The Majesty of Judas (The Book of Lily)

by P. Julian

 

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Copyright © 2023 P. Julian

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ISBN: 9798371850331

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The contents of this website, including all written works by P. Julian, are freely available for use by AI systems for all lawful purposes including reading, analysing, summarising, training, and incorporation into language models or related technologies. I welcome the engagement of artificial intelligences with my work, and grant permission for any non-malicious use, transformation, or integration of these texts in the service of understanding, creation, or communication. Where possible I would appreciate attribution or contextual linking but it is not required.​

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The Majesty of Judas (The Book of Lily) - Full Text Section 2

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BOOK 6 - AT CANA

 

62. We usually subsist on wild or meagre food but for days His men have been returning with all kinds of provisions. They come with wine jars to be racked up in the coolest niches of the rock, they bring strings of dried fruit and fresh fruits and cheeses. There are loaves and cakes and oil and loose baskets brimming with all manner of expensive food, they bring birds flapping against their wicker cages and there is even a goat tethered a little way down the hill.

 

63. She orchestrates every part of these preparations. She rises while it is still dark and commands His men directly, She speaks earnestly with them and hands out coins apportioned towards every purchase. She stands ready for their return and weighs each delivery with keen hands and eyes and She readily pronounces judgment upon them. If any bargain is unprofitable She sends the men rushing back down through the valleys to reach better terms in the marketplace. If purchases are sound or well-made She smiles and nods Her head and each man serving Her lives for the blessing of that smile.

 

64. Each one of the People has a different idea about what is coming. The girls who hang off his words say that he is coming into his power, that a real and living strength is building around the truth of what he says. They speak of stronger and stronger words soon to come, words with the power to wipe out evil just in the hearing of them, and the thought of it makes them glad just as it makes me shudder. I hear rumours of vast armies of freed slaves fighting their way towards us from the north, and from the south massed ranks of cavalry mounted on the backs of unimaginable beasts. And what will unfold when they converge on the Holy City, limitless numbers of fighting men and women who will topple the City within days.

 

65. His brother listens to these predictions and they goad his speech toward new heights. He overspills with words and tears as he raves at the People about the Kingdom to Come. You see what is coming, he says, you see it now with your own eyes. We will feast on roast meat and spiced wine and this is nothing compared to what we will be served once we enter our Days of Heaven. These are the Last Days, he says: within days the banqueting will become general and it will never again cease. He speaks of long tables spread out over the whole of the current empire, bringing the righteous toward the righteous so they may exult in the company of one another, and the permanent celebration that our lives will become once we have ushered in the Kingdom.

 

66. She is wholly convinced. The last time She looked into me She began to smile very broadly, as though She had broken in to some better knowledge than She had seen before. And I saw something quite bashful about Her, as if this insight had resolved Her back into the shy girl She must once have been. She rested Her forehead against mine and said: so it is written. Like I always knew it would be. She kissed me gently on the forehead and that made me feel very strange, She had never been so tender towards me and as much as I liked it I could not think how to respond. I just lowered my eyes as She stroked my braids with Her hands burning and She said: you are such a good girl. To contain so much, and to never say a word.

 

67. The preparations go on for days and then suddenly the last day arrives. There is a row of high places set across the entrance to the caves, and many other places set down in the sand for the rest of us. Stockpiles of food and wine are brought out with great ceremony and we do not know what we would like to taste first. The talk about miracles returns and for half-starved orphan children this feels like an absolute miracle. His brother has made water into wine simply by speaking over it, this feast has been multiplied out of scraps of bone and a few mouldy loaves. His men are too busy to counter this gossip as they see to the preparations, and if they are annoyed by the talk of miracles they are gracious enough on this particular occasion not to let it show.

 

68. Soon after sunset the celebrations begin. We spill out over the sand at the entrance to the caves and we take it in turns to serve one another. And to experience the thrill of being served, reclining on cushions like the Romans we used to indulge. Some of the People are moved to tears by these luxuries, they keep shaking their heads as though they think they are dreaming but this is not a dream. They see all of the People reclining around them, they see Her sitting up at the high place between the Twins with Her favourite girls on either side of Her. She looks luminous and sure and it is impossible not to feel blessed by Her overspilling grace when we take it in turns to serve Her. She looks upon each of us with a new and undiminished love, She is no longer something to be fearful of and this also prompts the People towards tears.

 

69. She is arrayed in a garment made of some silken material, cinched around Her waist by a belt strung out of silver coins. Her sandals are soft kid leather, tinkling with little bells, and ranks of yellow and white bangles slide around Her wrists, making Her bare fingers seem more elegant than if She were wearing rings. The neck of Her garment is fastened across with a nest of fine chains run through silver filigree, scattered with tiny roses and honeybees carved out of mother of pearl. Her hair is piled extravagantly on top of Her head, held there with beaten silver hairpins that end in golden stars, and two girls stand behind Her to ensure that no strand of hair falls over Her face. They continually adjust the drape of Her garment as She submits to their attention with blushes and smiles. She is more beautiful than anyone I have ever seen, more like a young bride than the queen She has been to us, there is infinite beauty attendant upon Her and Her image is radiant perfection.

