Tel Aviv, October 17, 2008
Catherine folded her coat under her arm and braced herself for Immigration Control. Ben Gurion International was nothing like what she had expected.
‘Have you been to Israel before?’
‘No.’
‘Do you speak Hebrew?’
‘I’m afraid not. I’m trying to learn, but I haven’t gotten very far.’
‘Do you have family here?’
‘No, sir.’ In other words, no, I’m not Jewish, she thought.
‘How long do you intend to stay?’
‘Three months, or until my money runs out,’ she said.
The officer on the counter frowned, ‘Purpose of visit?’
Shaahid at her local Justice for Palestinians group had urged her not to mention her research. ‘You don’t want to be questioned,’ he had said. ‘When we went through Tel Aviv, we all pretended not to know each other. It was all very cloak-and-dagger. Most of us said we were Bible students. They like that.’
Catherine didn’t see why she had anything to hide, though. Anyway, she was terrible at lying.
‘I’m a doctoral student at the School of Oriental and African Studies; I’m doing academic research,’ she said.
He didn’t look at it. ‘What kind of research?’
‘I’m writing my thesis on the Jewish Revolt of 66-73 CE.’
‘You have a US passport, but you live in London.’
‘I study there.’ It wasn’t the first time she’d heard this. This explanation was evidently not enough for the man.
He flicked a button to indicate his counter temporarily closed.
‘Come with me, please,’ he said, as he ushered her down a dark hallway into an interview room.
The interview room was small, with no windows and only two chairs with a desk between. The man sitting at the desk shuffled papers, which she presumed had been given to him by the officer at the counter, before looking up. He had exceptionally large cheeks, which jiggled as he moved. She wondered whether the Toshiba laptop on the table was her own. The man looked piercingly into her eyes, waving at the empty chair, introducing himself as Mr. Herschel. An armed soldier stood at the door as if to block any attempt to escape.
Herschel was used to seeing travelers not at their best, tired and grimy after hours cooped up in an airplane. Catherine had refreshed herself with a wet wipe, but she was still as tired and grumpy as any other tourist. The middle-aged student was not ugly, but one could tell she never gave much attention toward improving her appearance. She wore clothes that were last, last season, if best, and never bothered with makeup. She’d spilled something down her shirt from her flight meal and not washed it off or changed. Her curly hair was wash-and-go and contained unabashed grey streaks. She was shorter than most, and fatter than most. ‘Frumpy’ is how she would describe herself, and not mind the moniker.
‘Sit down,’ he said, smiling, as if interrogation by Border Police was as natural as an invitation to lunch. The Israeli Border Police, MAGAV, were quite a far cry from your usual Customs and Immigration, she mused, all in military uniform and armed to the teeth.
‘Why did you not apply for a B/1 work visa or an A/2 student visa?’
The real reason for this was that she thought the restrictions of these permits would hinder her—a work visa would have prohibited her from entering Palestinian areas, for example—but she said, ‘Well, I’m really just a tourist. I’m not officially studying here. I’m just meeting informally with a few professors and visiting museums.’
‘You said you were intending to do academic research.’ He said it as if she had used some foreign phrase that needed translating.
‘Yes.’
‘So, tell me about this academic research.’
‘I’m writing a history of the first century Jewish Revolt,’ she said, perhaps a bit too haughtily.
‘Yes… A history of the Great Revolt? Why would you want to do that?’
‘I’m a historian. It’s within my field of specialty,’ she said.
‘It’s already been done,’ he said.
‘Yes, you refer to the first-hand account from the Galilean general Flavius Josephus. Certainly, I’m looking at what he and also more modern historians have done,’ Catherine’s effort to smile didn’t go down well. He frowned. ‘But I hope to contribute something that hasn’t been done by using another line of approach.’
‘What’s that, then?’
‘I have a system for cross-referencing historical and mythological evidence using methods I’ve derived from Biblical exegesis.’
‘Exegesis?’
‘Critical interpretation of the biblical text to discover its intended meaning.’
‘So, you’re studying the Bible?’
‘The New Testament is one of our primary sources on the Revolt against Rome.’
She was not heeding Shaahid’s advice; she could have made more effort to hide her annoyance. ‘Please sir, you can see that I’ve fulfilled all the requirements, certificate of good conduct, medical exams, fingerprints… My visa was approved by the Ministry of the Interior.’
‘This thesis you’re writing, may I see what you have written?’
‘Certainly not!’ Catherine B Simpson MA sat bolt upright so quickly the joints in her neck cracked.
Herschel bristled aggressively and glared at her, while she tried to quell her rising indignation by focusing her attention on the jiggling of his cheeks. Without looking down, he pulled out a sheaf of papers from the folder in front of him, holding it between two fingers as if it smelled bad. She could see from across the desk that it was a photocopy of the London Socialist Historians Newsletter. It was the issue containing her article on ‘Myths of Zionism—Ancient and Modern’. So, before she entered his office, they had collected a dossier on her.
‘Perhaps you will be writing something like this?’ he glared.
‘My aim is to write an accurate account of the revolt that is consistent with the evidence to date.’ She made no move to take the paper from him.
‘Perhaps you need to be in London, not Jerusalem.’
Was he really threatening to deny her entry, send her trip up in smoke, after everything had been so scrupulously organised? From what Shaahid had said, the Israelis were more paranoid about people leaving the country than entering. She couldn’t determine whether there was a real risk of being turned away at the border, or whether Herschel was just interrogating her as routine.
She made an attempt at backpedaling. ‘Mr. Herschel, I only meant that I haven’t written anything, yet. I don’t know yet what the research will turn up.’
‘OK,’ he settled down again. Then he pulled the laptop in front of him. It was indeed her Toshiba! Although she had suspected, she was still outraged.
Her indignation moved up a notch. ‘Mr. Herschel, what are you doing with my laptop?’
He flipped it open. ‘I’d like to see what your research has turned up so far.’
She hadn’t password-protected My Documents, so he clicked right into them. Over the desk she could see him click into JESUS.doc. He seemed satisfied and opened PEOPLE66.doc.
She crossed her arms muscularly and tried to adjust her chair, but it was too heavy. She tried not to look at Herschel and thus give an impression of nervousness, so she studiedly looked around the room. There was nothing to look at, not even a window.
She could see him click into CHRONOLOGY.doc. This was a bigger file. As he scrolled down, he noticed her looking and tipped the screen up. He clicked on one more file and closed down the screen.
‘So, you’re a history student?’ They had already established that; he had all the documentation right in front of him. And he had just opened her own professional files.
‘A PhD student,’ Catherine insisted. Her visa had already been approved; she was even here on scholarship. Why was she here justifying herself to some clerk?
‘Look, Mr. Herschel, here is my card. The MA stands for Master of Arts, not Militant Anarchist or Murderous Antisemite. Now, as you have invaded my intellectual property without my permission, you can see…’
‘Your permission?!’ He practically shouted it. He was unapologetic, cautioning her sternly, ‘Ms. Simpson…’
‘Yes, my permission,’ she insisted. I might as well press the point, she thought. She was a sober and serious history student with a quirky hobby and an interest in things no one else seemed to think important. Did that make her some kind of terrorist? She wanted to make the point on behalf of travelling scholars of all ilk and nationality. We will not put up with this sort of treatment.
‘Ms. Simpson,’ he continued in no more polite a tone, ‘As you will know, Eretz Israel is surrounded by enemies, and it is our experience that misrepresentations of history only goad them to more dangerous extremes.’
She took a breath, ‘Mr. Herschel, I am a student at a respectable university. If I were guilty of misrepresentation of history, I would lose my degree.’ She tried to keep her voice from rising with emotion as she defended herself, ‘My Master’s thesis, Love, Class and the Bible in Provincial Roman Guilds, and numerous articles have been well received by the academic community. My purpose is entirely above board.’
Herschel said in a steady monotone, ‘It is our job and our sovereign right to interview those who cross our borders,’ he asserted. ‘So now, I ask you, Ms. Simpson, what sort of history do you study?’
