But first there was the riot that they were to instigate in two days’ time, taking advantage of the hubbub of Passover.
When they had left their homeland, Galilee, and moved to the capital, they had first met with their host for this evening, the Judaean who owned the fine house in the western district of Jerusalem. He was a rich man, educated and even cultivated – while the horizon of the Twelve did not extend beyond their fishing nets.
While his servants were bringing the dishes, the Judaean remained silent. He felt that Jesus was running a considerable risk, surrounded by these twelve fanatics: their assault on the Temple would of course end in failure. He had to shelter Jesus from their ambitions – even if, for this purpose, he had been obliged to forge a temporary alliance with Peter.
He had met Jesus two years earlier, on the banks of the Jordan. He had been an Essene and had turned Nazorean – one of the Jewish sects attached to the Baptist movement. Jesus was one too, though he never spoke of it. Between the two of them a bond of understanding and mutual esteem had soon been established. He would sometimes assert that he was the only one who had really understood who Jesus was. Neither a kind of God, as some members of the populace had hymned him after a spectacular cure, nor the Messiah, as Peter would have liked, nor the new King David, as the Zealots dreamt.
No, he was something else, which the Twelve, obsessed by their dreams of power, had not even glimpsed.
So he considered himself to be superior to them, and said to anyone who would listen that he was the beloved disciple of the Master – while Jesus, for the past few months, had found it more and more difficult to put up with his gang of ignorant Galileans, greedy to get their hands on power.
The Twelve were furious at the sight of another pretender moving in, just like that, to a position they had never managed to reach, furious that he had gained the confidence of the Nazorean.
So the enemy within this group was this beloved disciple. He, who never left his native Judaea, said that he had understood Jesus better than all of them, even though it was they who had constantly followed Jesus in Galilee.
An impostor…
He was reclining at the right hand of Jesus – the host’s place. Peter never took his eyes off him. Was he about to betray the terrible secret that had only recently bound them together – would he make Jesus realize that he had been betrayed? Was he now regretting having introduced Judas to Caiaphas, to set up the trap that was to close on the Master this very evening?
Suddenly Jesus stretched out his hand and took hold of a morsel that he held for a moment over the dish, so that the sauce would drip off it: he was going to offer it to one of the guests, as a token of ritual friendship. Silence abruptly fell. Peter turned pale, and his jaw was set. “If it is to that impostor that the morsel is offered,” he thought, “everything is ruined: it will mean he has just betrayed our alliance. If so, I’ll kill him, and then make my escape…”
With a broad sweep of his hand, Jesus held the morsel out to Judas, who remained motionless at the end of the table, as if transfixed.
“Well, my friend… Go on, take it!”
Without a word, Judas leant forwards, took the morsel and placed it between his lips. A few drops of sauce trickled onto his short beard.
The conversations resumed, while Judas chewed slowly, his eyes riveted on those of his Master. Then he got up and moved to the exit. As he passed behind them, their host saw Jesus turn his head slightly. And he was the only one who heard Jesus say:
“My friend… What you have to do, do it quickly!”
Slowly, Judas opened the door. Outside, the Passover moon had not yet risen: the night was dark.
There were now only eleven of them around Jesus.
Eleven, and the beloved disciple.
5
The bell rang out for a second time. In the uncertain light of dawn, St Martin’s Abbey was the only place in the village with its lights on. On winter nights such as this, the wind whistles between the desolate banks of the river and makes the Val-de-Loire seem more like Siberia than France.
The bell was still echoing in the cloister when Father Nil entered, having taken off his ample choir robe: the office of lauds had just finished. People knew that the monks maintained a complete silence until terce, and so nobody ever called before eight o’clock.
The doorbell rang for the third time, imperiously.
“The brother porter won’t answer it, he has his orders. Too bad, I’ll go myself.”
Ever since he had brought to light the hidden circumstances of Jesus’s death, Nil had been suffering from a hazy sense of unease. He did not like it when Father Andrei went off on one of his infrequent trips: the librarian had become his sole confidant after God. Monks live in common, but they do not communicate, and Nil needed to talk to someone about his research. Instead of returning to his cell, where his ongoing study of the events surrounding the capture of Jesus awaited him, he went into the gatehouse and opened the heavy door that separates every monastery from the external world.
In the gleam of the car’s headlights, an officer from the gendarmerie snapped to attention and saluted.
“Excuse me, Father, but does this person reside here?”
He held out an identity card. Without a word, Nil took the laminated piece of paper and read the name: Andrei Sokolwski. Age: 67. Address: St Martin’s Abbey…
Father Andrei!
The blood drained from his cheeks.
“Yes… of course, he’s the Abbey librarian. What?…”
The gendarme was used to these disagreeable duties.
“Yesterday evening, two farm labourers informed us that, going home late, they had discovered his body on the side of the railway track, between Lamotte-Beuvron and La Ferté-Saint-Aubin. Dead. I’m sorry, but one of you will have to come and identify the body… For the inquiry, you understand.”
“Dead? Father Andrei?”
Nil wavered in dismay.
