Fifth Gospel (33 page)

A ring of laughter circulated the room.

‘Really? And I wonder if you are the
traitor
that was promised!’ Caiaphas said, to a further chorus of laughter. He leant forward and threw a bag at Judas, like a bone to a dog, and watched him bend low to catch it.

When
Judas straightened he did not draw the string to peer inside the bag.

‘Thirty pieces,’ Caiaphas informed the elders, ‘You can count it if you like
,’ he said to Judas, ‘that is the measure of your master’s worth!’

‘
How should I point him out?’ Judas said.

‘Where does he spend the Passover feast?’ Caiaphas asked.

‘In the cenacle of the Essene house.’

Caiaphas pursed his lips in concentration.
‘He cannot be seized there, it is a sanctuary erected over David’s tomb. No. He will be protected by virtue of this. You will have to wait until he goes out. Take the guards to him then, when the population are in their houses asleep, so that it is done quietly and with a minimum of fuss.’

Judas hesitated and Caiaphas grew concerned that the man was developing a late pang for his wrongdoing.

‘What will you do to him?’ Judas said, finally.

‘Do to him?’ Caiaphas raised his brow
, a little amused. He prepared to flick away this annoying insect called, Judas. ‘That is no longer your concern, for you are on different ground now, since you have sold your loyalty. Go earn your wages!’ As he said it he made a gesture of dismissal and the man stood a moment looking about him, unsure of what to do before giving them his back and running out of the chamber like a phantom into the night.

Caiaphas was weary. He put his staff on the stone dais
, and leaning on it for support stood, glancing his eye about the room, his mind already contemplating a good scratch against a rock wall.

‘We go!’
he said.

LAST SUPPER

I
look behind
me now to see that
the sky is near tinged with a soft promise of light. How different everything is from this place below the fortress!

I
remember that terrible night, when the garrison tried to take back the barbican. A detachment of men had traversed the narrow space between it and the fortress, to come upon the French by surprise. All had gone well until one of them disturbed a rock and alerted the enemy. A terrible fighting had broken out on the steep slopes then and our men had tried to make a hasty retreat back to the fortress, but they had found the narrow pass blocked from behind. The valiant knights of Pierre Roger de Mirepoix fought desperately to break through the barrier of knights and archers. Thankfully, they had managed to make a way to the gates, dragging the wounded behind them before the French could storm the fortress, but not before countless knights and soldiers had fallen to their deaths.

I hope we do
not find their bodies scattered along our path. What grief would we feel then? I do not wish to think on it.

Once inside the gates
, our knights and archers fought to repel the Crusaders, some of whom had pushed their way in as far as the forecourt where a skirmish had broken out.

In that terrible commotion the wounded were
set down in any place available. It was dark and only a few torches were lit, making it difficult to see, but the smell of blood and the cries of pain directed us to those who were dying. I went from man to man, each more wounded than the next by way of sword or arrow fire. All of them wanted the
convenenza
; the consoler, the Holy Spirit, which had been promised to every man in John’s Gospel. At the time I was troubled about whether I should give it, though I knew the gesture would offer such a comfort that I could not, in all conscience, withhold it.

That was when the Marqu
ésia de Lantar came to me, and I hardly recognised her due to my panic and the darkness. She was old and determined, she wanted the
consolamentum
.

‘Why now, Marqu
ésia? In this turmoil!’

‘I will go to help
, and I do not wish to die without it,’ she said.

‘Come, what can you do? There are younger
persons who can do such tasks.’

‘
It was a woman who killed Simon de Montfort!’ she said with some pride. ‘In all that fighting in Toulouse, a woman threw a rock from the barricades and it hit that devil right between the eyes and killed him! I don’t want to kill a man,
pairé
, but I will offer to help with the wounded, that, at least, I can do.’

I thought of that
young boy wandering the fortress alone, the child who could not speak and whose eyes penetrated deep into the world. I asked her about her charge,

‘W
ill you not think of him?’

‘Come now,
pairé
, you and I both know I will not leave this place! Whether I die helping or I die on the pyre…it is all the same…the boy will be taken care of…he is not destined to die here. I have already arranged for my son-in-law to have the troubadour take him away.’

