Two days later we began our journey, following the Via Maris southwards in easy stages across the Plain of Sharon. For me there was a litter with two teams of trained bearers, while Cunoarda, Martha and Eusebius rode mules. Through the gauze curtain I could see the flash of sunlight on the helmets of my escort, sent to guard me and the chests of coin with which I, on behalf of the Emperor, would fund the building of churches in those places I deemed worthy. The rhythmic clash and tramp of the rearguard echoed from behind.

In Rome, I had been a dying woman, and when I set out upon this journey the Emperor had forced upon me I had hoped the stress of travel would release me from my pain. And indeed, it was doing so, but instead of death, I drew in life with each breath of the warm, salt-scented air. Was Palestine indeed a Holy Land, or was it only that I was at last returning to the path of my destiny?

The road pa.s.sed through open woodlands where umbrella pines mingled with oak and hazelnut. Each day, the hills on our left grew taller and more rugged, clothed in grey-green scrub and the last of the golden gra.s.s. The heat of the air was relieved by the breeze from the sea. Inland, one found fields of barley, and mud houses whose gardens were planted with pomegranate and fig and vine.

At night I slept on a well-cushioned folding bed in a tent of yellow silk, with warm blankets to keep me from the damp chill as night released the moisture from the air. Martha or Cunoarda lay on a pallet before the door. In this land, which was so close to her homeland, Martha bloomed like a flower. Cunoarda's fair skin burned and peeled, but she did not complain. As I spent more time in his company, I began to realize that Bishop Eusebius was a complex man. He had survived the persecutions without losing either his reputation or his life, and managed to avoid being caught on the losing side of the Arian controversy.

Now he faced a greater challenge.

Christians in the West had had almost twenty years to learn how to take advantage of Constantine's enthusiasm, but in the East, although Licinius had granted them toleration, only in the past two years had they begun to deal with the temptations of privilege. Eusebius's theology of a kingdom not of this world must have been perfectly suited to an embattled urban community surrounded by pagan iconography.

From all accounts, the Romans had done their best to deprive Palestine of any spiritual significance at all.

But Constantine had made it quite plain that he intended to reinvent the Holy Land, replacing the mythology of the older faiths with that of the new, just as he spoke now of founding a new Rome to replace the ancient capital with its weight of history. The notion had an epic grandeur which even in my current state of disillusion I had to admire. Whether it was truly Christian, I did not know. But Eusebius, if he wanted to survive, would have to go along with it.

Past Joppa our road turned inland, following a streambed, bearing only a trickle of water at this time of year, into the hills. The air was drier here, though the people of the country laughed when I said so. This was nothing compared to the land beyond the river Jordan, which flowed into a lake that was even more salt than the sea. Fortunately, as we climbed, we left behind us the damp heat of the coastal plain, and made better time.

As day followed golden day, we wound along the road through the hills until one morning we rounded a slope and saw, on the height across the curving valley, Aelia Capitolina, which had once been called Hierosolyma.

The walls had been built from the local stone, cream and gold with rusty stains as if all the blood that had been shed in this place had soaked into the ground. Huts clung to the slopes below them, with the remains of roads to show that once there had been more dwellings there. The tiled roofs of some of the princ.i.p.al Roman buildings were visible above the wall. This was the town that Hadrian had built after the last Jewish rebellion two hundred years before. Clearly it was the City of David no longer. How, I wondered, would it be changed by becoming the City of Constantine?

Then the bearers lifted my litter, I let the gauze curtains drop and we began the journey's final stage.

These days, Aelia was a military town, existing to serve the Tenth Legion which had been stationed here to guard against invasion from the east or local rebellion. Its commander lived in the fortress, and the house of the bishop, Macarius, was a modest place with no room for visitors, located outside the walls on Mount Sion. However one of the few wealthy merchants in the city had been only too happy to vacate his house for the visit of the mother of the Emperor. He himself had already set out for his other residence in Alexandria, so I need feel no guilt for having dispossessed him.

The next morning, the bishop himself arrived to escort me to the site of the Holy Sepulchre. It seemed to me that he greeted Eusebius with a hint of pious triumph, as if he already had the primacy of Palestine in his grasp. But Macarius was growing frail, while Eusebius was a veteran of Church politics. No matter what relics were found here, I did not think he would be dethroned so easily.

"It may not look as if we have made much progress," said Bishop Macarius apologetically, "but indeed the place looks very different than it did a few months ago. The abomination that was the Temple to Venus is gone, and we are making good progress in removing the rubble with which they covered the sacred ground."