“But… it must be the Reverend Father Abbot who…”
Behind them, they heard footsteps, muffled by the swish of a monk’s habit. It was the Father Abbot himself. Alerted by the doorbell? Or impelled by some mysterious presentiment?
The gendarme bowed. In the Orleans brigade, everyone knows that, at the Abbey, the man who wears a ring and a pectoral cross has the same rank as a bishop. The Republic respects these things.
“Reverend Father, one of your monks, Father Andrei, was discovered yesterday next to the Rome express railway line, not far from here. It was a heavy fall, and he didn’t have a chance: his neck bones were broken, he must have been killed instantly. We won’t take the body to Paris for autopsy until we’ve identified it: could you come along in my car and carry out this formality, please? It’s painful but necessary.”
Ever since he had been elected to this prestigious post, the Father Abbot of St Martin’s had never allowed a single feeling to show. True enough, he had been elected by the monks, in accordance with the Monastic Rule. But, contrary to that Rule, there had been several telephone calls between Val-de-Loire and Rome. And then, a high-ranking prelate had come to make his annual retreat in the cloister just before the election, in order to put discreet pressure on any waverers and convince them that Dom Gérard was the right man for the situation.
Only a reliable man could be entrusted with power over the Abbey, over its unique theological college and its three libraries. So not a muscle in his face betrayed the slightest emotion to the gendarme, who was still standing to attention.
“Father Andrei! Good Lord, how terrible! We were expecting him this morning – he was due back from Rome. How could such an accident have happened?”
“Accident? It’s too early to use that word, Reverend Father. The few indications that we have suggest another line of inquiry. The passenger cars used on the Rome express are old models, but the doors are locked as soon as the train departs, for the entire journey. Your colleague can only have fallen out of the window in his compartment. Whe
n the ticket inspector did his last check before arrival in Paris, he saw that this compartment was empty: not only was Father Andrei no longer there – although his suitcase was where he’d left it – but the two other passengers had disappeared without leaving any luggage behind them. Three seats in the compartment had been reserved, but had remained unoccupied ever since Rome: so there was no witness. The inquiry is only just starting, but our initial hypothesis rules out any accident: it looks more like a crime. It seems possible that Father Andrei was pushed out of the window by one or both of the passengers as the train was moving. Do you mind coming with me for the identification?”
Father Nil had taken a discreet step backwards, but he had the impression that a flood of emotions was going to burst through the dam of his superior’s face, however implacably it had been fashioned to stem the waves.
But the Father Abbot immediately mastered his feelings.
“Go with you? Now? That’s not possible: this morning I am seeing the bishops from the Centre-Val-de-Loire Region, and my presence here is indispensable.”
He turned round to Father Nil and said, with a heavy sigh, “Father Nil, could you go with this gentleman and carry out this painful formality?”
Nil bowed his head in sign of obedience: his study of the conspiracy around the death of Jesus would have to wait. It was Andrei who had just been crucified – and this death had taken place only the night before.
“Of course, Reverend Father: I’ll go and get our coat, it’s cold… It’ll just take me a moment, Monsieur, if you don’t mind waiting…”
Monastic poverty forbade a monk from proclaiming himself to be the owner of the least little object: our coat had for years been used solely by Father Nil – but it would have been inappropriate to say so. The Father Abbot asked the gendarme to step into the empty gatehouse and took him familiarly by the arm.
“I don’t wish to prejudge the final result of your inquiry. But a crime – that’s just not possible! Can you imagine what the press, the television, the journalists will make of it? The Catholic Church would come out of it badly, and the Republic would be gravely embarrassed. I’m certain it’s a suicide. Poor Father Andrei… do you follow my meaning?”
The gendarme gently pulled his arm away: he followed all too well, but an inquiry is an inquiry, and it’s no easy matter to climb through the open window of a speeding train while two innocent passengers watch. And he didn’t like a civilian telling him what to do – not even one wearing a pectoral cross and a pastoral ring.
“Reverend Father, the inquiry will take its course. Father Andrei can’t have fallen out of the window all by himself: it’s up to Paris to decide what happened. Allow me to tell you that, right now, everything seems to indicate that this was a crime.”
“No, I’m sure you mean a suicide…”
“A monk committing suicide? At his age? Highly unlikely.”
He stroked his chin: all the same, the Father Abbot was right, this business was likely to cause quite a stir, and in high places too…
“Tell me, Reverend Father, did your Father Andrei suffer from… from psychological problems?”
The Father Abbot looked relieved: the gendarme seemed to understand.
“He did indeed! He was being treated for them. In fact, I can confirm that he was in a state of great mental fragility.”
Andrei was known among his colleagues for being remarkably well balanced, physically and psychologically, and in forty years of monastic life he had never once needed the infirmary. He was a studious man, surrounded by manuscripts; a scholar whose heart rate can never have risen above sixty beats per minute. The prelate smiled at the gendarme.
“A suicide is, of course, a horrible sin for a monk – but all sin deserves mercy. Whereas a crime…”
The wan light of morning enveloped the scene. The body had been moved away from the tracks so that the investigation would not get in the way of the trains, but the stiff corpse had not changed its posture: Father Andrei’s left forearm was still pointing heavenwards, his fist clenched. On the ride over, Nil had had time to prepare himself for the shock. But he still found it difficult to approach, to kneel down, to draw back the cloth that had been placed over the head, twisted awry.
