same kind of thing before."
"There has not been a rising on his behalf before. How can he claim it is nothing to do with him if half the ruffians in Jerusalem are shouting, "Make Jesus our King! Down with the Romans, down with the High Priest!" How can he escape from that?"
"He's a slippery one, or so I've heard. There are stories of how he’s foxed the cleverest lawyers they've sent against him. He seems to know what to say without having to think about it, and just as they believe that they have him caught, for blasphemy, or sedition, or that he'll have to say something to disappoint his followers in order to avoid being caught, he says something that turns the tables on them and leaves them speechless. Like the time they wanted him to commit himself about paying taxes to the Romans. All he said was, "Whose head is on the coin?" And when they told him that it was "Caesar's, of course" he just smiled and answered them, "Then you had best give it to Caesar, since it is his." They did not know what to say and all the carpenter's followers jeered them for a mile back along the road to Jerusalem. You won't catch a fox like that with a few imbeciles shouting "Jesus for King"."
"Trust me" my mistress said. And there was such hatred in her voice, such fury and such power, that Baruch stayed still, and I saw his mouth go white, as if he knew what would happen, and could no longer prevent it. I think he would have prevented it if he could. He was never cruel nor revengeful. Only soft and greedy. At heart he always meant to be kind. "I shall make sure that he's involved" my mistress said. "Beyond all escape. If it means seeing that devil again, and being beaten again. I’ll see his carpenter nailed up on a Roman cross before this Passover of yours is finished, I swear it by Dionysus, I swear it by my soul." And she took one of the heavy silver wine cups and crushed it in her hands like the shell of a nut until the silver cracked and broke. I still have a fragment of that cup with the God’s head on it. Because I took the pieces the next morning and put them in her jewel chest thinking that one day we must have it repaired. It was not an ordinary cup but blessed, and sacred. It was a strange thing that my mistress should have broken it like that, that very night of the Fresco coming alive for us, and the lightning burning the faun’s heart like a sacrifice, and Judas coming. It was very strange. I was thinking that even while she was giving me orders for what I was to do the next day.
''Mary" she was saying ''tomorrow you must find Bar Abbas for me, and bring him here. I cannot go out like this, and nothing matters now. Bring him here as soon as you find him. And when we have arranged everything with him, then you must go and find Judas for me. I shall tell you what to tell him. What matters about it is that he should bring his master" - and her voice shook on that word - "that he should bring him to Jerusalem on a given day. That's all I need. Nothing else. Jesus and his people to enter one of the City gates on a given day. I'll see to the rest. And then let the Romans take him, and nail him up, and by the Eternal God I'll spit at him as he hangs there. I'd give my soul to drive in the nails."
She looked as if she would have done it then if he had been in front of her. I did not recognise her face. Like one of the Frenzied Women, only worse, far worse than that. As if she was the Queen of Hell, and burning.
I did not sleep well that night. I dreamed of the faun. He came to me in my sleep and looked at me with those dark, deep eyes, and said, "Come to me, child." And I wanted so much to go to him that I wept in my dream and woke with my face wet with my tears, to hear my mistress whimpering beside me with the pain of her body, and the humiliation, and the hatred. It was already dawn, and I could see her face. Baruch had left us not long after we made the plan, going back to his reports for the Governor and the Treasury, and my mistress and I had lain side by side, not talking, but her hand holding mine, and every now and then gripping it until I cried out with the hurt in my fingers. Now she lay asleep, her mouth open, and her face - her face somehow ruined. An old woman's face. Or rather I could see in it what it would be like when she was truly old. And it was a dreadful thing to look at. Not lined so much as scarred. As if wickedness had bitten into the flesh, and down to the bone, and stitched the skin to her skull. The mouth down drawn at the corners, shaped by hatred and by evil.
And she was not evil, not wicked, I knew it as I knew myself. Or did I know myself? Oh, yes, a thief, a blackmailer, an extortioner, but not - not wicked as Judas was, who went to the Jews' synagogue and prayed to Jehovah, and had never touched wine or women until that night, when he was already thirty six years old. He had probably never stolen a farthing either, until holding the purse for the carpenter's followers put temptation in his way. And yet he was wicked as my mistress never was, and I thought never could have been. Until they met, and fitted together like hand into glove. Quite ordinary hand, not good, not bad, fitting into a wicked glove lined with pitch, so that the hand could never be drawn out again, never be white again Until at last the glove of pitch would be lit, and burn, and the hand burn with it.
I thought of all that as I watched her face. Oh, my mistress.
Until it was time for me to get up and dress myself and go to the thieves quarter and Bar Abbas. I also had to discover where the carpenter was. He moved about a great deal in those days. Not he himself. I think, but his followers were afraid of the Jewish authorities, and they rarely slept in the same village for two nights running, and never in Jerusalem. During the days he would preach, and sometimes he would come into the City and preach even in the Temple, or answer questions, or tell stories that needed interpreting before any one could understand them, I remember some of them to this day, and still think of them, and find new ways of understanding them.
But they do not matter for now. They are written down elsewhere, I have heard them read. What matters for this moment is what I did that day, for it was the turning point. Before that monday, all could have been changed at least for my mistress and myself, and Bar Abbas, your poor, poor father, Simon. And for many others. Well. I acted as I did, and as I had been told to act, and all went as it did. Perhaps it was fastened from the Beginning, that it should go like that. Who knows what Eternal God has it in His thought to loose and fasten? Who knows whether anything can be changed?
I found Bar Abbas, and told him what my mistress wanted. There was no problem there. A riot? Loot? To burn a dozen houses, rob some shops, kill a few men? It was like promising him a holiday. And to be paid for it? And have his men paid! All praise to the Lord, and to Hermes, God of Thieves. As for danger, I promised him there was none, at least to himself. Perhaps one or two of his men might need to be hanged, but he did not care too much about that. A bandit's life is not often long. But he would be safe, I swore it on my mistress's faith. And he was ready to believe me because he knew her for a woman of her word.
He also knew that we knew Baruch ben Isaac, who was a great power in his way, in the Treasury. And he knew too that Baruch had brought us to see Pilatus. Bar Abbas always knew that kind of thing. He knew what the Chief of the Temple Guards had for his supper the night before if he wanted to. I let him think that Pilatus would not be too troubled to see a moderate riot, that could easily be put down after a day or so. It would give him an excuse to do several things the Romans wanted to do, one of them being to hang Jesus the Carpenter without any trouble from the Jews. And to be able to blame the Jews for having to do it.
By midday we were agreed and asking round about in the quarter to discover where Jesus was. As I have said he or rather his followers kept moving all the time. Yes, yes, Simon, I have left a clause suspended and I have broken the Law's of Composition. I am not a scribe, nor a poet, I am a woman telling what she saw and knew. Write it as I tell. Oh, if you must, if you must go back. I said that the carpenter came sometimes to Jerusalem to preach in the Temple or in the streets but not every day. And every night he would leave the City and sleep elsewhere. Because in the day time, with his followers around him, and the crowd listening, the Jewish leaders were afraid to touch him for fear of what the crowd might do. He was indeed already like a King. An uncrowned king of the poor of the City. And of the countryside too, because hundreds and sometimes thousands of villagers would come to the City to hear him teaching and would sleep in the streets or against the walls of the Temple, waiting for him to arrive. To have tried to arrest him in the middle of such a crowd could have started a riot that would truly have destroyed half Jerusalem, without any need for Bar Abbas and his men. So it was only at night, when the crowds were gone home to eat and sleep, that there was real danger for the carpenter, and his disciples. And at night he too would be gone.
One night to Bethany, another to Bethphage, or as far north as Jericho or Ephraim. Or west to Emmaus, or east to Qumran, where I think the Essenes protected him. He could be anywhere, and the next day he would be back again in the City, or else he would be teaching in the countryside, and drawing huge crowds after him, so that even there he was safe from the authorities. Completely safe, unless the Romans wanted to take him. Because of course what a handful of Temple Guards daren't do, a couple of maniples of Roman legionaries would have done with their eyes shut. But as I have told you, the Romans had no interest in him, or what he said, or preached, or taught. Unless he could be made to act against them, or seem to.
Which was our plan.
We found out that he had spent the night in Bethlehem, where I think he had relatives, cousins of his mother, Miriam and it was possible he was still there, or at least we could find out in Bethleham where he meant to spend the coming night. He was certainly not in Jerusalem that day.
It is not far from the City to Bethlehem, although it is farther than to Bethany, and seemed farther still to me, riding on one of the hired donkeys, inside that basket thing I have told you of, where you are either stifled by the dust, or by the heat inside the curtains. It was still early in the year, being the Jewish month of Nissan, and spring, but it had grown very hot in the last day or so, as though spring storms were gathering, and the sky was heavy and burning, and it was like early autumn rather than spring.
I rode thinking of what I must do, and of seeing Judas again, and hating the idea of it. Bar Abbas and four of his men were with me, also riding, and it did not take us three hours to reach the village. Olive groves and vineyards, and grey dust, and hovels. An inn where they served vile food and worse wine. Nothing. Except gossip. And all the gossip was about the carpenter, and what he was doing. They were very proud of him there, his cousins, and he was preaching somewhere in the neighbourhood. So we ate and drank what we could, and paid twice its value, or at least I did, out of the purse my mistress had given me, and we went to find him, or pretended to. The man we wanted to find of course was Judas.
They were only a mile or so away, on a hillside among the olive trees, a crowd of several hundred peasants, and villagers, and women sitting in the dust round him, while he sat on the stump of a tree, telling them stories. A small, insignificant, dusty man in a brown robe, like a peasant himself, telling them about a man who owned vineyards, and needed labourers for the harvest.
I told you he had a wonderful voice. He never seemed to raise it or shout, like most preachers have to do to make themselves heard. But you could hear him from the back of a great crowd of people as if he was standing beside you and talking in an ordinary tone. I stood and listened for a minute, while Bar Abbas moved about in the crowd trying to find where Judas was.
The story was a strange one, of this man who owned the vineyards, and how he went into the village at dawn and hired some of the men standing there wanting work. He offered them a denarius for the day, which was a usual day's wage, and they accepted, of course, and went to work for him. But the owner found he hadn't enough men, so he went back to the village at midday and hired some more for the remainder of the day, and promised them a denarius as well.
