A Letter of Mary mr-3 Read online

  Shortly before midday on the appointed Wednesday, I drove my faithful Morris to the station to meet Miss Ruskin's train. It was four and a half years since we had met near Jericho, and though I would have known her anywhere, she had changed. Her chopped-off hair was now completely white. She wore a pair of glasses, the lenses of which were so black as to seem opaque, and she favoured her right leg as she stepped down from the train. She did not see me at first, but stood peering about her, a large khaki canvas bag clutched in one hand. I crossed the platform towards her and corrected myself— some things had changed not at all. Her face was still burnt to brown leather by the desert sun, her posture still that of a soldier on parade, her clothing the same idiosyncratic variation on the early suffragist uniform of loose pantaloons, tailored shirt, jacket, and high boots that I had seen her wear in Palestine. The boots and clothing looked new, and somehow ineffably French, despite their lack of anything resembling fashion.

  "Good day, Miss Ruskin," I called out. "Welcome to Sussex."

  Her head spun around and the deep voice, accustomed to wide spaces and the command of native diggers, boomed out across the rustic station.

  "Miss Russell, is that you? Delighted to see you. Very good of you to have me at such short notice." She grasped my hand in her heavily calloused one. The top of her squashed hat barely reached my chin, but she dominated the entire area. I led her to the car, helped her climb in, started the engine, and enquired about her leg.

  "Oh, yes, most annoying. Fell into a trench when the props collapsed. Bad break, spent a month in Jerusalem flat on my back. Stupid luck. Right in the middle of the season, too. Wasted half the year's dig. Use better wood now for the props." She laughed, short coughs of humour that made me grin in response.

  "I saw some of your finds in the British Museum recently," I told her. "That Hittite slab was magnificent, and of course the mosaic floor. How on earth did they make those amazing blues?"

  She was pleased, and she launched off on a highly technical explanation of the art and craft of mosaics that went far above my head and lasted until I pulled into the circular drive in front of the cottage. Holmes heard the car and came to meet us. Our guest climbed awkwardly out and marched over to greet him, hand extended and talking all the while as we moved inside and through the house.

  "Mr Holmes, good to see you, as yourself this time, and in your own home. Though I do admit that you wear the djellaba better than most white men, and the skin dye was very good. You are looking remarkably well. How old are you? Rude question, I know, one of the advantages of getting old— people are forced to overlook rudeness. You are? Only a few years younger than I am, looks more like twenty. Maybe I should have married. A bit late now, don't you think? Miss Russell— all right if I call you that? Or do you prefer Mrs Holmes? Miss Russell, then— d'you know, you've married one of the three sensible men I've ever met. Brains are wasted on most men— do nothing with their minds but play games and make money. Never see what's in front of their noses, too busy making sweeping generalisations. What's that? The other two? Oh, yes, one was a winemaker in Provence, tiny vineyard, a red wine to make you weep. The other's dead now, an Arab sheikh with seven wives. Couldn't write his name, but his children all went to university. Girls, too. I made him. Ha! Ha!" The barking laugh bounced off the walls in the room and set the ears to ringing. We took our lunch outside, under the great copper beech.

  During the meal, our guest regaled us with stories of archaeology in Palestine, which was just getting under way now in the postwar years. The British Mandate in Palestine was giving its approval to the beginnings of archaeology as a science and a discipline.

  "Shocking, it was, before the war. No sense of the way to do things. Had people out there rummaging about, destroying more than they found, native diggers coming in with these magnificent finds, no way of dating them or knowing where they came from. All that could be done with 'em was to stick 'em in a museum, prop up a card saying SOURCE: UNKNOWN; DATE; UNKNOWN. Utter waste."

  "Didn't Petrie say something about museums being morgues, or tombs?" I asked.