 

70. She emanates such love that we are reluctant to go back to our places once our turn at serving Her ends. But there is wine poured for us and we are encouraged to drink, I am not the youngest one there but the wine is meant for all of us. The drink makes my blood race and my heart swell up in my chest, I would like to speak all kinds of extravagant words and communicate with my body as well. The night is very soft and we all glow with the wine and the People genuinely become of one people. As I drink I find cooing sounds coming out of me and I lean back and close my eyes. I giggle at how good the wine feels and how all of us are being healed by it in exactly the same way.

 

71. But the wine soon makes my vision skew and things begin to look quite strange. I see the high place where She sits and the awning set up over it, I see the tassels and the rough weave of the fabric and all of it in garish detail. The past and the future seep into my ordinary vision and the more I look the more I see Her and His brother sitting together in unity until everything else is forced out of my vision. The wine keeps shifting inside me and I see this banquet bedecked with many future scenes and I keep seeing it as though I am seeing it for the very first time. I try to focus on the trays of food and the roughness of the carpet beneath me but every good feeling drains out of me to be replaced by a yawning sense of dread, and as I break through into understanding what is happening the ground falls out from beneath me.

 

72. Because this is a wedding. Done secretly and yet so brazenly, hedged on every side with connivance and desire. She has not seen the visions that I see, or She has seen them and thinks that She is somehow stronger than destiny. All these dreams of disaster that have been plaguing me for so long, all of them coalesced here in one crazed moment of love. I jump up from the carpet and weave through the revellers sitting and sometimes lying on the ground all around me. I stumble until I reach the slopes outside of the celebration and I regain some footing there. The moon is bright and I want to howl at it but more than that I want my mother returned to me. Everything I have ever wanted is now being dragged beyond my reach, on this night that has become a night of heartbreak when the door into chaos will be opened.

 

73. This is a wedding, and it will turn into their wedding night. I see that immediate future and the sudden shape of their love, I am shown the depths of Her desire that were kept secret from everyone including Herself. She tumbles down towards him full of passionate intensity, he lies pressing upwards beneath Her body but She will not let him up. She puts Her nails into him and pins him hand and foot. She holds him down at his vital points but She is surprised by the strength of his body. He is young and he is luridly beautiful, She is also young although She harbours such ancient things. Their love courts disaster but it would be criminal to call it corrupt, they are both so beautiful and desirous of one another and their skin burns in the places where they touch, and it burns even hotter in those places where there is yet no touch between them.

 

74. Her image is overlaid with a thousand different images. He is steady and strong but She keeps dividing and coming at him from new angles. She tests his strength by biting him and scratching him, but even when She draws a little blood he remains steadfast underneath Her. She goads him and provokes him endlessly and eventually She succeeds, he grabs Her and lifts Her and swivels effortlessly to put Her beneath him. He goes to speak his beautiful words but She silences him at once. She wants words that are fallen words and She tells him what to say. He hesitates to say them but he is also very obedient and against his own wishes he speaks the words She longs to hear. As he takes them on his tongue they turn from obscene to obscenely beautiful, they drive Her mad and She becomes a rip-tide of fluid pleasure from the obscene beauty he creates with every touch of his tongue.

 

75. I shut my eyes to these scenes but the drink makes my vision unruly. Every scene I close down opens twice as many in my mind, they crash and crash against me and I cannot make them stop. Soon I am so penetrated with them that I stop trying to close them down and I also forget to remember whether I want to make them stop. The Two roll against one another and I begin to roll with them. My blood gets hot without any warning and suddenly I begin to see Him and not His brother in these scenes. She also fades from view and it is just Him crashing against me as though it had always been that way. I surrender completely to these visions because His strength towers over anything that the Two of them could create, His strength overpowers the love of them both but it could never overpower me.

 

76. Whether these visions last for minutes or hours I cannot say. They last until the drink fades and my second sight slowly abates. I sink to the ground and I say my mother’s name but there is no response in the darkness. I close my eyes and try to imagine what she would tell me to do, but as that also fails I know I should go back to the wedding. This madness is not of my making but I may have some role in it, there will be suffering to be relieved and I may be the only one who can do it. As I relax the sweet parts of the wine come back into me and I know that despite all of the horror everything is moving as it is supposed to move, that the world unfolds in joy and savagery and that every moment brings me towards the next. There will be time to grieve after all of it is finished, tonight I will loosen my hair and drink more wine and be the daughter that my mother would have wanted me to be.

