Sacred Sword (Ben Hope 7) (37 page)

‘
This
is what everyone’s after?’ Jude said. ‘It doesn’t look like much.’

‘May I?’ Ben asked, reaching towards the sword. Wesley balked, but before he could snatch it away Ben had gently taken it from him and was examining it, turning it over in his hands.

‘Please! Be careful with that!’ Wesley gasped. ‘You have no idea of its value.’

‘Relax,’ Ben said. ‘I’m not going to chop wood with it.’ He hefted the sword in his fist, feeling its balance. It was no mere ceremonial piece, that much was immediately clear. The hilt fitted perfectly in the palm and the blade just asked to be swung in a chopping motion. Ben noticed that the sickle shape of the blade gave it as many of the characteristics of a short axe as of a stabbing sword. In its day, this had been a state-of-the-art fighting implement that in the hands of a skilled soldier would have been capable of inflicting terrible injury, piercing armour and hacking off limbs. He wondered about the man who’d last used it, how long ago it had been and what had happened to him.

It was still just a sword, a lump of metal – yet one that had inspired such obsessive fascination that scholars wanted to write books about it, rich men would pay almost anything to possess it, and evil men would murder for it.

‘Why?’ Ben said to Wesley. ‘Why this sword?’

‘Simeon really didn’t tell you anything at all?’

‘He never had the chance,’ Ben said. ‘But now you’re going to.’

They left the vault and returned upstairs to the kitchen, where Wesley poured the remainder of the Bordeaux into three glasses and opened another bottle. Ben had gently but firmly insisted on bringing the sword upstairs, so that he could study it more while they talked. The ancient weapon looked strangely incongruous lying on a modern kitchen table. Wesley kept glancing at it nervously, as though concerned that at any moment Ben might run outside and start slashing weeds with it – but after another glass of wine he seemed to unwind and began his story.

‘If you’ve talked to Hillel, then you pretty much know the sword’s history for the last fifty years,’ Wesley said. ‘Since he stumbled on it by chance that day in 1963, it’s passed through the hands of various owners, none of who regarded it as anything more than a historic curio, not even Prince Al-Saud, who as a collector should have known better. He might have asked a far higher price for it. And I’d have paid it, too, I can tell you.’

‘So what about before Hillel found it?’ Jude asked. ‘Did it just stay hidden in the ruins of Masada?’

‘Given that nobody even knew where the site of Masada was for centuries, I’d say it’s a fair assumption that the sword was there all that time, yes. It was well concealed in the rampart wall, for the simple reason that the men who deliberately hid it there were determined that it should not fall into the hands of their enemies after the defeat of the fortress. If what I believe – and what Simeon and Fabrice believed – is correct, then for this particular sword to be taken as a trophy by the Romans would have been regarded as a worse disaster than defeat itself. Thankfully, that didn’t happen, or the sword would surely have been lost to us for ever, melted down, buried, hanging on the wall of some Roman emperor, only to be captured by the Barbarian hordes when the empire finally fell. Who knows where it could have ended up?’ Wesley eyed the sword lovingly.

‘Backtrack,’ Ben said.

‘Sorry, I’m skipping. Okay, let me lay the groundwork here. How much do you know about the history of Masada? Specifically, about the nine hundred or so men, women and children who died there?’

‘I know what most people know,’ Ben said. ‘That after the Jewish uprising against Roman rule in 66 a.d., Jerusalem was besieged and then sacked, and pockets of refugees fled to the fortress at Masada to escape persecution. They held out as long as they could, but defeat was a foregone conclusion. The rest is history.’

Wesley nodded. ‘In a nutshell. But there’s more to it. The revolt that kicked off in 66 was actually the culmination of a long period of warfare, some of it open military conflict but mostly hit-and-run guerrilla raids on Roman garrisons and supply convoys, that had been going on for a hundred years. The Holy Land at that time was a revolutionary hotbed, teeming with disaffected rebel groups, cults, sects and sub-sects, all ready to do battle against each other over the smallest matter of scripture but strongly united in their desire to strike back against the tyranny of the Romans. One of the major revolutionary groups were the Nazareans, regarded by the Romans as terrorists and hunted down accordingly. The Romans had a name for such rebels – they called them the
Sicarii
, from the Latin word
sicarius
, meaning a dagger-man, a cutthroat, an assassin.’ Wesley grunted. ‘Same way we use terms like “insurgents” and “extremists” in the modern age to describe folks who’re only trying to defend their homeland against invasion. Another nice example of history being written by the winners. But what if the Sicarii weren’t cutthroats and villains, but simply brave men who opposed a cruel foreign regime, refused to acknowledge Rome as their master, and were sworn to fight to the death for the reinstatement of a rightful ruler over the kingdom of Israel?’

