The Light of Other Days

authenticity; the direct detection of scent through WormCams was still an unreliable business.

The crowd spread out as they reached the rudimentary harbour. David made his way through the crush to the water’s edge, ignoring the temporary dimmings as Galileans brushed past or through him in their eagerness.

There was a single boat on the still water. It was perhaps six metres long, wooden, its construction crude. Four men were patiently rowing toward the shore; beside a stocky helmsman at the stern was a piled-up fishing net.

Another man was standing at the prow, facing the people on the shore.

David heard eager muttering. He had been preaching, from the boat, at other sites along the shore. He had a commanding voice which carried well across the water, this Yesho, this Jesus.

David struggled to see Him more clearly. But the light on the water was dazzling.

•

…And so we must turn, with reluctance, to the true story of the Passion. Jerusalem — sophisticated, chaotic, built of the radiantly bright white local stone — was crowded this Passover with pilgrims come to eat the Paschal Lamb within the confines of the holy city, as tradition demanded. And the city also contained a heavy presence of Roman soldiers. And, this Passover, it was a place of tension. There were many insurrectionist groups working here: for example the Zealots, fierce opponents of Rome, and iscarii, assassins who would customarily work the large festival crowds. Into this historic crucible walked Jesus and His followers. Jesus’ group ate their Passover feast. (But there was no rehearsal of the Eucharist: no commandment by Jesus to take bread and wine in memory of Him, as if they were fragments of His own body. This rite is evidently an invention of the evangelists. That night, Jesus had much on His mind; but not the invention of a new religion.) We know now that Jesus had links to many of the sects and groups which operated at the fringe of His society. But Jesus’ intent was not insurrection. Jesus made His way to the place called Gethsemane — where olive trees still grow today, some of them (we can verify now) survivors from Jesus’ own day. Jesus had worked to cleanse Judaism of sectarianism. He thought He would meet the authorities and leaders of various rebel groups here, and seek a peaceful unity. As ever, Jesus sought to be the Golden Mean, a bridge between these groups in conflict But the humanity of Jesus’ time was no more rational than that of any other era. He was met by a group of armed soldiers sent by the chief priests. And the events thereafter unfolded with a deadly, familiar logic. The Trial was no grand theological event. All that mattered to the High Priest — a tired, conscientious, worn-down old man — was to maintain public order. He knew he had to protect his people from the Romans’ savage reprisals by accepting the lesser evil of handing over this difficult, anarchistic faith healer. That done, the High Priest returned to his bed, and an uncomfortable sleep. Pilate, the Roman Procurator, had to come out to meet priests who would not enter his Praetorium for fear of being defiled. Pilate was a competent, cruel man, a representative of an occupying power centuries old. Yet he too hesitated, it seems for fear of inciting worse violence by executing a popular leader. We have now witnessed the fears and loathing and dreadful calculations which motivated the men facing each other that dark night — and each of them, no doubt, believed he was doing the right thing. Once his decision was made, Pilate acted with brutal efficiency. Of what followed, we know the dreadful details too well. It was not even a grand spectacle — but then the Passion of Christ is an event which has taken not two days, but two thousand years to unfold. But there is still much we do not know. The moment of His death is oddly obscured; WormCam exploration there is limited. Some scientists have speculated that there is such a density of viewpoints in those key seconds that the fabric of spacetime itself is being damaged by wormhole intrusions. And these viewpoints are presumably sent down by observers from our own future — or perhaps from a multiplicity of possible futures, if what lies ahead of us is undetermined. So we still have not heard His last words to His mother; we still do not know if — beaten, dying, bewildered — He cried out to His God. Even now, despite all our technology, we see Him through a glass darkly.

•

At the centre of the town there was a market square, already crowded. Suppressing a shudder, David forced himself to push through the people.

At the centre of the crowd a soldier, crudely uniformed, was holding a woman by one arm. She looked wretched, her robe torn, her hair matted and filthy, her plump, once-pretty face streaked by crying. Beside her were two men in fine, clean religious garb. Perhaps they were priests, or Pharisees. They were pointing to the woman, gesticulating angrily, and arguing with a figure before them, who — hidden by the crowd — was squatting in the dust.

David wondered if this incident had left any trace in the Gospels. Perhaps this was the woman who had been condemned for adultery, and the Pharisees were confronting Jesus with another of their trick questions, trying to expose His blasphemy.

The man in the dust had a phalanx of friends. They were sturdy-looking men, perhaps fishermen; gently but firmly they were keeping the crushing crowds away. But still — David could see as he approached, wraith-like — some of the people were coming near, reaching out a tentative hand to touch a robe, even stroke a lock of hair.

