John

Papias says nothing. His lips quiver and he presses them together as if they might utter betrayal.

'He has spoken, leave him!' The Apostle touches Matthias's shoulder, who shakes the hand roughly away.

'I could break you like a stick. I could make you fall to the ground with vomiting and wailing, old man, if it were my will. Touch me not. You know not with whom you deal.'

'I have no fear!'John replies sternly. 'We come gathered here for communion, for our community of believers, brothers in our Lord Jesus Christ. If you are not of us, then be gone.'

'We will be gone. By sunrise we will have left this hell.' Matthias paces down the table length. 'And you, you all, old men, what will you do? Stay here till death, like Prochorus, lie beneath mounds of stones and be forgotten? Yes, forgotten. Old man, old teller of a tale, your tale is threadbare and runs to nothing. This carpenter's son messiah. Do you wait, all of you, do you wait yet? That the carpenter will come again? Ha! Because the hour is at hand?'

'Matthias stop!' Papias cries.

'You will be bones and dust. Dust and bones. All of you. And your Jesus not even dust on the pages of the books of history. Remembered a few more years, then forgotten. You are fools, credulous fools, to follow an old fool.'

Papias comes forwards as though he will strike the other. Matthias stops and looks into his face.

'And you, the greatest fool if you do not come to your destiny.'

'Be gone.'

There is a moment, the face of Matthias an implacable mask inches from the youth, his lips pressed tightly, his dark eyes burning. Then, as if he releases in disgust what he himself has caught, he wheels away.

'So be it.' He walks swiftly to the cave entrance, stops. 'Hear ye. We, the chosen, the believers in the Divine, will leave this island at sunrise. Those who will follow are welcome. Consider well, Papias. Those who remain on Patmos will die on Patmos. Your Jesus does not come. Your Jesus does not care. Because your Jesus was a man, and is dead. Behold, the truth. Fools of Jesus, farewell.'

Matthias raises his two hands and brings them together in a loud clap. Then he turns on his heel and leads the others from the cave into the night.

17

When the bell rings at sunrise, the Christians do not know their number. In their separate huts they do not know who will have left and who remained. In the aftermath of Matthias's departure from the cave, the Apostle called them to sit again for the supper communion, Papias at his right hand. There was a pause first for prayer and contemplation. Then John broke the bread and gave thanks. He spoke the words of blessing they had heard many times, but there was a hardened edge to his voice, as though now there was an imperative. 'Jesus said: "I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger, he that believeth in me shall never thirst." ' The Apostle held aloft the cup of wine and said, 'Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God.' After, he had turned his head to each as though he could see and spoken loudly: 'My brothers, truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.'

He spoke on and the disciples listened, marvelling at urgency of voice, the vigour and conviction that seemed of old. He spoke of the light as if the darkness was nearer now. Papias and the elders attended as though the words were newly necessary, and in their telling remade the world, as if therein were retraced maps for the lost.

The old Apostle had taken the hands of each as they left the cave and went out across the dark. The night was blown about, unruly winds and heavy starless sky. Papias and Ioseph had remained. In the course of the night they woke and slept both, but neither could say they saw the Apostle rest.

Now, at the rising of a timid sun, the bell rings, its leaden clapper hand-beat to make a dull sound as the disciple Lemuel crosses the first thin light on the island and comes along the upper ridge to sound the call for prayer. In the chill gloom are shadow figures, silent, stepping the stone path to assembly. Birds are not yet astir; nothing sounds but the sea turning the key of its tide. In grey, like shades crossed from another world, the Christians. First there is only Lemuel, the bell ringer, then the woken form of Danil, then Meletios, and others, each uncertain as they come outside if they alone are left, if all will have followed Matthias. They take comfort from one another's company, but say nothing. They cross as always up the beaten way to the promontory where the flat table rock stands.

The sun rises.

The Apostle and Ioseph and Papias come — they, too, feeling the human consolation of community, and more, the enduring witnessing of their belief. The disciples have each prepared themselves in the night to be the only remaining in the dawn, and thinking so having ventured into the wild dark of their own spirits, to seek the truth of what they believe and then live by it — they have accepted it. Each has thought to abide with the old apostle in a community of two or three, if so be it, to wait in prayer for the coming of Jesus the Christ. But now they see, there remains all who sat to the supper communion, nine in number. And though they are less than half the community of before, from this each takes strength.

By the table rock they stand. The daylight reveals them where they pray to the Father.

Below, the sea unveiled, a boat waits. To it, in form like a snake, Matthias and his followers come. Behind them they leave their huts afire that nothing be left but darkened prints upon the ground.

I think of the multitude.

I think of the great multitude who followed you because they had seen your miracles on those who were diseased. The crowd whose number Simon Peter could not count but said were more than five thousand. Up the stony ground of the mountain following, the time of Passover near. The multitude in the heat of day. I looked back upon them, marvelling. How many there were. Philip saying to me, 'We become a nation.'

As we believed and were witness thereof.

The great company murmuring, whispering, expecting, climbing the mountain behind you to the place you led, where was a grassy expanse.

'Whence shall we buy bread that these may eat?'

The boy who carried five loaves and two small fishes. The sun shining upon the multitude.

I saw the loaves and fishes carried to you in the one basket. Your prayer of thanks over them, your eyes to the heavens. And breaking the loaves and fishes that they might be distributed among many and sending forth: 'Gather up the fragments that remain that nothing be lost.'

The twelve baskets that were filled. And again, and again, so a clamour arose among the multitude. They stood and cried out. 'O Prophet! O Most Mighty! Hail Holy King! Hail Holy King!'

For, in fervour then, they were for coming and taking you by force to be their king. The great multitude of your believers.

But you departed hence alone into the mountain.

We stood before the great assembly. Philip said, 'What number in the world there will be of us will outnumber stars.'

For so it seemed.

The multitude.

O Lord, if it be thy will, send us your mercy that we may abide.

If it be thy will, send us a sign.

'Papias?'

'Yes, Master?' Papias still cannot call the Apostle by his name. It does not seem fitting. For the truth is he wishes him to be other than mere human, not merely an old man called John.

They sit outside the cave in the afternoon. It is some days since Matthias and his followers have left.

'You are well?'

'I am.'

'What I ask you will obey, Papias?'

'You have no need to ask me.'