Rubble indeed, I thought as I gazed around me. Several marble columns, which some thrifty architect had saved for re-use elsewhere, lay stacked at one end of the forum, which was littered with ropes and other gear. Workmen were emerging from the excavation beyond it like so many ants, bent beneath wicker baskets of earth and stone, and dumping their loads onto a steadily increasing pile. Women, their wrappings so impregnated with dust they seemed themselves to be creatures of the soil, were picking over the rubble.

"Each night waggons take the sifted earth to the valley to extend the fields," said Macarius. The larger stones are saved for building, and the little ones will be used to repair the roads when the winter rains come. And sometimes they find other things-vessels of pottery or gla.s.s, a piece of jewellery, or coins. It is the coins we seek above all."

"To help defray the cost of the work?"

Macarius shook his head. "Not entirely. We allow the workers to keep what they find, or they would try to hide things, and we might miss some relic of our Lord. So long as the coins we find are later than the time of Tiberius, we will know that we must dig deeper."

I nodded, amused, and a little surprised, to find the old man so practical.

"In the gospels," he went on, "we are told that soldiers diced for Christ's clothing at the very foot of the Cross. May we not hope that when the earth shook and the heavens were darkened they might have dropped some of their winnings there?"

At that moment one of the women held up something small, and the Bishop limped over to see.

"This talk of relics is superst.i.tion, though his idea about dating the coins shows a sound grasp of history,"

said Eusebius beside me. "It is the empty tomb, the Sign of the Resurrection, that should concern us here."

Together we moved closer to the excavation. "In the time of the Incarnation," he went on, "this spot was just outside the city walls. But the new wall that was built by Herod Agrippa included it, and when Hadrian refounded the city he placed the forum here, at the crossroads."

One could count on Eusebius to stick to the facts, I thought as I gazed at the gnawed earth below. A k.n.o.b of rock seemed to be emerging to one side. Still, there was something rather engaging about Macarius's simple enthusiasm.

"I have heard it said that the Emperor placed the Temple of Aphrodite there on purpose, to scandalize the Christians."

Eusebius shrugged. "Perhaps, though he was not one of the great persecutors. It is the Jews who earned his wrath. I suspect that Hadrian put the temple here simply because it was convenient, and the site was covered in an attempt to level it."

I could see his point. The city was set on a plateau surrounded on three sides by canyons, and even the top had irregularities. The earlier wall had ended where a quarry had bitten deeply into the ground, but beyond it the ground rose in a hill. I could see what looked like the beginnings of a deeper ditch at the edge of the forum as well. I knew that the thought of the events that had taken place on this spot ought to move me, but I could find no meaning in the confused scene before me now.

Eusebius frowned. "Until the diggers have finished there will not be much to see here. Perhaps you should look at some of the other sites-the Galilee, or perhaps Bethlehem, which is only a half a day's journey to the south."

"To begin at the beginning?" I nodded. For some, like the Bishop, the proof of his religion was in the elegance of its theology. But I came from a place where power flowed through the earth and gathered in sacred pools. If G.o.d had become Man here in Palestine, surely the land itself would bear witness in some way to the miracle.

It was the season of the grape harvest, and in the villages, the people were picking the ripe fruit in the little vineyards that patched the hills. Patient donkeys made their way along the road before us, almost hidden by the great baskets of grapes they bore. On our journey to Aelia, I had been insulated from contact with the people, but even the commander forgot to be suspicious when confronted by laughing girls who offered him frothing cups of freshly-pressed juice along the way.

The village of Bethlehem had not changed much since the time of Jesus. A cl.u.s.ter of flat-roofed mud houses interspersed with stock-pens and clumps of greenery spread over the hilly ground.

"Do you see where some of the structures are built out from the slopes?" asked Eusebius. "There are caves behind them that the people use for stables and storage, because they are cool. They press out the oil of their olives there as well."

"Do you mean that Jesus was born in a cave?"

"A cave that was being used as a stable. There it is, ahead of us. This site has been known for a long time. The clay manger is still there."

He did not sound very excited, but by now I had realized that what mattered to Eusebius was not the place itself but its value as a historical proof of the Incarnation. Any lack of enthusiasm on his part was more than made up for by the villagers who swarmed around us, offering to show the sacred cave.

Somewhat to my surprise, the way was partially blocked by a grove of cedar trees.

"It is the grove of Tammuz," said the little girl who had taken my hand. "The pagans mourn him at the same time as we weep for Jesus in the spring."

