John

1

The sun rising, a bell is rung. On the narrow bed inside the cave the old man hears the bell but does not see the light. He has not been sleeping, but lying wakeful in almost a hundred years of memory. In the cool of the cave he rises to sit upright; his feet find the leather sandals. It is another morning. This one is cold. There is a wind from the sea. Storms have been foretold, and it was advised he move from the wooden hut on the hill. They were not wrong, he thinks, the storm is near.

Within the sound of the wind is the slap of sandals on stone. Papias is there. 'Master,' he says.

The old man stands. The youth holds out his arm stiffly, as if it were a rail, and the blind hand alights upon it. Together so, they move out towards the wind.

At the entrance of the cave the man's robe flaps sharply and his long hair blows about. He pauses Papias an instant, as if he can see then the thin crack of light unlidding the darkness in the east, or the pale spread of dawn on the broken surface of the sea. The wind blows at him. His face is long and composed and ancient; his eyes are open but unseeing. The blindness came to him there on the island of Patmos in the second year of his banishment, in the aftermath of vision, now a long time ago. But the things he had seen in the world are not forgotten, and on the rocks above the shore it is as though he views the dawn.

Papias waits. The old man is thin and vulnerable to the wind. His legs are not steady. He is a frail assembly of bones. Waves ride in high and collapse further up the stones. The air is full of the excited noise of the sea, and in standing facing it the old man may lose all sense of time and be returned to the beginning. It is dark still. He steps towards the sound of the waves on the stones, and Papias puts out his arm in case the old man will fall forwards. But he doesn't. He stoops down and feels for the water. He lets its iciness flow about his wrist and then cups a handful and brings it to his face.

'The storm,' he says. 'The storm comes.'

'Yes, Master.'

The bell rings again. They go towards it across the shore. From the darkness other figures appear and move wordlessly in the wind to a place above in the rocks. They are in number near thirty. As light breaks and reveals great heaves of black and purplish cloud rolling in the sky above, the men wait. They watch Papias lead the old man up the rough stones. The one that holds the handbell places it on the ground. Where they stand, exposed, the wind shows them little mercy. It comes at them like a paring knife, as if to test if anything in them not hard and true remains. It whistles and blows. Their robes slap. There is not light enough yet for them to make out one another's faces.

John arrives among them. They look upon him with reverence and greet him with the quiet gladness of those who are afraid each time they see him that it may be the last. Some are young and others old, but none as old as he. He takes their greeting kindly. Then, in that place on the hill, he stands and holds his hands out from his shoulders, parcelling a portion of the half-light and the wind. The men bow their heads. The Apostle's blind eyes gaze forwards into what only he can see. By the rock where once lightning struck and where, with his head pressed against the stone, he had the revelation, he kneels now. The others do likewise, shadows faceless in the half-dark. The wind whirls about them.

They pray.

The storm proper arrives by mid-morning. He is back in the cave and sits on a large stone just inside the entrance. He sees the storm through its sound. He sees the swirl of cloud descending out of the bruised heavens. Darkness contends with the little light and makes nothing of the day. The sea is up and crashing. High swells surface in mid-water and ride imperious to the shore, dragging back rocks that had once been surrendered.

The wind howls. Papias asks his master to move inwards out of the gale. But he will not. He is like a watcher on the deck, attendant, expectant. Salt skins his face, embeds in a thousand wrinkles. He sits, crouched forward as if he might miss something, as if in the contention of earth and sea and air is a message in a language just beyond his understanding.

'My Lord,' Papias hears him say, but nothing more.

The island is sheeted in rain. Vast, urgent thunder rolls across morning. Still John does not move from his place. When the bell rings at midday, Papias asks, 'Master, will you stay and not risk the weather? Will I tell the others to come here?'

'No, I will go.'

And as before, he rises and takes the youth's arm and goes out across the foreshore, where the stones are slippery and treacherous, and up the rock steps to the small gathering. In the wild elements there they pray again. Lightning fingers the sea. Their faith holds them, but they look to the old man in their centre as to a mystery. Some have followed him for years, through Troas, Apollonia, Samaria, other places, desert lands where he came preaching. Whether because of the conviction of his manner or that he spoke of what he himself had witnessed, they left their lives aside like old garments and followed.

Now they stand in the storm bowed and praying. When they have finished, and the rain beats down still, one of them, Matthias, loudly asks, 'Master, tell us, is it a sign?'

He knows he is not to ask. He knows that all have the same question in their minds all the time, but that none utter it. For there is an unspoken understanding that the Apostle does not want to be asked, because for him everything may be a sign; because he was a witness of Christ and because he had the vision on the island years ago, he may see into everything. Or nothing. The vision of the revelation came and went, and there had occurred nothing since. At first the small community of disciples had expected other visions to follow. Even while the words of the revelation were being scribed, they imagined another coming. They looked at the heavens as if they might see evidence of an aperture, a sky portal thrown open and the first fierce angels descending. Every storm, every sudden change in weather might carry meaning. A flock of seabirds, a heavy catch offish, these might be portents. The world became burdened so, and the old Apostle with it. He felt their hungering and grew quiet, like the sea exhausted by storm. In time the disciples understood and did not ask. It was to be a test of their faith. They understood endurance.

But this morning, standing in the storm, rainwater dripping from his black curls, Matthias asks again, more loudly, 'Master, will you tell us, is it a sign?'

The others look up and then look down quickly, as though the blind man can see them. Their faces, their beards, run with rain. The noon is dark, the day ruined, above them the unforgiving sky.

'It is a storm,'John says at last and then steps blindly away down the rocks before Papias, who scrambles after him.

Inside the entrance of the cave the Apostle sits again. Papias brings him a cloth for his face, another he lays on his shoulders. John says nothing. He tilts his face slightly upwards, where the wind meets it, and he sits there, his bones locking, aches of age arriving. He remains wordless, witness of the storm's urgencies, his brow furrowed deeply, as if engaged in an impossible act of translation.

The storm does not lessen. It brews and boils on. The day stays dark. All about the island rain-wind scours. The small community of fishers that live on the eastern shore remain in their homes and wait.

Then, when the short day is falling into night and fresh lightning crackles, the old man stands. At once Papias comes to his side.

'You stay,' says John.

'No, Master, please.'

'Stay. I command it,' he says, and he goes out of the cave into the driving rain.

His footsteps know the way. His sandals do not slip as he makes his way down to the sea. The wind and rain is a hurly-burly, the heavens unpacking torrents and gales and all manner of broken weather thrown out in the dark. The old man feels the thin framing of his body, how his joints ache, how the very bones of him resist movement. He has walked ten thousand miles, more, preaching. He knows that at his great age he should long ago be dead. He knows that already of the twelve there are few remaining. He has heard of crucifixions, stories of torture and stoning. He has heard from boatmen landing on the island how the persecution of the Christians has continued until it has seemed he has lived to see in a hundred years the vanquishing of the faith that gave his life meaning.

He goes down to the sea and along the shore, where the tide is high and the rocks rattle like bones. Blindly he finds the stones that are the steps and returns for a third time that day to the Rock of Revelation. He does not want the others about him now. To go truly he has to bend forwards and feel with his hands the way. The cold of the rain-wind is bitter, the sea in the night loud. There is no moon nor stars, as there have been none for him in many years. He clambers higher, then loses his footing and slips. His skin is thin and bleeds easily; the salt air tells him of the wound at his ankle. He climbs on until he comes at last to the flattened rock itself.

John stands in the storm. He has no fear of any kind. He has outlived all manner of pain and been near enough to death to kiss its face and walk away. He has lived for a purpose and believes he knows what it is. He remains, awaiting the coming.

And so now, at his great age, he stands and opens his arms to the wild night. It whirls about him. Not twenty feet away Papias watches silently. Rain comes and goes and comes again. The old apostle's arms tremble and waver, his long white hair blown back, and the flesh of his face weeping the salt rain.

'My Lord,' he cries out, and raises his hands upward to the utter dark. 'My Lord, your servant waits.'

2

Later, sleepless, in inconsolable dark he thinks of the beginning.

The day was blue and still. We were to be out in the boat fishing on Lake Genesareth, but I did not go that day. When Father came to call for me, I was already gone. Fishing was dull and tiring. What did I want of the family business, catching fish and drying them for sale in the narrow storeroom at Bethsaida? I was proud and stubborn. I left the house as if pulled on a cord, and walked that day as others before many miles through the dust to the place by the river where small numbers gathered to hear the teaching.

This day was no different. I was gone before James and Father had woken. I walked out in the cool of the early morning and across the unrisen dust of the street. It was a long journey. The sun rising thinned the blue of the sky until it shimmered.

On the road there was no one. No birds flew. For sound there was only my footsteps, the soft crush of sandals in sand. Brilliance of light. The low hills and folds of the desert unshifting in the windless day.

Remember looking upwards at the sky. Remember wondering what a day this was, and thinking of them waking now and going out on the lake with the nets. Remember thinking of the disappointment my father would feel seeing my bed empty.

But I walked on. That blue morning crossing the distance between one life and another, though I did not know it yet.

The Baptist was a thin figure with long hair. He seemed to eat not at all. From long speaking his voice was strong, his words compelling. He spoke of the Messiah coming. From scripture he quoted Isaiah: 'I am a voice in the desert, crying out, "Make the Lord's road straight!"' This man spoke, it seemed, all day and night, untiring. From him the stream of words that washed over those who sat by the riverbank, in some manner comforted by the vision of one so flowing.

I sat by the side of Andrew and listened.

The sun was hot, the river shone. Soft dazzlements crossed the current. I watched the water moving in light. I watched the heavens blue in the water. Remember. I turned my face upwards, imagined flight on such a day as this. What height I could reach into the blue, and what it might be to see from above. Imagining when the Baptist made louder his voice and cried out, 'Look! Behold! Here is the Lamb of God!'

Andrew turned first.

I looked around behind and saw you walking.

The storm continues for three days. The disciples come to the Apostle's cave. They pray the prayers he has taught them. Pro-chorus asks, 'Master, will you teach to us from the Revelation?'

John does not answer. They are unsure if he is with them or not.

Prochorus carries the copy he himself scribed in the Greek language. Matthias nods purposefully to him, and he begins to read from it.

'After these things I looked, and behold a door was opened in heaven, and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet speaking with me, which said: Come up hither, and I will show you the things which must be done hereafter.

'And immediately I was in the spirit: and behold there was a throne set in heaven, and upon the throne one sitting.'

Father's eyes. His face when I told him.

'Jesus, son of Joseph?'

'Yes, Father.'

'You are going to follow Jesus, son of Joseph?'

James beside me. I had brought him the next morning to see for himself.

'Both of you?' Father said.

Mother by the table, arms crossed on herself. 'Zebedee, be quiet.'

'He is your mother's cousin, he is Salome's cousin. And you think he is the Messiah, he is the Christ? And what of the family? What of the fishing? I am old. Who is to care for us in our age?'

'We must go.'

'Why? Why must you go? You are young. You are rash and stubborn. I am your father. I know because it is my rashness and my stubbornness. But why? Are there not others who have gone? Why must you also? Both of you? I need you here.'

'God will care for you,' James said.

Father's fist hard on to the table. He would have broken things. He would have lifted the table and thrown it against us. He would have nailed shut the door. Mother came to him.

Father's eyes. How they looked upon us, sorrowful.

And knowing.

As if he knew, the years ahead, the suffering, but could not save us from it.

Father.

His last look as we went. Knowing.

When we returned from Cana, illumined, excited, witnesses of the signs, proclaiming, Barnabus met us at the road and told us, 'Zebedee is dead. Your mother is gone to live with a cousin.'

O Father. O Father, look down upon me.

'Master? Master, surely you will teach us now,' Matthias says. He is a thin, dark-bearded figure of thirty. His hands he holds cupped in front of him, his head angled forward. His manner is honeyed with humility.

'Is the storm passed?' John asks.

'It is passing, Master,' Papias says.

'Master, the teaching?' Matthias presses forwards. 'We wait for your teaching. If you do not teach us, what are we to think? We are weak and you must give us answers. You have answers for us from on high.' He has stepped forwards to stand directly in front of the old man. 'Tell us,' he says. 'Tell us, O holy Master, what the Divine sees for us.'

There are looks and frowns. The cave air is clotted with disapproval, but Matthias is unperturbed. 'Tell us, O wise and holy Master,' he asks, 'how long are we to live here on this island in banishment? Tell us his plan. How are we to continue to wait and pray here, Master, if we do not know?'

'Matthias! Cease, be silent,' an elder, Ioseph, says.

But others, Auster, Linus, Baltsaros, move slightly forwards and Matthias continues: 'How does it serve to be silent? Are we not human? Is it not of man to seek to know? How can this be wrong if it makes stronger our faith? That we might better serve by knowing, surely this is truth. Is this not the truth, Master? All want to know what only you can tell us. How long more? How long more will we wait for the coming?'

'Brother,' the bald figure of Lemuel says, 'it is not for us to ask.'

'But it is. It is for us to ask and for our master to tell. How long? How long more are we to live on this barren island? I am not alone in asking how a life here, far from all, serves the Divine. I am not alone in asking, only in asking aloud. I am speaking the truth for us all. Surely there is a sign for us. Surely he has told you and you can take us from this darkness.'

At this, Matthias drops to his knees before John. He reaches out and takes the old man's hand and places it upon his own head.

'Behold, I touch the hand that touched the Christ,' he says. 'Of he that has seen. When will you guide us into the light of his presence? Master, tell us.'

'Matthias! Enough!' Ioseph steps forward, puts his hand on the other's shoulder to draw him back. But Matthias pushes it off.

'Does the Lord speak to you still, or is he silent?' he asks.

The sea sounds at the cave's entrance. All watch the old apostle's face. It is impossible to read what thoughts travel there. His mouth is tightly closed, his lips thin. As if in deep communion, or scrutiny for something precious lost, there is a deep furrow between his brows. His breath through the long, straight nose is inaudible. He has such stillness as do the dead. His long white hair falls thinly in serene compose. But within him may be thunders and lightnings. None can say.

Matthias holds his hand firmly. He will not let go until he has his answer. 'Is he silent to you?' he asks again. 'Does he speak to you?'

The slightest thing now may be a sign. There is turned on the old apostle's face such study and concentration as to note each quiver of muscle, each infinitesimal flickering of nerve, and such as may betray the truth of his response. His blind eyes are open and clear as sky. His lips press together and then — is he going to speak? The disciples dare not make a sound. Those who know they should admonish Matthias and leave do not. Those who so desperately hunger for an answer allow themselves to lean ever so slightly forwards.

John's tongue touches his lips.

Beside him, the youth Papias stands.

'I am the servant of the Lord, Jesus Christ,' he says. 'As are all of you. Because we were called. I heard the calling, and I have undertaken the Lord's work until he comes again.'

The elder disciples nod, comforted even by so few words.

But Matthias asks, 'Will he, Master? Will he come again? Will we see him with our own eyes? And when will he come? Is there a sign?'

'Matthias!' the scribe's voice calls out.

'Be calmed, Prochorus,' says John. He raises his brows as if so he might lift the weight on his spirit; his voice is quiet and firm. 'He will come again, Matthias. You will see him with your own eyes. As will I. The Lord has told me so himself.' He pauses, as if the saying aloud of this has renewed him in some way, as if he has traversed some shadowed terrain in himself into a naked light. 'He will come again,' he says simply.

'Soon, Master?'

'The hour grows near,' John answers. He withdraws his hand and holds it in the other.

The hour grows near.

3

The storm passed, a boat lands. It brings news of the outside world, and Papias carries this to the cave.

John sits outside on a rock, his face to the pale sun. He hears the footsteps of the youth and interprets their heaviness.

'Papias, you may tell me,' he says.

'Master, it is sad news. The boatmen say the persecution continues.'

'This is not their only news.'

'No, Master.'

'Tell me.'

'They say there was news of a new Christian martyr. He was one who had travelled, it was said, as far as the Caucasus Mountains to preach the word of the Lord, and had preached to the Scythians and from there went to Byzantium, then to Thrace and Macedonia, down the Corinthian Gulf to Patros in Greece.'

'Tell me.'

'Aigeatis, the governor of Patros, became enraged at his preaching and ordered him brought before a tribunal, where he was asked to renounce the Christian faith. But he would not.' Papias pauses. He studies his master's face, for it shows something he cannot explain. It is as though what he is telling is already known, or has to the old apostle been foretold. 'The governor Aigeatis ordered him to be crucified, Master,' he continues.

'Yes.'

'Do you know already, Master?'

'Tell me.'

'They say he was scourged and hung upon the cross, that he hung there for three days in suffering. The people came around him, and in his suffering he cried out to them to love the Lord Jesus. For three days he would not die. He was scourged further while he hung on the cross, but yet did not speak against our Lord. The boatman says his last words are reported, "Accept me, O Christ Jesus, into your eternal realm.'"

Fear and sorrow and awe pause Papias. He thinks of the agony of the martyr and his own intolerance of pain. He thinks of what it would be to have the ropes bind his arms to the cross, of the muscles tearing, and the wounds from the scourging crying out. He thinks of the thirst, and the sun burning, of the hunger and the anguish and how all such would be relieved at once if he were only to renounce. He blinks himself out of such thoughts.

'The boatman says the martyr's name. .'

'Andrew,' says John.

'Yes, Master.'

Andrew, the first. The fair-haired. Brother of Simon Peter. His father, Jona; his mother, Joanna. Andrew, who believed before I did. Who saw Jesus walking and jumped to his feet at once. That blue morning. We ran to be up with him. The first words our Lord spoke to us, 'What are you looking for?'

I, too timid to answer.

Andrew asked, 'Rabbi, where are you staying?'

'Come and see.'

How he ran back for Simon Peter, shouting, 'We have found the Messiah! We have found him!'

The beginning.

The day being dry, the old man walks out on the island with Papias. The youth gives his right arm. He does not speak unless spoken to. He believes himself honoured to be attendant on the Apostle.

The place is mostly rock, the wind cool. Sea sounds and seabird calls fill the air. They take a route up from the shore, the old man in his white robes frail and shaped thin by gently pressing wind. The youth is dark-haired and strong. White clouds cross swiftly above them, freeing and capturing the sun.

While to the others the island of their banishment has become smaller with time, to John in his blindness it has become boundless. In the dark in which he walks it is a landscape endless as eternity. He has seen it years previous, but forgotten the exactness. Now it is only the dark place where he is waiting for the light. He has Papias guide him up across the weathered rock face, past the low dwellings of the other disciples, and away on to the higher ground, where there is a view of the open sea and the island's perimeter. It is the highest point.

Whether the Apostle knows this exactly Papias is not sure. Whether he brings them there to the closest point to heaven on purpose or it is an assigned place and the Lord has communicated this to John, Papias does not enquire. In the holiness of the Apostle he believes completely. He believes all things John does are for a reason, and that this will be revealed in time. In recent months Papias has heard others in the community murmur doubt about the old man's memory and cogency. Matthias is not the only one to question. Others, too, are grown restless and impatient, the ascending columns of their prayers thinning at the base. Papias hears, but says nothing. He tells none of this to the old man, for it seems a betrayal, and his own faith is still absolute.

When they reach the high point, the wind blows more vigorously. John's hair is taken back, his white beard laid against his neck. His blue eyes look about, as though they had sight.

What is happening in his mind? Papias wonders. What sights does he see? His master is like a cave full of secrets.

The sea below is white-capped and the seabirds hover and cry. There is a ship on the horizon sailing west. John stands without a sound.

It is as though he expects something to happen here, Papias thinks. It is as though at any moment a door might open in the heavens above him. Papias looks up at the blue and the white clouds crossing. For the old apostle he anticipates what it might be that is shortly to happen. He pictures a brilliant light; he imagines music of trumpets, and all manner of white horses, winged and golden shod, beating down in majesty out of the upper realms. Papias sees an order of angels swoop from the entranceway of the Eternal and flank the incandescent light. He anticipates a bliss divine. Upon the head of this ancient man he foresees a white fire alight and all grow radiant in such dimension as to blind with whiteness and make men fall to their knees as the Christ descends to be once more, there, by the side of his beloved disciple.

While they stand, Papias sees it so. In the furnace of his youthful faith he forges this perfect image. He imagines it will be at any moment. He is certain this is what his master awaits.

John says nothing. He attends the wind.

An hour, two hours pass. The silence is absolute. The old man's ankles ache. The bones of his legs are brittle and full of pain.

Clouds come from the east, darkening.

Nothing happens.

When he fears that he will fall, John reaches out to allow Papias to support him. He leans on his arm, but says nothing.

He stands there on top of the island. To the north is the risen darkness of Mount Kerketeus, clouds gathered upon it. Together the Apostle and the youth wait.

When the bell rings noon, they come back down for prayer.

'It is written,' Matthias says that evening to a small gathering in the narrow confines of his dwelling, three sides of timber planking against rock. He holds open the scroll of the Book of Revelation. ' "And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held. And they cried with a loud voice, saying: How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and revenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?"

'Amen,' Auster says, and nods toward the thin, flaxen-haired figure of Linus.

'Amen,' say the others.

Lambs all of them, Matthias thinks. Lambs that can be led.

He turns on his heel, spreads open his hands. 'How long, O Lord? How long? Yea, I dare to ask. While Domitian reigns there continues persecution. The crucifixion of the apostle Andrew is only one of many. The soul of the slain. I hear him crying out. We will be slaughtered from the earth and none care. We will be forgotten.'

'But Matthias, ours is not to question,' Cyrus says. 'Ours is to wait and keep the faith. '"Yet that which you have, holdfast until I come." '

'But so, too, it is written, Cyrus, "Behold I come quickly",' Matthias replies.

Cyrus nods. 'This is true,' he agrees. 'We believe our Lord is coming, Matthias.'

'But why does he wait?'

The lamb can't answer.

'How many crucifixions does our Lord want? Five hundred more? Five thousand? How many more crucifixions will mark the roads of Domitian's empire while we sit here?'

The lambs don't bleat. 'Recall,' Matthias says, 'the Apostle himself wrote: "And behold there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as a sackcloth of hair, and the whole moon became as blood; and the stars from heaven fell upon the earth, as a fig tree casteth its green figs when it is shaken by a great wind.

' "And the heaven departed as a book folded up." ' Matthias does not need to read; he knows the words. ' "And every mountain and the islands were moved out of their places; and the kings of the earth and the princes and tribunes and the rich and the strong and every bondmen and every freeman hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of mountains. And they say to the mountains and the rocks: Fall upon us and hide us from the face of him that sitteth upon the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb. For the great day of their wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?" '

He pauses, his face flushed, and he looks at each. They are a small gathering, chosen, asked from among the others to come to debate the way to truth. They are mostly the younger of the disciples. Their beards have no silver, their faces are unlined. They have come in recent years, many by choice, to be in the company of the Apostle, to await with him the coming. But time has worked on their faith, the nothing that has happened each day since eroding mountains.

' "The great day of their wrath. The great day of their wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?" ' Matthias continues. 'But tell me, where is this wrath? When is this day? This I ask you. Tell me if you know. Tell if it is only poor Matthias who does not understand. Take him from his ignorance. Is it to come while we sit here on Patmos? Verily, is this the intention of the Divine? Tell me, tell me Baltsaros, Linus, is it the intention that we wait on till old age and weakness come? Is this what you think Cyrus, Auster? Or' — Matthias raises a finger as if to arrest a thought, as if there passes in the air just then a solution hitherto unconsidered — 'might it be, might it be that we are to go forward to meet it? As an army on a plain is emboldened by the approach of another legion, should we not make the great day happen ourselves? Should we not show ourselves willing to the Divine?'

'It is a vexing question, Matthias,' says the high voice of Phineas.

Bald-pated fool of a lamb, eyes too close to each other for clear thought.

'But how can we know?' Phineas whines. 'Only the Apostle has seen the Lord, and he commands we abide here.'

The others nod and voice agreement.

Lambs indeed.

Baltsaros says, 'We are all grieved, Matthias, to hear the news of the apostle Andrew. But his place is assured at the table of our Lord in heaven. His work was complete. In that we can rejoice.'

'Rejoice because every day we are less, not more?' Matthias arches his eyebrows. 'Truly? Truly? Well, I cannot rejoice. What work for God do we do here? Are we not the same as those dead? What keeps us here in banishment? An edict from Rome? Because if we leave this island we will be persecuted and crucified? Consider this: perhaps this is our destiny, and we hide from it here, are cowards. I do not rejoice in the death of Andrew, I grieve and anger. As should you all.'