She pursed her lips. ‘Ancient History, Near and Middle East, and I’m teaching courses on provinces of the Roman Empire.’
‘Roman provinces like Israel?’
‘Like Judaea, yes.’ Don’t even mention the WORD Palestine, Shaahid had warned.
‘So, tell me about this research methodology. What is Biblical exegesis?’
‘Scholarly interpretation of religious texts, using linguistic, historical, and other methods. We compare and contrast Biblical documents, either to make translations or to study them critically for their historical or theological relevance.’
‘You’re a theologian?’
‘No. If it’s useful for you to know it, I’m an atheist. But I’m interested in religion from a sociological and historical perspective.’ She caught herself deliberately trying to use big words. The intimidation of the pen over that of the sword.
‘So, you are a translator?’
‘No, I don’t read Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek. Biblical exegesis is just a hobby. But I’ve developed some of my research methods from this hobby.’
‘Such as?’
‘It would be quite boring to go into detail…’
‘Please, I insist.’ He folded his fingers on his desk languidly.
She frowned and considered how to sound as obscure and academic as possible. ‘Well, for example, what exegetes call Playing the Name Game involves spotting names in Josephus’ Jewish War that may also be mentioned in Acts of the Apostles.’
He raised his right eyebrow. ‘I doubt if that’s possible.’
‘Of course, Mr. Herschel, one would never be able to prove anything, being unable to interview either Josephus or St. Luke, but there are several possible correspondences.’
‘Give me an example,’ he demanded.
‘Well, Josephus’ Simon head of an Assembly could be another designation for St. Peter, Simon Cephas; and if Josephus’ Saulus is St. Paul, it could have profound implications for historical analysis of the early Christian movement and of the Great Revolt.’
‘Implications?’
‘Well, Christian apologists always insisted Christians had nothing to do with the Revolt.’
She hadn’t thought she’d be arguing academic theories with some functionary. She pondered on Shaahid’s advice to formulate a cover story. ‘Whatever you do, don’t mention the War,’ he’d said. But that was hardly possible since researching the War was the object of her trip. I should have just said I was a Sunday School teacher, she thought. Of course, they could easily have googled her, which it appeared they had done. She hadn’t thought they’d be compiling dossiers, asking her to justify her research methodology.
‘What does this have to do with the Great Revolt?’
‘Probably nothing; I’m confusing you. I’m simply interested in using these methods in the course of my research.’ She had to think up an example that would please him. Bible studies—they like that, Shaahid had said.
‘Let me give you an example. Say we compare and contrast Jesus and Menahem, leader of the Sicarii and hero of the first stage of the revolt. I analyse historical references by certain rules I call principles, and one of these principles is: What cannot be historical must be interpreted on a mythical or symbolic level.’
I’d better lighten this up a bit, she thought. If I keep being obnoxious, I’ll never make my coach. ‘One might apply this to the question of why Josephus never mentioned such a momentous occasion as Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem. A crowd of people laying palm fronds and shouting, ‘Hosanna, Son of David’, a contender for the throne riding in through the Golden Gate on a donkey like Simon Maccabee?’
‘Simon Maccabee? I thought we were talking about Jesus and Menahem.’
‘The reference, Zechariah 9:9, was to King Josiah. This was how the king had been mocked by the Babylonians. Simon Maccabee staged a repeat of the stunt as a symbol of his restoration, interpreting the act as a current fulfillment of prophecy found in the ancient text. A pesher.’
‘A pesher? You mean, commentary?’
‘A pesher can ‘comment’ about a current event by referring to some ancient event in order to say something about the current event. So, Jesus’ supposed Triumphal Entry was a pesher on Simon Maccabee, which itself was a pesher on Zech 9:9. This way it can be considered a ‘fulfilment of prophecy’.’
She couldn’t decide whether Herschel was really as familiar with this subject as he was pretending to be, or whether he was, somehow, trying to catch her out.
‘Zechariah 9:9 said, Behold your king, triumphant, humble, and riding on an ass, and Matthew 21:5 echoed it. But who was that king, historically? Riding into Jerusalem on a donkey would have been a blatant bid for kingship. If someone had done this during the 30s, Josephus would have noted it. King Agrippa would have heard about it, and Josephus used the royal annals in his research.’
‘Josephus didn’t write about Jesus at all. The Testimonium Flavianum was a forgery, added later.’ Herschel said.
‘So many scholars believe. But taking into account that Jewish War was already published by the time the Gospels were written, Matthew could have borrowed the story of Menahem’s Triumphal Entry for his own messiah. Exegetes have shown multiple places where Luke borrowed from Josephus.’
‘The Triumphal Entry of Menahem the Messiah, you say?’ Herschel looked quizzical. She was losing him. More on the New Testament, she urged herself.
‘If there were historical evidence that Menahem had been welcomed into Jerusalem with palm fronds, for example, that might support Matthew having borrowed the historical story for his Gospel as a mythical or symbolic story of Jesus.’ She tried to stress the Gospel as if that were her main focus.
He continued to glare at her. ‘So, you want to go to Jerusalem to find out who was telling the truth, Josephus or St. Matthew? You’ll find that’s been done, too.’
‘Mr. Herschel, I want to go to Jerusalem to see the city. You may read my thesis, or not, when it’s published. You may even write a critical review. I’m only giving you an example of one of the questions I’m here to research. I’m here to look at documents, interview historians, meet Biblical scholars.’ She paused and said as meekly as she could, ‘and see for myself what Jerusalem is really like.’ She couldn’t help but smile hearing herself say the name of the magical city.
Herschel lightened up. ‘You really should have obtained a B/1 work visa or an A/2 student visa, but since you are approved by the Minister of the Interior, I suppose everything is in order. If you need to extend your stay, make sure to apply for an extension before the date indicated,’ he said, making movements as if about to let her go. ‘Where will you be staying?’ It seemed this was the last question.
She arranged her poker face and handed him the card. At least here she was taking Shaahid’s advice. On the card was her cover story, the address of a youth hostel on the Israeli side of the Wall.
Alexandria, 26th of Tishri, 3926 (October 17, 165 CE)
The great lighthouse on Pharos island had dimmed its fire some few hours past. Shiphrah had no idea why she’d been called before the Master, the Sister hadn’t said. But there was no delaying the summons. Shiphrah chewed a quick emmer crust herself and left on the kitchen table a bowl of beer gruel for her husband Yona to break his fast alone. She tucked the last unruly wisps of hair under her headscarf, put on her cloak and set off.
Mornings were quiet in these days under Marcus Aurelius. Thirteen years earlier, the spirit of revolt had seethed through these streets, but that had died down now to nothing more than wishful rebelliousness behind quiet bookshelves. There hadn’t been a riot or massacre for years. Anyway, she thought, these days it is the Minim who are accosted in the streets.
Those Galileans and their pernicious superstition. They claimed to be following the Law, improving it, even. Though she counted some of these Christiani among her Sisters, Jews like Shiphrah considered the new creed heresy. To Caesar’s imperial bureaucracy, moreover, they were dangerous and subversive atheists.
She made her way to the Great Library, the Mouseion—it was not far, just the other side of the Stadium from Shiphrah’s household in the Jewish Quarter. She was quietly ushered in by a young woman at the side gate. Down a long columned peristyle corridor, off to the left were three rooms filled with shelves. These rooms were reserved for the private use of the exclusively female membership of the Academy of Sisters of Alexandria, an organisation founded by Jewish refugees from the Great Revolt. At the end of the peristyle, one accessed to the private quarters of the Master.
The matriarch was waiting, perched hieratically if uncomfortably on that famous bench. The bench of Sophia, the first Master. It was there the old woman had sat as she wrote her memoirs, the cherished secret text of the sisterhood.
