In Xanadu

It was still dark when I left Sheik Jarrah. At the Damascus Gate the first fruit sellers were gathered by a brazier, warming their fingers around glasses of sweet tea. The Irish Franciscan was waiting by the door of the Holy Sepulchre. He nodded from under the hood of his habit and without a word led me past the Armenian chapel and under the great rotunda. Around the dome you could hear the echo of plainchant as twelve separate congregations sang their different matins.

'It's not long now.' said Brother Fabian. 'The Greeks will be finished by eight-thirty.'

'That's in two hours' time.'

'Only half an hour. The Greeks don't allow us to put the clocks back. We work on Byzantine time here.'

He knelt down on a flagstone, folded his hands in his sleeves and began murmuring his devotions. We waited for twenty minutes.

'What's keeping them?'

'The rota's very strict. They're allowed four hours in the tomb, and they won't leave until their time is up,' He hesitated then added:

Things are a bit tense at the moment. Last month one of the Armenian monks went crazy: thought an angel was telling him to kill the Greek patriarch. So he smashed an oil lamp and chased Patriarch Diodorus through the choir with a piece of broken glass.'

"What happened?'

The Greeks overpowered him. There's an ex-weightlifter from Thessaloniki who looks after the Greek chapel on Calvary. He pinned the Armenian down in the crypt until the police came. But since then the Greeks and the Armenians haven't been on speaking terms. Which means we had to be the go-betweens. Until we broke off relations with the Greeks as well.' 'What do you mean?'

Last month Diodorus was crossing the bridge into Jordan when the border guards found a big bag of heroin in the air filter of his car. They released him but arrested his driver. Diodorus claimed he must have put the bag there. The driver was a Catholic'

'So now no one is speaking to anyone?'

'I think the Copts are still speaking to the Maronites. But apart from that, no.'

Brother Fabian pulled one arm out of his habit and pointed to the dome of the rotunda.

'You see the painter's scaffolding? That's been up ten years because the three patriarchs can't agree on a colour. They'd just about settled on black when the Armenian assaulted Diodorus. Now the Greeks are demanding purple. It won't get repainted for another ten years now. By which time,' added Fabian, ' I shall be back in Donegal.'

At that moment a procession of black-clad Greek monks emerged from the Tomb, a bulbous, kettle-like structure which Robert Byron thought resembled a railway engine. As the monks stepped out some were singing anthems while others sprayed the ambulatory with holy water. They had cascading pepper-and-salt beards and wore cylindrical hats topped with black mortarboards. They scowled in the direction of the Latin chapel then marched off towards Calvary.

"Wait here,' said Brother Fabian.

He returned carrying a tin watering can and a tray of what looked like surgical instruments. He handed me the tray then walked up to the tomb, bowed, bent double and squeezed under the low, cusped arch. I followed. We passed through the dim first chamber, then stooped into the inner sanctum. The holiest shrine in Christendom was the size of a small broom cupboard. Raised on a ledge was the Stone of Resurrection and on top of it rested two icons, a tatty Mannerist painting and a vase containing seven wilted roses. Twelve lamps were suspended from the ceiling by steel chains. Fabian knelt down, kissed the Stone and murmured a prayer. Then he rose.

"We've got until twelve-thirty,' he said.

From a recess in the first chamber he produced a small stepladder. He climbed up onto it, unclipped a hook from the wall-ring then let go of the pulley. The four Catholic lamps descended. They were made of beaten bronze and were very tarnished and very old. Finely incised on the outside were the figures of cherubim and a six-winged seraph. Motioning that I should pass the watering can up to him, the friar arched over the lamps and very carefully poured oil from the can into three of them. As he did so each one guttered.