The Jerusalem Parchment

by Tuvia Fogel

  The thought of reenacting the Gospels made her consider her own role.

  “On the other hand, why was I chosen to anoint the new Messiah? The Magdalene was a prostitute . . . Do my feelings for Yehezkel make me the new Magdalene? Oh, my God . . . the Magdalene wiped his feet with her hair, and mine barely reaches my shoulders! Imagine the crowd’s laughter should I try to do that to him! Besides, what would Yehezkel think of my using the oil in that way, and without even consulting him. I’ve let Hildegard’s visions get the better of me; I’d better put the whole idea out of my mind.”

  But the thought of Hildegard had already swung the jury in her head the other way. “Wait a minute. Did you learn nothing from Hildegard, from Gioacchino, from Father Makarios, from solving the enigma?” She stopped in her tracks, a hand over her mouth.

  “Mary Magdalene was a prostitute, and I was violated by my stepfather! Those humiliations entitle us to be the prophetess who anoints the Messiah! Yehezkel said Cathars believe the Magdalene was Jesus’s wife—the hermit and Makarios said so, too. Well, I already knew that Francesco is my heavenly husband. As for the problem of my hair, in one Gospel she wipes his feet, but in the other two she pours the oil over his head. Yehezkel said all the kings of Israel were anointed on their heads . . . Yes, that’s what I’ll do!”

  She recoiled from glorifying her role, but the fulfillment of her own destiny was clear to see. “Ezekiel’s prophecy of the anointing is found after a thousand years—and I’m there! The oil that anointed Christ is found again—and I’m there! Now Christ himself returns to Nazareth . . . and here I am! Who could ask for more evidence?”

  Suddenly, she could feel heat emanating from the pouch against her hip. It was time.

  She took the pita to Francesco and asked him to recite a blessing over it before she gave some to the Christians in the square. He mumbled some words over the bread, and she asked him to eat some himself. He hesitated and then put a piece in his mouth. That was when she uncorked the alabaster jar and poured all its contents into Samuel’s horn and from there over Francesco’s tonsure.

  The thick ointment ran into the dirty curls around the bare top of his skull, as the air filled with the resurrected fragrance of twelve-hundred-year-old spikenard. Francesco slowly tilted up his head and, for the first time since meeting her in Limassol, looked straight into Galatea’s eyes for a long moment. She knew that was the look Jesus had given the Magdalene.

  Some oil dripped on Francesco’s foot. Galatea changed her plan and freed her hair, which was in fact long enough to wipe it as the Magdalene had done. Francesco understood her intent and tried to stop her, but when his hand touched her hair to move it away, the memory of Chiara’s hair in his hand when he’d cut it, in San Damiano, swept over him—and he froze.

  The people closest to the tree, who’d seen Galatea’s gestures, froze on the spot, whatever their faith. Anointing someone’s head with oil is a potent symbol in the tradition of all three faiths, and a puzzled but outraged buzz rose from onlookers. They had mixed feelings. On one hand, bestowing such an honor on a sleazy infidel preacher sparked uncomprehending hostility; on the other, there was instinctive reverence for a scene that felt important, at once mystical and historic. It felt . . . biblical.

  But soon more intransigent Mohammedans were calling on their neighbors to punish the arrogance of the infidels, anointing each other before everyone, shamelessly proclaiming themselves what they were not. The crowd’s rumble grew unfriendly. Yehezkel and Galatea started breathing the folded breath.

  Then, head still dripping oil, Francesco stood up and stepped toward the crowd.

  He raised his arms, fingers splayed in the Priestly Blessing position, and slowly, in a voice that reached to the stalls, blessed the crowd in Hebrew, to Galatea’s Kyrie Eleison and Yehezkel’s Ken Yehi Ratzon.

  The animosity dispersed like smoke in the breeze, and after a moment, so did the bewildered crowd. Friars, nuns, and Jew sat down, a little shaken.

  They all knew that Francesco forfeited the chance to complete his Sequela Christi only because the mob wouldn’t have lynched just him and Illuminato, but no one said anything. Yehezkel tried to push Francesco’s heart further from martyrdom.

