Fifth Gospel (12 page)

PETITION

H
erod Antipas travelled the road from Callirrhoe like a child in search of a new experience. He was on his way to meet the man hailed as a prophet, a new Elijah. This was John bar Zacharias, whom they called
the Baptiser
.

Yesterday
, a courier had left his camp with a message for John – Herod Antipas would give him an audience. This morning had come the ascetic’s answer: the baptiser would not see him at Ainon but at the place of baptism, some distance from it. So it was to this place that the small caravan now travelled.

Accompanying Herod
on this journey was his soon-to-be bride, Herodias, and her daughter, Salome. Looking to Herodias now, sitting as she was beside him in their carriage, he felt a thrill at the base of his spine – she mesmerised him. She was a well of dark water, a soulless abyss and a bottomless chasm. She was spellbinding.

Some time ago
while in Jerusalem visiting his half brother Philip, Herod had taken a fancy to Herodias, then Philip’s wife. Herodias was not only his sister-in-law but also consanguineously, his niece, since she was the daughter of another half brother, Aristobulus. Upon seeing her Herod had desired her despite her being an ugly thing to behold, and this had quite amused him, it amused him still! He looked at her now. Her hair was black and thinly woven and her forehead was carved low over mud coloured eyes that were rounded and strangely askew. She seemed to be all head, all shoulders, all chest; as if the upper part of her were put together with the lower from mismatched portions. And yet…and yet…what eyes! The first time he had seen those eyes they had seized him with their claws, and had thrust into his mind the content of an awesome knowledge, an elemental and infernal vigour, and an appetite that worked like a lightning strike into his apathetic limbs.

Thrilled and exhilarated
, he convinced Herodias to divorce his brother, but his vacant mind had not foreseen the chagrin of his Arab wife, Phasaelis. In truth before he could do away with her, the woman had escaped from his clutches and made for the bosom of her angry father, who now threatened war. To add to this unfortunate turn of events, he found the council of priests at Jerusalem obdurate on the subject of his intended divorce and marriage. How could they ratify a marriage of uncle and niece?

Not one for exerting himself unduly, he would have given up on the entire idea had he not become enamoured of a certain other advantage. He cast a glance at Herodias’
daughter, Salome, a child of sixteen. All the characteristics that had assumed a misshapen proportion in her mother had combined differently in the daughter so that her black eyes were clear and deep and shaped like almonds, and her hair was the colour of a raven’s neck and fell in thick looms over the fine curvature of her pale form, over the perfect proportion of her breasts, over the rounded belly shaped in a design to nourish the eye of desire.

While Herodias tantalised
him with the wiles of her magic, just one look from Salome enticed the blood to his manhood in long painful throbs, whose intensity was wanton and incautious. He felt himself caught between the hammer and the anvil! Kept on a tight leash of hope one moment and craving the next - as compliant as a faithful dog that must-needs please its master’s every wish and whim. For how could a man who thought himself mystical and sensuous resist a union that promised both the pleasures of the spirit and the flesh?

The Baptiser
was well respected among the people of his province, even the Sanhedrin feared his power over them. If Herod could coax this man to ratify his marriage to Herodias, he would march into the Sanhedrin and demand the priests follow his example. But he had a secondary reason, which he did not like to think on.

At about the same time he met Herodias, he
also made a visit to Caesar to contest his father’s will. In Caesar’s house he had a dream in which he ventured to a place, a gloom-laden blank expanse of nothingness, a naught of naughts, an eternal null and void, where all was disappointment and despair. In the midst of this dimness he could hear screams and he saw a man chained to a rock, with a bird-like shadow gnawing at his liver. When he looked more closely he realised that it was his father! The last thing he remembered was his father’s laughter ringing in his ears and the words:

Now he is yours!

On waking, the memory of the creature had not diminish and in time it grew into a real thing, a great black bird that came and went, announcing its arrivals with a flapping of its dark and ominous wings and its departures with a foul stench of stagnant air.

In moments of despair he
told himself,

I
t is my father’s demon of madness, come to eat away my soul!

Herodias could not help him for although she was skilled
in the magic of herbs and metals and the forces that can manipulate births, she did not yet possess the power to harness demons, or control the forces of death.