And before it was dark, the same thing happened again. The owner saw the work wouldn't be finished, so off he went to see if he could find more men. There was only an hour of daylight left, hut he took the ones still standing there, or I imagine that by then they were lying down in the square playing knuckle bones, or sleeping, and he offered them a denarius each! For the one hour remaining for work. You can imagine they accepted.
So the harvest was finished and made safe, and all the men who had worked to gather it went to the owner to he paid. The ones who had worked all day, and the ones who worked half a day, and the ones who had only worked for an hour. And each of them got the same pay! One denarius. Of course the men who worked the whole day were furious, and protested about it. The carpenter acted his stories, not with his hands and body, but with his voice. And you could imagine the men grumbling, and wanting to claim more, and looking daggers at the fellows who had hardly broken into a sweat pocketing the same pay as they had, who were almost dropping with tiredness after twelve hours in the sun, picking grapes with their backs bent and their knees aching, and hefting baskets down the rows to the carts.
The crowd saw it as if it was happening to them, and a murmur of agreement went up, expecting there to be a riot in the end of the story, and the Owner to have his money bag taken from him. Or else the ones who had only worked for an hour would be made give up some of their money to the others. But the story did not end like that. The owner closed up his money sack and merely said, "You made a bargain with me. Keep it. What is it to you what I give these others? Whose money is it? Yours or mine?" Which of course was true, and every one had to agree that it was true but they still did not like the ending.
That was the strange thing about his teaching. Most teachers when they tell stories pick ones that will please the people who are listening and make them happy, so that they’ll go on listening to the real teaching. But the carpenter's stories, and I can remember a dozen of them at least and there are many others that are written in books, as I have told you - his stories were all strange, and uncomfortable, and impossible to understand. At least at first hearing, and for long after that. The story I've just repeated to you; do you understand it, Simon? I think perhaps that I do now, but that is after many years. I think he meant that God does not count the hours of service, but only the heart that serves. And that one denarius from God is all that any man can hope for or deserve, and contains all things, and all happiness. I think that is the meaning, but who could be sure? When I first heard it I agreed with the crowd, and thought that that owner was a cheat, or else a fool, and that by the next harvest no one would want to work for him, at least until an hour before the end of the day.
But by the time the story was over, and he was telling something else, Bar Abbas had found Judas for me, and was bringing him to where I was hidden behind the crowd. (I had left the donkey and the riding basket at the inn, so that we should not be noticed.) I had not thought that Judas would come to me, after what had happened, and was half afraid that the whole business would fail because of that, and half hoping that it would.
But he came, looking as different from that bridegroom self of the previous night as you could imagine. He could not have slept much if he had got from the City to Bethlehem during the darkness and had been with the carpenter all day, but he looked sharp and alert enough. Swarthy, and narrow faced, his head balding a little as I told you, giving him a high forehead that made his eyes look closer and deeper set than ever, and his nose longer, and his mouth smaller and crueller. Why the carpenter ever chose him for a follower I could never imagine. Unless - unless he meant everything to fall out as it did. But does that mean in its turn that what Judas did was fastened for him from the Beginning? And that he never had any chance of avoiding it? That he was lost long, long before he was born? I have thought of that often, and often, I promise you, just as I have thought about his master's stories. But I have never come to a conclusion.
Then of course, I thought of nothing but how I hated Judas, and how I must pretend to like him, and smile, and charm, and admire. I was plainly dressed, seeing the company I had known I would have to keep. But he was dressed like a labourer. The same sort of robe that his teacher was wearing, and broken sandals held together with plaited straw, and dirty feet, He had been eating bread and cheese, and he smelt of garlic and sweat.
"Judas Ben Simon!" I greeted him. "My mistress sends you her admiration. It was a hard lesson you taught her last night, but she has dwelled on it, I promise you, and learned much from it, and sends her thanks to you. She longs to learn more."
He had looked at me with distrust at first, and concealed hatred, but at that he began to smile. Not a pleasant smile. A sort of curling of his pale mouth, and a twitching upwards of that ragged beard that now had dust in it and bread crumbs and flakes of cheese instead of perfume.
"All things are possible" he said. "Under God."
"May that be so. And my mistress sends more than greetings." I drew him aside then, with Bar Abbas. That may seem strange to you who read this book, a woman speaking so freely to a strange man in the open countryside, in front of or at least in the sight of several hundred people. But the Jews were easier about such things then, and perhaps they still are, than the people here round Babylon, where women keep themselves hidden if they can, and scarcely look at strangers, even if they must go about to do their work. And as I think I have told you, scores of women followed the carpenter wherever he went, listening to his teaching, and looking after his disciples, and there was a great sisterhood and freedom among them. There would have seemed nothing strange to anyone there, seeing me talking to one of the disciples, with Bar Abbas beside us.
And I told him of the plan, or rather of that part of it that he was to know. That if he would bring Jesus to the City on a given day at near enough to a given time, we would have crowds waiting to proclaim him King. And by that night or the next day, we would hold the City in his name.
It sounded a mad scheme as I told it, and I thought he could not conceivably believe in it. I did not really want him to. He had only to refuse, and I could go back to the City with Bar Abbas as my witness that I done what I was sent to do.
But he listened, and nodded, and grew hard featured thinking of it. Looking at Bar Abbas, who did indeed seem like a man who could take the City and hold it if he made up his mind to it, I've told you how big Bar Abbas was, and how strong. And his four chief lieutenants with him. I remember one of them, a man called Dismas, who had been in the Hills with Bar Abbas, and had killed more than his share of travellers, and their guards. He looked like it. So did the three others.
"He does not want to be King" Judas said, looking across the heads of the crowd towards the carpenter. "At least not to be made King like that." He drew us farther off, away from any listeners who might have ears for us as well as for the carpenter, and dropped his voice. "We have all talked of it, again and again. He's of the Blood, King David's. He was chosen by John the Baptiser. A thousand people heard John saying it, "This is the One I have been sent to announce. This is the Son of God." He says it himself, and talks of the Kingdom. But he talks of it as if It would come of Itself without any one doing anything."
"I've met men like that" Bar Abbas said. "They want the loot but they won't do the killing." He spat on the ground, and made the shape of a dagger with his toes in the dust. "That's your only argument if you want him to be King."
"He will not" Judas said. "I know him. If he would!" His eyes blazed then, and I could see into his mind as if it was an open window. Himself as Treasurer to a King, the wealth of Palestine pouring between his two hands. The power of it. And I knew with a feeling between triumph and sickness that I was succeeding, and that we were going to have our way, and that the carpenter was already lost.
"He does not need to do it himself" Bar Abbas said. "He doesn't look big enough, anyway. All he needs is to be there."
"To be there?"
"When we begin. You bring him to Jerusalem, and we'll do the rest."
"It should not be hard" I said, cajoling. "Not for you who are so close to him, and whom he must trust like his own brother."
Judas stroking his beard and smiling, and looking modestly down at his knuckles.
"And he comes of his own accord half the days of the week" Bar Abbas said. "All we want is to know which day, and far enough ahead to be ready for him."
"Also" I said, "he must come in a particular way if that could be arranged. On foot if he insists on it, but crowds like things to be done in the right fashion. He should come on horseback if he is really to look like a king."
"He would never do that. Never. I know him. If that is part of it -.'
"Let him ride on something, man. For Hermes' sake, tell him the crowd want to honour him, tell him anything. Just get him high enough off the ground so that people can see him. They're not going to shout Hail to the King if he looks like a beggar tramping in from a village. Get him -."
I caught Bar Abbas's sleeve and tugged at it to quieten him. I did not want to ruin things now. "You will find a way", I said to Judas, "I know it. Persuade him. You are his friend, he'll trust you if you think of the right arguments. Let him ride on something. In a litter - no - in a cart like a chariot. Or - but how can a woman advise you? Will you arrange something, and come to us again when it is settled, and tell us? It is only a little thing to stand between all of us and such a dream as you have."
He closed his fingers on his beard and tugged at it. "It shall be done" he said.
We left him then, and went back to Bethlehem, and afterwards to the City, and all the way home I felt sickened by the shame of it. I could think of nothing but the faun and its eyes, and its terror. As if we were hunting the carpenter as the Frenzied Women hunted it, and we meant to tear him in pieces and devour him. But my mistress made much of what I had done, and patted me, and we made love together, and she drove all such thoughts out of my head, at least for the time. After all, if the carpenter had not threatened the Cult, we need not have threatened him. It was he who had chosen what should happen, was it not?
Three days later, Judas came to us again.
In the same way, the same bridegroom finery, the same wicked simpering. I do not want to tell about it. We ate together first, sending word to Baruch not to come; that my mistress had her courses and could not see anyone. It was all arranged as we had wanted, Judas said. He would come to Jerusalem the day after that coming Sabbath, that is, in three days time. He guaranteed it. He had told Jesus it was in order to show himself openly to the people of the City as the Messiah, to let them honour him, and in honouring him to bring the Kingdom nearer. "I did not need to lie" Judas said, plucking his beard and smiling. "Only to tell part of the truth and keep back the rest. He will be King before he knows it. As for riding, he will do it. Not on horseback, but on an ass that will look better than any horse. Milk white. I have it stabled and waiting for us near the South Gate, by the Pool of Siloam. It's very young, barely more than a colt, and that makes it perfect, because it seems to fulfill the Scriptures and the prophecies about the Messiah's coming. "Fear not, City of Zion, behold, here is Thy King, riding on a young colt." Anyone in the crowd who knows the Scriptures will see that, and tell the others."
He really believed in his Scriptures, that was the strange thing. And in his Messiah, and the Kingdom. He was a strange, strange man.
And all the time he was talking, I felt my mistress trembling with lust for him, and for what would happen to her. As if that had become even more important than revenge, or the plan, or the Cult, or anything else on earth. Only to lie at Judas's feet and let him beat her until she would almost die of it. It was no longer even lust, and as far from love, and Baruch's silly love play, as the moon is from the sun. It was sacrifice. If it went on it could only end in death for her, and somewhere inside her mind she knew it and wanted it. As if the evil in him had caught her soul and was drawing her into Hell along with it. It did not even matter how it was done. The beating was no longer important, only the submission, the degradation. I felt as if she was no longer my mistress, no longer my Clan Sister, no longer anything that I knew or could recognise. And for myself I felt as if the touch of cruelty would burn my soul, and I shuddered over what I had done myself, and longed to have done to me, as if it was the memory of the vilest wretchedness. Like the memory of eating filth, and vomiting.