Aware of how incautious are his words, he stops. He must bring the lambs back into safe pasture.

'Forgive me my weakness, my brothers. Pray with me that I may know the way to truth,' he says, and before them kneels down and bows low his head.

A brilliant stratagem. As though I ask them to show me the way. These lambs that think they are lions.

Matthias closes his eyes. The seeding is begun.

4

And the beast coming up out of the sea having seven heads and ten horns, and upon the horns ten diadems. The beast that was like to a leopard, and feet the feet of a bear, and mouth of a lion.

And the seven vials of the wrath of God. The sore and grievous wound that fell upon the men with the character of the beast. The blood poured into all the sea, wherein every living soul died. The rivers and the fountains made blood. The sun afflicting men with heat and fire so all were scorched and blasphemed. The vial that was poured on the seat of the beast so his kingdom became dark and they gnawed their tongues for pain. The sixth vial that was poured into the river Euphrates and dried up the waters. And from the mouth of the dragon, from the mouth of the beast, three unclean spirits like frogs. Spirits like devils working signs. And the seventh vial poured on the air, and a voice out of the temple saying, 'It is done.' And lightnings and voices and thunders, and a great earthquake, and the great city divided into three parts, and every island fled away and the mountains not found. And falling then the great plague of hail.

Did I see such things as these?

Did I?

Did those words come from me?

I remember not.

Was there a vision so clear?

When Papias reads it to me, it seems familiar yet strange.

Dear Lord, remember your ancient servant. Have pity. Pages in the book of my memory fall away.

Did the angel come to me truly?

Did I see such vision? And then was blind?

But Jerusalem fell. The mountain Vesuvius opened with fire. Nero's Rome burned. Such things did happen.

And yet you did not come.

Papias reads to me: ' "And I, John, who have heard and seen these things. And after I had heard and seen, I fell down to adore before the feet of the angel who showed me these things."'

But now I am afflicted, Lord, and cannot remember.

My spirit thirsts for salvation.

John kneels in the rock chamber and confesses. Papias is gone to see what fish have been caught. The old apostle's head is bowed. The news of the death of Andrew has struck him like many blows. Though the crucifixion may have happened a long time ago and the news taken this time to travel, it is to him as though yesterday. Cut as wounds into his mind is the history of the suffering of each of the twelve. Accounts he has heard. Each of these return him to one moment on the road.

They were passing through Phrygia and the country of Galatia when they met a traveller in purple. He was a wizened creature, humped, with ragged beard. Sun blazed upon them. 'O Christians!' he called out, his head tilted upward, his rheumy eyes aswim. 'Come, buy from me!' He had a wife and a loaded ass, gestured with a long-nailed hook hand for them to pause. The Apostle and his followers had nothing to trade. And when he discovered this, the traveller spat into the sand. 'Ye are not worth spit,' he said, and waved his wife to stop unloading the goods. 'Ye will be dust soon,' he muttered for consolation, glare-eyed, blister-cracking his lips. 'Ye're heads will roll like the son of Zebedee,' he said with undisguised glee and turned away.

'Wait. Tell us,' John called after him.

The traveller stopped, looked back over his hump. 'For what profit?' he asked.

'I am a son of Zebedee,' John said and walked forward. 'Tell.'

And for the pleasure of pain, for the tale he could carry to the towns of Phyrgia and perhaps trade upon it, the traveller turned. 'I saw myself the head of James, son of Zebedee, cut from his body by order of Herod Agrippa. I saw the blade rise, the hair pulled back, the eyes wide like moons.' He came closer. 'I heard the bone snap,' he said, clutching his hooked hand to his own throat below a blister-smile. 'The head, it rolled,' he said, and rolled his hand in a tumbling fall. 'The brown eyes stared till dust blinded them.'

John fell to the ground and cried out. And then bowed down and scooped a handful of dust and pressed it into his mouth to keep from shouting out with sorrow. The wild lamentation that lacerated him he could not release in weeping, for the others of his followers he believed he could not show the feeling of abandonment by the Lord. Instead the wolf of grief he took inside himself and let it roam and savage freely.

In repeated dreams after came the sight of his brother bowed before the blade the traveller told. In such dreams always John stood among the assembled witnesses; powerless, he saw James refuse to deny the Christ and his prayers growing louder even as the blade rose in the air. Forever since, though blind, he sees still; he hears the terrible crack and sees his brother's head fall away.

Now, with news of Andrew, all such returns to him. The loss is so great as to be unutterable.

John kneels and confesses. He kneels so long on the bare rock of the cave floor that his knees lock, and the framework of his bones entire is turned solid. First he aches, and pain is everywhere. And then, slowly, slowly, he passes beyond the condition of pain, into an inner terrain where by himself he himself is forgotten. There, these his ancient hands held together, this his bowed head with white hair, are no more present to him, and he is become instead like an element or a timeless feature of that place.

He is away, and out of this world.

Water sounds. The cave where he kneels speaks with the sound of a thousand invisible streams.

On the far side of the island, Papias goes to visit one of the poor families of fishers that live there. On the eastern shore there is a small scattering of houses that existed before the Christians arrived. At first mistrustful of the band of men who were brought and released on to the island, the fishers grew to understand they offered no threat, and then to warm to them because they were hated by the despised Romans. Finally, some among them were converted by the stories of the Christ, Jesus. The kingdom everlasting was explained to them, and gave solace in the hardships of island life to those who felt abandoned on that bleak edge of the world. When sons and husbands drowned, the Christians were told and asked to come and pray.

So now, the youth Papias.

In the days after the storm one of the fishermen, Xantes, did not return. Then his broken boat washed up at the feet of his wife, Marina, who was watching from the shore. She went back to the house and held her two small children and said not a word. When the others came to tell her what she already knew, she did not weep. They said it was only his boat and Xantes might have lived. There was no body.

For the following three days there was none, and it was presumed destroyed on the rocks or eaten by the creatures of the sea. The fishers sent word to the Christians, and old Ioseph, feeling ill, had asked Papias to go and pray with the woman.

It is a morning bitter with cold. Grey seabirds claw on the rocks and do not fly. Dull oaten-coloured clouds travel the sky. Mercilessly the wind beats at the sea. While Papias hurries, he looks out at the small scars of white surf, the unsailed waters. His sandals are worn, the soles thin. His garments are dirty from the walls of the cave. He wishes it weren't so. He is honoured that Ioseph has asked him this first time, and he wants to appear as he imagines a holy man should. I should be clothed in light, he thinks, then chastises himself for such vanity.

'You bring the Lord,' he says under his breath into the wind. 'You are clothed in the Lord.'

He crosses up over the bare, smooth stone at the top of the island and descends toward the fishers' dwellings. In his haste the edge of a rock gashes his ankle. He cries out but does not slow down. He is thinking of the prayers he will say. He is thinking he is engaged in the most important business of life.

He has been told the house, and knocks on the rough timber of the door. There is no answer and he knocks again. The third time he knocks and opens the door. Inside in the dark sits the woman Marina and clutched against her, her two small children.

'I come to pray for your husband's passage into everlasting life,' Papias says, the door light framing him.

The woman does not move. Her fair hair is coiled on her head and tied with a headscarf, her dark eyes distant. Lain at her breasts the infants sleep.

'I bring the love of the Lord Jesus,' Papias tells her.

She turns to him. She is twice his age. Her face, planed with light, is sadder than any he has seen.

Walking swiftly in the sunlight that day. The dust.

The knowledge that all my life had come to this moment.

Andrew running back to tell Simon. 'The Messiah, we have found the Messiah!'

My eyes not moving from you as you walked forward. My mouth open, as if I had eaten the world. As if the world were round like a ball and I had taken it inside me and could not yet know how I might breathe again.

'John, son of Zebedee,' you said. 'Come.'

Some moments as clear as water. Your hand held out.

A lifetime ago.

Knowing. Knowing in that first moment: I believe. I will follow you.

Andrew running up with Simon Peter. The smile in his face. How he wanted to laugh out loud with delight. As though this was a great victory. You turned to Simon and said: 'Your name shall be Cephas, Peter.'

And Andrew wanted to laugh with delight.

But gravely Peter looked at you, and bowed then and was changed already.

'Come.'

That road in the sand. The three of us just behind you speaking not at all.

The blue of the sky. The light. As if something had opened and we had walked right through.

I remember.

A feeling of light, of lightness.

And knowing. When I looked in your face. That was like no other face, and your eyes that were like no other eyes. Because of the kindness and the love. And the suffering.

'Come.'

Walking that dust road away from the river, we, your first disciples. The first time any had followed you.

So we felt chosen.

And the light and the blue of the sky. And the three of us just behind you speaking not at all.

Each of us already thinking: this is what is to be.

As if already it were written.

My Lord.

I remember.

5

She says not a word. She sits with the infants against her in the dark.

'I bring the word of the Lord,' Papias says. His Greek is perfect, but the woman shows no sign of having understood. Fearful for the children catching cold, he closes the door against the bitter wind. The little windowless room of the dwelling is darkened. This dark she has been sitting in, he thinks, and goes across to a rough board on the far wall to seek a lamp. His hands pat where rats are, and he bangs with his open palm on the timber several times. There is no lamp. The room is darker than the cave.

'Have you no light?'

He cannot see her eyes, only the outline of her head and the lumpish shadows of the infants. He moves closer. There is a stool with lambswool and netting; he lifts these aside and sits. He is close enough to make out her face now. Her eyes stare as though sightless, and her demeanour is of one thrown back from drowning, a straw of strength remaining.

Grief has exhausted her, Papias thinks, the good news of the Lord will be a salve.

'I am come to pray with you for the salvation of your husband, who has gone to eternal life,' he says.

She makes not the slightest movement or response, but stares on into the darkness between them. The air of the damp dwelling is close and bitter with brine. Behind him Papias hears the rats returned to the board table against the wall, scrape, nuzzle, and gnaw. He must concentrate hard to remember the order of prayers he rehearsed. Then from the unseen he smells something foul rising. It seems to thicken in the air as if the grief itself is spewed and lumpish and vile. It sickens him, the foulness, and he blinks away from beginning and scowls. The wind laughs at the door, a dry rattling. The stillness of the small room presses upon him; he feels the strangeness of it as if he is entombed, and though he has ready the words to begin, he cannot begin. The foul air, the windowless dark, the staring eyes of the widow, and the rats running down the board hungry and dissatisfied and hunting meagre nothings in the blind underfoot, these all undress his courage. He feels the wound at his ankle smart, and he makes a small noise with his sandals to keep the rodents at bay.

Still the woman stares, the children unmoving upon her breast.

A cold ooze slides on to Papias's forehead. His lips dry. I am lost, he thinks. I am not prepared. The counsel he is to give, the comfort he is to bring, are taken from him into the dark as insubstantial things. He tries to begin a silent prayer, to ask the Lord to be with him.

But the woman reaches forward and the thin bones of her fingers grasp his wrist. 'I am with demons,' she says. 'Death comes from me.' And she pulls his hand across the dark to alight on the cold infant nearest, and at once Papias knows that both children are dead. The cold of the flesh is appalling and he stands up and pulls back his hand. He cries out and rushes to the door to pull it open. The wind meets him. The light of day blinds and spins his head, and he staggers some steps to where he stumbles and bends down and voids himself on the rocks.

'Papias is not returned, Master, from the fisher's widow. I will care for you this evening,' Prochorus says.

'I need no care. You may return.'

'I have brought some bread and fish pottage.'

'Have them yourself with my blessing.'

John hears the other cross the cave to the small table and place a bowl there then return. He hears his knees crack to sit. There is the small puttering sound of a flame for the lamp.

'Shall I read with you, Master?'

'My thanks. No.'

They sit. At the mouth of the cave the wind noises. It is as if they are deep within a shell cast back by the tide whose memory is captured. John's breath is slow and thin. Next to him, the other is more restless. Prochorus is sixty years. His head is bare but for two thin ridges of grey hair above his ears. His beard is a wisp. The long fingers of his hands seem destined for fine work, and he can scribe with either one, but without instrument or papyrus they seem lost for purpose and move about on his thighs, his forearms, smooth the nothings on his pate. At sixty years he retains this energy in his body and would prefer any chore to sitting with the old apostle in silence.

'The pottage is good,' he offers.

'Prochorus, there is no need to stay. Nothing will transpire.'

There is a sigh released through the nose, there is the sound of fingers spreading on the knees and the slight friction of the cloth as Prochorus rocks very gently back and forth. The stool rhythms his restlessness.

'Should we pray, Master? Perhaps I should pray with you?'

'Pray as you return from here, Prochorus. I thank you for your intentions. I will see you at the dawn bell.'John offers his hand. But the other returns it to him and says: 'I am staying here until Papias comes.'

'Very well.'

John sits perfectly still. He has an ability Prochorus cannot fathom, to simply be. To sit in the turning of time as though nothing of him is diminished by it, as though he may wait for ever. His patience is beyond patience, is beyond any quality nameable in the vast vocabularies of the four languages Prochorus knows; it is a quality he has never seen in another human. For in the old apostle's constancy is a stillness that is not reposed or serene, no portion of him sleeps nor idles, but all is instead attentive, expectant, and indefatigable. From him there is not the smallest movement. Patior. Prochorus thinks of the Latin verb, to endure and to suffer.

The younger man folds his arms, his hands cup his elbows and he rocks forwards. He looks about him into the halo of light the lamp throws against the cave. The water sounds run, and here and there high in the roof glisten thin streams. He looks at them. He looks at the patterns of their descent, where they pool into the dark. Hunkered forwards he studies the cave floor, the beaten arc of path the years have made, elsewhere the sandal-printed dust. A place near the entrance where Papias lights small fires from what fuel can be found on that treeless isle. He rubs his palm across his beard, smoothes with right forefinger his right eyebrow. He tries to listen to the sound of the wind, to interpret in it music or messages, but hears only the howling and the loneliness.

Night is fallen; Papias is not returning. Prochorus is staying until the dawn now. He looks to the old man. Should he ask him will he be guided to the mat on the floor for sleep? Does he sleep at all?

They have sat for hours, John moving not the slightest. Prochorus himself is weary. When he is not active, heavy soft sponges of drowsiness descend on his brain. But he will not leave the old man; he will not sleep unless John does. And he decides that he cannot ask or disturb the Apostle in his meditation. Instead Prochorus blinks his eyes; he opens his mouth wide and hears his jawbone crack in its socket and holds a hand against it as if in admonishment. His head grows unbearably heavy. He feels it nod forwards as if in agreement and straightens himself and shakes it once to throw off the sleep that nests on stillness. He should get up and move about. He should put out the lamp perhaps. But he does neither. The sitting is intolerable prison now, but he cannot escape it. He considers it would be weakness and fault to move now. He must offer it. The old Apostle may be in communion such as he himself has never known. He it was, after all, who came upon John years earlier in their banishment, when the lightning had passed and the Apostle lay collapsed on the great stone. Prochorus had thought him struck by lightning in the temple of his head. His eyes were blind and he was speaking quickly, so quickly that at first it seemed he spoke in no language the scribe understood. Prochorus asked him if he had been out in the storm, if he been struck, for the rock was blackened. John did not answer but continued as if in tongues. His hand he reached on to Prochorus's shoulder, and the younger disciple led him to this cave nearby as their shelter. It was there, in the days and nights ahead, in fevered fits and starts, in long streams of words, and longer pauses, in a voice loud and strong and often angry — his hands flying out into the air about him, his blind face to the cave roof— that the Apostle dictated his revelation and Prochorus wrote it down.

It is the event of Prochorus's life. It is as close as he has come to the presence. Though years later he does not forget an instant of it. Not the hairs that stood on the back of his neck as he wrote, nor the chill in his blood, nor the sense he had as his stylus moved on the papyrus that the words would last the lifetime of the earth. He believed.

He knows it by heart. In the small hours of night, to keep awake now he mutely recites verses. Beside him, John is as before.

Some moonlight is uncovered by the wind-dragging clouds and falls at the entrance. Prochorus looks; he wonders what it might be to be visited just then by seraphim. Would he give his eyes for such? Would the dazzlement singe his brain? Although not an ancient, he is already an old man himself now. Perhaps there is nothing more for him. He wonders how each is chosen. How as if from a great constellation a hand sweeps through stars and selects one. He wonders at the destiny God has chosen for him, and if perhaps again, now, this bitter night, the Apostle will catch fire and speak.

'Let it descend' is his prayer. 'Let it come again, now, Lord.'

The wind whips up from the shore where Papias crouches to his knees over the stones. His head sings. His eyes blur with sudden tears. He feels struck in the pit of his stomach and retches violent, vacant gulps. The sea wind salts his face. From the corner of his mouth it pulls aslant a thin drool. He cries out a sound none hears. He stands upright and looks back at the widow Marina's dwelling, where the rough door opens and bangs with invisible traffic.

When he collects himself, Papias goes back inside. The scene is unchanged: the widow and the infants motionless upon her. The door opens and closes the light so she appears as in a series of identical portraits, each painted a grievous grey, each with a wild, implacable suffering.

'The children must be buried,' Papias says, softly. 'They are gone to the Lord.'

The widow shows no sign of understanding. Her eyes stare, as if across the room she keeps demons at bay.

Gently Papias leans down and places his hands on one of the children. The flesh is cold and scaled with something rough he cannot see. He goes to lift the child off the mother, and the moment the weight shifts she lets out a scream and grasps the infant to her.

'The children must be buried,' he says again. But the mother will not let go the child and shakes her head back and forth, and would be weeping if she had not wept herself away already, and so instead makes a kind of moaning crying and clings to the dead. Papias pleads with her. He tells her he will pray over the children. He tries to lift the first from her again, a girl it is, but the mother will not let go her hold. It is wretched and ugly and intolerable, and still the door bangs and opens and bangs and opens behind him in the wind.

'O Lord, help me,' Papias cries. 'Stop, stop, let go!' He wrenches the infant from her then, and then the other, and rushes outside into the ravaged light of day.

The girls are as nothing in his hands, weight of shells, no more. The lower side of one child's face and down her neck is spread a greenish scaling; the other wears it about her mouth like a lumpish paint. Papias looks up to the sky and wails. He holds the infant girls in the wind as if in offering, as if he believes that from the sky now will come a miracle. He draws down into the deep well of his faith and brings up this clear pure stuff that believes in the absolute bridge-way between man and God, that between earth and heaven is constant traffic of beseech and grant, that somewhere in all the lands stretching from Judea into Asia Minor, and even to Rome and Gaul beyond, there occur visits of the Divine, and the sick are sometimes restored. He holds the infant girls aloft in the wind. Ioseph has baptised all on the island, and will have dipped these children in the water; there is no fear for them. But still Papias finds himself asking. His faith tempts him to think of a personal favour. He looks at the girl with the ruined skin of her face and he closes his eyes. When he opens them, it will be gone; it will be cleansed away and he will feel the returning breath. Papias prays for it. He asks that it happen now. In a fever of belief he tells God that he will not succumb to vanity but keep the curing a secret. No one need know.

The wind beats at him. His eyes are shut to the dull grey hood of cloud, the obscured face of the heavens, but at any instant he expects to feel the blaze of illumination. His youth demands it, a visitation fierce and rapturous and violent.

Salt air swirls. Sandflies find the gash at his ankle and embed in blood. Gulls downed and raucous make urgent angry business with their wings. But Papias pays them no heed. The girls in his arms, his praying is absolute and aloud now. The Greek ascends into the air like a white ladder pressed up into the invisible, all about it the soft, exhausted collapse of the sea in the stones.

'Now, O Lord, come and make these, your children, live!' Papias cries. He tilts his head to allow the imminent radiance to blind him. That, he would gladly accept. Gladly he would be as the old apostle, his master. He has heard of so many healings, so many accounts of miracle, of leprosy cleansed, lameness righted, and even, yes, the dead rising, that he does not doubt the power; what he doubts is only his own worthiness to be its conductor.

The children lie along his arms, his hands cupping their heads. Across the sand floor unseen scuttles a crab. It delays on ochre seaweed, makes small pinchings of sideways motion; it is the size of a man's hand. What food it finds in the slime of the weed is insufficient, and it comes forward, pincers purposeful and elegant, across the shifting undulations of the sand. Minute twigs, like fingertips, the crab squeezes for small life. The blown bits of dwellings and boats from the sea, briny insect-loaded sea wrack, soft crumble harvests of rot alive with maggots, pieces of cloth run away in the wind, sheltering hard-skinned sea slugs, all that the storm undressed and shore-scattered like a bounteous god the crab considers on its route. In low observance it finds a plenitude and yet progresses onwards, as if a little of each is allowed only, or its lot is to be unrestful always on land. The crab crosses shingle and grit, finds brief meaningful pause in the under-place of a rock, scuttles on.

The crab arrives at Papias's foot before it knows it. The force of the youth's stance has embedded him, and sand thinly covers his sandals. The level is blown next to his ankle, where in the wound sandflies cling and suck and buzz, emboldened by the man's stillness to believe him dead or dying. Some, giddy and sated, fly up and hover briefly about the lifeless girls, land inquisitive, explorative, then flee the wind, back down to find the warm blood of the ankle they have forgotten. Black-shelled, sea-creased in an exquisite pattern of five arcs, ignorant of the world above, the crab lies motionless; it pinches a full careless fly, an ooze of white pulp, then senses the something in the sand below it.

Papias knows nothing of this. His voice is hoarse from praying against the wind and he has stopped now to wait. He imagines more prayers will only annoy; he has asked and his entreaty must travel whatever vast distances, through what realms lie ranked and assembled the saints and all the orders of angels up and on to the throne itself. He must attend. The girls grow weightier in his outheld arms. An ache pulls at the top of his shoulder. But Papias will not yield to it. He fears the slightest movement may disturb the ladder, may off-centre the miracle. Suffering is the currency for salvation, and he intends his arms to fall away before he surrenders the girls to death.

In the thin sand covering Papias's right foot a featureless ant is paused. Sweat, salted and savoured with longing, has fallen. The ant moves upon it and the crab pinches and catches sand and skin both. A flake of toe flesh is peeled. The sand shifts, exposing a small wound, and the crab sidles closer, till it lies along the line of the foot facing the five toes.

Papias feels the claw and the sharp announcement of intent, but he does not move and he does not open his eyes. His arms are agony. His head is bowed forward.

The sky darkens. Gulls and petrels dance upon the breaking waves. Effort and strain make the youth hot.

Papias cries out. For an instant, no more, he tries to endure the pain, tries to hold the girls in his arms and see if, now, at this moment of agony, at last the light is to descend. He looks up into the merciless grey, then cries and drops to his knees, laying both infants on the sand. Then he crouches forward, his two hands pressed into the damp grit and his forehead lowered to it, and he lets from him a long loud cry of no words, a wailing plaint that goes on and on, issuing freely from the place where his faith has been pierced.

Dark is fallen. Papias stares out into the sea. He has missed returning for the evening bell and prayer. A wounded part-moon is uncovered in the sky.

The bodies of the girls are before him.

It was for me to do this, he thinks. It was for me and not another to come today.

Wearily he rises and goes by the dwelling and finds a heavy stick there. With this he breaks the shale and opens a hole. In time he kneels and claws the dirt free, then is himself inside the pit, scrabbling at the dark below when he had imagined such light from above. He finishes and climbs out and goes inside the fisher's hut. It is dark. The shape of the woman Marina is where Papias had last left her.

'We must bury the children,' he says. 'I have prayed for them. They are with our Lord in heaven.'

She rocks back and forth slightly in her sitting. She says nothing.

Papias goes outside and lifts the infant girls one at a time and lays them into the pit. The wind is gone. Night is tranquil and ink. He stands bowed and prays again and does not look up into the sky. He scoops the dirt with both hands and lets it fall.

He returns to the hut.

'A mouthful of your water, please,' he asks. But Marina does not move, and he pats the dark blindly till he finds the water pouch and drinks.

'I have demons. I have death,' the woman says.

Papias lowers the water.

'My husband first, then my children. Who I touch dies. Now you,' she says.

6

Afraid that he is forgetting, John remembers. Afraid that age invents memories, he goes into the vastness of his mind to find the true.

Six stone water jars. Or eight?

Six. Our talk at the table. Nathaniel and Philip joking, something about under the fig tree.

Dusty from the long walk to Galilee. Andrew leaning to me: 'We will see the sky opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man. He has said so.'

Yes.

Drinking the wine freely all of us, excited. Chosen.

At the wedding they were not expecting us. They did not know you had disciples, Lord.

Your mother: 'They have no wine.'

'My hour has not yet come.'

That look. As if you did not wish it to begin.

