163. For days after He was killed I wandered around the city. Not recalling quite where I wandered or where I slept. I had some vague idea that I should find His men, but He had told them to disperse and they did that very well. I did not care whether I was captured by the Watchmen of the City, and my carelessness for whether I lived or died rendered me even more spectral and grey and transparent to the people who passed me by. Not a single living being noticed me or challenged me or even really encountered me at all.

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164. As I wandered I passed by the place where He was crucified. I might have passed it more than once but not once did I look for His body. My grief had turned my soul very dull and to my dulled senses His death seemed no more tragic than the death of any other man. If I had retained some of His strength I might have gone looking for those responsible, but how would I distinguish them? This is the invulnerability of Empire: you do not know who to fight or who to kill even if you have the strength to do it. And I was never born to bear arms. I was brought into the world to bear witness, armed only with the forlorn hope that life might lose the power to keep me in the world, and that I might be released into death sooner rather than later.

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165. Days of wandering eased my grief just enough to bring me back to my senses. I found myself hungry and thirsty in a dry wash outside the limits of the city. I began to walk towards the head of the valley, exploring a few shaded gullies and digging down into the sand. Eventually I found a soak of sweet water at the terminus of a narrow ravine. I tasted the water dubiously at first and then I took huge draughts of the cool water that I let pool in my hands. I also washed myself the best I could, the sweet water flowing over my arms and face and neck as some of the dust was washed away. As I washed and my thirst abated I felt a bit of life come back into me, and it continued to flow as I knelt down by the spring and wiped the tear-tracks from my face and wondered what I should do.

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166. The only thing I could think of doing was to return to the caves. As dangerous as it might be I knew it had to be done. I rested for a while and then I began to walk the long way around, keeping watch for any spies, approaching the caves from the safety of the opposite ridge. As I walked up through waste ground and sparse oak forest I was tempted to turn back but I knew I had to continue. The People may have scattered but there may be some who remained, and if there were remnants they would be the youngest and most frightened of the children. He would have wanted me to gather them up, I felt certain of it, and bring them to safety if a safe place could be found. I trod the dusty path up to the crest of the ridge and I was surprised at how equably I could remember Him, thinking of His wishes without grief or horror, thinking of His care for the People that was always the best part of Him.

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167. When I came within view of the cave entrance it was getting late in the day. I lay flat against the ridge to silhouette any sign of movement. A long time passed but in the softening afternoon sun there was no movement at all. No equipment, no refuse, no sentries. The caves seemed completely abandoned but still I kept watch until the valley and both ridges sank into shadow. Eventually I got to my feet and started to creep down the near slope towards the opposite bank. As I reached and then crossed the valley floor the caves seemed so deserted that I wondered whether I might have returned to the wrong place. But the ground outside the caverns was perfectly familiar, as was the main entrance, although when I put my head inside the caves there was absolutely nothing to see.

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168. It was only when I pushed deeper into the caves that I encountered the few remaining People. They called for me to stop in tremulous voices and I saw them standing against me in the gloom, holding out sticks and cooking knives and shaking as they did so. They were willing to fight but these were the smallest and most malnourished of the children. They were brave but they showed how doomed Her dreams of a Slave Army really were. I walked gently towards them with my head bowed and I removed my veil. After a moment of hesitation they recognised me by my hair, and they dropped their crude weapons and ran across the cave to embrace me.

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169. Their story was bleak. Most of the People had scattered once it became clear that some disaster had happened. They fled in twos and threes and did not stop to consider the others. They sensed that She was gone and that Her power to protect them was withdrawn, they had seen Him gather up His men and they knew He would not return. Most shocking of all was the condition His brother was in before he fled with Her out of the caves, his look of terror in the face of imminent death that all of us know too well. The older ones fled but the youngest children know nothing but obedience to Her. They stay in these caves because She put them there and nobody can countermand Her order. They remember the bright power She commanded on Her wedding night, they believe She might yet return to lead them if they only have the faithfulness to wait. 

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170. The children seek hope but I have a duty to show them the truth of what has happened. I pull the oldest one gently towards me, bringing our faces together, and although she has no skill in looking into me she gradually starts to see. I show her oblique images of the disaster and she begins to moan, saying no no no, and as she continues to look this is the only word she can utter. The others begin to tremble and they join in with her moaning because they recognise the sound of death when they hear it, they know our dream has ended in disaster and they cannot restrain their grief.