‘I get the idea,’ Ben said. ‘Keep going.’

‘Like I said, this is all groundwork. In around 63 a.d., James, the Nazarean leader in Jerusalem, was captured and executed by the authorities. Soon after, in the year 66, a massive renewed rebellion sparked open war, as a result of which the rebels took Jerusalem. One of their many victories against the Romans at that time was the slaughter, to a man, of the military garrison stationed at Masada, leaving the fortress empty. Naturally, Rome couldn’t leave such acts unpunished. In 70 a.d. the Emperor Titus ordered a massive invasion of Jerusalem by the biggest Roman army ever seen.

‘Now, the city had been sacked before, by the Egyptians a thousand years earlier. This time was much worse. The Romans surrounded the city with their siege towers and ballistas, and bombarded it relentlessly until the defences crumbled and the legions marched in. A million people died in the siege and ensuing slaughter, most of them Jews. The Romans massacred everyone they could find – men, women, children, priests, the elderly, those who tried to resist or those who begged for mercy. According to the Roman historian Josephus, the soldiers had to clamber over mounds of the dead in order to carry on the extermination. A hundred thousand more of Jerusalem’s population were captured and enslaved, while anyone who tried to escape was hunted down and killed. Once Jerusalem was taken, Titus ordered its complete destruction. The army laid waste to the place, demolished Herod’s Temple and levelled the city walls to their foundations.

‘Meanwhile, the contingent of rebels who’d taken out the Roman garrison at Masada, commanded by a man named Eleazar ben Yair, were digging in for the retaliatory onslaught that would inevitably follow the fall of Jerusalem. Many of them were committed to the Nazarean cause, had known in advance that things were about to reach boiling point and had managed to get out of Jerusalem in time.’

Wesley interrupted his story for a sip of wine. ‘And if I’m right – as I believe I am – the leaders of the Nazarean freedom fighters had brought with them to Masada an unimaginably precious icon and symbol of their struggle. An icon that nearly two thousand years of political and theological fact-fudging has left all but forgotten in the modern age. Until now.’

‘Are you still laying the groundwork, or are we getting closer to the point?’ Ben asked.

‘I dropped a clue earlier,’ Wesley said, ‘when I said that the revolutionary movements in the Holy Land had existed for many years before these events took place.’

‘I don’t get it. How’s that a clue?’ Jude asked, frowning.

‘Let’s go back another, say, forty years, to around 30 a.d.,’ Wesley said. ‘To a time when the Nazareans were already a significant enough subversive force, both politically and militarily, to present a real threat to Roman rule.’ He smiled. ‘There was one prominent Nazarean whose name I haven’t mentioned. His name was Jesus. And this was his sword.’

‘That’s a hell of a claim to make,’ Ben said. He hadn’t known quite where Holland’s story was leading, but it certainly wasn’t to this.

‘Yes, it is,’ Wesley replied earnestly, levelling a finger at him. ‘And it’s not one I, or Fabrice Lalique, or your father’ – pointing across at Jude – ‘would ever make lightly. But consider the evidence. It’s well established by now that “Jesus of Nazareth” is a mistranslation of “Jesus the Nazarean” from the original Greek text of the New Testament. Nazareth may not have been the birthplace of Christ at all, for the simple reason that it might not have even existed until three hundred years afterwards. Why pretend that he wasn’t strongly associated with the same rebel movements that the Romans were so desperate to stamp out, all through his lifetime and for years afterwards?’

‘This is the kind of stuff nineteen-year-old theology students discuss in the pub,’ Ben said. ‘You think I haven’t heard it before?’

