Fifth Gospel (42 page)

GRAIL SPEAR

T
he
strange
day was now near over. Each hour had caused Gaius Cassius to grow more anxious for what he was seeing and hearing, for in all of it he felt the acknowledgement of a peculiar truth.

Since his failed initiation he had held onto the only
sure thing in his life – duty. But now this duty was pulling away and leaving him no firm foundation. For the deepest duty of an initiate was to keep the secrecy of the mysteries and these had been violated and revealed before the eyes of all through this man Jesus.

This made him ask himself over and over
:

What kind of
man is this?

The more he asked it
the further did he seem from his duty.

How many had he seen crucified? Hundreds in his time, and yet he had never heard th
ose words – ‘My God, how you have elevated me!’ – a phrase uttered by every initiate who is raised!

This was an
initiate. He had no doubt!

And yet
…

W
hat kind of initiate is this?

T
he more he grew meek and frail, the more he was beaten and tortured, the more abundant was his compassion and love for all who tormented him. And what kind of influence did he have over the elements when the greater his compassion the more the yellow storm clouds grew in the sky?

By observing these portents and signs, by these slow means
, there began in Cassius’ soul a certain change and a species of knowledge rose to his mind.

This crucified man is more than an initiate
!

Did he not speak
, of the glory of God in him? Of
Exousia,
which meant that his body was enlightened by Mithras?

This was the ancient mystery wisdom:

Through God we are born!

He
recalled that afternoon in Galilee when, beside Claudia Procula, he had seen the light of the sun spill out of Jesus. Now he wondered how he could have put such a vision from his mind?

‘This man is surely the Son of God!’ he said aloud.

The Centurion Abenader was hard-hearted and yet even he was stopped with a look of amazement, for he too could see it.

In
the midst of the tempest of air and light and earth, Cassius observed foot soldiers coming up the incline. By the time they reached the hillock, the daystar had grown cold and lifeless and was hidden so deep in the clouds that it seemed to Cassius to be a manifestation of the portents of those sibyls who had long ago foretold the end of the world.

The
Temple guards, led by a captain, approached the crosses in haste and shouted for those Jews who had remained, the three women and one youth, to move out of the way.

Cassius knew what they had come to do and yet he went to them and in the confusion of wind and dust and
storm shouted in Aramaic,

‘Halt!’

The captain shouted back, so as to be heard, ‘Rome recognises our custom!’

‘You
may break the legs of those two.’ he pointed to the malefactors. ‘For they are yet alive, the other in their midst, is by now dead!’

The captain of the guards, no doubt desiring to have it over with, did not argue but sent two guards to fight through the moving air to the crosses. They did not climb the ladders
, but took their iron staves and broke only the legs of the men, who in turn uttered terrible cries as they struggled for breath.

These abuses made the storm tossed women below moan and hold
onto each other. The swirling world tore bites from their robes and beat into their faces but they did not move.

‘I need to be certain this one is dead!’ shouted the captain and moved forward to his
task, but at that moment Gaius Cassius saw before his eyes his dream made real.

This was
that cold day forsaken by sun, and obscured by cloud in the penumbral light! He saw that he was standing before the God Mithras! Mithras was upon that illuminated cross, defying the darkness! Overpowering was the memory of a child now, a child with stars over his head who had become a man and whose eyes were like suns! When had he seen this child? Was it at Bethlehem aeons ago?

An impulse came through him:

I am a Son of Fire and I will use the lance of fire!

He
intercepted the captain of the Jew guard and shouted into his face, ‘In the name of Caesar Tiberias I order you to give me your lance!’

The man, confused by wind and this strange command
, did not know what to do.

‘NOW!’

The man acquiesced.

Cassius went to the body of Jesus and with a hand to shi
eld his eyes from the sand-dust lifted the weapon to the dead man’s chest and made a thrust upwards, plunging the Jew spear deep into the light body of the God.

He shouted, ‘He is dead
, do you see!’

From the world we enter the spirit!

He said the ancient mystery words to himself.

‡

‘Blood and water, rose-warm life, now sprayed over him,
pairé
, and fell into his eyes. A tremble came from the heart of the earth and tore at the very foundations of the world and the sky let loose a great crack of thunder, rending the skies, and among these tempers he saw Christ in all of His fullness and truth, in all of His majesty and splendour. Christ now showed Gaius Cassius Longinus a distant future.

‘Tell me Lea…what did he see?’