I blinked at this easy acceptance, but Eusebius had warned me that some of the Christians in the country district were little better than pagan themselves. It did not seem so bad a thing to me, if it allowed them to live in amity.

The cave seemed very dark after the bright afternoon, but an oil lamp was flickering, and as my eyes adjusted I saw the clay feeding trough where the walls sloped sharply inward to the grotto's end. Inside the manger someone had laid a bunch of flowers. It was very still.

Eusebius had knelt to pray, with Martha beside him, but I stood, eyes closed and feet rooted firmly in the ground, and something that had been tensed since I had first been ordered to make this journey began to relax. Beneath the scents of old incense and lamp oil and a hint of goat there was something else, which after a moment I identified as the clean aroma of damp stone.Stone is eternal , I thought, and moved to the side so that I could lay my hand against the cool surface.Stone holds memories .

I extended my awareness into the rock, searching for impressions of the past. For a time all that came into my mind were the elemental needs of the beasts that had been kept here. Then, for a moment, I sensed a woman's pain, the profound relief of birth, and a flare of ecstasy as the child was put into her arms.Whatever Jesus was, I can believe that he was bom here , I thought then.

When I opened my eyes, Martha and the little girl were both gazing not at the manger but at me, with wonder in their eyes.

"I am thirsty," I said briskly. "Is there water here?"

"A well-among the trees," whispered the girl.

It was late afternoon by now and the light slanted golden through the grove. Strips of cloth and ribbons had been tied to the branches of one of them, that overlooked the little pool.

"Thus they do also in my own land," I laid my hand upon the rough trunk and closed my eyes, allowing awareness to follow the life of the tree down to its roots and upward once more to the leaves that drew in life from the sun.

And then, for a moment it was not a tree but a female body that I was sensing, feet rooted in the soil and arms reaching for the sky. The image trans.m.u.ted and I saw a tree trunk carved into the image of the G.o.ddess. Women whirled around her, garlanded with flowers. "Asherah..." they chanted, "Asherah..."

These were the Asherim that the prophets cut down in the Courts of the Temple! I realized in amazement.They were trying to destroy the G.o.ddess. And it is She, before Tammuz, who was honoured in this holy grove !

As the vision released me I realized that the girl was still speaking- "Trees are for the Mother, the Virgin who gives birth to the Child of Prophecy. In Mamre, which is just down the road, there is an ancient terebinth tree where Abraham dreamed of his descendents. The family of King David is a tree, and Jesus is at the top of it... I hope they will not cut these trees down."

"When I give orders for the building of the church here I will ask the architects to save them." I replied.

No doubt Eusebius would have disapproved of the child's mixed theology, but it seemed to fit that moment, and I realized that in their own way, the rustling trees were also witnesses to the fact that once more the Mother was being worshipped here.

It was growing dark by the time we got on the road once more. The villagers had begged us to stay the night and join their celebration, but I judged that a journey with my own bed at the end of it would be less taxing than a night on a lumpy mattress with fleas. But as we started to descend the last slope I heard a squeal and one of the soldier's horses reared.

Above the centurion's curses as they got the animal calmed I heard a soft whining. "Wait," I called.

"There's something out there."

"A wild beast," said the commander, loosening his javelin. "But nothing large enough to hurt us, by the sound of it." He motioned to a trooper to follow him with the torch.

"It sounds like a dog-" I watched the flickering light move along the side of the road.

"You were right, my lady!" the commander called back. "It is one of the wild dogs that roam the hills, with a broken leg. I'll put it out of its misery."

"Don't harm it!" I cried. "Let one of our men wrap it in a cloak so it can't bite and we'll take it back to the city."

"Augusta, you can't make a pet of a wild dog!" exclaimed Eusebius.

"Are you presuming to tell the Empress Mother what she cannot do?" Cunoarda asked dangerously.

I ignored them, my attention on the squirming ma.s.s of red wool from which emerged a golden, short-furred head with frantic dark eyes. Gently I spoke to the animal until at last it quieted. Only then did I give the order to resume our journey.

That night I dreamed I was once more a girl on Avalon, bending to drink from the sources of the blood spring, where the water trickled out from a cleft in the side of the hill. In the dream, it was somehow the same as the cave in Bethlehem, but now I realized how much the opening looked like the gateway to a woman's womb.

In my dream, I wept for all that I had lost, until there came a voice that whispered, "Youare the child of Earth and starry Heaven. Do not forget the soil from which you have sprung ..." and I was comforted.

