Erkenbert was comparing texts. Could the fantastic tale that the archbishop Rimbert had told them days before possibly be true? It had convinced everyone else at the meeting, archbishops and counselors alike. But then it had flattered their pride, appealed to their sense of themselves as a nation, and as a nation continually rejected and undervalued by the power of Rome. Erkenbert did not share that feeling—or at least not yet. The English nation, remembering its conversion by the blessed Pope Gregory, had long boasted its loyalty to the Popes and to Rome. But what had Rome sent in return? If what Rimbert said was true, then maybe it was time to be loyal… elsewhere.
The texts, now. First among them was one that Erkenbert knew well, could have recited in his sleep. Nevertheless, important to look again. The four gospellers’ accounts of the crucifixion of Christ all told slightly different tales—proof of their truth, of course, for who does not know that four men seeing the same thing will pick different parts of it to repeat? But John—John said more than the others. Turning the great, stiff pages, Erkenbert found the passage he wanted and read it, whispering the Latin words softly to himself and mentally translating them into his native English.
“…sed unus militum lancea latus eius aperuit. But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a lance.” With a lance, thought Erkenbert. With a Roman soldier’s lance.
Erkenbert knew better than most men what Roman soldiers’ weapons looked like. At what had once been his home at the great Minster of York, there had still remained standing much of what was formerly the headquarters building of the Sixth Legion of Eboracum. The legion had left York and Britain four hundred years before, called away to fight a civil war on mainland Europe, but much of its arsenal had remained behind, and much of what had not been stolen or used still lay in the vaults. The imperishable bronze fittings for the catapults Erkenbert had made for the heathen Ivar had been genuine old work, as good as the day they were made. Iron rusted, but for all that Erkenbert had seen on its stand, kept cleaned and polished as a trophy, the full panoply of a Roman legionary, helmet, cuirass, short-sword, greaves, shield and of course the iron-shafted Roman javelin, the pilum. Also called a lancea.
Yes, thought Erkenbert, that could have happened. And no question but that the lance, the Holy Lance, the lance that had pierced the side of the Son of God himself, could have survived physically. He had himself seen and handled weapons that might be as old.
But who might have thought to preserve such a thing? It would have had to be someone who recognized its importance at the very moment of its use. Otherwise the weapon would have gone back to the barracks, been mixed with a thousand others. Who could have set aside such a weapon? Not, thought Erkenbert, for all the archbishop had said, the pious Jew Joseph of Arimathea, whom John the gospeller mentioned four verses later. Such a man, if a disciple of Jesus, might well have been able to beg the body from Pilate, and to preserve the holy chalice in which Jesus had celebrated the Last Supper—though John said nothing of that. He would not have been able to gain possession of an infantry issue weapon from the Romans.
But the centurion, now. Erkenbert turned the pages of the Bible thoughtfully, moving from one Gospel account to the next. The centurion was mentioned in three out of four, and in all three he said almost the same words: Luke, “truly this was a righteous man,” Mark, “truly this man was the Son of God,” Matthew, “truly this was the Son of God.” And in the fourth, in John, might the writer not have meant the centurion by “one of the soldiers”? If the centurion pierced the side of Jesus, as was his duty, and had seen or felt the miracle—what easier than for him to keep and treasure his own lance?
Now where did the centurion go after the Crucifixion? Erkenbert turned to another book, small, shabby, untitled, a book it seemed of letters, one after another, prattling of land and loans and debts, written by many authors, the kind of thing many efficient librarii would have sent to be scraped and re-used. Erkenbert fixed on the one of which Rimbert had told him. It seemed plain enough. A letter from Roman times, written in Latin—not good Latin, Erkenbert noted with interest, the Latin of a man who knew only the words of command, and to whom grammar was a mystery—and said at the top to be from one Gaius Cassius Longinus, centurion of Legio XXX Victrix. Describing in admiring terms the crucifixion at Jerusalem of a troublemaker, and now sent to the centurion’s home at—Erkenbert could not read the name, but certainly something German, Bingen or Zobingen maybe.