Read The Warring States (The Wave Trilogy) Online
Authors: Aidan Harte
The Warring States (The Wave Trilogy) (46 page)
‘’course she’ll be,’ said Levi, ‘winter’s passed.’
‘Spring brings forth more than turtle-doves, lambs and blossoms. The dark gods wake from slumber; war banners and pestilence stalk the land. The eastern Tyrrhenian can be cruel
this time of year.’ He glanced at Sofia. ‘But we’ve been lucky so far.’
Sofia felt the wind against her skin and an instant later heard a fierce crack as the sail caught it. ‘That’s the style of it!’ said Ezra.
Levi had proved a surprisingly adept fisherman, so Sofia, feeling useless, asked Ezra to teach her how to trim the sails. It was harder than it looked, but she got the knack eventually. Now she felt the tension and the creaking strain of the running rigging striving against the wind. In flag-fighting, one created these snaps – the Doc insisted they were the mark of a
real
bandieratoro. Now she felt the canvas, billowing slow and regal, pulling the ship with it.
‘You’ve become a serviceable sailor, and just in time,’ said Ezra, ‘for tomorrow comes the bride at the end of week. Time to rest, and ponder and dream …’
The city had been elevated above all other things in the land, and its pride had drawn the wind’s wrath. What hands had carved and gilded and mortised and encased, the winds worked ceaselessly to undo, rounding away all memory of Men’s busy fingers, and now the heavy stones lay everywhere, a sea of caved-in houses, characterless pebbles on a forgotten beach, so featureless that the returning families – if ever the prophets’ promises of resurrection came true – would never be able to pick out the homes they had once lived in. The sand moved of its own violation, pouring with tireless curiosity into doorways that led nowhere now and creeping up walls, only to tumble back on itself again and again and again. It moved on and settled and moved on. The cobblestones of old paths appeared for a moment before the grains rushed between them and buried them again. The winds charged through the city’s forgotten quarters and drove each other to new peaks of outrage.
On the southern hill that faced the city the wind shredded hollowed olive trees into chips. Gravestones trembled like leaves; the carved names were blasted illegible. Sometimes, in the shifting dirt, Sofia glimpsed white smooth things: elongated, thinning shells of some extinct creature. The winds harried them into fragile meshes connected by calcium bridges and the desert’s jagged teeth did the rest until the last trace of Man was swallowed. The tombstones were finally ripped up and thrown with gay carelessness into the maelstrom, exploding against each other. Their owners, who had thought to be first, would find themselves nameless and forgotten come Judgement. And, if this was Judgement, the wind was a pitiless judge.
And everywhere, in the midst of the dull, incessant rage, floated pages crammed with dense scribbles. Even if she could translate the language the prayers were written in, they disappeared faster than her eye could read them. The lower quarters on the city’s periphery suffered least; whole hours would go by before the sands would barge through the streets and make them impassable again. But at the city’s heart, the howl of the storm was constant and overwhelming. A defiant section of a great wall circled the mount, the source of the prayers, which bled out between the wounded stones. On the plateau, lightning cracked between burly clouds. Storms condensed into tumbling balls of yellow air against a rumble like great stones being hauled up. The storm was made of grains of sand and scraps of paper. Most of the prayers begged for life, for love, for money, for power, but only prayers begging for annihilation had been answered.
Sofia opened her eyes and quickly closed them. Ezra was already up. Through half-closed lids she studied him. It was odd that she had never seen him sleep. This morning his eyes were not on the sails but buried in the old volume he carried always. He read it aloud with a melancholy melody, half song, half speech, and as if on command, a strong wind sent the skiff skipping over the water.
Without looking up, he said, ‘The joy of the Sabbath to you, Contessa. It’s bad luck to wake a sleeper, but I was tempted. You had a bad dream, I think?’
‘I slept fine.’ Sofia yawned to cover her embarrassment at being caught spying. ‘Shouldn’t you be checking our course?’
‘The wind will look after us. It knows I must read.’
‘You must know it by heart now.’
‘Even God must continuously study. Study alone keeps back the Darkness.’ He slapped the wood in front of him and the ship creaked in complaint. ‘It is a difficult art, requiring nerve and skill. You must wait for the letters to form words and the words to gestate without prematurely imposing meaning. If you can do that, truth springs upon you.’
‘Sure, sure:
be detached, go with the flow, nothing’s real
,’ Sofia said. ‘I’ve heard it before.’
Ezra sat up. ‘Oh no! You must be
attached
to the world. Constant awareness is necessary. God is in every
one
, every
thing
, every letter. Every word in this book spells His name.’
‘Sure,’ Sofia said.
He held up two pages then a third against the morning sun and shifted them until the first letters on each page lined up. ‘What’s it say?’
Sofia said, ‘I don’t read squiggle.’
‘We must rectify that. What about you, Levi?’
Levi had obviously been pretending to sleep too but he sat up and yawned ostentatiously before reading where Ezra pointed, ‘J–A–H’
‘You see! His
Name
is all around, if only we look for it.’
‘Since when do you read Ebionite?’ Sofia asked.
‘Condottieri pick up more than exotic rashes in their travels,’ Levi said defensively. ‘What’s that supposed to prove, old man? With enough letters you can spell anything.’
‘Each letter is connected to every other. On Sinai for a golden
moment Moses saw all connections. When diligent readers relink the letters, the words rejoice. They dance and ecstatically couple and new meaning is born.’