My foundling proved to be a female dog just past puppyhood. I called her Leviyah, which is "Lioness' in the Hebrew tongue. She bit two of the troopers before the legion's horse-doctor could splint her leg, but once I had put her into a small dark room she grew calmer. Perhaps she thought it was a den. From then on I allowed no one else to bring her food or water, and gradually the dog's panic became acceptance, and acceptance grew to trust, until she was taking food from my hand.

Leviyah remained shy with others, but from then on she followed at my heels, hiding beneath my skirts when there was too much commotion, and springing forth with bared teeth if she thought me threatened.

She made some of my entourage nervous, but what was the use of being an empress if I could not indulge my whims?

A few weeks later, we made another expedition, to the Mount of Olives which rose to the east of the city. With age, I had come to wake early, though I often needed a nap in the afternoon. When Eusebius suggested that I should arise in time to see the sun rise upon the city, I agreed, although when I emerged into the chill gloom of the hour just before dawn, I wondered why.

But inside my litter I was wrapped warmly, and Leviyah radiated heat against my thigh. We pa.s.sed through the silent streets and down into the valley of Kidron, then started up again through the rubble-strewn slopes and past the garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus had wrestled with his mortality and been betrayed.

When we reached the summit the stars were fading, and before us, the dim inchoate ma.s.s of the city was a.s.suming shape and meaning, as if this were the morning of Creation and we were watching the first emergence of the world. Like Rome, Hierosolyma took much of its character from its sacred hills. Now I could make out Mount Moriah, on which the Jews had built their temple; and glimpse Mount Sion, just outside the wall on the southern side. More and more buildings became visible, though they still seemed lifeless against the grey sky.

And then, of a sudden, the air was filled with radiance, and my shadow stretched out before me as if reaching for the luminous city beyond the gulf of shadow that lay below. Buildings which a moment before had been lifeless mud and plaster and stone glowed suddenly in a hundred shades of gold.

"Our Lord stood here," whispered Eusebius, his voice harsh with unwonted emotion. "He taught his disciples in the cave beneath our feet, and He prophesied that not one stone of Hierosolyma should be left upon another. And t.i.tus fulfilled His word."

And yet the city still stands before us, I thought then. I shivered, recognizing the sink and shift of consciousness that was altering my vision. I still saw Hierosolyma, but now I saw it as a series of layers, its outlines continually shifting while its essence remained the same. Words echoed through my awareness.

"The Romans were not the first to destroy this city, nor will the Jews be the last to lose it. It has fallen many times before, and will go down in blood and fire and be rebuilt in clean stone again and again, as one conqueror replaces another upon this land. The followers of Christ will make it their sacred centre, yet men of a faith yet unborn shall rule it until the children of Abraham return to claim it again.

"And again and again the blood shall flow across those stones, until not only the three faiths of Jahweh, but all the cults whose altars have been cast down shall worship here once more. For I tell you that Hierosolyma is indeed a place of power, and it is not men who have made it so, but rather they who have been touched by the force that rises up from the depths of its rock to seek union with the sky..."

Blinking, I came to myself once more. The ghostly outlines of the cities past and yet to come were fading, and the city of the here and now lay revealed with brutal clarity by the hard light of day. And yet I knew that those other Hierosolymas were still present, part of the eternal Holy City that would always be.

"Lady, are you unwell?" whispered Cunoarda. I found that I was leaning against her. Eusebius was still gazing at the view, and I realized with relief that I had not spoken aloud.

"A momentary distraction," I replied, pulling myself upright.

Eusebius gestured towards the hilltop, where an outcrop of bare stone was encircled by olive trees.

"And from this point Christ ascended into heaven. Christians have worshipped here ever since that day."

I bowed my head in reverence, but I knew that when I instructed the architects to build the church here, it would not crown the summit, but rise above the cave in the earth where Jesus had revealed to his followers the deepest mysteries.

That night I dreamed I was climbing a mountain. At first I thought I was ascending the Mount of Olives with a company of Christian pilgrims, but this was a smaller hill, and as the light grew I saw that it was the Tor. Below I could see the cl.u.s.ter of beehive huts and the round church that had been built by Joseph of Arimathea, and I realized that this was Inis Witrin of the monks, not Avalon. And yet, as I climbed, my vision altered, and I knew that I was seeing both at once. And still my sight sharpened, until I could look beneath the surface of the Tor to the crystalline structure of caves within.