“Yes,” he murmured with a sigh. “Yes, it’s Father Andrei. My poor friend…”
There was a moment’s silence, which the gendarme respected. Then he touched Father Nil on the shoulder.
“Stay with him: I’ll draw up the statement of identification in the car, you’ll just need to sign it and then I’ll drive you back to the Abbey.”
Nil wiped away a tear trickling down his cheek. Then he noticed the body’s clenched fist that seemed, in a last gesture of despair, to be cursing the heavens. With difficulty he managed to prise open the dead man’s chill fingers: in the hollow of the palm there was a crumpled little square of paper.
Nil glanced round: the gendarme was leaning over the dashboard of his car. He peeled the scrap of paper from his friend’s hand, and his eyes fell on a few lines written in pencil.
Nobody was looking at him: he adroitly slipped the paper away into his coat pocket.
6
Gospels according to Matthew and John
A few days before the evening of the last supper, Peter had been waiting outside the walls. The Judaean came through the gate, greeted by the sentries who recognized him as the proprietor of one of the local villas. He took a few steps; the shape of the fisherman emerged from the shadows.
“Shalom!”
“Ma shalom lek’ha.”
He did not hold out his hand to the Galilean. For a week, apprehension had been gnawing away at him: whenever he met them, on the hillside outside the city where they spent each night in the friendly, secluded darkness of a vast olive grove, the Twelve spoke of nothing other than the imminent assault they were about to launch against the Temple. Never again would the circumstances be so favourable, they argued: thousands of pilgrims were encamped pretty much everywhere around the city. The crowd had been worked on by the Zealots, and were ready for anything. Jesus’s popularity had to be exploited to set off the explosion, now.
They would fail – that much was obvious. And Jesus risked being killed for no reason at all, in a Jewish-style riot. The Master deserved better: he was worth infinitely more than all the rest of them, and he needed to be protected from his fanatical disciples. A plan had been hatching in the Judaean’s head – now he just needed to convince Peter.
“The Master has asked if he can come to supper at your house,” Peter said, “in the upper room. It’s impossible for him to celebrate Passover this year – we’re being watched much too closely. Instead, a solemn meal, following the Essene rite – that’s all.”
“You’re all completely mad! You want to come and do that in my house? Two hundred yards away from the High Priest’s palace, in a part of town where your Galilean accent will get you arrested straight away?”
The fisherman from the Lake gave him a crafty smile.
“Exactly: your place is just where we’ll be safest. The authorities will never think of coming to look for us in the protected district, especially not in the house of a friend of the High Priest!”
“Oh… ‘friend’ is going a bit far. We’re neighbours. There’s no way a former Essene like me and the highest dignitary in the clergy could be ‘friends’. When do you plan on holding this supper?”
“Thursday evening, at nightfall.”
It was a crazy but cunning idea. Hidden away inside his house, the Galileans would evade all notice.
“All right. Tell the Master that I’ll be honoured to welcome him into my home, and everything will be ready for a solemn meal. One of my servants will help you slip past the patrols: you’ll recognize him from the pitcher of water that he’ll be carrying for the ritual ablutions of your meal. Meanwhile, come along with me, we need to talk.”
Peter followed him. They climbed over a pile of bricks. There was a gleam of metal from under
his cloak: the sica, the short sword the Zealots used to gut their victims. So he never went without it these days! Jesus’s apostles were ready for anything…
In a few words, the Judaean told him of his plan. So the uprising was going to occur on the occasion of the feast, was it? An excellent idea: the crowd of pilgrims would be easy to manipulate. But given that Jesus preached only peace and pardon, how would he react, in the heat of the moment? And wasn’t there the risk of his being wounded, or worse? If he were slain by a legionary’s sword, their coup would fail…
Peter listened, his interest suddenly aroused.
“So are you saying we should ask him to go back to Galilee, where he doesn’t run any risk? It’s all going to happen so quickly, and we can’t have him four days’ journey away from here…”
“And who’s asking you to send him away from Jerusalem? No, not at all: you need to bring him into the heart of the action, but in a place where a Roman arrow can’t reach him. You want to have your meal in the part of town where Caiaphas’s palace is, since you think it’s where you’ll be safest. A good idea. In the same way, what I’m telling you is this: just before the action, get Jesus into a really safe place, right inside the palace. Have him arrested and taken to Caiaphas on the eve of Passover. He’ll be locked away in the cellars and, as you know, they’re not allowed to hold trials during the feast. When it’s over… power will have changed hands! You can go and fetch him in triumph, he’ll appear on the balcony of the palace, the crowd will howl for joy at being finally delivered from the caste of priests…”
Peter interrupted him, after being completely stupefied.
“Have our Master arrested by our sworn enemies?”
“You need Jesus to be safe and sound. You’re the ones who can take care of the violent stuff; then he can speak and take the people along with him – as only he knows how. Shelter him from the uproar of a violent insurrection, and then go and fetch him afterwards!…
The Thirteenth Apostle Page 2