‘Then maybe our bright young scholars should think about it a little harder,’ Wesley shot back. ‘Simeon did. The evidence, both from the Bible and other contemporary historical sources, all points to the inescapable fact that Jesus was crucified as a political revolutionary. The Roman chronicler Tacitus states as much in his Annals. But Jesus was much more than just another insurrectionist,’ Wesley went on emphatically. ‘The gospels of both Matthew and Luke state pretty explicitly that he was of royal birth, a legitimate descendant of Solomon and David claiming rightful kingship over the nation of Israel and come to deliver his people from the tyrannical rule of a foreign invader – a liberator, wielding a liberator’s sword. He was the Messiah or “anointed one”, whose triumphal entry into Jerusalem was in keeping with the ancient prophecy in Zechariah 9:9 that the rightful king would ride into the city on a donkey. How else could this humble travelling holy man have managed to convince the Roman governor of Judea that his intention was to become King of the Jews, and so needed to be made an example of by putting him to death in a manner specifically reserved for enemies of the state?’

Ben kept his mouth shut. Wesley had waded into an area of biblical research that even some of the most conservative scholars had to admit was murky at best.

‘This Bible stuff never stuck on me,’ Jude said, ‘but weren’t the two other men crucified with Jesus just common criminals? Hardly enemies of the state.’

‘In the original Koine Greek in which the New Testament was written,’ Wesley explained, ‘the men crucified alongside Jesus were described as
lestai
, which was mistranslated as “robbers”. In fact, in the first century a.d. the term lestai would have signified much more than common crooks, but rather terrorists, insurrectionists, rebels. They were outlaws, like the rest of the disciples. Take Judas Iscariot, for instance. That’s more than likely another mistranslation. Many scholars, your father included, believed that he was actually “Judas the Sicarius”, Judas the rebel or guerrilla fighter.’

‘But Jesus was a pacifist,’ Jude said. ‘Even I know that he advocated love, not war.’

‘As a philosopher he advocated Christian values of tolerance and goodness towards one’s fellow men,’ Wesley said. ‘The same virtues practised by, say, the Templar Knights a thousand years later, although that didn’t stop them from being ferocious warriors when violence was called for. Fact is, Jesus was far from the meek, mild hippy image he’s become identified with in modern times. Did your father ever tell you the story of how he stormed into the Temple and kicked over the moneychangers’ tables? Hardly an act of pacifism, do you think? It must have sparked a full-scale riot.’

Jude had to concede the point. ‘Okay, but Jesus and his disciples didn’t go around with weapons, did they?’

‘Actually, the Bible tells us that they were routinely armed, like any soldier would be. For example, they had swords with them at the Last Supper, even as they sat around eating and talking.’

‘What?’

‘It’s right there in the Gospel of Luke,’ Wesley said. “Jesus” last words to his disciples at the supper are to urge them to arm themselves, even if they have to sell their garments to pay for weapons. The disciples respond by reminding him they already did – “Look, Lord, here are our swords” – to which Jesus replies with approval.’

‘Are you serious?’ Jude said.

‘Sure I am. And there’s more. Now, when the Last Supper is over, Jesus leads his followers to the Garden of Gethsemane, where shortly afterwards the authorities turn up to arrest him. Not just the token handful it would take to round up an unarmed pacifist, either. According to some versions of the scripture, an entire cohort of Roman soldiers was sent to capture Jesus. A cohort is one tenth of a legion. That’s six hundred soldiers, accompanied by troops of the puppet Jewish regime and various officials including the High Priest and his assistant Malchus. No sooner have they appeared, but one of Jesus’ disciples whips out a sword and slices off Malchus’ ear.’

Jude shot Ben a look of incredulity.

‘It’s true,’ Ben told him. ‘It’s there in the Bible.’

‘Now, the Gospel of St John actually names the wielder of the sword as the disciple Simon Peter. Later to become known as St Peter the Apostle, of course, though he may also have been the same man as Simon the Zealot, a well-known militant nationalist of the time. There’s a 1520 painting,
The Capture of Christ
, that shows him swinging a sword at a terrified Malchus.’ Wesley grinned. ‘I know, I tried to buy it. The painting gives a pretty good idea of what the scene must have been like. What happened next? Six hundred soldiers dispatched to make an arrest, only to be met with armed resistance? There’s bound to have been fighting. Yet even despite what’s clearly written in the Bible, none of this is mentioned in the conventional account of the story that’s preached today.’

Ben leaned forward to cut in. ‘So if I understand, your theory goes like this: when Jesus is captured, presumably along with the two other rebels who are crucified along with him, some of his men manage to escape, taking the sword with them. It remains in the hands of the rebels who continue the armed struggle against the Romans for years after the crucifixion.’