Fifth Gospel(52)

‘One day,’ they said, ‘her beauty will be her undoing!’

In time, her hair grew to a deep shade that trapped the sun’s light and fell long over her shoulders. Her face, unblemished and lucid was made more pale by the redness of her lips and the darkness of her almond shaped eyes. To her parents the child was a jewel in their crown and they turned a deaf ear to all who suggested that they not dote on the girl; that they not dress her in resplendent clothes, and sit her upon fine cushions and expensive carpets, to display her to all who came by.

But her parents died, one after the other, and she became the responsibility of her sister Martha, who was five years older. Martha was pale and sickly, and prone to a nervous temper, the result of an issue of blood, a disease that defiled her and prevented her from ordinary social intercourse, from attending the synagogue, and even from marriage. This meant that Martha lavished all her love on Mary, and appeased her mothering urges by nurturing her as if she were the centre of her world. Martha dressed her in only the finest garments under embroidered silk girdles studded with precious stones and dusted her hair with gold and adorned it with the sheerest Arabian veils. Her arms she garlanded with the finest bracelets and wherever Mary walked all heads turned, not only for her unparalleled beauty and the fineries of her toilette, but also because around her ankles Martha had wrapped numerous lengths of silver chain, specially wrought to make little sounds!

This attire, far from being unusual in young Galilean women, composed the dress of the distinguished and the fashionable, but when such richness was wedded to a girl of Mary’s exceptional beauty it created a vision that attracted both the attention of men and also the derision and jealousy of women.

Mary herself did not think much of these luxuries, and Martha would scold her when she returned from the markets bare of purse and jewellery, having left rings and bracelets and money in the hands of some unfortunate beggar.

In truth, Mary felt smothered by her sister’s incessant fussing and preferred her own company and would often wander out far beyond the scrutiny of the people to sit alone in the valley, or on the green hillsides or in the cool shade of a sheltering tree where she could think her deep thoughts.

She did not know when it was that a second sight began to unfold in her soul, for this transformation was a quiet creature whose footsteps were soft and left no trace. She only knew that at one moment she was gazing at the sky, and at another she was noticing how the sun dreams the world, how it shines over the minerals and stones, and penetrates even into the plants, unfolding the work of the nature beings. But such visions were not meant to last, for soon something changed these ecstasies into agonies.

It was autumn and she was sat, as was her custom, beneath a low hanging tree. The crops were off the meadow, and the wind that came now from the north brought a chill. Not far from her a bee was making traffic with a flower that grew wild in this valley. When she reached out to touch the creature she felt a sting.

A strange lightness in her head made her swoon.

The world fell away and she saw herself in a dream.


She sees a long river, cast silver in moonlight, striking a snake’s path through a dark valley that lay between the clefts of a black-faced mountain. She is in this river, on a boat, among other women who wear their hair braided and their breasts oiled and their eyes painted. When they arrive at the shores of a great dark Temple they adore the moon, they intone auguries and they make sacrifices. She is taken to the Temple where she is admitted into the torch-lit antechamber.

In the warm half-light they dress her and adorn her in fine white robes and costly veils. They sprinkle the essence of roses on her hair and they braid its lengths with copper and gold. The women attendants point to the layers of the heavens, to the realms above the open roof where lives her bridegroom. She sees the starry cluster from which He shall descend. She is the virgin priestess.

She waits.

When he comes into the womb of her heart, she is overcome with ecstasy, for she is the keeper of the light, she is the Wife of the Sun, His mother, His sister, His servant and handmaiden.

She is the image of Isis…the tower that unites heaven with earth.


Awakened by cold, the pain in her hand was returned to her. She realised that night had already descended over the valley and shaking, she gathered her wits about her and ran home with tears in her eyes and the palm of her hand to her mouth.

Amid the pain and the cold of her run, she recalled her mother’s jar of Alabaster, full of the fragrances of Egypt. It had been left to her and she had always imagined that her mother’s very essence lived in it. For this reason she had thought it deeply holy and had never once used it on herself, and had long forgotten about it.