 

171. My visions escape my control and they begin to play out in vivid stations across the walls of the cave. We see the wicked find His brother and drag his corpse out of his tomb, and how their magicians manage to reanimate him just long enough for his blood to flow again. Death left his body terribly degraded but some of his secrets remain, they drain out what is left of them and they drink his blood for its secrets. They also tear at his flesh, that has been decomposing for days, and these vile acts will be commemorated for the whole of the rest of history. Their Blood Magic shows them enough to consolidate their hold over the world. It is not the absolute victory that would have flowed from his living blood but the Romans triumph all the same.

 

172. They profit by his blood but it is the Word that gives them their power. We are shown endless scenes of them preaching his Words of Love to their sighing slaves, they practice oppression under cover of these words and their slaves sigh all the more. The corrupted Word lulls every victim into passivity and their empire becomes spiritual, they steal the love out of their victims and they make them bow down as they do it. Raising up images of death and brutality in front of them, securing their complete surrender without a single drawn sword.

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173. But the Word is vast, as are the places where it is spoken, and finding no other place in this world it comes suddenly back into me. My stilled tongue is loosened and I hear words spilling out from within me, announcing that I am no longer the Sealed Prophet it was ordained for me to be. Those seals are broken and I am commanded to testify by the Word that has been revealed to me, to set down a True Testament to His courage and His sacrifice, shoring it against their lies until I am no longer resident in my body. Lines that will identify me when He storms back into the world, and remind me of Him in those many lifetimes when He does not appear. But I am mostly commanded to set down words to be signposts upon the path, some comfort to the weary traveller who yet presses on alone.

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174. My first act of leadership is to cast off the name She gave me. I tell the children that I am now bound to this soil because of the blood that was shed here, I say that Ruth no longer fits me as a name if it ever did. I tell them the name my mother gave me, translated from my mother's tongue, and I say that from now on amongst the People I will be known as Shoshana. I ask them to repeat my new name and each time it gets louder in their mouths: Shoshana, Shoshana. I tell them they are also free to select new names for themselves, and in fact it is fitting that they do so, because their names were given to them in an exercise of power and they still have the flavour of slave names. I see one slight boy practicing the name of my beloved on his lips, he seems like a brave boy and he would be blessed to live under the aegis of that name. As I am blessed to remain amongst the People, with a voice within me calling them the Shoshannim, knowing that my work is to tend to them and nurture them even if I cannot do it alone.

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175. Our next aim will be to locate Peter. And as many of His men as we can find. My beloved said as much that day in the Garden and I know how crucial it is. There are truths scattered amongst their books of lies and this is one bedrock truth: that everything depends upon us coming together, that we must join together and look after one other and hold all of our things in common. And to spread throughout the world what was always the best aspect of the People. I see vague scenes where we drift northwards until we come to quieter places, places where the Romans have become sedentary and might allow us to live in safety. This close to the Holy City everything is violence and madness, from their commerce and their unrepentant bargaining in souls, from their Gods who demand burnt offerings and who lust to humiliate and enslave.

 

176. The children have not been sleeping, and when the excitement of my arrival subsides they fall into sudden sleep. Wrapping their grimy cloaks around themselves, closing their eyes to the world. I am left wakeful with them scattered all around me on the floor of the cave, still thinking how I might contact His men or move us to safety until we find them. I think of reaching out to Her but Her presence is now completely gone out of these caves. She sinks back out of the world so completely that there is no longer any way for me to reach Her. When I shook off the name She gave me I broke the last connection between us, and in the absence of Her dominant light I feel my own radiance swelling gently to fill the caves, a softer and more golden light shining without need of dominion. For what good is it to liberate a slave only to bend them to your will?

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177. I pray that I will be able to sleep tonight. It has been so long since I had any proper rest. The darkness brings its own fears but for the moment I am too tired to worry about that. My visions can't be interpreted when I am this short of sleep and it is a relief to see nothing except what is laid out in front of me. I have a mat to sleep on, with my veil rolled as a pillow. I have water and a little bread and that will do for now. There is the lamp I will trim and the darkness I will welcome in. I might say a formal prayer that I be granted restful sleep, and for protection to come down over us for this our last night in these caves. I pray to be given sleep without visions of the past or the future, I ask for one night that my sleep not be troubled by dreams.