Fifth Gospel Read Online Free PDF Page B

whose bowels dripped, and whose feet were enlarged and oozing with fluid. Without that blood, he would die with no friends to mourn him, a man hated by the Romans and despised by his own people.
    He let the dervish, the song, and the smell of incense enter into him and he asked the devil a question:
    Wh at now?
    Immediately h e received a vision. His eyes stared into the smoke-full air between the naked bodies that moved around the blooded altar lit by fire and candle, and in that space he saw all that was in store for him. A surge of terror clawed its way from Herod’s colon to his eyelids and he gave out a yell that was drowned by the lament of dancers, the playing of instruments and the rhythm of drums. Something gripped his throat. He struggled for breath and tried to run out of the grotto but fell. Above him, dark shapes came, some with flapping wings, others with tentacles.
    ‘I am afraid!’ he said to them, but they did not heed him.  They enveloped him in their delicate shadows and pulled him down into the dismal depths of his madness.
    It took him long to die and when the people heard of his agonising death these words rang out across the land:
    ‘ He is dead, he is dead! The Idumean who stole to the throne like a fox, who ruled like a tiger and who died like a dog!’

4
    MARY
    F orty generations after Abraham, and some months after the birth of that first child, a young woman called Mary accompanied her husband on a journey from Nazareth. It was the era of Caesar Augustus. Herod the Great had died and his cruel, sadistic son and successor Archelaus, had been deposed, leaving Syria a Governorship of the Roman Senator Quirenius.
    U nder his rule, a census was announced for the purpose of taxation and the people of Judea were required by law to travel to the seat of their ancestors to be counted. Mary’s husband, Joseph, was of the lineage of David and so he and Mary had to make the journey to Bethlehem, the town of his forebears, even at this difficult time.
    For Mary of Nazareth was long with child.
    Nine months earlier the seed had been sown in her belly on a fateful night when the Essene priests had called her and her betrothed, Joseph, to the veiled place. There they had been given a cordial that made their minds fall into nothingness. So it was with surprise and anxiety that Mary herself greeted the news of her conception, for she could remember nothing of her union with Joseph. Only the warmth and protection of that radiant angel of God had calmed her worried heart. For the angel’s soft whispers had announced the birth of her child in these words:
    Ave Maria! Blessed ar e you among women! To you will be born a child and you will name him Jesus, and he will be called the Son of God.
    This was the same voice that had compelled her to travel to her older cousin’s house, to help her with the imminent birth of her own child.
    Since her youth , the world had seemed a recent thing to Mary, and she had felt like nothing more than a dust mote drawn upwards by the breezes and the winds of heaven. A dust mote that rarely falls down-to-earth. But on her journey to see her cousin Elisabeth, she had found that an awakening was taking place in her soul. She had walked through the cold southlands, among the sadness of the mountains and the misery of the desolate trees, among the mocking face of the unforgiving brown coloured sky of Judea, until she had found herself, not only at the threshold of Elisabeth’s house, but also at the threshold of her own life.
    It had been made clear to her then, that she was coming down to earth, and she had understood what she must give up.
    T hat had been six months ago and now as she cast a glance at her husband, the young carpenter with the soft brown eyes and hair like charcoal from the fires, she knew her descent was near complete and she put her trust in Joseph. He saw to all her needs and pulled the animal gently on the road, so as not to cause her unnecessary discomfort, he