Their talk died away, and they sat looking at one another, she with her body trembling, and his grown rigid, his mouth white and set. Now and again he licked his lips with that sharp red tongue. He did not need to be made drunk. He was drunk already, with cruelty and desire. They went out into the courtyard, Shaitan baying and howling where I had chained him, over by the kitchen wall, and I sat waiting.
I had a long time to wait. To my surprise I did not hear her screaming, although faintly, very faintly from where I sat, I could hear the sounds of his beating her, and once a heavy fall, I sat feeling sick and faint, and frightened, thinking that I must go up to them, must try to stop them, and knowing that I could not. I must not, because of the plan. And because I did not want to see.
It was more than two hours before he came down again. He was trembling himself by then, almost staggering, like a drunken man, although he had drunk almost nothing this time. He did not get sick, but he propped himself against the wall with his hand, and looked at me with eyes that did not really see anything but what he had done. "Go up to her" he whispered. "She needs you." He took his cloak from the couch and went out, feeling his way as if there were no lamps. And I followed him, and let him out of the gate, so that I could put off going up to her.
She was lying on the floor, on a white lambskin rug, stained with blood and other things. He had bound her hands together with a silk scarf, and tied the end of it to the heavy ebony leg of the bed. And he had gagged her mouth with another scarf so that she could not scream.
I thought she was dead at first. She lay unconscious, the blood beginning to congeal on her back and buttocks, and down the backs of her legs. Her hair was filthied with it, and her face was swollen as if he had beaten her with his fists as well as with the whip. I had to kneel for a minute beside her to steady the shaking of my hands before I could untie her. Even then I did not know what to do. Fetch Baruch? He would kill me if he saw her like this again. He would have me arrested as an accomplice to murder. I did not know what he would do. I scarcely thought even as logically as that. I simply did not know what to do and knelt there with the bloodied scarves on my lap as I knelt, pushing the hair away from her face, and crying over her. She did not move, and after another minute I ran and fetched water from the bath rooms below, in a silver ewer, and poured a little of it onto her forehead and her hair, and then her face.
She came to slowly, not able to move or speak. Only to open her eyes and look at me. Her lips tried to whisper, and then she coughed. Blood came and ran down her chin, bright red and terrifying. I thought she was surely dying. She tried to whisper again, and I put my ear close to her mouth.
"Is he gone?" she breathed.
I said "Yes", still crying, and wringing my hands together.
She whispered "Bring me - down - to the Fresco. Quickly."
Quickly! It took twenty minutes to get her down those stairs. Still naked, because she could not have born to he touched on her torn body, not even by ointment, by gauze, let alone by silk. When we reached the Fresco room she told me to bring her to the couch, and the supper table, and give her some wine. She drank it standing up, supporting herself on my shoulder. Her voice grew a little stronger after the wine, and she told me to lay cushions and rugs along the bottom of the wall where the Fresco was painted, and help her to lie there, face down again.
"Now leave me" she said.
I did not want to go, but I left her after she began to grow angry, and went up to the bedroom to sit there, and then to clear up the filth as best I could. I did not want Anna to see it if I could help it, nor my mother. I fetched more water, and washed the floor, and soaked the skin rugs in the cold water pool. There was blood everywhere, On the bed coverings, on the ivory bedhead and the foot of it. On the walls, He must have been insane. Perhaps that is the answer to all of what he did, and he cannot be judged like another man. I hope sometimes that that is so.
It was near dawn before I was done and I still dared not go back to her. I lay down and slept for an hour, tossing in nightmares of his eyes pursuing me, of pain, of the carpenter, of the men in the vineyard who had become devils gathering a harvest of souls for Hell, and screaming, "Pay us our Wage, Prince, pay us our Wage in full!"
I woke to feel her lying down beside me. I could hear the cockerels crow-ing and clattering down below in the courtyard. My mistress slid under the covers, and took hold of me. She was still naked, and I was afraid to touch her. "Hold me" she whispered. "Little brown one, hold me, feel my flesh." She took one of my hands and pulled it behind her back, made my fingers feel the skin. There was nothing there. No welts, no scars, no dried blood. As smooth as it always was, like velvet.
I sat up in my half sleep and stared at her. The lamp had gone out while I slept, and I could only see the shining of her eyes.
"He has healed me" she said. "The God has healed me. Lie down and let me take hold of you."
But I would not let her. I crawled out of the bed, and pretended that I did not feel well, and must go down to the bathroom and get sick. I stayed there until the household was well awake, and did not come back to her until it was breakfast time, and I could go up with Anna.
I thought that when I did go up I would find I had dreamed that too, and that she would be lying there half conscious and crying in agony. But it was true, There was not a mark on her. Not like the healing after the Ceremonies, when the scar remained, and only the pain had been eased away. There was not a mark there. Not the faintest reddening of her skin. And she lay glowing with power as she looked at me. Angry because I had left her, and contemptuous. But too proud of what had happened to care what I had done.
And that night at the Ceremony - because it was a friday, the friday before the Jewish Passover - that night she glowed with such power as I had never seen, nor anyone else there. Her light had become like flames of purple fire, close to black, if you can imagine a black light, that you could scarcely see, but only feel. The whole hillside, not just the hollow where we celebrated, but the whole side of Golgotha pulsed and vibrated with light and power. So much that even the onlookers could see it - the hangers on of the Cult who came only to watch, and usually saw nothing. People who were not initiates and never would be, and never knew anything of the true Cult and the God, only thinking of the few scraps of gifts He might give them in their daily lives - even they saw it, and I heard the murmuring of terror on the hillside behind me.
The novices knelt and prayed, trying to sing a hymn to the God and losing their voices for terror, I was afraid myself, it was so tremendous an outpouring, so tremendous a coming of the God and Goddess. They showed Themselves more clearly than I had ever seen Them. I saw their dark, burning shapes within the covering of their light. Saw Them join together, felt the ground tremble with it, the Stones shuddering.
It was then I noticed the most frightening thing of all about that Ceremony. The Stones had lost their light. They lay dead and grey, all the glow fallen from then. As if it had been killed by something, or drawn away, like water from a pool by the sun's heat. And as I lay under the High Priest I felt the deadness of the Stone, and the High Priest's seed was cold inside me. I had a sudden, insane fear that I would become pregnant by that coupling, and would bear a monster.
Then it was over, and we were going home, Baruch with us. For the first and last time in all my life I drank too much that night, so that I should sleep, and if God was good to me, not dream.
The next day was the Jewish Sabbath. And the day after that the carpenter entered Jerusalem, as we had arranged for him. In triumph, riding on the milk white colt, the crowd screaming, "Hail to the King, all Hail to David's Son, Hail to the Messiah, Hail to the King. Hosanna, Hosanna."
He rode through the South Gate, past Herod's Palace, to the Temple, and all the way the crowd was shouting, "Hosanna, Hail to the King." At first because a few hundred of them had been given a few pence each to shout it, and then because the thing caught fire, as such things can and we knew this would. The whole City was ready for it, all the poor, and the riffraff, the beggars and the whores and the servant girls and the slaves, They had only to hear the first few minutes of shouting to come and join it, and scream as if they had been paid a shekel each to scream, "Hosanna". They tore branches from the palm trees to make a carpet for him along the streets. They threw their head scarves and their coats down under the ass's hooves. They roared and stank and sweated in the sun as if there was no Roman Governor, and no legionaires in all the world, and the Kingdom was come again with Solomon's glory burning in the sky. I shouted myself.
We were there to watch, and see that our money was properly earned by the first crowd round the South Gate as he entered. And we shouted too to encourage them. But I found myself screaming as if I meant it, "Hail to the King, all Hail to David's heir." And at one moment he rode quite close in front of me, and turned his head, and looked at me. And in that second all I could see were the faun's eyes, huge and dark, looking into my soul.
That night the Rising began. We watched the houses burning from our roof top, and heard the shouting, and the swift tramp of legionaries as they went from the barracks under the Praetorium to put the Rising down,
"The God be praised!" my mistress said. "He will be dead before the Passover. We have won."
CHAPTER 8
The Rising was over almost before it began. By the tuesday night it was finished. Bar Abbas, Dismas, and another of his lieutenants were in prison. A few of their followers were killed in the fighting with the legionaries and the Temple Guards. The rest were in hiding, or fled out of the City to the hills, or beyond the Sea of Salt. The burned houses and the looted shops were quiet again. The thieves were back in the quarter with their bits of gold and silver, their bolts of silk, the purses they had snatched from the living or rifled from the dead. And the City was as peaceful again as it ever was.
But Jesus was not taken then, because he had not been there. To tell the truth I do not know where he was. Some said that they saw him in the Temple, clearing it of the money chargers and animal dealers for a second time. Others said he took refuge in Bethany, or in Qumran, knowing that a trap had been laid for him. Or he may have been hidden somewhere in the City, his followers keeping him out of sight until they knew what would happen.
But it did not matter. The harm had been done to him and he could not undo it now. He had been proclaimed King, and men had risen to create his Kingdom for him. Had risen against Rome. It was enough. Or nearly enough. The rest would come. We, Mary and I and Baruch, waited to see what more we might need to do. I think I was even happy, waiting. In one part of my mind, in my heart I suppose, I knew that we had done wrong. I even knew that it was wicked, evil, wrong. But in another part, the part that belonged to my mistress, to the Cult, to all the life I had ever known, I thought we had done well, that we had triumphed. That I had helped bring the victory, and that my mistress would love me for it, and the God would be pleased with me, and take me to Himself.
But I avoided looking at the Fresco, and at the faun, and I drew the curtains across it whenever I could, so that the faun's eyes should not look at me.
On the wednesday, the day after the Rising was completely ended, we received a letter from Judas, brought by a messenger. A furious letter, full of rage and contempt, and at the same time, if you read between the lines, of pleading, of unbelief that all could have gone so wrong, and failed so utterly. Because of course he believed in his Messiah, he believed in the Kingdom, after his own fashion. It was not that he had believed so much in us, for ourselves, or any influence we had. He had seen us only as instruments of his, of his God, of his Messiah, of the working out of the Jewish Scriptures. He had not imagined that once he had begun it, that his God had allowed him to begin, the thing could fail. And all that showed in the frantic words he wrote to my mistress. Threats, scorn, rage.
She wrote four words in reply. "He did not act!"
