Fifth Gospel (3 page)

What
strange riddle was this? A sudden terrifying thought assailed me. Perhaps she was a sphinx? Would she kill me if I gave her the wrong answer? No, soon I would wake up, I told myself, with my mouth dry and my back aching, for I had fallen asleep thinking again of that infinite library and that book which encompassed all the knowledge of the world.

Having
read in some place
(
who knows where?) that one must ask an apparition its name, if one wishes to dissolve it, I did so.

‘
Who I am,’ she said, ‘is of as little importance to what I will tell as the wind is to the perfumes that it carries. But you can call me Lea.’

What a singular
dream creature was this that sat before me, with her face so poignant and wise, her voice so perfect, her mien so calm, and her answers so infuriating!

Realising that th
e stubborn spirit would not be put off, I acquiesced. ‘Well then, Lea…why would the wind choose to carry its scent to me this night, in this of all places, with war all about?’

‘
You have willed it so…for you have called me here,
pairé
.’

I
was confounded. ‘How on earth, my dear, did I call you?’

‘
You are awake while others are sleeping.’

P
erhaps I was awake in my dream but surely not in real life! I resolved that there was nothing more I could do except to go along with the dream and see where it would lead until I finally woke up.

‘
What does the book show?’ I asked.

‘
Many things, things that are in the past and those that are also in the future...but the part which I will show you, could be called a Gospel…’

A Gospel no less!

‘Why do we need another Gospel, child, when there are so many? Poor Eusebius was driven mad trying to decide which ones to include in the bible!’ I peered at her. ‘Do you know he nearly didn’t add John’s Gospel…the only eyewitness of the sacrifice of our Lord? The truth is, after he had made his choice of gospels he spent the rest of his life trying to reconcile their differences! No, my dear, we don’t need more gospels only more faith!’

‘
But what are differences?’ the apparition said, serenely. ‘The back of your head is different from the front, and yet both back and front belong to you and are needed…is this not true?’

I had to agree
that she had a point!

Weary
and outwitted, I conceded. ‘Well then child, if the Gospels of Luke and Matthew tell us about Jesus, and the Gospels of Mark and John tell us about Christ…what is there left to tell?’

‘
Have you forgotten John’s words: that if all that could be said about the Lord were to be written down, even the world itself could not contain all the books that would be written.’

I nodded for
this was so, and yet my poor old head was confounded by so many allusions to libraries and books and gospels, that all I could say was, ‘Go on…go on…’ and wave a hand.

‘
It begins with two children, not one.’

‘
What? What do you mean two children?’

‘
The Gospel begins with the kingly child, the other is a priestly one, each is born at a different time but the kingly child is the reason why the centurion is sat upon his horse.’

‘
A centurion…a Roman centurion?’ I said.

‘
He rides into Bethlehem to kill the child…’

‘
Oh, I see! On behalf of Herod.’

‘Yes.’

‘You are speaking of Jesus, then.’

‘Not Jesus…
’

I started.
‘What do you mean not Jesus?’

‘T
his child’s name is Yeshua…’

‘
Oh my!’ I felt my eyes popping, ‘I am confounded in my mind already!’

‘
Then listen with your heart,
pairé
, and take up your quill and write it down, for I will speak…are you listening with your heart?’

I took up my
quill and dipped it in ink and took up those parchments and said, ‘Yes, yes, my dear, go on.’

And that is how it began.

Before I knew it I was lost in a rosary of words. Words that followed one another, each dying away into the next; melting in her mouth like that green honey, which they say induces visions.

MASSACR
E

I
nto
Bethlehem, there entered with a clattering of hoofs and a thunder of dust a company of legionaries headed by a Roman Centurion.

A moment earlier the man who wore the silvered breastplate
, the greaves and crested helmet of Rome, was sat upon his horse the colour of obsidian, observing the mountain’s rim-rock and the wheeling of the heavenly spheres towards the west.

The god of the sun,
Mithras, was soon to awaken from his sleep and the centurion felt two things: an ache behind his eyes and something more – the restless souls of his men. Only a moment of worship, and soon the sun would light a path to their duty.

Only a moment.

Behind him and yet ahead of the others sat his
optio
Septimus, upon his own fine animal. The young man had brought his horse up and now made a whisper into the air between them, ‘You wait, Cassius?’

The Centurion did not look at his junior
for the youth was not an initiate of Mithras and did not understand the moment’s divinity. Instead he stared ahead to where the light worried the shadows.

