‘I don’t know. But he smelt bad. And I’m not sure, but I think he was wearing a hair shirt.’
His eyes opened wide. ‘That really is unusual. Did he mention heresy, by any chance?’
‘He talked about erroneous doctrine,’ I recalled. ‘And he did call the Professor a heretic.’
‘Catholic, then. If he really was wearing a hair shirt, that makes him a very unusual Catholic, though. I’ve met quite a few, and not one of them would wear anything like that.’
‘Do we still have a Spanish Inquisition?’
He laughed, but with an undertone of caution. ‘Once upon a time that was nothing to joke about. These days it’s called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The worst they do is post people to unpleasant parishes and tell them they’re not allowed to preach anymore.’
‘Maybe he’s a splinter group of one, like the People’s Front of Judaea? But really: what could there be in this scroll that would upset anyone now?’
‘Would it surprise you to know that Jesus was almost certainly married?’
This sounded a bit Dan Brown to me. ‘To Mary Magdalene?’
‘Why not? She does kiss him a lot in your Bible. And some of the Dead Sea Scrolls are a bit more forthcoming.’
‘Are we talking about children as well?’
‘What I’ve read seems to suggest so. And yes, our Da Vinci Code guy seems to have been right. Mary Magdalene went with St Joseph of Arimathea to the south of France. Though I doubt that the Merovingian kings were descended from them.’
‘That does seem a bit weird. Look, I’m not really any sort of expert on Christianity. It didn’t play much of a role in my life except by accident. But does it matter if Jesus was married and had children?’
He thought about this for a while. ‘Ketschele, how likely do you think it is that a man could reach the age of thirty back then and not be married? Unless he was an Essene.’
‘Who were they?’
‘The people who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls were Essenes. They were separatists and mystics, and what we know about them is not all that pleasant. Although there is a definite suggestion that Yeshua – Jesus to you – might have been one of them. When we hear that he spent forty days and nights in the Wilderness, he probably went to stay with them. Think Haredi on steroids. They wouldn’t even share the same city with women, which explains why they finished up around the Dead Sea.’
‘And also why they died out?’
‘That too. But we knew about them before the Scrolls, from Josephus. He was a contemporary historian. He was the only survivor of Masada, and managed to talk his way out of it.’
‘Masada? Sorry, I think I know who the Haredi are. What was Masada?’
My love grimaced. ‘One thing we really learned about Imperial Rome is that you don’t mess around with them. The last Jewish revolt took three years to quell, and Vespasian used four legions to crush it. The last fortress to fall was Masada, and all nine hundred and sixty defenders killed themselves rather than surrender to be crucified.’
‘All except this Josephus character?’
‘All except him. He became a friend of Titus – Vespasian’s son – and wrote two books called Antiquities of the Jews and The Wars of the Jews. He says that some of the Essenes weren’t so anti-woman. Jesus could easily have been one of them. Anyway, I can imagine that some Christians would be very angry at the idea.’
It was my turn to mull over this. ‘But it’s been suggested before, surely? And not just by Dan Brown?’
‘It is … puzzling. Anyway, the Gospel of St Joseph is probably by St Joseph of Arimathea, who put Jesus into his own tomb. I didn’t know he’d written a Gospel, but Biblical scholarship isn’t my forte. Anything new about Biblical times is probably bound to upset somebody. Especially someone as inflammable as our little friend Jordan.’
At that moment, the lift doors opened and Meroe wafted towards us. It is what she does, as if her feet are only touching the ground for the look of the thing. She was wrapped in a blue silk shawl with white clouds painted on it. ‘Blessed be,’ she said with a beatific smile.
I certainly felt blessed, with my Daniel at my side and my adored cat asleep under my chair.
‘I want herbs for cleansing the Professor’s apartment,’ she explained.
We watched her stately progress as she gathered all manner of herbs I knew and some I didn’t even know were here. She put them into a small calico bag and came to sit with us. I offered her the gin bottle, but she shook her head.
‘Meroe,’ I said, ‘do you have any idea why anyone should want to steal Professor Monk’s manuscript? We’ve talked it over and we’re still confused.’
She folded her neat hands in her lap and closed her eyes. ‘The Rom have many stories about Jesus that you may not know. We left India long ago and went to Egypt. Then we came to Palestine. A gypsy boy is supposed to have stolen the nails for Jesus’s crucifixion. Unfortunately, they found some more. But we have His blessing for that.’
‘Would it surprise you to know that Jesus may have been married to Mary Magdalene?’
She looked at me with her dark eyes unblinking. ‘Of course they were married. After Jesus was taken up, St Joseph took her with him. She had one child, and was carrying another unborn. They went to France, and we went with him. Have you not heard this before?’
Daniel shook his head. ‘This is gypsy lore, known to all your people?’
‘Not to all, perhaps. Why? Is it important?’
‘It may be. What else can you tell us, Meroe? It would seem that there are more stories than we knew about Jesus of Nazareth.’
She closed her eyes for a moment. ‘Have you heard the tale of the robin?’
We shook our heads.
‘When Jesus was on the cross, a robin flew down from a sycamore tree and tried to pick out the thorns from His forehead. But the crown of thorns was buried too deep, and the red blood stained the robin’s breast. And that is why all robins have red breasts, in memory of the kind bird. Robins may not be hunted, for any reason. The fowler may take any bird save the hawk, the eagle and the robin.’
‘No, I never heard that either.’ Daniel bowed his head, and Meroe stood up.
‘I think the police must be done with Professor Monk’s apartment by now,’ she said. ‘Perhaps we should go there now, and I will perform the cleansing ritual.’
Daniel went with Meroe while I escorted Horatio back to my own apartment. I had just put the herbs I’d gathered in my pot and settled Horatio down with some kitty dins when my phone rang. It was Daniel.
‘Corinna? You’d better get up here right now.’
When I arrived, the door was flung open. Meroe, Daniel and I stared at the interior. It looked like there had been an invasion of Visigoths.
Philomela: My body hurts all the time. I’m used to it now. And while I would love to be able to dance again, I can live without that. Without my voice, though, I am utterly lost.
CHAPTER NINE
These violent delights have violent ends.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, ROMEO AND JULIET, ACT 2, SCENE 6
‘Hello? Letitia? You’re not going to like this, but …’