I had to bring her answer to him, going with the serving man who had brought the letter from Judas. He brought me by roundabout ways to a corner of the City I did not know, and a small house with a tiny courtyard, and a garden, and some fruit trees. Judas's new house. There was not even furniture inside it. A table, a chair, some books, a bed. A servant cooking something on a charcoal brazier. Judas at the table, reading his Scriptures as if he wanted to tear an answer from them. Dried figs in a dish in front of him, and crumbs of bread. A smell of staleness, as if the house had been shut for a long time and was only newly re-opened.
He looked ghastly with lack of sleep, and fury. His eyes red in their deep sockets, the lids swollen and livid, his cheeks horribly pale behind the beard, like stale finds of cheese, and his mouth working. He had plucked and torn at his beard until the flesh was red raw under it.
"Whore!" he shouted at me, as soon as I was in the room. "Liar! Cheat!" He tore the message from my mistress out of my hands and read it at a glance and threw it down and trod on it with his foot as if it was in flames. "Act? Act? I did as I promised! You said that was enough!"
I waited until he grew, not calm, but at least stopped pacing the room and clawing at his beard. He sat down again, slumped in front of his Holy Books, hiding his face in his hands. I could see the fingers bending like claws, as if he was going to tear at his own eyes like Oedipus.
"It is not too late" I said, as I had been told to say. "Bar Abbas -"
"He has been arrested. Did you not know even that much? You fools, fools! Or was it -?" Staring at me, suspicion there like insanity in his red eyes.
"His men would fight all the harder to get him out of prison if they saw any hope in it. But your King must act the King. He did not show himself, he did not fight, his followers did not fight. Where were you these last days?"
"I was with him Praying."
I laughed my contempt, and felt it. "Praying! Is this a time for prayer. It’s a time for swords! And you need a pair of women to tell you that. A King! What sort of King needs prayers? He needs fighting men!"
He stared at me, uncertain, wanting to shout at me, but not knowing what to say.
"Listen" I whispered. "There is still time, still a chance Bar Abbas's men would fight again. But you must give them a lead. He must, your Jesus, your King. He must be seen to fight, so that others will fight for him. Make him fight. And the men with him, the others like you, his disciples."
"He does not want to fight."
"Then let him be damned! Let him be caught and crucified! How can we help a man who will not help himself? Make him fight!"
He went in staring at me, his mind knowing I was right, if it was that sort of Kingdom that he wanted and at the same time bewildered, He was not really a clever man.
"How can I make him fight?" He spread his hands and let them fall on the scroll in front of him. "It does not say here -"
"Say where? Do you want your God to tell you everything? Does it not say your Messiah shall take his Kingdom?"
I did not know whether it did or not, and at that moment neither did he, but he began to listen, not so much to me, but to something inside his mind, as though my words were only expressing his own inmost thoughts.
"Only one thing will make him fight," I said, "Or the men round him. If he is being taken by the Romans or the Temple Guards. Would that not make his disciples fight for him?" I had come close to him and touched his arm, It was almost a mistake. He shook me away as if I was unclean, and got to his feet and began pacing the room once more.
"Taken?" he said. "He is too well hidden."
"Not if he was betrayed."
He stared at me then, those sunken eyes of his almost lost inside his skull. Like creatures of darkness peering out of their holes.
"You know where he is, always, where he goes at night, where he sleeps. You could - pretend to betray him."
He put his hands over his face, and hid the red glimmer of his eyes completely. "He would - know."
"For a moment! Only a moment! Then, when the Kingdom was there, he would know the truth, that it was you."
"And if it failed?" His fingers at his mouth, at his beard again, his eyes avoiding mine. Filled with a red fire that I could not interpret.
"If you failed" I said, "then it would be because it is written, and he is not the Messiah, and his disciples are not worthy of the Kingdom. That is the only reason it could fail. And you would be safe."
"I? Safe?"
"From the Romans. From the Jewish leaders. You would have made your peace with them. Whatever happened, you would be safe, you would be safe here in your house, and your garden." I pointed to it, to the fig tree outside the window.
"But to betray him! Even to pretend to! Even for this." He looked round. "I loved him. I loved him." He put his hands to his mouth, and held the shaking of his lips still, by pressing on them with his finger tips. "I love him. Can you understand?" Almost as if he was talking to a friend. And then contempt. "You! A woman! Like a serpent! You are tempting me Get out! Get out of my sight."
"I’ll go" I said. "Only think of it. Go to the High Priest. Say that you are doing it for money, that you have lost faith in him, that you want to make your peace with the true God. And with the priests of the Temple. Tell them where he will be tomorow night."
His eyes on me, haunted with fears.
"Then send word to us that you have done it. And tell us where he will be. We will arrange all else."
There was no good in saying any more. I went out of the room and the house, with its fig trees and its vine, and its pergola. It was on one of those fig trees that he hanged himself, later.
The next morning we had another message from him. That it was done. And that Jesus and his disciples would be in a garden just outside the City, late that night. It was called Gethsemane, and it was beside the road to Bethany. My mistress took both my hands in hers and kissed me. "The God will be pleased with you" she said. "Wait until tomorrow night."
But before that, before tomorrow's Ceremony, which was one of the six great Ceremonies of the year, and one of the greatest, being to celebrate the coming of new life, there was something else to be done. Because my mistress did not only want victory over the carpenter. She wanted him to know that it was her victory, and by her doing. She wanted triumph as well as victory, and for him to see it. And she wanted to humiliate him as he had humiliated her that day in Bethany.
I bathed her in the special oils that we used for the Great Ceremonies, a day earlier than I would have done. And massaged her and oiled and perfumed her for hours. She lay on one of the bathroom couches dreaming of her triumph, half asleep, drowsy with the bath, and wine, and massaging, and the scent of the oils. I dressed her hair with nard, and made up her face as it should be made up to receive the God, and represent the Goddess. Kohl for her eyelids, white lead for her face, the scarlet of crushed rowan berries for her mouth. Henna for her cheeks. I painted the green shadows where they should be, of verdigris from bronze, and malachite, and tinted her breasts, and her nipples. Set the ruby in her navel, that is the omphalos, put on her girdle of saphires that represent the hidden stars. Massaged and oiled and perfumed her feet, and painted the toenails dark blue for night. Painted her finger nails dark green, like holly leaves. Until she was as the Goddess should be on a night of triumph, a night of love.
As dark fell I began to put on her veils, each with its own prayers and rituals. Because she was going to dance for the carpenter, and show him her power. The inmost veil of Holiness. The fifth. The sixth. Out to the first veil that is the world we see, the world of illusion that surrounds us in our daily lives. Then I put on her hooded cloak to cover her from all eyes but his, and we were ready.
It was not far to go. We went out of the Jericho Gate, beside the High Priest's palace, and saw in the courtyard men standing about as if they were waiting for orders. Temple Guards, and palace servants, with that look about them of men who are used to waiting for orders and not having to think about them. Then we were out of the City, and turning right along the wall of the Temple courtyard, that towered above us in the dark. There was no moon, of course, being so near the Passover. But there was starlight, and a kind of milky haze in the sky that made it easy to find our way. Like a frost haze, in spite of the heat of the day. At night in Judaea, during the spring, the cold falls like an axe with the darkness, and we shivered as we walked. Or I did. My mistress was too intent on what was to happen to feel heat or cold.
We found them as if we had had a lantern and a guide. The slope runs down from the Temple wall to the garden, and on down to the river, if you could call it a river. A dry bed mostly, or with a runnel of water in it that the Jews call the river Kidron. And the garden is no more a garden than that streamlet is a river. A few oak trees, moss grown, and withering with age, set far apart, because in the old times men came here to cut the trees for fire-wood. It has only recently been called a garden, and the people have been forbidden to touch the oaks. Some bushes, some dusty grass, and that is the "garden".
His disciples were lying on the ground, their heads covered, and we made a wide detour round them. They were no more than ghostly shapes lying down. We knew that he would not be there, asleep with them. In his letter Judas had told us that he came to this garden quite often, to pray late into the night and into the next morning. And would be doing that tonight. Further down the slope, away to our left, we saw three more of his followers, also sleeping. One of them propped against a tree, but obviously asleep, unmoving. And we heard the sound of a man's voice, farther down the slope again, almost at the edge of the deep gully that holds the bed of the Kidron, and that is cut deeper each year by the occasional storm floods from the hill side.
We saw him then. Kneeling and praying. I could not hear his words, only the sound of his voice. We crept down into the gully, and along it, until we were close beneath him. He was praying to his "Father", by which he must have meant his God. Praying for the Cup to be taken from him. I thought that I understood that too, and that he knew already what must happen, and was praying to his God to save him. My mistress gripped my wrist, and laid her finger to her painted mouth.
"I am going to him" she whispered, and taking hold of a tree root growing out of the bank she lifted herself up, and was standing above me, and in front of him. I heard his prayer falter, and come to a stop. But he did not ask her who she was, or what she wanted. He must have known that too. Then I could not hear anything, but above my head I saw her light beginning to take form. Dark light, Darker than I had ever seen it. Like the God's light at the last Ceremony.
I caught hold of the root that she had used to lift herself onto the bank, and pulled myself up until I could see without the danger of being seen. It was like the day at Bethany, but in reverse. He was kneeling, as he had been as he prayed. And his light was the same white blaze that it had been then, but all the strength gone from it, like moonlight after the sun's brightness. And her darkness was covering him. It reached out like the night coming from the East, and his light retreated before her as she danced.
Already she had shed the first veil, of illusion, and he must have seen her reality, since he had the power of seeing. Seeing not her, but the God in her, and the Goddess. I could see them too. Not clearly, for that is the end of the dance, and even those with power cannot always see the end. King Herod did, when his daughter danced for him, the Princess Salome. That is why he gave her the life of the Baptiser, he could not refuse it to her after the seventh veil. But both Herod and the Princess Salome were very powerful in their black version of the Cult, that was like the dark image of ours. Not even the image of it, for they had no kinship at all with us, or had not until now. But as my mistress danced for the carpenter I saw the Others gathering, and again knew what was happening without the need of being told.
The Others of the darkness. Because Dionysus is not the only God we knew, although He was the only one we worshipped. We never spoke of the Other. Never thought of Him as our Master. We only knew that He was there. And that is why I told you nothing of Him when I described our Ceremonies. He did not come to them, and I had scarcely known that He existed, never thought that He had anything to do with us. He and His Bride. I thought that only such as turned away from us, and wanted evil, had anything to do with Him. And now His servants were here, in the Garden with us. I could feel their presence, see their shapes surrounding my mistress, reaching for her veils as they fell. And the God and Goddess within her, They too knew what was happening, and seemed to be afraid.
