The Waste Land

by Simon Acland

  ‘Next day, that is, after the day of Preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate and said, “Sir, we have uncovered the impostor’s plot to rise from the dead in three days time. Therefore order the sepulchre to be made secure until the third day, lest his disciples go and steal him away, and tell the people, ‘He has risen from the dead’.” Pilate said to them, “You have a guard of soldiers, go, make it as secure as you can.” So they went and made the sepulchre secure by sealing the stone and setting a guard.

  ‘So his disciples were unable to roll away the stone at the appointed hour and they despaired. Jesus woke in the tomb, and finding it still closed, he knew that he had been betrayed. Now this cave tomb had been chosen because a hidden passageway led from it. Jesus stripped from himself the bandages and made his way out through the passageway.

  ‘Now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, the chief priests became impatient and they ordered the stone to be rolled away. And so, with a noise like thunder, this was done. But the guards trembled and became like dead men, for they found the tomb empty, save for the linen clothes in which his wounds had been bound.

  ‘Mary Magdalene was also watching, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. So she ran, and went to Simon Peter and another disciple whom she loved well, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Peter then came out with the other disciple and they both ran to the tomb. At first they could not go in because of the guards, and they hid. But when the guards left they were able to go in. They saw the empty tomb and the bandages and returned to their homes.

  ‘Mary remained weeping near the tomb. She turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus for he was dressed like the gardener, wrapt in a brown mantle. Then he said to her, “Mary, it is I.” And she said to him, “Rabboni!” (which means teacher). And he said to her, “Do not be dismayed. Go, tell the disciples and Peter that I will go secretly before them into Galilee, and that they will see me there.

  ‘While they were going, behold, some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests all that had taken place. And when they had assembled with the elders and taken counsel, they gave a sum of money to the soldiers and said, “Tell people, ‘His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ And if this comes to the governor’s ears, we will satisfy him.” So they took the money and did as they were directed, and this story has been spread among the Jews to this day.

  ‘Now the eleven remaining disciples went to Galilee to the secret place to which Jesus had directed them. Because of his betrayal by the twelfth he could not show himself openly. He was seen by two friends on the way to Emmaus, but thereafter he took more care.

  “And then Jesus went back into the rocky desert and we saw him no more.’

  SAINT LAZARUS’ COLLEGE

  The Master pulled the key from his pocket and as usual looked at it with pleasure for its weight and workmanship. With a quiet sigh he bent forward and inserted it into the wine cellar door. The lock turned smoothly with a satisfying clunk and he reached for the handle.

  When he had been Chairman of the External Security Committee, as a matter of routine he had been given some training in self-defence. Now, some sudden instinct, perhaps prompted by a slight breath of air on the back of his neck, caused him to pull the door hard inwards and step sharply to one side. The Research Assistant, a monkey wrench raised viciously over his head, hurtled past. The Master stuck out his leg, so that his assailant tripped and was carried by momentum head first down the steep wine cellar stairs. From the cry, the crash and the silence that followed, the Master knew that he had plunged to the bottom and knocked himself out. The Master closed the door and locked it before hurrying to his office to call the police.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  AMONG THE LOWEST OF THE DEAD

  I now understood why my Father Abbott had destroyed the book at Cluny. Indeed, how correct he had been in warning me of the effect it would have on my shaken faith.

  I closed the ancient volume and sat astounded, listening to my own thoughts in the silence. My head hammered as if it had been beaten by a mace. My brain flickered in turmoil like the candlelight round the walls of my tomb. Could there be any truth in this book? How was it possible? I could now indeed understand why the papyrus had described it as ‘the book you fear’. Surely this book contained the heresy of all heresies and its contents could have strangled the Church at its birth.

  Yet some things fell into place. How easy it was to believe the preaching of a well-meaning man of compassion, doing all he could to influence his fellows to make the world a better, gentler place. How hard it was to understand why an all-powerful, all-knowing God should wish to test His creation, and to punish His creatures when they fell short, as He knew they would. How hard to understand why His omnipotence permitted evil and misery to exist. How hard to understand why He inflicted pain and grief on His only Son when He could have simply forgiven the world its sins.

