The Boudicca Parchments (21 page)

“That’s right,” said Ted. “You certainly know your Celtic legends. I think there was something about him hacking at a tree in grief and anger until an old wound from his head started bleeding again and he died. That’s Conchobar I mean, not Barach.”

“Well presumably this is all just coincidence,” said Daniel.

“Oh yes,” said Ted. “I don’t think anyone’s suggesting the legends were true. They were originally oral pagan legends, but by the time they were transcribed, they’d probably been edited somewhat by monks to bring them into line with Christian beliefs. But the point is that the name Barach
could
be a local name. It doesn’t have to be this…”

“Baruch,” Daniel added.

“Okay but you said there were
two
witnesses.”

“Well the other was a name was very easy to read. It’s a name of Hellenic origin, but it was a name that was found in several members of Herod’s family. Aristobulos.”

Daniel was expecting some comment from Ted in response to this – expecting anything but the reaction that he actually got. For when Daniel said the name, he noticed that the look on Ted’s face was one of shock – the man was absolutely shaken to the core.

Chapter 49

“Why can’t we go through there?” asked Shir.

She was pointing to a bank of machines at the far right end of passport control where people were just placing their right hands and then walking through. Julia thought about how to explain it to an eight-year-old.

“It’s a special machine that can read people’s hand prints.”

“What do you mean ‘reading’ them?”

“It can tell who they are by their handprint. And if it recognizes them, it lets them through automatically, so they don’t have to stand in the queue like us.”

The queue was long and didn’t seem to be moving, so as usual the girls were getting impatient.

“So why can’t
we
use it?”

“Because it’s only for Israelis.”

“That’s not fair,” said May.

“In order to use it, you have to register with them beforehand and they can only register people who live in Israel.”

Romy was pointing in another direction.

“Then why can’t we stand in that line over there?”

Julia looked round, wondering if she had indeed missed the chance to stand in a shorter queue. Of course the problem was you could never really tell. You could join what looked like the shortest queue only to discover that another queue was moving faster. In fact in Julia’s experience, that was usually the case.

“That’s a queue for Israelis only too.”

“But why can’t they use the machine? Then we could stand in that line?”

“Because not all Israelis have registered to use the machine. And if they haven’t registered, then it hasn’t got their records.”

The discussion fizzled out, but the twins and Romy kept looking over at the hand-scanner wistfully, as if wishing that they too could use it. Julia relied on the scanner to keep them distracted and pre-occupied while the queue crawled slowly forward. She knew that it would be another long wait at the baggage reclaim, but she remembered that the carousel had held the girls spellbound at LAX on their way to Disneyland and she assumed – translation:
hoped
– that it would be the same here in Ben Gurion Airport.

It was over an hour later that she passed through customs with the suitcase on a trolley and the girls on the suitcases, having relegated airport safety rules to obscurity. By that stage her mother, Helen, was going frantic with worry, as Julia had forgotten to switch her mobile phone back on after the flight. When the Sasson’s finally emerged groundside, it was Shir and May who spotted their grandmother first, followed a second later by Romy. But it was Romy who tugged at her mother’s arm and pointed to alert her.

“Julia,” said Helen with a smile. She wanted to embrace her daughter, but it was hard to when she was being swarmed by the equally loving embrace of her granddaughters. When she finally extricated herself from the zealous affections of the happy threesome, Helen and Julia exchanged a quick hug before Helen exerted her matriarchal authority to restore some discipline to the situation.

“All right girls,” she said firmly, “to the car.”

This produced a quickly scramble back to the luggage trolley which very nearly degenerated into a three-way fight. But Helen made short shrift of this.

“Cut it out girls! No you can’t ride the trolley. You’ll have to learn to walk. You’re not babies.”

Coming from their grandmother, this seemed to work.

It was a long walk to the car, especially in the humid heat. The airport town of Lod was on the coastal strip and on hot days, with the humidity from the sea, it could feel like a sauna. To Helen this was nothing, but neither Julia nor the little ones were used to it. Still, they were troopers and none of them wanted to wilt or succumb to complaining before the others did. Soon they were in the car on the way to Jerusalem, with the air conditioning turned up to high.

Julia thought she noticed a car behind them that had pulled out of the airport car park at the same time as hers. Presumably the driver of the vehicle was going to Jerusalem too, or at least somewhere
near
Jerusalem. At any rate, she thought nothing more of it.

Chapter 50

“Aristobulos wasn’t just a common name in the Herodian dynasty, Daniel. It was also the name of one of the seventy disciples – the one who went to Britain.”

“What do you mean
seventy
disciples? I thought there were only twelve.”

Ted replied in his slow, deliberate spoken baritone.

“There were twelve
immediate
disciples, the ones who were part of Christ’s immediate circle. But in Luke, Chapter 10, it describes how Jesus appointed seventy disciples – or in some traditions seventy two – and sent them out in pairs to spread the word to what it calls ‘every city and place whither he himself was about to come.’ This is generally understood to mean the whole world. In other words, they were sent out to spread the word to the world at large.”

“It just goes to show the gaps in my knowledge,” said Daniel sheepishly. I didn’t know anything about these seventy disciples. Are they called disciples rather than apostles to distinguish them from the original twelve?”

“Oh er no. In fact, the eastern churches call them the Seventy Apostles. But the
western
churches refer to them as disciples.”

“And Aristobulos was one that he sent to Britain?”

“Yes. According to tradition.”

“But you said Jesus sent them out in pairs”

“That’s right. According to eastern orthodox tradition he was the brother of Barnabus and both he and his brother travelled with Saint Paul.”

“How much of this is known and how much of it is speculation?”