Mother Deborah dressed no differently than the ordinary members, a thin reddish-brown linen robe draped over one shoulder and across her middle, tied with a multi-coloured sash below her breasts, its ends hanging down to her hem. The cloth was of one colour but appeared browner in the places where it overlapped underlayers. Out of doors, she would have worn a headdress consisting of an underscarf tying her hair back tightly and an outerscarf hanging down one shoulder, but here, in the surety of female privacy, her head was bare, in braids hanging down.
Constructed of plain sycamore fig planks, there was nothing special about the bench beyond its historic significance to the Sisters. This tablinium was used by the Master as a sort of throneroom, where she conducted all her consultations. The Sisters had leased adjacent rooms for more comfortable spaces, with couches and tables and more shelves, for their study purposes. In this room, shelves with diagonal dividers occupied every wall, covering every space but the doorway, and scrolls protruded from every cavity. Of such proliferation were they that the longer ones even got in the Master’s way as she moved around the room. The muffled sound of sandalled feet respectfully shuffling here and there could be heard from neighbouring rooms, and a deep, woody odour pervaded, with whiffs of rotting leather.
The smell of Wisdom, Shiphrah thought.
Shiphrah dressed more brightly, in blue and sunny orange, as women often do when they are aware that they are not particularly attractive of face.
‘Mother Deborah, you sent for me,’ she presented herself, removing her own headscarf and tossing her head to shake off the heat of the street. The current Master of the Academy of Sisters was much younger, still in the flower of womanhood. Shiphrah herself was beginning to feel the weight of years on her shoulders and back, but the Mother did not leave her standing for long.
The summoned were provided with comfortably cushioned chairs. Around the corner, over by the fountain there were even a few couches for Greek style dining. In the Academy triclinium, women reclined as well as men, and were even ranked higher than their husbands.
The roster of excellent and willing cooks within the sisterhood allowed the Master and her husband to entertain some evenings. Scholars and philosophers, translators and priests came to dine, gifting pieces of their Wisdom to enrich the shelves. The fare was not rich, but prepared with skill, love and devotion. Shiphrah had dined here herself many times in recent years with the previous Master, while she and her publication team were producing a new Greek translation of The Jewish War.
The Master’s living quarters, also, were well known to Shiphrah. For many years she had helped with bedtimes of Deborah and her seven younger siblings, especially while her mother was pregnant with the ninth and her father was off fighting with Bar Kokhba.
‘Sister Shiphrah,’ Mother Deborah began as a young Sister brought in refreshment, ‘your translation was truly a good work for the Academy. A good many of the Sisters have read it by now, some of their husbands, too; and Chaereman tells me their copies are in demand.’
The Bibliophylax, head librarian, would permit visitors to read the work for a fee, a good proportion of which was paid back to the Academy. The Mothers used these funds to purchase teaching materials for the younger Sisters.
‘Thank you, Mother.’ Surely, the summons couldn’t be about this. An entire year had passed since the team had finished the translation. They’d already received sufficient accolades.
Mother Deborah continued, ‘The Master wrote in her memoirs that a new translation would be a worthy work, and you accomplished this.’
‘I did but draw together the work of talented others,’ she protested. Shiphrah had simply coordinated the process. She really didn’t need further compliments.
‘Your record so well recommends you that we wish to press upon you another work.’
Shiphrah’s eyes lit up. She was beginning to divine the purpose of this summons. So, that was it—another work! She could not deny that the translation process had been a most rare diversion from the round of studying, teaching and administering of alms that was the usual role of a senior Sister. Though she loved all three of these roles, in the translation work she felt she had found her true calling. The work had taken nearly a year, and she had thrilled with every day of it.
The original Jewish War, written in Aramaic, had been translated into Greek by the author himself, but inked years later, in times of defeat. The Academy’s translation had preserved, readers claimed, the bolder tone of the Aramaic original. Now, all Alexandria was looking for an Academy girl, as a wife or sweetheart, to gain them entry to the library to read a copy.
‘It is twenty-six years since the Master sat on this bench,’ the matriarch continued. Twenty-six years, a magical number for Jews, since the death of Sophia e Mara—called the Master—the founder of the Academy of Sisters.
‘It was the end of an age,’ Shiphrah said. It was something of a scholar’s joke. Sophia’s death in the year 3900 from Adam had coincided with the conjunction of the Sophic and the Aegyptian Civic calendars—the end of an age.
Mother Deborah did not smile, choosing to take the aphorism seriously, ‘There are many who still seek messiahs,’ she said. Menahem had not been the last; each successive war had had its saviour. And now the Galileans had their Christos.
‘Though the Master counseled us against doing so.’
‘We Sisters have the benefit of her Wisdom. But the Many know it not. She so earnestly instructed us to broaden our influence beyond these halls.’
‘Certainly, we endeavour to do so,’ said Shiphrah.
Mother Deborah leaned forward, her eyes scanning the shelves piled with scrolls, as if anxious to add another literary treasure to their wealth. Then, she smiled broadly at Shiphrah, a smile of shared goals. She knew she was offering a gift. She said, ‘We believe it is time for the Master to do it in her own words.’
‘You wish me to supervise the translation of The Memoirs?’
‘Yes, a translation into Greek, for the Many,’ the Mother clarified.
‘I read the scrolls when I joined the sisterhood, but my Aramaic is not of literary standard.’
‘That did not hinder you in the previous work. Your role in this work would be similar, administrative. Of course, your disciples must not suffer the lack of your tuition…’
‘With the previous work, I was replaced for two days out of the week?’ she suggested.
‘Very well, I will speak to the Mothers and enquire who can take on an extra class or two.’ Mother Deborah waited for her answer.
‘Thank you for your confidence, Mother.’ Yet she hesitated; immediately her thoughts flew to something that would prove a major concern. ‘I know that there are things in The Memoirs that the Many do not, and perhaps should not, want to know.’
‘These we will decide upon before publication,’ the Mother said tersely. So, this was to be a different sort of work from the Josephus translation project. That one had involved questions of bias and mistranslation; this one would involve censorship.
‘With your guidance?’ Shiphrah said.
‘Of course. Considering these matters with the Minim (heretics), this work is of priority now, to the Academy, to the Many and to me. My door is open to you.’
‘Mother, when you say matters of the Minim I am uncertain whether you refer to the persecutions? Or do you mean relations with the Jews, between the ekklesiae and the rabbanim?’
‘My dear Sister, we must concern ourselves with both. The Academy is in a position to empathise on the one hand and perhaps mediate on the other. If we are able to protect our Christiani Sisters the way they protected us, we should surely do so. And we have certain knowledge, do we not, of the War that would set eyes popping in the ekklesiae and may even turn things around in Yavneh.’
Shiphrah smiled. ‘Are we sure we desire this turning around?’
‘What we desire, of course, is a return to the Way, to the project of the Kingdom of Heaven. Behind our differences, this is a goal we share.’
‘I understand, Mother. The rabbanim are only concerned with the welfare of Jews. The Minim concern themselves with nothing but chastity and life after death.’
‘Of course, we must not condemn.’
‘No, of course not. We are both persecuted. But it would help if we were on speaking terms.’
‘I am to understand that Yavneh accords increasing respect to our Academy, though the Minim... well, there is no talking to them, is there? We would like to see both sects return to the Way. In any case, we do not want to see Sisters persecuted for their beliefs. If Jews, pagans and Minim can work as harmoniously together in the world as we do in these halls, the forces of Light will be greatly strengthened. I have confidence that you can lead us in these objectives, Sister Shiphrah.’
The Mother gave Shiphrah a librarian’s pass to the Great Library, a set of keys to the Academy’s inner shelves, a copy of The Memoirs of Sophia Zealotes—the codex copy Sisters were allowed on loan—and her authorisation to interview anyone she wished.
The Sister at the gate was admitting one of the Mothers, Priscilla. They were of similar age, and Shiphrah greeted her warmly with a kiss.
Priscilla saw the excitement in her face. ‘So, you said yes,’ she commented with satisfaction.
‘Oh, Mother Deborah told you about the work?’
‘Yes,’ said Priscilla. ‘She discussed it with me and a few of the Mothers. She wants us to consult on the… well, the secret parts.’