‘He saw a man upon a great mountain fortress, gazing backwards in time at him. In that moment, the two places were woven into the same space in life’s evolving stream, and those two souls could look upon one another knowing the other as himself.

‘
It was only an instant, but to Cassius it was an eternity, gazing with wonder and awe at all that would pass in between: sorrows and battles, births and deaths, lifetimes.

‘And what of
Cassius?’

‘
He never again said,
all is dust and shadows
,
pairé.
He never again saw life darkly for the scales had been torn from his eyes by that light, which illuminates memory to dispel the blindness of death.

The light of Christ
which is the fount of eternal life.’

HOLY GRAIL

During those fourteen days we said our goodbyes and celebrated our love. Those who had chosen the pyre gave away their belongings: the other perfects gave Pierre-Roger a coverlet full of deniers, I gave him a small present of oil, some salt, and a piece of green cloth for his devotion, and the Marquésia de Lantar gave all her possessions to her grand-daughter Philippa who was Pierre-Roger’s wife. Others gave whatever they had, some small memento, a favourite hat, a purse, a little wax, even their shoes.

I gave the
consolamentum
to those of our people who desired it and even two knights and a great number from the garrison. These men could have walked away from death but they chose to die with us.

So began the days of
preparation for our martyrdom.

In the meantime
Matteu the troubadour arrived stealthily in the night. He spent some days with us telling stories and amusing the children and the adults alike. Soon he would leave us to take away the Gospel of John, the Book of Seven Seals, and that speechless child, the charge of the Marquésia. But we would only know if they had reached safety by the sign – a fire on the summit of Bidorta.

One day I came across
Matteu while walking the courts. He was nearing fifty-four springs and yet he was hale and strong, his brow full of things seen and done and his eyes reflecting a youthful spirit.

He fell to his knees before me
but I asked him to rise. I told him I was not worthy of his adoration.

‘But you are a
parfait
, my friend!’ he said.

‘Who in the world can call himself perfect?’ I
said to him and took him aside to the gate now open to the expanse of the mountains. We both sat quietly together for a time, staring out, until I told him I wanted to speak to him about his songs.

He
looked at me then with that intrepid eye, no doubt bracing himself for one of my invectives.

‘No…no,’ I said
, with a laugh, ‘I am not going to rebuke you. I wanted to say that I have grown some sense of this song of the Grail that you sing.’

His face opened up in a smile, ‘
You? What do you think it is then, a stone or a cup?’

I said
that I thought it to mean many things. I said that it was Jesus who came to earth to be the vessel for the Lord, that it was the soul of every man, the soul full of faith in Christ, and also that it was the earth and all its creatures, for it had taken up the body and the blood of Christ.

Matt
eu fell silent and thoughtful with his face to the dying sun.

He said finally,
‘Do you know, old friend, I dream that it is a woman, a woman holding her dead son…sometimes I think I see it when the moon is only a sickle…sometimes it looks like that to me, like a vessel.’

I nodded
with a smile to myself. ‘Yes that is a good likeness.’

‘
You know,’ his voice changed, suddenly full of enthusiasm, ‘I think after this I shall sing a new song…I shall sing how once upon a time a castle of the Grail was threatened by the Devil’s armies and that at the time of the greatest danger a dove flew down from the heavens to split open the summit of Bidorta over there…with its beak. I will sing how Esclarmonde de Foix, the angel keeper of the Grail, threw the cup into the heart of that mountain to keep it safe. Do you think they will look for it a long time, thinking that it is in the mountains,
pairé,
because of my song?’

I smiled
. ‘Yes, I think they will.’

‘They
may burn all the pure ones, you know, but I will sing how Esclarmonde did not die, I will sing that she turned into a dove and flew off from the very top of the keep to the mountains of the land of Prester John, and that is why her grave will never be found!’

Prester
John? There was something in that!

I looked at him.
‘But Esclarmonde has been dead many years.’

‘Yes
of course,’ he said, ‘but just between you and me, Bertrand, I feel her presence every now and again, in the night. She whispers songs into my ears…she is so beautiful!’ He seemed to remember something then. ‘When you came out of that hiding spot in Beziers, with fire all around, you told me that a beautiful woman had woken you in the night and told you to hide in the woods, I just remembered it!’

I paused, struck by
his words, for something was now making perfect sense to me. I clapped him on the back. ‘Yes, she saved my life and I don’t think I have ever properly thanked her for it!’

We sat then for a time with our memories until he stood to leave.