We fell silent. A bird flapping high in the awning.

'They have no wine.'

Because she knew it would be now. Now would be the first sign. There in Cana.

But you did not speak; you looked to your mother's eyes.

I thought to say we would leave and get wine. I was the fastest; I could run and bring wine from a cousin of Nathaniel not far.

But the look in your mother's eyes. As if she pushed you with her eyes: Go, now, begin.

The bird flapping high above. Not escaping.

The six stone water jars, empty.

I did not need a sign, Lord. Already I believed.

Your mother turning to the Architriklinos: 'Do what he tells you.'

The moments after, I remember. Your mother touching your sleeve. Walking from you. My puzzlement sitting next to you. Across from me, Nathaniel and Philip and James. Andrew pushing to see. None of us knowing what to do.

Your face. The light in it. The knowledge.

'Fill those jars with water.'

The buckets being brought from the well, the water clear falling into them.

'It is only water,' Andrew whispered.

More buckets brought. More water.

Your face unperturbed and considering each of us. Your sad smile of knowledge.

'Now draw some out.'

The heads of us turned to see.

Not I. I knew. I heard the Architriklinos cry, 'It is wine!' But already you had stood.

'Come.'

Philip could not stand; Nathaniel took his arm. Your mother was watching us leave. The music was playing.

You looked at the awning; the bird flew free.

The angel descending has golden wings. From the fore rank of seraphim, seated blissful in divine light, it has come, its form majestic, its purpose sanctified. Rising resplendent upon its summons, and laying broad the full glory of its wings, it had paused momentarily before flight, in manner as one elect and upon the rim of high heaven prepared. With single beat it met the hallowed air, fanned to the seraphim ambrosial farewell and flew beyond the gathered company of the prophets and the saints and the martyrs of the Almighty, beyond Isaiah and Elijah and Moses and all the faithful departed. To the furthest frontier of the celestial it arrived effortless, was as a flaming comet passing, lustrous, sublime. From its prominence at heaven's gate it considered amassed the stars below, myriad assembly of creations, carpet of illumination, then plunged headlong. Wings enfolded rearward, feet as one, it fell like God's arrow. Past the illumined belt that girdles paradise, and the supernal glow that radiates beyond, past the black and the blue, the lesser worlds of empty space, fathoms numberless of uncreated nothing wherein the cries of the undeserving perish and reach no further, past all the angels flew.

It made descent beyond purgatory and paused not to pity or preach, not to tell of those elsewhere bound in chains by the burning black waters of the Styx, the Acheron, the Lethe, whose agony was promised everlasting. It passed as lightning, swift, strict, missioned; came to that outer region where the sun burned white brilliance of fire, made melt any. But here the angel was scorched not and came itself as silvered light, in form formless, in speed absolute. And so appeared in hovered pause above the placid shelf of planet Earth, within its sight all lands and seas that were, all from Asia to Judea and to the north as far as Gaul and Brittania. Its wings it extended then; feathers slight fell, drifted below as marvels; then, in brief quiescence considered the beauty and perfection of creation, what rivers and mountains, what seas.

From all, the angel chose the island, and lifted and lowered its wings mightily and swooped invisible down.

Now, here, at the entrance of the cave, it comes. Appears from within a great illumination, a thousand lamps large, dazzling to human sight. In accompaniment is a sound, sweet, melodic, music without playing. He folds to him his golden wings. He comes from the light and is clear and beautiful to behold, face becalmed, demeanour serene, as though journey from the ranks of seraphim in heaven to the place beneath is not arduous or lengthy.

'Prochorus,' the angel says.

The man bows low to the ground, then drops to his knees.

'Prochorus,' the angel says again.

The scribe cannot believe the angel knows his name. Then he believes it and believes his reward is at hand, believes when he rises that he will assume eternal form and begin his own ascent. His being is filled with gratitude and surrender. Upon his face is a look of transport.

Then he feels himself shaken. A hand touches his cheek.

'Prochorus!'

And he opens his eyes and sees Papias standing there.

'Wake, Prochorus, wake. Where is the Master?'

The angel is gone. There is only the looming face of the youth.

'Prochorus, the Master is not here.'

The scribe is curled on the floor. Chastened by the vanity of the dream, for some moments he cannot stir. It is as though, returned to earth, he is made of weightier stuff and will not be able to stand. But the look of Papias is wild and urgent, and Prochorus presses against the burden of disappointment and rises.

'How long have you been asleep?'

Prochorus does not answer. He crosses the cave with the lamp to where the Apostle had last been sitting. He looks into the empty space in puzzlement. Papias comes to his shoulder. Neither of them say what crosses in their minds. Neither say that perhaps the Apostle has been taken from them.

'Go, wake the others. Call his name. Quickly, quickly,' Prochorus says.

The dawn is near to breaking. There is a chill wind. Papias hurries away across the rocks, while Prochorus stands and cups his hands and calls after the Apostle. His voice travels nowhere. The sea sighs back at him and he feels unwell. He calls again, and again. He goes some way along the upper ledge of the scarp and stumbles and falls forwards, and fears then the blind apostle has plunged off the edge to death in the rocks below. The thought is as a sickness and he lets out a cry.

Across the darkness the other disciples come. Shades against the blued blackness of the predawn, they announce themselves like seabirds by calling. Their master's name is cried over and over. They assemble and disperse, assemble again. None admonishes Prochorus for sleeping when he was to be watching. The business of finding the Apostle is too urgent. Even the elder, Ioseph, is with them now, and with him the wheezing, anxious figure of Simon.

'Where might he be gone? This is not good. This is not good.' Simon wrings his hands.

Ioseph is swift and decisive. 'Two along the upper rocks,' he says, 'two to the eastern ledge. Linus and Prochorus go above to the meeting place, either side of the pathway. He may be fallen. Simon stay here. Papias and I to the foreshore.'

'I am more nimble, I will go with him.' It is Matthias, who appears out of the dark.

'Very well. Simon, remain here by the cave lest he come.'

'But why is he gone?' Papias asks.

'Go,' Ioseph says. 'Hurry.'

A dull daylight greys the island. The figures of the disciples clamber away, calling. They are like ones abandoned in the dark. Across the air no seabirds fly, and the bleak sky above the island seems lidded closed. Matthias moves quickly, his thin figure light. He stops calling. From the foreshore he considers the ledge above them, the fall that would be fatal. Papias is behind.

'Do you think he is perished?'

'Papias, are you unwell? Your face is pale.'

'I am. . I may have taken ill in the night. Do you think he is perished?'

Matthias looks at him in the thin light. He does not answer. He thinks: What will it mean for them if the Apostle is gone? Without him what will be the hope for their faith enduring there in banishment on the island? What if he is simply wandered out in the dark and fallen to death? What if he has simply succumbed to the fate of the aged or infirm? A mere human ending. It will mean nothing; his power will fade away. There will have been no sign, no miracle. They will feel cheated; they will hunger for a new master.

'I will go the southern shore,' Matthias says. He points in the opposite direction. 'Can you walk that way?'

Papias nods.

'If you find him and he. .'

They look at each other, then away. They do not say. Matthias's impatience is clear; the old man cannot be left alone; that is what their living has become, minding him on an island. He shakes his head at the thought of it, then he is gone up on to the large rocks, where a man falling from above would be broken like a shell.

Papias prays as he walks. He scans the upper shore, the grey sand where gulls stand curious over spews of seaweed, the smoothed salted stones. The morning is bleak and cold. His eyes are rheumy, blurring the middle distance so a blackened mound of algae, or rockweed might easily be the figure of a fallen man. Papias fists an eye, the other blinks into the bare wind. Is that him? His sandals quicken on the sand, sinking some and making jagged twists of his prints. His heart races, his prayers are stopped. He runs lamely, wound in ankle smarting, pushing back with his hands parcels of the air, wavering his head to and fro and blinking for vision. The black mound, is it the Apostle's white garment sea-spoiled? Did he fall blindly into the sea? Papias clambers on to the first of the rocks, his ankles angled over and slipping, his body pitched forward so he feels for balance with his hands. He progresses, and then stands, fists his eyes again, and sees that the mound is not a man but a large, dark fish haloed with flies.

Momentarily, Papias sits, sighs relief. A needle of pain presses in above his left eye. The fish is of great size and without wound. It lies on one side with mouth pursed and flat incurious eye, its scales lustreless beneath the leaden sky. How it arrived so far up the rocks, what ailed it, age or disease, are not apparent to Papias. It seems to him a strange portent, and for a moment he delays on lunatic logic: the fisher gone, a fish in his place.

He looks at it, waves away flies: is it living still? Is it beached and in need only of return to water? It may be, and is briefly puzzling for reasons he cannot shape, but Papias cannot delay. He steps back, the flies return. He scratches at his face and moves back down the rocks again, hurries limping once more along the grey sand.

My soul longs for you.

Each day, each night.

I have loved you with my life, Lord.

As the vine for water, my soul thirsts for you.

Come, Lord.

I have remained.

Come for me now and take me to you.

This is my prayer. Now, Lord.

Now.

Further along the shore Papias finds the footprints. The parting tide has left a virgin floor of sand, and upon it in the curved pathway of the blind is a pair of barefoot prints. Heel-heavy, stagger-stepped, by the white salt frill the prints make a route towards the water. Papias hurries after them. His head is still needled, his stomach unwell. Is a fever establishing in the caverns of his body? Warm droplets glisten on his brow, fall like stars past his eyes. The prints blur in the softened sand and sink, vanished into the shallow pools and low waters of the tide. Papias feels his heart drop. The Master is gone into the sea, he thinks, and without reason he thinks again of the large fish, the symbol of the Christian, beached on the stones, and steps himself into the first skirting wave. The water is shocking with cold. It seizes his ankles like ice manacles, burns his toe wound. He is gone, he thinks, gone; and with utter grief he scans the waves coming toward him and thinks he will fall into them and never rise such is his loss and guilt and regret.

He wades forwards and scans sideways into the sea, his vision smeared, and grief delirium not far. Gulls raucous wheel and hang overhead. Long, ragged ribbons of weed are in the tide and twine about him. He presses further into the freezing waves, peering down at what touches against him, half expectant to see floating and dragged there the drowned apostle.

Papias sees what may be the white head. It is some way out, in the high, rolling waters. If it is a man, he is to the point of his depth and faces the waves that come higher than him, making his head vanish in the foam.

Now, Lord.

Now.

I am here to meet you.

By water. As in the beginning.

Come now.

'Master! Master!' Papias calls. His voice is carried away, but in the expiration of another wave he sees clearly now that it is the Apostle deep in the sea. Papias calls to him again and wades forward. The water is ice against his chest, his breath is crushed. But he pushes on; John is thin and weak and will drown in moments. What madness is this? Why has he blindly gone into the sea? Is his mind overthrown? He must be saved. Unevenly the sand floor falls away, and suddenly Papias is deeper and loses footing and drops beneath a wave, wide-mouthed and gulping. He cannot swim; he paws wildly at the sand glitter and a long, slimed scarf of weed that enwraps his neck. His life bubbles furiously; kicking and flailing he sinks to drown.

In blind underwater his eyes are bulged O's of astonishment that it will end so. He calls out another grey bubble, is by a wave rolled upon himself so his garment swirls as a sea flower, and his white legs are strange stamens, loose and long and darted through by silvered fish in that fish-full sea.

Kicking done, a sandal falls free, spins, floats, sinks, heels into the home of sea lice and sea worms.

Papias is taken out by the hungry tide; the one who came to save, drowned. His eyes are open, white and pinked as scallops, his fingers pale starfish, all his body a bountiful island of feed. Underwater, the motion of the waves is soothing, is as waves of sleep coming, one after the other, each taking him further. He lets go, lets go of rescue, of struggle, of overcoming the sea. In the same instant, as if his life departs from him like a ship and he watches it go, Papias feels float from him the service of the Apostle. Floating from him are the years he has followed the Master since he heard the Christians were banished on Patmos and came himself in a fisher's boat to be baptised and stay. From him go the years of prayer and attendance and faithfulness, dissolving goes the night he has spent, the woman Marina, her dead children just ahead of him now on the journey into the everlasting. All sails into the deeps. Papias lets go, is dragged down by the undertow, wave-spun, his chest crushed for last air. A briny nothingness takes him. His brain is dulled, a sea cabbage, his final expression empty surrender.

The undersea sounds constant pounding. As though all is within a great ear, pulse and thrum, susurrus, the ceaseless sighing. Fish, silent as death, slip one direction for another. On the sea floor a shell moves minutely. Black weed waves funereal slow. The body of the man sinks unevenly, feet down, head up, as if to foot off water sprites or land walking in the afterlife. It is as ascension in reverse, slow, deliberate, hands outwards, hair fanned, garments waving even with heavenly majesty, but in descent. This floating sinking is for ever, a journey not many feet but enduring out of time, the sea's small mercy before the body touches bottom and does not rise.

But then it does.

It defies the laws of death and dominion of the sea.

It surges upwards, past waterweed and fish shoal and bursts headfirst through the waves.

Papias does not feel the hands that grasp him. His eyes are away, his mouth agape. He does not know how the drowned return, how life is measured, cut, or granted, how in the vastness of the sea the blind apostle has found him. Has he pulled back the tide like a cloth? Has he seerP. Papias has no mind to ask. Lifeless, he does not feel the fierce strength in the old man, but is fallen against the Apostle's breast, is cradled there, where the sea seems to withdraw from them. What daylight shines, what air enwraps them, are all unknown to the drowned servant; what prayers may be said, what words called up to the very gates of heavens, unheard by him.

He is held in the arms of the Apostle.

Then brusque life returns. Violent air like fierce light is thrust into the flooded chambers, and Papias is convulsed. He gags and his head shudders. John holds him. The sea about their waists. With brief flickering the eyes of the drowned open. Papias sees where he is.

He opens his mouth and speaks a spew of seawater.

'Praise God,' the blind apostle says.

And Papias turns to the grey swirl of sky all about them, as if he might see just then, the sight of the Lord himself departing.

7

'His mind is lost,' Matthias says. 'In his blindness he does not know day from night. He wandered out and did not know where he was and could have perished in the sea. This is the truth. Prochorus, tell me, is this not the truth?'

They sit inside the open doorway of Matthias's dwelling of skin and sticks, planking and rock. Iron light falls, the sea beyond rough.

Matthias offers a dried fig, gnaws on its aged wrinkling when it is declined.

'You have known him, Prochorus. He is no longer the same man. You cannot say so. And yet we follow what he says. Answer me this: if he says we must all walk into the tide and drown in the morning, what shall we answer?' Matthias's hooded eyes seek the scribe's, but Prochorus looks away.

'I tell you this. We do nothing here for the Lord. This is not what God wants of us, Prochorus. He spoke to the Ancient many years ago, but does he now? The others will not ask this question, but they think it. I know they do. You do, too, don't you? You must wonder where is the one singed with fire that dictated the revelation? Where are the revelations he promised were at hand?'

The fig requires harsh chewing to find flavour. Matthias works it, pursed in his cheek, fingers out seed caught in his teeth. His voice is clear and unafraid; he has calculated what he is to say and has chosen now, and Prochorus, with whom to begin.

'Consider,' he says, and draws another fig from the pouch, offers it, is declined, eats. 'Consider this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man. He was the son of Joseph the carpenter. A Galilean. As a child he was a child. He did not cure the sick, raise the dead. He was as you or I, Prochorus. There were no signs. Nothing. Why so, if he was the Son of God? Why, if the Son of God, and his cousin is dying of a snakebite, his aunt lame, why not lay a hand and heal? Why not begin God's work at once? Illness and hurt were always present, why wait? Why play with other children and live an ordinary life if Jesus was the Son of God?'

Prochorus is uncomfortable on the timber stool. He feels flushed. The sweet smell of the fig on Matthias's breath is turning his stomach. His face is parched and stiff from the salt wind.

'Answer me, Prochorus. Why?'

'I need water. I am thirsty.'

'There is only one answer,' Matthias continues, the water in a pouch behind him. 'The Son of God would not play with children, would not learn the trade of carpentry. For what? For what purpose learn to plane wood? No, these are human things, Prochorus. Listen to me. Listen.' Matthias's lips are thin, his face a thin triangle climbed with black beard. 'The truth is, Jesus was as you or I.'

'Jesus was the Christ.'

'But first he was a man, then God descended upon him. Just as he had on the Baptist before him, and before him on David, and on Moses, and Elijah, and so on into ancient time. The Lord descended upon him and he became the Christ and was no longer the carpenter. God came upon him so that Jesus might do his work. It is the truth; I know it, Prochorus. And answer me this, why would the Son of God allow himself to be scourged like a man, to be spat upon, humiliated, and hung to his death on the cross?'

Matthias leans forward; the zeal of his words carries him. His brows are brought together in a deep furrow. Impatiently he waves a thin-fingered hand in the air as if warding off a bird.

'What was to gain by that? How many more followers might we have if at that moment he had shone forth with blinding light? If he was truly the Son of God and had been able then to strike,' he fists a hand, smacks it to the other, 'if enemies and unbelievers were made to fall to their knees then, and he proved himself the Almighty?'

He draws his stool closer; his voice is throaty now with passion. 'Think, Prochorus, what would have been then. Think of how he may have thrown off the cross like a stick, how he may have risen in air clothed in light and all would have seen and believed. Believed, Prochorus. Think of it. All would have believed, and for all time. We, his followers, would not have been persecuted. Despised by the world. We would have been honoured. And would the Son of God not want that? Would he not know that by showing himself then and not hanging on the cross all would have known it to be the truth: that Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God? And none could deny it. His followers would have outnumbered Roman legions. So why, Prochorus? Why then did Jesus not do this? Did he want us to suffer? To be hated? Flogged at the walls of synagogues? To be banished by Roman emperors to live on such a barren rock as this?'

Prochorus does not answer. He palms his bald head. His brow is bubbled with sweat, a furious itch is on his cheek and neck. He works at it. He wants water, but has not time to ask before Matthias says, 'What is the answer? How can it be explained?' He taps his fingertips together, a tent in desert wind. 'My learned friend, I will tell you. Jesus of Nazareth was not the Son of God, but a man like you or I. When he reached the age to be useful to our Lord, God descended upon him so that he might do his works. Christ did not come in the flesh, but in spirit. And so, too, God departed from him and left Jesus before Calvary. And Jesus knew this. He was again a man. He cried out as much. The power of the Lord, the spirit, had gone from him, as from all of the prophets. He suffered, he died on the cross, Prochorus. He could not shine forth or throw off the cross, because he was as you or I then and could do nothing. Do you see?'

The light in the hut is low. The wind is gone away. There is curious stillness, on the damp sand floor a converse of flies.

'I need water,' Prochorus says.

The other does not move. His eyes are fixed on the scribe.

Prochorus works the itch on his right cheek. 'Matthias, a drink,' he gasps. 'Water.'

'Water, yes,' Matthias stands and from a table behind him lifts the water bag, holds it. 'You are learned, Prochorus. You are knowledgeable, able to discern truth. I respect you. That is why I have spoken.'

The scribe's hand is reached out, the water not yet given.

'As the Lord visited Jesus, Prochorus, so, too, he can visit himself upon others. You know this. We are not meant to remain here. It is not the Lord's intention. We who follow him have been chosen, and are free from sin, and must not live uselessly here in banishment. Prochorus,' Matthias whispers, 'J know this to be true' Then he gives the scribe the water bag.

Prochorus drinks. His eyes are already fevered, the side of his face red with rash. And whether because he sees this or he judges he has risked enough for now, Matthias says no more. He sits on the stool, tents his fingertips. No wind at all blows.

I hated them for wanting always a sign. 'What sign can you show us?' Always asking. 'Go on, a sign, a sign!'

I did not need a sign. I believed.

You know I did.

We went up to Jerusalem when Passover was near. A dry season. In the temple precincts the animal sellers, the coin changers changing the denarii and drachmas to pay the temple tax of a half-shekel. Calling out their rates to those approaching. Oxen in the passages, sheep, cages of doves. Noise of trading. Hot sun. The long journey we had walked to come there.

When we come to the temple, something will occur, I thought.

On the long walk up the hillsides you did not speak. You walked swiftly. I was by your side.

When we came, they had already heard of you. Their murmurs we heard: 'That is him! That is Jesus, the one who did those things. They follow him. Look!'

And some called your name, and others asked did we want strong oxen, fat sheep, cheap rates for coin changing. They pulled at your sleeve. I struck one in the face. James another. He kicked a table of coins. Spilling in the sunlight. The cries of the animals, the sellers waving their hands. James with his hands about the neck of another.

Because we had imagined it otherwise. Because we had walked that long walk up the dry hillsides, thinking, Behold, the Son of God comes to Jerusalem.

And we, the chosen, alongside him.

But no glory was in this. Dirt and noise and fighting. A man pulling me back, striking me.

Another standing before you offering a jewelled brooch, pulling at your garments. Thinking because we were your many servants that you were wealthy.

You bent down to the bedding of the oxen and entwined the straw and reed to make a whip of cord. Raised it in the air.

The only time I ever saw your anger.

James and I and Philip and Andrew wild with fighting, furious as beasts.

You were ashamed, I thought. Of them. Of us, too. And knelt down in that deserted passageway of the temple.

To repent.

For the glory of the Father could not be won that way.

In two days the sellers and the coin changers would be back. You knew that. You knew and knelt and knew already the history of what was to come.

The merchants went running to the chief priests and the elders and told them of you, how the people would not be able to pay the temple tax if there were no coin changers.

And the chief priests came and asked, 'What sign can you show us, authorising you to do these things?'

I confess, Lord, I, too, wanted a sign then. I wanted them struck down, made lame, prostrate on the ground before you.

You placed your hand on your chest. 'Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.'

We did not understand then. No more than the priests. I looked at the temple walls. I expected you would make them fall by raising your hand. Such was my belief.

Such was my love.

'Master?'

'Papias. I hear in your voice you are recovered.'

'I have brought a bowl of lentil pottage. Master, will you eat?'

'My thanks.'

It is mid-morning. John sits near the cave entrance, his white head tilted back, brown blind eyes open to the weak sun. There is a little wind. Before him the island prison is stilled and empty, bleak rock and brooding sea.

The young disciple carries a small wooden bowl, places it in the Apostle's hands, sits by him while he eats. Papias has told none that John was in mid-sea when he found him. For in the aftermath of the rescue he was not sure himself what he saw. He has said only that he came upon the Apostle wandered down by the shore. He has not said he himself was drowned and found by his blind master in the deep waters, for the puzzle of what happened is too profound and unclear in his mind.

'Your foot is lame?'

'It is a small thing, Master.'

'I hear you limp.'

'It will be soon healed.'

John spoons the pottage, the lentils long soaked and thick and savoured with fish tails and herbs.

'I have been weak, Papias,' he says. 'I have surrendered to impatience.'

'You are our master. If you are weak, we are weaker. You are the beloved disciple of the Lord himself,'

Do not call me that. I am no more beloved than another — all are beloved.'

Papias purses his lips, does not ask the question he wishes to, what the Apostle was doing in the tide. He is filled with restlessness, wild birds of the unasked, the untold. His hands tap softly on his thighs. He studies his wounded foot, raised lips of scar, sandgristled. He wants to tell of the woman Marina and her dead children and her belief she is with demons, but feels a cloud of guilt over it. He did nothing wrong; he stayed with the woman, he prayed for her, he prayed for her children safe passage to heaven. But still, in him is guilt and restlessness.

'Tell me of the sky,' the Apostle says.

'The sky, Master?'

'Yes. Tell me.'

'There is cloud. White cloud. Moving slowly. And some blue in the east. Pale. Very pale.' Papias does not know what else to add, whether there is something of significance he misses. The old man says nothing. He sits, face angled to the light, silent.

Is it this sky or another in memory he sees? Papias wonders. In his blindness does he remake the world as it was once? Where does he go in the long silence of the days here on the island? Papias is too young to have known him in his vigour. The Apostle was already blind when the youth sailed to Patmos, and so he has not seen the strong figure of the fisherman, the muscled, brown-haired figure who in his own youth had walked into Jerusalem by the side of Jesus Christ. But he has heard a thousand stories. Boanerges, Jesus had called the sons of Zebedee, Sons of Thunder, for their temper and strength. Papias had heard of them in preachings from wandering Christians who came in from the desert lands beyond Antioch. He had heard of the twelve, the followers of the Galilean, and how one was little more than a youth; this one loomed in Papias's mind. To be of that age and see the Christ, what would it have meant? Would Papias himself have known? Would he, too, have abandoned his family, the fishing business, to follow? He had listened to the preachings carefully, the stories they told beneath a held awning on sticks, of the signs at Cana, the healing of the royal official's son, and come back the following day to hear more. In dazzling sunlight he sat cross-legged and heard from the blistered lips of the Christians' accounts, grossly detailed, of the scourging of Jesus. Blood spatter, lacerations, spearings, stones thrown, all were vividly painted. Thin arms out-spanned, head thrown back, one with ragged twist of dusty beard and eyes baleful and prominent, made alive the agony of the crucifixion, the nails driven, the pulp of hand bursting, the raw torment when the cross was risen up and the Christ hung.

