"Michael Moorcock - London, My Life or The Sedentary Jew" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moorcock Michael)

her. I hadn’t expected an actual runaway, just a quick roll on my palliasse
until dawn, when I thought they’d be back on their boat and heading for
Cornwall and Market Zion.

“No, love,” I said. “I’m not helping you pinch his worldly goods,
especially since he means to start a farm with them. We have Roman law
here. I know what value these farmers place on that stuff.”

“He’s not a farmer,” she said. “He’s barmy. He’s a Jesusite. He’s
brought a bit of the cross as well, but I couldn’t see much use for that. He’s
awaiting what he calls the Rapture, due a hundred years after his prophet’s
death, and he wants to found a religious colony so he can be ready for the
prophet when he turns up again. He married me under completely false
pretences shortly after he left Arimathea. Described himself as a wine
merchant. All for my dowry. He was on his uppers. Honest, I’m not loose. I
just want to get back home to Palestine. I’m not totally sure he doesn’t plan
to kill me. Human sacrifices and so on. Some of those loonies have already
crucified themselves in what they call ‘Imitation of the Kristos’. I can see
you’re surprised, but, yes, they’re Greeks, or as good as.”
 “Greeks are generally so rational!” I was shocked. Then I shrugged.
“Well, he’ll get on all right in Cornwall if he plans a few human sacrifices.
They all do it down there, especially when the harvest’s been poor. So
what’s this, some sort of Sun god?”

“He’s a Jesusite, I told you.”

That was actually the first I’d heard of the Christians, though
apparently they were already making enough trouble in Palestine and
nearby places for the Romans to outlaw them. A lot had been rounded up.
The Romans called them ‘donkeys’, which I gather was some sort of
obscure pun. That was why Joseph of Arimathea and his little band had
come here, so they could practise, as he said, without being persecuted.
The hoe wasn’t a hoe, as you know, but a spear. It had religious
significance. It was supposed to be the one which had pierced Jesus’s
side on the cross and still had his blood encrusted on it. The cup, which
was a very expensive looking item of gold, encrusted with jewels, was the
one in which, for some reason known best to themselves, they had caught
his blood. Apparently they were only a shade away from human sacrifice
and cannibalism, because they drank human blood in their ceremonies. I
was now doubly glad I hadn’t accepted their invitation.

Anyway, the long and the short of it was that she’d had enough. She
thought she was marrying a well-to-do bloke with a nice place in Arimathea.
The house proved to be mortgaged to the hilt to pay scribes to turn out all
his pamphlets, and before she knew it they were sailing across the Med into
the Atlantic and beating up the Thames looking for a new Promised Land.
He thought he was some sort of Moses. She had been seasick all the way.
She thought she could buy my protection with the stolen gear. She had
plenty of heavy currency as far as I was concerned. I was soft, I know, but I
felt sorry for her. “Take the stuff back, love,” I said, “and I’ll look after you.