“It’s pretty much all speculation – or let’s call it tradition. But that’s with reference to the
origins
of Aristobulos. Although there’s no documentary evidence to support it, there is a general acceptance in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches that there was a person called Aristobulos of Britannia who lived, preached and died in Roman Britain
in the first century
. He is regarded as the first Bishop of Britain and a saint, although the Catholics and Orthodox differ on whether or not he was martyred. The Catholics say yes; the Orthodox say no.”

“But they don’t differ on whether he was one of those seventy disciples or apostles?”

“No, they agree on that. It’s just that apart from the religious tradition itself, there’s no evidence that such a person was ever in Britain.”

“Well this
ketuba
might just change that – albeit at the price of making him a bit more Jewish than the churches might like.”

“Well let’s not forget that the early Christians basically thought of themselves as messianic Jews.”

“True.”

“There is one other thing, Daniel.”

“Yes.”

“Well you mentioned that the name Aristobulos was common in the Herodian family. It has been speculated – in the Roman Catholic Encyclopaedia no less – that Aristobulos of Brittania was Aristobulos the Minor.”

Daniel recognized the name from his knowledge of Judean history.

“The youngest son of Aristobulos the Fourth?”

“Exactly… and thus a grandson of Herod the Great.”

Daniel thought about this for a long time.

“Very little is known about Aristobulos the Minor, Ted. Unlike some of the Herodian family’s other progeny, he lived a relatively quiet life, except when he chided Caligula for setting up statues of pagan gods in the Temple.”

“A very courageous act, considering Caligula’s paranoid propensities.”

“Yes, but he came through okay because Caligula died in 41 and we know that Aristobulos the Minor outlived his brother, Agrippa the First, who died in the year 44.”

“But of course, we still don’t know when the
ketuba
was actually from.”

“No we don’t. But like I said I asked my lawyer to get the police to have it carbon dated.”

“If does turn out to be Aristobulos the Minor, then maybe he didn’t live such a quiet life after all.”

The conversation fizzled out at this point.

“Okay Ted, I’ve told you what I’ve got. Now you tell me your big news.”

“We found another piece of parchment, at the dig site. It was inside a clay jar sealed with a cork.”

“And what was on this parchment.”

“It was a map – a map of Europe as envisaged by the Romans In the first century. There were no Americas and the bulk Asia was largely unknown. There was Europe and Africa and the near and middle east. But everything centered around the Mediterranean.”

“But what’s so special about it that it got you so excited?”

“Well firstly the parchment itself didn’t look like any traditional Romano-British parchment. I can show it to you afterwards, but I suspect I know what you’re going to tell me. It’s probably a Jewish-style parchment.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Firstly the type of parchment itself. Secondly, because there’s writing on the map and it isn’t Latin – or even the Roman alphabet. I’ll need to show it to you, but based on what everything we’ve been talking about, I suspect it’s Hebrew or Aramaic.”

“Okay let’s head back to the service station and you can show it to me there.”

“Got that,” said Sarit from the front, pulling into the slow lane, preparing to take the next exit.

“Can I ask you something about those names Daniel?”

“What names?”

“The names on the marriage certificate.”

“Barach and Aristobulos?”

“No, the bride… and her father.”

“Lanevshiah and Farashotagesh?”

“Yes.”

“How certain are you about the pronunciation. I mean you said yourself that foreign names were hard to transliterate.”

“Well first of all it was a complete guess as to where the vowels go. I mean I could have inserted vowels where none were intended or missed out vowels that were supposed to be there. Also like I mentioned, where there’s a Hebrew letter vav it can either be pronounced like the letter V or used as a placeholder for one of two vowels, either oo as in soon or O as box. We can play around with various combinations and see if we can come up with anything that you recognize as a Romano-British name.”

“But you’re sure about the consonants?”

“Most of them yes.”

“
Most
of them?”

“Well one of them is the Hebrew letter
shin
which is pronounced like an S-H as in shout of short. But it can also be the Hebrew letter
sin
which is pronounced like an S. And also, in Farashotagesh, I read the first letter as the Hebrew letter
Fay
, which is pronounced like an F. However it could just as easily be read as the Hebrew letter
Pay
, which is pronounced like a P.”

“So it might actually be
P
arashtagesh?”

“Exactly. And the daughter could be Lanoosiah.”

For the second time in this car trip, Ted looked like he’d been pole-axed.

“Could it be Lannosea?”

Daniel was encouraged by the surprise and enthusiasm in Ted’s voice.

“It could very well be.”

But before either of them could follow up, their car was viciously side-swiped by a large lorry that had been overtaking them in the middle lane, sending them veering across the hard shoulder and rolling upside down into a ditch, to the loud screeching of metal.

Chapter 51

He kept several cars between them, but the man in the black frock coat continued to follow Julia Sasson and her family up the mountain road that wound its way up to Jerusalem. He had hovered around the arrivals area of the airport and picked up on Julia Sasson both from her description and the presence of the twins and the younger child. It was unlikely that there would be another family with precisely that arrangement and a young woman who matched Julia Sasson’s description.

He felt guilty at the temptation of lust that afflicted him when he looked upon the woman. But he told himself that it was her fault. He would ask his rabbi – HaTzadik – for guidance on this matter.

He would have to be alert now, because they were approaching the entrance to Jerusalem and that meant they could take the
Sacharov Gardens
entrance on the right that led to the
Givat Sha’ul
neighbourhood. However, he was not surprised when they passed the entrance and went on instead to the main entrance to the city instead.

Once they were inside the city with its busy traffic, he had to stay alert, because it would be all too easy to lose the car amidst the turnoffs and side streets. So he made sure that this time there was no more than one car between them as he followed through the labyrinthine streets. Jerusalem, the “new” city outside the Old City walls – was no carefully planned metropolis like New York City or the other major cities of the USA. It had grown organically over the course of its 150 year history.