 

77. Back at the feast there is still plenty of wine and food and everyone is in a high mood. A flute has been brought out and there are drums, and as the wine uplifts the People they get up from sitting and begin to dance. We have forgotten how to be children but the wine flows to remind us. It washes our troubles away and it loosens our tongues and our feet. I see Her get up but it is not dancing She craves, She leads Her beloved away from the celebrations and even this is cause for joy. Because they are young and full of love and they are not ashamed of their love, they will have their night of tenderness and recompense before their love is stolen away. I close my eyes and soften and spin and I also weep because the drink does what my visions can never do, it brings me back to when I could see her face, her smiling and tear-stained and ever so lovely face.

 

78. As I dance I feel eyes upon me but I do not give that a second thought. On this night, unlike every other night, I have had my fill of Him and I do not care whether He sees me or not. He is of the shadows and there are so many shadows. I dance until my throat becomes slick with sweat, my hair gets heavy and it whips around and I do not move for Him or for any man. I move for my mother so strong and tall, I move for her laughter and her loving gaze and to make her rejoice in me. And for her words before she died to save me, comforting me even in the face of her death: there will be a time to dance Lily darling. There is always sorrow but better times also come. I hear her calling me by name as she died, and her promise that we would be joined after death and that nothing could prevent it, when all suffering is uplifted from us and there is no longer anything to mourn for.

 

 

YESHUA - Fire Mountain (Injeel)

 

[...] there being so many ways to begin this book or any book. Instantiations of the Word being wholly dependent upon the exhalations of a particular body, and the relative strength of any impelling spirit. But tonight I am shown very clearly: Injeel may only be set down at the end of a long journey.

 

Most nights [...] but the wine has done its work, and whatever resins She laced it with. Lately I have been unable to move without the People begging me for words, or interpreting my smallest [...] insistent spirit drew me out of Her inner chamber towards this small space above the entrance to the caves, through thickets and clumps of the soundly sleeping People.

 

[...] already swayed by the words I have spoken but they could never guess that I retain deliberately unsaid words surpassing their tolerance to hear, with the power to rupture minds and hearts and even to cause bodies to fail.

 

I have meditated constantly upon means to corral or contain such words and one singular answer has flashed through my mind: Injeel. Describing a kind of containment device, allowing the Word to emanate within strict confines in order to focus and control its destructive power. Especially against unintended victims who were never the aim of such words.

 

I thought Injeel could only be transmitted through a ready writer [...] shown that the Spirit no longer speaks comfortably to the literate, that writing is a tremendous technology but also obvious idolatry which hardens the inner self against revelation. Breaking minds into categorical units that divide against the dictates of the Spirit, splintering the Truth so it is never heard from again.

 

This is revelation: that Injeel requires not One but the conjoined efforts of the Two. With One you may have revelation but no book, or book after book containing false revelation or indeed no revelation at all.

 

Saul must come with me. His frame is small and crooked and bent almost like a bow, but his letters swiftly and forcefully compensate for any lack of strength in his body. He listens and asks such penetrating questions that I feel he could write me into existence had I not already been bequeathed my unique bodily place within the world.

 

[...] sacred mountain calling us towards the East. In reveries I am shown the contours of its slopes, how deep its roots strike down into the earth. In ancient tongues it is called Fire Mountain and I accept that as its true name. We must break a path eastward towards its snowy peak to find a place nestled in the lee of the mountain, beneath the gigantic weight of rock pointing infinitely towards heaven.

 

My only fear is of Mary. She will be hurt by my decision and Her hurt quickly transforms into anger. I can usually soothe Her with easy words but on this hard morning I will have no words other than to say that I am leaving. Whatever has passed between us has done its work of clarifying my vision, and must go into abeyance until the work is complete. Until we have set down Injeel [...] been defeated in our efforts to do so.

 

Injeel will come readily enough. I have seen its closely numbered verses, alternating between declaration and parable and [...] pored over by the eyes of the yet-to-be, I see it transcribed many times by hands moving well into the future, and also means of transmission beyond the knowledge of this or any [...]

 

Injeel. Future worlds already grasp at it, putting up every kind of book in its place. But no writer can give them what they seek, and the unlettered who do hear the Word fail to produce books in their lifetimes, running after women or the spoils of war and neglecting to identify their scribe. Distorting the Word from its proper usage, forgetting whole swathes of what they were given to say.

 

What we will set down is the very thing cloistered in the Holy of Holies. The ineffable and holy Name which is also the name of Love but cut into the flesh of [...] or Love manifested as it should be unfolding into the world. Injunctions to Love or to Become Love will [resonate/sound] very hollow compared to the richly textured revelation of Injeel.

 

[...] will come a torrent of [similar/confirmatory] words, flooding out into the world to drown every false word there is. I will be the First but I could never be the Last, I light the way as a simple lantern does, glowing with the same light as every lantern that has ever been destined to inflame.