With December, winter came to the Judaean hills, with violent storms and a perpetual damp chill that bit to the bone. Storms on the Mediterranean made a return to Rome inadvisable, work on the Sepulchre had become almost impossible, and when I developed a racking cough that worsened my usual winter breathing problems, Bishop Eusebius suggested that I move down to Jericho, where it was warmer, while he stayed to watch over the excavation.

As we made our way along the Jericho road, I could see that the terrain was changing, the trees that had clothed the hills around Hierosolyma giving way to scrub, which diminished until it seemed to disappear into the stony hills. At the slow pace my aching joints required it took us three days to reach the palm-girt oasis whose mud buildings huddled below the ancient mound. The palace of Herod was in ruins, but once more, a local merchant was happy to give up his house to an empress.

Eventually I began to feel well enough to explore the surrounding countryside and give Leviyah a chance to run. Compared to the great rivers of Europe I found the Jordan a modest stream, even when swollen by the winter rains, but the greenery that edged it made it pleasant. Venturing farther, we followed the river down to the sh.o.r.es of the Dead Sea.

To the west, the clouds which were no doubt still drenching Hierosolyma hung above the hills, but here, the sky was an intense blue. At this season the folds of the hills sheltered some vegetation, but it seemed impossible that men should live here, until our guide pointed out a brushwood shelter or a hole in the cliffs where one of the Perfect! had come to escape the temptations of the world. We made camp below the ruins of a place called Sekakah, where a community of Jewish holy men had lived in earlier days.

In this bare land I found a curious peace. A messenger was sent to bring back the supplies we would need for a more permanent encampment, and we settled in. I bathed in the saline waters, warm as blood and so thick with minerals that I floated upon the surface like a child in its mother's womb. And I took long walks along the sun-baked sh.o.r.e with Leviyah frisking by my side.

It was during one of these walks, in the middle of the day when the rocks-water-worn or sculpted into fantastic mushroom-shapes-blazed white in the sun, that I encountered the old man. Like me, he had come out to greet the noon, standing with uplifted arms at the edge of the sea.

Surprisingly, Leviyah remained still until he had finished his devotions. As she danced up to him, he turned with a smile. But I held back until he gestured a welcome. Life in this arid land had fined him down to bone and whipcord, his skin too leathery for me even to guess his age, beyond the evidence of his grizzled hair and beard. Save for a bit of goatskin tied around his skinny hips he was unclad.

"I thought you might be one of those who is not permitted to speak to a woman," I said when we had turned to look out over the water again. Its lead-coloured waters shimmered in the sunlight, and I blinked, trying to pin down the sense that I had lived this moment before.

"What is male or female when we stand as spirits before G.o.d? In the desert, true opposites are obvious-light opposes darkness, heat battles the cold," he answered. "Truth is easier to see. Men come here now to live as anchorites because they can no longer hope for the martyrdom of blood to wash away their sins. But they are not the first to seek enlightenment in this wilderness. The men of Sekakah lived a life of purity in their caves, and our Lord Himself spent forty days and forty nights wrestling with illusions not so far from here."

"And are you one of those who seek wisdom?" I said, watching Leviyah hunt among the stones and sticks cast up upon the sh.o.r.e.

"Since before His day there has always been a small community here, pa.s.sing on certain teachings that the established religions have forgotten. In times past, persecution was likely to interrupt traditions. In these days, I fear that certain aspects of the ancient wisdom will become unacceptable to a church that is learning how to live with wealth and power."

"Why do you say such things to me?" I asked, focusing on his face at last. Suddenly I was certain that I had seen him before. "I am the mother of the Emperor."

"Even in this life that is not all you are-" he reached out and touched the spot where once the crescent of Avalon had blessed my brow. How had he known? My forehead was deeply lined and my skin browned by the sun; the old tattoo was no more than a discoloration now.

"By this I recognize you as a sister in a tradition kindred to my own, an initiate of the Mysteries."

I gazed at him in astonishment. From time to time I had met priests of the Mediterranean G.o.ds who recognized that behind all their cults lay a greater truth, but I had never expected to hear a Christian speak this way.

"And there is something more. I have had a vision," he said then. "For a time the holy Joseph-he in whose tomb Christ was laid -dwelt among us, before he sailed away across the sea. In my vision, he appeared and told me that you would come. When I saw you, I was to speak these words: " 'Follow the setting sun to your journey's beginning, and through the mists of morning you shall pa.s.s between the worlds...' "

"Does this mean something to you?"