  And the magic, that Lazarus called the holy spirit? How could that be? But even there much fell into place that I scarcely dared to believe. After all, I suffered an immersion like the baptisms described in the gospel; my veins too were cut and refilled with new fluid. I pensively fingered the scars at my wrists. And when I was wounded in Antioch, I healed faster than anyone could have predicted; when I had been surrounded by the plague, I had not succumbed; when everyone around had been suffering from famine, I scarcely felt hunger or thirst and it had seemed I could go almost indefinitely without food and drink. How different I had been before Alamut. I remembered my agonies toiling across the desert after Dorylaeum, my exhaustion then after a single day’s march. Could it be that I was now one of those whose life could end only when the head parted from the body? I remembered from the skull in the Church of Saint Victor in Marseille that this was the method of Lazarus’ death. John the Baptist too had died that way. What had happened to Jesus himself?

  And if I was somehow long-living, even immortal – I scarcely dared to think the word – or at least stronger than other men, immune to disease – what did that mean for me and Blanche? Would I have to watch her age, wither and die, whilst I stayed ever-youthful and vigorous? Could she undergo the initiation too? Did it work for women or would their weaker bodies break under the pressure? If Blanche could be initiated would our children then inherit the same powers? These and many more questions fermented in my seething brain. I felt excitement but also alarm and fear. To spend more than a normal lifespan with Blanche would be heaven; to have her die while I was still young would be hell.

  The candle guttered again and brought my thoughts back to my immediate predicament. I quickly lit a new candle from the dying wick of the old. So would I be relit again and again while the lifetimes of others burned out. I counted the candles that were left. Could I just stay in the crypt and wait for the leprous monk to open the secret door, expecting to find a corpse, dead of hunger and thirst? But what if the monk were to die, slaughtered in the violent sack of Jerusalem that was doubtless taking place above? And then…then I might spend the span of many lifetimes sitting in the dark of the crypt, in absolute silence, with only my thoughts for company, unable even to die. I shuddered. That would be hell indeed. I thought of an eternity bitter with guilt and self-reproach, turning over and over what might have happened to Blanche. How things might have been different if I had paid more attention to the old monk’s movements. I would go mad – or perhaps the vile fluid in my veins did not even permit that release. I pictured myself desperately trying to hack off my own head with my own sword in the pitch dark. Frantic, I stood and scrabbled again at the door, trying to find a crack to push against, but now I could not even make out where the door ended and the wall began. I sat down again, my head back in my hands, in utter despair.

  And then hope returned. What if the tomb had another entrance – an exit r
ather – like the tunnel they had started at the Cave Church at Antioch, or like the Holy Sepulchre, according to Lazarus? The air in the chamber was clear, not musty. The candle burned bright and undimmed. Yet fresh air could not possibly penetrate the door through which I had entered. Perhaps there was another way, unknown even to my leprous imprisoner. Suddenly I felt hope again.

  Feverishly I felt round the high bookshelves. I began to pull out volume after volume – bibles, works of the saints, commentaries many of which were familiar from Cluny’s library – piling them on the table, dropping them on the floor. And then, there was one, from a shelf low down, which looked to have been gnawed by rats from behind, and another; now I felt the faintest breath of air. Or had I just willed it?

  No, as I frantically pulled more books away, I saw a small gap, no larger than a fist, in a wall of rotten masonry. I grabbed a heavy candlestick and hammered at the wall, trying to enlarge the hole. Bit by bit the stonework fell away, and then the hole was big enough for my head, my shoulders. I lit another candle, held it through, and dimly made out a passageway. I levered out some more stones, making the hole wide enough to squeeze through, all the while praying that it might lead somewhere and not be a teasing dead end.

  I had a moment of panic, for so many volumes were now heaped on the table that I thought I might not be able to identify the Gospel of Lazarus again. But then I found it and thrust it inside my tunic. I tucked a spare candle in beside it. I buckled back my sword and wriggled through the hole, holding the burning candle out in front. I stood up cautiously and found that my head did not touch the roof. It was true; there was a breath of air from somewhere, for I could feel a gentle draught drying sweat on my face. Oh, to be back in the desert offering the water on my face to the sun.