  "Charnel houses," she corrected me. "He calls them 'ghastly charnel houses of murdered evidence.' Isn't that a fine phrase? Wish I'd written it." She repeated it, relishing the shape of the words in her mouth. "And during the war, my God! I spent those years doing nothing but stopping soldiers from using walls and statues for target practice! Incredible stupidity. Found one encampment using a Bronze Age well as their privy and rubbish tip. Course, the idiots didn't realise their own water supply was connected to it. Should've told 'em, I know, but who am I to interfere in divine justice? Ha! Ha!"

  "Surely, though, most of the digs are more carefully run now," I suggested. "Even before the war, Reisner's stratigraphic techniques were becoming more widely used. And doesn't the Department of Antiquities keep an eye on things?" My rapid tutorial at the hands of one of the British Museum's more helpful experts at least enabled me to ask intelligent questions.

  "Oh, yes indeed, improving rapidly, things are. Of course, there's no room for amateurs like myself now, though I'll be allowed to make drawings and notes when I get back. There's talk of opening the City of David, really exciting. But still, we get Bedouins wandering in with sacks of amazing things, pottery and bronze statuettes, last month a heart-stopping ivory carving, magnificent thing, part of a processional scene, completely worthless from a historical point of view, of course. He wouldn't tell us where in the desert it came from, so it can't be put in its proper archaeological setting. A pity. Oh, yes, that's more or less why I'm here. Where's my bag?"

  I brought it from the sitting room, where she had casually dumped it on a table. She opened it and dug through various books, articles of clothing, and papers, finally coming out with a squarish object wrapped securely in an Arab man's black-and-white head covering.

  "Here we are," she said with satisfaction as she displayed a small intricately carved and inlaid wooden box. She laid it in front of me, then bent to replace various objects into the bag.

  "I'd like you to look at this and tell me what you think. Already gave it to two so-called experts, both men of course, who each took one look and said it was a fake, couldn't possibly be a first-century papyrus. I'm not so sure. Really I'm not. May be worthless, but thought of you when I wondered whom to give it to. Show it to whomever you like. Do what you can with it. Let me know what you think. Yes, yes, take a look. Any more tea in that pot, Mr Holmes?"

  The box fit into one hand and opened smoothly. Inside was nestled, secure in a tissue bed, a small roll of papyrus, deeply discoloured at the top and bottom edges. I touched it delicately with my finger. The tissue rustled slightly.

  "Oh, it's quite sturdy. I've had it unrolled, and the two 'experts' didn't coddle it any. One said it was a clever modern forgery, which is absurd, considering how I got it. The other said it was probably from a madwoman during the Crusades. Experts!" She threw up her hands eloquently, eliciting a sympathetic laugh from Holmes. "At any rate, the experts deny it, so we amateurs can do as we please with it. It's all yours. I started on it, but my eyes are no good now for fine work." She took off her dark glasses, and we saw the clouds that edged onto the brilliant blue of her eyes. "The doctors in Paris say it's because of the sun, that if I wear these troublesome things and stay inside all the time, it'll be five years before they have to operate. Told them there was no point in having the years if I couldn't work, but, being men, they didn't understand. Ah well, five years will get me going, if I can get the money to start my dig, and after that I'll retire happy. Which has nothing to do with you, of course, but that's why I'm giving you the manuscript."

  I took the delicate roll from its box and gently spread it out on the table. Holmes pinned the right end down with two fingers and I looked at the beginning, which, as the language was Greek, began at the upper left. The spiky script was neat, though the whole eighteen inches were badly stained and the edges deeply worn, in places obscuring the text. I bent over the f
irst words, then paused. Odd; I could not be reading them correctly. I went back to the opening words, got the same results, and finally looked up at Miss Ruskin, perplexed. Her eyes were sparkling with mischief and amusement as she looked over the top of her cup at me.

  "You see why the experts denied it, then?"

  "That is obvious, but—"

  "But why do I doubt them?"