And these things the youth John witnessed, Papias had thought. When he lay in the cool of the night after, images of the preaching took possession of his mind. For the three days the Christians remained he went to listen. He heard the glory of the resurrection told — John running first to the tomb but waiting at the entrance, as if he did not need to see to believe. The Christians told it like a triumph, though the flies sheltered beneath the canopy and crawled on their faces, though some passing called out at them to be gone, or derided their telling with pulled faces and mocking gesture.

'What of John after?' Papias had asked the skeletal Christian.

'What of the Son of Thunder?'

'To John was given the care of the Lord's mother, Mary. And he was attentive to this until she rose to heaven in glory. Then he travelled in his ministry, as do we, telling the good news. And for this he was imprisoned and stoned and flogged, but escaped and continued. He passed through lands as many as stars, through Phrygia and the country of Galatia, Mysia, Bithynia, through Pisidia into Pamphylia, was in Thyatira and Amphipolis, Thessalonica, saw fifty men crucified on the road out of Sepphoris.'

The Christian, warming to his topic, continued, the naming of places a kind of conquering.

The boy Papias had sat, mesmerised. It was the best story he had ever heard. In it he believed utterly. When the Christians left, ragged caravan of a donkey with pots and water bags, mat rolls, rattle and hum of murmured prayer, Papias missed the theatre of their conviction, the quality they bore of being touched. He watched for others, pricked his ears when stories circulated of Christians driven out, of crucifixions, stonings, of how they were beggars and would steal even the mat you sat on. When others came, as they did — now three thin and wizened near ghosts, one, whose face was bubbled with leprosy, now a sprawling family, men, women, a blind child — he went and listened.

'What of John, the youth?' he always asked, 'who sat at the right hand of Jesus?'

And so, frayed patchwork of Christ's history was his. From numerous tellings, expansive, exaggerate, or spare, Papias learned the life story of the Saviour, but more, assembled, too, the image of the fearless beloved disciple.

'Where is he now?' he would ask. 'Where is John, the youth?'

He was now an Ancient, he was told. One said he was imprisoned in a pit in Rome, to be fed to the lions, but the Lord God came in a chariot of light and saved him and slew all that attended. He had gone into the east another recounted, into strange far lands on the furthermost edge of the earth to preach the resurrection. He had cured a thousand, it was told, made see the blind. He had plucked a spear from his side and tossed it from him as a dove that flew into the heavens. He walked the world entire as living witness and could not be killed, the Christians said. Ten thousand miles were in his feet, dust of all creation.

One, Nuri, a rag of man, sag-fleshed, slit-eyed, said he himself had touched the Apostle's robe. He held a bone of arm towards Papias, outstretched claw of fingers, in invitation for the youth to leave his life and join them. Beneath the pulsing heat, blue canopy of sky and scorched light, Papias had considered them: the smallest of tribes, their two goats, their road-worn apparel a badge of their poverty, the watery pink of zeal in their eyes. He had read more books than all of them, had clean robes and a room of his own next to his parents, whose love he had as an only child. The claw wavered in the sunlight.

'Come with us,' Nuri said, hacking the words like pits from the thin gully of his throat. 'Come and follow the Lord.'

The others, who sat to listen or stood about momentarily to eye the curiosities, looked then at Papias as at a spectacle. He felt their eyes upon him, the sudden ringing in his ears as though his head was inside a bell. He had not expected it. Nuri was a shrunken and unseemly messenger if from God. His skull was reclaiming his face. His lips, part eaten by some long-ago disease, were dried crusts, quivering now as he waited for the answer.

'He has called you. Will you come and follow the Lord?' he asked a last time.

In the distance of the village a donkey brayed. The spell broke, and Papias shook his head and walked hotly away. There were jeers at the Christians and jokes in the aftermath of intensity. In the evening they were gone, empty circle of printed ground when Papias returned to it the following day, in its centre, stick-drawn, the sign of the fish.

For a time then he kept himself from others who passed that way.

But always there was a prompting. In night visions he would see the Christians flogged, the crucifixions rising one after the other along the roads of his dreams. He saw the outstretched hand hanging in air before him, and sometimes the white-clothed figure of the Christ himself, pacing away over desert sands toward immutable destiny. But these yet did not sway him. He awaited a sign, and believed he was sent it when one day two years later he heard that the apostle John, himself, the Son of Thunder, was banished in exile on the island of Patmos.

Papias sailed there and was baptised, and because of his youth and devotion, became the attendant of the Apostle.

These things he thinks now as he sits by John at the entrance of the cave and tells of the sky. His is to serve the Master, he tells himself, and in doing so serves best the Lord.

But as he sits and the clouds move swiftly across the blue, Papias also thinks of the two children he has buried beneath the stones, and the woman Marina who believes she is a harbour for demons and death.

8

'Master, it is Prochorus. He is ill with fever. The side of his face is imprinted with blister.'

Danil, a disciple of sixty, brings the news. It is late afternoon. Light is thinning.

'He speaks in delirium. We must pray for him.'

John stirs from reverie, angles to Danil his head, then rises quickly. 'I will go to him.'

'No!' Papias does not mean to startle but he does. 'I will go, Master, let me.' He wears a pink desert flower of guilt and concealment on his cheeks.

Danil looks at him, astonished that he would tell the Apostle what to do.

'It may be catching,' Papias says to him and twists the hand that touched Prochorus's face to wake him. 'Let me go only.'

John does not pause. 'Lead me,' he says.

They go down the rock face to the stones of the foreshore. Seabirds whirl above them. A bright wind hammers silver out of the sea. The Apostle's robe is blown against him, so he seems thinned to nothing, a pale sliver of light traversing the stones. They come along by the hardened sand, the smaller gulls dancing before them, printing the virgin ground.

'Here, Master,' Papias says, and they turn where the shore bends away and stones have been lifted to make a pathway upwards, towards two huts, part tent, part boat, perched on the edge. The old apostle is surprisingly nimble, his feet sure, his head high, and he moves with silent purpose and fixed demeanour, unencumbered, it seems, by blindness.

When they arrive on the cliff top, three of the other disciples, Simon, Lemuel, and Meletios, are knelt outside praying. They stop when the others approach, rise and go towards them.

'He is worse with every moment, Master,' Simon says. 'Ioseph is with him.'

John stoops in the doorway. The inner darkness is no darker to him. He does not see the ravage of black blister that spreads on the scribe's face and neck, the yellowish complexion of his forehead. By his side, Papias sees these and must draw his hand sharply to his mouth to obstruct the vomit, then spin gagging out into the daylight.

Ioseph rises from his place by the bed mat and touches the Apostle's hand. 'He will not take water, Master,' he says. 'He speaks wildly, cries out, then is silent but for convulsions that seize him. He is shaken as if by a force, then released like a creature thrown aside. His blister climbs and bubbles. He is fevered hot as fire. In instants he returns to himself, speaks for you to come, then is lost again.'

John approaches. He feels downward with his right hand, is guided by Ioseph, and so finds the rough timber stool. His head is upward, his eyes far away, as though watching in the infinite dark for the descent of most slender light.

The other disciples gather behind, silent, watchful, expectant of miracle and afraid it will not come. They have testament of many healings, have preached the same countless times — leprosy, lameness, wild contagions of the blood — death itself they have preached undone by faith. But never have they witnessed it. Their stories are their creed, and by these they have stood in marketplace and hilltop telling to the crowd until so many imagined damaged figures were made whole that the world entire could seem cured by this Saviour. The disciples recounted it with greater or lesser detail each to their own fashion. But in each of them, in the disparate corners of lands where they were, the telling was informed not by evidence. They had seen no curing themselves, only told of those told to them. Now they hold their breaths in the hut — to keep from the fever, and lest they obstruct by human weakness the coming of the power.

It is so. John bends down his head to Prochorus and whispers his name. The scribe does not move. He lies with shallow breath on the ledge of death. John lifts his right hand, thin fingers moving toward the other's brow.

'Do not touch him, Master!' It is Papias, flushed and wide-eyed in the doorway. 'Do not touch him, Master.'

Simon cannot help himself from moving slightly back, but not John. There is a fragment of delay, no more; John's hand reaches and finds the face of Prochorus. His fingers feel the broken skin, the fury of heat, the clam and ooze, a quality waxen and lifeless in the flesh. He lays his palm against the flamed cheek, bows his head, prays.

By the entranceway the others kneel. Discovering a shallow in their faith, they breathe through cupped fingers. The time is like a dark metal beaten thin. It stretches outwards to where it must give beneath the blows. For nothing happens. Swiftly the afternoon is taken by evening into the sea. A lamp is lit. And still the Apostle is bent down over the scribe, his hand upon the face. He prays in silence, moves slightly back and forth on the stool so its joints sing thinly.

And still nothing happens. How often is it to be so? To the ten thousand prayers they pray these years on the island what answers come? No miracles have attended them. No signs that they are cherished, or that the long suffering of their faith is considered, that their sacrifice is measured and in the hereafter will be rewarded.

There is nothing. There is darkness and wind off the stars. There is the same sea sighing in chains of waves. What invisible drama plays, what passes to and fro in the columns of air above them, none knows, but the disciples think: perhaps the time is arrived at last. Perhaps the bald scribe who had attended the Apostle in his revelation is himself to reveal the Lord.

The time is beaten away, and is as nothing. No hours are measured.

The knees of those kneeling ache, the damp of the ground travels through them. Night saddles their shoulders with cold. On the bed mat Prochorus tosses and wrestles the unseen. John says his name, but it does not still the scribe. He kicks at a beast that stalks toward him.

This, your servant, Lord.

If it be your will.

Before the dawn the wind turns about and comes from the sea into the dwelling. It makes flap the canvas sides; bestirs papyrus, dried seaweed, fistful of seeds; rolls the wooden beak-cup from table to floor. The disciples are statues in half sleep, half prayer, otherliness. The wind touches them on their stooped shoulders, passes to the Apostle, who turns towards it, inquisitive of what fills the dark room where the scribe is dying. His hand is laid on Prochorus's forehead. The fever is there still. The prayers, the herbs brought and crushed, tinctures dribbled on his lips, poultices applied, all have wrought little change. Only that the patient is grown calm. Several times in the night he woke and whispered with cracked voice what could not be understood. Now the wind whirls into the hut. The lamp is out. All are in blue-black shade and do not know at first that then Prochorus opens his eyes.

John feels it.

'Prochorus,' he says, and leans down. He puts his head close to the other's lips.

What the scribe says is not heard by the others. The Apostle listens at the swollen, blistered mouth. To Prochorus he says then, 'I tell you, Jesus is the Christ, truly he is the Son of God.' And leans slightly back as though he is newly aware of a task ahead of him and the enormity of it, as though he sees suddenly the frailty of faith, of Christianity itself. John sits upright. He raises his voice in the wind.

' "The wind blows about at will," Jesus said to Nicodemus, in Jerusalem. "You hear the sound it makes but do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone begotten of the spirit. If you do not believe about earthly things, how are you going to believe when I tell you about heavenly things? No one has gone up into heaven except the one who came down from heaven — the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up," the Lord said, "that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life in him." Yes, the Lord said, "God loved the world so much he gave his only Son that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life." '

The Apostle pauses. He has preached the scene many times in far places. He has remembered often sitting in the starlit night when Jesus spoke the words for the first time, when the lemon trees were in bloom and the air sweet.

He leans close to the scribe. He touches with his fingertips the eyes, discovers that Prochorus is dead.

Anger and grief course through him. John stands up, a pale figure before the dawn, and when he speaks there is violence and hurt in his voice. The other disciples are gathered at the doorway, Matthias now among them.

'The light has come into the world, our Lord said, but men have preferred darkness to light,' he cries out, 'because their deeds were evil, for everyone who practises wickedness hates the light and does not come near the light for fear his deeds will be exposed.'

His chest heaves. It is not clear if he knows that Matthias is there, or whether he thinks there are others, too, who no longer believe as he has told him. He stands and is a glimpse of his younger self, fierce and loyal and resolute. His lips quiver with anger. It is as though he sees in the landscape of his blindness a vast temple begin to crumple, and he throws out his hands to hold it up.

Abruptly he pushes forward and knocks a stool. Papias steps quickly to his side, offers his shoulder for his master's hand, and they go past the others outside to where the dawn is not yet risen and the wind gone elsewhere.

9

The scribe is buried in a mound on the cliff top, his face towards the east. Stones are piled above him, their soft clack a doleful music. The disciples stand and pray. John is not with them. He has told Papias to leave him, and his absence is felt but not spoken. Old Ioseph leads the prayers. Matthias stands by his side with two others, Auster and Linus. The ceremony is short, Ioseph's voice thin with grief. For each there is a sense of betrayal of which they cannot speak. How has this happened, that their scribe has been struck down like this? That one who gave so much of himself to the service of the Lord has been visited by this plaguey death? Why has he been taken from them? The air above their heads is crowded with questions. The death threatens the unspoken belief they have in being chosen, in being set apart. Not because they have imagined themselves free from dying, nor because they have taken as a sign the great age of the Apostle and believed they, too, will outlast all perishing until the dawn of the Second Coming, but because Prochorus was not old. Because his role in their community was to record, and the taking of him seems an act full of portent, as if their tongues have been pulled out. All have expected the Apostle to have further revelation, and for Prochorus to be on hand to write it down. Now his death seems a wilful silencing. The disciples voice no protest. Some of them, bowed, mute, with vigilant rigour tour the inner rooms of their souls and find evidence against themselves — jumbled furniture of doubt, unbelief, false piety, pride — and leave to begin atonement.

Among them Papias harbours the greatest guilt. He fears he brought the sickness to the scribe, but has told no one. He has no sign of it on himself. When the disciples leave the burial mound, he hurries away down the rocks to the shore. His face is white, his eyes glitter like fish scales. Arriving on the soft pebble-and-shell floor of the departed tide, he slips and sinks in haste, his sandals are unfooted as he steps forward into the shallow waves. There, grey corona of gulls turning above him, he bends and dips his hands in the salt sea and rubs them hard together. Again and again he dips and draws the water and scrubs the invisible from his hands. The waves are against his calves, his robe darkly stained to his waist. Against the backs of his legs and beneath his feet he feels the suck of the out-flowing sea. His actions are uncalled for. He has already tumbled entirely in the waves since visiting the fisher's wife, but nonetheless scrubs now at his hands with a wild passion for absolution. He knuckles one palm then the other, presses his fists through the cold surface of the sea and holds them there as if manacled. The gulls wheel, waiting to see what strange fish may appear.

By the time Papias is done, his hands are as red as if hell-burnt. He comes from the sea shivering, and Matthias is standing nearby watching. Two paces behind him stand Linus and Auster.

'Young Papias,' Matthias says, 'what troubles you?'

'I did not see you there.'

'You were occupied intently.'

Papias turns back to look at the sea, as though a plausible reason may be written there.

'How cold your hands are,' Matthias says, stepping closer and for an instant taking the reddened fingers in his own. 'Are you suffering some ailment?' Matthias's voice is soft and comes about like a velvet cloak. His eyes are darkly inviting. 'Papias, tell me,' he says, and lets go the hands.

'No. No, I am well. It was something from the cave, something on my hands,' Papias tells him, tells the others behind him, folding his arms so the evidence is tucked beneath them. He feels the lies multiply like flies around a rotted fish. 'I was foolish. I thought it might be. . I thought there might be disease.'

'You are upset by the death of our dear Prochorus.'

'Yes.'

'Indeed are we all. He is a grievous loss.' Matthias looks to the others and nods towards them. 'But he is now in everlasting life, therefore why should we mourn? Don't you believe so, Papias?'

'I do.'

'What does the Ancient say? What does he say about the death of our scribe?' Matthias is close enough to kiss Papias on the cheek, the cloak tightly enwrapped.

'The Master has not spoken of it.'

'Truly?'

'Truly, he has not.'

'Not of Prochorus. Nor of me?'

'No.'

'You find no comfort in that, I am sure. I find no comfort in it. Indeed it is troubling that he has not offered us wisdom.' Matthias looks out into the sea. 'He is himself perhaps unwell. Have you remarked it?'

'The Master?'

'Yes.'

'No, I have not.'

'You may have other concerns. Let me ask you, Papias, do you think the Lord God wishes us to remain here?'

'The Master says so.'

'Indeed.' Matthias considers the sea a moment longer then turns to face the youth. He smiles and says, 'Does the Lord speak only to him? Curious if one blind old man was to be the only ear for the heavens.' Slowly he shakes his head. He places one hand on the other's shoulder. 'Did not the Lord speak unto Moses and say, "Speak unto all the children of Israel and say unto them: You shall be holy"? So it is written in scripture, Papias. Yes, dear brother, surely there is more discourse between heaven and earth than to one Ancient. The Lord does not speak to only one. But we will talk again of this, you and I. I can see you are anxious to be elsewhere. Perhaps Linus will attend to the Master and allow you. .' Matthias throws open his hands. 'Go wherever it is that presses on your mind so.'

'No, Matthias.'

'O, yes, I insist. It is small charity to attend to yourself, Papias, that you may better serve. You are free, I relieve you.' He turns to those behind him. 'Linus, go and serve the Ancient, our beloved apostle.'

'He does not like to be called that,' Papias says quickly.

Matthias spins about as if stung. 'Truly?'

'Yes.'

'And why not? Is he not the Beloved? Was he not the one our Lord Jesus loved the best? Who sat at the right hand? Who laid his head upon his breast? Surely he was the Beloved? Or am I mistaken? Does my memory go? Or is it his? Who does he say he was now?'

'No. No, his memory does not.' Papias's cheeks burn. Matthias's eyes are dark. He is close. His gaze seeks entry to secrets. Behind him at two paces the short, squat figure of Auster watches, and on the near stones Linus, fair-haired, slim, tall but stooped, shoulders curved forward as if to hide himself from the slight wind.

'Linus, go,' Matthias says over his shoulder. 'Attend him. But do not call him the Beloved.' He does not take his eyes from Papias. Stones click the other's departure toward the cave.

'Young Papias, you are weary,' Matthias says. 'Weary from troubles and grief. I read it on your face. Your cold hands burn red.' He shakes his head slightly, as though there is an unfair balance he would set right. 'Go, go and be at peace.'

Released, Papias begins to turn. But the cloak is still about him. 'But Papias, know that if you have concerns, if the Ancient appears' — Mathias pauses to consider the word — 'diminished in his faculties, exhausted, if you consider him too greatly taxed by his duties, come and let me know at once. Do this. I will assist you in all things. Do you understand me?'

Papias nods to be free.

'Go then, and may God bless you.'

At last he hurries away along the sea-washed stones. The day is calm but dull. Weak light is smeared. Grey waters stir restlessly. He descends to the eastern shore and across the large rocks. Seabirds scatter and return to stand behind him. Places he clambers on hand and foot. The rocks rise toward a short cliff as if the sea has broken them from the land and abandoned them. Papias makes his way upwards. In crevices are feathers or twigs or small bones decaying in sunlight and sea air. Sometimes in the rock gaps are clear falls to still pools below. His reddened hands cling to pull his weight upward across a flat-faced slab. He kicks into a smallest ledge, goes cheek-printed against the rock and hauls himself head and chest over, then climbs atop. He stands a moment, looks up at the fringe of green and the ragged thorn bush that leans aslant from the cliff edge. A powdery ground is at the top. The sea now well below him, he considers at once the route onwards and does not look down.

He does not see Auster following.

At full stretch Papias can reach the cliff top. Briefly cruciform, he clings either side of him to the rough face of the island. His fingers scrabble. Ground falls away. There is no hold. He should go back down and around the long way. But then he will be seen. Instead he scratches at the dry dirt and pebbles above him. There is nothing solid. An error now and the fall would break his back on the rocks below. Papias feels the rashness of the plan, how guilt skews the mind. His toes are pressed in the tight mouth of a thin ledge, his heels in the air. But he won't go back. He is not sure he could. He hangs there some moments, a cross of conviction. With breathy whisper the sea below collapses upon itself. Sounds of soft breakage and gull cry and the beating of his own heart: these things Papias hears. He hands away loose dirt, its click and clatter marking the distance down. He tries a claw of cliff top, but there is no support in it. It gives easily. Ache knots in his calves. For a moment there crosses his mind the thought of letting go, of stepping out of his toeholds and falling headfirst, the brief bliss of flight, his robe aflutter and the perfect calm of a mind cleaned of all concern. It is a moment only. Then he is returned to the faith that there is something for him, that there is a destiny yet unknown that is his and that it has been scripted by the Lord himself. Emboldened so, he grasps the thorn bush. He takes it in both hands, the coarse knotty twist of it, then pulls.

It gives but only a little. Its roots, not deep, are gone wide for water. Papias releases his footholds and scales the cliff face, hangs briefly asway, kicks blood toes off rock, heaves, then rises face-first into the thorn bush till he can get his chest above ground and fall forwards, panting on the upper edge.

He rolls over for breath. The sky is grey and unforgiving.

Papias rises quickly. His face is scratched with thorns. He hurries across the bleak terrain toward the house of Marina.

10

I fail you.

Lord, I am weak. I am old. I forget much.

I fail you.

If a servant fail his master, ought not that master to find a better servant? What I have I hold not. Prochorus is dead. They speak against you even amongst those here. I hear it, though I hear it not. I see it, though I see it not.

I fail you.

It was long ago. I am ancient as dust. I will not see Galilee again.

Give me to drink. The woman of Samaria by Jacob's well. The others gone into the city of Sychar. I stayed with you. You asked her for water, and she was surprised that a Jew ask a Samaritan. You said, 'If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is saith to thee, give me to drink, thou wouldst have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water.

'Whosoever shall drink of the water I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.'

Sir, give me this water that I thirst not.

Lord, give me to drink.

I am your poor servant aged as dust.

Weary as ground too often sown. I confess it. What can I yield now?

We are few and weak, and pray that you may come.

Come, Lord, give me to drink.

By the entrance of the cave, Linus sits. He hears a murmuring from the Apostle, endeavours to make out the words. Then there is the silence peculiar to that cave that is not silent but filled always with the sound of water running from invisible source inside the hill above. In the early part of the afternoon, Ioseph comes along the beaten pathway to the cave. He, too, is thin and wiry and sharp-boned; his beard is coarse and white.

'Master?' he says, blinking into the darkness.

'Ioseph, come.'

John extends his hand and the disciple takes it in both of his.

'Master, I come to confess despair,' Ioseph says.

And at once John grasps his arm and rises. 'Come,' he whispers, 'bring me outside.'

Linus stands. 'I will attend you, Master.'

'No. Ioseph will see to me.'

'Matthias has instructed me, Master.'

'To disobey me? Stay. I will return, fear not. Ioseph, come.'

'I will follow in case. .'

'You will stay!'John's voice is louder, greater than himself. Linus is startled back a step and looks to Ioseph then says: 'You may fall, Master, Ioseph is old and infirm. I can follow at ten paces and. .'

'A third time: you will stay, Linus. You will not follow. I command it.'

In Linus's chin a pulse of muscle trembles. His pale eyes are a thin metal of disdain. His face is hotly reddened. How dare the old man talk to him so.

The two elders walk past him and go outside. It is after the midday and the sun has not broken the cloud. Disappointed grey light falls. In the sombre sea down the pathway below them short combed waves are whipped and swallowed. There is a salt tang on the wind. The two men proceed along a route of broad stone to a place where there is natural seating of sun-and-rain-flattened rock.

'He is not behind us?'

'No, Master. He has stayed.'

'Good. Here, then, let us sit.'

John feels with his hand the smooth rock. Always in his touching a tapping, slight, quick, light, as though he affirms the real by his fingertips and knows only then that he is in it. They face the western shore, the Apostle's face tilted to receive what light may be.

'This death has touched me closely,' Ioseph says. 'I sin of despair.'

'You are not alone, Ioseph. It has touched us all.'

'I fear. .' The elder disciple pauses, presses his palms together.

'Tell me.'