  “I reflected on your problem, Francesco. The answer may lie in your leadership of the order. If you go back—but abandon that leadership—and continue your personal mission, leaving decisions on the future of your friars to those you deem worthy, then you’re doing what Ezekiel said, leading by example only without correcting anyone. In other words, my friend, solve the problem by continuing to be yourself!”

  Francesco reflected, swollen eyes closed, for what seemed like a long while. When he opened them, they interrogated Illuminato. The young friar smiled, clearly grateful to the Jew for his suggestion. Francesco stood up and embraced Yehezkel, his head ending up on the rabbi’s wide chest. “You’re right, Yehezkel. Something bothered me anyway about taking the place of Providence and deciding by myself when to leave this vale of tears.”

  The grateful smile Galatea gave Yehezkel was enough for him to subsist on for the rest of his days.

  Francesco stepped back and looked at the rabbi. “Before we part, there’s one question I must ask you. But I want the truth, Yehezkel. Did you betray my words to save my life, in front of the sultan?”

  “Yes,” said Yehezkel immediately. “Just as you would have done to save mine in front of Domingo.”

  Francesco laughed. The two grabbed each other’s forearm like knights and were standing like that when they heard Galatea’s shriek.

  She’d gone to pick up the alabaster jar she emptied into the horn and found it full again. She held it up for them to see. Francesco was the first to fall on his knees. Galatea wept openly; Gudrun laughed, Francesco and Illuminato thanked Christ over and over as Yehezkel mumbled kabbalistic blessings.

  It took them ten minutes to acknowledge the world around them again. By then, Galatea had taken another unilateral decision. She went up to Francesco, proferring the prophet Samuel’s ivory horn. “I want you to take this, Brother Francesco. Pilgrims buy all kinds of fake relics in Jerusalem, but this horn was used by the prophet Samuel to anoint King David! Don’t ask me how I know; suffice it to say that we found it hidden in a tunnel fifty feet below the Dome of the Rock! Please take it.”

  Yehezkel was startled at the thought of Samuel’s horn going to Italy but said nothing.

  Francesco looked in her eyes and decided to visit Chiara the moment he was back in Assisi. “I’ll take it, Mother Galatea, though I’ll never need a reminder of the miracle I witnessed here today.”

  “One more thing, Brother Francesco,” she said. “If you should sail to Venice, ask after a place called Island of the Two Vines, near Saint Erasmus. Ten years ago, I met one of Gioacchino’s monks there, and he predicted what happened in Jerusalem. It is the holiest place in the lagoon.”

  “I’ll pray there, rest assured,” replied Francesco, already looking stronger than he had an hour earlier.

  Then they blessed each other and parted ways, the two friars heading back to Acre and Italy, the other three riding east, toward the Sea of Galilee, which the Gospels also call Lake of Gennesaret.

  SEA OF GALILEE, 5TH APRIL 1220

  Three days later, at the end of an afternoon of spring squalls and sudden outbreaks of blue sky, they sighted a round little guard tower, perched on a spur of rock jutting over the eastern waters of the lake.

  Yehezkel wanted to visit Rav Moshe’s grave in Tiberias, but it would have meant renting a boat afterward to cross the lake, which would have left too easy a trail to follow. So they had ridden their donkeys around the south side of the lake and up its eastern shore.

  No horses were tied outside the tower, so they decided to rest a while inside it, where they would be less visible. Leaving the donkeys below, they climbed the stairway to the terrace. Dusk approached as they gazed at the lake below and the mountains of the Lebanon to the north, their peach color blazing again
st the darkening blue, as bright as if a fire were burning inside the peach. They reminded Galatea of the Alps lit by the last sun in September, a sight she’d grown to love in Torcello—and there weren’t many.

  As they sat there, Yehezkel quietly clung to his messianic speculations. “I found the confession, it’s here with me, shortly to be in safe hands, so who can say I won’t be the one to show the world the error of Christianity?” The thought gave him pause. “And how does that error make Galatea any less a ‘valorous woman’ than she is?”

  The sound of a galloping horse broke the silence. They jumped up and looked out from the ramparts. A Templar knight was riding toward the tower as fast as he could, his white mantle flying behind him. Yehezkel’s first thought was for the laissez-passer in his pouch, signed by Pedro of Montaigue in Damietta.

  “This shouldn’t be a problem,” he said to the two women.