I did not think all this then, as I watched. Only felt it happening. It is a long time ago, and I have had many years to think of it. And to understand what we were doing, and had done.
As if our God Dionysus, and our Goddess Aphrodite, were children's toys, dolls to be set up for worship, and given breath, and shape, and voices. To take on what shape we gave them, so that it was we who made them Gods, and not they who made us. Who can make a soul, except the One God? They were our creation, and if we played as children do they remained innocent, or innocent enough. For love is innocent, and all that goes with it. And if my mistress stole, it was not from a love of evil, only love of the world's goods. Just as Baruch took his percentages from the Treasury, and falsified accounts. And all of us in our measure did the things that all men and women do. It was not wickedness.
But behind the Gods we had created lay the Others, waiting. Waiting until we gave Them their opportunity. And now we had done it, and they had come, and we belonged to Them, as Herod already did, and the Princess Salome, and the ones of the other Path. The true God of our cult had come, to take possession of it, and do what He wanted with it, and with our selves, and with the carpenter. I saw our own doll Gods diminish, fade, and my Mistress filled with darkness. I wanted to scream to her, and I could not speak. She was at the fifth veil, and I could see Him as I see you, Simon. May God protect me from that memory. Blackness shining, like oiled skin. And His power erect, like a bull’s, bursting with evil, his horns burning. I saw the face of Darkness, the eyes shining, and I lay down and buried my eyes against my arms, and I still saw them. I saw the carpenter shrink back, praying, holding his hands towards his Father who did not hear him, or did not choose to hear. And the Enemy come close to him, reach out his hooves to take him.
I saw the carpenter go back, creeping on his knees in the dusty grass, to wake his companions, the three sleepers he had left to watch with him, and who had not watched. I heard him crying out "Could you not watch with me? Watch and pray! Watch and pray!" As Hell's Master reached out to touch his face, and put out the last of his light. I saw them struggling, as the sixth veil fell. It was not my mistress dancing, it was the Master's Bride. The Garden was colder than black ice, and I lay shivering and crying, so frightened that I wanted to die, and shrieked inside myself at what would happen to me if I died. I wanted to be saved and there was no one to save me. No God, no Dionysus, no Aphrodite, no Cult. Nothing in Heaven and on earth and Hell but the carpenter and the Master, and we had given the Master victory.
As the seventh veil fell, and Jesus lay on his face, praying, the torches shone in the darkness up the hill side, and I heard the soldiers coming. Temple Guards in their white tunics, their swords drawn. And Roman soldiers, helmeted, glitter of steel in the dark. Temple servants, the ones we had seen waiting. And leading the way, with his quick, hurrying stride, came Judas.
The seventh veil was fallen, and for a moment the Bride and the Master stood in their darkness, triumphant in their victory. Then my mistress was beside me, shivering with cold, naked except for the saphire girdle round her waist. I put her cloak over her shoulders as if I was in a trance. The veils lay on the ground, but they were hidden from sight because they were so dark. The lightest of them is crimson, and the last is black.
Judas came hurrying, like a hound on the scent of a faun. Jesus stood up, and saw him, and the soldiers. And Judas said nothing. No greeting. No shrinking away, he held out his hands and took the carpenter's hands, and kissed his mouth. I saw it by the torchlight. It was only then that Judas spoke.
"This is the man you are seeking."
The soldiers surrounded them both, and took Jesus away. There was no sign of his followers. There had been only a dozen of them at the most, and what could they have done if they had tried to save him? Against armed men and soldiers? I did not see where Judas went, I never thought of him until afterwards. Did he really believe that his master would fight to save himself? Or allow his disciples to fight for him? I heard a story later that there had been a struggle, and that one of the disciples had tried to fight against the Temple servants. But if he did I saw nothing of it, from where we were hidden in the river bed, and it could not have lasted more than a moment. All we saw was the torchlight going back up the hill to the Jericho Gate, and the column of pale figures, and the glitter of the Roman helmets, and the drawn swords. Indeed, as for Judas, I never saw him again. They say that later that night he tried to give the money back that he had taken, and flung it down at the feet of the men who had paid him. Then he went to the house he had bought and hanged himself on his own tree. He was a wretched creature.
But I had no thoughts to spare for him then. We followed the soldiers and the guards back to the City, and through the gate to the High Priest's palace beside it. It must have been long after midnight, but the palace was alive with people, the courtyard full of soldiers, Temple Guards, men servants, women. Half of them had been making the arrest, and the others waiting for them, wanting to know what had happened, what would happen. Half afraid, half excited. Because it was hard to know what would follow when the crowds tomorrow learned what had happened to their Messiah. It was only days since they were still trying to make him King.
We did not see Jesus there of course. He had been taken inside the palace, in front of the Chief Priest, Calaphas, or else before Annas, I'm not sure which of them. Maybe both. They each of them hated everything he taught, and they hated the people who loved him. I imagine that both of them would have wanted to have a share in putting an end to him. But while he was inside the palace I saw two of his disciples in the courtyard. I had seen them both in Simon the Leper's house, and again in Bethlehem, when Bar Abbas brought me to find Judas. One of them was young, almost a boy still, but the other was a grown man, as old as Jesus, a big rough looking man. Someone had told me that he was a fisherman before he took to following Jesus.
I sidled up to him and touched his sleeve. "Where is your master?" I said to him. He looked like a hare in a net, terrified, and yet unable to run. "Your master, Jesus" I said.
"I don't know the man" he said, his hand going up to hide his mouth, his eyes looking away from me towards the gate. "He is not my master."
I left him then, but I went to one of the Temple Guards and pointed hint out, and the man went over and questioned him. I heard the fisherman shouting. "I tell you I don't know him! Can a man not warm his hands at a fire without being persecuted by lies?"
He went outside the gates of the courtyard after that, but I saw him standing nearby, waiting to see what would happen. He was still there an hour later, as they started to bring Jesus out from the palace. I went out to him and said, "Fisherman, they are bringing your Jesus out now. Do you not want to go to him?"
"I tell you girl, I do not know the man! On my soul I do not know him!"
I laughed at him, tired of tormenting his cowardice. And as I turned away from him the cocks started crowing for the dawn, which was almost there. I think I could even hear our cockerels. They had a peculiar venom in the noise they always made, and our house was not very far away. Behind me I heard the fisherman begin to run. I looked round and he was running like a madman, his hands to his head, crying, "The cocks are crowing, oh my master, oh my Messiah!" I think he had gone mad with fear. I was still watching him as they brought Jesus out of the gateway, and my mistress caught at my arm.
"There is still work to do" she said. She had been inside the palace, talking to some of the priests she knew. "They are taking him to Pilatus, but the Governor will not see him for hours yet. We need Bar Abbas's men to be ready when he does."
We had sent messages the day before, warning them that they would be needed, and telling them to have a crowd ready for whatever would happen. But it would have been useless to have them there too soon. Crowds lose their fire as easily as they catch flame. And we could not be sure where Jesus would be taken first, or if he would be taken before Pilatus at all. Being from Galilee he was Herod's subject, and Herod was in the City. They might have taken him there. Or Caiaphas and Annas might have tried him themselves and condemned him to be stoned. We doubted that, because they were cowards both of them, afraid of their shadows, and terrified of offending Pilatus, but we needed to be sure before we set the crowd into action. An hour too long a delay, or something unforeseen happening, and the people could as easily change their minds and shout that he was innocent, as that he was guilty. We had promised money, but that means nothing in the heat of the moment for a crowd. You probably know what city crowds are like yourself, if you have ever lived in a city.
So we ran to the thieves' quarter, and down to where the beggars sleep, and sent out messengers. "Come to the Praetorium. There is something happening, they have taken the false Messiah and are going to hang him. Come and shout against him, and you'll get drinking money. But you'll have to shout hard."
By nine o'clock we had the crowd gathering in front of the Praetorium. The High Priest had sent word to Pilatus that the leader of the Rising was taken, and waiting to be judged by him, but nothing so insignificant as that would have got Pilatus up before he was ready for the day, or made him hurry. And in the meantime the soldiers of the Governor's guard were amusing themselves with the carpenter. There was a pillar at the back of the audience terrace, under a roof garden, and they had tied him to it and flogged him, as a rebel and a Jew. Most of the Roman soldiers hated the Jews worse than they hated anyone in any province they ever garrisoned, and the chance of tormenting a Jewish prisoner was like an extra ration of wine to them. When we came back to the terrace, to join the people from the High Priest's palace who were still waiting for Pilatus, the soldiers had begun to dress Jesus up as a King.
They had found an officer's scarlet cloak, and a white robe, and one of them had cut branches from a thorn tree growing out of the palace wall and made a crown out of them. They were forcing the crown onto his head as we arrived, and I could see the blood running down his face. They were screaming with laughter and I thought that if Pilatus did not come out to judge him soon the soldiers would kill him without a trial. They had lost two or three men in the rising, and that added a savagery to what they would have done in any case with such a prisoner.
I say that Pilatus had to come out onto the terrace for any trial he might want to give the carpenter, because it was the day before the Jewish Sabbath, which began at nightfall, and none of the High Priest's people, nor the Orthodox Jews who wanted Jesus killed, could go inside the Governor's palace without being made unclean. And they would not have time to cleanse themselves before the Passover began. I think that was an added reason why Pilatus kept them waiting so long. I imagine him eating his breakfast, and thinking of them standing out on the terrace in the sun, and hating them.
But he came out in the end, of course, about eight o'clock, and the trial began. You could hardly call it a trial, though. There was only one question, whether Jesus himself had taken part in the Rising. And even that could scarcely matter. It had been in his name. We expected Pilatus to condemn him straight away. Or at least, we hoped for it. You could not expect anything with Pilatus. Which was why we had made sure of the crowd beforehand.
Our people began to shout as soon as the Governor appeared. "Crucify him! Crucify him! He is Caesar's enemy."
Pilatus looked as though he heard nothing. He was dressed for giving judgements, in a scarlet cloak and a white tunic with the Senatorial border of purple. Behind him his staff were in full uniform, gold ornamented breast-plates, plumed helmets, short military cloaks. There were clerks in white togas, and slaves carrying parchments, and papyrus scrolls. Both parchments and scrolls, because the copies that would go to Rome for the Imperial Archives had to be on parchment, while the Jerusalem archives wanted rolls of papyrus such as they had always had since the days of Egypt and the Pharaohs.