  "You couldn't seriously think—"

  "Oh, but I do. It is not impossible. I agree it's unlikely, but if you leave aside all preconceived notions of what leadership could have been in the first century, it's not at all impossible. I've been poking my nose into manuscripts like this for half a century, and though it's somewhat out of my period, I'm sorry, this does not smell like a recent forgery or a crusader's wife's dream."

  It finally got through to me that she was indeed serious. I stared at her, aghast and spluttering.

  "Would you two kindly let me in on this?" interrupted Holmes with admirable patience. I turned to him.

  "Just look at how it starts, Holmes."

  "You translate it, please. I have worked hard to forget what Greek I once knew."

  I looked at the treacherous words, mistrusting my eyes, but they remained the same. Stained and worn, they were, but legible.

  "It appears to be a letter," I said slowly, "from a woman named Mariam, or Mary. She refers to herself as an apostle of Joshua, or Jesus, the 'Anointed One,' and it is addressed to her sister, in the town of Magdala."

  THREE

  gamma

  Holmes busied himself with his pipe, his lips twitching slightly, his eyes sparkling like those of Miss Ruskin.

  "I see," was his only comment.

  "But it's not possible—" I began.

  Miss Ruskin firmly cut me off. "It is quite possible. If you read your Greek Testament carefully, ignoring later exclusive definitions of the word apostle, it becomes obvious that Mary the Magdalene was indeed an apostle, and in fact she was even sent (which is, after all, what the verb apostellein means) to the other— the male— apostles with the news of their Master's resurrection. As late as the twelfth century, she was referred to as 'the apostle to the apostles.' That she fades from view in the Greek Testament itself does not necessarily mean too much. If she remained in Jerusalem as a member of the church there, which after all was regarded as merely one more of Judaism's odder sects, all trace of her could easily have disappeared with the city's destruction in the year 70. If she were still alive then, she would have been an old woman, as she could hardly have been less than twenty when Jesus was put to death around the year 30— but impossible? I would hesitate to use that word, Miss Russell, indeed I would."

  I drew several deep breaths and tried to compose my thoughts.

  "Miss Ruskin, if there is any chance that this is authentic, it has no place in my hands. I'm no expert in Greek or first-century documents. I'm not even a Christian."

  "I told you, it's already been seen by the two foremost experts in the field, and they have both rejected it. You want to send a copy to someone else, that's fine. Send it to anyone you can think of. Publish it in The Times, if it makes you happy. But, keep the thing itself, would you? It's mine, and I like the idea of your having it. If you don't feel comfortable with it, lend it to the BM. They'll throw it in a corner for a few centuries until it rots, I suppose, but perhaps some deserving student will uncover it and get a D Phil out of it. Meanwhile, play with it for a while, and as I said, let me know what you come up with. It's yours now. I've done what I could for Mariam."

  I allowed the little conundrum to curl itself up and then placed it thoughtfully back into its box with the snug lid.

  "How did it come to you? And the box? That's surely not first century?"

  "Heavens no. Renaissance Italian, from the style of inlay, but I'm no expert on modern stuff. The two came together, though I added the tissue paper to stop it from rattling about. Got it about four months ago, just before Easter. I was in Jerusalem— had just come back from a visit to Luxor, Howard Carter's dig. Quite a find he's got there, eh? Pity about Carnarvon, though. Any road, I had just been back a day or so when this old Bedouin came to my door with a bundle of odds and ends to sell. Couldn't think why he came to me. They all know I don't buy things like that, don't like to encourage it. I told him so, and I was about to shut the door in his face when he said something about 'Aurens.' That's the name a lot of the Arabs call Ned Lawrence— you know, the Arab revolt Lawrence? Right, well, I knew him a bit when he was working at Carchemish before the war, at Woolley's dig in Syria. Brilliant young man, Lawrence. Pity he got sidetracked into blowing things up, he could have done some fine work. Seems to have lost interest. Oh well, never too late, he's still young. Where was I? Oh, right, the Bedouin. Turned out this Bedouin knew him then, too, and rode with him during the war, destroying bridges and railway lines and what not.