‘They are a concern of mine, as well,’ said Shiphrah. ‘We certainly cannot publish it word for word.’
‘That is certain. A Jewish voice from the War alone is enough to shock the whole of Alex—Jews, Greeks and Africans. Witness the popularity of our translation of War. Imagine what they would think if they read about… you know.’
Shiphrah giggled in comprehension. ‘Mother Deborah said the Academy wants to make a translation because of matters with the Minim. What do you think she means? Persecutions? Relations with the rabbanim? She told me she is concerned with both.’
‘She is quite concerned about the persecutions, I am sure. I mean, especially after they protected us in our time of trouble. But truly, Sister, she has a bigger objective. You know, synagogues in Asia are cursing the Minim in The Eighteen, and you can be sure they are including Christiani in that. For their part, they scarcely miss an opportunity to slander us in their goodnews books. Mother Deborah wants to effect a reconciliation between the heirs of the Just Ones in Ephesus and the remnant of the Pharisees in Yavneh. The Academy is unique as an organisation with friendly relations in both camps.’
Shiphrah sighed. ‘A bigger work than just a translation, then,’ she said. ‘We could test our friendships too far.’ She paused, pondering upon the magnitude of the task. ‘Mother Priscilla, will you join the translation team?’
‘I thought you would never ask.’
Shiphrah embraced her warmly.
‘Of course, neither of us reads Aramaic,’ she said. ‘A translation has to start with people who can read the book. I have never read The Memoirs myself, though I had them read to me when I joined the sisterhood.’
‘That was as long ago for you as for me, Sister.’
‘It was more than thirty years ago; I was still a virgin.’
‘We shall need someone who knows Aramaic. And your husband will not do, Sister Shiphrah.’
‘Of course not. Yona knows better than to be curious about Academy secrets.’ She’d met Yona at an Academy symposium, and he was aware of the Sisters’ strict code concerning matters internal to the sisterhood.
‘But I will wager he will be just as keen as anyone else to read the translation. What do you think?’ said Priscilla.
‘You are right. He knows not to ask me questions, but others are always asking him things, knowing he is married to an Academy girl.’
Shiphrah took out a sheaf of loosely bound sheets of papyrus—the Sisters had a never-ending supply of this valuable commodity donated to the Academy by Nabataean merchants by grace of a historic friendship with Sophia the Master—and inked her stylus. She wrote at the top:
reads Aramaic
writes Greek
By the following afternoon, she had already chosen the Aramaic team. Mother Deborah had suggested a few Sisters who read the old language, wrote a good Greek and would be amenable to working on the project.
Coming in from the side gate, she passed through Academy halls of shelves and tables toward a back room, where she’d arranged to meet them.
Groups of women huddled over scrolls and wax tablets, from time to time pausing to deal with children who played around their knees. Some of the children were also busy with wax tablets, and a Mother wandered among them giving a correction here or an instruction there. She stopped at a boy, and whispered to his mother, ‘A bit beyond the age, I think, Mother.’
‘Please, Mother. He has only just turned ten. My husband forbids me to read at home.’
‘I commend your zeal, dear, and will not scold you, but you must find other arrangements for the boy. Other Mothers will be happy to help. There are reasons for the rules. Boys will dominate, you know, and keep girls from finding their voice.’
‘Yes, Mother, I do realise…’
‘And a modicum of peace…’
‘…is to be desired.’ She finished the quote. ‘Yes, Mother.’
In the back room, a room that had its only entrance through the entry hall to the Master’s quarters, the selected women—Elia, Drusilla and Sadeh—were waiting for her around a table.
‘Thank you for responding so quickly, Sisters,’ she said.
‘It is no problem for us,’ said Elia. ‘We are all virgins with no husbands to cook or sew for.’
Sadeh added, ‘We are almost always in the halls of an evening.’
‘If we have no conflicting responsibilities, we love to meet here at the end of the day to swap scrolls, find out news and exchange gossip.’
‘I know what a zealot for works you are, Sister Elia.’ Elia had been on her Aramaic team for the Josephus work. ‘And thank you, Drusilla and Sadeh, for committing yourselves to a work that will probably take up the next several months of your lives.’
She thumped down the heavy codex on the table. After filling in the young women on her discussions with Mothers Deborah and Priscilla concerning the overall objectives of the work, she launched the project. ‘I know you have read them. We all read them or had them read to us upon initiation. But I ask you, Sisters, to read The Memoirs once more, each in turn, with a fresh eye, and give your testimony to the translation team regarding these points.’ Shiphrah handed them each a sheet of papyrus from her sheaf. ‘You are free to add points I may have forgotten.’
The women looked at the list:
Zealots, Ein Gedi, Menahem, The Yahad, Minim, Samaritans, the Rich, Kittim, Churban haBayit
They nodded; all members of the Academy of Sisters were aware of the Master’s legacy. These were the obvious subjects on which Sophia’s Wisdom could instruct the Many.
‘Before we begin the translation, perhaps you could start by drawing up a little summary of the Master’s experience and teachings? A few words in Greek on each point would probably suffice at this stage.’ The Aramaic team nodded again.
‘And, of course, there is a second list,’ Shiphrah said, indicating to the Sisters a List Beta on the reverse side of their papyrus sheets. ‘We shall not discuss them until a later stage, but on these points the team would appreciate your own personal and frank testimony. If you could provide a brief summary of the Master’s Wisdom, but also let us know which parts should not be… that is, parts which, if revealed, might have damaging repercussions.’
‘By which I suppose you mean which parts will alienate the Minim?’ said Sadeh.
‘Yes, Mother Deborah is particularly concerned for the Galileans, but there are also the Samaritans to consider, not to mention the Jews,’ Shiphrah replied.
Elia commented, ‘We Jews have had enough torment from Greeks all over the empire, that, as well as from Roman soldiers, the Kittim, as Sophia would say. The disciples of Rabban Yochanan in Yavneh are but a small force. Sophia’s revelations could rub a number of old wounds afresh.’
List Beta on the reverse side contained words and phrases that also did not surprise them:
the True Name of God, the Messiah, Yahya, the Copper Scroll, the tomb of the Just Ones
They nodded but giggled. They knew the parts of The Memoirs that were hidden from the Many.
It would take the three women a few weeks at least just to read through the codex, Shiphrah calculated, much less to summarise Sophia’s life and thoughts on all major subjects in The Memoirs. The Aramaic team enthusiastically set to the task.
Now, for someone who knew the Master, thought Shiphrah. For any work of translation, it was essential to really understand the author, yet Sophia was a hazy, distant figure far back in Shiphrah’s past. She knew more about Sophia’s reputation and her works than about her person and her life.
She spoke to her husband Yona as they shared some bread and cheese.
‘Did you know her yourself?’ he asked.
‘I remember her sitting on that bench, an old woman, always writing on a scroll, but I was too young to remember anything she said or indeed anything about her except her incredible age and the respect she was paid by the Sisters.’
After many years, decades, even, of marriage, the love between Shiphrah and her husband was still fresh. It was not the burning passion of young lovers, but rather the deep, comfortable understanding of two lives inter-twining over time. Perhaps it was because HaShem (God) had not blessed them with children, although both would have welcomed the intrusion. As Yona set off for his work on the master’s land and she left the house to begin her day’s work on Academy business, Shiphrah pondered, not for the first time, that she would miss him.
She kissed his forehead affectionately, shutting her eyes in a small expression of bliss. She already awaited the sweet hours of separation. She anticipated the moment her sandals would shuffle back across the courtyard cobblestones. She would cross the threshold into that warm embrace, radiating its musty, masculine smell of soil, animals and a man’s daily labour. When seasonal work like ditch-clearing, planting or lambing kept him into the dark hours, that delicious moment would simply be later and tireder and smellier.