•

I do not think His death — humiliated, broken — need remain the centre of our obsession with Jesus, as it has been for two thousand years. For me the zenith of His life as I have witnessed it is the moment when Pilate produces Him, already tortured and bloody, to be mocked by the soldiers, sacrificed by His own people. With everything He had intended apparently in ruins, perhaps already feeling abandoned by God, Jesus should have been crushed. And yet He stood straight. A man immersed in His time, defeated and yet unbeaten. He is Gandhi, He is Saint Francis, He is Wilberforce, He is Elizabeth Fry, He is Father Damien among the lepers. He is His own people, and the dreadful suffering they would endure in the name of the religion founded in His name. The major religions have all faced crises as their origins and tangled pasts had become open to scrutiny. None of them have emerged unscathed; some have collapsed altogether. But religion is not simply about morality, or the personalities of founders and practitioners. It is about the numinous, a higher dimension of our nature. And there are still those who hunger for the transcendent, the meaning of it all. Already — cleansed, reformed, refounded — the Church is beginning to offer consolation to many people left bewildered by the demolition of privacy and historic certainty. Perhaps we have lost Christ. But we have found Jesus. And His example can still lead us into an unknown future — even if that future holds only the Wormwood, and our religions’ only remaining role is to comfort us. And yet history still holds surprises for us: for one of the most peculiar yet stubborn legends about the life of Jesus has, against all expectation, been born out…

•

The man in the dust was thin. His hair severely pulled back, prematurely greying at the temples. His robe was stained with dust and trailed in the dirt. His nose was prominent, proud and Roman, His eyes black, fierce, intelligent. He seemed angry, and was drawing in the dust with one finger.

This silent, brooding man had the measure of the Pharisees, without even the need to speak.

David stepped forward. Beneath his feet he could feel the dust of this Capernaum marketplace. He reached forward to the hem of that robe.

…But, of course, his fingers slid through the cloth; and, though the sun dimmed, David felt nothing.

The man in the dust looked up and gazed directly into David’s eyes.

David cried out. The Galilean light dissipated, and the concerned face of Bobby hovered before him.

•

As a young man, following a well-established trade route with His uncle, Joseph of Arimathea, Jesus visited the tin mine area of Cornwall with companions. He travelled further inland, as far as Glastonbury — at the time a significant port — where He studied with the Druids, and helped design and build a small house, on the future site of Glastonbury Abbey. This visit is remembered, after a fashion, in scraps of local folklore. We have lost so much. The harsh glare of the WormCam has revealed so many of our fables to be things of shadows and whispers: Atlantis has evaporated like dew; King Arthur has stepped back into the shadows from which he never truly emerged. And yet it is after all true, as Blake sang, that those feet in ancient time did walk upon England’s mountains green.

Chapter 22 The verdict

In Christmas week, 2037, Kate’s trial concluded. The courtroom was small, panelled in oak, and the Stars and Stripes hung limply at the back of the room. The judge, the attorneys and the court officers sat in grave splendour before rows of benches containing a few scattered spectators: Bobby, officials from OurWorld, reporters tapping notes into SoftScreens.

The jury was an array of random-looking citizenry, though some of them were sporting the highly coloured masks and SmartShroud clothes that had become fashionable in the last few months. If Bobby didn’t look too carefully he could lose sight of a juror until she moved — and then a face or lock of hair or fluttering hand would appear as if from nowhere, and the rest of the juror’s body would become dimly visible, outlined by a patchy, imperfect distortion of the background.

It was a sweet irony, he thought, that SmartShrouds were another bright idea of Hiram’s: one new OurWorld product sold at high profit to counteract the intrusive effects of another.

…And there, sitting alone in the dock, was Kate. She was dressed in simple black, her hair tied back, her mouth set, eyes empty.

Cameras had been banned from the courtroom itself, and there had been little of the usual media scrum at the courthouse entrance. But everybody knew that restraining orders meant nothing now. Bobby imagined the air around him speckled with hovering WormCam viewpoints, no doubt great swarms of them clustered on Kate’s face and his own.

Bobby knew that Kate had conditioned herself never to forget the scrutiny of the WormCam, not for a second; she couldn’t stop the invisible voyeurs gazing at her, she said, but she could deny them the satisfaction of seeing how she hurt. To Bobby, her frail, lone figure represented more strength than the mighty legal process to which she was subject, and the great, rich corporation which had prosecuted her.

But even Kate could not conceal her despair when her sentence was at last handed down.

•

“Dump her, Bobby,” Hiram said. He was pacing around his big conference desk. Storm rain lashed against the picture window, filling the room with noise. “She’s done you nothing but harm. And now she’s a convicted felon. What more proof do you want? Come on, Bobby. Cut yourself loose. You don’t need her.”

“She believes you framed her.”

“Well, I don’t care about that. What do you believe? That’s what counts for me. Do you really think I’m so devious that I’d frame the lover of my son — no matter what I thought about her?”