Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal

Sunday

Joshua’s mother and his brother James found us outside of the Golden Gate of Jerusalem, where we were waiting for Bartholomew and John, who were looking for Nathaniel and Philip to return with James and Andrew, who were off trying to find Judas and Thomas, who had been sent into the city to look for Peter and Maggie, who were looking for Thaddeus and Simon, who had been sent to look for a donkey.

“You’d think they’d have found one by now,” Mary said.

According to prophecy, Joshua was supposed to enter the city on the colt of a donkey. Of course, no one was going to find one. That was the plan. Even Joshua’s brother James had agreed to be part of the conspiracy. He’d gone ahead to wait inside the gate, just in case one of the disciples had missed the point and actually came back with a donkey.

About a thousand of Joshua’s followers from Galilee had gathered on the road to the Golden Gate. They had lined the road with palm fronds for Joshua’s entrance to the city, and they were cheering and singing hosannas all afternoon in anticipation of his triumphant entrance, but as the afternoon wore into evening, and no colt showed, the crowd gradually dispersed as everybody got hungry and went into the city to find something to eat. Only Joshua, his mother, and I were still waiting.

“I was hoping you might talk some sense into him,” I said to Mary.

“I’ve seen this coming for a long time,” Mary said. She wore her usual blue dress and shawl, and the usual light in her face seemed faded, not by age, but by grief. “Why do you think I sent for him two years ago?”

It was true, she had sent Joshua’s younger brothers Judah and Jose to the synagogue at Capernaum to bring him home, claiming he was mad, but Joshua hadn’t even gone outside to meet them.

“I wish you two wouldn’t talk about me like I’m not here,” Joshua said.

“We’re trying to get used to it,” I said. “If you don’t like it, then give up this stupid plan to sacrifice yourself.”

“What do you think we’ve been preparing for all of these years, Biff?”

“If I’d known it was this I wouldn’t have helped. You’d still be stuck in a wine amphora in India.”

He squinted to see through the gate. “Where is everyone? How hard can it be to find one simple ass?”

I looked at Joshua’s mother, and although there was pain in her eyes she smiled. “Don’t look at me,” she said. “No one on my side of the family would ever sacrifice a straight line like that.”

It was too easy, so I let it go. “They’re all at Simon’s house in Bethany, Josh. They aren’t coming back tonight.”

Joshua didn’t say a word. He just climbed to his feet and walked off toward Bethany.

“There is nothing you can do to stop this from happening!” Joshua screamed at the apostles, who were gathered in the front room of Simon’s house. Martha ran from the room crying when Joshua glared at her. Simon looked at the floor, as did the rest of us. “The priest and the scribes will take me, and put me on trial. They will spit on me and scourge me and then they will kill me. I will rise from the dead on the third day and walk among you again, but you cannot stop what must happen. If you love me, you will accept what I’m telling you.”

Maggie got up and ran out of the house, snatching the communal purse from Judas as she went. The Zealot started to rise to go after her but I pushed him back down on his cushion. “Let her go.”

We all sat there in silence, trying to think of something to do, something to say. I don’t know what everyone else was thinking, but I was still trying to formulate some way for Joshua to make his point without giving his life. Martha returned to the room with wine and cups and served each of us in turn, not looking at Joshua when she filled his cup. Joshua’s mother followed her back out of the room, I presumed to help her prepare supper.

In time, Maggie came back, sliding through the door and going directly to Joshua, where she sat down at his feet. She took the communal purse out of her cloak and from it she pulled a small alabaster box, the sort that was used to store the precious ointments that women used to anoint the bodies of the dead at burial. She tossed the empty purse to Judas. Without a word, she broke the seal on the box and poured the ointment on Joshua’s feet, then untied her long hair and began to wipe the oil from his feet with it. The rich aroma of spices and perfume filled the room.

In an instant Judas was on his feet and across the room. He snatched the box of ointment off the floor. “The money from this could have fed hundreds of the poor.”

Joshua looked up at the Zealot and there were tears in his eyes. “You’ll always have the poor, Judas, but I’m only here for a short while longer. Let her be.”

“But…”

“Let her be,” Joshua said. He held out his hand and Judas slammed the alabaster box into it, then stormed out of the house. I could hear him shouting out in the street, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying.

Maggie poured the rest of the oil on Joshua’s head and drew patterns on his forehead with her finger. Joshua tried to take her hand but she pulled it away from him and stepped back until he dropped his hand. “A dead man can’t love,” she said. “Be still.”

When we followed Joshua to the Temple the next morning, Maggie was nowhere to be seen.

Monday

On Monday Joshua led us through the Golden Gate into Jerusalem, but this time there were no palm fronds laid on the road and no one was singing hosannas. (Well, there was this one guy, but he was always singing hosannas at the Golden Gate. If you gave him a coin he’d stop for a while.)

“It would be nice to be able to buy a little something for breakfast,” Judas said. “If the Magdalene hadn’t spent all of our money.”

“Joshua smells nice, though,” Nathaniel said. “Don’t you think Joshua smells nice?”

Sometimes you find yourself grateful for the most unlikely things. Right then, when I saw Judas grit his teeth and the vein stand out on his forehead, I said a quick prayer of thanks for Nathaniel’s naïveté.

“He does smell nice,” said Bartholomew. “It makes one want to reassess one’s values regarding the material comforts.”