I told him to go with God.

His face broke out in a wrinkled smile. ‘And you!’

When he left my
heart grew weary and sad and I sat upon that rock looking out long after the sun had set. I had said goodbye to a dear friend that I hardly knew! For in all the years I had seen him barely a dozen times. This strange, paradoxical friendship would only be made clear to me in the upper room when Lea came again to spin her words. For it was then that I would begin to see who Matteu had been in lives gone past, though I would not know our bond until much later, as you will see.

‡

Joseph had remained awake all night after the trials. He had watched the scourging and had followed the dismal procession to Golgotha. He was now on his way back again to the gallows, after receiving Pilate’s authority to remove the body of his Lord to the place of burial.

As
he walked beside his friend Nicodemus he realised what a fool he was to have thought himself near death all these months. For when his master had asked him to go home to prepare his grave he had meant that he must build a sepulchre in which His body could be laid. And as Joseph toiled the road to Golgotha now he held this goal firmly in mind.

B
ehind him his servants carried the articles necessary for the burial, vases of water, bottles of unctions, bundles of linen and a litter. Nicodemus carried costly spices in barrels of bark strapped around his neck, while Joseph himself carried a lantern in one hand and in the other a flask of wine and the cup of Jasper used by Christ Jesus at the Passover feast to fortify those who had remained at the cross.

The sun had been dark all afternoon but now it began to hide itself altogether and the wind came up like a living thing, playing with their robes, flustering the flame in the lanterns and taking the cloths from out of the hands of
the servants. A sudden, sonorous rumble was heard and a number of hastening temple guards passed their group, taking themselves to the place of execution. By the time the little party had reached Golgotha Joseph caught a glimpse through the mayhem of windblown rubble and chaos, of a spectacle – a man was piercing the side of his master with a lance!

For the first time in his long life Joseph moved without a thought. Thrown away
was his prudence and let go was the lantern and the flask. He ran through the storm of dust to the cross. How could he allow his master’s blood to fall on the ground? In a moment he was kneeling beneath the stream of blood, holding the cup to catch its flow.

A
fterwards he looked at the centurion and a feeling passed over his heart that one day he would see that spear which the man held in his hands and it would give him a vision of this moment as he stood beneath the cross.

He
stammered when he told the centurion that he had a dispensation from Pilate to take the body down from the cross in order to bury it in his own tomb. And he was surprised to find both the centurion with the spear and the other man, strangely full of tenderness for the body of his master. They tied it with cords and drew the nails out one by one, lowering it slowly from ladders, one rung at a time, and gave it into the hands of Nicodemus. Together the three men took it to the mother, who sat upon the ground with the woman, Magdalena.

The wind paused
and the rumble grew quiet. In this sudden, otherworldly silence, Joseph was taken by a vision.

C
louds parted to allow a soft light to console the mother, who held her dead son. The world lay in hushed adoration of it. Even the moans and sobs of the women who had come to join them in their doings were now paused. Standing before this vision, holding the cup in his hand, a second realisation came. Joseph fell to his knees. Here was that image that he had seen in the heavens standing in his garden those months ago, but then it had taken the form of a slice of moon holding the dark disc of the sun! He looked to the cup and he looked to the mother in that light-radiance. He understood – mother and cup were one. For a mother’s soul held her Son like the cup in Joseph’s hands held His blood!

The light faded
and night was drawing near. Joseph had to quite his thought to lead the others to his tomb for soon would commence the Sabbath.

‡

‘It was later, after Jesus had been laid in the tomb and near the hind of morning,
pairé
, that Joseph, replete with sadness, was making his way home again. Through the dark and windy streets he walked contemplating all that had come before when not far from his house he was arrested by armed soldiers and taken by force to a tower, a deserted turret that formed a part of the city wall. There he was locked in a cell.

‘
Legend tells that it was among the rats and the dampness that Joseph would experience the full teachings of the risen Christ, even as the other disciples experienced it, and so nourishing was it for his soul that though he was given no food and no water he did not die. All were astonished when they set him free, especially those high priests of the Sanhedrin who had ordered his arrest. But Joseph knew,
pairé
, what they did not know, that a man does not live by bread alone.

‘
And so, as the moon had shown Joseph that morning in his garden he was destined to become the first guardian of this sacred knowledge, which he took westward to the island of Glastonbury, to that land of Druid priests. They would come to call this knowledge, The Mystery of the Holy Grail.’