'I fear myself. I fear my weakness. Today I have thought I will die here on Patmos, like Prochorus, waiting for the Lord, when before I had supposed I would live until the day. I know this is vanity. What am I that is different from others? Why should I endure when others perish? For what reason? Because I have believed? Others have believed and been crucified. Because I have lived this long with you, old Master, because we have walked together in lands as far as Phenice and Antioch before banishment here, and because I believe the Lord watches over you and all of us? That you will live until he comes again, I am certain. And so have hoped that I, too, might see the glory. This is my first sin, I confess it: this vanity. Then the death of Prochorus has made me chastise myself. He was my friend. Why should he die? And in the darkness of my thinking a serpent has come: we all will die here, it says. We are forgotten and a plague comes now amongst us. I confess it. I have listened to the serpent, and my flesh has grown cold with the thought. I have clung to myself and wept, touched my face to find plague I dreamt would be coming. My prayers ascend not. They lie about my feet like stone birds. I despair.'

The two men sit. Little wind blows. John's face is tilted, his eyelids closed, his grey-white eyebrows lowered. He says nothing. He is a man for whom time itself seems inconsequent. It is as though, some time past, the turning of one hour into the next became to him of no matter and the numbering of one day to another a thing no longer counted. In his darkness, time is without measure of light. When he speaks of the hour that is at hand, it may be yet an age hence. He will wait. So it is, he sits and says nothing in reply for a long time. The two old men look not unlike statues high on the smooth rock. But the Apostle is troubled. He has known Ioseph more than two score years and never felt in him the despair he hears now. What is he to say? Is he to confess his own fears? To tell his old friend that he prayed for Prochorus to be spared? That he mounted high stacks of petition on the shelf of his mind, and yielded to the death only with a weak acceptance of the mystery of the Lord's way? There would be no consolation in this. He cannot tell his own thoughts. Instead, he holds silence, searches in himself for a voice.

Then, loudly the Apostle says: ' "My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. And I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand." I heard our Lord Jesus say this with my own ears, Ioseph, in Jerusalem, in the winter, in the time of the feast of the dedication. "And I give unto them eternal life." ' He reaches and finds the other's hands, holds them in his own. 'Old friend, do not despair. Grieve not for Prochorus. He was a loyal servant of our Lord and this day is in the kingdom of heaven. Neither grieve for yourself, Ioseph. For each of us the Lord has his plan. Ours is only to recognise this truth and attend him as servants a master. We wait.'

There are curious seabirds overhead. They watch for fragments of bread, foodstuffs, fish, and cry raucous as though in torment. The sea tumbles. Sky burdened with cloud releases no light. The island seems evermore a prison.

Then John speaks from a psalm. He speaks softly, as if testing that the words like stepping-stones will take him across water.

'When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion,

We were like them that dream.

Then was our mouth filled with laughter

And our tongue with singing.'

He has found the psalm without looking. The words of it are inside him. It may be that in the lifetime of his preaching he is become a living book. The scriptures entire are scratched on his spirit, written with reed pen, dipped and dug into the soft red pulsing of his inner being. Inside him is a scribed record of testament. The voices of Moses, of Joshua, Ruth, Samuel, the Books of Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, and Job, the Psalms and Proverbs, all of these are within him, and so, too, all from the twelve chapters of Ecclesiastes to the Book of Isaiah, from the voice of Daniel to Malachi. He is living book and carries their voices and their telling like a wind ever whispering inside him.

'Turn again our captivity, O Lord

As the streams in the south.

They who sow in tears shall reap in joy.

He who goes forth and weeps bearing precious seed

Shall doubtless come again with rejoicing

Bringing his sheaves with him.'

His voice grows stronger as he recites. Ioseph looks at him and is moved. 'We have missed your preaching,' he says simply.

The seabirds circle, as though chained.

'We would benefit greatly, all of us, if you preached to us again.' Ioseph leans forwards, speaks to the blind face in near whisper. 'I fear among us are heresies.'

A gap of sea sigh and gull cry. Light darkens under cloud.

John says, 'I know there are.'

Across the stony ground of the cliff top and through the scrub of thorn bush and weed where tethered is a thin goat, Papias hurries. He comes down the slope to the place where he buried the children and is relieved to find the rocks unmoved. He prays a short prayer, then continues to the dwelling. He is not sure why he has come. He is afraid of his reasons and leaves them in a corner of his mind. He knocks on the wooden frame. There is no reply. He calls out, but nothing happens. He looks around, behind him, at the desolate waste ground, three crooked sticks where cloths had been hung, a hank of briny rope, a holed bucket. He calls again, then enters.

At first there are only shadows. Papias can make out nothing. There is a stench of rotting, a salt tang of seaweed stewed long ago. He hands the edge of the rough wooden table, holds there briefly, blinks, says, 'It is I, Papias.'

His breath is loud and short. Fear of many kinds is within him. He thinks of the raw red print on Prochorus's face, the rage of the fever, the skin that buckled and bubbled and curled back from the bone blackly as though peeled. Silently he tries to say 'The Lord is my Saviour' over and over even as he breathes the thick grey soup of the air and fears he takes within him the disease. The Lord is my Saviour. He will protect me. I am a fool. I am weak to fear anything. The Lord is my Saviour. He will not let me die. Across the earthen floor a rat scuttles toward him, is apprised by smell or sense, and suddenly turns, darts into the dark. Papias looks down and in the dimness makes out the legs of the woman Marina.

She is not dead. Her mouth lets a slight warm bloom against his cheek as he cradles her head. Her eyes are far away.

'It is I, Papias,' he says. She does not move. He has not held a woman so, and the living weight of her is shocking to him — not the burden in his arms, for she is light, but the living substance of her. Her hair falls on his forearm. Her face is tilted back, and he touches it to bring her eyes towards him, but they are unseeing. Is that a blemish of contagion on her cheek?

The Lord is my Saviour.

Kneeling, Papias brings her head upright on the support of his arm. She is weak, she is collapsed from exhaustion and grieving, he decides. But within him he cannot escape the memory of her telling that she was with demons. He presses the thought away, shoving it deep. But it merely coils and snakes back and slithers now across his chest.

In an instant he sees it rise, actual, large, and loathsome into the dim air of the small room. It flicks back its head, makes hiss, and stretches with deep luxuriance, released from the tight confines of denial. The demon snake is a hundred times a snake. It twists about, rises to the rough mud of the roof, towers above the man and woman, and lets jab at nothing its forked tongue. Papias stares at it and holds Marina, as though aboard a rudderless boat that enters the mouth of a storm.

The Lord is my Saviour.

The demon laughs. Its coils continue to rise, coming from beneath, curling. Its green-gold-patterned snakeskin sliding past Papias and crowding the room. Now it lies along the lower wall, now a second length upon itself, and a third. The demon is unending; it fills the space like sin and thickens the air with a sweet poison. Papias raises his hand and cries out in fear.

The demon laughs. 'How thin is your faith,' it says. 'Look at you!'

Sharply it flicks forward its great head, lets fly its tongue so the thin yellow fork of it lashes like lightning, snaps, quivers not a finger's breadth from Papias's face. He screams, closes his eyes, thrashes at it wildly with one hand, touching nothing. With his other arm he clings to Marina.

The demon retires a small distance. 'You cannot drive me off,' it says, and laughs again as from behind Papias its tail comes and crosses his belly and enwraps him and the woman both. Papias heaves at it, but it is too great a weight.

'Go!' he cries out. 'Go. Be gone!'

But the demon does not. 'Dear friend Papias, where would I go?' it asks.

'My name. How do you know my. .?'

'I know all you know.'

'Spare her,' Papias says. 'Spare her.' He is surprised by his own words.

'If I give her to you, what will you give to me?'

Papias looks at the woman Marina, who lies across his arm. He does not remember speaking again. But at once the coils unwrap from about their waist. From above the demon snake descends in silence and crossing coolly backwards across the disciple's chest, with hiss and flicker, diminishes into nothing.

From a joint gap in the planking of the wall, Auster watches. He sees the young disciple hold the figure of a woman in his arms. So this is why Matthias wanted him followed. This is why he had to go up that treacherous cliff after him. Palms flat on the wall, face pressed sideways, he one-eyes the gap. He watches Papias hold the woman close to him. The youth studies her face, moves hair from her mouth, then he lays her down and rises and goes from view. He returns with water but no scoop. He hand-cups it to her mouth, touches water against her lips. And she coughs at last and sputters some and stirs. Her eyes come to, and she partly sits and is in a wild manner beautiful as she turns to look at him who is holding her.

'You?' she says.

11

The day being with little wind, the sea is flat and Matthias decides on a boat. A boat is fitting. He sends word by Cadmus: he has had a revelation and wishes to speak of it. Matthias tells him which disciples to call, which to pass by. So to the shore comes a quiet gathering of twelve. Matthias is pleased; numbers are signs, too. In the shallow water a boat waits.

'Come, follow,' he says and steps ahead of them into the low lapping waves. The under-stones give slightly; his brown robe darkens. He does not look behind him to see if they are following.

He walks erect into the sea. Command is in your bearing, and in your mystery, he has discovered, and proceeds in perfect faith. He is not wrong. The twelve, after a puzzled pause of only moments, step down the stony incline into anklets of surf. Matthias is on board the fishing boat and only then turns to see his flock. He goes toward the prow and stands. He wears the look of revelation upon him, or so he considers. The disciples he has chosen are the younger of those on the island. Their youth gives them a hunger for action, and Matthias knows they are restless in this useless banishment. The hold of the Apostle upon them is weakening every day. How long will they continue to believe? How long before worms of doubt eat them hollow? Will they live into old age on Patmos, confined by the Romans like mad dogs? Matthias has run a speech in his mind, an exhortation, a patina of genuine concern to hide the hooks of intent, but all the time feeding doubt, dropping worms to fish. His skills at rhetoric are considerable; he could argue them into discipleship, but in the end has decided on a different lure.

The boat sails with gentle sway. The island retreats and shows itself for what it is, a barren place of grey rock and scrub. The twelve sit ranked on either side, saying nothing. The water deepens below them, a black-blind murk. Matthias instructs Cadmus to lower the dun-coloured sail, and the boat slows and lingers in slap-water sounds, its mast an inverted cross.

Matthias plants his feet and holds open his arms. The time is now; he will wait no longer.

'Let us pray,' he says. The disciples bow their heads. He has a last moment here, a pause that fills him with power. He enjoys the parallels, this touching of something untouchable.

'O seekers of the Divine, it has come to me,' he begins. 'A vision I saw in ecstasy of mind. And to which I bear witness now. To you. For you are the chosen. I will share with you what has come to me, what light has fallen into my mind, that we may all benefit.'

The eyes of all are upon him. He feels his power grow and lets play a long pause. The sea rocks them softly.

Matthias says, 'Heed this: Jesus was a teacher. A great teacher. This we all understand. His place is great and certain, but heed me now, his place is amongst all the teachers who have come since the time of Moses. This an angel has made clear to me that we might know the truth.' Matthias's eyes catch water light, flicker with fallen scintilla.

'There is, my fellow seekers, an ultimate source of goodness. This is the Divine Mind. It is not of this earth. It is not of water or soil nor of flesh nor bone. It exists outside of the physical world. It is in an elsewhere. This world where we stand was not created by the Divine Mind, but by a lesser god. This world is flawed. What great god would make a flawed creation? What great god would make a world wherein a death such as that visited on good Prochorus would be allowed? What great god would allow the scourging and the torture, the crucifixions? The storms that drown the sailors? The great quakes that shake and open the ground wherein thousands perish? This is not the work of the ultimate Divine. We are flawed, all of us. But' — Matthias raises his right hand — 'within each of us in this world is a spark of the one Divine Power.' He raises his voice to announce it. 'Yes. It is true. I tell you the good news. Jesus knew this. He said so. He knew he carried the divine spark and was a great teacher. This is why his disciples followed him. For he tried to teach us that we are all carrying the Divine. We can all hope to touch the mind of God if we have the right teacher, one who hears the voice of the one God himself.'

Matthias steps down into the centre of the boat. He looks at each of them in turn. He watches on their faces for proof that the hooks of his words have taken hold. Some nod slightly, others are unconvinced yet. Still, it is a beginning. He is not discouraged. He points a finger and lets it roam around them all.

'Our teacher,' he says, 'teaches not.' He shrugs. 'He is an ancient who taught for many years. More years than he can remember. More words than he can remember and in more places. He has now the burdens of his great age. He forgets. Linus heard him say so. And of course he does forget. Why would he not? Is he not human? Is he not flawed? In years gone past I have heard sailors tell they knew stories of another who said his name was John the apostle of Jesus, and that this John was stoned in Iconium, imprisoned, brought to Rome, where he died at the side of Peter. So some have said. I have wondered: how could this our ancient be the same? I have heard some say they have doubted him to be who he says.'

There is a stirring of discomfort; it is a step too far and Matthias turns from his course swiftly.

'But of course this is untrue. He is the Apostle of the teacher Jesus. But he is old. He teaches no longer. He waits. We wait.

'But, beloved disciples, I tell you, we must not. This is the urgency that sent the angel to me. We must be taught to understand the Divine that is within each of us. This was the true message of Jesus and of all the teachers before him. We can each be as divine as Jesus if we open ourselves to this understanding.' Matthias pauses. He considers his step and then takes it. 'As have I.'

As he steps further out into his position, exposing what he has kept hidden from them, he feels a surge of power through him. Recklessly it rises from his heart, runs delicious chill along the back of his neck, makes pulse the blood in his very fingertips. Matthias stands as if he is an exhibit. He says, 'This the angel has told me. I, I have been gifted the knowledge. I have understood the message and discovered the Divine inside myself.'

He allows an instant for credence, for the sea sounds and soft noise of the wooden boat. He walks up to the prow of the fishing boat and stands to look back over them.

'If you follow me, I will teach you to do the same,' he says. 'We will become, all of us, the sons of God.'

Marina drinks from Papias's hand. She thinks he may be an angel and this some threshold before another world. She expects the faces of her children. She expects them in winged form in the space above his head. Her husband, she hopes, is in another place, where devils rent his soul asunder.

'Sit,' Papias says, and brings her slight weight against the wall. He does not know clearly why he is come. He tells himself he came to see if she was dying like Prochorus and if he could administer to her and pray for her soul. He tells himself he does not believe he carried the contagion from her to the scribe, but the fear is there nonetheless. If so, why has he been spared? On his hands, on his face in the sea pools he has seen no sign. The serpent devil he saw has left him quivering, like a stringed instrument in after-play.

He goes to the small bench to find lamp oil or candle, but sees neither. The rat recrosses the earth floor, and he shouts at it, stamps his sandal, so it darts out beneath the broken end boards of the door. He finds a cloth and dips it in the bucket and brings it to her. With a gentleness he has forgotten is in himself, he washes her face. He has never touched the face of a woman before. Her eyes are open. Water trickles down her neck. Her lips, blistered and swollen, part. She looks above him for spirits winged, then directly at him.

'You,' she says.

'I am Papias,' he says, 'a Christian. You remember?'

'My children are dead.'

'Yes. I have buried them outside. I have prayed for their souls.'

'Am I dead?'

'No. You are living.'

She groans at this, turns her face sideways into the ragged fall of her hair.

Papias feels the fierce hold of temptation then. He is seized by it. His desire does not take the form more easily defeated: it is not her body that draws him. More forcefully it is the idea of saving her soul. He is compelled by the notion that she is one he has come across on his way, one who has fallen into his very path, and that the reason for this must be that he is to save her. It is part of his purpose. The steps to this understanding he leaps three at a time. It is wonderful. Here, the Lord has given him this poor woman to whom he can administer salvation. She will be the first of his congregation, his church of one. The realisation is a sharp thrill. It polishes his eyes with desire.

'Your children are in heaven above,' he tells her.

From sipping at the water, Marina regains herself. 'The devil took them.'

'No.'

'The devil is my hands.'

'No. They are with the Lord.'

'What kind of cruel Lord is he that is same as the devil?' She spits the question at him.

Papias bites his lip. 'The Lord is not cruel,' he says. 'His ways are merciful. But they are mysterious.'

'Bring me a knife, and I will show you. There is no mystery. My children are dead.'

'It is sad, and you grieve. But you have been spared.'

'I do not want to be spared. If there is a Lord, he has forgotten me. He has left me behind like a fish too many for his basket. Bring me the knife.'

'No. You must not say such things. He is merciful. You will be well.'

'My husband is dead! My children are dead!' she screams at him. 'I am with demons; they are in my hands, in my breath!' She blows an air stale and putrid toward him. 'I breathe death.'

Papias draws back. No, it cannot be. If it were so, he himself would be ill already. It was chance. It was the design of the Lord to take the children, and his design is so great, so beyond the understanding of simple man, a purer mathematics than can be conceived, that it is foolishness even to try. It was divine mystery. He will show this woman, Marina, the truth. He will lead her there. Already Papias feels love for her. He feels the kind of love that connects one to another in community; he feels his strength will meet her weakness, and blissfully envisions the entire world so, how it might be saved one soul at a time, how loving and forgiveness can bind each sheaf until there is a harvest so great its golden bounty will stack to the sight of the Almighty. And the Almighty will be pleased.

But even as he is settling things so in his mind, Marina is pressing herself up to stand. She is small and weak but possessed of resolve.

'Wait! Stop. You must rest,' Papias tells her.

She ignores him. In the half-dark she steps past. She knocks a reed basket, a beaked earthen cup that spins and breaks against a table leg. Her head is down and the fall of hair obscures her face. She pats the table. Papias comes behind and hoops his arms over her. He holds her tightly against himself.

'No. No, you must rest,' he says. Her hair smells of salt. But there is something of honey, too. The feel of her in his arms is so slight and yet of substance; she is a marvel, like a creature rescued from overboard, he is thinking. But she pushes out her arms against his hold and cries out. Still he clings on to her. Her head jolts back against him, knocks a sharp rap on his chin.

'Let me. Release me!'

'No.'

She thrashes her torso one way and the other, the hemp of her garment rips. Barefoot she stamps a heel on his foot. Papias yells. Still he will not let her go; he will save her. He tries to tighten his lock about her, his arms pressing across her breasts, her body doubled forward now and her head down. She fights against him. On the table before them is the long knife she uses to cut the fish heads.

'I will not let you,' Papias says. He holds her tight, his fingers dug into the soft tissue of her sides till they feel the bone. Her feet kick at his shins, stamp. Then, realising that she will not escape him so, Marina twists, spins about so she is facing Papias. Their breaths meet. Her eyes hold him, as if she sees further into him than he himself.

Papias lessens his hold. Her hand comes up like a blessing and reaches to the side of his neck, slides inside the robe and down the soft flesh of his shoulder.

Papias lowers his head toward her. She will be rescued. She will be saved. It is a victory. Love is all-powerful.

Her fingers on his skin are cool and delicious. He closes his eyes, letting himself surrender and fall towards her.

Her hand draws him down.

Then she opens her mouth and bites down with full force on his right ear.

The pain is incomprehensible at first. The wild surge of it blows open his eyes, shoots a yell from his open mouth. His hands fly up, releasing her. Still she is attached to him, her teeth fierce and unrelenting, gnawed into the very stuff of him. A pulpy blood stains her. Papias's head is bowed into the grip of her, and he is roaring now, his fingers trying to push her face from him. But still she bites down into him. The sharpness of the hurt lances into his brain, is blinding, makes him slump forward. The curls of his head are in her fists. What fury and grief is in her is set upon him.

Then, as the lance of pain presses on, spearing his mind, the woman Marina bites free the flap of his ear, and Papias falls to his knees. It lies on her lips. She spits it, steps back.

She turns to the table, having conquered the Lord of love and his spurious mysteries. She tears open her torn robe and exposes to him her breasts, her belly. Then she takes up the long-bladed knife that she uses to cut off the fish heads and two-handed plunges it into her chest.

The blood spurts out into the room. Her head jolts backwards. The knife swings, proscribes a range of angles as it protrudes from her. She stands a moment before the kneeling disciple. Upon her face freezes an expression of cruel joy. Then she falls forwards on to the floor.

12

The light I cannot see. The sky. The sun.

What I see is the evil of man. What I see is what grows in the darkness. But how can I cut it away? Lord, what use your gardener if he is blind?

On my lips is the prayer I confess from weakness: Make me to see again. Make me vigorous and whole that I may go about as I please and seek out those who betray you and be again as I once was. Let me show you the love I carry like breath all this ancient lifetime, the love that is yet like a sword that would cut down your enemies.

If I could see.

Let me serve you again with strength of body.

If your hour is not yet at hand, let your servant see again and stand fortified. I would hold what is. I would I were a better servant. Through my fingers now falls the water.

The Apostle sits in the inner cave, Linus by the entrance. He has returned from speaking with Ioseph and his spirit is low. Not because he has learned of the heresy spreading, for he knew this, but because he feels his physical weakness and wishes for the strength of youth, and because in him rage finds no release. The bones of his knees grind together as he moves from the stool and kneels. Suddenly the entire of him is racked with aches. They announce in his bones, in the bending and straightening, in the pulling and flexing of aged ligature. His elbows, from the near infinitude of crooking for prayer, are most comfortable foreshortened, as though his arms are wings folded in front. Each knuckle is swollen with small purses of pain. At the thin joints of his wrists are risen knobs, lumps of discomfort. His back curves, as though some force he resists bends him toward the ground. Here in his neck is a knife pressing; it advances if he tries to lift his head toward the sky. So he stoops forward, holds pressed and cupped the flimsy flesh of his hands, wherein seems a nest of bones. There is the pain of years, time itself a hurt that sings without relent. It is about him, an everywhere. He does not seek the source of it, or a remedy. But instead takes the dolour as a condition of living, the near century of his continuance. It is moments only, as he kneels, the pain orchestrating along the various podia of his body, before the Apostle can pray himself beyond.

He prays the first in words, as if he speaks personally, and knows that he is heard. But soon, to escape the hurt of time, he escapes time and is silent and drifts from the space, and is no longer present to the cave but restored to his own youth and the most meaningful days of his life.

He has scenes of extraordinary clarity. He can feel the sun of a certain day, the dust of the road. A bird he did not know he saw. But these moments are in disarranged order in his mind. He has poor remembrance of their chronology, and this is burdensome on his heart. The record that he is wears away from the inside. But this will not matter if the Lord comes soon. He will have endured; he will have remained behind as witness until the Second Coming.

So, hands held together, as if cupping a small bird of faith, he visits a morning of sunlight.

We were on the road. Coming back into Galilee for the second time. We had been in Samaria and you had met that woman at Jacob's well. The woman with her water pot; the others could not understand why you would speak to her.

'Sir, I perceive thou are a prophet,' she said.

'God is a spirit, and they who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.'

'A messiah is coming,' she said.

'I who speak unto thee am he.'

And afterward she went to the city proclaiming, and from there men had come to see. They had asked of you to stay, and two days we had tarried there, all of us strangely welcomed in that unwelcoming city.

Then, a morning of sunlight.

Come.

We left and walked back out of Judea into Galilee.

We were changed then. Already as we walked on that road we were other than ourselves. Andrew had put away his foolishness. Philip was older than himself. Peter. Peter walking as if carrying on his shoulders a burden, a building. Speaking nothing at all. We were returning to our own place, but with gravity, with import now. We knew we would come across others who had known us before. We were aware there would be judgement.

This in the sunlight on the road. Your step, light and long and purposeful. Always.

A prophet hath no honour in his own country.

So why then were we returning?

We did not ask aloud. We followed.

You followed, too. What was written before in scripture. You now like a reed in another's hand going along the letters toward the last word.

A high eagle I saw overhead us. It flew without wing-beat, gliding the blue ridges of the sky. I lost it and found it again. And again. All that day the eagle accompanied us. Watchful. Where we passed caravans and merchants, tent makers, a herdsman with goats, women bearing bundles, baskets of olives, the eagle remained above.

We were watched over thus. In the hot sunlight on the road.

I thought to ask if you saw it. I was young. I was a youth. But knew not to ask.

A wind arose though the sky was blue. It came across the barren land and whirled the sand in circles dancing. A herdsman hurried with his goats. A copper bell rang. We walked on, dust and sand blowing, our garments pressed back against us and fluttering behind as though we were aflame. The windstorm followed us. Blind whirl of sand. James looked to me and offered his hand. I did not take it. I wanted my brother to know I was a man. Our faces burned, skin sanded. You did not stop. You did not say we should take shelter and let it pass over, but walked on, the storm no more than a dream.

It passed as quickly as it came. Above us again, the eagle.