“Thank you, Bart,” said Joshua.

“Yes, there’s nothing like a good-smelling man,” said John dreamily. Suddenly we were all very uncomfortable and there was a lot of throat-clearing and coughing and we all walked a few paces farther apart. (I haven’t told you about John, have I?) Then John started to make a great and pathetic show of noticing the women as they passed. “Why, that little heifer would give a man some strong sons,” John said in a booming and falsely masculine voice. “A man could surely plant some seed there, he could.”

“Please shut up,” James said to his brother.

“Maybe,” said Philip, “you could have your mother come over and tell that woman to cleave unto you.”

Everyone snickered, even Joshua. Well, everyone except James. “You see?” he said to his brother. “You see what you’ve started? You little nancy.”

“There’s a nubile wench,” exclaimed John unconvincingly. He pointed to a woman who was being dragged toward the city gates by a group of Pharisees, her clothes hanging in shreds on her body (which indeed appeared to be nubile, so credit to John for working outside of his element).

“Block the road,” Joshua said.

The Pharisees came up to our human blockade and stopped. “Let us pass, Rabbi,” the oldest of them said. “This woman has been caught in the act of adultery this very day and we’re taking her out of the city to be stoned, as is the law.” The woman was young and her hair fell in dirty curls around her face. Terror had twisted her face and her eyes were rolled back in her head, but an hour ago she had probably been pretty.

Joshua crouched and began writing in the dust at his feet. “What’s your name?” he asked.

“Jamal,” said the leader. I watched Joshua write the man’s name, then next to it a list of sins.

“Wow, Jamal,” I said. “A goose? I didn’t even know that was possible.”

Jamal dropped the adulteress’s arm and stepped back. Joshua looked up at the other man who was holding the woman. “And your name?”

“Uh, Steve,” said that man.

“His name is not Steve,” said another man in the crowd. “It’s Jacob.”

Joshua wrote “Jacob” in the dust. “No,” said Jacob. He let go of the woman, pushing her toward us. Then Joshua stood up and took the stone from the man nearest him, who surrendered it easily. His attention was focused on the list of sins written in the dirt. “Now let us stone this harlot,” Joshua said. “Whoever of you is without sin, cast the first stone.” And he held out the stone to them. They gradually backed away. In a moment they had all gone back the way they had come and the adulteress fell to Joshua’s feet and hugged his ankles. “Thank you, Rabbi. Thank you so much.”

“That’s okay,” said Joshua. He lifted her to her feet. “Now go, and sin no more.”

“You really smell good, you know that?” she said.

“Yeah, thanks. Now go.”

She started off. “I should make sure she gets home okay,” I said. I started off after her, but Joshua caught the back of my tunic and pulled me back. “You missed the ‘sin no more’ part of my instructions?”

“Look, I’ve already committed adultery with her in my heart, so, you know, why not enjoy it?”

“No.”

“You’re the one who set the standards. By those rules, even John committed adultery with her in his heart, and he doesn’t even like women.”

“Do too,” said John.

“To the Temple,” Joshua said, pressing on.

“Waste of a perfectly good adulteress, if you ask me.”

In the outer court of the Temple, where the women and the Gentiles were allowed to go, Joshua called us all together and began to preach the kingdom. Each time he would get started, a vendor would come by barking, “Get your doves. Get your sacrificial doves. Pure as the driven snow. Everybody needs one.” Then Joshua would begin again and the next vendor would come by.

“Unleavened bread! Get your unleavened bread! Only one shekel. Piping hot matzo, just like Moses ate on the way out of Egypt, only fresher.”

And a little girl who was lame was brought to Joshua and he started to heal her and ask about her faith when…

“Your denariis changed to shekels, while you wait! No amount too large or small. Drachmas to talents, talents to shekels—all your money changed while you wait.”

“Do you believe that the Lord loves you?” Joshua asked the little girl.

“Bitter herbs! Get your bitter herbs!” cried a vendor.

“Dammit all!” Joshua screamed in frustration. “You’re healed, child, now get out of here.” He waved off the little girl, who got up and walked for the first time in her life, then he slapped a dove vendor, ripped the top off his cage of birds, and released a cloud of doves into the sky.

“This is a house of prayer! Not a den of thieves.”

“Oh no, not the moneychangers,” Peter whispered to me.

Joshua grabbed a long low table where men were changing a dozen currencies into shekels (the only coin allowed for commerce inside the Temple complex) and he flipped it over.

“Oh, that’s it, he’s fucked,” Philip said. And he was. The priests took a big percentage from the moneychangers. He might have slid by before, but now he’d interfered with their income.

“Out, you vipers! Out!” Joshua had taken a coil of rope from one of the vendors and was using it as a scourge to drive the vendors and the moneychangers out of the Temple gates. Nathaniel and Thomas had joined in Joshua’s tirade, kicking at the merchants as they scampered away, but the rest of us sat staring or ministered to those who had come to hear Joshua speak.

“We should stop this,” I said to Peter.

“You think you could stop this?” Peter nodded to the corner of the courtyard, where at least twenty priests had come out from the Inner Temple to watch the fracas.