He hoped
John bar Zacharias would help him.

But h
is thoughts were interrupted. His entourage was paused before a throng of people headed for the baptismal bend in the Jordan and his mind, like a weak flame in a breeze, was bent to those scores and scores of old and young, poor and rich alike that were walking the rough road. His guards shoved and pushed the crowds with their pikes to make them move out of the way and to his chagrin, they only gave the slightest acknowledgement to his royal person. As he stared at them a new emotion battled lust and fear for chief position in his heart.

Envy.

His father had overlooked him! His brother Archelaus had stolen the throne from him! Now this upstart was taking what little he had left, if he had ever had it – the love of his people.

By the time
Herod and his entourage arrived at the place of meeting, he had already calculated how he would get what he wanted from the man before doing away with him.

A number of
crude, rush-covered huts encircled a small space, a natural court in the middle of which stood a rock. The cavalcade dismounted and rolled out an assortment of opulent carpets, food and wine, for Herod and his women. They waited beneath the canopy of a tree near half a day.

When
John the Baptist finally appeared it was sun down. He was tall and muscular and his face was as ancient and dry as the dirt of Judea. He entered the enclosure surrounded by a swarm of students. He saw Herod but his face did not speak of it, it remained as it was. He whispered something to his pupils and they dispersed, one by one, and he took himself to the rock and sat down, as if he were a king and Herod a subject who must pay homage to him.

More vexation heated Herod’s cheeks. Herodias rasped in his ear
. She told him that John the Baptist was making a mockery of him. But Herod weighed his vexation and humiliation against his need to know the power of the man, and found to his surprise, that his curiosity was greater than his self-esteem. This was another strange realisation in a day full of portents and it did not bother him particularly. He took a sip of wine and waited for John to speak.

He waited
, but the other man had a patience that was beyond his own.

‘You are come, finally, John bar Zacharias,’ Herod said, in Aramaic, using his friendship-making voice, ‘
we have waited long.’

John did not answer immediately but cast a glance about, noting Herodias and her daughter
sitting upon their fine cushions and carpets he said, ‘I have spent a long day baptising the citizens of your country who are morally sick and in want of guidance. Now, I see why it is that they are so.’

Herod bent a smile upwards.
The man has a sense of humour. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I saw the crowds on my way here. I too have come to meet the one whom they say is a great prophet to rival even Elijah…!’

The voice was restrained.
‘I am no prophet…I am only a forerunner, a messenger of the One who will come after me. It is to Him that you should go.’

Herod made a little laugh at the back of his throat, a giggle
, which sounded like a nervous cluck to his own ears. He cleared his throat. ‘Then I have come to meet the messenger, to whom I wish to put a question. I seek to ask for your ratification of my forthcoming marriage to Herodias. The priests of the Sanhedrin state that my petition is unclean because Herodias is my niece…but you and I both know such a marriage is not uncommon among our people. They say you are holy and wise and so I have brought the scrolls pertaining to the subject of my suit…for your perusal.’ From his half-sitting position on the grand carpet Herod gave two scrolls to a servant.

But
as the man approached the baptiser shook his head. ‘I will not soil my hands with your iniquity!’ he thundered. ‘What lives in you, Herod, seeks the gratification of two things: your lust for the pleasures of this world and your fear of the other world. But what lives in that viper…’ he pointed to Herodias, ‘is a devil, and in her he burns his purposes like a fever. She lusts for power over the souls of men! She is Jezebel reborn!’ he said.

Herod was full
of excitement, for he was now certain the man was a seer, a prophet. Herodias, on the other hand, was snarling at him to act.

‘Have him seized!’ she rasped
. ‘How dare that animal say such things against your future wife! Have him arrested, you fool!’

Herod ignored her. He was thinking.

Salome, for her part, stood, and prowled her way to John. She was arrayed in the most resplendent silks bordered in the finest gold thread. Jewels crowded her neck, her ears, her wrists and fingers, and her veil - a last minute attempt at modesty - now fell from her hair to the ground as she walked. Her painted eyes darted at Herod as she encircled John upon his rock. She inspected him and sniffed him and paused a moment before saying,

‘You are a stupid man!’

