‘Yes, it showed ...’
‘The figure of Christ bound hand and foot, dragged to the tomb.’ She paused. ‘That isn’t how the Bible tells us he died, is it? But it’s not a painter’s fantasy either, nor some ghastly attempt at blasphemy. For
the Brotherhood, it is the literal truth. It is the centre of their faith.’
Patrick remembered Alessandro Contarini as he had last seen him, angry, his long white hair falling loose across his face, his finger raised, pointing again and again at the fresco on the wall and crying: ‘For that, you fool! For that!’
Francesca hesitated and turned to O’Malley.
‘Dermot, I...’
‘It’s all right, my dear. You’re doing well. Keep going.’
She closed her eyes briefly, then opened them again, as though, in a moment’s darkness, she had found strength.
‘The Old Testament,’ she said, ‘is built around the notion of sacrifice. Bullocks, rams and sheep, goats, turtle-doves, pigeons: an endless flow of sacrificial blood.
‘But there is human blood as well. Abraham goes to a mountain with his son and prepares to slit his throat as an offering to his God. Moses is sent by the same God to redeem His people from Pharaoh: the price is the blood of Egypt’s first-born. God gives them their Promised Land, and the price is yet more blood - whole cities put to the sword, men, women and children without distinction. Jephtha returns from his victory over the children of Ammon and the price is his only daughter, to fulfil a vow to God. Hiel the Bethelite rebuilds Jericho and pays with the blood of his sons, Abiram and Segub, cast beneath the foundations and the gate. In time, the Temple reeks of blood.’
The unseen storm that raged round her was reaching its height. She fought against it, denying its force in her.
‘Christ was born into a world obsessed with sacrifice. The daily burnt offering, the weekly sacrifice
on the Sabbath, the monthly offering, Passover; burnt offerings, drink offerings, sin offerings. Within days of his birth the streets were awash with the blood of little children. That was God’s price, the ransom that allowed him safe passage to Egypt. In Jerusalem, in the Temple, the altar was red.
‘He wanted to change that world, to invest the throats of doves and the necks of rams with a different sanctity. His own life for the world, his own body as a final sacrifice, his own blood as the price of everything, the coin that would buy God’s pardon. That is what the Church teaches, what the Church believes. The Mass repeats his sacrifice endlessly, flesh and blood on God’s new altar.’
She looked at Patrick, then at Assefa. Her eyes had a faraway look now.
‘That is what you believe, isn’t it? That in one man the Temple sacrifice became universal. But the Brotherhood thinks otherwise. The Brotherhood knows the truth.’
From the table next to her, she lifted a small book bound in black.
‘This is a copy of the Aramaic Gospel of James,’ she said. ‘It has been in the possession of the Brotherhood since its inception. Any other manuscripts that may have existed have long ago been lost or destroyed. The Brotherhood itself has only ever printed a few hundred copies. I stole this one from my father’s library just before I came to Rome. It’s an Italian translation. Let me read James’s account of the death of Jesus.
“He went up to the cross, and they nailed him and hung him on it, as the prophet had foretold. And he suffered greatly from the sixth hour until the ninth, whereupon he cried out with a loud voice and hung upon the cross as one dead. And yet he had not died,
but still lived. For when they came to take him down that they might carry him to the tomb, they rejoiced that they found him still alive.
“His mother and Mary Magdalene tended his wounds and nursed him by day and night for three months, until he recovered. And in those days but a tiny number of his followers knew what had passed, that he had not died as predicted, but was still alive. For most of the disciples thought he had been buried and had risen from the dead.
“For three months, his mother and the Magdalene tended him in secret. They let the Sanhedrin and the Romans think him dead, for in that thought lay his only hope of safety. It was their plan, once he was fully come once more to his strength and could walk again, that they might find a way for him to take himself out of Palestine, into another country. And he himself desired it greatly, for the cross had broken him, and he could not face the nails again.
“But I, James his brother, together with Simon the Canaanite, Andrew the brother of Peter, and seven others from among the disciples other than the twelve, all of us who knew the truth thought otherwise. For God’s will had been thwarted, and His Sacrifice remained unfinished. Wherefore, we met together in Simon’s house that is in the Street of the Water Gate and swore a solemn oath binding us to finish what had been left undone. That night, we came to a place outside the city, where Jesus had been hidden, and took him from there over the cries of the women that watched over him, and carried him to the place outside the city, where Joseph of Arimathea had given a tomb for his burial. And he was bound with cords and his mouth tied with cloth, lest he break free or the Romans hear his cries and send men to investigate.
“And we laid him in the sarcophagus that Joseph
had inscribed with his name and the circumstances of his crucifixion under Pilate. It was a great anguish to us to treat him thus, but we remembered God’s promise to us that He would forgive us all sins through the blood of His son, and the sins of all men. And so we laid him in his place and covered him with the stone and sealed the tomb.” ‘
She stopped reading and the room filled with a terrible silence. Minutes passed and still no one spoke. At last Assefa turned to Father O’Malley.
‘Do you believe this?’ he asked.
The priest laughed loudly, breaking the spell of gloom that had settled round them all. ‘Good God, no,’ he said. ‘I can’t say it isn’t all true, of course. How would I know? How would anyone know? But the world is full of apocryphal Gospels, isn’t it? Sure, the Gnostics had Gospels and Epistles and Apocalypses and God knows what coming out of them like eggs out of a chicken. I choose not to believe in the Gospel of Thomas or the Gospel of Peter or the Gospel of the Ebionites, or, for that matter, the Acts of Paul or Peter or Thomas, and the Lord alone knows what besides. So why on earth should I believe this Gospel of James? And if it is true, what difference would it make to anything? If the saints are in hell, I’d far rather be there with them than in heaven with James and his gang.’
He paused and looked sadly at Assefa.
‘I don’t doubt that the Brotherhood exists; I know too much about them and their doings for that. And the papyrus I showed Patrick is proof enough that they go back a long way. But it doesn’t mean they know all there is to know.’
He smiled.
‘Listen, we’ll talk about this later. In the meantime, I’ll let Francesca get to the end of her story.’
Francesca laid the book back on the table.
‘There’s not much more to say,’ she continued. ‘The Brotherhood grew, at first in Egypt, later in Italy. My ancestor Pietro Contarini met some Brothers there and was initiated into their secret. By that time, Egypt was under Muslim rule, and the Brotherhood wanted to find a way into Christian territories. From Venice, they spread to Rome, and in Rome they became bishops and cardinals. About the same time Pietro brought the faith to Italy, an Irish pilgrim on his way back from Jerusalem had taken it to Ireland. During the Crusades, French and English knights were welcomed into the Brotherhood by a branch living in Jerusalem, the Guardians of the Tomb itself.