Claudia Procula, having come from her chariot, was now beside him, and they stood not far from the crowds facing east, behind a group of shading trees. The nearness of Claudia made him nervous. He had to curb a desire to lean into the smell of her body, scented as it was with roses. Perhaps it was this nervousness, or the heady scent, or the magic of the woman, or even his old eyes playing him for a fool but whatever the case, he was not prepared for what he saw.
All these years, he had grown out of the habit of looking at the sun since Mithras was no longer to be found in it. Nor did he feel the god in his heart, which seemed to him like a wasted vessel. And yet, as birds flew in the soft-coloured air to find their homes, and the frogs called and the people full of plagues and infirmities came to Jesus to be healed, he let his old wasted eyes look on Jesus and he saw something grand, he saw that from him came a light as mighty as the sun! A night-sun was rising in his heart, even as the day-sun was setting.
This let loose in Cassius what had not moved since those years before in that cave dedicated to the God Mithras. This movement unleashed from the locked places inside him his long lost devotion and his reverence and it seemed to him like the universe was a hollow space and that he was stood in that hollowness like a pillar of salt, about to be blown away.
‘Do I live?’ he asked himself then, ‘Or am I in the heaven of the Greeks?’
When he looked again, it was over.
Cassius tried to tuck it away, and made up his mind not to think on it, for what madness had visited him? He did not know. He turned away to look at Claudia Procula, and he saw that she was weeping.
‘Mistress, you are in distress?’ he asked, worried now.
She shook her head and told him with a small laugh of embarrassment, ‘I am not distressed, my dear, Cassius…tell me, did you see it too? It was only a moment, but did you see how the sun shone from out of him into the oncoming night? Oh Cassius!’ she said to him, ‘I cry for joy, because I am full of that sun! I am full of grace!’
Cassius did not know what to say.
40
THE CALL
Lazarus walked the road from Endor among the seventy or so who followed in his master’s train, but he did not feel himself to be one of them.
After all, he had not been baptised by John, nor had he followed Jesus directly. His destiny, like those of his sisters, had been a different one. It had been to wait.
John the Baptist had told him during the months he had spent with him, that his baptism would be a new one, performed by Jesus himself, that he would have to wait and see, for Christ Jesus would call him only if the other disciples failed him. Now, looking about him, John felt the imminence of this call, for among those chosen disciples there did not seem to be one who could hear the fullness of the word of God, which lived in his master’s voice and in his gestures. If they had seen it, surely they would not complain constantly to him of their tired feet, or challenge him with their trivial thoughts, or ask him ignorant questions, or sit with him as if they were his equal!
Lazarus could see it and so he kept himself apart.
Sometimes his master’s eyes would fall on him from a great distance and they would stir in him grand pictures, pictures that seemed to him to be more vivid than life. At other times those eyes would be full of promise for his call but he would sense in his heart – not yet.
Lazarus obeyed.
Such were his thoughts before they were interrupted. The group had come to the gates of the township of Nain and had met a great many people leaving the city. The great crowd striving to enter the city, among whom he stood, were met by a funeral procession emerging from the township and because neither party could easily give way, both were made to stand still. The funeral procession was led by a line of lamenting women accompanied in their wails by the chanting of rabbis and the sounds of flutes, cymbals and trumpets. The cacophony rose in frustrated pitch and injured the quiet of the end of day, causing even the birds to keep far off.
Lazarus looked for the body and saw that it was carried according to the tradition of his forefathers on a bier made of wickerwork. The body was not yet wrapped in burial cloths but lay with its hands folded over the chest and its face covered with a napkin. Lazarus discerned by its dimensions that it was the body of a youth.
His master moved through the crowds, unperturbed by the excited words and gesticulations of the two sides. He sought the woman who was weeping the most bitterly, knowing her to be the mother of the dead youth.
Lazarus picked his way through the people to get a better look.
‘Was this your son?’ his master asked the woman whose face was creased with anguish and streaked with tears.