The Baptiser narrowed his eyes, ‘Do not come near me, Lilith, daughter of evil!’

She smiled
, wide and innocent. ‘I would not stain my hands, for you are simple and uneducated, and…boring!’

When she
laughed, it was like a ripple in water and her mother and their attendants laughed also and the entire entourage fell about in a flood of laughter as returned to the comfort of her cushions to braid her hair. Herod was not laughing.

He
directed himself to John, ‘I have heard that you can make men lose their sins by immersing them in water…is this true? Is it also true that you can cleanse the soul, perhaps even of madness? Shall we go to that place in the river so that you can baptise me?’

John fixed him with an eye. ‘
No. I cannot.’

Herod scoffed, ‘
You would refuse a king? I have guards at my disposal, ready to arrest you should I but give the sign.’

‘You can
not arrest me,’ John pointed out, ‘I am not in Galilee, but in Judea, which is not your country.’

‘Then I
’ll have to return to Jerusalem and petition the Sanhedrin for your arrest,’ Herod said, angry and put out.

‘Be careful Herod
,’ John the Baptist said. ‘At any moment, the curses of hell are ready to pour into you…I see their wings touching your hair.’

Herod lost his temper and his voice was shrill
when he said, ‘Is your task not to ready the souls of men, Baptiser? Why will you not ready mine?’

‘My task is to prepare souls to see the One Who will soon come. Some souls are not destined for seei
ng Him…These are vipers destined for what is prepared for the iniquitous, in this life and the next! Look to Him who comes after me. He is the saviour, not I! He will have the power to redeem the shadow of evil that pursues you, if you believe in Him.’

‘
Order him killed!’ Herodias ordered Herod, ‘Do it now!’

But in Her
od the creature of fear overtook the creature of anger and lust and envy, for he knew the shadow was back, flapping its wings and causing that moribund wind to fan his face. He shouted to his attendants and servants and guards to take up the rugs and the food and wine and to prepare the animals. Herodias and Salome scurried behind him to the chariot and they were soon away from that man.

On their return to Callirrhoe, Herod heard of
the riots inspired by John the Baptist’s sermons against the pagans in Dothain and instantly he knew what pretext he would use to have him arrested. He would go with his captain and take stock of the situation and report back to the Sanhedrin.

He was confident that s
oon he would have it all, a sorceress for a wife, a nubile lover, and a cure for that shadow of madness! For the dungeons of Machareus were good for making even the most disobedient man acquiescent.

SCORPION

T
he sun entered Scorpio on the night of his birth. In a dream his mother had seen that her boy child would be the agent of three betrayals: he would kill his father to marry his mother and he would bring about a disaster so great that it would taint his name and stain the blood of his people for all ages to come.

On hearing of the dream t
he father wanted to rid himself of the child, but the woman feared committing a sin and convinced her husband to have the boy taken from Cariot in Judea to a far distant land, to avert his maleficent destiny. And that is how it came to be, that in the night the child was spirited away, and taken by merchants to a community of Diaspora Jews on the Tigris, near Seleucia in Parthia.

It was
a quiet, hidden community, peopled by Mandeans - those who had brought together the mysteries of the Persians and combined them with the religion of the Hebrews. Within this group there lived a wealthy childless couple known to the Jew merchants who upon seeing the tiny innocent creature, grew warm with love, exclaiming to one another that here at last was a son delivered to them by God! Gladly they paid the merchants thirty pieces of silver for him and raised him as their own.

They named him Judas.

As the years passed, Judas grew into a bright youth with a sharp mind, excelling beyond all others at his instructions on the laws and the prophets. What he loved most were those Hebrew stories of the great Jewish Heroes, the seven sons of the widow and the five sons of Matthatias, warriors who had struggled against the enemies of Judaism.

He was particularly interested in one of the
five sons of the priest Matthatias, his namesake – Judas Maccabeus. Judas Maccabeus was described as a lion from the house of Judah, and many a night did young Judas spend thinking on him.