Her day having been spent entirely in female company, the strong arms of a man in the prime of his middle years, hardened by years of toil, filled her with a sense of completion. Reunited with him, she became one, the egg white sucked back in to rejoin its yolk. Sometimes the brief ecstasy overwhelmed her such that her knees gave way, and he lifted her bodily for the duration of the embrace. Her body was the magnetic reverse of his. She, soft arms enmuscled by no labour greater than the lifting of a wax tablet and stylus, was the fleshly opposite to the burly man, her balancing force.
‘Skin and bones,’ he teased.
Almost everything she knew about Sophia Zealotes was from her latter years, when she was Master of an academy of female scholars which was growing in importance within the intellectual landscape of the largest city in the world outside Rome. She knew little of the young girl who came to Aegyptus as a footsore refugee from the War. As all of the original Jewish refugees from the Forest of Jardes had joined those who sleep; there were only a few alive who remembered them.
A light rain was clearing, and Shiphrah shook the moisture from her travelling cloak after, accompanied by a slave boy from the household, climbing the hill above the amphitheatre to knock at the gates of a large house. While waiting for admittance, she admired the panoramic view of the harbour with Pharos shimmering in the morning sun.
She called upon Matia, a Jewish householder and son of the man who had employed Sophia’s husband Athanasios when the refugees came to Alexandria. Bending slightly to the right with age, he escorted her into a bright courtyard tiled with mosaics of various birds, where a slave girl served them watered fig juice. The boy sought his own diversion in the kitchen.
After explaining her purpose, she asked Matia, ‘What manner of person was Sophia? Did you know her?’ It was an obvious place to start.
‘Indeed, yes. She was an admirable woman, a scholar. She built that Academy from nothing.’
‘What was she like, as a person?’
‘Quiet and soft-spoken, as a matter of fact, which you would not suspect for a woman of words, but when she spoke, you could tell it was from a wealth of experience.’
‘Did she speak to you about the War?’
‘Yes, yes. I was young, but she spoke much to my father about the War.’
‘What did she say about it?’
‘She mostly talked about how the Rich betrayed the Zealots.’
‘The Rich?’ Shiphrah fished for more detail.
‘She meant specifically the rich priests and nobles in Jerusalem, but sometimes I suspected she was insulting my father.’
‘Was she?’
‘No, they were friends. Athanasios was content in my father’s employ. At least, I believed so. And the wife was friendly, though she did pass most of her days in the halls.’
‘Athanasios. What was he like? What sort of man was Sophia Zealotes’ true love?’ she asked.
‘A dour sort, never smiled,’ said Matia. ‘But if you counted him as a friend, as I did, though I was just a boy, he would never fail you.’
The Dreaming Self took him for a moment, as he recalled a childhood experience. ‘Once I lost a ball I had been playing with, and Athanasios left his work to help me look for it under all the furniture. We finally found it stuck under a heavy cabinet. I could never have lifted that on my own.’
‘Perhaps that is a trait he shared with his wife—a respect for young people,’ Shiphrah suggested.
‘Yes, I think so,’ Matia agreed. ‘He gave his emancipation fees and every obol he ever earned to you girls over there, you know,’ he waved his hand in the direction of the Library and the Academy halls.
‘He was not a Jew, yet he fought beside our heroes,’ Shiphrah noted. ‘Did he ever speak to you about the other Wars?’
‘Yes, many times. To my father, that is. He did not agree with Lukuas, Artemion and Julianos. He said that Jews alone cannot win against Rome.’
‘Neither did Sophia, our Master, though our menfolk fought with Bar Kokhba at Betar,’ she said.
Jewish Wars after the Great Revolt had seen Jews ever more isolated from other rebellious forces. Shiphrah’s father-in-law had perished in Bar Kokhba’s last stand at Betar thirty years ago, before she’d met Yona, as had Mother Deborah’s father. Sophia, a Jew from Babylon, and her husband, a Greek freedman, had preached a more international resistance.
Jews at the Academy longed as dearly as their forebears for independence from Rome, but since that final bloodshed, everything was changed. Now, Jews could not even set foot in the Holy City without arrest. Along with the beautiful buildings, even the beautiful name of Jerusalem had been destroyed; it was Caesar’s capital now, Aelia Capitolina. The statue of a foreign god stood atop Temple Mount.
‘Did Athanasios ever speak to you about what happened to the refugees at the gates?’ she queried. This was one thing about which Sophia had not written in her memoirs.
‘No, but I heard it from the husband of one of your Mothers. Sophia, Athanasios and the others left the Forest of Jardes only hours before the Romans found and killed the remaining militiamen there. When the refugees arrived at Alex there was nearly a massacre at the gates—Greeks were killing Jews all over the empire after the fall of Jerusalem—but some Jewish citizens, Christians they were, managed to bribe the Greeks with half of Athanasios’ sesterces to let them in.’
‘The emancipation fees?’
‘Yes, and the rest he gave to your Academy, as you know.’
This was recounted in The Memoirs. Athanasios had become free upon murdering his master, an act he’d committed with Sophia’s aid. The so-called emancipation fees referred to a bag of sesterces she had stolen from this master’s storage vault underneath the Temple. It was probable that neither Matia nor his father Athanasios’ master knew that part of the story.
Wherever one stood on the subject of Roman domination, most readers could be sure to abhor murder. Would Sophia’s message to the Many be corrupted by association with this crime? Should that be one of the parts to be kept secret? It was a long time ago. Could a man’s soul be damaged by the truth, his reputation marred by scandal, now, after it is all finished? No one at the Academy wished to compromise the reputation of their founder’s husband, who had done so much for them. Moreover, anyone in the Wars, on either side, had a bloody past. If the Sisters, who knew every hidden bit in The Memoirs, respected the memory of Athanasios despite his crime, could not the Many gain Wisdom by learning the darker secrets?
No one else alive today had known Sophia the Master in life except Mother Deborah’s own mother, herself a former master of the Academy. She didn’t leave the house much anymore, although she was still involved in the Mothers’ works.
Shiphrah and the boy walked down the path by the orange trees to Mother Juliana’s residence, a small building made from the timber of cedar trees that people used to import from the Lebanon before the Wars.
She was ushered into the courtyard by a steward, and the old woman seemed glad to see her, but Shiphrah held out her hand to stay her from rising. She placed one hand against her back in gratitude as the other pushed some stray grey hairs back under her headscarf. Nine children had taken their toll.
‘I understand you are undertaking another translation, my dear. Good for you, good for you,’ she said.
‘Yes, Mother Juliana, and I was hoping you could tell me things about Sophia the Master and her legacy for our times?’
‘I read the scrolls once, Sister. There was a time my Aramaic could stretch that far,’ the old woman said. ‘Memories of Sophia herself are fresher, sitting on that bench, writing.’
Shiphrah waited to let the Dreaming Self take her as she remembered.
‘She wrote in the Aramaic of her youth, but since coming to Alex she spoke Coptic like the rest of us. Her words were always ones of encouragement,’ the Mother mused. ‘I was only a young girl, of course, but I remember she was ever asking me what books I wanted to read, helping me to find scrolls on the shelf. She would actually make the Sisters—and Mothers even—move aside, to give me a space at the tables. She was never a sycophant to class, rank or age. She often said, ‘It was half crippled veterans, spotty youths, and bright eyed girls who made the New Jerusalem’.’
‘What did the Master say about the Rich?’ Shiphrah asked.
‘She said that widening, expanding the garrisons to include all classes, did not work. The Rich were enemies of the Many and undermined the revolution from the inside. ‘Truly, Sisters, it was not the Kittim who crushed us; it was the Rich,’ she’d say.’
Sophia spoke with more venom of the principal men, rich landowners and merchants, Herodians, and priests than even she used for the Romans. Mother Juliana chuckled, ‘Her favourite word was wisdom, she used it in nearly every other breath.’
‘She liked the sound of her own name?’ Sophia meant wisdom in Greek.
‘No, it was for the love of scholarship itself and how it can broaden a woman’s horizon.’
‘Sorry, a weak jest. I know that women, wisdom and resistance to tyranny were the major themes in the Master’s teachings.’
‘And sectarianism, she hated that.’