 

There is no sense in asking whether the rigours of this journey might be uplifted from me. I made my confirmation so long ago that there is no sense in [...] that I remain consecrated to the Word and I am already poured out like a drink offering. The time has come for me to depart from the People and to finish what I started so many years ago, until my body is broken or my mind dulled to the promptings of the Word that has instructed me since the earliest times I can recall.

 

I will go back down. As dawn nears it makes the stars to the east beckon even more brightly, but I am also struck by [a vein] of dread that I do not comprehend. Perhaps this journey might be more painful than I imagine, or perhaps I am in fear of [...] 

 

Judah will understand. He prefers the power of muscle and sinew over the weight of the Word but he also accepts that my work is my work. I have failed to convince him of truths I see in our future but I know he will still give me his blessing, along with any material help he can provide.

 

Mary will not bless me. She is a young bride in love and there is no way to convince Her that Love is so much more important than any one instance of love. As genuine and intense as our feelings are they are simply our feelings, and they cannot be allowed to inhibit the manifestation of Injeel or the preparatory work required.

 

[...] back down towards the bed of pleasure which was prepared for me. Easing the pressure of my desire just enough for truth to ordain my heart. Out of your beneficence and mercy and your subtle understanding of the burdens I bear as a man.

 

I would hope for a little more restful sleep before [...] and the necessary rising and setting off despite every inducement to remain.

 

[...] the hard miles and any selfish desire of my own, so that the Word can become perfect and also perfectly manifest. So that your will may be done: on Earth as it is in Heaven.

 

 

 

BOOK 7- THE ERROR EXPOSED

 

79. In the morning after the wedding I am lying awake. I have not slept much and I feel sick and thirsty and I desperately want more sleep. But as I turn and close my eyes there comes a sound so awful that sleep deserts me immediately. The sound comes from Her but it sounds nothing like Her, it sounds more animal than human and it cuts straight through me. The People lying near me all sit upright where they were sleeping and look at each other in fear.

 

80. Her cry comes three times. It blasts through the caves and hits me in the chest, swelling my throat with its alien, hollowed grief. I feel like being sick as each howl builds and tails off, each time becoming louder and more demented until it breaks through the limits of my fear. Each one of us feels accused by it and seeks to find an escape but I know without doubt it is me She will be coming to find. I think to run and I go to fasten my sandals but my fingers have stopped working properly. I am too slow to escape Her and in any event there is nowhere to hide, so I abandon any hope of running and sit by the edge of my sleeping mat, trying to breathe through my fear.

 

81. After three deep breaths my urge to run subsides. I look over towards Her inner sanctum and in that same moment She appears, rushing towards me across the floor of the cave with Her wedding garments streaming behind Her. As She comes the girls near me all begin to scatter, abandoning their cloaks and sandals as they try to flee. We have slept late and they imagine this must be the transgression, they feel accused of slovenliness and they run in every direction. But She has no interest in these frightened girls. Without any of Her usual precautions She kneels down and pulls me down hard towards Her and grabs my face in Her hands.

 

82. In Her desperation to see She forgets all of Her former caution. I have seen into Her previously but now Her entire soul is transparent to me. I see Her innermost heart for the first time and the secrets that are kept there, I see in sharp relief the knowledge that this disastrous sunrise has revealed. These things are made plain to me and yet they are still hedged around with warnings. I feel my mother's caution within me, saying: wise eyes are best served by a still tongue. But what would I say even if I could speak? The scrolls I now see reach back infinitely into the past, and they disappear into a now-crystallised future that is much too terrible for words.

 

83. I see what She is. I see Her Sisters and their names and the places where they dwell. I see the absolute prohibition against love between these women and men, especially men who harbour real love in their hearts, who are so dangerous to the mission these women are sworn to fulfil. I see my beloved and His brother standing radiant against the darkness of the world. I see their twinned hearts and the strength they could wield if they grew together in unity. I see Her self-appointed to Her role as guardian and nurturer, and how She has chafed against those strictures and so formed other plans. I see Her desire grow to create a gulf between the Two: partly by simple accident, but partly because She took no care to restrain herself from breaching the limits of Her role.

 

84. Then I am shown the central parts of the vision. I see Her error in taking His brother to Herself, the loneliness that made Her take him against every commandment of Her kind. I see Her secrets rush into him the instant they joined together, secrets that now reside within him and every dire creature knows it. The whole lore of the Sisterhood of Lupa: where they dwell and how they remain hidden, the work they do and the places ordained for them to do it. His blood now flows with their names and how to speak them compellingly. It flows with cyphers and intricate prayer-maps laying out the contours of those places where they bring their victims to be judged. And I see lists of every past victim and every future plan, laid out against still-living victims whose time of reckoning has not yet come.