It was a huge terrace, with a low parapet a few feet above the level of the square and the streets outside. The mob had to stay outside the parapet, although in any case that stirred them at all they always flowed over it onto the terrace itself, no matter what the Governor's bodyguard did to stop them. Short of killing them they couldn't be stopped. At the far back of the terrace there was the palace, which the Romans called the Praetorium, and which was both palace and offices and archives, and barracks for the soldiers, and store house for all the military equipment and anything else that governing required. War equipment, balistas, the beams for crucifixions. A lot of those, because the Romans believed in making examples now and then, and would crucify fifty or sixty men together, and pacify a district for another year.
If you were ever in Jerusalem in the days before it was destroyed, you will not need me to tell you what the palace and the audience terrace were like that day. White stone, and sunlight. The crowd shouting, surging against the parapet and the line of Roman soldiers. Most of the scum of the City in the crowd, because word had gone round that there was money to be had for shouting. All the prostitutes, the thieves, the slaves who could steal time off from their masters; shop boys and apprentices, market women who'd make more by yelling "Crucify him" than by waiting for someone to buy stale eggs from them and a few ounces of dried figs. Servant girls and porters, litter bearers. Men who had never worked in their lives. Every ruffian who could walk and shout got himself to the terrace for that sort of occasion. And scattered among them as we had arranged there were Bar Abbas's men.
The ones who had gone into hiding had come out of it on the chance of freeing their chief, and the ones who had fled from the City on the tuesday night were back again, because there was nothing to do in the hills, and no food. We had more than fifty of them. They were not shouting yet. Their turn would come when it mattered. For the moment nothing would affect Pilatus, except boredom, and the heat, and his hatred of the Jewish leaders. As for them, they were all there on the terrace, near the judgement seat, a marble throne set on a shallow dais with three stone steps up to it, and purple cushions and draperies. Annas, Caiaphas, their principal assistants. Sweating already in the growing heat of the day, and the weight of their ceremonial robes. Furious to have been kept waiting for above three hours for Pilatus to come out to them. Annas and Caiaphas had not waited on the terrace of course. They had gone back to their own palace, which they shared, the one being the other's father-in-law, as well as his predecessor and colleague.
But every one who mattered knew that they had just been humiliated, and the two of them were in mortal dread that they were going to be humiliated again, this time in public, face to face with the Governor. The fear of it made them burn to begin, and get it over with, and they started shouting their accusations aloud against the Carpenter almost before Pilatus had settled himself on the cushions, and the scribes were ready to take down what was said.
They made an endless story of it. The miracles that they called devil's tricks to catch the people's minds. The preaching against the rich. Against the Temple. The driving out of the animal sellers and the money changers. The mob that followed him about. They would have begun with the prophecies about the Messiah, if they had dared, and tried to prove by their Scriptures that the carpenter could not be him. As it was, Pilatus was shifting on his throne and looking over their heads at the sky before they were half way to telling him about the Rising, and Jesus's part in it. And all the time the crowd was surging against the parapet, and the spears and drawn swords of the body guard, and shouting, "Crucify him, crucify the Galilean! We want no King but Caesar!"
Pilatus held up his hand at last, and silenced the High Priest and Annas, his father-in-law, if not the crowd. "Where is this man?" he said.
The soldiers who had been tormenting Jesus and crowning him as a mock King brought him forward. They took off the crown and the officer's cloak they had put on him, and he was in white, the cloth splashed with blood from his head where the thorns had driven into his forehead. There were blood stains showing where they had beaten him, because when the Romans scourge a man, even for fun, they come very near to killing him. And they don't use whips that simply cut the flesh, and leave scars that heal again. They use heavy vine rods that crack the bone, and smash in the rib cage against his lungs. A man who has been scourged like that doesn't recover for weeks after, and sometimes he dies of it. I never saw anyone look less like a king.
He stood in front of Pilatus, his hands bound, the right shoulder hunched upwards as I told you it was, his feet bare, and I felt again, as I had felt before we began, that what we were doing was wrong, that nothing could justify it. He looked so small, and so poor, and so insignificant. A carpenter who had taught that the poor were blessed, because he was poor. And who had made the lame walk, and the blind see, because Eternal God had given him the power of healing. We were killing him because of that. I wanted to run away, and not watch any longer, but my mistress had her hand fastened on my arm like talons, and she was drinking it in by the word, and the moment.
"Let him try to use his Power now" she whispered. "Let him try! I have destroyed him, I have ground him under my heel! Now let him die of it!" I was afraid to look at her, for what I should see in her face.
Pilatus was questioning Jesus. I did not hear the question, but I heard Jesus say in his clear, carrying voice, "So you say." And Pilatus, lifting his hands as if he wanted nothing to do with any of this, turned to the High Priest and said in his cold, bored aristocratic tone, "I find no fault in him. Is he to be crucified because his name was shouted in a riot?" He spoke in Greek because although he knew some Hebrew and Aramaic he never used it, and an interpreter translated what he had said. I saw Caiaphas go white with fury under the great head dress he was wearing as High Priest, and support himself on his staff. The crowd had not heard anything, and went on chanting, "Crucify him, crucify him!"
The noise became deafening as the word spread of what the Governor had given as his judgement, and Bar Abbas's men began their work. "Bar Abbas is guiltless, free Bar Abbas and crucify the Galilean!" The first of the crowd broke through the barrier and scrambled over the parapet. We were already on the terrace, as Baruch's friends, and the filthy mob of ragamuffins and beggars flowed towards us like a dirty tide across the white marble floor.
"He called himself King! We'll have no King but Caesar! If you don't crucify him you're not Caesar's friend." That was the shout that we had taught to Bar Abbas's men. Pilatus had power of life and death in Jerusalem, and throughout Judaea, but; if word got to Rome that he had done anything, or failed to do it, that laid the least shadow on the Emperor Tiberius's glory, Pilatus was a dead man, and his family ruined. He would have had to be very sure of himself to resist it, given all that had happened. That was Baruch's idea, that shout of, "You are not Caesar's friend if you let him go free."
I saw Pilatus wince as if he had been struck near the heart. He understood quite enough gutter Aramaic to understand what was being shouted. Yet even then, his hatred of Caiaphas and his contempt for everything Jewish, made him try to save the carpenter again.
He lifted both his hands for silence, and even stood up. "1 find no fault in him" he repeated. "I find him guiltless of the riot." At that he looked at Caiaphas, and I think that he suspected something of what had really happened, that the rising had been manufactured simply for this moment. Only he thought that Caiaphas and Annas had done it. He had been a long time in the Provincial Service, and he knew what men like that could do to gain an end. But he never looked towards where my mistress stood, gripping my arm.
The shouting grew louder, and the interpreter had to yell at the top of his voice even to be heard on the terrace.
"I will free him to you for the Passover. Rome frees your King to you in honour of the Feast." And he gestured to the soldiers to turn Jesus round and show him to the mob. The mob howled for death. And for Bar Abbas.
"Free us Bar Abbas" they were yelling. Every year since he came as governor, and I think in his predecessor's time before him, the Romans freed someone as a token towards the Jewish Passover, since it is against the Jewish Law to draw blood or punish anyone that day. Pilatus still tried to offer Jesus to them, and the roars of, "Bar Abbas, give us Bar Abbas" shook the air like thunder rolling, and echoed off the buildings and set the pigeons flying round the gold roof of the Temple as if it was a grove of Ashtaroth. Which it used to be, according to Baruch.
There were more yells of, "Are you Caesar's friend or enemy?" More of the crowd flooded over the parapet, pushing close to the inner line of body guards. There was going to be bloodshed soon, and Pilatus started to waver.
He had not much time to decide. Caiaphas and Annas saw that they had won and went forward, shaking their fists and then tearing their clothes, or at least the ritual white linen gowns that covered their robes. It was a sign of ultimate desolation, and despair of Justice.
"He has blasphemed against the One God. He must die for it, Pilatus, or else we must go to Rome for Justice."
"Then take him and kill him yourselves," Pilatus shouted, gripping the sides of his judgement seat so hard that the cloth hangings fell away, and showed the white marble underneath.
"It is against our Law to shed blood so near the Passover. Let him be crucified according to your Law. He rose against the Emperor. He deserves death for it. Crucify him, Pilatus, as an enemy of Rome."
That was the end of it. Pilatus made a sign of resignation, and spoke to the nearest scribe, and the interpreter. "Let it be done as you wish." Then he stood up and his Staff made a passage for him, and he went towards the palace and disappeared.
The crowd yelled and roared in triumph, shaking their fists at the carpenter who only five days ago had ridden into Jerusalem to hear the same voices yelling, "Hail to the King, all hail to David's heir, Hosanna to David's Son."
The soldiers took him back to the pillar where they had beaten him and crowned him. They crowned him again and out of hatred of the Jews, and contempt for them, they put on his scarlet cloak before they took him down to the level where the beams were kept and the men who would see to the execution were waiting. The Governor's body guards never dirtied their hands with crucifixions, or escort duties of that kind. That was left to provincial troops, that the Romans call Auxiliaries. They came out of the lower entrance beside the parapet about ten minutes later. Ten men and a centurion, surrounding Jesus who was carrying his beam on that hunched shoulder of his.
He staggered as he came into the sunlight, and I thought that he would never carry it out of the City, let alone as far as Golgotha, where the executions took place, if there were only a few of them. The beam for a crucifixion, if you have never seen one, is six or seven feet long according to the size of the man who is to be hanged on it, and the timber is half a foot thick and wider again than that. Even the smallest of them would be heavier than I could lift, and I have told you that Jesus was a small man and already broken by that scourging. I could see his face, we were so close to him, above on the terrace. I could see the blood where the thorns were digging into his head. Huge thorns, like nails
I could not see his back because of the cloak and its colour hid any blood that might have showed. But it was running down his legs and his footprints left bloody marks in the dust. I could not imagine him reaching Golgotha, I say, and I hoped he would not. Let God be merciful to him, I thought. Let him die now. He was so small. Smaller even than I am.
But he went on, swaying from side to side as the crowd made way. The shouting had died down, and there were throngs of men and market women and whores and all the scum, clustering round Bar Abbas's men who were scattering denarii about like grain at a wedding. Behind Jesus and the men escorting him there were other soldiers leading out Bar Abbas, his hands freed, and his face looking stupid with relief that he was free, and not carrying a beam to Golgotha. He must have thought that he was done for, this time. My mistress leaned down to him and caught his shoulder as he went by beneath us.