  "His English was not too great— this Bedouin's, that is, not Lawrence's, of course— but over numerous cups of coffee, with my Arabic and his English, it turned out that he'd been injured during the war and now was finding it difficult to get work. A lot of these people are being crowded out of their traditional way of life and have no real skills for the modern world. Sad, really. Seems that was his case. So, he was selling his possessions to buy food. Sounds like the standard hard-luck story to convince a gullible European to hand over some cash, but somehow the man didn't strike me that way. Dignified, not begging. And his right hand was indeed scarred and nearly useless. Tragic, that, for an Arab, as you know. So I looked at his things.

  "Some of them were rubbish, but there were half a dozen beautiful things: three necklaces, a bracelet, two very old figurines. Told him I couldn't afford what they were worth but that I'd take him to someone who could. At first, he thought I was just putting him off, couldn't believe I was not trying to buy at a cut price, but the next day I took him to a couple of collectors and got them to give him every farthing of their value. Amounted to quite a bit, in the end. He was speechless, wanted to give me some of it, but I couldn't take it, could I? I told him that if he wanted to repay me, he could promise never to be involved with digging up old things for sale. That'd be payment enough. He went off; I went back to my sketches for the dig.

  "About a month later, late one night, he appeared again at my door, on site this time, with another bag. Oh Lord, I thought, Not again! But he handed me the bag and said it was for me. There were two things in it. The first was a magnificent embroidered dress, which he said his wife had made for me. The other was this box. He told me it came from his mother, had been in the family for generations, since before the Prophet came. I knew it wasn't that old, and he must have seen something on my face, because he took the box and opened it to show me the manuscript. That was what his family had owned for so long, not the box, he said, which had been his father's. He told me, if I understood him right— he would insist on speaking English, though my Arabic's better than his was— that it had been in a sort of pottery mould or figurine when he was a child. It broke when he was twelve, and the whole family was terrified that something awful would happen— sounds like a sort of household god, doesn't it? They hadn't known there was anything inside the figure. Nothing much happened, though, and after a while his father put the manuscript into a box he had been given by some European. It came to this man when his parents were killed during the war, and as he himself had no children, he and his wife decided to bring it to me. I tried to give it back to him, but he was deeply offended, so in the end I took it. Haven't seen him since."

  The three of us sat contemplating the appealing little object that sat on the table amidst empty cups and the remains of the cheese tray. It was about six inches long, slightly less than that in depth, and about five in height, and the finely textured blond wood of its thick sides and lid was intricately carved with a miniature frieze of animals and vegetation. A tiny palm tree arched over a lion the size of my thumbnail; its inlaid amber eyes twinkled haughtily in a shaft of sun
light. There was a chip out of one of the box's corners, and two of the giraffe's shiny jet spots were missing, but on the whole, it was remarkably free of blemish.

  "I think, Miss Ruskin, that the box alone is an overly valuable gift."

  "I suppose it is of value, but it pleases me to give it to you. Can't keep it— too many things disappear when one is on a dig— and can't bring myself to sell it. It is yours."

  " 'Thank you' sounds inadequate, but if you wanted to be sure it has a good home, it has found one. I shall cherish it."

  An enigmatic smile played briefly over her lips, as at a secret joke, but she said, only, "That's all I wanted."

  "Shall we have a glass of wine to celebrate it? Holmes?"

  He went off to the house, and I tore my eyes away from the beguiling present.

  "Can you stay for supper?" I asked. "Your telegram didn't say when you had to be back, and the housekeeper has left us a nice rabbit pie, so you wouldn't have to face my cooking."

  "No, I can't. I'd like to, but I have to be back in London by nine— dinner with a new sponsor. Have to talk up the glory that was Jerusalem to the rich fool. Plenty of time for a glass of your wine, though, and a stroll over your hills." She sighed happily. "We used to come down to the coast every summer when I was a child. The air hasn't changed a bit, or the light."