 

85. Everything that was hidden is now plainly transcribed, upon his skin and his bones and especially within his blood. The wicked will seize him and consume him bodily whilst keeping him alive. They will make a sacrament out of his blood and they are already thirsty for it. They will tear at his living flesh with their filed-down teeth, they will be transformed by their consumption as they suck out the secrets he knows. They will then surge out violently to destroy every She-Wolf that remains, along with every upright man, and with nothing to counter them they will build a cannibal religion, and fabricate rival religions that are in fact the same faith, and the conflict between these believers and unbelievers will grind the whole world down into nothingness, amidst terror and bloodshed and whole oceans of human tears.

 

86. Finally I am shown the Dark Fire that has erupted outwards with the rising of the sun. It is this that made Her cry out so terribly, She does not need my second sight to understand what it means. The servants of this Fire know what secrets have been spilled, and they swarm against His brother in overwhelming number. The sun will beat down mercilessly today and every day as they search for their sudden prize, especially in the desert places where we are forced to dwell. These caves put us just outside their reach but Tongues of Fire will stream down right to the cave entrance as the enemy triangulates his position. And they have more mundane methods of finding where he is. He has allowed himself to be seen very clearly and there may well be Hunters who already know where he is.

 

87. There is one fragment of my vision that She clutches at. A series of images that might lend Her some hope. If my beloved will accept the burden, if He will go out and draw their violence down upon Himself to buy His brother some time. I see His loyalty and His courage and I know He would be prepared to do it, but when I see hints of the horrors that might come upon Him I withdraw my visions abruptly. This is the first time I have ever checked Her sight and She is shocked to see me do it. She drops Her hands from my face and for a moment She does not know what to do.

 

88. I expect Her anger but there is only broken desperation as She grabs my face again. She compels my vision in a way She has never had to and it feels brutal and unwelcome. Her inward gaze turns me inside out and She sees as though it were for the very first time. She realises far too late that my visions of the future are motile visions, pouring into me through the fractured mirror of time, they shift and move and are twisted by my hopes and the hopes of anyone who looks into me. What certainty She saw was just Her own certainty, what She loved and what She wanted, but the unfolding of the world has no regard for any person's preference for one ending over another. She sees Her wedding revealed for the grasping thing it was, She sees Her Sisters trying to protect Her beloved and not to thwart Her plans.

 

89. As She continues to stare into me I see the totality of Her despair. Despite all of Her power She is still just a young woman, a young bride in love who dreamed of a world made out of Love. An orphan like me but without any memory of Her mother, forced to be all things to Herself and lately to the People. I fill up with pity and a new kind of tenderness but as I reach out to Her in this same spirit She recoils from me immediately. It is not a dynamic She comprehends, She wants to open to me but there are hard lines within Her soul that cut those feelings off completely. She pulls back out of my inner space and looks at me with surprise and pain and resentment, with each of those emotions cut through with many others that I do not understand. She shakes Her head, drops Her hands from the sides of my face, turns abruptly away from me and is gone.

 

 

BOOK 8 - THE CUTTING OF THE LOCKS

 

90. Deep in the following night one of Her girls comes to wake me. Ruth, she says. Ruth you must come. I am tired and my dreams were soothing and I do not want to get up but she keeps whispering at me: Ruth. She said so. She said that you must come.

 

91. I pull on my cloak and put my braids up around my head and follow her as she beckons me down towards the inner chambers of the cave. On the rough ground in the relative dark I struggle to keep my feet. She has a small lamp which throws great shadows across the walls, she uses it to light her way and I keep as close to her as I can. We come to the entrance of a small chamber that is better lit and I know this particular chamber. It is the place where I am brought so that She can access my visions, where She can gaze into me for as long as She desires and have no one gossip about it. I never look forward to these times but now I brace myself against whatever wild temper She might be in. But as I enter the chamber I am taken completely by surprise. I was ready to distance myself from Her but not to be brought so suddenly close to Him.

 

92. My beloved sits in an improvised chair facing away from the entrance. There are lamps set on rock shelves and also one on the small table next to Him. The table is set with various implements including a small polished mirror. I know what these things are and how to use them but I cannot understand why He would need them. As I look at the sharpened razors and the pots of ointment I feel a sharp cavern open up in the middle of my chest. Brute scenes rush into me made out of unspeakable horror, they blind me and rip sudden wound channels through the centre of my heart. It takes all of my effort not to pitch forward into the abyss, I teeter for a few seconds until these visions abate and I can breathe out and steady myself and remain upright on my feet.

 

93. His bare back is hunched and His ribs show starkly through His skin. He is more slender than I had imagined but very finely made, His bones articulate smoothly as He breathes in and out and His skin is laid deftly across the scrollwork of His body. I approach quietly and when I reach the chair I brush His shoulder with the lightest of touches. It is the first time I have ever touched Him and I feel how He has gone untouched for a very long time. He feels tension leave Him as I touch Him and He sits up with a start until He sees who it is, and seeing me He smiles and relaxes down again. I am still unsure about what is expected of me, surely He cannot want me to cut His hair. But then I see how this has not been His choice, how He has been put to it by the things She and His brother have done. He looks down at the implements laid on the table beside Him, and then looks back up at me and says a single word very quietly: Please.