“He’s going to bring down the wrath of the priests on all of us,” Judas said. He was looking at the Temple guards, who had stopped pacing the walls and were watching the goings-on below in the courtyard. To Judas’ credit, he, Simon, and a few of the others had managed to calm the small crowd of the faithful who had gathered to be blessed and healed before Joshua’s tantrum.

Beyond the walls of the Temple we could see the Roman soldiers staring down from the battlements of Herod the Great’s old palace, which the governor commandeered during feast weeks when he brought the legions to Jerusalem. The Romans didn’t enter the Temple unless they sensed insurrection, but if they entered, Jewish blood would be spilled. Rivers of it.

“They won’t come in,” Peter said, a tiny note of doubt in his voice. “They can see that this is a Jewish matter. They don’t care if we kill each other.”

“Just watch Judas and Simon,” I said. “If one of them starts with that no-master-but-God thing, the Romans will come down like an executioner’s blade.”

Finally, Joshua was out of breath, soaked in sweat, and barely able to swing the coil of rope he was carrying, but the Temple was clear of merchants. A large crowd had started to follow him, shouting at the vendors as Joshua drove them out of the Temple. The crowd (probably eight hundred to a thousand people) was the only thing that kept the priests from calling the guards down on Joshua right then. Josh tossed the rope aside and led the crowd back to where we had been watching in horror.

“Thieves,” he said to us breathlessly as he passed. Then he went to a little girl with a withered arm who had been waiting beside Judas.

“Pretty scary, huh?” Joshua said to her.

She nodded. Joshua put his hands over her withered arm.

“Are those guys in the tall hats coming over here?”

She nodded again.

“Here, can you make this sign with your finger?”

He showed her how to stick out her middle finger. “No, not with that hand, with this one.”

Joshua took his hand away from her withered arm and she wiggled her fingers. The muscle and tendons had filled out until it looked identical to her other arm.

“Now,” Joshua said, “make that sign. That’s good. Now show it to those guys behind me with the tall hats. That’s a good girl.”

“By whose authority do you perform these healings,” said one of the priests, obviously the highest-ranking of the group.

“No master—” Simon began to shout but he was cut off by a vicious blow to the solar plexus from Peter, who then pushed the Zealot to the ground and sat on him while furiously whispering in his ear. Andrew had come up behind Judas and seemed to be delivering a similar lecture without benefit of the body blow.

Josh took a little boy from his mother’s arms and held him. The boy’s legs waved in the air as if they had no bones at all. Without looking away from the boy, Joshua said, “By what authority did John baptize?”

The priests looked around among themselves. The crowd moved in closer. We were in Judea, John’s territory. The priests knew better than to challenge John’s authority under God in front of a crowd this size, but they certainly weren’t going to confirm it for Joshua’s sake, either. “We can’t say at this time,” said the priest.

“Then I can’t say either,” said Joshua. He stood the little boy on his feet and held him steady as the boy’s legs took his full weight, probably for the first time ever. The boy wobbled like a newborn colt and Joshua caught him and laughed. He took the boy’s shoulders and helped him walk back to his mother, then he turned on the priests and looked at them for the first time.

“You would test me? Test me. Ask me what you will, you vipers, but I will heal these people and they shall know the word of God in spite of you.”

Philip had moved up behind me during this speech and he whispered, “Can’t you knock him out or something with your methods from the East? We have to get him out of here before he says any more.”

“I think we’re too late, John,” I said. “Just don’t let the crowd disperse. Go out into the city and bring more. The crowd is his only protection now. And find Joseph of Arimathea too. He might be able to help if this gets out of hand.”

“This isn’t out of hand?”

“You know what I mean.”

The inquisition went on for two hours, with the priests concocting every verbal trap they could think of, and Joshua wiggling out sometimes, and blundering through at others. I looked for some way to get Joshua out of the Temple without him being arrested, but the more I looked, the more I noticed that the guards had moved down off the walls and were hovering around the gates to the courtyard.

Meanwhile the chief priest droned on: “A man dies and leaves no sons, but his wife marries his brother, who has three sons by his first wife…[and on] The three of them leave Jericho and head south, going three point three furlongs per hour, but they are leading two donkeys, which can carry two…[and on] So the Sabbath ends, and they are able to resume, adding on the thousand steps allowed under the law…and the wind is blowing southwest at two furlongs per hour…[and on] How much water will be required for the journey? Give your answer in firkins.”

“Five,” Joshua said, as soon as they stopped speaking. And all were amazed.

The crowd roared. A woman shouted, “Surely he is the Messiah.”

“The Son of God has come,” said another.

“You guys aren’t helping,” I shouted back at them.

“You didn’t show your work, you didn’t show your work,” chanted the youngest of the priests.

Judas and Matthew had been scratching out the problem on the paving stones of the courtyard as the priest recited, but they had long since lost track. They looked up and shook their heads.

“Five,” Joshua repeated.

The priests looked around among themselves. “That’s right, but that doesn’t give you authority to heal in the Temple.”

“In three days, there will be no Temple, for I’ll destroy it, and you nest of vipers with it. And three days after that, a new Temple shall be built in honor of my father.”

And then I grabbed him around the chest and started dragging him toward the gate. The other apostles followed the plan and moved around us in a wedge. Beyond that, the crowd pressed in. Hundreds moved along with us.

“Wait, I’m not done!” Joshua yelled.

“Yes you are.”

“Surely the true king of Israel has come to bring forth the kingdom,” one woman shouted.

