Free Fifth Gospel by Adriana Koulias

a rigid shield of flesh.
    She shuddered and closed her eyes.
    ‘Mind your son, woman,’ she heard him say, stern of voice, ‘this is a great crowd and the city is large. You have come so far it would not do to lose him now!’ He drove his eyes down into hers to make the significance of his words more clear and turned away.
    ‘ Let them through, Septimus!’ he called out over his shoulder.
    The other man hesitated.
    There was a look full of danger in that young man’s eye . He let loose a seductive whisper between them, ‘See these hands, Jewess?’ he showed them to her, ‘These were bloodied from killing all the children of your township…one by one I cut their little throats and stacked their pitiful Jew bodies in piles and milked the blood from their veins for your mad king to drink…what do you think of that?’ He watched her, waiting for a response. When none came, he made a cold, perilous laugh at the back of his throat. ‘You were clever to have saved him, I’ll give you that! But you can’t change his fate,’ he leaned in, so that she could smell his wine-sour breath. ‘Fate is a hard mistress, Jewess…she always comes to take her earnings, believe me, and when she does…’ he smiled, ‘I hope I am there to see it!’
    Mariam kept her eyes steady on his and her face calm. Meanwhile, the line of pilgrims swelled behind her and the people complained so that the soldier, now drawn from his reverie, was made to shift an eye to the hordes. He straightened and a look of frustration passed over his face for the menial task that had no end, and with a wave of a hand dismissed her and shouted to a place behind her,
    ‘Next!’

9
    T HE KISS
    I t was in the Temple that what had begun three days before came to fruition. Before that there had been three days of endless marches and toiling over rough roads. All around him there had been the constant noise from prayers and songs and psalms, the ever-movement of the people onwards, the laughter of the children and their games and his mother’s concern in his ear.
    In the night , dreams shadowed his soul. He had seen an abyss, a dark, fiery furnace molten hot in which he glimpsed many things of darkness, dreadful to behold, waiting to ensnare him. On a far shore stood his friend Jesus, adorned in light, with his heart-face radiating love. In the dream he had gestured for Yeshua to cast into the abyss all his hard-won treasures but Yeshua’s heart had been weighed down with sorrow for the loss.
    His friend’s voice had told him, ‘Remember, we are brothers, Yeshua . All that you lose will one day return to you and all that dies will live again through me.’
    On the last day he fell ill , faces came and went, but his soul was awake only to the process that was mysteriously and cautiously working its way through him.
    And his question to it was:
    Am I?
    And the answer was:
    Not yet .
    He did not understand this voluntary leaving of his body but he was not afraid, his concern was for his mother.
    When she had shown him Jerusalem she had spoken of the Sanhedrin, of its Temple and palaces, of its gardens and of its people. She had expected that it would quicken his heart with excitement. But his heart was grown too big in his body to be excited and it could only strike a slow rhythm.
    When they entered the city, all around him he heard the clamour of the pilgrims, the calls of the merchants in the bazaars, the noise of the camels and horses and entertainers, the chanting of the priests and the clanging of bells – all these sounds were seeking to bring him back to life and to entice him from his task but the will of God was set. Death, he knew, lay at the end of the way, and he walked this long road with Jesus to his Father’s house, where it would be accomplished.
    Once over the twelve steps of the Temple, he followed Jesus through the Beautiful Gate whose massive double doors were made of brass. Now in the courts of the Temple, the world was left behind them