  Bois-Guilbert was waiting for his platoon to return from patrolling the northern shore and saw them approach from the terrace. There was no doubt, it could only be them. He’d laughed, gloating over the unsought-for advantage of being on God’s side, and immediately left the tower in the hope that seeing it empty, they would shelter inside it. The prey, of course, fell into the trap.

  They expected a Templar to address three pilgrims decorously, especially when they recognized him, but Bois-Guilbert jumped onto the terrace, sized up the opposition, and grabbed Gudrun. He pulled her to his chest, put a dagger to her throat, and then snarled at the other two, “I bet you thought you’d made it! Now you’ll hand over to me what you found in Jerusalem, or the blood of this innocent nun will be on your heads!”

  Galatea didn’t hesitate. She slipped the pouch from round her neck and gave it to the knight.

  Bois-Guilbert took it with one hand, keeping the dagger at Gudrun’s throat with the other. “I want to know exactly what is inside it. It is my condition for letting you live. All three of you.”

  There was a silence. Then Galatea, unable to bear the terror in Gudrun’s eyes, blurted out, “The Holy Oil with which Mary Magdalene anointed Christ in Bethany and a missing page from the prophet Ezekiel, predicting that anointment.”

  The Templar’s victorious cackle rung out in the fading light. He threw Gudrun back toward them and the two nuns embraced, weeping.

  “I don’t know if that’s what the Parchment of Circles led to, but Father Domingo will know what to do with these things. A page of a Jewish prophet that speaks of Jesus Christ! I can just see him converting masses of Jews with it! As for the oil, I guess it will anoint popes from now until the end of time!”

  Bois-Guilbert had been keeping his eyes on the big Jew, and Galatea caught him totally by surprise when she lunged at him and in one, smooth sweep wrenched the pouch from his hand and flung it over the ramparts into the lake below.

  There was nothing they could do, but still they all watched it arch into the air, as if to memorize the point in which it splashed into the waters of the lake.

  The Templar’s voice was full of cold, self-righteous anger. He looked skyward. “Oh Father, I couldn’t find a Jewish harlot, so I found a Jew and a harlot, instead. Now I’ll kill them both, and you’ll finally be avenged!” He turned to Galatea.

  “I was going to kill you anyway, renegade bitch, but now I think I’ll have some fun with you first!”

  He drew an incredibly long sword and placed its tip under Yehezkel’s chin. “I wanted you to watch me force her, Jew, but you’re too unpredictable, so I’ll have to kill you first.”

  Yehezkel stepped back to distance the blade from his neck, but he was at the edge of the terrace. He thought, “Well, if I’m the Messiah, it seems I am of the Christian kind, who only come to be killed.”

  Suddenly, he heard something at the foot of the tower. He shouted the first thing that came into his mind, loud and slow, to cover the noise from the stairs, in case it was a Saracen who could help them. “Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed tuo nomini da gloriam!”

  “What the fuck are you shouting, Jew? You’re about to die, so say your prayers, not ours!”

  Yehezkel saw Frutolf ’s big head rise above the last step, his eyes aflame like a German Saint Michael.

  “Maybe you can kill me and get away with it,” he said with unnatural calm, “but the man behind you is a real knight, and he won’t take it kindly if you lay a finger on the nuns.”

  “Ha, ha! How typical of a Jew to try deceit until the last second of his life! But it won’t help you this time, Jew. I’m not about to turn around!”

  Something deep in his Teutonic soul had prevented Frutolf from abandoning his mission, and he’d traced their every move to that tower. He stepped onto the terrace and said, without raising his voice, “If there is a master of deceit here, it is you, Bois-Guilbert, not the Jew.”

  The Templar spun around, unsure if words could save the situation at this point.

  “Frutolf, if you won’t let me kill these heretics, at least help me tie them up and take them to Acre!”

  Frutolf drew his sword, which looked even longer than Bois-Guilbert’s.

  “I’m through listening to your lies, Englishman. My master says you’re a spy for Domingo of Guzman and a traitor to your order. Your time is up, Bois-Guilbert.”

  “That’s true, but you’re too blind to see what it means! Yes, I work for Domingo, and no man alive is closer to the pope than he is! If you want to become someone, Frutolf, you had better join me!”