‘Immediately, or nine months later? Come on, old man,’ Levi said, ‘no race can beat the Eebees at fooling themselves. Torah’s out of date. You think the scribes who wrote it knew anything about Natural Philosophy?’
‘The Concordians say there are atoms and the void and nothing else – a useful philosophy for burrowing rodents. It’s true that the scribes were ignorant as we of tomorrow. What of it? I do not care about tomorrow or yesterday. I study to understand
today
. To one who understands this moment, all vistas – past, present and future – are open. He is free, free even to disagree with God.’
Sofia had only been half-listening, but here her heart skipped. ‘God can be
overruled
?’
‘I told you even God must study. Torah belongs to all. No one has the final word. Scholars argue to become wise, and when two sincere students differ in their interpretations, their dispute is a journey to truth.’
The wind was turning against them, so Levi lowered the sail and secured it against the lifting yard. He yawned, and lay down. ‘Madonna, it’s too early for philosophising. Wake me up when the sun’s over the yard-arm.’
‘You want a bedtime story too?’ said Sofia.
‘Sure, why not? How about it, old man? Any good stories in there?’
The Acts of the Wrongly Guided Apostle
5 | Now at this time the Etruscans were besieging Jerusalem and all Judea was in uproar. |
2 | Mary’s fame had spread until even a tent-maker from Tarsus knew Her name. This Saul was a Jew and also an Etruscan citizen. His countrymen’s eagerness to join the revolt amused him. Why, he asked, do the Jews always wait for prophets? Can prophecy enrich a man? If this prophetess is true, her prophesy will come to pass; if she is false, it will not. Since most prophets come to grief, it is better to have nothing to do with them. Thus meditating, Saul rode to Damascus with his wares. |
3 | He was worried about encountering bandits in the desert, but he considered the market worth the risk. Perhaps the road to Damascus was bad, perhaps the horse, perhaps the rider, perhaps all three – Saul fell and was injured. His horse ran away, taking Saul’s purse and waterskin with it. Saul lay there roundly cursing his fortune until some riders came along: it was a tax collector and his servant, and a centurion with a pair of soldiers. |
4 | Saul begged the tax collector’s help, saying, Brother, I am a fellow citizen. The Etruscan laughed at him, saying, Jew, what have I to do with thee? Saul wished |
5 | The party rode on laughing, but the tax collector’s servant tarried to give Saul water. He said unto him, Brother, despair not. Trust in the Lord and He shall deliver thee. |
6 | Weeping, Saul thanked the servant and asked his name, That I might remember thee in my prayers. As the servant rode away, Paul wiped his tears, drank deep and pondered. He knew the servant’s name, but knew not how. |
7 | As the sun grew higher, Saul’s water grew lower. It was gone by the time another rider approached, a merchant from Jerusalem. Saul cried aloud, Help me, for are we not Jews and brothers? The Jerusalemite said, If I tarry I will miss the market and if I miss the market I will go hungry. Surely thou wouldst not wish thy brother to go hungry? And so saying he passed on. |
8 | Presently another Jerusalemite, a priest, came along. When Saul begged for water, the priest refused, saying, Away thou sinner! The Lord God sees all. He would not permit a good man to fall as low as thou hast fallen. |
9 | Saul wept. |
10 | He watched the Jinn turning in the distance, and cursed Jerusalem and its citizens and priests. Presently Saul bethought he saw a babe drifting across the sand on the wind, with swaddling bandages flowing behind. And he heard a voice that said Saul, Saul, Why dost thou doubt Me? |
11 | Now, Saul spoke Greek as well as Etruscan and could therefore reason. This vision was obviously a fever brought on by the heat. He buried his dry lips under his robe and only when the sun was low did he lift his head. |
12 | He saw a rider coming from Damascus. As the rider drew closer, Saul saw that it was the tax collector’s servant. |
13 | The servant was alone. He dismounted. He did not speak, neither did he seem to see Saul. He quickly lit a fire and baked bread, and as he did so, Saul studied him. His loincloth was torn and marked with blood. When the bread was baked, the servant looked at Saul and said, Forgive my ignorance. I am no philosopher. How can a Jew be a Jew and a citizen of the Etruscan Empire? Surely no man can serve two masters? |
14 | Though the question was politely asked, Saul was sore afraid, for he knew the custom of the desert: that the servant had not offered bread because he was considering killing him. |
15 | Saul summoned all his eloquence, and said unto him, My friend, just as all men are born stained by Adam’s sin, so I was born a citizen of that Idolatrous Empire. My father was a usurer who in accordance with the Law lent only to Etruscan soldiers. They are, thou must know, filth who think nothing of cheating a Jew. My father believed that Etruscan Law was like our Law, fair and blind. He purchased citizenship so that he might prosecute defaulters in Etruscan courts; a vain hope. It is well said that the sins of the father are visited on the children. My people think me a traitor and the Etruscans think me a fool; |
16 | They will not trouble thee again, said the servant. |
17 | Now Saul remembered where he had heard the servant’s name: this Barabbas was one of the notorious disciples of Mary the Galilean. So Saul informed Barabbas of his vision, gilding it and claiming that the babe said, Arise Saul, and persecute those who persecute me! |
18 | Barabbas was much impressed, saying, You must be he that my Mistress sent me to find. She said I would find an eloquent man on this road who would help spread the Word. Rarely have I heard a man who could lie so skilfully. |
19 | Then Barabbas gave Saul water to drink and bread to eat, and went to sleep with his hand on his dagger. |