‘We wait,’ he told him
, cold and significant. ‘The stars and planets have been on fire these nights. You see the combination of Gods? It is rarely seen…and now the Sun rises in the sphere of the Virgin.’ He gave the boy a speck of a glance. ‘I am no Magi, but I sense a portent in it!’

Septimus looked to the sky and grumbled
happily, ‘Well, I hear Herod too has men watching the skies. It is said men from the east have come to whisper something in his ear that has caused us to have this charge. Why Roman soldiers must dance to that madman’s tune when he has his own dogs snarling at his feet is not reckoned in my mind.’

The centurion
looked at the boy full in the eye this time, as he spoke, ‘The Legions of Rome do not dance to Herod’s tune, but to the tune of the Governor of Syria. This day, it seems, he is of the mind to stroke the madness of the Jew king by allaying his fears…and we are his instruments – that is all.’

‘You were born in this place,
Cassius,’ the boy said merrily ignoring his vexation. ‘Is it the habit of Jew kings to fear children?’

Gaius Cassius Longinus
quelled his vexation, ‘I was not born in Judea, but in Syria…and Herod is not a Jew but half-Jew, half-Idumean.’

The
optio shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. ‘And there is a difference?’

The centurion
drew in a breath. The boy was ignorant and too big for his skin. ‘It makes him despised,’ he explained to him, ‘and men who are despised look at their children, at their wives and servants, with suspicion and with hate. They fear auguries and portents, conspiracies and wicked designs. The Idumean part of Herod doubts the prophecy – that a child will come to topple him from his throne – but he knows his people believe it, so he must do something.’ He looked again to the horizon, ‘On the other hand the Jew part believes the portent and will not allow him to use his own dogs, but asks the governor for his legionaries – so that it may never be said in future times that Herod killed the Messiah of his people.’

Septimus grinned a
t these contradictions and Cassius suspected the smile was also for the contradiction that must live in Cassius, who was of both Syrian and Roman blood.

‘Well then,
’ Septimus said to him, making light of it, ‘we shall be the butchers of Quintilius Varus if it please him.’

Cassius
told him plainly, so that there might be no misunderstanding on the matter, ‘Only because it pleases the Governor.’

The
optio’s
stare gave way then and he nodded and smiled and nodded again, the very picture of deference. ‘It is as you say.’ But the smile continued to play at his mouth, and there was no respect in it.

Cassius ignored
him and his contrivances to concentrate on the sun, edging the mountain. The air was full with the impending thrill of the regal splendour of dawn. This was the moment he longed for, before the first rays, when all of nature lay in a cool green sleep ready to be awakened.

A
s the fat round orb crept over the rise, these words escaped his lips in a gasp, ‘It is!’

By degrees the sun
began to lean its body low over the world then, pouring out one luminous beam after another. Divine and pure, its light entered into Cassius’ soul and he yielded to its force, letting it mingle with the elements astir in his heart, in his organs, his muscles and sinews, his marrow and his blood, so that all of him fell to adoration of the one god, all-powerful and remote: the god that commanded water and fire, air and earth.

Sol Invictus!

The god arced a dagger of luminance, cutting a path over the dying stars, breaking over the back of the mountains, tearing the fabric of the world in half and dividing the shadow from its opposite, good from evil.

All plants and herbs,
animals large and small, those that crawled over the earth, and those that swam or flew, all that was contained in an ear of corn, and all that was in the grain of wheat made bread by human hands, all that was from the vine to the cup – all of it was made and unmade for the glory of Mithras!

In the midst of this splendour of splendours Cassius felt himself a small soul among many; a man descended from the empyrean heaven to t
he body that had been prepared from out of the noble qualities of the seven planets. In this body he would live out his years, his days, this very hour, a Lion of the Sun.

He closed his eyes and recited in his mind
the words of the poet Horace.

Polvere e ombra.
All is dust and shadow.

When he opened them again
, the day was brighter.

He did not turn to his
optio
but took an in-breath of fire into his lungs and said, ‘This day the God devours his children…’ He took the Spanish Gladius from the belt over his left shoulder and raised it in imitation of the god, and with the words, ‘We go!’ arced it over the world and down to his side again.

The company, barely half a century on foot, s
aw the sign and moved in unison behind him, ascending the rise towards the settlement and through the village gates.

Some of the citizens
of the township had already risen and were beginning the day’s labours when the sound of earth thrumming to horses hoofs and the stamping of feet caught them by surprise. Cassius arrived first on his sure-footed horse and so he had a moment to sense the odour of clinker and coal, and the pleasant aroma of baking bread. A town bathed in a dream soon to end, he thought.

Sep
timus came up behind him and directed the company, made up of Samaritans and Syrians, to form a line before the rows of houses.