Peter smacked her on the back of the head. “Stop helping.”

By the sheer mass of the crowd we were able to get Joshua out of the Temple and through the streets to Joseph of Arimathea’s house.

Joseph let us in and led us to the upper room, which had a high arched stone ceiling, rich carpets on the floors and walls, piles of cushions, and a long low table for dining. “You’re safe here, but I don’t know for how long. They’ve already called a meeting of the Sanhedrin.”

“But we just left the Temple,” I said. “How?”

“You should have let them take me,” Joshua said.

“The table will be set for the Passover feast of the Essenes,” Joseph said. “Stay here for supper.”

“Celebrate the Passover early? Why?” John asked. “Why celebrate with the Essenes?”

Joseph looked away from Joshua when he answered. “Because at the Essenes’ feast, they don’t kill a lamb.”

Tuesday

We all slept that night in the upper room of Joseph’s house. In the morning Joshua went downstairs. He was gone for a bit, then came back up the stairs.

“They won’t let me leave,” he said.

“They?”

“The apostles. My own apostles won’t let me leave.” He went back to the stairway. “You’re interfering with the will of God!” he shouted down. He turned back to me. “Did you tell them not to let me leave?”

“Me? Yep.”

“You can’t do that.”

“I sent Nathaniel to Simon’s to fetch Maggie. He returned alone. Maggie wouldn’t talk to him, but Martha did. Temple soldiers had been there, Josh.”

“So?”

“What do you mean, so? They were there to arrest you.”

“Let them.”

“Joshua, you don’t have to sacrifice yourself to prove this point. I’ve been thinking about it all night. You can negotiate.”

“With the Lord?”

“Abraham did it. Remember? Over the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. He starts out getting the Lord to agree to spare the cities if he can find fifty righteous men, but by the end, he talks God down to ten. You can try something like that.”

“That’s not completely the point, Biff.” Here he came over to me, but I found I couldn’t look him in the eye, so I went to one of the large arched windows that looked down on the street. “I’m afraid of this—of what’s going to happen. I can think of a dozen things I’d rather do this week than be sacrificed, but I know that it has to happen. When I told the priests that I would tear the Temple down in three days, I meant that all the corruption, all the pretense, all the ritual of the Temple that keeps men from knowing God would be destroyed. And on the third day, when I come back, everything will be new, and the kingdom of God will be everywhere. I’m coming back, Biff.”

“Yeah, I know, you said that.”

“Well, believe in me.”

“You’re not good at resurrections, Josh. Remember the old woman in Japhia? The soldier in Sepphoris, what did he last? Three minutes?”

“But look at Maggie’s brother Simon. He’s been back from the dead for months now.”

“Yeah, and he smells funny.”

“He does not.”

“No, really, when you get close to him he smells spoiled.”

“How would you know? You won’t get close to him because he used to be a leper.”

“Thaddeus mentioned it the other day. He said, ‘Biff, I believe this Simon Lazarus fellow has spoiled.’”

“Really? Then let’s go ask Thaddeus.”

“He might not remember.”

Joshua went down the steps to a low-ceilinged room with a mosaic floor and small windows cut high in the walls. Joshua’s mother and brother James had joined the apostles. They all sat there against the walls, their faces turned to Joshua like flowers to the sun, waiting for him to say something that would give them hope.

“I’m going to wash your feet,” he said. To Joseph of Arimathea, he said, “I need a basin of water and a sponge.” The tall aristocrat bowed and went off to find a servant.

“What a pleasant surprise,” Mary said.

James the brother rolled his eyes and sighed heavily.

“I’m going out,” I said. I looked at Peter, as if to say, Don’t let him out of your sight. He understood perfectly and nodded.

“Come back for the seder,” Joshua said. “I have some things I have to teach you in the little time I have left.”

There was no one home at Simon’s house. I knocked on the door for a long time, then finally let myself in. There was no evidence of a morning meal, but the mikveh had been used, so I guessed that they had each bathed and then gone to the Temple. I walked the streets of Jerusalem, trying to think of some solution, but everything I had learned seemed useless. As evening fell I made my way back to Joseph’s house, taking the long route so I didn’t have to pass the palace of the high priest.

Joshua was waiting inside, sitting on the steps to the upper room, when I came in. Peter and Andrew sat on either side of him, obviously there to ensure that he didn’t accidentally skip down to the high priest and turn himself in for blasphemy.

“Where have you been?” Joshua said. “I need to wash your feet.”

“Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a ham in Jerusalem during Passover week?” I said. “I thought it would be nice, you know, some ham on matzo with a little bitter herb.”

“He washed us all,” Peter said. “Of course we had to hold Bart down, but even he’s clean.”

“And as I washed them, they will go out and wash others, by showing them forgiveness.”

“Oh, I get it,” I said. “It’s a parable. Cute. Let’s go eat.”

We all lay around the big table, with Joshua at the head. Joshua’s mother had prepared a traditional Passover supper, with the exception of the lamb. To begin the seder, Nathaniel, who was the youngest, had to ask a question. “Why is this night different from every other night of the year?”

“Bart’s feet are clean?” said Thomas.

“Joseph of Arimathea is picking up the tab?” said Philip.

Nathaniel laughed and shook his head. “No. It’s because other nights we eat bread and matzo, but tonight we only eat matzo. Jeez.” He grinned, probably feeling smart for the first time in his life.