Screams tore the night in two then
. I could barely see the Marquésia’s determined face. I took her hastily aside.

‘If you receive the
consolamentum
you will not be able to deny it, since to deny the Holy Spirit is the greatest sin…is that clear to you?’

‘Yes,
pairé
,’ she said, ‘I know it.’

‘You wish to embrace the faith?’

‘Yes,
pairé
, bless me.’

‘Then kneel, my dear.’

I asked her the ritual questions and she answered them, and then came time for the solemn promise.

‘
Firstly,’ I said, ‘you must dedicate yourself to God, and to John’s Gospel. You must never lie, never take an oath, never have any contact with a man, nor kill an animal, nor eat meat….’

‘I promise,’ she said.

‘And you must promise never to betray your faith, no matter what death awaits you.’

‘I promise.’

I gave her the benediction and placed the Gospel of John near for her to kiss, now my hands found her head and I prayed for the Holy Spirit to descend upon her. I said the Lord’s Prayer as I had done countless times but now a peculiar thing happened. It seemed to me that I was not hearing my voice alone, but another voice, a higher voice, a voice weaving with mine. Recollection of the words of the Bath-Kol came to me, recollections of the transfiguration, and all of the words spoken by Christ Jesus. They welled inside me, I could feel the mighty power of their wisdom entering into me, and oh! What a love did I then feel to know it! A love more rapturous than words can tell! The light of the spirit flowed through my hands like fire, a flame of gleaming colours and lights that came pouring out from me into the Marquésia to make her glow. Between us, wisdom moved the soul to pictures and I saw how Christ lived in me and in the Marquésia. I saw how He lived in every man who came and went, both within the fortress and without. He was in every child and woman, He was even in the inquisitors and the French who fought us.

I don’t know how long we stood there, the Marqu
ésia and I, locked in the flow of heaven’s grace, only a moment perhaps, and yet it seemed like hours. When the spirit finally let go of us I was left expanded, panting and shaken. I looked at the form of the Marquésia as she knelt and told her she was pure now, blameless like a rose. I touched her back with the Holy Book, and she stood and was paused a moment. I could sense that she had felt the strength of the spirit, as I had felt it.

‘Thank you,
pairé
,’ she said, wiping her face, perhaps wet with tears. ‘I have always wondered how I would feel when I received the
consolamentum.
Now I know it does not matter how I feel…but how Christ feels in me! That is what matters!’ she said this and walked away from me.

For my part
I stood in that court with the sounds of battle fading to nothing and no other noise save the beating of my heart in my ears. And in that moment I knew without a doubt that among the errors of our faith we had managed to understand one truth, that it was possible for every person to receive the Holy Spirit. I also knew that despite our suffering, or perhaps because of our suffering, this understanding was destined to be our most important gift to the world.

When I fell out of this peaceful reverie and
returned to the world of men I saw that the garrison had managed to repel the French assailants. They had retreated to the barbican and the gates were closed again. So many lay dying I could not walk without stepping over the mutilated bodies.

Two nights later
Lea came again; she said she would tell of the crown of all earthly misunderstandings.

‘I will
show you how a God died an earthly death in the body of a man and how He raised this man to a God.’ She said, and I opened my spirit’s heart to her.

A
s she began to weave her wonders into my soul I imagined that I was walking a path lit by the light of an Easter moon; I imagined that ahead of me stood a diaphanous apparition, paused, with her hand outstretched. On her brow, the evening star spread its rays like wings, and made her gleam like a silver ghost in the moonlight.

She asked me, ‘What comes before love?’

‘Faith,’ I told her.

‘
Then do not be tempted to sleep,
pairé
,’ she said, ‘For it is on the eve of Passover, upon the sun’s decline into the bosom of the night that the end begins; when the first three stars become visible and the threefold blast of the trumpets from the Temple announce the commencement of the Feast. Now, more than ever…faith is needed.’

I opened my eyes and I realised that I was sitting
at my table and that the quill, having fallen from my hand, had made a blot on the parchment. I realised too that I had been listening to Lea and dreaming her words to life.