"I promised you" she shouted, and he made her a sign that meant both triumph, and what he hoped to do to her that night. She laughed like a mad-woman, there in front of everyone, and shouted, "Tomorrow, Bar Abbas. Tomorrow in your house." She was lost to everything but her victory over the carpenter.
He had no light now, or nothing you could see in that mob, and in the sunlight. Scarlet cloak. Bloody footprints trodden on by the mob behind him. The end of the huge cross beam swaying and tilting, and then falling. The soldiers hauled him upright, and one of them smashed the crown of thorns down over his eyes until it must have blinded him. We followed him, out through the Damascus Gate that's on the other side of the square facing the Audience Terrace and the Praetorium, with only a few yards of street leading to it. Then out along the road to Caesarea and the North. The mob yelling, Caiaphas and Annas jostled and pushed, their priests trying to protect them. They wanted to see it was really done, I suppose, and that Pilatus would keep his word.
Jesus fell again, and a third time before he reached the hill. For part of the way they got a man to help him, and even then he looked as if he would die before they had him crucified. It was a mercy in reality that they had smashed him so much beforehand, although they hadn't meant it to be. I saw women lifting him up one of the times he fell, and one of them was Mary of Magdala. She looked as if she was dying with him, her clothes torn, and cover-ed with dust in sign of mourning. Another woman bathed his face, trying to clear the blood from his eyes, and the cloth she used came away the colour of his cloak, as if you had painted his face on it in blood. There was a whole crowd of women, shrieking and clawing at themselves, and throwing themselves down on the ground in despair that their master was going to be killed.
I felt like shrieking myself, I was sickened by it. Never in all my life had I gone with the crowds that watch crucifixions. I wanted to go home, and shut my ears, and not think of it. Instead my mistress dragged me along as if she had forgotten I was there, and her hand was fastened in my arm like a ring driven into a wall.
"Free yourself!" she was screaming. "Call on your God to free you now!" He must have heard her, because he turned his head once to look at us, and I saw the faun again. I wanted to throw myself down then, and shriek like the other women. But we were already climbing Golgotha. Our own hill of the Ceremonies. We passed close to our own hollow where the Stones lay. Up to the crown of the hill where the Stones had once stood before the days of the Jews and their God.
Now it was crowned with gallows. There were two already complete, with their cross beams, and their victims, because Dismas and Bar Abbas's other lieutenant who had been taken after the Rising had been brought here early in the morning, and were already hanging. Bar Abbas had been kept back in case what eventually happened should happen, and Pilate would need to give him to the Jews for their Passover. It had been a very unimportant Rising. No more than a riot, and neither Tiberius nor anyone else in Rome would so much as hear that the leader of it had been freed, and someone else had been executed in his place. All the reports would tell would be that the carpenter was a rebel against Rome, and that he died for it according to the Roman Law.
Between the two gallows where Dismas and the other man were hanging, there was an upright waiting. I don't want to tell of it, and yet I must. Do you know how they kill a man, the Romans, when they crucify him? They strip him first, down to his loin cloth, because anything else he is wearing belongs to the soldiers who brought him there. Then they lay him down on his back, with the cross beam behind his head, and they stretch out his arms along it and drive a twelve inch iron nail through each palm and into the timber. I saw him shudder with the pain of that, and his muscles contract until they almost tore the hand away from the nail. But they hold the man fast while they are doing it so that that cannot happen. Then the other hand, and he's ready to be lifted up.
It takes three men to lift him onto the upright. One at each end of the cross beam, and one at his legs, supporting the weight of his body so that he won't tear free from the nails. This third executioner fits the condemned man's crutch over a thick wooden peg that's already set in the upright, and that's what takes the most of his weight while he's dying, not his hands. They'd tear apart in five minutes if they had to hold him there. Then the executioners nail his feet. There's a lump of wood for the heels to rest on, and take more of the weight, and they drive a nail through the arches of the condemned man's feet to hold them there, so that he can't throw himself off the cross and down onto the ground, to die on the earth instead of in the air. I heard them saying in the crowd that usually it takes a man at least twelve hours to die like that. A strong man like Bar Abbas would take more. A day and a night, and another day perhaps. But Jesus would never last so long, and in any case he would have to be finished before dusk, because the Jews would not want him hanging there when the Passover began. They break the men's legs usually, to hurry it along if they need to hurry things. With a smith's hammer.
The women who had followed him were still there, and some of his disciples, although not many of those. They must have been still in hiding. But I saw one that I knew by sight, supporting an old woman, and someone told me that that was Jesus's mother, Miriam. She was the only one of the women who was not shrieking, and I was afraid to look into her face. If I had been by myself I think I might have joined the others, but I would not have looked at her.
And as I stood watching, my mistress shivering with excitement and still holding me, they lifted him up between Dismas and the other man, and I saw him hanging against the sky like a great black letter Tau, as if the shape of the letter had a meaning. I put my hands over my eyes.
"His light is dying" my mistress shouted. "Let it be put out!"
I looked, and it was dying. Very faint, like a candle in the sunlight. It was past midday, and burning hot, but I could still see the white flickering of what had been his blaze of power. It was dying with him, as he died, and I could see the darkness gathering, I could see it like a cloak of the Other, of the Enemy, spreading out to hide him, and carry him into the Other's keeping. The sky itself was darkening as I watched, black and purple thunder clouds building towards the storm that had been threatening for days, and never breaking. Coming out of the East, from above the Sea of Salt, like black wings, and battlements. People were watching the clouds already, and calculating when they would break, and if they would spoil the day before it was half over.
Families had brought baskets of food to eat while they watched the executions, and there were parties scattered about on the hill top, drinking. I saw men taking bets on how soon the first of the three would die, and on which would last the longest after his legs were broken. The soldiers who had brought Jesus were gambling for his cloak, although it had never been his except in mockery. I suppose some officer's servant had stolen it, and given it to them for the occasion. Only the women were crying, still clustering round the foot of the cross. Annas and his son-in-law the High Priest had gone as soon as they saw the carpenter lifted up. Perhaps they were ashamed. Or else too hot to stay there.
But we stayed. I know I could not have dragged my mistress away if I had tried. She had sat down on the ground, on a cushion I had brought for her, and she watched him dying as if she was tasting blood and it was like the finest wine. While I watched the storm gathering. And as it gathered, the knowledge grew in me of what we had done. Of what I had seen, those hours before in the garden, in Gethsemane, when my mistress danced for her triumph, calling on Dionysus, and it was the Dark God who came.
With the daylight all that had died in me, like the night's dreams and nightmares, and I had tried to tell myself that I had never seen it, that what we were doing was terrible, but was needed for the God. And that my mistress and Baruch knew best, and there are no rules of mercy or gentleness for Gods when they are in danger. How could I condemn it, or fight against what we were doing? Was I the only one who knew? I told myself all that for hours on end, all through the hurrying about the City to organise the crowd, and the waiting for Pilatus, and the trial, and the coming here to Golgotha. I still tried to tell myself. And I would not look at the cross again in case he might look at me. Because they stay conscious while they are being crucified. That is the point of it,
And all the time the darkness gathered, and I knew why it came, and from where.
I heard one of the other men who were dying cursing Jesus for a coward and a fool. That he hadn't fought with them. But Dismas shouted, "Leave him alone, damn your soul. We knew what we were doing, and we were paid for it, but he had no share in anything." And he said something else in a lower voice that I couldn't hear. But I saw Jesus look towards him, lifting his head, and whispering an answer. A few minutes after that he worked himself higher on the cross, trying to get his shoulders onto the top of the beam, I think, and his head fell backwards. I told you that I dare not look at him, but after a time I could not look away. He had not seen me there, I think. But I found I had crept closer, leaving my mistress behind me where she was sitting, and I was half way between her and the women round the cross. I saw the heaving of his chest as he tried to lift himself higher still to get some ease, and the blood running again where the wounds in his back were opening against the timber. It ran down his legs onto his feet, and dripped to the ground. The day had grown so dark that some of the Jews began to cover their heads for the beginning of the Passover, and to pray aloud, although the real dark was still three hours away.
I heard Jesus calling out in Aramaic. "My Lord, my God, why have You deserted me?" and I had to push my knuckles into my mouth to stop myself from screaming. Drops of rain were already falling, thick and warm as blood, and one splashed on my face and I was afraid to touch it in case my hand came away stained red. Some men and their wives who had been picknicking were gathering up their things and beginning to run down the hillside towards the road. The soldiers were pulling cloths over their breastplates to shelter them from the rain and getting rusted, and the man who had won the scarlet officer's cloak was bundling it up small to keep it dry.
" Let him die soon!" I was praying, and I felt the wounds in my own back and in my hands and feet, as I had felt them when my mistress beat me, and as I lay sobbing afterwards. And I knew that his pain was worse, so much worse that I knelt down with the sudden agony of it, I could not stand up.
And I knew Who he was, and beyond all doubting I knew what we had done. He looked down at me, then, at last, and He knew me, and I knew that He knew my soul, and all that I had done, and why, and that there was no corner of the dark in which I could hide from Him. That He hung there for me, and because of me. And for everyone. I think I fainted, and when I could kneel up again he was dead.
Not long after that they took him down. The rain had begun falling like a curtain, and the ground was slippery with wet. My hair clung to my head, and my clothes were sodden with it. So were my mistress's. Almost everyone was gone from the hilltop, except the soldiers, and the women, and ourselves, and a few men. One of the men spoke to the soldiers, and showed them something under the shelter of a cloak. A letter, or a permit from the Praetorium, I think, because the soldiers gave him the body, and let two men take it away. The other condemned men, Dismas and the one who had cursed Jesus were still hanging there, and the executioners were breaking their legs to get it over with. Then the soldiers marched away, leaving them, and the hill. The two men I spoke of lifted Jesus and wrapped him in a burial cloth and carried him down the other slope.
The women followed them, and we followed the women. No one noticed us. There was a garden half way down that north slope, with some olive trees on narrow terraces. It must have belonged to one of the two men who were carrying Jesus, or to a friend of theirs, and there was a tomb there, cut in the hillside, out of the rock.
They went into the tomb, and laid the body down, and came out again. If it had been another day than the friday, and just before the Passover, they would have stayed I suppose, and prepared the body for proper burial. But as it was they only laid him down, and closed the opening of the tomb with a big stone that rolled along a deep groove like a mill stone, and went away. After a few more minutes the women went too, their heads bent under the weight of the rain, and what had happened. Until we were alone there, hidden among the olive trees. My mistress went slowly towards the closure stone, and touched it, the rain shining on her face.