“And why do we only eat the matzo on this night?” asked Nathaniel.

“Skip ahead, Nate,” I said. “We’re all Jews here. Summarize. Unleavened bread because there was no time for it to rise with Pharaoh’s soldiers on our tail, bitter herbs for the bitterness of slavery, God delivered us into the Promised Land, it was swell, let’s eat.”

“Amen,” said everyone.

“That was pathetic,” said Peter.

“Yeah, was it?” I said angrily. “Well, we sit here with the Son of God, waiting for someone to come and take him away and kill him, and none of us is going to do a damn thing about it, including God, so forgive me if I’m not peeing all over myself about having been delivered out of the hands of the Egyptians about a million years ago.”

“You’re forgiven,” said Joshua. Then he stood up. “What I am, is in you all. The Divine Spark, the Holy Ghost, it unites you all. It is the God that is in you all. Do you understand that?”

“Of course God is part of you,” James the brother said, “he’s your father.”

“No, in all of you. Watch, take this bread.” He took a matzo and broke it into pieces. He gave a piece to everyone in the room and took a piece himself. Then he ate it. “Now, the bread is part of me, the bread is me. Now all of you eat it.”

Everybody looked at him.

“EAT IT!” He screamed.

So we ate it. “Now it is part of you, I am part of you. You all share the same part of God. Let’s try again. Hand me that wine.”

And so it went like that, for a couple of hours, and I think that by the time the wine was gone, the apostles actually grasped what Joshua was saying to them. Then the begging started, as each of us pleaded for Joshua to give up the notion that he had to die to save the rest of us.

“Before this is finished,” he said, “you will all have to deny me.”

“No we won’t,” said Peter.

“You will deny me three times, Peter. I not only expect this, I command it. If they take you when they take me, then there is no one to take the good news to the people. Now, Judas, my friend, come here.”

Judas went to Joshua, who whispered in his ear, then sent him back to his place at the table. “One of you will betray me this very night,” said Joshua. “Won’t you, Judas?”

“What?” Judas looked around at us, but when he saw no one coming to his defense, he bolted down the steps. Peter started after him, but Joshua caught the fisherman by the hair and yanked him back off of his feet.

“Let him go.”

“But the high priest’s palace isn’t a furlong away,” said Joseph of Arimathea. “If he goes there directly.”

Joshua held his hand up for silence. “Biff, go directly to Simon’s house and wait. Alone you can sneak by the palace without being seen. Tell Maggie and the others to wait for us. The rest of us will go through the city and through the Ben Hinnon valley so we don’t have to pass the priest’s palace. We’ll meet you in Bethany.”

I looked at Peter and Andrew. “You won’t let him turn himself in?”

“Of course not.”

I was off into the night, wondering even as I ran whether Joshua had changed his mind and was going to escape from Bethany into the Judean desert. I should have known right then that I’d been had. You think you can trust a guy, then he turns around and lies to you.

Simon answered the door and let me in. He held his finger to his lips, signalling me to be quiet. “Maggie and Martha are in the back. They’re angry with you. All of you. Now they’ll be angry with me for letting you in.”

“Sorry,” I said.

He shrugged. “What can they do? It’s my house.”

I went directly through the front room into a second room that opened off to bedchambers, the mikveh, and the courtyard where food was prepared. I heard voices coming from one of the bedchambers. When I walked in, Maggie looked up from braiding Martha’s hair.

“So, you’ve come to tell me that it’s done,” she said. Tears welled up in her eyes and I felt as if I would break down with her if she started sobbing now.

“No,” I said. “He and the others are on their way here. Through Ben Hinnon, so it will be a few hours. But I have a plan.” I pulled the ying-yang amulet that Joy had given me out of my tunic and waved it before them.

“Your plan is to bribe Joshua with ugly jewelry?” asked Martha.

I pointed to the tiny stoppers on either side of the amulet. “No, my plan is to poison him.”

I explained how the poison worked to Mary and Martha and then we waited, counting the time in our imaginations, watching in our mind’s eyes as the apostles made their way through Jerusalem, out the Essene gate, into the steep valley of Ben Hinnon, where thousands of tombs had been carved into the rock, and where once a river had run, but now was only sage and cypress and thistles clinging to the crevices in the limestone. After several hours we went outside to wait in the street, then when the moon started down and the night made way into early morning, we saw a single figure coming from the west, not the south as we had expected. As he got closer I could tell from heavy shoulders and the moon shining on his bald pate that it was John.

“They took him,” he said. “At Gethsemane. Annas and Caiphais came themselves, with Temple guards, and they took him.”

Maggie ran into my arms and buried her face in my chest. I reached out and pulled Martha close as well.

“What was he doing at Gethsemane?” I said. “You were supposed to be coming here through Ben Hinnon.”

“He only told you that.”

“That bastard lied to me. So they arrested everyone?”

“No, the others are hiding not far from here. Peter tried to fight the guards, but Joshua stopped him. Joshua negotiated with the priests to let us go. Joseph came too, he helped talk them into letting the rest of us go.”

“Joseph? Joseph betrayed him?”

“I don’t know,” said John. “Judas was the one that led them to Gethsemane. He pointed Joshua out to the guards. Joseph came later, when they were about to arrest the rest of us.”