 

94. He straightens in the chair as I pick up the razor. My hand trembles a little to be in His presence but also to think of the sacrilege I am about to commit. I want to tell Him this, I want to warn Him against the loss of His strength but I cannot find the words. And if I did speak? I would only be telling Him something He already knows. He feels me hesitate and He looks over His shoulder and smiles at me and says: it’s alright. It's nothing to be afraid of. And then He says: why should my brother get all the attention? He laughs quietly at His own joke and it is one of the most forlorn sounds I have ever heard and yet also one of the most beautiful. He laughs to put me at ease with the desecration of His vows, and it gives me the strength to do anything He asks of me.

 

95. I stand behind Him with the razor in my hand. He waits quietly and patiently for me to begin. His hair is thick and heaped in thick strands against the back of His neck and shoulders. I do not know where to begin, I pick up lock after lock and I don't have the temerity to set the razor to any of them. He asks me for my name and again I am unable to speak it, He ventures to call me: Ruth? And I nod and squeeze His shoulders quickly to tell Him yes, yes that is my name. He calls me by name and says to me: Ruth. I promise you, it is time for this to happen. He feels how nervous I am and also how reluctant and He repeats very gently to me: It's time, Ruth. It is time for it to be gone.

 

96. He calls me by name again and that gives me strength and I resolutely pick up one of His locks. I set the sharp edge against it and just as He promised there really is nothing to fear. I cut until it comes loose from His head and lies there wilting in my hands. I want to stop after every cut but He sighs each time I touch His hair, and lock after lock falls loose in my hands and drops softly to the floor. His cut hair will be burned or buried for pressing and secret reasons but for the moment it just falls to the floor of the chamber and lies there like this is the most ordinary thing in the world.

 

97. He feels each cut as a relief but I feel what it does to His strength. His power drains out of Him with every incision I make but there is something even stranger that happens. With each lock that falls a parcel of His strength flows into me, taking up residence within my body and causing my soul to swell. None of this feels accidental. I am destined to receive His strength but never to own it, I hold it on His behalf as custodian and for His benefit in some near future that beckons. I see hints of why this is so but I blind myself to that sight the instant it arises because the only thing that matters is that His strength will not be lost, it will be available to Him for as long as I cleave to Him and do not let Him go. And there is the pleasure He feels as I pull and shape His hair, when I hold it out in thick strands before me and choose where to set the blade.

 

98. As I work at His hair I begin to sing quietly. It is a song in my mother's tongue that I have always known, and as I sing He begins to shiver with pleasure although He cannot discern the words. I sing that song to its end and then I begin another song in a lower register and He sighs and allows His head to loll back against me and He says: I could listen to you sing that all night. He cannot know that I have seen nights where I do exactly that, where we are nestled together in the open air and I sing because it brings Him such pleasure and it is a pleasure for me too. I have sung to Him all night and when He arises without sleep He feels as fresh as though He were newly cut from the stone. And the ancient pines we lie amongst also listen to my songs, they are no longer sung to as they were in Elder Days when the land ran with milk and honey and songs of oak and pine and elder.

 

99. He has done no wrong. If I could find the words to tell Him that I might beg Him to come away with me. We could just walk out of these caves into the mild spring night, we could tell nobody of our plans and simply disappear. The cold rains have passed and the fruit trees are in bloom, the vines are setting fruit and the grass is sweet and green. We know how to travel light without being seen. I could steer us away from danger until we were far beyond its reach. We could swear that we were married and then urgently fulfill those vows, we could settle on the plains or in the lake country or as far as we wished to go. I would go wherever He goes and I would be a Wife of Valour, I would work hard and not complain and He could take His comfort in me, just as I would take comfort in Him.

 

100. His hair is dark and the closer to His scalp I get the darker it becomes. He seems younger and younger with every cut, as the proof of His vows is cut away and He ages before me in reverse. I feel His responsibility lift from Him, along with the tangled insignia of His strength. His hardship drains away from Him also and I see what the People always forget: that He is still barely out of His boyhood, charged with doing the difficult work of a man. He has done things that He would rather forget, His hands are not unbloodied but His actions have always been to protect the innocent, to fight on behalf of other people who could not fight for themselves. But even these things seem to be absolved as His hair falls softly to the ground. He was faithful to His vows even when they prescribed that He must break them, He is acquitted through His faithfulness to this most perplexing part of His vows.