Lying awake he pondered the hero’s alliance with Rome against the Greeks and his underestimation of Rome’s powers, which had
caused so much sorrow for his people ever since. This pondering affected him in two ways: on the one hand he dreamt of leaving his village to return to Jerusalem and join the fight against the Romans like a Maccabean hero; on the other he longed for a life of piety and simplicity as a Mandean priest.

I
n his heart he could not decide which of the two he was destined to be, the fearless warrior or pious priest.

He
grew into a strong man with a dark face framed by unruly black hair whose curls hung loose above eyes the colour of grey stones. His beard was as red as clay and from its deeps there would come a smile that spread over the geography of his face like a snake moving through grass. His brooding nature and his heart’s wild-hearted lean attracted the young girls of the small colony to him and they pursued him with their shy eyes. But the warrior in his soul struggled with the postulant in his spirit. The warrior was red-blooded and desirous for these attentions while the postulant was full with disdain and looked away from these displays of sexual promise with a superior eye.

The villagers and his teachers could see that Judas’ soul was made of two opposites, for his face was like a dial created to measure that running quarrel
, which never ceased, and could find no shared purpose in the wilderness of his soul. In time, however, he proved to his superiors that he was a good scholar, hard working, devoted and pious. Soon his mystical abilities grew beyond even those of the priests and they found they could not prevent him, when he finally reached the appropriate age, from entering through the portals of the mysteries. For he had passed every test they had given him and had almost, without their noticing it, begun to steal into their hearts.

So it
was after much deliberation that they had agreed to allow him entrance to the House of Creation.

The House of Creation stood not far from the
Mandean settlement. Here the secrets of light and darkness were revealed to those who risked life and madness and were capable of overcoming the abyss of death to find daylight. Here, the successful ones were baptised with water and anointed with fire.

One
fateful night, in the inner sanctuary, Judas was given the lighted lamp and told of the original causes of things. He was given a cordial to drink and told to lie down and after a time the high priest came to fetch him and to guide him to the underworld, where he would have to pass those strenuous tests meant to measure his endurance and his courage, his revulsion and his steadfastness.

He was taken
then to a black place without light. Alone, and only guided by a voice he ventured towards one test after another, each more gruelling than the next. He passed each trial until exhausted and near broken in his spirit, he heard the resounding voice of the priest and saw the lighted torches come to meet him.

Weak and fatigued he was led
by them to a room where he was dried, dressed in fine linen, and told to rest. Overcome by lassitude he then stretched out on the soft couch provided and soon fell asleep. A languorous music entered his dreams, the sound of harp and flute and sighs reached his ears and when he opened his eyes he saw a woman, clothed in a dress of iridescent gauze which hung loose and limpid over her oiled, Nubian body. On her face he observed a mocking smile, full-berried and white of teeth. It pulled upwards to high-boned cheeks. Around her neck, precious necklaces gleamed in the dim light and around her wrists bracelets of different coloured metals shimmered. In her hand she brought forth a cup filled with aromatic wine. She told him it was the Soma juice of bliss, the sacred ceremonial wine of remembrance. She told him to drink it, for he was in the Temple of the highest wisdom and she was his prize, the ceremonial meal.

He paused a moment, uncertain.
But the woman held the wine closer to him, and he, sensing her womanhood, was taken with the vigour of his victory so that his manhood became heated with ardour. As his pride swelled so did his body swell for he had outwitted the priests and could now collect his reward! He took the woman to him and pulled her to the bed, bending his lips to that mouth, to that long neck, to that perfumed breast, to that bronzed shoulder and bejewelled ear. He took the cup from her hand and let its contents fall down his throat and held her then, beneath him. He commenced to pull away the silken dress and would have taken her with the wild insatiate desire of a beast had he not been plunged at that moment, not into the depths of desire, but into the deeps of nothingness.

When he woke again
he was alone in that first dark chamber where the priests had given him the cordial of forgetfulness. Disoriented he tried to bring reason to his mind and in a moment realised that he had been fooled. He had been duped! The priests had deceived him! His trials had been illusions, his triumphs dreams!