“Where did they take him?”

“To the palace of the high priest. That’s all I know, Biff. I promise.”

He sat down hard in the middle of the street and began to weep. Martha went to him and cradled his head to her breast.

Maggie looked up at me. “He knew you would fight. That’s why he sent you here.”

“The plan doesn’t change,” I said. “We just have to get him back so we can poison him.”

John looked up from Martha’s embrace. “Did you change sides when I wasn’t here?”

Wednesday

At first light Maggie and I were pounding on Joseph’s door. A servant let us in. When Joseph came out from his bedchamber I had to hold Maggie back to keep her from attacking him.

“You betrayed him!”

“I did not,” said Joseph.

“John said you were with the priests,” I said.

“I was. I followed them up to keep them from killing Joshua for trying to escape, or in self-defense, right there at Gethsemane.”

“What do you mean, ‘in self-defense’?”

“They want him dead, Maggie,” Joseph said. “They want him dead, but they don’t have the authority to execute him, don’t you understand that? If I hadn’t been there they could have murdered him and said that he’d attacked them first. The Romans are the only ones who have the authority to have someone killed.”

“Herod had John the Baptist killed,” I said. “There were no Romans involved in that.”

“Jakan and his thugs stone people all of the time,” Maggie said. “Without Roman approval.”

“Think, you two. This is Passover week. The city is crawling with Romans watching for rebellious Jews. The entire Sixth Legion is here, plus all of Pilate’s personal guard from Caesarea. Normally there’d only be a handful. The high priests, the Sanhedrin, the Pharisee council, even Herod will think twice before they do anything outside the letter of Roman law. Don’t panic. There hasn’t even been a trial in the Sanhedrin yet.”

“When will there be a trial?”

“This afternoon, probably. They have to bring everyone in. The prosecution is gathering witnesses against Joshua.”

“What about witnesses for him?” I asked.

“That’s not how it works,” said Joseph. “I’ll speak for him, and so will my friend Nicodemus, but other than that Joshua will have to defend himself.”

“Swell,” Maggie said.

“Who is prosecuting him?”

“I thought you’d know,” Joseph said, cringing slightly. “The one who started the Sanhedrin plots against Joshua the other two times, Jakan bar Iban.”

Maggie whirled around and glared at me. “You should have killed him.”

“Me? You had seventeen years to push the guy down the steps or something.”

“There’s still time,” she said.

“That won’t help Joshua now,” said Joseph. “Just hope that the Romans won’t hear his case.”

“You sound as if he’s already convicted,” I said.

“I’ll do my best.” Joseph didn’t sound very confident.

“Get us in to see him.”

“And let them arrest the two of you? I don’t think so. You stay here. You can have the upper rooms to yourselves. I’ll come back or send word as soon as anything happens.”

Joseph hugged Maggie and kissed her on the top of the head, then left the room to get dressed.

“Do you trust him?” Maggie said.

“He warned Joshua before when they wanted to kill him.”

“I don’t trust him.”

Maggie and I waited all day in the upper room, jumping to our feet every time we heard footsteps going by in the street, until we were exhausted and shaking from worry. I asked one of Joseph’s servant girls to go down to the palace of the high priest to see what was going on. She returned a short time later to report that the trial was still going on.

Maggie and I made a nest of the cushions under the wide arched window in the front, so we could hear the slightest noise coming from the street, but as night started to fall, the footsteps became fewer and farther between, the distant singing from the Temple faded, and we settled into each other’s arms, a single lump of low, agonizing grief. Sometime after dark we made love together for the first time since the night before Joshua and I left for the Orient. All those years had passed, and yet it seemed familiar. That first time, so long ago, making love was a desperate way to share the grief we felt because we were each about to lose someone we loved. This time we were losing the same person. This time, we slept afterward.

Joseph of Arimathea didn’t come home.

Thursday

It was Simon and Andrew who stormed up the steps to wake us Thursday morning. I threw my tunic over Maggie and jumped to my feet in just a loincloth. As soon as I saw Simon I felt the heat rise in my face.

“You treacherous bastard!” I was too angry to hit him. I just stood there screaming at him. “You coward!”

“It wasn’t him,” screamed Andrew in my ear.

“It wasn’t me,” said Simon. “I tried to fight the guards when they came to get Joshua. Peter and I both did.”

“Judas was your friend. You and your Zealot bullshit!”

“He was your friend too.”

Andrew pushed me away. “Enough! It wasn’t Simon. I saw him face two guards with spears. Leave him be. We don’t have time for your tantrum, Biff. Joshua is being flogged at the high priest’s palace.”

“Where’s Joseph?” Maggie said. She’d dressed while I had been railing at Simon.

“He’s gone on to the praetorium that Pilate set up at the Antonia Palace by the Temple.”

“What the hell’s he doing there if Joshua is being beaten at the palace in this end of the city?”

“That’s where they’ll take Joshua next. He was convicted of blasphemy, Biff. They want a death sentence. Pontius Pilate is the ruling authority in Judea. Joseph knows him, he’s going to ask for Joshua’s release.”

“What do we do? What do we do?” I was starting to get hysterical. Since I could remember, my friendship with Joshua had been my anchor, my reason for being, my life; now it, he, was running toward destruction like a storm-driven ship to a reef, and I couldn’t think of a thing to do but panic. “What do we do? What do we do?” I panted, the breath refusing to fill my lungs. Maggie grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me.

