King Jesus (Penguin Modern Classics) (34 page)

“Though I condemn myself from my own mouth,” said Jesus, “I know that I was born four months before the death of King Herod ; on the day of the winter solstice. My mother has often told me so.”

The Second Doctor said passionately to the First, who was smiling triumphantly : “Take my new embroidered cloak, for you have won your wager. Grin like a dog and run about the city in it. Yet I would rather freeze to death than accept yours in exchange, for you have done a worse day’s work than you know, and if I never see your face again it will not greatly grieve me.—Come with me, boy, to my house and be my guest until you return to your parents in Galilee. For you are a good boy, and was it not the learned Hillel (his memory be blessed) who justly said : ‘A wise bastard is better than an ignorant High Priest’ ?”

But Jesus had toppled and fallen to the ground with his limbs rigid and his features distorted with pain. A terrible cry rang through the building.

The next day Jesus said faintly to the Second Doctor, who was tending him with remorseful care : “Learned man, it would be a kindness if you were to send one of your servants to fetch me a block of olive-wood, a chisel and a mallet.”

“For what purpose, boy ?”

“To see whether my hands have forgotten the trade upon which they must now depend for a livelihood ; for a Doctor of the Law, it seems, I can never be. Yesterday a great white mist rose up over my mind and I find now that I cannot remember simple Scriptural texts that I thought were burned deep in my memory. A chisel, a mallet, a block of wood.”

They were brought him, and finding that he could still manage his tools in workmanlike fashion, he gave thanks to his God. Then he said : “Add to your kindness, learned man, and send one of your servants with me a part of the way home, for I am not sure whether I can remember the road.”

“He shall go the whole way with you, if you will.”

Jesus returned to Galilee and parted from the Doctor’s servant when within sight of his home. He said nothing to his mother or father about what had happened. He could not bring himself to do so. Nor did he need to absent himself from the synagogue on account of his bastardy, for the generous rule was that no man should be debarred from religious communion with his neighbours on account of some fault of his ancestors or parents. The chief sign that he gave of his spiritual disquiet was that he ceased to read more of the Scriptures than the ordained daily texts and would no longer discuss them with anyone at all. He worked all the more diligently at his trade and was more punctilious than ever in his behaviour towards his elders. Everyone noticed the change in him.
On the whole, the people of Nazareth and Bethlehem agreed, it was a relief that he had ceased to be a boy prodigy and become an ordinary carpenter’s apprentice. He had frightened them by his learning, his independence and the critical acuteness of his mind. “We have seen this before,” the elders said. “The change comes with puberty. The visiting spirit flies off, never to return. There was a boy at Cana in our grandfathers’ day, an Issacharite, who confounded by his knowledge all the Greek professors of astronomy and mathematics at Gadara University. Figures, figures, figures—they served him like a witch’s familiars! But with puberty, off the spirit flew, and the boy, overcome by melancholy, disgraced his father’s house by taking his own life.”

Four years went by, and each year when the Passover or the Feast of Tabernacles came round again, Jesus told Jose and James : “No, brothers, go up yourselves to Jerusalem, and the Spirit of the Lord be with you! I am the youngest of us all—this time I will stay at home and mind the beasts. Next year, perhaps, I will go.” It was at the Passover of the second year that a party of Samaritans broke into the Temple one night and, entering the Court of Priests, strewed it with human bones to make it unclean ; for which the Samaritan nation was publicly cursed in the synagogues and forbidden entry for ever into the Court of the Gentiles.

In the fifth year old Joseph died. Jesus’s grief was great and he fasted for three full days. Afterwards, Mary took him aside and said : “While he lived, I could not tell you a secret about your parentage which you have a right to know. I feared that you might look on him with different eyes. Even now I shrink from hurting you.”