"It is done" she said. "May he rest in Hell."
CHAPTER 9
What can I tell of what happened then? How can I explain it to you who may read this book? I cannot explain it to myself. I knew who He was that we had helped to kill, and yet I still did not understand. I do not understand today. How could it have been?
We went home, on foot, drenched, the rain running from us in streams. And I bathed my mistress in the hot pool to warm her. She wanted me to join her, but I would not, and she did not care much what I did, she was so self-absorbed in her triumph. She ate and drank, and allowed me to dress her for the Ceremony, and scarcely spoke, only shivering with a kind of ecstacy at what had happened, and at the thought of the Offering she had made, and would make tonight, to the God.
I have told you, I think, that that friday was one of the Great Ceremonies of the year. It would last three hours, from nine in the night until midnight. And I tried to think that it would be as she thought it would, and that Dionysus would come, and Aphrodite, and they would lift my mistress up in glory. In the next moment I shook with fear that it would be the Other who would come, and claim us for His. I tried to tell her, and my tongue seemed to stick to the palate of my mouth, and I could not say anything. Only bathe and dress her, and kneel to serve her, and then dress myself and go with her back to Golgotha, and the beginning of the Ceremony.
The rain had stopped. The streets were almost empty, since all the Jews were indoors preparing for the Passover, or already asleep. Along the road we saw the white glimmer of the onlookers gathering, and the novices and the initiates, walking towards the hill where the two men must still be dying, or were already dead but still hanging there, for the crows tomorrow.
Every member of the Cult in Jerusalem must have been there that night. Five, six hundred of them, more. Every onlooker, every novice, every initiate. Although Baruch was missing. I think that he was so softly cunning that he suspected what might happen. I took his place as Celebrant. And stood shivering in my nakedness while the prayers began.
They go on for a long time, those opening prayers at a Great Ceremony. Or used to. And before they were ended the light of the Celebrants should already have grown strong. But this time they ended and there was nothing. Nothing at all. Only the darkness, and the cold, and the few stars overhead as the clouds went racing, taken by a wind high up that we could scarcely feel. I knew already what was happening, or what had already happened. And my shivering grew worse. The other Celebrants saw it, staring at my mistress, at her pale nakedness, the white necklace of sea shells glistening against white skin. The silver knife in her hand as the High Priest brought the black cockerel to her to be killed. Still nothing. Only the brazier's light, and the smell of burning entrails, and then the scream of the small black pig. And its swift struggling as it died.
A dead Ceremony. Dead. Nothing there except the cold. I felt the cold as I had never felt it, even as a novice who has no part in the Ceremonies, except to watch and fear. I saw my mistress shivering, and I saw her growing more and more afraid. But she went on. And still there was nothing. Nothing except the dark, and the cold, and the fear. Behind me I heard the onlookers murmuring, and the novices, and the initiates whispering together. The Ceremony dragging itself like a dying thing.
The first stone hit the High Priest in the back, and drove him forward as he was holding out his silver cup for the wine. I turned and saw the onlookers, that scum of the Cult I told you of in the beginning, coming silently towards us. Not running, not moving quickly. But slowly, bending down to pick up more stones. They knew that we had betrayed the Cult. Betrayed the God. And they were going to kill us. They were going to stone us there on Golgotha within a half mile of where he had died, and something in me wanted to stay where I was, and let them kill me.
But fear of the body's death is stronger than all other fears, although you do not think it will be until the moment comes. And I ran, naked as I was, and caught my mistress by the arm, and dragged her away from the brazier. I even caught up our clothes, or someone's clothes, and we ran like hunted things while the stones struck the ground behind us, and smashed against the rock, sending rock splinters whirring and hissing at our heels. I saw one of the priests fall, and ten men gathering round him, their arms lifted to bring the stones down. He screamed once, and they went on killing him in silence. There were people running everywhere, novices, initiates, and those onlookers who thought the Cult was theirs, and that we had destroyed it for them. How did they know what we had done? But some of them were Bar Abbas's men. Of course they knew. And had had their chieftain back from us, and their money, and their freedom. Now they turned on us. But I did not think of that, or of anything, as we ran. Only of hiding, and of living, and not dying under their stones. When only a few hours before I would have welcomed death.
We got free of them, making our way right round the hill, among the rocks, and the bushes, and the few olive trees and the oaks that must once have covered it. Until we were out of danger, and could think of what we should do.
"We cannot go home" my mistress said. "Not now, not tonight. They would come and find us, and burn down the house." I could see her face in what light there was from the stars, and it seemed to have grown old, and haggard. She stared at me as if she still did not understand. "He is dead" she kept whispering, "Do They not understand? He is dead. He is dead."
And we were outside the tomb.
She went and touched the door again. "Stay there" she said. She laid both her hands against the grey surface that was still wet with rain. "Stay there. I command you. It is all over. I have won. Do you remember Bethany, and what you said? You told them I had anointed you for burial. Now it has come." She sank down by the stone half laughing and half crying, but neither of them the way a sane woman laughs or cries. I tried to pull her away, and she clung to the stone. "Leave me alone! Leave me alone! I want to tell him how it happened." And she began whispering, whispering, hour after hour, while her body shivered, and grew still, and shivered again. I could not get her away, and she became like ice, and I felt as if I was touching ice as I touched her. I tried to warm her with my body, and I was so cold that I could no longer feel my hands. I went then and huddled myself against the trunk of a tree, and watched her, too cold to think of anything, too wretched.
She must have stayed like that for three hours on end. The sky cleared, and there were ten thousand stars, frost glittering. It was as cold a night as winter. I could not think, or speak, or control my body from its shivering, I thought we would both die there of the cold, and I no longer cared. Only watched her as she lay against the stone, whispering and raving, and caressing it with claw hands. She had grown old. Old, old. I thought that even her flesh had shrivelled, although it was only shadows, the dark light of the stars.
And then, as if the stars had grown nearer, there was a light in the sky, a soft haze of light like the stars falling, growing, growing, until the hillside was as bright as dawn, and I felt the light taking hold of me, and not my body but my soul shivering, in terror. The light was gathering round the tomb. I saw my mistress flung to one side as if she was rags, filth swept away by the wind. The stone moved, it rolled to one side, and there was such light behind it, such light inside the tomb, that I covered my eyes and I still saw it, as one sees the lightning. A white blaze of fire, and he was there, walking. Only he had grown tall, and beautiful.
But he was still wearing the scarlet cloak they had put on him, or seemed to be, and he was still crowned with thorns. I saw the blood, and the agony of what had happened. I saw His face, and the pain, and the blood running from the thorns, and I knew that the pain was fastened to Him for ever, that we had fastened it. He held out His hands, and I thought that He held them towards me, and showed me the wounds of the nails. There was light from them, and it burned my eyes like the lightning, like looking into the sun I fell on my knees, and lay face down as if I was dying. And I still saw the light, that blazing from His hands, and all His body, and the tomb behind Him, and the haze of light like a net of stars falling from the Heavens. I thought I heard singing, ten thousand voices singing.
And I lay waiting to die of the thing I had done.
Until the rocks hurt my face and my body where I was lying, and I looked round me and He was gone. I knelt up, and my mistress was kneeling. She was no longer mad, no longer whispering. I could see her clearly, see her face and eyes, as if some light had stayed with us. And I saw in her face that she too knew now what we had done. She got to her feet, staggering as he had staggered under the weight of the beam, and began running from me. She ran and ran, stumbling and falling, running down the hillside, eastwards, towards the dawn that was still hours away. And I ran after her. I did not call out, and after a time I had no breath for calling. I caught up with her, and we ran together. And fell into a stumbling walk, and ran again as if we were pursued by Furies, and terror gave us strength. Ran for miles, until we were in the desert, and the dawn was coming. The shadows fled behind us, and the sky grew light. We were near Qumran and the Sea of Salt, and there was nothing but the desert round, us, rocks and sand, and the road, and stunted, salt-withered trees.
One tree by itself, its arms twisted outwards from the trunk, writhing and knotted as if it had hands that beckoned. I could not walk any more and I sank down onto my knees. But my mistress went towards the tree and knelt in front of it. It was so quiet in that place that I could hear the sound of the hornets murmuring, that must have lived in the tree's hollow trunk. And I knew what she was going to do, and watched her, unable to move, to cry out, even to think it strange that she should find them there, waiting for her. The messengers.
I saw her open the white cloak I had snatched up for her, and lay her naked breast against the opening of the withered tree. I could see the dark flecks of the hornets as they flew out of the nest or round it, disturbed by her, and recognising her scent. I saw some of them on her white shoulders, and her neck. Recognising, welcoming. I made myself stand up, go forward, and I did not know if it was to hold her back from what she meant to do, or to share in it. But before I reached her it was done. She forced both her hands into the nest and tore it open, and the hornets still swarmed about her, bewildered, unable to understand what she was doing, or why, she who came from their Lady and belonged to Her.
Then they stung her. Driving their stings deep into her breast and throat And she knelt there not moving, not crying out, until she died.
POSTSCRIPT
That is the story I set out to tell you, so many days ago. And how it ended. As for me, I stayed beside her for a long time, and then I went away into Qumran, and could not tell anyone what had happened. After a little while I did not want to tell. A man with a covered cart allowed me to ride back with him to Jerusalem. And I went to our house, and took the box of jewels, and all the money I could find, and all the silver and gold ornaments, and I broke the box open and emptied everything into a leather sack, and carried it away. I brought Shaltan with me for protection, and bought a donkey, with a saddle and a covering-hood, and hired a serving man to lead it where I wanted to go.
We travelled east, for days and days, out of Palestine into Mesopotamia, until we came to Babylon, and here to this village. Then I paid the serving man his wages and bought this house from a villager, and I have stayed here for sixty years. Waiting. I hear things of the great world. People come by, and some of them stop and talk to me. It has become known to certain people who I am, and where. That is how Simon the scribe found me, Bar Abbas’s son, and said that he wanted to stay with me, I do not know why. Perhaps I am a memory of his father, who died long ago, as thieves do. Perhaps it was written he should come, being a trained scribe, so that I might tell my story, and he should write it down, and you should read it. May all be done according to God's Will.
May it be done to me. And as She wills it, Who is my True Mistress whom I abandoned long ago. I am waiting for Her to come.
The End
|