“Mary Magdalene said to Him, ‘Lord, then how will we know that?’
“The perfect Savior said, ‘Come you from invisible things to the end of those that are visible, and the very emanation of Thought will reveal to you how faith in those things that are not visible was found in those that are visible, that belong to the unbegotten Father. Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear!’”
“What Jesus means by this,” the preacher went on, “is that God’s bounty is available to us all without interference. He will create each of you a prince of your own Destiny, but you must first sabbitise your belief, and the joy that comes from knowing, and the sharing of Bread with the College of the Faithful. You must be born and weep in the jubilation that is Christ and, through Him, receive the Hidden Knowledge that will sanctify all your works. For only then will He reveal to you the Truth.
“As proof of this I offer my assistant minister, Mary Josepha, who has been ordained by God with the power of healing, even though she was nothing but a common maid before He sought her out as His servant.”
The woman whom Purchase had met earlier that summer then took the podium, and she was as beautiful as he remembered her, even a in her vestments of office, which were a purple robe like the other preacher’s and, in place of the stole, a garter of different-colored glass beads, which caught the light as she moved to the lectern.
“When I first met her she prayed to strange gods and spoke of an oracle called the Aro Chukwu and places with untamed names, where the weaker of her people took shelter from the stronger because they did not have God’s knowledge to protect them. But since she found Christ she hides from no one and needs no other strength. As proof I invite any of you with an ailment, any seeking relief, to come up here and let Sister Mary Josepha put her hands on you so that you might be healed. You must hurry, though, because there is, as John teaches, but half an hour left.”
There was a great clamoring among the audience and many people stood to receive her blessing, even some who were devout in the normal church. The Merians sitting there all felt something stir in them as well, as the Englishman began a chanting behind the woman.
When the preacher spoke, Merian thought he could remember things he did not remember and closed his eyes, seeking to pin down those elusive flickerings. He was also reminded of the stranger he had met that dark winter day years ago, who prophesied the end of unions when it was still barren woodlands around him.
Magnus remembered then how he was once called something else, and that there was a truth about him he could no longer possess but had died with his African mother.
Sanne, when she saw the woman standing there in the office of preacher and healer, felt a great pride that all but the church fathers were going to get blessed by her, and that she had in her the power to make them defer, and that she very obviously did not wear the yoke of the household. It was an affirmation for her that was not religious but was powerful all the same.
Purchase, when he saw her standing before the crowd with the girdle, which accentuated her shape and the length of her limbs to an effect of great beauty, was moved mysteriously into standing from his seat and walking forth to get a better look at her. He soon found that he kept moving closer, as though hypnotized by the glass beads.
“You see,” the preacher said, as people streamed forth in a great throng under the tent to receive blessings, “there is but one original of each thing: one slave and one master; one church and one believer; one convert and one righteous heathen; one husband and one wife; one king, one subject; one father, one son; one Wisdom and one great Lie.
“All marched forth from the Original Element in the Beginning in pairs, to either stay with their original other or else get lost from it; either remembering their purpose or forgetting it. The farther they get from the Beginning the less they know, unless those binds are renewed, and if they are not, eventually they will lose all their original way and purpose. Such was the fate of Sophia, and of preacher and believer. We are here today to remember and to redeem that mission.
“I want the Seeker to come forth now to rejoin with the Sought After; and the Pursued and Persecuted to come forth and know again Original Freedom.”
“They will have you all burning in hell,” a man from the crowd called as the preacher went on. “He is a charlatan and preaches original heresy. If you ask him how he found himself among you he will tell you a fantastic story about being waylaid by pirates off the coast. It is not true, and his deaconess is no religious woman but his common married wife, though what kind of marriage it is only the devil can tell. Probe about Antioch and you will find it is a pub in central London, and he was ordained there, all right. My Jesus, how he was ordained!”
The Englishman defended himself. “He is an agent of the pope.”
“It does not take an agent of the pope to know God would never hide His wisdom from us,” the other countered. “And if not for theology then for the sake of philosophy, but he is illiterate and ignorant as dirt. If he were not, he would not so disregard the doctrine of Telos, as described by Aristotle in his thesis of metaphysics. Sophia is no more lost than a bird in winter, but fulfilling her function according to divine plan, which is mysterious. Anyone who claims to know it is a bigger blasphemer than Satan himself.”
In all this the crowd began taking sides, arguing either from religious, superstitious, or philosophical views about who was right and who was wrong, as others ignored both men and kept moving toward the woman, some shouting as she touched them, others falling down in the aisle and weeping. The most profound feeling among all of them that morning belonged to Purchase Merian.
After the last congregant had finished wailing he walked up to the healing chair and sat down. Somewhere inside himself he knew what he did amounted to bad faith where God Himself might have been concerned, but the religiousness of his feelings was undeniable. He had made his way to that chair with a palpitating heart that quickened when Mary Josepha put her hands on him. As he sat there under her hand, every desire within him was to join with her. If she were truly a vessel for the spirit, he would accept conversion and serve her God. If she were vessel for some other concern that stood unseen behind her, he would serve that instead, so long as he could keep her hands on him. He held his eyes closed and allowed what she offered to course through him. He knew there were unknown forces in the world that he had felt, unbidden or else in deep moments of contemplation. When she touched him he did not know what it was that she offered, and it reminded him not of the energy of creation, as he had known it before, but something just as white hot in his breast. When he opened his eyes he thought he knew what it was and shivered. To his surprise he also felt her hand trembling as she held it there on his forehead. He knew not only what it was then, but that it was also experiencing out of the ordinary for either her church or any other. In that instant he almost pulled her down into his lap, but he stayed still and rigid in the chair, receiving her touch.
The other preacher looked at them with a fiery stare that spoke not of spiritual disapproval but erotic jealousy. Whether she herself struggled with religious notions or the more earthly ones that sometimes pulled on them, he did not know, but Purchase was certain he would win her over for his own.
As he sat, there was a shot fired in the audience, and people began climbing over each other to leave the tent, which was quickly brought to lean on one side. Magnus reached for Sanne and Merian, and they began making their way toward the exit. Someone pushed against their back, and Sanne was knocked down to her knees, and her purse disappeared. While the two men made a cordon around her with their bodies to give her room to stand, they were manhandled by the crowd and nearly toppled over, as the other side of the tent came down and full pandemonium erupted. Finally they were able to get Sanne to her feet and, with brute strength, force their way out of the commotion.