The smell of failure hung in the air. He fell into a rage
, and called out with an angered voice to the priests. The hierophant came to him then. Awesome was his expression and grave were his words:

‘You were victorious over the darkness, over fire and water and because of this
, you are alive and are not dead. But the earth has conquered you, you have killed your father, your body, to marry wisdom, but you have wedded your soul to lust and darkness instead, killing your soul, the mother in you. For this reason you are like a scorpion, which must sting itself and die to avoid the light of the sun. And you shall ever more be named
scorpizein.’

He was taken
then, by the broad-bodied servants of the House of Creation, and sent into exile.

A deep, violent hatred moved inside
the mechanisms of his thinking, it moved into his will and drove him to Seleucia, where he announced to its leaders the whereabouts of the order’s hidden house. Artaban, King of Parthia, despised the practices of the Mandeans as aberrations, and he took no time in ordering his generals to send forth soldiers to the community to slaughter every woman and child, to hang the priests from the trees and to topple the House of Creation.

Thus
did Judas perform his first betrayal.

Full of
hatred and dissatisfaction Judas travelled to Judea with a sting in his tail. He sought restitution of his other hopes. If he could not be a priest he would be a warrior, another Judas Maccabeus. He would lead his people towards the creation of a great empire.

In Jerusalem he found
a group of like-minded men who called themselves
Sicarri
, or dagger carriers, because it was their custom to slip, sleek and unseen into the crowds to assassinate enemies or to inspire bloody revolts. He met one of their leaders, a man called Bar Abbas, and three other men, Simon of Nazareth, Dismas and Gesmas. His charm seduced them and they allowed him gradually into their confidence, telling him their secrets and of their every conspiracy and plan. One such plan was near ready for implementation.

Pontius Pilate was a new Roman Governor and he had no care for Jewish custom and
religion. Time and again he had transgressed the laws of the Jews and recently had misappropriated Temple funds to build an aqueduct for Jerusalem. The
Sicarri
, seeking everything to their advantage, planned to use this sacrilege as an excuse for inciting a riot.

Judas thought long on it. A week before the Easter festival, disguised
Sicarri
would enter the city of Jerusalem via a series of ancient passages and tunnels built to carry water from the Gihon Spring into the Ophel quarter. These were large enough to hide a number of men until the city was overfull with pilgrims from near and from far. When the festival was at its height and the crowds began to throng to the Temple for the services, no one would notice the
Sicarri
merge with them and begin to incite them with speeches. Pilate’s sacrilegious tampering with Temple funds would feature prominently in their rhetoric, and it would take but one strike of the flint stone at a time when sensibilities were heightened by religious fervour to ignite a conflagration of passion against the Romans.

It was Pontius Pilate’s custom to come from Caesarea for the festivals and to spend his time ensconced in the pr
ae
torium where from a distance he could keep an eye on the festivities. He was always heavily guarded but the
Sicarri
figured that an uprising would cause him to send all available men to the streets and in the ensuing chaos a number of them could force their way into his palace and sink a dagger into his heart.

With Pilate dead, Rome would need to send a new prefect to Jerusalem and in the meantime
there would be disorder and confusion -the food of revolution.

Such was the grand and auspicious plan
.

Judas was disturbed by it.

It was fraught with traps but more importantly it did not fit with Judas’ own ideal. In his mind there still lived an image of the Messiah, which had become entangled with the likeness of Judas Maccabeus. This Messiah would be a great king and he would unite the glory of Rome with the wisdom of the Jews. Rome might even be persuaded to become the benefactor of such a transformation if it were to her benefit. Moreover, Pilate seemed to be a man of principles. He may have used Temple funds to build an aqueduct, but was Jerusalem not arid and dry? Did its population not cry out for water? Was there not a practical logic to using these funds, which often fell into the pockets of the corrupt priests, to quench the thirst of the people? Perhaps there was a way of preparing for the Messiah by stroking Roman pride?

He
resolved that he would start by warning Pilate of the insurrection. The Roman would look favourably upon such a warning and consider its messenger a man he could trust. Trust, Judas reasoned, led to favour, and favour led to outcomes.

And so, in his mind he calculated his next move. He would take himself to the Procurator of Judea and beg an audience. He
could not know that such an action was destined to bring about the realisation of his second betrayal.