  Holding up the candle in excitement and hope, and peering around, I saw that I was in a passageway with compartments on either side. Some were open, and brown skeletons lay there grinning at me in macabre mockery. My prison must have originally been the crypt entrance to a charnel house or catacomb, and had only later been blocked up and turned into a sacristy-cum-library.

  I walked forward and in a few paces saw other passages radiating off on each side. Should I turn right or left? I chose the right. Then I was faced with the same choice again. This time I turned left, and then right, and then left again. And then I had lost all sense of direction. Anxiously I retraced my steps and with relief found again the broken wall. Some method was needed to make my way through the maze.

  I wriggled back into the chamber and took a book from the table. I would tear out the pages, and at every turn would carefully lay the page on the ground facing in the direction I was going. The order and the direction of the pages would show where I had been. Then it would be easy to retrace my steps if necessary. I ripped out the first page, and saw that I had desecrated the opening of the First Book of Moses, Genesis. I thought in bitter irony that the Holy Bible itself was pointing my way through the maze; it had not been much use for anything else.

  This time I walked straight as far as I could. I reached a blank rock wall and turned left, laying down the first page of Genesis in the direction I had turned. ‘In the beginning…’ read the opening sentence.

  Again I walked as far as possible, passing several turnings to left and to right, but now I came to a dead end. I retraced my steps and took the first turning, now on the left, but originally on the right. I laid down another page and noticed that it began with the verse ‘Let there be light…’ Was I being mocked by the Holy Book? Perhaps deservedly so.

  The next junction was in the shape of a T, and here I turned left, laying down the page that opened ‘Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures…’ A few steps further on, I saw red rats’ eyes reflecting my candlelight, and a drain or a sewer carrying some sort of underground river, flowing from left to right. A pack of rats scurried along, splashing into the water. I backed away and went straight on at what had been the T, carefully placing another page at the junction facing in the direction I was now going. ‘So God created Man in His own image…’ the paper read. A few steps further on I came face to face with a skeleton sitting in a niche, its knees drawn up under its chin, its skull grimacing in malevolent contempt. Another dead end.

  Shaken with disappointment I turned back, going left at the T and coming to one of the branches that I had passed. I tore out the next page and was about to place it on the ground when I read the verse ‘a river flowed out of Eden…’

  With a sudden thrill, it dawned on me that the rat-infested water must flow out somewhere. In rising excitement I turned and dashed back. I climbed cautiously down into the black water and found that it only reached up to my knees. I splashed forward, rats squeaking in front as they ran from my intrusion. I carefully checked that the precious book was inside my tunic safely away from the water, and as I was doing so I stumbled on an uneven stone. I put out my free hand desperately to stop myself falling and plunging with my treasure under the surface of the stream. But my candle dipped under the water and hissed out.

  I stopped still in the pitch dark. In horror I realised that I had no way to relight the candle. What had I done? What could I do? Perhaps I could retrace my steps back to the chamber, feeling my way like a beetle through a dungheap. That would be better than standing knee deep in a rat-infested drain, but it would set me right back at the beginning. And I might be unable to find the way back, and wander forever among the skeletons. Or I could fumble forward, hoping to find a way out, but at risk of becoming ever more lost. I stood there in blank desolation, water running round my knees. I no longer even knew to what god I should pray.

