St Paul's Labyrinth

by Jeroen Windmeijer

  A day earlier, Friday 20 March, 9:30am

  The cave echoed with the sounds of frightened bleating. The lamb had been given sour wine mixed with myrrh and hyssop to calm it, but it still pulled at the rope that tied its leg to an iron ring on the wall. The terrified animal’s bound leg hung almost horizontally in the air as it struggled in vain to escape.

  The Father laid his hand on the lamb’s head. He spoke softly to it and tickled it behind its ear, like a cat. This appeared to calm it. It pressed its small body against the Father’s legs and took little bites of the fresh hay that had been put down for it.

  They usually came together once a month, around the sixteenth day when the half-moon was waxing. There were also holy days, when despite being deep under the ground, they felt the power of the cosmos in every fibre of their bodies.

  On March 21, they celebrated the summer solstice, the glorious moment when Mithras, their saviour, the lord of light, was once more triumphant in his cosmic battle against the darkness. But on this day, they also remembered the sacrifice of the bull made by their god long ago.

  On September 21, they celebrated the Ascension of their Lord, who left this earthly sphere and would one day return.

  They also came together on the day of the winter solstice, December 21. The days had grown shorter after June 21, and the darkness seemed to have the upper hand, but on this day the Lord proved once again that he was worthy of his name, sol invictus, the invincible sun.

  And on December 25th, they celebrated his birth. Born of a virgin, in a cave, on the day that a star appeared in the heavens to show his birthplace to the wise men who came to honour him with gifts, and to the shepherds, who watched over their flocks in the fields. Together, they celebrated the arrival of the new light of the world.

  But this day was special for many reasons. As they secretly gathered in the place where the loving, warming rays of their Lord would never reach, a miracle took place above them that had confused and even frightened people centuries ago. On this day, the sun would briefly disappear behind the moon, a sign from the heavens. This particular solar eclipse was especially meaningful, especially powerful, because it took place on the day before the spring solstice, a day that was already charged with energy.

  Since that very first moment, since the first conversations with Ane after his epileptic fit at Archeon, Tiny had felt compelled to share the knowledge that had been revealed to him. After a time, the breaking of bread and the sharing of wine had taken on a new meaning, different to the one he had been taught at the seminary. It had lost some of its uniqueness, but gained something universal, a message that would be relevant to all of humanity. The good news had endured for centuries, existed for thousands and thousands of years in different forms, but the story itself had never changed. The message was the same: there is life after this life if you break free from the chains of your carnal desires that shackle you to an earthly existence. Eat the bread, drink the wine, participate in the irrepressible force that life is, the life that renews itself again, year after year. Choose the right side in the battle of light against darkness, be a soldier and fight.

  The mystery of Mithras embodied everything that Tiny had ever believed in: the fight against inner demons, the scourge of the flesh, the light in the darkness … More so than Christianity. Over the course of history, Christianity had become detached from its original meaning, from its original substance. It was no longer connected to nature’s powers of renewal. It had fallen prey to academics who wrote countless volumes about how this word should be interpreted, or the true meaning of that passage, or what the source of this Hebrew word was, or how often that Greek word had been used and in which contexts and by whom … People had started to take the stories literally. The literalists had eventually won, and with that, all the vitality of the faith had vanished.

  On that day, Tiny would finally set in motion the plans he had begun so many years ago. What he had started in secret had gradually involved more and more people, and now, they were about to come out into the open, into the full glare of the public spotlight. There had been opposition of course, and now it was clear that not everyone had submitted to his will, but a father naturally sees more than his children see, knows best what is good for them. Ultimately, he had the blessing of the pater patrum, the father of fathers, the head of all the temples in the Lowlands.

  He’d had the perfect man in mind almost from the very beginning. He would be their spokesman, their intermediary. This was a man who had shown that he was open to a view of the world that was different to the one most people had accepted until now. He was exactly what was needed to bring the message of Mithras to a wide audience, a born teacher …

  This was also the day that Raven would finally join their ranks and serve in the army of the Lord.

  The lamb was lying calmly at the Father’s feet now, a perfect pastoral image.

  The Father looked around the temple. It had originally been created from a natural subterranean cave, then extended by human hands. The temple faced the east, where their Lord rose every morning. The location was perfect, not least because it was next to a river which could provide fresh water for their rituals.

  There were eighteen men in this group, and he was the nineteenth. It went without saying that every single one of them, every rank and every grade, would be present on a day like today. It was pleasing to see how some of them lost themselves in their roles. Some flapped their wings like birds and imitated the caw of the raven. Others roared like lions …

  The pit at the back of the temple had been filled with water. A man lay on the floor, his hands bound with bird entrails. He was thrown into the pit, disappeared under the water, then resurfaced, coughing and gasping for breath, his hands stretched above his head. Then the Liberator came to cut the entrails with a sword and free his brother from his animal bonds. Two men lifted him out of the pit and he stood at its edge, dripping and shivering like a half-drowned cat.