We came into Cana of Galilee once more. The word had gone before us, and it was not as before at the wedding feast. There were rumours of miracle. There were stories of you. There were tellers whose words were wild and far from truth. There were some who told for their own purposes. Who told so that they might watch the eyes of the Sadducees and the anger redden. Some, who had come ahead from Samaria, told of the woman near Jacob's well, and told, too, that you had said, 'Believe me, the hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father.'

So it was reported.

Already there were words spoken against this.

When we walked into Cana, I wondered why we had come back.

But we followed you, and did not ask.

The narrow curve of the street, the low white buildings giving small shade.

We walked past whispers. 'He is the one from the wedding feast. He is the one.'

I looked all in the eye. I would have struck any that spoke aloud against you. I would have drawn a knife and bled them.

So wild is love.

The band of us, the twelve, coming into Cana, into the cool of the shade. Where were we going? What was our purpose there?

The deep faith we had that it would be revealed.

And was.

We sat by steps, a sprawl of men, and drank after the long journey. There gathered a small crowd. They watched to see if a miracle would happen. They whispered among themselves. Bring water. He may make the water wine again. Quick, bring water. Bring water. He is the one. He is a magician.

We were magician's followers.

He is a teller of fortunes.

We were the fortune-teller's followers. We had left our families to follow a fortune-teller. We were no wiser than children, some laughed. No wiser than foolish children.

One brought a stone jar of water. Others water bags.

'Sir, I would have wine for my guest this evening.'

'Sir, wine. Please make this wine. Wine, sir. Wine.'

In this your gentle composure. Like water untroubled in a deep pool. Waiting.

'Master,' Peter said, after the long journey, 'eat.'

But you said, 'I have meat to eat that ye know not of. My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.'

We sat in the street shade. The Canaanites waited for their miracle. I watched the sunlight retreat on the stone wall of the house of Eli. The blue of sky with nothing in it, the eagle gone.

Patience was short.

'My water, Sir. I cannot stay here all day. I have work.'

'My water, Sir, to wine, please. It is no trouble to you.'

You answered them not, and some grew angry and muttered against you. But left the water jars in case.

They went away, all but a few. It was in the seventh hour when the nobleman came.

'My son is on the point of death, Sir.'

Peter looked to you. There stirred among us a silent anticipation. We had sat a long time by the steps attending such a moment, flies and insects moving in the shade.

'Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe,' you said.

The nobleman fell to his knees. 'Sir, come down to my son ere he die.'

His old face. His love for his son.

None of us spoke, the old man kneeling so.

I watched your eyes. The pity that pooled, this love of the father.

'Go thy way; thy son lives,' you said.

And he raised his face to you, and we could see that he believed. And did not need the proof of his servants coming on the road to meet him when he went back from Cana, and they told him on the seventh hour the fever had left his son.

I believed. I believed already all things were possible to you.

I leaned and touched your robe.

Simon sits with Ioseph. They sip a brown broth offish and pulses. Simon's face is pale, his eyes running with rheum. He is nearly the age of Ioseph but of a more anxious disposition. He troubles over his health, always certain that he is ill. His pains and aches are legion; he fears clouds and rain and wind, and must temper this against his faith that God watches over them. The death of his friend Prochorus, the sight of the disease blotching his face, has filled him with dread.

'You saw it,' he says to Ioseph.

'I did.'

'He was as a leper.'

'Yes.'

Simon scratches the back of his hands. Itches are intolerable. Heat of blood, he believes, a sign of his ill health. 'But there was no warning.'

'I saw him myself the morning.'

'So it just came. It just came like that, and he was dead.'

'The Lord took him. I am saddened for you, Simon. I know Prochorus was a close companion.'

'Why? Why would the Lord not take him peacefully in his sleep? Why would he not pause his breathing and leave him on his bed mat? I have these itches in my hands since. My breath is shallow; do you think my breath shallow, Ioseph?'

'No, Simon. You are as you always are.'

'What if it is beginning? What if the itches are. .'

'Simon.' Ioseph lays his hand across his friend's. For him he feels a duty of care, a bond he cannot quite explain; but it as though he is a kind of ointment, or knows the calm of his spirit to be the salve the younger man needs. 'Simon, do not be afraid.'

'I know. I know I should not even think such things. I know I should welcome what the Lord has in store for me. But I want to live to see. I want to live to see the promised day.'

'You will,' Ioseph says. 'God willing.'

Simon scowls at the broth; in the taste is something peculiar. It takes his mind from the itching.

'Matthias went out on a boat,' Ioseph says.

'Yes. I did not go. He did not ask me. But if he did, I would not go. The sea is treacherous this time of year. A storm can come from nowhere.'

'It is late for their returning. Did they return?'

'I did not see. I do not care greatly for our brother Matthias. Do you think something in this broth sour?'

'Only the reflection of your scowl, old friend.'

Simon sips it through tight lips, as if to sieve the sourness. Into the afternoon sky sail dark clouds. There is a wordless gap, the two old men sitting on their various discomforts, then Simon asks: 'Ioseph, do you think we will see Judea again?'

'Judea?'

'Yes. Do you think we will ever walk there freely again? I do not. Only in dreams now will I visit the house of my parents.'

Ioseph does not offer consolation.

'I have this thought, Ioseph; I will confess it to you that you may chastise me and forgive me for it. It is this: what if the Apostle dies?' Simon turns his rheumy eyes toward his old friend. 'I am a fool, and the weakest among us. But I confess I am afraid. What if he dies? What if you go to the cave in the morning and discovered? And the Lord has not come?'

'We believe he will come.'

'But if he doesn't? If this plague takes the Apostle? What will become of us?'

'He has survived many plagues, been imprisoned and stoned, had burning oil poured upon him. Yet he remains. He will not die, Simon. I believe he will not die until the Lord returns.'

Simon scratches at the back of his hands. 'I had a dream. In the dream there was a great storm, and sand blew and a city was lost beneath it. A whole city. No trace of it remained. Not a trace, Ioseph. It was forgotten.' His breath is shallow, his heart is jumping unevenly. 'If he dies, I have thought. If he dies, Jesus dies again. For we will fade away here without our witness, our testament. We will be a city forgotten beneath the sand. And this thought, once come to my mind, will not leave now.'

The light is swiftly fading out of the sky, and before them the sea deepens gray to black and churns like a mind troubled.

'If he dies,' Simon says again. But the words are neither question nor answer, and hang in the darkening. He looks down at the backs of his hands, sees the scratches from which thin blood seeps.

13

Auster presses his eye to the wood chink. Papias howls again and again, hand-patches the black blood and ooze, holds the jagged stump of ear root, touches the unstoppered hole in himself, views aghast the bloodied fingers, and falls unconscious to the ground.

Before him on the floor is the woman Marina, the knife stilled in her chest. Auster waits. He cannot move. He has not believed what has appeared before him. He saw no devil but heard the woman say the devil was there. He believes the devil is as great as God and has looked about him in the sky for signs of rupture, portents of presence. He has heard her say she killed her children. When she took the knife, he thought she would plunge it in the chest of the youth, and he had been transfixed and would not have been able to save him. In the instants after, Auster does not move. He fears evil invisible in the dwelling, thinks to run away, but is held by the terrible conceit that he may see here, now, the face of Lucifer. He presses against the wood wall, eyes downward for a serpent, upward for the fallen angel that might manifest fierce and dark and awesome in the roof space. He bites his lips to blood. He clings to the little dwelling, expectant of a revelation from which he cannot move. In his mind the fiery figure of the fallen, the proud, unvanquished though banished, possesses strange glory. He barely admits it to himself. But here by the fisher's hut it is this that delays him. The life leaks out of the youth. Still there comes no manifestation, no great wing-beat, no descent of fire. The sky is darkening, it is true. Perhaps if he waits longer. Perhaps this is the work of a minion, a lesser devil, and Lucifer himself must come from vast distance, ascend from nether regions, traverse fiery ringed chambers of the damned to arrive with warm flutter and seize the souls for himself? Auster studies the clouds, looks back inside the dwelling, where all is stilled now.

Where is he? Where is the devil?

From the boat, Matthias sees the smoke rise. His words done, they are sailing back to shore. It is a fisher's hut, he realises. It is burning to the ground. The black smoke curls and hangs in heavy pall above that end of the island. Matthias makes no comment. He has asked the disciples to pray with him that all may be enlightened, and their heads are bowed. With grim concern the pilot has indicated to Matthias the darkening of the sky and stirring sea and been given permission to sail them back. The waters slap at the sides, tilt and sway the slim boat with the bowed men, heads like darkened moons.

It has gone well, Matthias thinks. He has taken the step and none have spoken against him. Why should they? Why would his word not be as another's? Why believe one and not he? Belief is not a lamb but a sword. It must be seized and then wielded. We are not shepherds but soldiers. The Romans have already shown what comes of shepherds. The Christians will be wiped out, banished or crucified, until they dwindle away to nothing, confined to the pages of annals where the scribes record the bizarre heresies of the ages. The Children of the Lamb will rank alongside Followers of the Sacred Goat, Disciples of the White Dog. It is the Jews and the Romans who will write the history. In more wise times the truth of the Divine Mind will be understood, and those who have touched it will be honoured as sages. To think of God as a man was a man's creation. Only a man could have the conceit of thinking God was himself, was like a father who sent down his son. No, God was not like a man, nor did he have a son. He is called the Father only so that the simpleminded might understand. And then they took it as the Word. The Father, the son! Childish ignorance. The truth of the Divine Mind was beyond them. God is a spirit, even Jesus had said, and must be worshipped in spirit, but they had not understood. Of course not. Clamour of the blind: What about our temple? What about our high priests and elders? Who will pay the temple taxes? Ignorance of sheep. Yes, sheep, apt.

But here, these are different. These are hungry to see God. They are tired of waiting for the promised return. What is Jesus to them? A story. They never saw him. They have only the word of a blind old man who forgets more every day and soon will not be able to remember his own name. What then of his promise? What credence in a man who will dribble his food and smell of his own waste? No. They were ready to hear. I knew it. When I told them Jesus was only another of many teachers, many who had understood the Divine Mind, I could feel ground fall away in their minds. A whole shelf of faith without foundation falling into nothing. Their love for him is deep, but not so well founded that it is strong. He becomes whatever they want him to become. Now he is fierce, now gentle, now damning the tax collectors, now forgiving all. A convenient god. The kind a man might invent for himself. But I knew to leave him his place in their minds. Continue to pray to him. O, yes. O, a great teacher. A wise teacher. But misunderstood.

The Divine Mind is like the sky that covers the world, I told them. A good picture. A simple one to understand. It is over everything and everyone.

Perhaps Baltsaros doubted most. Perhaps at first Cyrus. But the reverence of the others swayed them. How perfect this boat, too. The setting. Already we were freed from the prison of Patmos and its prisoned thinking. How easily is loyalty won when the disciples believe they have been chosen! The select. Sitting either side of the fishing boat and swelling with their own importance. Realising they are the younger, the stronger, that I have chosen none of the elders. Soldiers, not shepherds. And proud ones.

Flattery moves all things.

'I have chosen you amongst all others. As yet tell none what we alone know and what I have spoken here. Your ministry will follow when the hour is at hand.'

How the words sat like doves in my hands. How else but I am guided by the Divine?

The sea pitches and heaves and Matthias must sit. Still the dark smoke rises above the fisher's hut. The sky is weighted with stones of storm. The pilot takes them to the shallow waters, and those in the prow step gingerly overboard, hold firm the boat. One offers Matthias his hand, and he alights without word or gesture, walks from them across the stony underwater, and stands, looking at the distance as though he hears things told. The disciples come up and attend, their faces pale with soft bliss of meditation.

'I will send word,' Matthias says. 'We will sail again to speak of these things. Go. Go and consider the truth I have told you.'

He turns from them, walks up the pebbled shore with swift purpose. Something has happened. The clouds build on each other still. The air is cooler by the moment. As he ascends the rough stone steps in the cliff-way two at a time, he has a sour twist in his stomach. What is it? What has happened? Wind is turning like a mind; it spikes the scent of burning through all.

When Matthias reaches his dwelling, Auster is slumped before it. The disciple is exhausted and dirtied, the side of his face stained with blood. He does not rise. He does not tell Matthias what he has seen, nor that he was impelled after to set fire to the fisher's hut and leave the bodies to burn. He has not the strength, nor the knowledge even of how. How did he decide? How one moment was Auster outside and Papias awakened, breathing in moans on the floor, then how was Auster entering and seeking the lamp oil and setting the blaze? How? He cannot say. The flames kissed him. He did not run out. He stood in the swift devouring, the whoosh of the fire opening its mouth, its hot tongue taking the woman Marina like a blistered fish skin. Auster had stood too long, mesmerised by what was released there. Too long blinking at the wild smoke, breathing its blackness, until scorch and choking ran him outside. He had flung himself forwards on to the stones, retching. The roof caught. Creak and collapse, snarl, hiss, crackle: the fire ate at all. Then Auster, blur-eyed, throat-burned, coughing at the black gagging that kept him from air, stood, and for reasons he cannot explain, re-entered. To be himself taken by the flames? To allow the fury of the fire to devour him, too? He cannot say. Nor can he yet tell what he saw then. How the fire danced around the walls, how it took all but did not touch the fallen figure of Papias. He cannot tell this yet, nor how he came back to himself in that black place and stooped down to lift the youth up on to his back and brought him from there all the way across the island here to the dwelling of Matthias.

None of this can Auster say yet. He is slumped forwards, like a beast of burden heavily used.

'What is it? What has happened?'

'Papias,' Auster mutters and raises a hand to indicate.

Matthias steps past him into the dwelling. There Papias lies, blackened and blood-faced, but breathing still.

In the small grove of the olive trees is the stranger. Early sunlight plays. From branch to branch birds engage and dart, quickened in the light. The first pale olive leaves stir with emergence, the minor rustle as a bird exits a tree and crosses with swooping flight to another, the morning otherwise still. Tranquil, his back turned, the stranger stands. His feet are unshod, his robe the brown of a gardener. So moveless and silent is he, the birds take no notice and cross the grove singing the new day.

The light is the light of early summer. It cradles the scene, makes of the trees and their undershade a haven.

How he himself comes there, John does not know. He has walked from nowhere but is at the edge of the grove, branches overhead not yet fruited but leaf-heavy and stirring in wind he did not know was there. There is a scent out of old Galilee, a perfume of olives and dust baked in sun. He handles the tough bark of the trees, touching as he passes. The light he sees. How it falls between the trees. How all is balanced, light and dark, as he steps forward. The birdsong is life-full, pulsing. The stranger he knows, even from distance, even though his back is turned. He knows because of how the world is about him. He knows because of this condition of stillness, about him the createdness of things, how in the stranger's company all seems of one purpose, from the smallest leaf-move in unfelt wind to the traverse of a bird, from the patterned fall of sunlight to the pooled shade beneath. In this company he feels all is intent. Nothing is but what is intended. All has been made. And as John walks forward, he feels the deep solace of this, the knowledge he has almost forgotten that he is loved.

'Brother,' the stranger says, turning to him.

'My Lord.'

'Papias! Papias!'

'What?' Linus answers, startled from sleep. He uncoils his long limbs, moves free an ache in the elbow he slept on.

'Papias?'

'It is Linus. I am coming.'

'Where is Papias? Why is he not returned?'

Linus looks at the old man, his filmed eyes, his white beard, anxiety wrinkling his face. Does he not know it is night? Linus speaks to him as if to a fool, slow and loud. 'I do not know where Papias is,' he says. 'You should sleep now.'

'Go and find him,' the Apostle urges. 'I must speak with him.'

Linus gasps at the arrogance of command, looks away as if to others for corroboration.

'It is night now,' he says, bending his long body down and slowing his words further still. 'Night. There is storm coming. There are no stars.'

'But where is he?'

Linus's lips are thin, his face pinched with scorn from narrow chin to yellow hair. 'I have told you, I do not know where he is.'

'And I have told you, go and find him! Go! Go!' The old man's voice is suddenly fierce, and he waves his arm, gesturing outward toward the cave exit and the night.

Linus steps back. How dare he. How dare he shout at me like that. He has it in his mind to shout back, even to push the old man off his stool, but doesn't. He sneers in disgust and shakes his head, walks out of the cave and stands not a yard from the entrance. The night is doubly dark, clouds gathering all day have not yet fallen, and there is strange cold. He holds his arms wrapped together, broken sleep and the raised voice of the old man making him shiver. The sea is wild. The air smells of salt and burning.

After a short time Linus goes back inside the cave and sits, his head propped against his arm on the wall, his eyes closed, looking in vain for sleep.

'Linus is that you? Are you back, did you find him?'

Linus does not answer. He keeps his eyes closed, allows a thin smile to turn up his lips.

'Linus?' the old man calls out. 'Linus?'

Linus lifts a small stone from the cave floor, pitches it high past the head of the Apostle so it lands with a sharp clack against the far wall. The old man turns toward it.

'Who is there? Who are you? Is that you, Linus?'

Another comes through the air and hits on the near side.

'Who is there? Speak! Who are you?'

Linus holds a hand across his smile.

'I command you, speak.'

The old man gets to his feet and feels in front of him. He is dark against dark, finger-tipping at nothing. A clump of dirt is thrown at the back wall, and a bat falls from hanging, flies, then another.

The blind man spins about. 'Stop! Who is there? Linus! Is that you, Linus?' From the dark there is no answer. The bats circle, swoop, flicker in velvet black. John stops then. And it is as though in three moments he arrests the all of him, makes stop the beating of human fear and anger inside himself and stands perfectly still. Then directly he walks the smoothened floor across the cave to where his attendant sits. But Linus is up quickly and with held breath slides along the wall.

In the dark of the cave John turns his blind face to where Linus stands with in-breath pressed against the wall.

'Why do you act so?' he asks, as though he sees. 'Go I tell you. Go and bring Papias here.'

Linus does not move.

'Papias cannot come,' Matthias announces suddenly, his voice at the entranceway, where he stands watching Linus and the old man.

'Matthias.'

'Papias has been injured. I come to tell you.'

'How injured?'

'He has lost an ear and bled much. He has been inside the fisher's hut with the woman Marina when it burned.'

John feels for the cave wall.

'He is living still, but barely. Auster saved him, brought him to me.' Matthias does not take his eyes from the old man. 'He is in my care. I have prayed over him that the Lord may not take him, and the Lord has spared him to me these past hours.'

'He is living?' John's voice is thin and low.

'He is living.' Matthias shrugs. 'My prayers have thus far been answered. He has woken once and spoken wildly and fallen asleep again. In dreams he cries out, but without import. I speak to him, but he is unhearing.'

John cannot speak. He feels a deep wound of love open.

'Be assured my prayers are with him,' Matthias says. 'He cannot be moved. Linus will attend you these times.'

The Apostle stands. 'Take me to him.'

'The night is wild, the storm coming since nightfall comes still. You must remain. He may not live until sunrise. I come to ask that you pray for me in my ministering for his soul.'

'You must take me to him now. I will be by his side.'

Matthias taps his fingertips together before his mouth.

'For your own good I cannot allow it. You know my dwelling is on the cliff top. The way is treacherous. I near fell several times myself. I could not answer to the community with good conscience if anything befell you. Stay here. I will send for you if Papias lives.'

'You defy me?'

'I act from love, O Master.'

'I would go to him now.'

'Of course. But as it is written, "and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit. Be not hasty in thy spirit to be angry, for anger resteth in the bosom of fools." '

'You quote scripture to me.'

'The Lord has placed Papias in my care. So I have come to tell you. That you might pray for me that I might bring about the miracle of his living. If it be the Lord's will. Ours is not to understand the mystery of his ways.' Matthias looks to Linus, gestures him to move from where he stands by the wall to the cave entrance. 'The storm will be fierce. You should not leave the cave until it is passed. Linus, observe what I say. Protect our Ancient. See he remains here in safety. God be with us all.'

14

He did not burn, though the fire was all around him, Auster has told Matthias. Papias did not burn.

From this, Matthias concluded ignorance and fantasy to be the measures of Auster's mind; the youth had probably been rescued too soon, that was all. Miracles were most often explained by the unreliability of the witnesses. The resurrected were most often the buried too soon, the mere sleeping, who woke bound in chambers and fought to be returned. No, the fire would have eaten the youth soon enough. There was no miracle in that. But now, here — so much black blood leaked out of him, the ear cut away — here there is something worth considering. Papias should be dead. He lies on the very lips of death — a moment and they may open and take him. But still he breathes. Such a one is valuable in these times, Matthias thinks as he returns from the cave. Do not mistake the value of a resurrection. He steps in out of the wild, dark wind that is blowing now. In pulsing candlelight Auster looks up from where he is squatted by the rush mat.

'He lives?' Matthias asks. 'Leave us now, but be nearby. I will implore the Divine to let me save him,' he says.

He chafes his hands, sits in the crooked light. The youth's forehead is cold, his breath as nothing on the back of Matthias's hand. Is he already gone? Matthias presses his head to the chest, hears the thin beat of life.

If Papias dies, I will say it was because God wished it. Or should I tell about the woman? Should I say he confessed to me?

Or better, that he awoke before death and I saw the devil himself in his eyes? Indeed. I saw him and fought against him for the soul of our youth. Verily, I will say. Verily, verily I myself drove the devil off, so that before dying our dear Papias was saved. Alleluia. Alleluia.

If he lives, I saved him.

This is better.

Live, youth.

The night howls. The dark is utter. Whips of rain lash the island. The wind lifts the sea into the sky and lets it fall. In the eastern end the charred shell of the fisher's hut is deluged. Metal flanges, twisted tin spoons, earthen bowls, all are taken by the hands of the storm and carried elsewhere. The ground is cleaned of human living. With dextrous intent the white biscuit bones of the dead are lifted, let fly into salt swirl and then dropped to be washed away into the suck of tide. Seabirds unsheltered try to go beyond the storm but are blown backwards in darkness like the souls of the undeserving from the near bounds of heaven. The stars are undreamt. Pathways in the rocks are awash and tumble water like jagged wounds weeping. It is weather eloquent but in language lost or forgotten. It fizzes the air, whistles, roars, bangs, and in their disparate huts keeps from sleep the disciples. Some are on their knees in prayer, others are curled on bed mats and rocking softly, as though riding from doom. On Patmos in winter they are used to storm. The inclemency of the weather they take as a characteristic of their banishment, as though rain rods are the bars of jail. But this storm comes more fiercely than the last, or the ones that have rumbled off across their memory. There is something happening, it seems to say. Something in the heavens is happening. The disciples cannot keep themselves from taking recourse to the scriptures. They are fluent in the writings of the ancients, the testaments of the prophets, and each has their own favourite. To each there are chapters, episodes of assail and trial that have appealed and found residence in their imaginations. Just so, then, are they unable to keep from thinking of these as the storm howls. One, Eli, huddles and sees his candle blow out and thinks of the verse from Job: 'How oft is the candle of the wicked put out! And how oft cometh their destruction upon them! God distributeth sorrows in his anger. They are as stubble before the wind, and as chaff that the storm carries away.' Another, Lemuel the bell ringer, finding fault in himself, is visited always by the vehement, burly-chested figure of Moses. Here in the fifth book, Deuteronomy, for those who fail to observe the commandments, Moses rages with fierce promise: that the Lord shall send cursing and vexation and rebuke, that he shall make pestilence cleave unto thee until he has consumed thee from off the land, shall smite thee with a consumption, and with a fever, and with an inflammation, and with an extreme burning. Lemuel tosses beneath his blanket, feels his brow hot, his body cold. In the howling of the storm he hears Moses roar: 'Thou shall be oppressed and crushed away! The Lord shall smite thee in the knees and in the legs with a sore botch that cannot be healed from the sole of thy foot on to to the top of thy head!'

The disciple scratches wildly, prays contrition, screws tight his eyes.

The storm rages.

Something is happening.

Indeed, the heavens are wild, Matthias thinks. He sits forwards, elbows on knees, fingertips a tent below his lips. Perhaps Prochorus hammers on heaven's gate. Perhaps the Divine makes clear his displeasure with him, blows him thither to a furnace beneath.

It is a thought.

Papias breathes still, but thinly. The candlelight is canted, the small room umber and dark, shadows long and twisted. To the howling there is no end.

I have my twelve. But no miracle. This one, the servant of the old man, is most apt. What better disciple. I save him and he follows me. It follows as numbers, one upon the next.

But live, youth. Live.

Outside wind and rain contend. The dark is beaten with fury. The skies crash and bang and no dawn approaches.