‘Love was another favourite theme,’ Shiphrah added. The engine of liberation.
‘She founded our academy for the improvement of all women, Jew, gentile or pagan, who advocate the hastening of works.’
‘By which she meant bringing forth our salvation by the agency of our own acts?’
‘Yes.’ Daughters and daughters in law bustled in and out of the peristyle as Mother Juliana reminisced on the early days of Sophia’s project. ‘Academy girls hold our heads so high nowadays in the company of the philosophers, we forget that in those days it was shocking for a woman even to read a scroll or write a letter, much less to seek an afternoon’s intellectual activity independently from her husband or father.’
‘Now, our husbands speak of us with pride,’ Shiphrah noted.
The conversation had moved away from Sophia herself, and Mother Juliana seemed to have little more to add on the subject of The Memoirs. Shiphrah left her with a papyrus sheet with a few points on which to make notes for the team. ‘Perhaps you could deliver it to me, you or one of your brides or daughters, on your next visit to the halls?’ she said.
That was probably enough for the moment. The questions would start to come in once the translation started, many questions. Now, I need translators, and then scribes, she thought. They would not join the work until a later stage, but it was fun to ponder in advance who might make a good team. The scribes needed to be people skilled at writing Greek—if they knew Aramaic, too, so much the better.
I wish I could have Yona on the Aramaic team, she thought. Aramaic is his native tongue, and if we pursued the work together, it would give us something to talk about in bed.
It was one reason she so looked forward to the successful completion of the public version of The Memoirs. She would have loved to share her Master’s wisdom with her husband in its every detail. As things stood, they were doubly prevented. Though he could read Aramaic she couldn’t show him The Memoirs, and she couldn’t herself read them as she didn’t read Aramaic.
The Greek team, in contrast, would not see the hidden parts—they would not be shown excerpts categorised under List Beta. So, theoretically she could recruit even from among the Many. Still, disciples of the Master would surely be preferable.
The writers she’d commissioned on the Josephus project were obvious ones to consider. Ones outside the sisterhood were remunerated, and they had all expressed satisfaction with the fees. She would certainly choose some candidates from within the Academy—Mother Priscilla, of course, and some of the Mothers maybe, who were not so far from remembering the glory and the tragedy of Jerusalem. Since the Aramaic team were all so young, it might provide a balance.
If any of the Sisters had Greek husbands who were scribes, they might be useful for the team. The work would not be conducted within the inner halls, so men would be allowed.
The Master was not an Aegyptian, of course, so it might be advisable to have at least one from the homeland. The Academy membership was predominantly Jewish; most of the Sisters were Alex-born.
Shiphrah remembered the Mother’s words about the matters of the Minim making this work a priority. I would like to find a Minim scribe for the team, she thought. That’s what the Master would have done in her position. What we release to the Many will concern the Minim greatly; we might as well include them from the start.
Shiphrah had the time to go through two amphorae of documents relating to Sophia passed to her by Mother Deborah. There were copies of letters she had written to people as far as Rome during the Bar Kokhba period, when the Jews of Palaestina were making their last bid for independence, and every letter she’d ever received at the Academy. Sophia never threw away a page of writing.
One of them was a letter from the late Bishop of Edessa, Oraham of Kashkar. Thinking it might relate to the matters of the Minim, Shiphrah pulled out the scroll for further examination. He’d written in Syriac, so she asked Elia to read it to her:
I regret that I can offer you no information regarding your cousin. Sadly, some of them were caught up in the massacre at Damascus.
‘That must refer to the Master’s cousin Shulamith,’ Shiphrah said, ‘who joined the Notzrim fleeing across the Jordan before the siege of Jerusalem.’
Elia continued:
I send you our good news that the light of the Lord Jesus Christ has shone upon the Gilanians on the Caspian shores and also upon the Land of Gog and Magog.
With our respect, please accept for your shelves a copy in the Greek of Diatessaron, which I include with this missal. Tatian is currently translating it into Syriac, a copy of which we will also send to you when it is finished.
‘The Master would have been pleased with the gift,’ Elia commented. ‘It has always been Academy policy to include the works of all the sects. And it is customary for guests to the halls to offer a gift for our shelves.’
‘This letter could be relevant,’ Shiphrah said. ‘Could you make us a rough translation?’
Elia readily agreed and returned to the others to continue their work.
One afternoon a few days hence, as Shiphrah was with the other women of her household preparing food at home, a messenger came from the Academy. The messenger presented her with a wax tablet:
On the 9th of Marcheshvan, in the year 3926
To Sister Shiphrah from Deborah, Master of the Academy of Sisters, Shalom.
The Archon and his wife are to dine with us in the halls on the morrow. As they knew the Master in the flesh, perhaps they may be of assistance in your work. We would invite you to accompany us, if you are willing, and we would be pleased if you bring your husband. Be well.
The messenger said, ‘The Mother told me to tell you: Please do not feel obliged. The Archon is kin and an old friend, and the occasion will be quite casual.’
‘Feel obliged? Of course, I shall go!’ A chance to meet the Archon of Alexandria—Marcus Julius Alexander? He was chief of the gerusia, the governing body of Alexandrian Jewry, which under Marcus Aurelius had replaced the old alabarchy (Jewish magistracy). The Archon had known the Master in life. There were so many questions she could ask. Plus, she could perhaps steal a moment in confidence and gain Mother Deborah’s guidance concerning the selection of her Greek translators.
And Yona was invited, as well! The Dreaming Self took her for a moment as she envisaged herself on a luxurious dinner sofa in front of her beloved, in distinguished company with genteel conversation admiring her work—sipping Italian wine, even—with adorable and intelligent children doing talented things quietly in the background.
She didn’t write on the tablet, instead urging the messenger to convey instantly, with the greatest of pleasure, her acceptance.
La Rochelle, October 17, 1307
In a suburban backstreet in La Rochelle, the trapdoor to a cellar opened, and the light revealed the face of Hugues’ friend Réné. ‘Wind is up,’ he urged him in a whisper.
‘What is the news?’ Hugues whispered back as he woke his squire Galains.
‘You do not want to know,’ answered Réné. ‘They have been arrested, all around the country, in one simultaneous swoop. Hundreds. Soldiers have seized the temples in Arville, Chartres, Paris.’
The members of Hugues’ preceptory had escaped the clutches of the Inquisitors, lodging secretly overnight in the Occitan port town, in the cellars of friends, waiting for a ship.
‘Where is Reynaud?’
As Hugues and Réné were close friends, so were their squires, Galains and Reynaud, both seargents in the order. Galains was wrapping their bedding into a pack on his back, hiding his master’s falchion, mail hauberk and chausses in the folds. Hugues had never been tested in battle. He had had no chance to earn his spurs. He donned a plain black tunic.
‘I sent him on ahead,’ said Réné nervously. ‘Will you two hurry?’
The orders had come, their informant said—in Latin, French and English—from the King. Réné gave them a hand to climb up into the light.
The sun was risen, but La Rochelle seemed darker than it should have been.
They leapt out of the way as a housewife cast her night waters from a window, and a bit splashed onto Hugues’ boot.
‘Merde!’ he cursed, but instead of apology she shouted abuse, as if the two men and boy had spied into her bedchamber.
Under the Tower a wrinkled crone called to them, in English, offering ‘a prophecy for a penny’—looking for custom at this early hour—and when they didn’t respond, cursed them for free.
‘Maleficia!’ Hugues worried. ‘She looked at me, Réné, straight in the eye.’
‘Hush, she is only an old woman.’
‘What if she goes to the English king?’
‘And says what?’
‘That we fought for Wallace?’
‘Hugues, will you get ahold of yourself?’ Réné gestured discretely toward Galains, willing his friend to set an example of manliness for the sake of his young attendant.
Being in fear for one’s life did something to the eyes. Every person they passed seemed to Hugues grotesque, inhuman. Every young man looked to be an assassin, every maid a whore.