  Someone pulled down on a large, wooden handle, halting the flow of water. Someone else pulled another smaller handle to open the drain at the bottom of the pit. A vortex swirled in the water as it flowed away. The pit had to be empty for the offering they were about to make.

  The grate was moved back over the pit and secured.

  The hubbub in the temple died away and the men took their places on the large, stone benches that ran the length of both walls. Each was about twenty metres long and ten metres wide and padded with cushions.

  The central aisle between these benches was decorated with seven simple black and white mosaics depicting the seven grades of initiation. This was the via salutis, the path of salvation that all believers were required to follow in order to be given redemption. An eighth mosaic depicted a vase surrounded by twigs full of buds, the promise of a new life.

  The mosaics formed a sort of ladder, along which the soul descended at birth. The soul received a quality from each of the seven planets as it descended, which it then redeposited on the return journey after death.

  The vaulted ceiling was decorated with stars, symbolising the heavens. In earlier times, their critics had been amused by this: how can you worship a god of light in a place of darkness?

  They began their simple meal of bread and wine. The lowest ranks, the Ravens and Bridegrooms, served those who ranked above them. The bread stilled their hunger and the wine quenched their thirst, but it was also food for the soul, giving them spiritual strength and new life.

  The Father and the Sun-Runner sat on two thrones at one end of the room. In an alcove behind them, a magnificent relief had been carved out of the living rock, just as the god himself had been. According to another legend, he had been born from a rock, created like the spark that comes from two stones when they are struck together, a light emerging from darkness.

  They refreshed the colours of the relief every year with natural pigments, making it look as though it had been created only the day before.

  The sculptor had excelled himse
lf. His depiction of Mithras was superb. The young god, agile and strong as Heracles, was depicted forcing the huge, lumbering bull to the ground with one knee and pulling its head up by the horns. The god was both executioner and executed, the slaughterer and the sacrifice. He gave his own body in return for humanity’s salvation. Mithras struck the beast in the heart with a dagger. The blood that flowed from the wound was transformed into ears of corn, the life-giving grain that would feed mankind. A dog and a snake reached up their heads to drink the blood from the wound. By licking at the blood, they hoped to absorb some of its invigorative power. A scorpion was carved next to the bull’s testicles, gripping the genitals with its pincers, a symbol of man’s struggle against his base desires.

  The god wore a soft, red cap with the top pulled forward, a mitra. It would evolve into the mitre worn by Catholic bishops who would be oblivious to its pagan origin.

  Behind Mithras was the Raven, bringing a message from the god Sol.

  A torchbearer stood on either side of the scene, one with his torch raised, and the other with his torch lowered, emphasising the rising and setting arcs of Sol and Luna, the rising and falling of light, and also the arc of life and death. One torchbearer, Cautes, depicted the position of the sun in the morning, the rising sun. The other, Cautopates, depicted the position of the sun in the evening, the fading sunlight. Just like Jesus who was flanked at his crucifixion by a criminal and a penitent thief, evil and good, darkness and light.

  Two braziers blazed in front of the alcove.

  The Father broke the silence and spoke:

  As the god kills the bull, I also kill my own passions.

  Then he broke the bread across the cross-shaped indentation in the middle that symbolised the four winds and the four elements. He said:

  Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation. Through your goodness we have this bread to offer, which earth has given and human hands have made. It will become for us the bread of life.

  He blessed the chalice of wine with the words:

  Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation. Through your goodness we have this wine to offer, fruit of the vine and work of human hands. It will become our source of eternal life.

  He placed the bread and wine on the small altar in front of him.

  Take this, all of you, and eat it.

  This is my body which will be given up for you.

  Take this, all of you, and drink from it.

  This is the cup of my blood,

  the blood of the new and everlasting covenant.

  It will be shed for you and for all mankind.

  He who does not eat of my flesh and drink of my blood, so that he remains in me and I in him, shall not know salvation.

  The members solemnly repeated this last sentence, as one voice, one body.

  The Father continued:

  And so our saviour and saint, our Lord Mithras, blessed be his name, has offered his body, a beneficial and creative act. Through his sacrifice, he has given us new life, like the grain of wheat that dies in darkness after it has been entrusted to the bosom of Mother Earth then rises once more into the light and bears fruit. So is one grain multiplied one hundredfold, another sixtyfold, and another but thirtyfold and yet it still bears fruit. So our Lord gives us life again and again. We must use the talents the Lord has given us. We are not worthy to receive him, but he speaks and we shall be healed.

  Before the bread was passed around so that each member could break off a piece, he looked around the room then spoke the words of warning that they all knew so well.

  Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgement upon himself.

  They ate the bread in silence, taking turns to drink wine from the chalice as it was passed around.

  Then the Father stood up.

  Eighteen pairs of eyes looked at him expectantly.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he began, casting a critical eye over the men in front of him. He rested his gaze on each individual member in turn, as though assessing their devotion, nodded and then said: ‘Hora est.’

  33

  Saturday 21 March, 8:45am

  Peter read the text on the thin strip of paper.