A moment passed.

Cassius waited. When he could wait no longer he gave the second sign, it told the soldiers to begin forcing their way into the mud brick houses. In a moment there followed a concord of shrieks and a chorus of desperate howls, which moved through Bethlehem like an evil wind. But Cassius did not come off his horse. He watched the scene from above with his mouth a thin, tight line and his thoughts quiet inside his skull. He held the reins of his animal with one hand and smoothed its nape with the other. In the meantime his soldiers dragged every boy-child from its crib and from its mother’s breast out to the street, to be slaughtered before the horror-struck inhabitants. His face changed not. He moved not a muscle. His breath made clouds in the frigid dawn and signalled no stirring in his heart.

But something
else had caught his eye now. He looked to the south. He thought he could see dark figures shadowed by the soft light, they moved slow and steady in the penumbral distance. It occurred to him to send a soldier to those pleasant pastures and his mind was bent upon this duty when a piercing light entered into his skull to blind his eyes. It was not Mithras, this light, and yet he discerned in it something of the majesty of the sun! In its brilliance he saw the formless image of a child and in his mind’s fancy the child turned into a man and when their eyes met the intensity of that gaze bore a hole into his soul.

He lost his breath and had to grasp onto the reins so as not to fall from the horse. When he had gathered
in his wits he looked to the pasture again but the vision was gone, traded for the revenant screams and wails of the people, which rose in pitch and extremity in his ears.

He cast his vision-laden glance at the ground where a growing pile of little bodies lay before his horse.
The image of that child conjured by his mind had fixed itself to those children that lay dead. Of a sudden he felt bewildered and surprised for it. These bloodied things, the pitiful sight of the women pulling out their hair, and the sound of the men dashing their heads against mud walls, all of it looked different now to him. The lamentation grew woeful and loud and the smell of blood was thick in his nostrils. He blinked and blinked again and when the feeling loosened he realised that his
optio
was paused watching him.

B
lood spattered and smiling, the boy held a woman by the neck, almost choking her. In her arms a plump, pink child squirmed.

He is too fond of this.
Cassius thought.

‘She says the child is over two springs.’
Septimus said, and let go of the woman to pull the infant from her grasping arms. It began a cry of horror that made her faint to the ground as though dead. A man then, whom Cassius guessed must be the father, tried to make a way to him but was prevented by the flat of Septimus’ sword over his back. He too fell over his wife and from that position turned a red-streaked, tormented face upwards, saying in the Aramaic tongue of his people that the child had turned two only days before.

Cassius gathered up the metal in his sinews and looked at the
screaming infant dangling by one arm. He wished it were true. The child was large enough in size, but it seemed young to him.

‘Put the chi
ld down,’ he told the sergeant.

Septimus hesitated.

‘Put it down!’ he shouted at him. The spit in his mouth was sour and his greaves chaffed his legs. ‘If it walks it lives, if it crawls it dies!’

Once on the
cobbled path the crying bundle sat a moment. It made as if to stand but its legs, unsure upon those tiny feet, gave way.

Cassius stared at the creature and willed it to walk
; he willed it with all the force in his limbs.

The
child, for its part, was paused in its crying to look at the father and the father, realising what would come, looked away, but it was too late – the child made a smile and began a crawl.

The man wailed and pleaded to Cassius
but Cassius was resigned to it. He made a nod to Septimus and the young man made a laugh and took the child by one arm and held it up as if it were his prize. In that one instant a lifetime seemed to pass between the father glancing upwards, muttering prayers, and the pink child’s terror-full stare. An instant, an aeon, and after that a sweep of the Gladius across the throat followed by the falling to white of the eyes and the gushing of child-blood over the father and mother below.

All is dust and shadow
, thought Cassius.

Septimus dropped the carcass
without ceremony into the pile of dead things, wiped the blood from his face and left to see to his men.

The Centurion’s
head was a vacant, vast adamantine wilderness. He did not try to recognise the geography of its landscape, instead he turned his horse away from the slaughter and took a moment to notice the silence that had descended over everything; a silence so deep that he could hear the moment’s heart pounding in the crib of the world; a silence that suspended the odour of bread and the scent of spices in the air, an imitation of a former peace now banished for always.

It was Septimus who broke it, warning the
population of Bethlehem that should they speak of the slaughter, further reprisals from Rome would befall them. By then Cassius had directed his horse through the gates of the city and was on his way to the valley below.

When
the young sergeant caught up with him to ask what he should do with the dead things, Cassius told him, with his mind full of scraps of thoughts:

‘Send them to Herod
…the man who calls himself King of the Jews!’