Mission (36 page)

The three
magi
arranged to meet in Jerusalem where the ageing king, Herod the Great, had a palace of butter-milk marble. Herod was sixty-seven, stricken with arterio-sclerosis, and surrounded with relatives who had inherited the family gift for intrigue and treachery. Herod, a favoured vassal-king who had been accorded a large degree of autonomy by Rome, was, above all, a survivor. But the constant conspiracies of his ungrateful relatives and would-be revolutionaries had turned him into a malevolent despot who, in his determination to remain in power, had not hesitated to murder his second wife, her brother and mother, and several of his own sons.

It was at this point that The Man proceeded to demolish the rest of St Matthew's story. Apparently, the section dealing with the Nativity had been constructed to perform three separate functions. First, to carry another vital code message. Second, to establish the legitimacy of the claim – made by the early Judeo-Christians – that The Man was the direct descendant of David, Moses and Abraham. Third, as a crude piece of anti-Herodian propaganda.

One of the root causes of Herod's problems was the fact that he was not really a Jew. He was the son of a rich, influential Arab whose family had been forcibly converted to Judaism. This nagging challenge to his legitimacy continued to dog the three sons who assumed power after his death and led to the bad reviews the family got in the Gospels.

I knew it was Miriam's turn to ask questions but I could not help
muscling in. ‘So, there was no meeting between Herod and the three
magi.
'

‘No,' said The Man. ‘The literal interpretation of the promise of a child-king of the Jews from the house of David was just wishful thinking. The important part in that section is the phrase, “
we have seen his star in the east”.
That's the code-message. It was the Persian god, Ahura Mazdao, who was the “star in the east”. Behind that line lay the truth that, with my birth, the power of Ahura Mazdao had entered the world to carry on the fight against ‘Brax.'

‘That gets rid of one headache,' I said. ‘I've been trying to work out how they could have seen Michael's ship in the east. He would have to be orbiting from west to east to match the speed of rotation in order to go into a geo-stationary orbit. Which means that the “Star of Bethlehem” would have risen in the
west.
And then would have hung there as Gaspar and Melchior headed for Jerusalem.'

The Man smiled. ‘Let that be a warning to you. Don't take everything too literally. You have got to dig below the superficial meaning of the words.'

‘What about this story that Joseph had to register at his place of birth?' I asked. ‘Were the Romans really holding a census?'

He gave a non-committal shrug. ‘The reason why we went to Bethlehem was to be with Eliza, Zacharias and Johanan-Gabriel.'

‘Who was now what – six months old?' said Miriam.

‘That's right,' replied The Man.'

I cut in on her next question. ‘Both Matthew and Luke stress the importance of Joseph's family tree. Matthew follows it as far back as Abraham. Luke tracks it all the way back to Adam, then God. But if Joseph wasn't your biological father, you could not have been a blood-relation of Abraham – which makes it a rather pointless genealogical exercise.'

The Man nodded. ‘If it's taken literally. But if you visualise it as referring to some kind of spiritual seed being passed down through Adam to Abraham's line, generation after generation, then those passages begin to make some kind of sense.'

I turned to Miriam. ‘I don't know how you're coping but if we keep going at this rate, I'm going to have to put in for a brain transplant. He's been coming out with stuff like this since I got back from the office at seven.'

‘I know how you feel.' she said.

‘Yes, but do you really think anyone else is going to believe it?' I
insisted. ‘That's what bugs me. The thought that he is telling us all these amazing things and it's all being recorded faithfully but, at the end of the day when we start playing back these tapes, people are going to say we made it all up.'

Miriam exchanged a look with the The Man. ‘Don't worry. I'm sure he'll think of some way to help us put the message across.'

As I write this, I can't help asking myself: Did she know then? Is it possible that he had told her what was going to happen? Or am I, with hindsight, reading more into her words than was ever intended?

‘Okay,' I said. ‘Let's get to where you were born in the manger. You know – “
because there was no room in the inn”.'