  Later I could not remember how long I stood there in anguished indecision. Then, bit by bit, I thought that perhaps I could detect some phosphorescence, some faint gleam of distant light. I inched forward, my hands on the slimy surface of the tunnel wall. I was sure now that I could feel a stronger movement in the air. I tried to contain my excitement, moving cautiously forward, anxious not to make the same mistake again and bring disaster with another stumble. The ground sloped gently downwards. The roof also began to slope lower, so that now I could no longer stand upright. Bent double, the water still up to my knees, I felt my way carefully forward. Then I thought I heard the rustle of leaves in the wind. Was I finally losing my senses? Now I could no longer stand in the tunnel. I took the Lazarus Gospel out of my tunic. I knelt. Holding the book beside my head just above the water, I crawled forward. What was I to do if the water reached the roof? I cursed my inability to swim on the surface, let alone like a fish beneath the water. But then I realised that if I could really hear leaves rustling in the wind, if I could really feel the breeze and make out some light, part of the passage must be filled with air and not with water. As I moved forward the water level fell; perhaps the moisture was seeping away into the dry soil around. Now I was in a hole the size of a large badger’s earth, little more than a trickle of water running along its bottom. I felt a moment of alarm as the walls narrowed and pressed in on either side. Then the hand which I held forward with the precious book brushed against some thorny shrubs. My alarm turned to elation. I scrabbled at the earth around the opening, trying to widen it. Eventually I could squeeze my shoulders through. Ignoring the scratches to my face I pushed through a thicket of aromatic bushes, and found myself in a dry watercourse at the bottom of a steep valley. My nostrils filled with sweet dry air and I panted in relief, almost weeping. It was dark; night must have long since fallen, indeed for all I knew I might have been in that underground prison for days.

  At first I was overcome by such emotion that I could not move. Then I began shaking with relief, shivering in my damp clothes in spite of the warm night. I crawled forward, sat up and started to take in my surroundings. Behind, above Jerusalem’s soaring walls, red fires lit the sky, and I could hear the distant sounds of terror and celebration as the Christian sack of the Holy City continued. In front, up a steep rocky slope, silvery in the moonlight, loo
med the bulk of a hill. This must surely be the Mount of Olives. It seemed that I had emerged on the eastern side of the city at the bottom of the Torrent of Kedron. Here in winter perhaps water flowed after rains in the surrounding hills; now in summer the bed was dry. From habit, I said a quiet prayer of thanks. Now my mind began to recover from the many shocks that it had suffered. Should I re-enter the city and return to my comrades? I thought of the awkward questions that I would be asked. Once I was back with Godfrey I would again become embroiled in his affairs. I found that I was still clutching the Gospel of Lazarus in my hand and I stuffed it back into my tunic. Or now that my quest was accomplished should I find horses and set off north towards Alamut? There was no purpose to hold me in Jerusalem, and everything to hurry me to Blanche as fast as I could go. I got stiffly to my feet and carefully set off northwards, boots squelching, turning west towards Saint Stephen’s Gate and the point at which our siege tower had conquered the city walls.

  I knew that there were horses picketed in my old camp. They had had no part to play in the assault. Stealthily I moved towards them. I knew too that few guards had been left. Those that were on duty were the least worthy soldiers, denied the chance to participate in the first wave of plunder. They would be distracted and disgruntled by their misfortune at being forced to stay in the camp, and would probably be drunk. Quietly taking two horses should be an easy task. Of provisions I had little need, and could pick up anything I needed along the way.

  So I crept into the camp and heard the guards complaining to each other about their misfortune in thick winey voices. The horses started to move nervously and one near me whinnied. I put my hand over its soft velvet nose and soothed it. “So you have chosen to come with me,” I murmured, and selecting another led them both away. I tethered them a little distance off and went back for a saddle. I chuckled at the thought that Duke Godfrey’s trusted aide was now a renegade robbing his own camp. Then I mounted and rode hard to the north east, aiming to join the valley of the Jordan. I knew that a straight line to Alamut from Jerusalem led across the great Arabian desert. That was not a possible journey for one without camels or the knowledge of where water lay. I remembered Mohammed talking of the ferocious desert tribes and the unpleasant welcome they meted out to any who trespassed on their traditional lands. So I aimed to follow the Jordan valley up to the Sea of Galilee. From there, I would skirt round the great city of Damascus, carefully avoiding other travellers, and then cut an arc north-eastwards through the wild country that I had travelled in Mohammed’s company towards Antioch the previous year. I would ride at night and shelter by day. I expected more trouble from wild beasts and animals than from human enemies.