  “But you swore an oath!” said the Teuton, his anger rising.

  “No oath is valid when sworn to enemies of the faith! The Temple has become a snake in the bosom of the church. Help me tear out the rot and purify once more the Body of Christ!”

  “Enough! You’ve trampled over everything a knight should honor and defend! I’m going to kill you not for lying to me for months, not for threatening the lady of my thoughts, but because it is intolerable that a knight should betray his order! Defend yourself, Robert de Bois-Guilbert!”

  The bout began in the bright moonlight, the onlookers shouting support for their champion. The duel on the minute terrace didn’t last long, for Frutolf was a foot taller and fifteen years younger than Bois-Guilbert and was fighting for chivalry itself. After a few parries, the Teuton disarmed the Templar in a clash of blades so loud it seemed to echo off the hills around them. Then, with a scream of pure rage, he sunk his sword through the chain mail on Bois-Guilbert’s chest.

  Instead of the look of surprise that Yehezkel had seen on men who realized they were dead, Bois-Guilbert, arrogant to the last, clutched the point of the sword with both hands with animal desperation, trying to deny it entry into his body, and the blade, as Frutolf pushed it in with both hands, cut off most of his fingers. Then he lay against the parapet, mouth spurting blood and fingers bunched in his lap.

  A minute later Frutolf was on his knees before the abbess—apparently asking for absolution for the killing she’d just witnessed; in reality wordlessly dedicating to her his revenge over Bois-Guilbert.

  Suddenly, he heard the sound of the Templar platoon returning from its round and thought, “What my Master tried to avoid, a Teuton murdering a Templar, is what I ended up doing. Now these knights will arrest me and take me to their castle. Maybe this is what I had to do to get in there.”

  Galatea spoke before he even thought of asking her to justify his actions before the Templars. “What you just did was a noble deed, Frutolf of Steinfeld, and I shall bear witness to that before the knights who will be here shortly. I am an abbess and a countess, so if I tell them that I know Bois-Guilbert was betraying their order, they will do nothing to you—at least not until they find out if I speak the truth.”

  Frutolf was as euphoric as if he’d just single-handedly freed Jerusalem.

  “Madonna, you can’t imagine . . .”

  “I shan’t be doing this for a sense of justice alone, Frutolf,” she interrupted him before he could gush any courtly love words. “The three of us need an esc
ort to reach Acre in safety. Are we agreed?”

  “Of course, my lady. It goes without saying, my fairest, noblest muse!”

  With a mischievous smile, Galatea placed a kiss on his vast forehead. The German closed his eyes, overwhelmed; Gudrun frowned, and Yehezkel found that, for the first time in a year, he wasn’t jealous.

  He pulled her to one side. “Have no regrets over the pouch, Galatea,” he said. “It’s all part of the plan of the God of Israel . . . who—it has been granted me to understand—is also the God of Christians.”

  The presence of Bois-Guilbert’s slumped body and the clinking sounds of the knights dismounting at the foot of the tower gave his next words a strange, somber weight. “When you threw the pouch into the sky, my friend, as if you wanted to return it to the Heavens that gave it to us, my eyes followed its arch and I had a numerical vision: Rav Yitzhak the Blind’s calculation is the right one. In the fullness of time, when the arch is complete, the pouch will be found and the Holy Oil will anoint the true Messiah!”

  “When the arch is complete,” she repeated. “I’m afraid I don’t understand, Yehezkel.”

  “Arch in Hebrew is keshet: kof, shin, tav. Do you understand now?”

  “Yes,” said she. “A hundred, plus three hundred, plus four hundred. You’re saying that in eight hundred years, in 2020, the oil will anoint the true Messiah.” She took his arm gently.

  “You know, speaking of the true Messiah . . . I thought Francesco was the returning Christ, and that the oil had done its work, but I was wrong. Now I understand what Gioacchino meant when he said that the Jew and the woman will be redeemed together in the Last Days. What he was saying was that the true Messiah . . . will be a woman!”

  Yehezkel smiled, finally tamed, and kissed her lightly on each eye.

  Then they went down to speak to the Templars.

  The Holy Grail was lost, but in Acre Gudrun was reunited with Garietto and the abbess with her trunk.