He paused and took a long knife from a sheath he carried on his hip.
‘I don’t need you any longer,’ he said. ‘I can find other scholars, men with greater experience than you. You threw away your chance. Stand still. I don’t want a struggle.’
He stepped forwards, one hand reaching out for her, a smile playing on his lips.
Later, she could not remember the actions that followed. Her right hand reached along the wall and found the pilum, the Spear of Destiny, and she grasped it tightly, bringing it to her front, swinging it forwards and buttressing it with her left hand; she braced her feet, the right ahead of the left, and thrust, throwing her body after the lance and taking him hard just beneath the heart, stopping him. The knife clattered to the floor, and he gave out a long sound, wordless and without echo. He remained standing and put his hand on the lance that had last pierced the side of Christ. He pulled it from himself with great effort, but Sarah kept her grip on it and pushed it back. He stood facing her, disappointed and angry to know he had been bested by a woman. He would have moved for his handgun, but she raised the spear again, and this time it penetrated higher up, piercing his heart with great force. For a moment she kept him suspended there, then she pulled the pilum from his chest, so that his legs gave way and his body fell to the ground and was still.
All around her, the skulls of the dead in their niches watched. They might have been saints, they had more probably been ordinary human beings caught by the tribulations of life. Sarah could look them in the eyes, and if they seemed to smile, she could bear it, for she could see no difference between them and her.
She walked among the tombs, identifying the sarcophagi one by one: the tombs of Simon and Alexander, the ossuaries of Joseph and Mary and their children, and finally the Christ tomb, the holiest thing in the world, if not to her, then to millions.
For a long time after that, she sat in the centre of the charnel house, as though communing with the dead. Not far away lay the bodies of the freshly dead, and the weapons that had killed them. She understood everything, and she understood nothing.
At some point in the night she thought she heard breathing. Later, when she had fallen into a light sleep, she was wakened by a different sound. A baby was crying among the tombs. And a girl’s voice was hushing the child to sleep.
33
Jesus
Ethan and the others finally reached Ain Suleiman towards noon on the following day. Their arrival sent the women into a state of near hysteria. Even though their guide, Ayyub — who knew a little Tamasheq — called to them reassuringly, they vanished among the palm groves and would not come out. The other guide, Mohamed, was nowhere to be seen.
The monks got out, weapons in hand, searching for Aehrenthal and his gang. They knew they would have been alerted by the sound of their engines as they arrived. But as they started to spread out, they came across several bodies. Clearly, something had happened here.
And then a voice called out.
‘Ethan! Gavril! It’s all right, you can put your guns down. Aehrenthal is finished. His men are all dead.’
Ethan swung round. Like a bird, his heart escaped him and took flight. Sarah was walking towards them across a stretch of sand. On one side of her walked a Tuareg man, on the other a young Tuareg woman carrying a child.
‘I thought you were dead,’ he said. His cheeks were wet with tears, but he barely noticed.
‘I’d given up hope,’ she answered, and then she was crying and falling into his arms. He clung to her, as if to turn her ghost to flesh. He wanted to sing or dance with her, or to sit with her in silence, holding hands.
After a long embrace, Sarah led them to a place by the pool where they could refresh themselves. Their cook brought food, and the monks sat at the water’s edge, eating and gulping down mouthfuls of fresh water that Flaviu and Claudiu had drawn from the spring. While they ate, Sarah told Ethan and Gavril as much as she could remember of what had taken place. The deaths, her visit to Wardabaha, Aehrenthal’s death.
‘I’ve walked around a bit,’ she said. ‘This city is much larger than the synagogue and tombs your grandfather found. They’re probably the most important part, but it will take teams of archaeologists decades to excavate the whole thing. Who knows what’s hidden here?’
She smiled to herself. For many hours now she had been hugging herself inside. Not for Egon Aehrenthal’s death, which she considered a minor thing. What was Aehrenthal set beside the bones of Christ or the Lance of Longinus or the Crown of Thorns? But more than that, she knew something that would shake half the world to its foundations. It was not a relic, not a tomb, not a collection of bones.
She let her hand fall in the open water, felt it ripple across her skin. Later, when it was dark perhaps, she would come down here and take a bowl of water and strip naked, so she could wash it all away, so she could cleanse herself of Aehrenthal’s filth and abuse. She smiled gently.
Next to her sat the young woman she had found in the tombs the night before, the woman with the baby. For some time, the woman had been in deep conversation with Mohamed, the Tuareg guide.
On her other side sat Ethan and Gavril. They were getting ready for their first venture into the city, which was being emptied of the corpses of Aehrenthal’s men and the bodies of the women who’d been slaughtered there.
‘Ethan,’ Sarah said. ‘Gavril. I want to tell you something. There’s no easy way to tell this. The young woman beside me is the youngest widow of Idris agg Yusuf, who was the chief of this settlement when Aehrenthal arrived. His body is out with the other men awaiting burial.
‘Idris is Arabic for the prophet Enoch. Yusuf is Joseph. All the leaders of the Tuareg here have carried the names of Jewish prophets or holy men. The names are the same as those used by Muslims, so no one has ever noticed anything odd. But all the men in general carry Jewish names. It is quite possible that this group are not Tuareg at all, but direct descendants of the Jewish Christians who settled the oasis in the first place. Some of the men have survived Aehrenthal’s massacre. In time, the line may be re-established. But there is more. Ask this young woman what her name is.’
Ethan exchanged glances with Gavril. Neither man could understand what Sarah was up to.
Gavril spoke first.
‘Mohamed, will you ask this woman what her name is?’
The reply came without hesitation.
‘Maryam.’
Mohamed nodded.
‘The name Maryam mean Mary,’ he said. ‘Her name Mary.’
‘Ask her mother’s name.’
He asked her.
‘Hana,’ the girl said.
‘Her mother’s name in English is Hannah.’
‘Now ask her the name of her baby.’
‘Isa,’ she said.
Mohamed looked at Gavril and Ethan.
‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘Her baby is Jesus, like the prophet, salla ‘llah ‘alayhu wa sallam.’
There was a long silence as the truth began to sink in. Finally, Gavril spoke.
‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘How does this work?’