“You have a plan, remember.” She tugged on the amulet around my neck.

“Right, right,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Right. The plan.” I grabbed my tunic and slipped it over my head. Maggie helped me wrap the sash.

“I’m sorry, Simon,” I said.

He forgave me with the wave of a hand. “What do we do?”

“If they’re taking Joshua to the praetorium, that’s where we go. If Pilate releases him then we’ll need to get him out of there. There’s no telling what Josh will do to get them to kill him.”

We were waiting along with a huge crowd outside the Antonia Palace when the Temple guards brought Joshua to the front gates. The high priest, Caiaphas, wearing his blue robes and with a jewel-encrusted chest piece, led the procession. His father, Annas, who had been the high priest previously, followed right behind. A column of guards surrounded Joshua in the middle of the procession. We could just see him amid the guards, and I could tell that someone had put a fresh tunic on him, but there were stripes of blood soaking through the back. He looked as if he was in a trance.

There was a great deal of posturing and shouting between the Temple guards, and from somewhere in the procession Jakan came forward and started arguing with the soldiers as well. It was obvious that the Romans were not going to let the Temple guards enter the praetorium, so the transfer of the prisoner was going to take place there at the gate or not at all. I was measuring whether I could sneak through the crowd, snap Jakan’s neck, and sneak back out without jeopardizing our plan when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked around to see Joseph of Arimathea.

“At least it wasn’t a Roman scourge they lashed him with. He took thirty-nine lashes, but it was just leather, not the lead-tipped whip that the Romans use. That would have killed him.”

“Where were you? What took so long?”

“The prosecution took forever. Jakan went on half the night, taking testimony from witnesses who had obviously never even heard of Joshua, let alone seen any crime.”

“What about the defense?” asked Maggie.

“Well, I put forth a defense of good deeds, but it was so overwhelmed by the accusations that it was lost in the noise. Joshua didn’t say a word in his own defense. They asked him if he was the Son of God and he said yes. That confirmed the blasphemy charge. It’s all they needed, really.”

“What happens now? Did you talk to Pilate?”

“I did.”

“And?”

Joseph rubbed the bridge of his nose as if fighting a headache. “He said he’d see what he could do.”

We watched as the Roman soldiers took Joshua inside and the priests followed. The Pharisees, commoners in the eyes of the Romans, were left outside. A legionnaire almost caught Jakan’s face in the gate when he slammed it.

I caught movement out of the corner of my eye, and I looked up to a high, wide balcony that was visible above the palace walls. It had obviously been designed by Herod the Great’s architects as a platform from which the king could address the masses in the Temple without compromising his safety. A tall Roman in a lush red robe was standing on the balcony looking down on the crowd, and not looking particularly happy with their presence.

“Is that Pilate?” I asked Joseph, pointing to the Roman.

Joseph nodded. “He’ll go downstairs to hold Joshua’s trial.”

But I wasn’t interested at that point in where Pilate was going. What interested me was the centurion who stood behind him wearing the full-crested helmet and breastplate of a legion commander.

Not a half hour later the gate was opened and a squad of Roman soldiers brought Joshua out of the palace in bonds. A lower-rank centurion pulled Joshua along by a rope around his wrists. The priests followed along behind and were mobbed with questions by the Pharisees who had been waiting outside.

“Go find out what’s going on,” I said to Joseph.

We waded into the middle of the procession that followed. Most were screaming at Joshua and trying to spit on him. I spotted a few people in the crowd that I knew to be Joshua’s followers, but they were going along silently, their eyes darting around as if any second they might be the next one arrested.

Simon, Andrew, and I followed behind at some distance, while Maggie fought the crowd to get close to Joshua. I saw her throw herself at her ex-husband, Jakan, who was trailing the priests, but she was stopped in mid-leap by Joseph of Arimathea, who caught her by the hair and pulled her back. Someone else was helping restrain her, but he wore a shawl over his head so I couldn’t tell who it was. Probably Peter.

Joseph dragged Maggie back to us and handed her over to me and Simon.

“She’ll get herself killed.”

Maggie looked up at me, a wildness in her eyes that I couldn’t read, either anger or madness. I wrapped my arms around her and held her so her arms were pinned to her sides as we walked along. The man with the hood walked along beside me, his hand on Maggie’s shoulder, steadying her. When he looked at me I could see it was Peter. The wiry fisherman seemed to have aged twenty years since I’d seen him Tuesday night.

“They’re taking him to Antipas,” Peter said. “As soon as Pilate heard Joshua was from Galilee he said it wasn’t his jurisdiction and sent him to Herod.”

“Maggie,” I said into her ear, “please stop being a madwoman. My plan just went to hell and I could use some critical thinking.”

Once again we waited outside of one of the palaces built by Herod the Great, but this time, because it was a Jewish king in residence, the Pharisees were let in and Joseph of Arimathea went in with them. A few minutes later he was back outside again.

“He’s trying to get Joshua to perform a miracle,” Joseph said. “He’ll let him go if Joshua performs a miracle for him.”

“And if Joshua won’t do it?”

“He won’t,” said Maggie.

“If he won’t do it,” Joseph said, “we’re back where we started. It will be up to Pilate to order the Sanhedrin’s death sentence carried out or to release Joshua.”

