Chapter 14: Man-made
Longinus was like the holy spear of the same name, tall and thin, dark and sharp; he often narrowed his eyes, looking down on others from above.
Longinus was not his original name; he had made a vow that unless he accomplished something great, he would not take back his family name, but now it seemed that hope was growing increasingly slim.
You must know, wandering knights like him filled the entire Holy City; for various reasons, some were abandoned by their family, some were cast off by the lord they served, some failed to fulfill or had made oaths, or had done things forbidden by customary law and canon law, so they clung to a slim hope, entering Ayyarasa Road under the guise of “pilgrimage” and “combat with heathens.”
Such thinking was not strange, after all, the Knights Templar, the Knights Hospitaller, and the four Christian kings of the Arabian Peninsula had all been born from the Crusaders, but unfortunately time waits for no one; now the various powers of Ayyarasa Road were long established, no longer the days when a lone knight could win praise, gold, and a title with just courage and martial arts.
At seventeen, Longinus had boarded a ship to Jaffa with his servant, three horses, a suit of armor, and weapons; now he had only himself, a piece of leather armor, a long sword, and one horse. For these ten years, he had been seeking opportunities everywhere, but large knightly orders like the Knights Hospitaller and Knights Templar required a sponsor just to step through the door; rich merchants and nobles coming for pilgrimage either had their own guards or preferred to hire Knights Templar; he tried bribing officials of Ayyarasa Road, but they were either swindlers or useless wastes.
Ironically, it was ultimately a somewhat merciful waste who gave him an opportunity: to serve as attendant for the priests of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The priests were not only in the church and monastery; they often went out to perform sacraments for pious and valuable believers, and outside Ayyarasa Road, priests were one of the plump preys most favored by thieves—perhaps you wonder, why was there no fierce competition for such work?
Well… that was of course because… the priests were too stingy. The wages they paid could only ensure Longinus was not left naked and starving, plus an empty promise—to recommend him to the King of Ayyarasa Road, and that Longinus could freely enter and exit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Place of Suffering in front of the church like a monk.
Thus Longinus used this privilege to make money.
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was not open at all times to everyone, though canon law dictated it should be. But the monks and priests always found ways to refuse pilgrims who had not given sufficient offerings; they could not see, touch, or smell even a trace related to Jesus Christ, so large crowds of pilgrims could only linger at the stairs leading to the Place of Suffering, weeping in prayer, kneeling, hoping some good person would take pity and bring them inside.
Longinus was not a good person, but he was unexpectedly skilled at finding opportunities and not greedy; for half the priests’ price, when there was no need to go out, at dusk and when daylight was fading, he would select a few pilgrims, claim they were his friends or companions, and bring them into the church—this could be called a win-win: the pilgrims fulfilled their long-cherished wish, he supplemented his impoverished life, and the priests could more righteously order him about—though some among them grumbled about it.
But sometimes, the knight would gaze at the sky, lost in deep thought: was this all his life would be? He did not know when the priests would lose patience and tell him to get lost; even if they tolerated him, how many more years could he maintain his current strength and sharpness? He had thought of saving some money, but the armor needed repair and polishing, the horse needed feeding, the sword needed maintenance, and he himself needed to eat and drink…
Just thinking of five or ten years later, becoming like those aged or crippled knights he had seen, clutching a deflated money bag, head bowed, riding a gaunt old horse, carrying a long spear that might snap at any moment, walking the path home full of fear and despair, begging his nephew for a favor, seeking work on his farm like an overseer… maybe with offspring, maybe not, but even if he had offspring, they would just be a commoner.
He had seen with his own eyes how his father and brother treated a commoner.
Any person with a heart would shudder at this.
“Longinus?”
A voice brought Longinus back from possible hell to the human world; he saw Monk Thomas, and a boy beside him.
The boy’s overcoat was of ink-green velvet that he rarely saw even at home, with a silver cross hanging on his chest: “Longinus,” Thomas said, “I have something to ask of you.”
“What is it?”
“I know you are very familiar with the church,” Thomas said. “This young brother has made a vow to personally cleanse the Lord’s residence. I have lessons to attend and cannot accompany him—though I very much wish to—so, knight, can you look after him for me, just from after Venus rises each day until morning prayer.”
Longinus was naturally not very willing, but he knew that Monk Thomas’s secular family name was Gerard, and in Ayyarasa Road, the Gerard family name was never to be underestimated. Was this child from the Gerard family? If so, his behavior was excusable, but upon seeing the child’s eyes, he was not so sure. He had little learning and was not skilled at singing or composing poetry, but this child definitely had something starkly different from the noble youths he had seen before.
“Alright,” like all mortals, Longinus did not know what important decision he was making, nor that his destiny turned here; rather than being awed by the priest’s command or having some other scheme, it was more that he was tired of his repetitive and desperate life. “What do you want me to do?”
“Do as you usually do.” The boy humbly replied.
“I have brought my friends and companions, or their kin and friends, through this Temple more than once,” Longinus said. “Follow me.”
Since Skull Mountain was called a mountain, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre built upon it could not be as level and uniform as vast buildings on flat ground; it was divided into three parts, arranged from low to high, and at the end of the narrow, steep stairs was a square plaza. “Place of Suffering,” Longinus said, “the outward-facing part.”
He said this because the Place of Suffering—true to its name—was where Jesus Christ suffered; there was a round hole in the plaza, said to be the mark left when the Cross on which Jesus was nailed was driven into the ground; Jesus Christ had cried out in prayer above it, appealing for God’s benevolence, and the Virgin Mary, disciples, and believers had knelt and wept on this very ground, so long ago, the priests of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre had built a rectangular structure under the name of protecting the holy relic, hiding and safeguarding it—except for pilgrims with enough power and money; impecunious commoners could only crane their necks outside the pine wood doors, hoping for a occasional glimpse of the sacred trace through the intermittently visible gaps.