“Mother, you could not hurt me now, even if grief for the dead did not so numb my senses that I can hardly tell hot from cold. For I was struck to the heart five years ago when I read the Temple records of a certain marriage contract, and the knife is still plunged in the wound. You are my mother, and I am commanded to honour you, and I do honour you. Yet I honour you the less for knowing that the man whom I called father was not my father according to the flesh ; as I honour his memory the more on that account, having been treated by him as a well-beloved son. Mother, what have you to say? At Jerusalem I am written down as a bastard and you are accused of having wronged my father between the day that he undertook to marry you and the day that he came to fetch you away to his house. Why did you not tell me in good time of the flaw in my citizenship? You feed me with hopes, you send me to a learned rabbi, you persuade my father to introduce me into the synagogue of Nazareth ; thinking, I suppose, that the truth will never come out. Did you even dare to take me to the Temple to be circumcised? Were you making me a partner at eight days old to a wicked breach of the Law? And how did Joseph find it in his conscience to humour you in this? Yet I dare not reproach the beloved dead.”

Mary asked softly : “Jesus, little son, am I a woman who would sin,
do you think? Do my eyes meet yours steadily? Do my cheeks show the guilty flush of shame ?”

“Since the day that I was shown the Temple records by the Captain of the Watch, and warned never again to enter the Inner Courts until I could prove my legitimacy, a cloud has overhung my mind. Questions which once I had the power of solving quickly have become enigmas. Especially, your look of innocence and the written record of your shame stand in contradiction ; I cannot reconcile them. If I could, perhaps the cloud might lift, for night and day this question tears like an eagle at my soul. I love the Lord still with all my heart, but among the torn shreds of my former learning a saying of the gloomy Shammai flaunts like an ensign. ‘The same is true of every man alive : “It would be better for him that he had never been born.” ’ This view Hillel attempted to confute, but Shammai for once won the debate. Every man, he said, is necessarily born into error ; and error leads into sin ; and sin to divine displeasure ; and when a man displeases his Maker, it would be better that he had never been born. As heirs of Adam we pay for the sin of Adam. In my childhood, Mother, I could see myself a Doctor, a prophet, a king—surely it is this failure in humility which our God has now punished in me.”

“It is written : ‘Whom he loves, he chastens.’ My son, listen to me. I swear to you, as our God lives, that I have never in my life sinned with any man, either willingly or unwillingly ; I swear that you are no bastard, but born in royal wedlock. I did not marry the generous Joseph until my husband the King was dead, and then it was a marriage in appearance only, the one means by which your life could be preserved from your enemies.”

Having said so much, Mary waited calmly for Jesus to speak, watching his face attentively.

At last in bewilderment, he asked : “Who am I, then, Mother ?”

“You are the uncrowned King of the Jews, the secret heir to the throne which has stood empty since the days of King Herod !”

He gazed at her horror-stricken and incredulous. “Do you mean ?” he began.

“Do I mean what, little son ?”

“Almost I should have preferred bastardy to this,” he said, groaning. “You mean, Mother, that you were the secret bride of King Herod the Wicked ?”

“The Lord forbid !” she cried. “Your father was the noblest and gentlest and most unfortunate prince in the history of our race.”

Slowly the mist drew off, the sun shone out. As Mary told Jesus the story of his birth, he felt the lost powers of his mind flooding back, with nothing lost or impaired ; on the contrary, he knew himself capable of thought hitherto beyond his scope. He had not wept before, but now the tears flowed and he cried : “Oh, Mother, if only you had spoken before! If Joseph were alive, and I could fall at his feet and thank him for his great love !”

“You were the best of sons to him,” she reassured him.

Then she told him of his adoration by the three astrologers, and of the massacre at Bethlehem, and how Kenah’s nephew had conveyed Joseph and herself safely across the desert to On-Heliopolis. She ended : “And the learned Simeon who taught you at Matarieh : he was not the old schoolmaster that he pretended to be. He was Simon the son of Boethus, your father’s friend, who was High Priest. Two months after his deposition he took Nazirite vows for a year and went out into the Arabian desert as a hermit. When he returned, gaunt and burned and unrecognizable, it was not to his luxurious home at Alexandria but to Matarieh and the mean lodgings where Joseph sought him out. As your spiritual guardian, he felt it his duty to watch over you in those days of hardship and danger, and educate you in a manner worthy of your destiny.”

“How did he know that we were at Leontopolis ?”

