Fifth Gospel(28)

‘How should I concern myself with men whose view of the world is narrowed?’

This was his other self, the one full of defiance!

‘What do you hope to find in that wider world beyond your homeland?’

‘A teaching that is true, that can help me to understand why everything is falling into ruin. This, I shall not find here in Nazareth.’

‘You know,’ Salome said, ‘my mother once told me a story about a mule who wandered the world looking for the source of a wonderful perfume. One day the poor thing realised that the perfume came from a twig of jasmine caught behind its ear.’

‘When did the mule realise it?’

‘Not until the jasmine was already dead and withered, and had fallen to the ground.’

Jesus nodded. ‘And the meaning of the story is that I will go in search of something I already have, something right behind my ear, is that it?’

‘That is it, for certain,’ she said.

‘Even so…I must go,’ he told her cheerily. ‘I am a stubborn as a mule!’

She paused a moment, listening to the ring left behind by his voice. ‘Yes…yes,’ she confirmed it, ‘so you are…I know…and that is what I told my mother, and if I hadn’t wandered the world I wouldn’t be here with you this night. You see…all is as it should be.’ She looked at him. ‘Have you told your stepmother?’

He gave her a sideways glance. ‘Not yet.’

‘Oh Jesus!’ she chided. ‘You mustn’t be unkind to her. Her life has been a puzzle. Take a moment to think on it. First she loses a husband, then she loses her son, not long after that her other son moves into the Nazarite order to live a solitary life. Of the two youngest children, one has fallen into the lap of the zealots and the other is too young to help her. All of them have disdained their stepfather’s trade as something beneath them. Since your father’s illness, you have been her handhold in the world…how must she lose you too?’

‘I do not see how I am her handhold,’ he said.

‘Well, let me tell you that over the years, in all that time you were coming and going from Jerusalem, I observed her sadness each time you left.’

He looked at her. ‘She never seemed full of joy each time I returned. I appear to cause her pain no matter what I do, if I go, or if I stay…it is all the same,’ he said with a shrug.

‘That is because she is troubled, Jesus. The love that grows in her heart for you, does not sit well with the memory of her dead son, and so she stows it away like a seed awaiting its season…’

Jesus was long quiet, until it seemed his breath near stopped. ‘Then I shall let it germinate while I am searching for wisdom,’ he said.

‘For how long will you search?’

‘As long as it takes to find it, or else to realise there is none to be found. In the meantime, perhaps her heart will mend if she sees me less.’

Salome held back her tears for she remembered how she had missed him herself when he when he was away at the Temple. ‘And mine will break…for I fear I will not live to see you come over that rise again, my heart’s child!’

He laughed in the purpling light. This was Jesus now, the one who could laugh.

‘But you will Salome! You will see many things yet, even before others see them, you will see them!’

She nodded her head with resignation. ‘Yes, yes…I suppose you are right…in my family women live long years…I will be alive to see many things…that is what I am afraid of,’ she said to him, and fell to watching the sky.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said to her, ‘Things will be what they will be, despite your worry.’

She smiled to herself. ‘Yes I know they will and still, it does not prevent me from worry.’

He put an arm around her shoulders and she felt his warmth. And thus they remained together, united in fellowship until noises reached them from the house and the spell was broken.





13


SUN HERO




Gaius Cassius was blindfolded and cold, holding a dagger in his mouth. In the stillness, he sensed the movement of his blood, the intake of his breath and the turning of his heart. He did not know where he was or how long he had been here, only that his stomach gnawed with hunger and the dagger was making cuts on his lips and tongue.

He told himself,

Harness your mind! Soon you will rise not Gaius Cassius the Roman, but Gaius Cassius the Sun Hero, a representative of Mithras. You will taste honey on your tongue and feel the warmth of the sun on your shoulders and you will be given to eat of the bread and given to drink of the blood.

First, however, he had to pass the test.