John

The elders move their mouths. Papias falls back beneath the sea.

The pain in the eye is exquisite. It shoots in from the corner, needling deeper than the needle with the slightest movement of the head. Matthias's vision is smeared as with ointment. The pain pierces. He would shriek if it were not for the others. Baltsaros dabs at it, then lays a poultice he has prepared. It stings fiercely. Matthias feels holed into the back of his mind.

But it was worth it. How they look upon me now. Pain is proof. How the ignorant love suffering in another.

He lies with his back rested against a goatskin cushion of lambswool. (Who of them harbours such a thing?) Linus points Phineas to the reddened knees, but Matthias waves him away, a movement that causes a wince, as though a hook embeds in the jelly of his eye. He sips the thinned winter-berry wine, its sourness recalling him from the hurt. There are figs; there is a bowl of raisins swollen in honey. There are dried pieces of goat meat.

Such dreary offerings. My disciples.

'Master, you saw the devil?' Auster asks, kneeling, his plump face pale and his eyes watering like one fevered.

'The devil had taken the youth; I had to pursue him,' Matthias says.

'He was a serpent?'

'He was serpent in form, but greater than a serpent. He twisted in the youth's eyes, two-headed.' Matthias pauses. They want more. They hunger for detail. Struggling against weariness and the pain, he continues. 'He had taken possession of the spirit, and he rose out and up above me, in size enormous, as to sink his venom in me.'

There is a hush. His twelve, and Auster and Linus attend. He sips the sour wine.

'I called to him to be gone. I opened my arms wide like so, and in my hands were swords of silver. Light shone from them and lit the room and dazzled the devil, but he twisted upon himself and spat and became then a creature breathing fire. "Be gone," I cried out. "Be gone. You know not who I am." The fire he breathed burned me not. I was as one bathed in light divine and he cowered back. One head sucked at the youth for the last of his spirit, the other spat skyward, and a flock of birds it seemed fell from the sky slain. I raised my sword and plunged it to him. It sunk into the hardened scale as though in hide. Black blood of him, hot, flowed. Verily it did. He was wounded, and my sword plunged again and again till he twisted back from me and the youth and departed into darkness.'

Matthias allows a pause. None speaks. The pain in the eye pulses from the telling. He touches the poultice, tries to mask the shudder that passes through him.

'Papias?' Baltsaros asks. 'He was dead?'

'The youth was dead. Auster saw. But his spirit was not taken. It hovered still between this world and the next.'

There is nodding. There is a murmur. There is reverence.

'I knelt then,' Matthias tells them. 'I knelt then to pray that I might be able to intercede on the youth's behalf, that he not leave this world yet. That he be spared to me and returned from death. I summoned the Divine, and found it within me, and touched Papias's forehead, and behold! he lived again.'

There is a gasp. Matthias bows his head. The others do the same.

Wonderful. The power of a story to the credulous.

When Papias wakes a second time, he sees the face of the Apostle. John is bent low over him and must feel the moment, for he turns his head at once.

'Papias?'

'Master.'

'Praise God.' The Apostle reaches his two hands to lay them on the forehead of the youth. The fever is gone.

'Can you hear, Papias?' Ioseph asks.

Tenderly the youth touches his ruined ear, as if his fingers recollect, he nods. 'Yes.'

'Come, we will bear you to the cave,' John says.

'Master, I can walk.'

'You will be weak, Papias,' Ioseph counsels, 'let them bring a litter.'

'No. I will walk. And guide my master. Please.'

And so Papias stands and seems at once to the elder disciples as though he has aged greatly. There is in his bearing the prudent air of one who has come through peril, as if a traveller from lands of plague and famine. He is slow and deliberate where once sudden. He offers his arm to the Apostle. 'Master?'

They go out into the day. Though the storm has moved to the west, the sky is overhung with clouds and the light poor. The disciples progress silently from the dwelling across the smooth rock face polished with wind. The slain seabirds lie where they fell, but none make comment. The dark sea throws itself about, unsettled yet. On the stone steps Papias takes care to attend the Apostle, offering both hands. Wind whirls the white hair and beard. The elders stop and wait. They do not voice opinion on what Matthias seems to have brought to pass; they will wait to hear the word from the Apostle. They have the reverence of ones aware they are in a presence, and though each feels turn inside him the tireless wheel of human questioning, they keep silence. Something is happening, and has happened, but it is not for them to know yet, they believe. All will be revealed. Their faith now is founded as before on the telling of the acts of Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, and the Apostle is as a roadway leading back to that reality and onwards to the Second Coming. He will tell them when he has considered it. He will tell them if Matthias has worked a miracle.

At the cave entrance they stop.

'You must rest now, Papias,' Ioseph says. 'We thank God that you have come back to us.'

'Back? I have not been gone.'

The elders exchange looks, some lower their eyes to the stone path.

'Before the dawn bell you were announced dead,' John says.

Papias looks at him. 'Master, I was not dead.'

None speak. John holds on to the youth's hands, a frail bridge-way, windblown. The illumination of the night is about the Apostle still. We are nothing lest we love. He finds himself welling like a spring struck. His chin trembles with emotion. He fears he may weep with gratitude, may seem the oldest of old men to the elders and buckle with love. It keeps coursing through him. The poor daylight, the sealight, the sounds and smells carried on the wind, these, the disciples who have followed him in banishment all these years, the loyal youth: all are touched with the same blessing. He cannot think of one without feeling love. It is as if he has been rescued and returned to himself, to a time long ago when he felt so. This is his understanding of it now. It is love that informs all. Nor is this love a thing soft or immature like a new bud, but rather that which comes coursing through the vine itself and makes it strong, durable, pliable, makes it spread to encompass more and more ground, cling to the wall, bear fruit. He has been weak, and foolish, and forgotten love, but no more.

'Come. Come all of you. Come inside,' the Apostle says. His blind head at an upward tilt, he releases Papias and waves both hands. 'Come. All. Be with me.'

When they are entered and sit around on rush mats and stools, and Papias has been given a lambswool blanket for his shoulders, the Apostle speaks to them. He speaks as he has not in a long time, and from his first words all of the elders feel a shiver of knowledge, understanding the words he speaks will outlive time.

'Beloved,' he says, 'we must believe not every spirit, but try all spirits whether they are of God, because many false prophets are gone out into the world.' He touches his tongue to his lips, raises his voice louder and stronger still.

'Hereby know ye the spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that confesses not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God; and this is that spirit of Antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.'