“Joseph and I took you to Alexandria with us soon after our arrival in Egypt, before he left for Arabia. We went there to pay the half-shekel which completed our interrupted marriage contract. But Joseph feared to show himself in the Jewish quarter because of Herod’s agents, who were now active in the service of your uncle Archelaus the ethnarch of Judaea. So it was I who carried the money to Simon and told him how we were situated. I said nothing to Joseph and he never guessed Simeon’s identity. The High Priest Simon was supposed to have died in the desert.”

“Is he dead now ?”

“He is still with the Essenes at Callirrhoë. I have news of him once a year.”

“And what became of the gold crown that the three astrologers brought for me to the stable at Bethlehem ?”

“It is at Ain-Rimmon in the care of my Aunt Elizabeth. One day you shall claim it—one day you shall wear it.”

“I wear it? The Emperor has abolished the Jewish monarchy.”

“He has not abolished it. He has only withheld the royal title from unworthy and murderous claimants to it. The throne is yours by Roman Law, as your father’s only surviving heir. King Herod’s Will, by which it was conveyed to you, is laid up with the Vestal Virgins and cannot therefore be either overturned at law or set aside.”

“I would scorn to wear a crown by favour of the Romans and be hated by the Sons of Israel for comforting their prime enemies.”

“Your noble father wore a Roman crown.”

“He was royal in his own right and would have been more greatly blessed if he had put it off his head.”

“What other crown would you accept ?”

“A crown bestowed on me by my own people.”

“What? In defiance of the Romans? Would you lead your people to war ?”

“No, to repentance and love. I accept your words as prophetic,
Daughter of Rahab. One day, by the grace of the Lord, I will wear that crown.”

“May it bring you happiness and peace, and freedom to your people !”

They talked together far into the night. In the morning Jesus made a decision : to go off with Mary’s blessing, when the mourning for Joseph was over, and prepare himself for kingship under the guidance of Simon son of Boethus. He made over to her all the property bequeathed him by Joseph and all his own savings ; and she remained at Nazareth. Old Shelom of Rehoboth, now widowed, came as her companion in the house.

Jesus took his toolbag on his shoulder and provisions of parched corn, dried fruit and a bottle of water, and set out for the nearest ford over the Jordan. He crossed it and travelled southward through Lower Transjordania until he came to the Dead Sea, continuing along its shores to the town of Callirrhoë. The Essene colony lived at some distance from the town. Their round wooden huts were arranged in circles within a large irregular compound enclosed by earthworks topped by thorn hedges and faced with stone. When he knocked at the gate of the compound and asked for admittance he saw Simeon himself coming towards him across the sandy ground. They kissed affectionately.

Simeon was dressed in a white robe and a white apron. Around his middle was a leather girdle—as a charm against the Adversary—through which a wooden trowel was thrust. All the Essenes carried a trowel in perpetuation of a custom followed by the Israelites during their residence in the wilderness of Zin. He told the porter : “Send for Father Manahem !”

The porter fetched another Essene, who was tall and gaunt with a fiery eye. He took Jesus by the right hand and then, to the surprise of Simeon, the porter and Jesus himself, gave him two smart cuffs on his head, saying : “Not in anger, not in reproof, but to remind you of Father Manahem !” Then he embraced him and led him to the Overseer.

The Overseer, who was very aged and had charge of this community of four hundred and fifty brothers and novices, rose to his feet when Jesus came in.

“A postulant for the novitiate ?”

“A postulant.”

“Who ?”

Simeon answered for him : “Joshua son of Abiathar”—which was to say “Jesus son of Antipater”, no Greek names being in use among the Essenes.

“Leitimate ?”

“Legitimate.”

“Of what tribe ?”

“Of Judah.”

“Of good disposition ?”

“Of the best.”

“Trade ?”

“As you see.”

“Instructed in the Law ?”

“By myself.”

“Let him take the vows.”

Father Manahem told Jesus : “The vows are required for one year of service. If after one year you prove worthy of further progress in the Order, you will be made a partaker of the waters of purification and, as a novice, required to take further vows. If at the end of two years you are desirous of becoming a full member and no fault is found in you, you will be made a partaker of the Holy One and required to take lifelong vows.”

“I did not come here as a postulant but to greet my teacher and renew my studies. If this is not permitted unless I become a postulant, I am content to do so. Father Manahem sees one in me, Father Simeon sees the same, and I will not dispute their judgement. What vows do you require of me ?”