‘Sorry,' he smiled. ‘You'll have to delete the straw, the animals and the shepherds watching their flocks by night. That was all written in later to give the story popular appeal. To underscore the idea of rejection by a cruel, uncaring world and give you all a guilty conscience.'

‘So,' said Miriam. ‘No manger.'

He shook his head. ‘I was born in the same room of the same house as Gabriel. There were some animals in the barn underneath but…'

‘When exactly was your birthday?' asked Miriam.

‘Twenty-second of September in the thirty-seventh year in the reign of the Emperor Augustus. Under your present dating system it works out at 7 BC.'

‘That makes you a Libran,' said Miriam.

‘A good sign,' I said. A weighing in the balance. Justice. I checked through some books later. His birthday was well into the middle of
Tishri,
the seventh month in the Jewish calender. Libra was also the seventh sign of the Zodiac. 7 + 9 + 22 = 38, which by reduction (3 + 8) became 11. I know critics of this unproven science say you can manipulate almost any combination to give the desired result but, to students of numerology, it was an interesting set of what were called ‘cosmic numbers'.
Tishri
was, by tradition, the month of ploughing. The opening up of the soil to prepare it for the seed. And I was reminded that the Crucifixion had taken place in
Nisan,
the first month of the harvest, and that the gift of power to the Apostles had taken place in the month of
Sivan,
the period devoted to the tending of the vines.

I looked beseechingly at Miriam. ‘There's one more question I've got to ask.' I turned to The Man. ‘Something that's been worrying me ever since we got on to this subject.'

‘What's that?' he said.

I hesitated, trying to frame the question as coherently as possible. ‘Well – if, as you suggest, ‘Brax had created the conditions that left you marooned on this planet, had fouled up your communication link with Michael and had jammed all signals to the Empire – why didn't he try and wipe you out during that first period of regeneration when you were most vulnerable?'

‘Yes,' said Miriam. ‘I'd like to know the answer to that too.'

He lifted his palms. ‘It's simple.'

I really don't know why he kept saying that.

‘The first thing to understand is that ‘Brax could not actually “wipe me out” in the sense that term implies. He didn't need to. He had already achieved his objective.'

Miriam got in ahead of me. ‘You mean by forcing your regeneration within a human host?'

‘Yes,' said The Man. ‘You remember me telling you why I was reluctant to take that step. Because it meant that I would be subject to the law of
karma.
As long as I remained tied to a human host, I would be at the mercy of ‘Brax – just like anybody else. Of course, I had more power to fight him with, but that only meant he would concentrate more of his energies against me. If I lost that fight and acquired a fatal degree of
karma,
I would be trapped in the World Below for ever.'

‘Well, not quite for ever,' I said, remembering his words about the final triumph of Empire.

‘That's true,' he smiled. ‘But I would have become, like you, a prisoner of Time and Space. A tyranny you cannot fully understand until your return to the World Above. As you say, there is an end, but I would have had an awful long wait.'

‘Am I right in thinking that the Massacre of the Innocents never happened?' asked Miriam.

‘Yes,' he said. ‘But the ingredients of the story were there. If Herod
had
known about the arrival of the three
magi
and their claims that I was the new-born Saviour of Israel, there certainly would have been a massacre. Herod certainly had no intention of allowing his line of succession be usurped by a dubious descendant of the Royal House of David. Herod was no fool. He knew that fulfillment of the prophecies was a cherished tradition among his Jewish subjects. The basis of their philosophy was the unshakeable belief that their past had been shaped by the personal intervention of God, and that their future was
in his hands. Herod, on the other hand, tended to believe that both he and his subjects would be better served by applying his own management skills to the task of shaping the nation's destiny.'

‘So the news never reached him,' concluded Miriam. ‘But the three wise men
did
get to Bethlehem – '

‘Yes,' he said.

‘With gold, frankincense and myrrh?' I added, anxious to air my newly acquired biblical expertise. ‘Or are you going to tell us they came empty-handed?'

He laughed again. ‘No. They came bearing gifts. But the value of them was mainly symbolic.'