Some among them, seeing Longinus with the boy, could not help showing disappointment; Longinus was cautious, and though his actions had the priests’ tacit approval, he never got carried away; he brought only two or three people into the church each day. With this child here, it meant one less spot today.
“But look at this noble person’s attire,” they whispered, “he’s not the sort who can’t afford an offering, is he?”
Caesar was seeing people outside the castle for the first time; those who could come on pilgrimage were destined not to be truly destitute commoners or slaves with nothing at all—how could one afford the food and travel money needed for the pilgrimage road if they couldn’t even fill their bellies? Even so, their appearance and bearing still could not compare to the lowliest servant in the castle; if one had to compare, they were like group after group of wild rabbits, with disheveled fur, cloudy eyes, full of wariness, hard to approach.
Longinus was long accustomed to the crowd’s stares; he pushed open the heavy doors for Caesar, shutting out those jealous, unkind gazes.
This place felt familiar to Caesar: walls, ceilings built of long great stones, dim light streaming in from small windows only to be drowned by bright candlelight, exquisite tapestries hanging around, images of saints enshrined, banners and curtains dangling from arched ribs; the only difference was that in the center of the mirror-smooth granite floor, a jagged rock surface was exposed. There were no pilgrims yet; Longinus took Caesar to see it. “Come touch it,” he said, kneeling to touch the round hole himself.
Caesar did so too, but unlike the single-minded pilgrims and priests, he could not help thinking of that young Isaacite who came to save the world yet was betrayed and judged by his own people, then executed like a thief, merely because he touched the interests of Isaac officials and elders—what was he thinking when nailed to the Cross? Did what he firmly believed in exist? If he was indeed still watching this human world, seeing priests use his holy relic to gather and scrape believers’ property, would he laugh or be angry?
Behind the small hall of the Place of Suffering were upward stairs, broad and long; at the top was a cedarwood door, with two priests guarding beside it. Inside the door was a bed-sized blood-red stone; without Longinus explaining, Caesar could guess that after Jesus Christ died, his disciples took him down from the Cross and laid him on this stone, the Savior’s blood soaking it, making it a relic.
From the second hall upward was the true Holy Sepulchre; ebony double doors led to a circular domed great hall, in the center a sumptuous golden chamber containing Jesus Christ’s tomb, originally belonging to a rich merchant who donated it to the Savior—this was a stone cave so narrow it was almost unbelievable, its entrance blockable with a stone, which Jesus’s disciples did; on the third day, after Christ resurrected and appeared eleven times, when people opened the tomb, they found only a shroud left inside.
Now the shroud had been obtained by the Roman Church; here there was only the stone cave made especially smooth from countless people rubbing it, but under the reflection of silk and gemstones, even the plain grayish rock seemed sublime and glorious.
Longinus parted the brocade curtain, allowing Caesar to venerate the final dwelling in the human world of the Son of God.
Caesar knelt and silently prayed for a while, reached out to touch the smooth stone, then lightly touched his forehead.
“You saw it too, right,” Longinus said earnestly after taking this boy—who could claim a place in the Church or court by looks alone—through the entire Church of the Holy Sepulchre. “Lord, I don’t know how you came to make such a vow, but with your strength alone, cleaning the whole church would take much time and energy; your fingers will ache, your skin will grow calluses, your fatigue will affect your work. If I were you, you’d be better off giving me some money to hire servants for you; when someone asks, I’ll proclaim your name.”
His words sounded reasonable, but Caesar knew full well this sir was just fulfilling a broker’s duty—not that he would break his word, but once he took the money, he would exchange opportunities to bring people to venerate relics for free labor, and all of Caesar’s money would end up in this wandering knight’s pocket.
Caesar would not blame such a small figure, but would not let him dictate and betray his original intent: “That won’t do,” he said with a smile. “I came precisely to suffer.”
He and Longinus walked out of the church together onto the plaza; the sky was still dark, but the pilgrims lingering on the stairs unwilling to leave had all woken; they curiously stared at Caesar and Longinus. Longinus watched the boy take from a servant’s hand something like a wooden spear but with rags bundled at the end, and a waterskin; the boy sprinkled some water on the rags and began slowly cleaning from the first stair.
“What is this?” Longinus asked.
“Mop.” Caesar answered. Before he came to the castle, floor cleaning still relied on maidservants kneeling with rags and sponges; he did not know why, with brooms already existing, there was no sign of mops—clearly for cleaning stone and wooden board floors, a mop’s efficiency far exceeded hand-wiping. He thought perhaps there was some taboo, but when he had attendants make a mop, they immediately eagerly copied and used it—of course, before that, they specially and very formally requested his permission.
Longinus wanted to ask more, but by then a pilgrim had approached; though dressed like a Christian, careful scrutiny—especially by someone as experienced as Longinus—revealed at a glance he was an Isaacite. Jesus Christ was born in the Isaacites’ tribe; he should have become an elder or even king of the Isaacites, but unfortunately the Isaacites lacked such wisdom and foresight; they framed and killed the Savior, though this was the suffering the latter had to endure, but as executioners and traitors, Isaacites were long hated and shunned by Christians.
Longinus did not have that pure hatred; he scorned Isaacites but not their money.
“Oh dear, isn’t this Sherlock old brother?” He walked toward that Isaacite, smiling as he linked arms with that fat arm.