Peasants were assembling in the streets with scythes—why? The harvest was in. At their backs three crows perched on a fence, cawing intermittently. Sour fish smells emanated from the various eateries—the stinking garbage from last night’s removes, not the aromatic anticipation of tonight’s preparations. Rats tittered in the alleys.
A dog barked and howled, as if announcing the death of knights hidden in cellars, and a burly man burst from his door in fury and whacked the dog’s head with a mallet, inducing a sharp shriek from the animal as he smashed its skull in a bloody, sticky red mess against the wall.
Along the canal, a drunkard vomited into the grass, while a young woman—his daughter?—loudly berated him for his sins.
Coming down toward the port, slowly but straight toward them as if on the hunt, was a mob of monks bared to the waist on this chill and dreadful morning, flagellating themselves with whips. Their mournful monophonic chanting drifted softly seaward.
The three spied other clusters of their brothers as they approached the harbour, but they feigned unrecognition. A cat mewed. When the knights crossed under the Chain, several of them groaned superstitiously and crossed themselves.
‘I hope it is a good wind,’ Hugues whispered. ‘It is not blowing well so far.’
‘Do not make it so by saying it,’ Réné scolded.
The men scurried down to the docks and onto the ship, past barrels of Poitevin wine, still cheap in La Rochelle, being loaded into the hold. Now, they allowed themselves greetings. There was not a croix pattée in sight; none of the seargents had even dared wear the brown mantle. After circulating cups and a pitcher of water, they huddled together with the baggage, with no chores to do, as the company couldn’t bring the horses.
Knights and seargents, most were in peasants’ clothing, the cold weather giving everyone pretext to shield their faces. Conversation was hushed; the docks might be filled with spies.
‘Why are we not setting sail? What in Heaven are we waiting for?’ Hugues wondered.
‘Maybe it has something to do with that,’ said Réné, pointing to a flurry of new deliveries to dock. ‘That cannot be any of ours.’
An opulent load of baggage was making its way onto the ship. There were four packmules laden with sacks of almonds, herbs and spices, coffers of fine cloth, hanging lamps and boxes of candles, cases of larks, live lobsters, eels and laying hens, crates of fruit. There was even a milchcow. A cook carried aboard his own clay oven, a falconer clutched a hooded goshawk, a stableboy led two fine animals clacking their hooves noisily against the wooden deck, shattering the brothers’ carefully crafted quiet. All were dressed in sparkling turquoise livery, contrasting sharply with the Poor Knights’ greys and browns.
‘Your passage has been financed by another passenger,’ a sailor explained to Réné, ‘the niece of some visconte, apparently.’
A servant came aboard carrying a fine ceramic pot with matching basin and water jug. ‘For her ladyship’s movements,’ said the sailor, rolling his eyes sarcastically. ‘She could hardly place her lofty nether end on the jacks at the bow.’
At the last minute the lady herself arrived, bustling and fussing at her entourage of maids all in turquoise.
‘The higher they are,’ Hugues said to Réné as the lady blew past them, ‘the more trouble they cause.’
‘Blasphemous talk in this company, Brother,’ his friend replied.
‘I am not talking about the Son of the Widow, you dolt. I am talking about these people.’ Hugues looked around them and did not regret the comment. The Knights Templar, at least Hugues’ preceptory, were certainly among the cream of French nobility, but more the third or fourth sons or cousins and nephews rather than lords of castles.
‘Most of these men are outstanding Christians,’ Hugues explained, ‘and more interested in pious scholarship for the Glory of God than in ostentatious…’ He nodded toward the Visconte’s brother’s daughter.
Hugues himself was typical of this class. As a direct descendant of Geoffroi Bisol, one of the original nine founders of the Knights Templar, his lineage was impeccable. Some of his relatives were viscontes in Champagne, but Hugues, and his father Guillaume before him, since losing their lands in Cyprus, had preferred the life of a Poor Knight of Christ. The Temple being a celibate order, he had presented his credentials upon application to the order as Guillaume Bisol’s nephew. The notaries he’d submitted upon initiation were forged. He was twenty-one, the youngest of the knights on board.
The busy activity of the crew preparing for departure and the pretty distraction of the lady and her entourage had lifted their mood. Now that all the men were gathered, the knights conversed eagerly.
‘They have the Grandmaster in chains,’ said one of the commandeurs, Acelin de Villiers, soberly. ‘Everyone else, all in one morning, on Friday.’ It was four days ago.
‘Oh, unlucky day,’ the knights moaned. They recounted each detail of the raid amongst themselves.
‘Who did this?’ Hugues demanded.
‘The King, of course.’
‘You really think King Philippe ordered this?’
‘I am sure of it,’ said the commandeur. ‘With the new Pope taking his orders. I cannot believe we did not know he would go this far. The only thing that steams him hotter than old Boniface did is the 500,000 livres he owes to the Temple.’
‘So, someone has betrayed us to the King…’ Hugues began.
‘Most certainly, a number of people have betrayed us to the King, Hugues,’ commented Réné. ‘We are just lucky one of them turned coat and gave us the tip off.’
‘Who was it then, our benefactor?’
‘Someone connected to the ship, I hear,’ said De Villiers. ‘Perhaps you can find out by asking around aboard.’
‘And our betrayer?’
‘I do not know.’
‘What are the charges?’ Hugues asked.
‘That we kiss the Grandmaster’s backside and navel,’ the commandeur continued. ‘That we worship a severed head as our Saviour and owe our wealth to it.’ The arrest warrant said: ‘God is not pleased.’
Hugues said nothing.
‘That our marshals perform lay absolution.’
‘Eh? You mean what De Montjoie says at the end of chapter about things we omit to say on account of shame of the flesh. That is about infractions of the Rule, unholy dreams, that sort of thing, not our mortal sins.’
‘I know, but they are making it into heresy. They say we deny Christ at our reception.’
‘Ridiculous,’ said Réné. ‘At Safed, eighty of our knights were beheaded by the Sultan rather than deny Christ. 20,000 of our men have died in Crusades for the patrimony of the Lord.’
‘We spit on the cross; we worship cats,’ the commandeur continued, disgusted.
Hugues was too shocked for tears, ‘Looks like people will say anything under torture.’
‘That is exactly what is happening. They are saying anything the inquisitors want them to say to spare themselves more of the rack,’ said Réné.
‘How could the King do this?’ another of the knights commented. ‘De Molay is godfather to his son Prince Robert.’
As men passed and bumped into each other here and there, struggling to claim their baggage, and find and settle into their quarters, they dropped comments into the conversation. ‘Only the day before, he had been pallbearer in the funeral of Princess Catherine of Courtenay,’ said one. ‘The Grandmaster counted kings and princesses as friends.’
‘And the Paris Temple, as well. Think of the money we have loaned him.’
‘What I cannot understand is HOW did he do it?’ asked Reynaud, as he added some wine to Réné’s cup of water. ‘A mass arrest of 600 men? He would need to employ every guard and bailiff in the country.’
‘You forget last year, my boy, when he arrested the Jews—10,000 of them,’ Réné told the young squire. ‘He got away with it that time. Now, he figures he will do the same thing, pick some group who can invite the superstitious hatred of the mob and engineer a mass persecution, bagging some rich lands in the process.’
Hugues saw the fear in the squire’s face, and said on the boy’s behalf, ‘You denigrate the people of France, Réné. There are many who are grateful for our good works and benefit from our finance.’ He put his arm on Reynaud’s shoulder. ‘They will come to our defense.’
A few men had news about the brothers in Paris.
‘I heard that Raymond de La Fère already confessed,’ said someone.
‘Who is he?’ said Hugues.
‘Just one of the young initiates,’ the man replied. ‘But now that one has cracked, the rest will probably cave in sooner or later.’
‘Did they seize the trea…?’ Hugues inquired.
‘No,’ said a tall knight who was allocating the men their quarters, ‘the brothers got it out under a hay wain, everything that was in the Temple—records, documents, too. They made it to Gisors.’
‘All our docu…?’
‘Yes, safe at Gisors.’