But beneath all, prone on the bed mat, from the lips of death Papias returns. His chest expands more profoundly. Matthias draws the candle closer to examine if indeed the colour comes in his cheek. When he is convinced, he blows out the candle and shuts the narrow room into darkness complete. Then he goes dimly to the door and cries out into the storm.

'O heaven! O Divine!'

He has to shout again before Auster comes from beneath a covering, stands in the gale.

'What? What, Master?' he shouts.

'It is Papias. He is dead. Look.' Matthias draws open the door into the dark. Auster sees what he has been told is there, the motionless body of the dead, and is turned back by the hand of the other. 'Go, go and tell the others,' Matthias says into the wind. 'Go and tell the old man.'

Auster nods, blinks, shouts against the storm: 'But the fire did not burn him.'

'Go! He is dead. Tell them to come at sunrise. Go now! Hasten.'

Fool. Belief is easily created in a fool.

Matthias waits a moment, admits surprise himself at the push of the wind against the chest; a man cannot stand upright in the world tonight. His dark head he tilts upwards to the starless vault, flesh of his cheeks pressed flat to the bone, eyes watering with salt. He turns to re-enter the shelter but catches sight of a blanched lump not far off. What is it? He cranes toward it, this whiteness, then goes seven steps in the dark to see lying there what seems a fallen swan. He sees the one, and then another, then all about the dwelling, in a vast littering he can make out the bodies of white seabirds slain. There are a hundred, maybe two. He cannot count. The image of them, a mass of white feathering pitched out of the sky and slung there about his dwelling, makes Matthias gasp. There is a sky army fallen. He holds an arm above his head, as if a rain of birds may descend still. He looks up into the deep dark, the swarth of night, sees the nothing there is. He foots a seabird next to him to be certain it is dead, toe-feels the cold, wet plumage; with heavy looseness the neck slides further into the stones. For moments Matthias cannot move, the appalling sight of so many arrests him. It is as though the world is turned upside down and the earth-sky studded with birds. They are legion, and may continue beyond the dark edge of vision. Matthias holds a hand to his mouth. The night blows at him. He thinks of plague and contagion, all manner of canker and pestilence that may be broadcast in such upheaval.

He regains himself, turns to hurry back to his dwelling, but cannot keep from another gaze. He looks back at the swan sea, considers, nods.

A portent. Useful. Mythological. The Night of Resurrection it happened that.

Stepping inside, Matthias relights the candle, stoops to see Papias is breathing well.

They will come at daybreak for prayers. There is an hour, maybe less, beforehand. He readies himself. In the earth of the floor next to the bed mat he scrabbles two depressions, rubs at his knees with a small stone till they redden raw, then kneels into the holes. In fools appearance is the foundation for faith. A soul cannot easily be resurrected. There must be effort, and of this there must be evidence. He considers his posture when they come to the door. He will bend down so, he will have prayed himself into the very ground so — nay, look at the imprints. He will have his two hands lain upon the youth's forehead and be praying and not even look up or notice they are arrived.

But I will need another sign. Something of the cost of intercession. That it is not the business of mortals, but only those who can touch the Divine.

A wound. I should have a wound.

From where he kneels, Matthias looks into the shadowed room. Upon the table is a short metal spike, holed one end as a needle. It is within his reach. How the Divine provides for his own.

Matthias waits. He listens into the whirl of the wind for the bell ring and for those who will be coming. He is perfectly poised. Papias breathes easily now and soon will wake. He may hear or not, it is of no import. The others will let him know Matthias wrestled him back from death.

Then, faintly, like a distant bird lost, the bell sounds. There is no light. No daybreak is apparent to Matthias, but must be. He takes the metal spike, touches its tip to the candle flame, then he brings it to the corner of his eye.

I will weep blood.

With one hand holding the spike to the outer corner of his eye and the other raised behind it, he begins to press. The needle burns minutely. With a sudden blow, he smacks hard the hand that holds it, and it pops with blood spurt in past the corner of his eye socket. He shrieks out, pulls and lets fall the spike, then must fumble in the dirt to find it quickly and throw it out of view. The pain is wild. Blood blurs his seeing, but he finds the needle and flings it away. Roughly he pokes at the wound, the pulpy blood and watery leakage of himself, draws a weep line on to his cheek. His teeth chatter and he has to bite hard to keep from weakness. Their footsteps approach. He throws himself forward, lays both hands on the youth's forehead, and says aloud the prayers in a voice not his own.

Then John and the disciples step inside. They see the shocking figure of the kneeling mourner, the blood flowing freely from his eye. Then Linus sees the chest of Papias rise.

'He lives!' he cries out. 'Papias lives! Look. Behold, he is brought back!'

15

The younger disciples fall to their knees. The Apostle stands.

'Papias lives?' he asks.

'He does,' Auster says. 'Praise the Divine.'

There is the murmuring of prayer. The door being ajar and the gathering both inside and out, the storm blows amongst them. The framing of the hut creaks, the cloth tenting slaps and snaps angrily. A beaker rolls on the floor.

'Bring me to him,' John says.

Ioseph leads him. Auster and Linus offer their arms to lift Matthias from his kneeling, his bloodied eye-weep making the others look away.

'God has answered my prayers,' Matthias says aloud. 'Praise him.'

'Look how he has prayed himself into the ground,' Linus whispers, pointing to the imprints.

John reaches his hand, pats the dark until his outstretched fingers descend to find the face of the youth. He kneels then. His fingers lie flat against the cheek of Papias and he bows his head. He says nothing. He touches the ravaged ear and a shudder passes through him. His blind eyes he shuts tightly.

O Lord. O Lord Jesus.

I am a poor shepherd who loses his sheep.

Forgive me.

His lips do not move; his prayers are unheard. Some leave to accompany Matthias and to dress his wound. Others kneel on their uncertainty. John stays, and in his staying suffers the pain of self-knowledge. He sees his weakness, his withdrawal, his waiting. He sees how ineffectual he has become, how the community itself falls away to nothing. How day by day time erodes what had been built with blood and suffering. It is his fault, vanity that made him believe his work was over and the Lord Jesus would respond by coming now. He has been blind in all ways, not merely in sight. But above all, he has forgotten the essence that returns so powerfully to him now. He has forgotten love.

On his knees by the side of Papias it suffuses him. He feels it like a course of water coming, sluicing from gates unlocked. It roars into the very blood of him, his ancient arteries quickened, laved. Love. Love. His eyes weep. He draws his hands together. The knuckles whiten in fierce clasp. Love. What comes pouring, flowing to every end of him is the awareness of love. And within it sorrow. Here flows and intermingles the sorrows of failed love, of untold love, of love afraid and perishing, of love twisted by pride, made silent, destroyed. He loves Papias, as he loves Ioseph, as he did Prochorus, but feels he has failed all. He weeps, his shoulders shudder. Ioseph kneels down at the Apostle's side, as do others of the elder disciples. The wind whirls in the little dwelling, the day breaking with little light. Still John is bowed, his heart inundated. We are nothing lest we love. We are of God, who is love. Therefore let us.

The thoughts course, swollen with feeling, carrying in bright effluvium flotsam of phrases, things he might say. Antique channels of him open, wildly irrigated and overflowing. Comes the vivid recall of the love he felt for Jesus, the absolute, the unconditional. This is light and water both. Flowing, flowing, and he a vessel. Love. How a man might be filled and overfilled and feel the radiance of all creation to be the radiance of love, the daylight itself awash, dazed, deluged. How he might be humbled so to feel himself connected to the everlasting, the infinite flood of love, the bounty therein. And feel himself taken, carried, helpless but hopeful, full, filled. A man filled, light-filled, touched like the wick of a candle with flame so he trembles. Love. And knows a bliss of gratitude, an ecstasy of soul to witness himself so capable of such light, such water. Water of life itself. We are nothing lest we love. We are of God, who is love. Therefore let us.

John's frame is bent over, his brows knitted, his white hair a gleam waterfall over the prone figure of the youth. He is other than himself. Not yet is he thinking of what happened to Papias, of the fire or the woman or what Matthias claims. Not yet is he considering the straying of the community, the meaning of what happened, or what must follow. For he is breathed into with spirit, in-spired and at one with what was from the beginning.

At the fifth hour Papias opens his eyes. He lies still. He sees the host of elders gathered around and wonders if he attends his own funeral. Does his spirit float free? The faces are grave, heavy-featured, the room dimly shadowed. There is a noise like the sea that is not the sea. Has he drowned? Has his body drowned and he been thrown up on the shore to be laid out before burial? The waves whisper.

The elders move their mouths. Papias falls back beneath the sea.

The pain in the eye is exquisite. It shoots in from the corner, needling deeper than the needle with the slightest movement of the head. Matthias's vision is smeared as with ointment. The pain pierces. He would shriek if it were not for the others. Baltsaros dabs at it, then lays a poultice he has prepared. It stings fiercely. Matthias feels holed into the back of his mind.

But it was worth it. How they look upon me now. Pain is proof. How the ignorant love suffering in another.

He lies with his back rested against a goatskin cushion of lambswool. (Who of them harbours such a thing?) Linus points Phineas to the reddened knees, but Matthias waves him away, a movement that causes a wince, as though a hook embeds in the jelly of his eye. He sips the thinned winter-berry wine, its sourness recalling him from the hurt. There are figs; there is a bowl of raisins swollen in honey. There are dried pieces of goat meat.

Such dreary offerings. My disciples.

'Master, you saw the devil?' Auster asks, kneeling, his plump face pale and his eyes watering like one fevered.

'The devil had taken the youth; I had to pursue him,' Matthias says.

'He was a serpent?'

'He was serpent in form, but greater than a serpent. He twisted in the youth's eyes, two-headed.' Matthias pauses. They want more. They hunger for detail. Struggling against weariness and the pain, he continues. 'He had taken possession of the spirit, and he rose out and up above me, in size enormous, as to sink his venom in me.'

There is a hush. His twelve, and Auster and Linus attend. He sips the sour wine.

'I called to him to be gone. I opened my arms wide like so, and in my hands were swords of silver. Light shone from them and lit the room and dazzled the devil, but he twisted upon himself and spat and became then a creature breathing fire. "Be gone," I cried out. "Be gone. You know not who I am." The fire he breathed burned me not. I was as one bathed in light divine and he cowered back. One head sucked at the youth for the last of his spirit, the other spat skyward, and a flock of birds it seemed fell from the sky slain. I raised my sword and plunged it to him. It sunk into the hardened scale as though in hide. Black blood of him, hot, flowed. Verily it did. He was wounded, and my sword plunged again and again till he twisted back from me and the youth and departed into darkness.'

Matthias allows a pause. None speaks. The pain in the eye pulses from the telling. He touches the poultice, tries to mask the shudder that passes through him.

'Papias?' Baltsaros asks. 'He was dead?'

'The youth was dead. Auster saw. But his spirit was not taken. It hovered still between this world and the next.'

There is nodding. There is a murmur. There is reverence.

'I knelt then,' Matthias tells them. 'I knelt then to pray that I might be able to intercede on the youth's behalf, that he not leave this world yet. That he be spared to me and returned from death. I summoned the Divine, and found it within me, and touched Papias's forehead, and behold! he lived again.'

There is a gasp. Matthias bows his head. The others do the same.

Wonderful. The power of a story to the credulous.

When Papias wakes a second time, he sees the face of the Apostle. John is bent low over him and must feel the moment, for he turns his head at once.

'Papias?'

'Master.'

'Praise God.' The Apostle reaches his two hands to lay them on the forehead of the youth. The fever is gone.

'Can you hear, Papias?' Ioseph asks.

Tenderly the youth touches his ruined ear, as if his fingers recollect, he nods. 'Yes.'

'Come, we will bear you to the cave,' John says.

'Master, I can walk.'

'You will be weak, Papias,' Ioseph counsels, 'let them bring a litter.'

'No. I will walk. And guide my master. Please.'

And so Papias stands and seems at once to the elder disciples as though he has aged greatly. There is in his bearing the prudent air of one who has come through peril, as if a traveller from lands of plague and famine. He is slow and deliberate where once sudden. He offers his arm to the Apostle. 'Master?'

They go out into the day. Though the storm has moved to the west, the sky is overhung with clouds and the light poor. The disciples progress silently from the dwelling across the smooth rock face polished with wind. The slain seabirds lie where they fell, but none make comment. The dark sea throws itself about, unsettled yet. On the stone steps Papias takes care to attend the Apostle, offering both hands. Wind whirls the white hair and beard. The elders stop and wait. They do not voice opinion on what Matthias seems to have brought to pass; they will wait to hear the word from the Apostle. They have the reverence of ones aware they are in a presence, and though each feels turn inside him the tireless wheel of human questioning, they keep silence. Something is happening, and has happened, but it is not for them to know yet, they believe. All will be revealed. Their faith now is founded as before on the telling of the acts of Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, and the Apostle is as a roadway leading back to that reality and onwards to the Second Coming. He will tell them when he has considered it. He will tell them if Matthias has worked a miracle.

At the cave entrance they stop.

'You must rest now, Papias,' Ioseph says. 'We thank God that you have come back to us.'

'Back? I have not been gone.'

The elders exchange looks, some lower their eyes to the stone path.

'Before the dawn bell you were announced dead,' John says.

Papias looks at him. 'Master, I was not dead.'

None speak. John holds on to the youth's hands, a frail bridge-way, windblown. The illumination of the night is about the Apostle still. We are nothing lest we love. He finds himself welling like a spring struck. His chin trembles with emotion. He fears he may weep with gratitude, may seem the oldest of old men to the elders and buckle with love. It keeps coursing through him. The poor daylight, the sealight, the sounds and smells carried on the wind, these, the disciples who have followed him in banishment all these years, the loyal youth: all are touched with the same blessing. He cannot think of one without feeling love. It is as if he has been rescued and returned to himself, to a time long ago when he felt so. This is his understanding of it now. It is love that informs all. Nor is this love a thing soft or immature like a new bud, but rather that which comes coursing through the vine itself and makes it strong, durable, pliable, makes it spread to encompass more and more ground, cling to the wall, bear fruit. He has been weak, and foolish, and forgotten love, but no more.

'Come. Come all of you. Come inside,' the Apostle says. His blind head at an upward tilt, he releases Papias and waves both hands. 'Come. All. Be with me.'

When they are entered and sit around on rush mats and stools, and Papias has been given a lambswool blanket for his shoulders, the Apostle speaks to them. He speaks as he has not in a long time, and from his first words all of the elders feel a shiver of knowledge, understanding the words he speaks will outlive time.

'Beloved,' he says, 'we must believe not every spirit, but try all spirits whether they are of God, because many false prophets are gone out into the world.' He touches his tongue to his lips, raises his voice louder and stronger still.

'Hereby know ye the spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that confesses not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God; and this is that spirit of Antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.'

None speak. The elders and the youth look at the blind apostle as though at a column of light.

'But ye,' John says, 'ye are of God, my children, and have overcome them, because greater is he that is in you than he that is the world.

'They are of the world; therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them.

'We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us.

'Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error.'

He pauses. The phrases are like platforms in his mind, the construction building one upon the next, rising as steps he discovers just as he arrives at each one. It proceeds with perfect logic, as if out of a natural pre-existent order. The words are there just before he needs to find them. He raises his head, his whitened eyes, his arms he holds outwards.

'Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and everyone that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.

'He that loveth not, knoweth not God.' Again he pauses, as if he is in flight and discovers a higher plane of purer air, then flies up into it. He says aloud the four words that seem carved on the invisible: 'For God is love.'

His speech has the quality of truth, beyond dispute, and the disciples need no persuasion. Some nod silently, others stare as if at a marvel. The Apostle draws to him his arms, presses together his hands. None have heard him speak so before, for this is not the telling of the acts of Jesus, there is no narrative. This is not the preaching Ioseph heard from the Apostle many times when they wandered in the dusted lands of Bithynia or Troas or the stony fields of Thessalonica. This is other. This seems a pure distillation.

'Beloved,'John repeats, 'he that loveth not, knoweth not God: for God is love.

'In this was manifested the love of God towards us, because that God sent his only begotten son into the world, that we might live through him.

'Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.'

The cave catches the wind; the air sings like the sea. Light and cloud-shadow cross. The old apostle raises his hands a last time.

'Beloved,' he says, 'if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.

'No man had seen God at any time. But if we love one another, God dwells in us and his love is perfected in us.

'Let us pray that it will be so.'

John bows his head, the others likewise. In the cave on Patmos they kneel in the darkness, flooded with light.

16

Now is the moment.

Matthias stands on the seashore, before him a great mound of the dead seabirds that Auster and Linus have gathered and now set alight. Lamp oil takes flame, sea faggots, flotsam of storm wrack, timbering. Black smoke in a banner unfurls.

Now is the moment. I will win to me no more but Papias. He alone of the others would be of value. Testament. Eyewitness. My own Lazarus. How quickly they carried him away! It will matter not. I will confront him: You were dead; I went after and brought you back. How deny that? Arise and follow.

The bird fire burns poorly. Smoke smudge thickens against the daylight. The grey sea twists as though in chains. In the near distance some few fishers are about, starting late because of the storm, hoping to bring home a heavy catch of fish foolish to seek sanctuary in the shallow waters. The boats cut across the waves on quick wind till the nets grow heavy. Auster and Linus stand by the pyre. They are in open-eyed amazement still at the discovery of the seabirds after Matthias had told of them in his struggle with the devil. When Linus saw them, he vomited, Auster wanted to clap his hands. The birds were a brilliant display, all the more awesome for the substantial weight of each as Linus and Auster dragged them over the sand. What power it took to strike them from the sky! What flash of mind forked into the night to plunge them headlong! The two disciples watch the smoke rise and curve in upon itself and uncoil, caught by the wind. Matthias walks away down the stony shore, stands.

The storm will have passed by this evening. At daybreak we will leave.

Lemuel comes with the news. The Apostle has announced the community will take supper together. There will be a communion before sunset. Matthias returns to his dwelling, his eye pulsing with pain. He removes the poultice, palms water on to his face from a bowl. The hour is near. His heart is quickened at the thought. He palms the water a second time, touches gingerly the throbbing, winces. Still, the wound has its worth. He sits to consider how things must proceed. After a time he sends Auster and Linus to tell the others to come to his dwelling before the supper.

The Apostle is renewed. He has a vigour and resolve unfamiliar but to Ioseph, who has known him the longest. He sits by Papias, who tells him, 'You need not care for me, Master. I recover quickly.'

'Call me not "Master", call me Brother, or call my name, John.'

'I cannot, Master.'

'My name is John.'

Papias lowers his brow, his complexion waxy and pale, his eyes glossed. 'I must call you "Master",' he says, then adds, 'and Master, I must confess.'

'And you will be forgiven.' John bows his head and Papias tells him in whisper the story of the woman Marina and her children and the vanity of thinking he could bring them back from the dead. He confesses to temptation and concealment, to the potent seduction of power. His face reddens as before a fire. His voice drops further so the words are smallest sounds. John listens, holds out his right hand and prays. 'Walk in the light,' he says.

After, he tells Papias, 'I, too, must confess. I have forgotten myself. I have forgotten love. I have been harsh and have tired of the burden I carry within me, which burden now is made light as air. Papias, from this day forth the sun shall not set but I will have told you and all our brothers the word of our Lord Jesus. The sun shall not set but I will have related what was, that it will be still. My telling will continue while does my breath till he come again. I confess to you, I have forgotten myself. I have fallen down, but now stand up, my burden light.' John's face smiles, deep furrows paired, cheekbones prominent. He is both the Gallilean fisher, Zebedee's son, John, brother of James, mender of nets a lifetime ago, fleet barefoot boy who ran one end of his father's boat to the other, untoppling, gifted with balance, and also this other, this man who seems footed in two worlds, this and the next. He is the boy and the old man both.

Now he rises. 'We must make ready,' he says.

Ioseph brings him a white stole he lays over the Apostle's shoulders. With Papias he draws two tables together, and for them benches.

The sun retreating, the elders approach. They bring some of the flat fire-baked bread the islanders make, two skins of winter-berry wine. The events of the night past are still in their minds but age and experience and faith quiet the questions. They come nonetheless with the awareness of heightened moment; the storm, the death and return of Papias, the fall of seabirds, are as currents that converge. The call to communion is another such. So as they enter the cave the disciples bear themselves as if to counsel and revelation both. Something is happening, and they are its witnesses.

They stand. John goes to each and takes their hands. None speak of Matthias and the younger disciples, though all notice they are not there. Ioseph goes outside to look. Behind clouds the sun nears the sea. He returns, tells nothing. There opens a long pause.

'My brothers, sit,' the Apostle says at last.

And they do, gathered in the yellow lamplight about the tables, Papias at the right hand of John.

'Brothers, whom I love in the truth, the darkness is past and the true light now shines. Let us give thanks and break bread and take of wine in memory of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father.'

'Amen.'

The bread is broken and passed. The elder men watch the Apostle for signs. They can see in his demeanour renewed vigour and purpose. The communion is not yet properly begun when Matthias comes.

'O Beloved. Why do you begin without us? Are we not also chosen children of the Father?' About and behind him Linus, Auster, and the other disciples bear torches and stand in fire glow.

'Indeed you are welcome, brothers,'John says. 'All are welcome to give thanks to our Lord Jesus Christ. There is room at the table. Sit.'

'We do not come to sit,' Matthias says and comes forwards. 'We come to announce the true light. The Divine.'

There is a murmur. Some of the disciples look down. John says nothing, his face held upward, as though to take a blow. Matthias walks to the top of the table.

'I come to speak the truth. For it has been given to me. "I am come a light into the world that whosoever believeth in me should not abide in darkness." '

'You cite the words of our Lord Jesus?' John's anger flares.

But Matthias turns from him, throws open his arms, booms his voice. He glares down at the assembly. 'Why do you speak of Jesus as a messiah? Any of you? Because this ancient says so? Because this Jesus was his friend, because he was the beloved disciple, of this carpenter's son, a Galillean like himself? The Christ? How convenient! His own relation, his neighbour!'

' "I am the resurrection and the life," said the Lord, "he that believeth in me though he were dead shall he live",' John calls.

'How, old man, how shall he live being dead? You are a fool. And all of you who follow him fools, too, who cannot see how he has led you. That he might have caretakers in his ancient years, attendants who serve him in his dotage.'

'Matthias! Be silent,' Ioseph calls.

'I will be silent hereafter. I come this time and this time only to announce to those who will follow. Hear me: there is a light divine. It is the One. It was from the beginning and ever shall be. It is as the prophets tried to tell us. Even as the prophet Jesus. Its illumination I have felt, have touched. I myself His right hand he slaps on his chest twice.

John stands. 'Jesus said: "Verily, verily I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep. All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved." '

'The sheep! The door of the sheep! Is that what you think? What you believe, all of you? Are you sheep? Is that what you were born for, to be sheep? Is that a man? A sheep? Is that why you remain here on this rock? O apt indeed! Sheep going through a door?'

Ioseph stands up beside John. 'Blasphemer!'

'Ioseph,' John extends his hand, holds back the other by the shoulder. 'Leave him. Let him to speak.'

'He takes the name of our Lord in vain, Master. Though I am old, I would strike him down.'

John shakes his head. 'Leave be, Ioseph.'

Emboldened, Matthias moves down along the table. 'Listen, listen now this time that ye might know the truth and choose for yourselves. I, Matthias, son of Ignatius of Amphipolis, have been chosen by the One that I might bear his light as witness into the world. The light that was from the beginning and is and ever will be. Which light makes other lights a darkness. Though others preach their own words of God, these are but poor versions of the truth, as candles to the sun. Listen now, I am come to tell you what is. We must be soldiers, not sheep. We must leave here and go out into the world. I fear not. I fear no Roman, nor any man. Nor should any who follows me.'

He comes along the line of disciples, passes Lemuel and Simon and Meletios until he stands behind Papias. Both hands Matthias places on the youth's shoulders.

'I have faced death. I have faced him and fought him myself for this youth who was taken from us. The divine light shone upon me. I was as one lifted from myself. Not in this world nor the next. But in the Presence. The Presence who made me all-powerful against death.' He leans down, his face next to Papias, and speaks loudly. 'This youth was given back to me. As proof. That you might know, that you might believe. Stand, Papias.'

Under the scrutiny of all, uncertain, puzzled, full of torn pieces, hearing for the first time the extraordinary account of his resurrection, Papias stands.