  There is a time to sow and a time to reap.

  Was it a reference to a time? The ‘hora est’? The words were reminiscent of the famous chapter in Ecclesiastes that was often used at funerals.

  There is a time to be born, and a time to die … a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted.

  Or was this about a specific date? Because up until now, they’ve seemed to want me to look for numbers, Peter wondered. 41, 41, 42, 15 … What was next? It looked like a completely random list of numbers. He hoped it wasn’t some sort of complicated mathematical code, because he practically needed a calculator just to count his fingers.

  When did Paul go to take up his collection? When was he in Jerusalem? There is a time to reap … A time, that had to point to a date.

  He nervously scanned the church. Nobody seemed to have noticed that he was hovering by the collection box. He needed a computer, but where would he find one?

  He remembered that a café had opened here last year on the side of the church that was on the Kloksteeg. He’d had coffee there a few times. A pleasant, quiet spot where you could read the newspaper in peace. And there was a door that connected it to the church.

  He hurried towards the corridor that led to the café, staying close to the wall. As he got closer, he could see that the office, where the doorman usually sat, was completely deserted. Inside, on the desk, a computer displayed the Pieterskerk homepage. Reassuring sounds of classical music and a hissing espresso machine drifted in from the café.

  Peter knew that he was taking a huge risk, sitting at the desk inside this oversized aquarium, but he was running out of time. He walked down the corridor, and took another quick, cursory look around him, then went into the office.

  He sat at the computer and quickly typed ‘Apostle Paul collection’ into the search bar. A second later, he had millions of results. He scanned the snippets of text under the links, but they were mostly bible commentaries and calls to support Israel. He added ‘date’ to the search terms which produced slightly fewer results. Wikipedia was the first hit as usual, but a few lines below that was a sentence that immediately caught his attention: ‘In AD 58, Paul went to Israel to give the money he had collected on his travels to the community in Jerusalem.’

  Peter hesitated. Was this the number he was looking for? A time to reap … He opened Wikipedia.nl and typed ‘58’ into the search box. It led to a list of events that had taken place in AD 58, and there, near the bottom, was Paul’s collection.

  Palestine

  The Apostle Paul returns to Jerusalem with the money he has collected. However, he is accused of treachery and is arrested and imprisoned in Caesarea.

  If this was what he was looking for, then his clues so far were 42, 41, 41 and 58. He still couldn’t make any sense of them, but now an idea was taking shape at the back of his mind. The answer was there, not quite within reach yet. Just like when the students in their association jackets had eventually led him to the ravens in the Quintus boardroom.

  Suddenly, the café’s sliding door shot open, and a young man in a waiter’s apron appeared. He came to a halt and gawped at Peter in surprise.

  The glass walls of the office muffled the waiter’s voice, but Peter didn’t need to be a lipreader to see that his mouth was forming the words, ‘What are you doing in there?’

  Peter waved, as though he was greeting a colleague for the first time that day. He immediately got up and left the office to head towards the café, but the man blocked the doorway.

  ‘Might I ask what you were doing in there?’ he asked, trying to sound authoritative but without mu
ch success.

  ‘Sorry,’ Peter said, ‘I know this looks odd, but the battery on my phone is dead, and I really needed to look something up. I haven’t taken anything.’ He put his hands in the air to prove it.

  The waiter didn’t move.

  Peter put his hand on the man’s arm, and tried politely to move him aside. ‘Come on, don’t be silly,’ he said, using the same tone he took with unruly students. ‘My phone’s dead, I had to look something up. It’s no big deal. I really do need to get a move on now, so would you please just let me through?’

  This time the waiter allowed Peter to pass. ‘Okay then,’ he said, and then, trying to sound firm, he added: ‘But don’t do this again, all right?’

  Peter nodded and meekly bowed his head. He walked through the café, and heaved a huge sigh of relief when he made it outside. He left the Kloksteeg and disappeared into the narrow alley of the Lombardpoort, went through Gekroonde Liefdepoort’s little garden and came out among the tall, tightly packed houses and flats of the Langebrug. Then he turned right, towards the backs of the shops on the Breestraat. He still had no idea what to do next.

  When he saw Kapper Eric, the barbershop, it suddenly struck him that a haircut and a shave might make him less recognisable. Eric’s was famous for its stained-glass windows and vintage interior. Taking a seat in one of his old barber’s chairs was like travelling back in time to the 1950s.

  Apart from one gentleman who was already having his hair cut, Peter was the only customer. He hung his coat on the hat stand next to a trench coat and a baseball cap.

  ‘And what’ll it be, sir?’ the barber asked. His own hair was so perfectly styled that he could have been a catalogue model.

  ‘I think I’d like to go short for a change,’ Peter said. ‘Close-cropped, let’s say number one.’

  The barber looked at him in the mirror with amusement. ‘And what has brought you to this, might I say, rather radical decision, sir?’ he asked, running his fingers almost tenderly through Peter’s hair. ‘Such a fine head of hair at your age … It would almost be a travesty.’