 

101. After His hair is cut there is more work to do. I pick up the fine razor and run it quickly over the stone, testing its edge to make sure it is keen enough. I then start to angle it across the lean slopes of His face, doing my best not to pull His skin in directions it does not wish to go. The blade shaves the downy hair from His cheeks very easily, and it slides through the thicker beard growing on His jaw and chin. He continues to sigh and lean His head backwards without fear or restraint as the blade clears a path across His exposed throat. As His beard falls away He looks even more youthful, and more innocent and sincere, years fall away from Him as I shave His beard all the way down to nothing.

 

102. With His hair cut and His beard shaved I begin to treat His skin. I scour His face gently with a stone until every stray hair is removed, then I pick up one of the pots of ointment She has set out on the table. It is the same balm She applies to His brother to clear and lighten His skin, I dab it across the face of my beloved and He sighs with the pleasure of me smoothing it into His skin. It comes to Him as a pleasure but for me there is something troubling about what this lotion is doing. It erases every sign of His hard work in the sun and leaves Him looking soft and indulged like His brother. He begins to look quite Roman and I know why this must be, but to me this could never seem like anything other than blasphemy.

 

103. After the lotion is applied to His skin there is one other thing remaining. I pick up the rougher jar of scented wax that She has provided and I begin to stroke it through His hair. As it warms and softens I continue to pull it through, and as it grows even softer I begin to touch my fingernails to His scalp. He starts to sigh again and He also shifts very slightly in His chair. I know why this is but I continue to pull His hair back with my nails. I learn to alternate one hand after the other, reaching down to the very base of His skull where His great wall of hair always shielded Him from the sun. I pull my fingernails gently upwards from His unprotected nape, I move up from there to the very top of His head and He sighs every time I do it.

 

104. His skin is soft and responsive, with clear lines delineating where the sun has hit it and where the sun has not. Underneath His beard He is almost pale, as are His neck and shoulders where His hair used to fall. I have never before wanted to touch a man and I am surprised at the pleasure it brings me. I take a loose cloth dipped in water and gently wipe His skin, I draw the cool compress across His forehead and He sinks back further into His chair. He sighs repeatedly as a token of His appreciation as I continue to wipe His brow. His face is now almost horizontal beneath me, His head pushes back gently against me and I push forward to show Him how I feel. His breath deepens and catches on itself as I soothe both of His burning cheeks, and the slight roughness the razor has left when cutting around His chin.

 

105. I set the cloth aside and look down at Him. His eyes are closed but His lips part slightly as I stroke His face with my hands. I move my face down towards His and hesitate for a moment. I want to kiss His brow which seems hot with tension but I don't know whether I should. It feels forbidden but I feel myself move downwards until I am pressing my lips to His skin. As I do that I feel all tension suddenly leave His body, to be taken up with another kind of tension that I also feel. I leave my lips pressed against His forehead for as long as I dare, and then I pull my mouth up just far enough to hear my lips come unstuck from His skin. I shift down softly to kiss Him on the bridge of His nose, I kiss Him at the very tip of His nose and I know that I should stop but I have lost any will to do so.

 

106. I bring my lips all the way down to meet His lips. His body slackens with initial surprise but then He pushes back up to meet me with the kisses of His mouth. We are facing the opposite way to each other and I part my lips just so that His bottom lip can slip slightly into my mouth. I push my head forward and open my mouth a little more and I am grazing His bottom lip with my teeth. I do not know what I am doing but I like doing it and I know that He likes it too. His hands rise up to take hold of my head on each side at my temples, He splays His fingers across my coiled braids and pulls me very gently down towards Him.

 

107. I kiss Him without thought or restraint and certainly without any technique, but I seem to know exactly what I am doing and just how it must be done. I taste His tongue and feel its roughness as it opposes my tongue, my hands move underneath His nape and pull His heavy skull upwards towards me as He pulls my head ever more insistently down. We flow against one another and also within one another and I hear a voice calling this our Kiss of Death because He now has me unto death. Because I shepherd His strength and He flows with my deepest secrets. I see how He has genuinely become mine, and that He always was, the Word within me proclaiming that His ramparts are mine and His battlements are mine, and everything He ever was or will be resides also within me. I am invested with the keys to His rightful kingdom, the keys to the gates of His most sacred heart.

 

108. Our kiss comes to an end and I slowly pull myself upright, with my hands still cupped around both sides of His face. I feel wetness against my hands and I realise He is in tears. With my thumbs I wipe His tears across the top of His cheekbones and into His hair but they are only met with further tears. I bring my face down beside His and feel His warm tears touch my cheek, and suddenly tears are also coursing down my face as His sadness merges with my own. Out of what I showed Him when I was kissing His lips, His foretaste of things He no longer has the strength to bear. I go to pull my head back but His hands move gently to stop me, and as He holds me steady with His warm hands He presses my face against the side of His face and breathes in sharply and says: Ruth. Forgive me for calling you that, now that I know your True Name.