'Look upon him. See. Believe. Behold the miracle.' Matthias allows his witness a moment; he takes a half step back, opens wide his arms as if the youth is a thing conjured out of the dark. He smiles, his head inclined away to better view the marvellous, then he says, 'Papias, go and stand by the others.'

But Papias does not move. His face reddens. All are looking at him.

'Papias,' Matthias raises his voice.

When still the youth does not move, Matthias taps him on the shoulder, then leans in to whisper: 'Papias, you will be the wonder of the world as we walk in it. You will be marvelled at and praised. In time you will recall the truth of what happened and tell to gathered multitudes how death came for you and be living witness of that other darkness. You will spread fear and wonder. You will tell what was and is on the other side of this mortal domain. You shall be by my side as an angel to the Divine, testament to the Omnipotent. Men and women shall fall before your feet. The sick and infirm shall seek the hem of your cloth. Consider. You have been chosen and cannot deny it. It is your destiny I bring you, good Papias. Go, take your place at the forefront of the others.'

Along the table the disciples' faces are turned towards him; in firelight by the cave entrance Linus, Auster, Cyrus, Baltsaros, and the others watch. Papias is still weak; his ear wound pulses. All seems stopped. In the mute delay comes the vision of himself as another, as this Lazarean disciple, this thin figure of return still printed by the fingers of death. Lands far and strange whose names he does not yet know, places of dust and sand, blue rivers, villages where they might arrive like ones traversed down from another world: these he sees. He would walk at the front beside Matthias. He would wear a white robe. Perhaps the Divine might touch him, too, and give him the power to resurrect. Why not? It was likely. Had not Matthias just said as much? And it would all be in the name of goodness. There would be no gain sought. It would be for the glory of the Creator. If he could do that, would that be wrong?

'Good Papias.' Matthias's face moves close to him again, his voice low. 'Beloved Papias, be not afraid, go.'

Pain beats at his temples. Papias must close his eyes. His head he inclines slightly.

'Auster, Linus, come, help our disciple, he is yet weak.'

'Leave him!' the Apostle cries out. 'Lay not your hands upon him!' He comes forwards so he stands facing Matthias, his white head back. 'Papias, be not seduced, but abide with us here. This is the very voice of the Antichrist amongst us. Listen not.'

'Old man, old fool!' Matthias shouts, 'Jesus-lover! You dwindle to nothing.'

'Brother Matthias!' Lemuel shouts, standing stoutly, and Matthias flares back at him. 'Brother? I am not your brother,' he says, his eyes narrow and dark, his lips spitting the words. 'Why call each other brothers, ye are not so. Some of you mistrust the others, some envy and despise. Brothers! This is a mockery, a mask ye hide beneath. I know you all. Brothers! Call me not Brother. I am Matthias, son of Ignatius of Amphipolis, who has known the Divine, the One. Stand back, old man. Your time is past.' Matthias turns to the youth. 'Papias, come with us to your glory.'

There is a moment, the cave like one breath held.

In whisper, dream voice and eyes as if upon a distant truth, Papias says, 'I will not.'

Matthias leans nearer. 'Be not a fool! Do not let the old man sway you. You have no need of loyalty to him. Do not be afraid. You are of us, and know it.'

Papias says nothing. His lips quiver and he presses them together as if they might utter betrayal.

'He has spoken, leave him!' The Apostle touches Matthias's shoulder, who shakes the hand roughly away.

'I could break you like a stick. I could make you fall to the ground with vomiting and wailing, old man, if it were my will. Touch me not. You know not with whom you deal.'

'I have no fear!'John replies sternly. 'We come gathered here for communion, for our community of believers, brothers in our Lord Jesus Christ. If you are not of us, then be gone.'

'We will be gone. By sunrise we will have left this hell.' Matthias paces down the table length. 'And you, you all, old men, what will you do? Stay here till death, like Prochorus, lie beneath mounds of stones and be forgotten? Yes, forgotten. Old man, old teller of a tale, your tale is threadbare and runs to nothing. This carpenter's son messiah. Do you wait, all of you, do you wait yet? That the carpenter will come again? Ha! Because the hour is at hand?'

'Matthias stop!' Papias cries.

'You will be bones and dust. Dust and bones. All of you. And your Jesus not even dust on the pages of the books of history. Remembered a few more years, then forgotten. You are fools, credulous fools, to follow an old fool.'

Papias comes forwards as though he will strike the other. Matthias stops and looks into his face.

'And you, the greatest fool if you do not come to your destiny.'

'Be gone.'

There is a moment, the face of Matthias an implacable mask inches from the youth, his lips pressed tightly, his dark eyes burning. Then, as if he releases in disgust what he himself has caught, he wheels away.

'So be it.' He walks swiftly to the cave entrance, stops. 'Hear ye. We, the chosen, the believers in the Divine, will leave this island at sunrise. Those who will follow are welcome. Consider well, Papias. Those who remain on Patmos will die on Patmos. Your Jesus does not come. Your Jesus does not care. Because your Jesus was a man, and is dead. Behold, the truth. Fools of Jesus, farewell.'

Matthias raises his two hands and brings them together in a loud clap. Then he turns on his heel and leads the others from the cave into the night.

17

When the bell rings at sunrise, the Christians do not know their number. In their separate huts they do not know who will have left and who remained. In the aftermath of Matthias's departure from the cave, the Apostle called them to sit again for the supper communion, Papias at his right hand. There was a pause first for prayer and contemplation. Then John broke the bread and gave thanks. He spoke the words of blessing they had heard many times, but there was a hardened edge to his voice, as though now there was an imperative. 'Jesus said: "I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger, he that believeth in me shall never thirst." ' The Apostle held aloft the cup of wine and said, 'Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God.' After, he had turned his head to each as though he could see and spoken loudly: 'My brothers, truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.'

He spoke on and the disciples listened, marvelling at urgency of voice, the vigour and conviction that seemed of old. He spoke of the light as if the darkness was nearer now. Papias and the elders attended as though the words were newly necessary, and in their telling remade the world, as if therein were retraced maps for the lost.

The old Apostle had taken the hands of each as they left the cave and went out across the dark. The night was blown about, unruly winds and heavy starless sky. Papias and Ioseph had remained. In the course of the night they woke and slept both, but neither could say they saw the Apostle rest.

Now, at the rising of a timid sun, the bell rings, its leaden clapper hand-beat to make a dull sound as the disciple Lemuel crosses the first thin light on the island and comes along the upper ridge to sound the call for prayer. In the chill gloom are shadow figures, silent, stepping the stone path to assembly. Birds are not yet astir; nothing sounds but the sea turning the key of its tide. In grey, like shades crossed from another world, the Christians. First there is only Lemuel, the bell ringer, then the woken form of Danil, then Meletios, and others, each uncertain as they come outside if they alone are left, if all will have followed Matthias. They take comfort from one another's company, but say nothing. They cross as always up the beaten way to the promontory where the flat table rock stands.

The sun rises.

The Apostle and Ioseph and Papias come — they, too, feeling the human consolation of community, and more, the enduring witnessing of their belief. The disciples have each prepared themselves in the night to be the only remaining in the dawn, and thinking so having ventured into the wild dark of their own spirits, to seek the truth of what they believe and then live by it — they have accepted it. Each has thought to abide with the old apostle in a community of two or three, if so be it, to wait in prayer for the coming of Jesus the Christ. But now they see, there remains all who sat to the supper communion, nine in number. And though they are less than half the community of before, from this each takes strength.

By the table rock they stand. The daylight reveals them where they pray to the Father.

Below, the sea unveiled, a boat waits. To it, in form like a snake, Matthias and his followers come. Behind them they leave their huts afire that nothing be left but darkened prints upon the ground.

I think of the multitude.

I think of the great multitude who followed you because they had seen your miracles on those who were diseased. The crowd whose number Simon Peter could not count but said were more than five thousand. Up the stony ground of the mountain following, the time of Passover near. The multitude in the heat of day. I looked back upon them, marvelling. How many there were. Philip saying to me, 'We become a nation.'

As we believed and were witness thereof.

The great company murmuring, whispering, expecting, climbing the mountain behind you to the place you led, where was a grassy expanse.

'Whence shall we buy bread that these may eat?'

The boy who carried five loaves and two small fishes. The sun shining upon the multitude.

I saw the loaves and fishes carried to you in the one basket. Your prayer of thanks over them, your eyes to the heavens. And breaking the loaves and fishes that they might be distributed among many and sending forth: 'Gather up the fragments that remain that nothing be lost.'

The twelve baskets that were filled. And again, and again, so a clamour arose among the multitude. They stood and cried out. 'O Prophet! O Most Mighty! Hail Holy King! Hail Holy King!'

For, in fervour then, they were for coming and taking you by force to be their king. The great multitude of your believers.

But you departed hence alone into the mountain.

We stood before the great assembly. Philip said, 'What number in the world there will be of us will outnumber stars.'

For so it seemed.

The multitude.

O Lord, if it be thy will, send us your mercy that we may abide.

If it be thy will, send us a sign.

'Papias?'

'Yes, Master?' Papias still cannot call the Apostle by his name. It does not seem fitting. For the truth is he wishes him to be other than mere human, not merely an old man called John.

They sit outside the cave in the afternoon. It is some days since Matthias and his followers have left.

'You are well?'

'I am.'

'What I ask you will obey, Papias?'

'You have no need to ask me.'

'Nonetheless. Answer me.'

'I will obey you.'

'God be with you.'

The weather is broken, the island in bleak light. What was empty before is now more so. Where before the younger disciples carried out many of the chores of the community, catching the fish, drawing the water, such tasks are now fallen to the elders. In the aftermath of the departure there is renewed vigour in belief, but hardship, too. The Apostle is aware of this. More than ever now he wishes their faith might be rewarded. He wishes there might be something to avouch for their staying on, for their refusal to surrender though their number is diminished. Long since, he has accepted for himself that there be no obvious exchange, between heaven and earth no simple traffic of plea and response, whereby all that is sought is granted. But nonetheless he feels there exists always the listening presence. He feels love. Always the prayer is heard; the judgement of its merits is the Lord's. But now, in the bleak aftermath, John feels the urgency of the time. There is a turning. He can sense it in the air, in the fall of the sea. It must be now. Now nears the hour. So he says to Papias, 'I am to ask the community of our brothers to fast with me. We will fast that our spirits be made pure and our prayers ascend. I will ask this of our brothers, but not you, Papias.'

'Not me? But I am the youngest. I am the most able. I. .'

'No. Not you, Papias. I command it.' John extends his hand, takes hold of the youth's shoulder. 'You have suffered and serve the Lord as he wishes. I am grateful for your love. But you should not fast. Bear with us. For forty days and nights we shall take only water. The time is near for our Lord.'

The disciples are told at communion. All consent. They eat the last bread and taste the last wine. Then quiet falls on them. Their faces are old and lined. The flesh of Ioseph's cheeks is white and sags from prominent bone. The bald head of Lemuel is wrinkle-creased, his brown eyes deep; Danil is in his sixth decade, narrow-jawed; Melitios, with the long face and blue eyes of Iconium, has forgotten his age; in his narrow chest Simon breathes wheeze. They are all in various manner infirm. In ordinary time they suffer the multitude of ailments visited on the aged — rheums and aches of joint, poorness of breath, wheeze and gasp and cough, vision blurry or marred with floating fish-hook nothings, dryness, deafness, flakiness, dolour of source unknown — and are poorly suited to the rigours of fasting. Nonetheless, each agrees without discourse. By nightfall they are begun.

The first days hunger comes for them. It comes like an unwelcome companion at mealtimes. Its teeth are sharp, its breath foul. It licks its lips with wet red tongue, spits aside the dust of the day and impatiently waits. It says the names of foods. Warm soup of lentils and beans. Pepper spices. Dipping bread. Pottage of sweet lamb with crushed herb of rosemary. Fat onions fried. Baked fish filleted with lemons sliced inside, drizzled over with honey. Touch it. Suck your finger burn. Taste the juices. Sip from the wineskin, pour and watch the beading bubbles, purple mouth swallow. Swallow in the gullet, for the good of it. Taste the sweetness of a honeyed cake, warm from the fire. Break its crust, go on, let free the scent, breathe it deep. Finger the soft food. Eat. Eat. Eat, the cruel companion urges. But the elders endure and do not relent. They sit with bowed head. Some pray the same prayer over and over so it curls about them and is cast like a cocoon. Others find a place, at first in the real, in the mid-distance, a rock, a minor landmark, and stare at this. They focus intently and do not move. They watch an hour, two; they watch while the stiffness comes in their necks and locks tight the vertebrae, they watch themselves into perfect stillness and on until through the place they see they see another, and this takes all their sight. To this other place they go, escape the unwelcome companion who cannot follow.

By the end of the first seven days they are already noticeably weaker, thinner, as Papias brings them water. How can they continue for another thirty-three?

The spring is coming to meet winter. Winds blow down off bright skies of swift white cloud. Seabirds in the twist of season fly low across the broken surface, search the first fish of season. The light changes by the moment. The heavens throw down fists of hail, darken the island then make brilliant with the sun. Light and shade compete across the stony shore, outpacing the flight of gulls. Suddenly the air warms. Up the coast of Greece come mild drafts, gusts carrying the scent of the lemon trees leafing. While the disciples fast, the sea turns blue before them. White sails cross. All is renewal. The plate of the earth itself seems borne upward toward the sun.

Whether the disciples note this or not, Papias cannot say. He comes and goes from each without word. They are both present and absent, their silence deep. The Apostle lies by night on the bed mat of dried rush, sits by day outside the cave, his face to the sun. What prayers he says, or whether he prays at all, remains a mystery. Does he sleep? Does he rest truly? The fasting is a purge of spirit, a paring back to the root. It is painful before it is purifying. In perfect stillness, their faces composed, some of the elders' eyes weep. Twin tears thinly gloss their cheeks, as though they mine a source. Then the water stops. They sit or kneel on, travelling further to another place in their soul, where some history of their weakness or failure awaits.

But the weather is clement, and clemency seems the coming mood of season. Papias himself prays thanks for his rescue; he does not know or understand yet the reason and prays to know his purpose. But for now that purpose is the care of these disciples. The words of the Apostle concerning love are with him like a white stole. God is love, he says to himself many times, and feels in this a vast illumination as though a rock has been pushed back and a bright revelation beheld. If he can hold on to this, if he cannot forget for one moment, then the world is easily lived, he thinks. Within the white aura of this radiance he can put aside any thought of Matthias and the others. He can banish the disturbing thought of the rupture in the community, the versions of his death and resurrection, and the evidence that evil exists.

The sun shines.

By the twentieth day the spring is truly come, but the disciples weaken visibly. Papias thinks to squeeze berry juice in their water, anything that may give strength. But then chastises himself for not trusting the Lord. He himself tries to eat little, but the hunger is fierce and he fears he grows weak and risks illness, so he takes a little more. As he brings the water from one silent old man to the next, he watches for signs they need more. But rarely do their eyes rise to meet his or is there the slightest indication they know he is there. They are as ones gone away, their bodies like cloaks cast off. Nonetheless, Papias can see the wastage. He can see the bones emerge, the skeletal features of Meletios, the sharp jawbone of Danil, and worries compete with his faith. How can there be twenty days more?

At sunrise each day he goes to the table rock alone. He has been asked to ring the bell for Lemuel, though none are to gather. And so he does, hand-beating the dull notes to the pale sky, where the birds turn over in surprise having forgotten men exist. After the prayer bell he rings again, one chime for each day of the fasting past, then he kneels alone and prays. Sometime across his prayer there comes to him the image of the greater world. He has a glimpse of places far away, the villages and towns where the ordinary business of markets and merchants continues, where the day is begun not with a bell but stalls and salutes and the cry of prices. He sees the world gone ahead without him and for moments feels the melancholy of that loss. Out there is the life he might have lived, might be living now, with a family and neighbours, the joys and complaints of every day. On his knees by the table rock he must pray himself back to concentration. No, he has chosen this other life. Because he has a purpose. Because the Lord has a purpose for him, though it may be no more than to attend the Apostle. So be it. If that is his will. Amen.

By the thirtieth day, speech and food, company and discourse seem things of a lifetime ago. Never was so much loneliness. Here is the lone moving figure of Papias crossing the near shore, where the seabirds rise lazily before his approach and land not six paces further on, as though he will not come there. They alight and land, cawing, scuffing the sand, wing-brushing where sandflies stand. He goes with heavy heart to the path across the island, and hurries then to the place of his private grief and guilt. In this season of purge he returns to the burnt ground where stood the house of the fisher's wife Marina. His stomach turns as he approaches. He feels he might fall down, but doesn't, but in him breaks the cords in which are tied up his emotions, and his shoulders shudder. He sees the blackened stone mound of the grave of the children, and a wail is torn out from inside him like a line with jagged hook.

O Lord, hear thy servant.

O Lord, if it be thy will, send us your mercy that we might abide.

Forgive us our trespasses.

If it be thy will, send us a sign.

Forty days and nights of fasting. Forty days and nights of prayer ascending. John remains as he was in the beginning. The Apostle is as ever, some part distant, as though a portion of him is perpetually engaged elsewhere. He suffers the fast without evidence of decline. It is as if for him food and sleep have already been abandoned and the necessities of life for others are for him idle. He remains. His great age matters not. He may live for ever, or until the Lord Jesus comes for him. So it seems. In his blind silence he sits, a rock of faith. He touches the water to his lips only; they flake and scab, but he pays them no attention. His praying is like the instrument of the gifted. He knows its form and features so well that it is become his second nature. He is more than comfortable within it. He sees the words in his mind without saying them. He sees the distance between heaven and earth in terms of height and tilts his head slightly backwards as if in his darkness he will see the light coming. The prayers flow from him. Sometime he finds in himself the words of the psalms, and twenty, thirty of them flow past his mind; other times a single one recurs and repeats until it becomes like the noise of a wind blowing upwards. He prays. The forty days and nights pass over him.

18

The springtime comes all about the island as the disciples fast. It announces itself in light and air. Warm breezes play at the cave entrance. The sea sings lightly. What sign is expected, what the community seeks, has not been said. The fasting was for each not for reward, and God is not to be bargained with.

But as he rings the bell for the fortieth day, Papias feels there will be something. Something will happen. He knows it. He has food prepared for the supper after midnight. All day he feels the strange exhilaration of imminence. The disciples have come through. Though they have weakened, their faces gaunt, their flesh a yellowish hue, and the eyes of many shot red with blood, they have endured. He rings the bell as loud as possible. Let the sound peal out! Let the heavens hear! It is the final day.

He walks the shore with quickened step. The sky is perfectly blue, the light thrilling. Papias's belief in miracle is such that anything could happen. It might come from the sea or the air, he thinks. The waves themselves could stop in mid-fall and then curl back as they did for Moses, or the blue canopy overhead open, amber-fringed, and golden chariots with angel charioteers appear. Winged horses could thunder down the sky, trumpets herald the Almighty. It could be so. It could be. At any moment the Lord might come for his beloved disciple. So the day has been made lovely, so the sea glistens like polished glass.

Papias walks the full length of the curved sand to the rocks and then back again. He prays to be worthy to witness. He prays that our Lord of Infinite Mercy forgive him his sins. The tender skin of his ear wound burns with the sun. He holds a palm against it as he walks, as though to keep in something he hears. His footprints parallel those of earlier days. Birds are in the sky. He watches these, too, for the possibility of signs. Anything can be used as the language of the Lord, for he created all. Just so, even flies. The world is thus to the youth as he comes along the shore, it is charged, loaded with meaning; just beneath the surface of all is this pulsing sense of advent. It is the fortieth day.

He returns the full length of the eastern shore to where he left the handbell in the sand. He goes along the stone-way and looks back over the island edge. Not yet, he thinks. He does not come yet. But it will be soon. With light, swift stride he goes back the dry scarp to the dwelling of Danil, where rainwater brims a trough, and he dips two buckets and brings these back to the cave. He empties the water into a large earthen pot and returns to the trough with the buckets to fill again. All the time he keeps his eyes on the sky. Is the blue made thinner? Is the sky in some manner stretched? The color seems less, as though a white albumin has been pressed on to a palette and worked into the blue. Does all now not seem whiter? Is there not a milky opalescence? Look, how the distant rocks are softened in light! How pearled is the very air!

Several times, as he comes and goes with chores readying for the end of the fast, Papias thinks the moment is at hand. He stops. One time he drops to his knees so certain is he that he hears trumpets clarion. But the noon passes without event. The day remains strangely bright, but nothing more transpires.

'It will be hereafter,' he counsels himself. 'The fast will end at midnight when I ring the bell, and then, then. .' He does not finish. Although there are none listening, he does not want to say aloud the words lest he be guilty of presumption and upset the order of things.

The afternoon is long, the evening longer.

The disciples continue as before. As Papias brings to each a beaker of water, none show sign of even knowing it is the last day. They sit or kneel in silence. He wants to tell them. His mind flutters with a hundred thoughts, caged birds. It is nearly done, he wants to say, and the day shines brilliant with thanksgiving and God's glory. The hour is near. It is near at last. But Papias can do nothing but pour the water and bow and leave and visit the next.

The sun weakens. He comes inside the final hours and kneels by the Apostle. On the face of John, too, there is no sign of the nearness of the end. He is away in himself and has passed beyond the suffering of time.

Across the darkness, at last, Papias goes. Sky is million-starred, moon-lovely. He goes first to the furthest dwelling, that of Lemuel, and rings the bell. Then he hurries back along the ledge walk, where are Meletios and Simon, and beats the clapper there, then — his excitement making slip his sandals on the rocks — to Danil, Ioseph, and Eli. He cannot move quickly enough. It is as if an instant after the bell sounds the heavens may open, the stars fall away down the sky. His heart races. It will be now. They have done it; they have fasted forty days and nights and are as pure as any of God's creatures walking on the surface of the earth. They are as lights lit. From the highest point in the heavens our Lord could see them shining, and at their centre his beloved disciple.

Come. Come now.

Without word — absence from speech making the muscles of their mouths tight — without the slightest show of victory, through the glittering dark the disciples move. They gather into the cool air of the cave. John reaches out a hand for Papias.

'Help me to stand, Brother.'

Papias takes the thin fingers. The Apostle is bent down, his head low, and at first can raise only his arm above him. It is as if he has prayed himself into the earth, and his knees and torso are as a tree grown into a stone.

He makes a small groan as Papias crouches down to place his left arm around him and ease him into standing.

'Thank you, my brother.'

'I have water here readied.'

'Good. Bring me to it.'

Into the tall water pot Ioseph dips the scoop and empties it into the cupped hands of the Apostle. John washes his face, his hands, and then his feet. The others do likewise. Cleansed so, they come and sit in a circle.

'Let us give thanks,' John says, and when they have, he says the psalm, ' "Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity." '

The disciples pray together for an hour before coming to share the supper Papias has prepared. They can eat only little, but take of the communion bread and wine. They say almost nothing. None refers to the fast or utters any hope of what may transpire. They have about them a quiet, radiant contentment, but Papias wants more. Twice he leaves the table to go outside and watch the sky.

Now. Surely it will be now.

But moon and stars retain their places in the firmament. The face of night is unchanged. After the communion supper the disciples take the hands of one another in love and thanksgiving and return to their dwellings.

No angels come. No trumpets sound.

But soon after sunrise the following morn the thin figure of Eli comes. He hurries up from the fishers' huts, where he has gone to bargain for salted fish.

'Come. Come, there is news!' he cries out, waving the other disciples to follow him to the cave. 'Good news! Come!'

He is in his sixth decade, but with the short, wiry strength of the Bereans. Papias comes out to meet him.

'What is it? What is it, Eli?'

'Good news. Good news.' He stops, waits for his breath to catch up with him. The others are approaching across the stone-way. John comes out into the full of the sunlight.

'Tell, good brother Eli,' he says calmly.

'I went to bargain for salt fish, and there was a boatman come from the mainland. "O Christian," he said, for he had been told of us. "Good news for Christians." "What news?" I asked him. "You have not heard?" said he. "We hear nothing of the outside world," I told him. "The emperor is dead," he said. "But before his death he did decree that all persecution of Christians should be ceased, and banishment lifted herewith." '

Eli stops, his breath heaves in his thin chest. There is a stunned silence, in the mind of each disciple a great throng of questions pressing forwards. They look to John. A moment. Another. His white hair gleams in the light.

'Praise God,' he says at last.

'Praise God,' they all rejoin.

Then he holds wide his arms, as if he takes to him light or love.

'My brothers,' he says, 'the Lord has spoken. Our work is not over. It is not even begun. Prepare. We leave this island in three days. We sail for Ephesus.'