‘Okay,' replied Miriam. ‘Let's take them one at a time. Gold – that's easy to understand. I checked out the other two with my botanist friend who identified those thorns from your scalp. She told me they were both aromatic gum-resins that were burned like joss-sticks. One from a tree, the other from a shrub. Why two lots of gum?'

He treated her to a patient smile. ‘They had different qualities. Frankincense was solely for burning. Myrrh was normally used in perfumes, and in medicines for its antiseptic qualities. It was also mixed with the wine given to criminals before their execution. To deaden the pain. To my parents, they were three welcome, practical gifts. But their symbolic significance formed another code message. To those who, like the
magi,
were versed in the Chaldean Mysteries, gold was the symbol of spiritual wisdom and the power of thought. Frankincense was the symbol for love and compassion. Myrrh symbolised incorruptibility–force of will. They represented the attributes of Ahura Mazdao. The leader of the Forces of Light whose transcendent power they believed had now been transferred to me.'

‘Was Ahura Mazdao someone else from the Empire, born into the world like you?' asked Miriam.

I answered for him. ‘No. He was a notional super-god that Zoroaster, the great Persian mystic, placed at the head of a pantheon of lesser deities, angels and demons. As I understand it, it was Zoroaster himself, who is sometimes known as Zarathrustra, who was the agent for the Empire in the sixth century BC.'

The Man confirmed my statement with a nod.

Miriam refreshed her memory with the aid of the Bible I had brought back from Sleepy Hollow. ‘Does this mean that there was also no trip to Egypt?'

‘I'm afraid it does,' said The Man. ‘That was the last code message hidden in Matthew's account of my birth. What you might call ‘the Egyptian connection'. The story of a three-year sojourn in the Lands of the Nile was inserted to underline the link between Thoth and myself.'

Thoth, whose Greek name was Hermes Trismegistus, was one of the pre-dynastic Egyptian gods. A spiritual entity who figured in their Creation legends and was the alleged inventor of numbers, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy. He was also credited with the setting up of an intriguing item known as the Siriadic Columns, on which were inscribed the history of all things past. When I dug out this information it seemed to tie in, albeit tenuously, with The Man's revelations about Mother Earth's encyclopedic memory-banks.

I gathered our cups on to the tray and flashed a smile at Miriam. ‘I'll go and make some more coffee. Keep talking.' A totally unnecessary instruction.

When I returned, it was time to put on a fresh tape. Joseph had taken his young bride back to Nazareth where their infant star-child was playing happily among the wood shavings of his father's workshop. At least, Joshua was. The Man's meta-psyche was commuting regularly to Bethlehem to compare notes with Gabriel.

Michael, who had been sitting out the double-barrelled delivery of his Celestial shipmates aboard the Star of Bethlehem, now began the return trip to the Time Gate. Which, according to my calculations, meant that the ‘star' whose origins has confounded so many astronomers was a permanent feature of the Mediterranean night sky until late December – beginning of January. When I asked The Man why Michael had stayed on station for so long instead of heading home to get help, he explained that the three
magi
did not begin their journey until the ‘star' had stopped its movement across the heavens, thus confirming his arrival
and
his location.

According to the books, Herod the Great died on 13th March, 4 BC. I don't know about you but it always amazes me the way historians confidently cite dates of this period. When you discover the tinkering that went on with the Julian and Gregorian calendars right up to the eighteenth century it's a wonder that any of us know which day it is. When this story gets out I'm sure there will be more than one scholar who will tell you that The Man got
his
dates wrong.

With Herod's death, the seemingly eternal problems of Palestine returned to plague the Romans. The surviving members of his family
squabbled amongst themselves, each trying to carve out the largest possible chunk of Herod's palace-strewn real-estate, his fortune in money and jewels, his fifty per cent stake in the lucrative mining operations in Cyprus and his business interests in Rome. And his Jewish subjects wanted out from under.

The Romans split Herod's kingdom between his three surviving sons but they were as unpopular as their old man, despite everything he had done, and they continued to do, to court favour with their subjects. Like rebuilding the Temple on Mount Zion in Jerusalem; a ninety-year labour of love that was still incomplete when the Romans levelled it in 70 AD along with the rest of the city.