Fifth Gospel(123)

She could only nod to Simon-Peter and continue walking amid the cries of grief and lamentation that rose up from the people who loved her son. When they came near the gates of the city she saw him. Those who came too near to him were struck by the soldiers and told to return to their houses.

‘What will you do with our Lord!’ they cried.

‘Yes what will you do to him?’

‘You should mind the company you keep!’ they told the people. ‘This man is a blasphemer and a heretic, an inciter of rebellion! Go back to your hovels, lest you be tried with him and suffer his fate!’

These ignoble guards struck her son with cords, and kicked him and spat on him.

He fell.

The mother made to go to him but the crowd swelled and prevented it.

Lazarus-John said to her, ‘I will go and alert Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea and Gamaliel…go on ahead with the others, I will find you again!’

She followed the crowds as they passed through a door made in the wall and beyond the pool of Bethsaida to the forum, descending with the growing numbers of citizens down a steep street and turning south towards the whereabouts of the house of Ananias, father-in-law of the high priest. A number of Roman guards came then, and a centurion upon his horse.

The centurion interrogated the crowds concerning the commotion but no man answered him. She struggled to move forward through the multitudes and called out in Latin, ‘They have seized an innocent man, and they take him to Ananias without a Roman trial!’

The Centurion came closer and leant over the neck of his animal to bring a torch to her face.

‘I recognise your voice!’ he said.

And she too recognised his, though she did not know from whence.

‘What is his name!’ the man pressed.

‘Iesus Nazarenus!’ she told him.

The man heard it and was gone into a memory, his horse whipping the air ahead of the crowds.

Magdalena, beside her, was overcome with grief and said to her, ‘Mother…how shall we endure it?’

She let out a breath and the world grew still, as still as a light beam caught fast through a gap in trees. In this splinter of a pause floated sun-like stars, and she was directed to their seeming. In her mind came the face of her old friend Mary. The dead mother of Jesus stood before her with the sun in her eyes and a smile playing about her mouth. She gestured upwards to heaven’s vault and when Mariam looked, she was lifted out of her soul to a place where there was nothing but love and light and life.

When it was over she realised the crowd had moved on through the gates and the other women were crowded around her. Her eyes moved over them, each face creased with pain and panic. A soothing calmness came into her voice, ‘Be consoled my little ones…we are not alone...’ she told them.





62


TRIALS AND VISIONS




The stepbrother of Jesus was asleep in the sanctuary of the Temple. Before that he had spent the hours since the Paschal feast on his knees communing with God and in contemplation of his destiny.

Years ago after his baptism in the Jordan, Jacob son of Mariam, had let go of the power of his inherited birth right and had wandered the land like a fish without a sea, not belonging to any place. The corrupt priests and hypocritical rabbis of the temple could not draw him to their side and he did not feel at ease with the Essenes, though they welcomed him always in their outer circles. He did not even consider himself a Nazarite in the strictest sense, and so could not call himself a true follower of John the Baptist.

He was a man in search of a spirit home.

As the years passed conflicting words had reached him concerning his stepbrother. He had heard of John the Baptist’s testimony and rumours had abounded of Jesus’ healings and his exorcisms, his sermons and signs. Other rumours told that his stepbrother was a magician, a sorcerer ruled by devils, that he had broken the laws of their forefathers, that he had blasphemed and desecrated the Sabbath.

For his part Jacob had kept himself aloof from all of it, not wishing to know what truth there might be to one or other rumour. That is, until the Paschal week.

Of late Jacob had come to Jerusalem to celebrate the holy day and to unite with the heart of his people. He was tattered and thin after long months of wandering through the land, long months of punishing his body with fasting and prayer, and had sought a place to rest his head. But here, in Jerusalem, he could not avoid his stepbrother, who seemed to be everywhere, speaking out against the priests in one place, condemning the rituals of the temple in another. Making more and more enemies as each day came, not only in the Sanhedrin but also among the people.

He had not seen Jesus since that afternoon at Nazareth those years ago and on hearing him in Jerusalem these last days it had been hard to imagine him the same man, so strong and full of authority was his mien and so powerful were his words. Yes. His baptism and those years of wandering had made Jacob’s ears sensitive and discerning, and he heard the ring of truth in his stepbrother’s voice and over the holy days this had formed in him a question.