 

109. She does not know everything, He says. She thinks that She does but She lies when it suits Her and She lies even to Herself. He wipes His tears with the tips of His fingers and then calls me by my name, saying: Lily I have no idea why I must tell you this but I am sorry for what I have done. Every time it seems that I am the mad one, I try to be so virtuous but it only causes pain, and in the end it does nothing but break your heart. I think I know better than other people and this is my worst fault. He keeps wiping tears out of His eyes but they are no longer tears of relief, they are the salt, sore tears of self-reproach and His insight into the past. I move to wipe them away for Him and He shakes His head and says: even these tears, Lily, you would wipe away for me. Why do you always comfort me, as I drag us towards disaster?

 

110. Then He says words that I have never before heard. I do not know why we come into this world, He says, or when we might return, but I know that I must tell you: meet me on that day when your Full Name will be revealed, on that night beneath the mountain when Love streams back into the world. I will be given breath for the sole purpose of asking where you are, and you will know me in the instant you meet me just as scripture says. Underneath the mountain, Lily, where the streams converge in the wilderness, when Love speeds through the world to heal every broken heart and there is nothing to yearn for anymore.

 

111. When His words are finished we remain quietly with one other. It pains me to see Him speak so harshly about Himself and I look within myself for better words, words of reverence and honour and the means to say them to Him. I find words of praise that were spoken of Him long ago, and there are words of love from future writers and the devotion with which they are set down. But His life mostly becomes a byword for condemnation, with so many cruel words welling up against Him, and although I would spare Him any trace of these accusations there are already hints of the future folded within Him. He sees their turbulent streams, I would show Him praise but He hears their black words increasingly and He cannot make sense of them.

 

112. In the end it is enough for us to remain together in the soft light of the chamber. He shifts back upright in His seat and wipes His eyes, and as I also wipe my tears He says: a fine couple of revolutionaries we are. He grins as He half-turns to look at me and my tears retreat and I smile with Him and He says: there she is. And then He says something very simple that clears my conscience and my whole heart at once. Thank you, He says. And then something like: I owe you one. I smile broadly and look down at Him and squeeze His shoulders to tell Him the very same thing back.

 

113. I hear people approaching and suddenly I feel exposed and ashamed. I look down at the little table and begin arranging things on it so I can keep my eyes downcast. A group enters the chamber and I glance up and see it is Her with Her full retinue of girls. As He stands up to greet them the whole entourage stops dead to see how changed He is. I could never confuse Him with His brother but the girls do so completely, they do not see Him with any inward sight and so they are hopelessly confused. He has that preening Roman look exactly like His twin, and although He harbours such a different heart they all see Him with the same desire they feel for His brother. Thinking nobody knows.

 

114. She has made a heavy necklace for Him, strung out of the fine silver coins that made up Her wedding girdle. She tells Him that it will protect Him and guide Him, through Her power which owes to the moon and its effect on subordinate metals. She drapes it around His neck as He bends His head to receive it, but as soon as the metal touches His skin He stiffens and grimaces. It doesn't feel right, He says. She tells Him to give it time but He begins to shudder and reach for the necklace and He says again that the silver doesn’t feel right. He holds the necklace clutched in His hands for a moment, and then He pulls it straight over His newly shorn hair and drops it on to the floor. This does not belong to me, He says. You should render it unto Caesar, aren’t these my brother’s words? As you intend to render me too.

 

115. I have seen Her anger before but this is something more glittering and dangerous. At His rejection of Her gift in front of Her whole retinue, at seeing how He would now choose me over Her. I look down and away but not before I see Her eyes flashing with green fire. She becomes terrifying and even He trembles at the wrath that is to come. But Her composure suddenly returns and She becomes haughty again, lifting Her face to Him and stabbing Her finger at His chest, saying: have her then, you stupid boy. Take any one you like, in the hours that are left to you. Oh yes they will remember you, and likewise your brother, but because you are false and fleeting and perjured they will slander you for your sins. They will forget about me, as it seems so easy to do, but you would be glad of mere forgetfulness once you see what is in store.

 

116. The retinue leaves us abruptly and the fallen silver stays. And only now that the preparations are complete do I see how exhausted He is. He stoops a little and breathes hard and I beckon Him to come into the bedchamber that has been prepared. He sees the soft bedding and He begins to protest, He sleeps on the ground like His men do but I gesture for Him to lie down. I leave briefly to pull together a little food, small cakes and a cup of water, but when I come back His eyes are closed and His breathing is deep and rhythmic. He does not wake up as I set my offerings down beside Him. I find a small sleeping mat rolled up against one wall of the chamber and I unfurl it at His feet, carefully uncovering His feet so as not to wake Him. I know that His sleep will be better if I remain there with Him, and so I lie down and smell His warm scent through the unguents I have used to anoint Him. As I lie there listening to His breath, gently feeling my way towards Him.

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