‘At least that is a blessing.’
‘The rest of the Temple fleet; they set sail from here the night before the arrests.’
‘Where did they go?’
‘Paris? London? No one knows, but some say they went west, to the perfect land marked by the star.’ He pointed Hugues and Réné to their bunks.
‘Do you mean La Mérica?’ enquired Hugues. The mysterious land in the West, across the Ocean. Basque fishermen knew of it and yearly trawled there for cod. Norsemen also, and they drew charts. Perhaps there were some of these precious maps among the treasure of the Temple.
‘There, or Scotland, where we are bound,’ said the Quartermaster.
‘The King of Portugal is resisting the suppression. They could have gone there,’ Réné suggested.
‘Well, we must look to our own saving,’ the Quartermaster said as he turned to deal with other men. ‘We can only pray for theirs.’
As they settled into the cramped quarters and the ship lifted anchor, Marshal De Montjoie came to Hugues to convey him the bad news. Among the men seized in the raids, he regretfully reported, had been Hugues’ ‘uncle’, captured at Narbonne, killed under torture in Paris and denied Christian burial. The Marshal conveyed his sympathies, and Réné comforted Hugues as the ship lifted anchor.
The ship set sail, an escape from all this fear into a new life. But they left behind the dead.
Hugues prayed that God might see to his father’s exaltation despite the ignominy of his burial. The Lord will know His own. His father was no heretic. Hugues went to his uncomfortable bunk with the agony of grief and anger in his soul and the sound of waves slapping against the hull of the departing ship in his ears.
Now, he was on deck, fighting against the brisk wind, next to—her. Unused in the extreme to female company, Hugues found the conversation on deck nothing less than excruciatingly painful. Knights were normally forbidden the company of women, but his superiors in the gentlemen’s cabins had other matters to concern themselves with than the Rules. It was a week since they’d left port; the ship was clearing the Orkneys. It was freezing, and everyone had put on extra woolens.
The lady he had earlier so disdained now favoured him with her company—it felt like hours—while they regarded the rugged northern shore, a maid hovering nearby.
He was quickly apprised of their relative ages—she was perhaps five years his elder. Likewise, their respective parentages—she was Éléonore de Bourgogne, the daughter of the visconte’s third brother and herself an heiress—five times higher born.
‘Oh, the Bisols of Champagne? You are visconte, then?’ she quizzed him.
‘No, my lady. But they are my relations.’
‘I am the visconte’s niece.’ She rudely assumed that he surely knew to which visconte she referred.
He didn’t, nor did he care. Her status and wealth were matters for which he cared not one sou, Hugues reminded himself. Yet it hindered their conversation; it hindered him. He may have believed himself indifferent to her rank, but he was far from indifferent to her beauty. He found himself blushing at her every word.
The lady was far from genteel in her manner.
‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘Do you really spit on the cross of Christ and kiss the Grandmaster’s posterior?’
Considering that as they spoke hundreds of his brethren were undergoing torture in the prison at For-l’Évêque, to speak so flippantly was rude, to say the least. Hugues was fresh with mourning for his father; it had been mere days since he’d had the news. ‘You may believe whose evidence you choose,’ he responded coldly.
‘And the head, that is another one. What is this head they say you worship? Is the face really covered in dog’s bristles?’
‘I am only of First Rank, mademoiselle. I know nothing of such a rite. And I would not be permitted to speak of it if I did. I may not even discuss such things with a fellow knight.’
Technically, this was the case. The Rule for each rank was revealed only upon initiation into that rank.
‘It is this secrecy thing that has condemned you, you know,’ the lady continued impertinently. ‘People do not know what you get up to in your secret night-time meetings and your one-legged initiations. Naturally, we assume it is something demonic.’
He hadn’t liked her when she arrived late onto the ship, with her entourage of luxury, and he didn’t like her still, now on deck. Nevertheless, she was the most painfully beautiful girl he had ever seen.
If truth be told, she was probably just about the only girl he had ever seen, and here he was, a mere cubit away from her warm arm, flicked by rich scarves and fine woolens in the icy wind. He longed to creep between the thick cloth and that exquisite white skin. Her smooth voice and words, however carelessly she delivered them, sounded to him like the song of young birds warming the world for spring.
He felt the lambskin girdle chafing against his loins, and wondered if his vow of chastity could be as easily dismissed as his father’s had been. Then he rebuked himself for the wicked thought—there were no confessors on board. With each word the two exchanged, Hugues wrestled between his worship of her beauty and his dislike of her person. He flipped violently between the two emotions, and it made him dizzy.
She didn’t seem to like him, either; she was only whiling away idle hours at sea.
Though he did not enjoy the experience, Hugues couldn’t pull himself away. His eyes fixed upon her every movement, and it was not until she made the first excuses, to ready for dinner or something, that they parted. He gazed after her as she left behind her veils a whiff of fine perfume.
He retired to the gentlemen’s cabins in consternation after this encounter, staying there for most of the remainder of the voyage, and only summoned the nerve to continue his inquiries of his shipmates when the ship was scarce hours from their destination on the eastern coast.
He used the sequestered time to canvass the other knights. All he wanted was a name—Who betrayed my father?
As to their benefactor, they owed their tip-off to one of the seargents, Bernard de Saint-Just, whose father had leased the ship from the Venetians and paid for it with funds from Lady Éléonore’s father. As to their persecutor, the matter was being driven by the King and his councilor Guillaume de Nogaret.
‘As we speak De Nogaret is torturing the Grandmaster, who is of higher rank than St. Peter and the Twelve,’ the Brothers moaned.
‘Surely, His Holiness, whose Holy Church we have with our blood defended, will come to our succour,’ said Hugues.
De Villiers contradicted him, ‘It was the Pope who gave the order. The Holy Church is fully complicit. It is at the bishop’s prison at For-l’Évêque where our brothers are being tortured. The prosecutor William of Paris is a Dominican priest.’
‘We should have known this was coming last month when he excommunicated the order,’ said another.
‘Do not fool yourself. No one knew this was coming. If it were not for young Saint-Just…’
‘They have been tortured into false confessions, and thirty-six have died under torture. They were not even allowed to know the witnesses against them.’
Hugues winced to think of his father’s pain and humiliation, but he agreed, they should have known to expect that something terrible was to happen. The king had gone from bad to worse, mad to carve himself a dominant role in the shifting politics of Europe, and all the lawyers and clerics did his bidding without so much as a grumble.
The Crown possessed a legal framework, created to expel the Jews, that licensed the arrest of heretics and seizure of their property. Confession under torture was nonretractable, and defendants had no right to interview their accusers.
One knight said, ‘You will find they have all got something to do with De Nogaret, sure enough.’
‘But De Nogaret wants revenge against the old pope, Boniface, not the Temple,’ Hugues posed. ‘Were his parents not Cathars—burned as heretics?’
‘That is where he gets in with the King,’ the man explained. ‘De Nogaret does the King’s dirty work, and they both hold over His Holiness’s head the threat of a posthumous trial of Boniface.’
The men had explained to Hugues the larger politics of the situation, but he went back to his quarters thinking: There are still smaller players to indict. Who, for example, had told De Nogaret the Templars would be at Narbonne?
At least he understood now why the King, crazy as his actions were, wanted to destroy the Temple. Since the fall of the Frankish Kingdom of Jerusalem, kings of France and popes had no further use for the Temple and coveted its enormous wealth. With the new pope colluding with him, the King could get away with absolutely anything, and the Knights of Christ looked to be juicy prey. De Molay had fallen into a trap, betrayed by the man who was his friend and father of his godson. Hugues’ father’s case was different. How did De Nogaret find him at Narbonne? There was a story there, and he determined to discover it. Whoever it was, he would have his revenge.
On that black Friday the 13th, King Philippe seized hundreds of knights. The confiscation of their land proved useful in paying off his war debts.
Philippe never found the Temple treasure, though. Descended from one of the original nine knights who had excavated Solomon’s Stables, Hugues was among the few who knew what it comprised.