‡

On the south side of Mount Zion, there stood a property owned by Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, which they had given over to the Essenes of Jerusalem for their celebrations. Here, in an upper room called the cenacle, a room reached only from the outside by a staircase, Jesus gathered with his disciples for the celebration of the Passover feast.

The room
glowed from the warmth of firelight, and from the windows there came only the scant light of the silver moon rising now in the ocean of black above. The tables, set like a horseshoe, followed the shape of the room and were surrounded by divans upon which the disciples inclined. On the middle divan sat his master, John sat to his left, and on the right sat Judas, with the rest dispersed here and there, according to their fellowship.

The tumultuous events of the past week had given way to a contemplative mood among
and a renewed feeling of gloom, of foreboding, began to fall over those present, which the oncoming night made more real. They could hear the whispering of an unearthly wind that whistled around the walls of the houses, and made the trees shiver – made them shiver. This wind recalled to John the stories of that first Passover, and the sweeping destruction that had been visited on the people of Egypt by the angel of death. That destruction had passed over the houses whose doors were painted with the blood of the lamb. A thought now came to John:

A
blood sacrifice had once saved the people.

He
thought on this as the others ate and talked quietly among themselves, as the women came to refill the cups with wine and the baskets with the unleavened bread. When his eyes fell on Christ Jesus he was taken by his radiant presence and another thought came, like a fish glimmering below the surface of a stream:

He is that image handed down from generation to generation. Jesus is the true Passover lamb!
He must die to save Israel!

Full with this realisation he looked about him but realised that none of his fellows had seen
it, they were hanging on his master’s words.

‘
I have desired to eat this Passover with you,’ he said to them, ‘before I suffer my sacrifice…for I say to you that I will not eat again until the Kingdom of God has fulfilled its task in my body.’

He took a basket full with unleavened bread and gave thanks for it and began breaking it into small pieces
and handed it to those present.

‘This bread is like my body, which I shall sacrifice for you.
A time will come when you will not see me though I am within your hearts. When you eat of the bread, which is made from wheat, remember what I am telling you, that you will be eating of my body, which will have become one with the earth.’

T
aking the jug of wine then he gave thanks and filled a jasper cup and said, ‘Drink this among yourselves.’

He lifted
the cup high.

‘
When you drink wine made from grapes remember, you will be drinking of my blood, which I will have shed for you. Look at this cup. In times to come, when you shall not see me, take comfort, for I will be with you in your soul in the same way that the wine sits in this cup.’ His countenance looked about the group. ‘I will be in the hearts of all, even those who do not love me.’

‘We all love you!’ said Phil
ip.

‘You may say that
, Philip, but even now one among you at this table will betray me.’

John saw anxiety scurry over those faces
in the group, like a light disturbs mice in a dark room. Whispers and looks and wisps of glances were exchanged and all around men fell into disbelief, moving their hands this way and that way.

‘Who is it Lord
. Is it, I?’ one man after another asked.

At this point John
felt as though he were entering a dream. Quietly Lazarus-John, the beloved of his Lord, came into the room. To John’s mind he carried a basin and a pitcher and on seeing him the others began to mumble and to argue among themselves, not as to the betrayer but as to who was closest to their master. In his heart John, son of Zebedee, felt no desire to be greater than the one who was raised from the dead. In fact, he had felt a certain kinship with the beloved of his master. His raising had meant that some strange mystery was affixed to Lazrus, which John did not fully comprehend, but which he knew in his soul to be of profound significance.

In this dream
, he saw his master lay aside his garments and gird himself with a towel. He saw him pour water into a basin, which he brought to the table. No man knew what he was about to do until he knelt and started removing the sandals from Andrew’s feet. Andrew seemed astonished when his master washed them. All were amazed as his master proceeded to the next disciple, and the next.

He continued to wash their feet
, one by one, and while he did so he said to them, ‘Who is greater, the one who sits at the table or the one who serves him? Is it not he who sits at the table? But I sit at the table and yet I also serve those whom I love. For you are like my feet and hands and arms,’ he said to them, ‘what would I do without you? Just as the head must bow down in loving, humble service to all that lives below it, so must I bow down before you who are a part of me…’