“Maggie, come with me,” I said, tugging at her dress as I backed away.

“Why, where?”

“The plan’s back on.” I ran back to the praetorium, with Maggie in tow. I pulled up by a pillar across from the Antonia Palace. “Maggie, can Peter really heal? Really?”

“Yes, I told you.”

“Wounds? Broken bones?”

“Wounds, yes. I don’t know about bones.”

“I hope so,” I said.

I left her there while I went to the highest-ranking centurion stationed outside the gates.

“I need to see your commander,” I said.

“Go away, Jew.”

“I’m a friend. Tell him it’s Levi from Nazareth.”

“I’ll tell him nothing.”

So I stepped up and took the centurion’s sword out of its scabbard, put the point under his chin for a split second, then replaced it in its scabbard. He reached for the sword and suddenly it was in my hand and under his chin again. Before he could call out the sword was back in its scabbard.

“There,” I said, “you owe me your life twice. By the time you call to have me arrested I’ll have your sword again and you’ll not only be embarrassed but your head will be all wobbly from your throat being cut. Or, you can take me to see my friend Gaius Justus Gallicus, commander of the Sixth Legion.”

Then I took a deep breath and waited. The centurion’s eyes darted to the soldiers closest to him, then back to me. “Think, Centurion,” I said. “If you arrest me, where will I end up anyway?” The logic of it seemed to strike him through his frustration.

“Come with me,” he said.

I signaled to Maggie to wait and followed the soldier into Pilate’s fortress.

Justus seemed uncomfortable in the lush quarters they had assigned him at the palace. He’d had shields and spears placed around the room in different places, as if he needed to remind anyone who entered that a soldier lived here. I stood in the doorway while he paced, looking up at me occasionally as if he wanted to kill me. He wiped the sweat from his closely cropped gray hair and whipped it so it drew a stripe across the stone floor.

“I can’t stop the sentence. No matter what I want.”

“I just don’t want him hurt,” I said.

“If Pilate crucifies him, he’ll be hurt, Biff. That’s sort of the point.”

“Damaged, I mean. No broken bones, no cut sinew. Have them tie his arms to the cross.”

“They have to use nails,” Justus said, his mouth shaping into a cruel frown. “Nails are iron. They’re inventoried. Each one is accounted for.”

“You Romans are masters of supply.”

“What do you want?”

“Okay, tie him then, only nail through the web of his fingers and toes, and put a board on the cross so he can support his weight with his feet.”

“That’s no kindness you’re doing him. He could linger a week that way.”

“No he won’t,” I said. “I’m going to give him poison. And I want his body as soon as he’s dead.”

At the word “poison,” Justus had stopped pacing and looked up at me with open resentment. “It’s not up to me to release the body, but if you want to make sure the body is unharmed I’ll have to keep soldiers there until the end. Sometimes your people like to help the crucified die more quickly by throwing stones. I don’t know why they bother.”

“Yes, you do, Justus. You of all people do. You can spit that Roman bitterness toward mercy all you want, but you know. You were the one who sent for Joshua when your friend was suffering. You humbled yourself and asked for mercy. That’s all I’m doing.”

Now the resentment drained from his face and was replaced by amazement. “You’re going to bring him back, aren’t you?”

“I just want to bury my friend’s body intact.”

“You’re going to bring him back from the dead. Like the soldier at Sepphoris, the one the Sicarii killed. That’s why you need his body undamaged.”

“Something like that,” I nodded, looking at the floor to avoid the old soldier’s eyes.

Justus nodded, obviously shaken. “Pilate has to authorize the body to be taken down. Crucifixion is supposed to stand as an example to others.”

“I have a friend who can get the body released.”

“Joshua could still be set free, you know?”

“He won’t be,” I said. “He doesn’t want to be.”

Justus turned from me then. “I’ll give the orders. Kill him quickly, then take the body and get it out of my jurisdiction even quicker.”

“Thank you, Justus.”

“Don’t embarrass any more of my officers or your friend will be asking for two bodies.”

When I came out of the fortress Maggie ran into my arms. “It’s horrible. They put a crown of thorns on his head and the crowd spit on him. The soldiers beat him.” The crowd milled around us.

“Where is he now?”

The crowd roared and people began pointing up to the balcony. Pilate stood there next to Joshua, who was being held by two soldiers. Joshua stared straight ahead, still looking as if he were in a trance. Blood was running into his eyes.

Pilate raised his arms and the crowd went quiet. “I have no complaint with this man, yet your priests say that he has committed blasphemy. This is no crime under Roman law,” said Pilate. “What would you have me do with him?”

“Crucify him!” screamed someone next to me. I looked over to see Jakan waving a fist. The other Pharisees began chanting, “Crucify him, crucify him.” And soon the whole crowd seemed to join in. Among the crowd I saw the few of Joshua’s followers that were left begin to slink away before the anger was turned on them. Pilate made a gesture as if he was washing his hands and walked inside.

Friday

Eleven apostles, Maggie, Joshua’s mother, and his brother James gathered at the upper room of Joseph of Arimathea’s house. The merchant had been to see Pilate and the governor agreed to release Joshua’s body in honor of the Passover.

Joseph explained: “The Romans aren’t stupid, they know our women prepare the dead, so we can’t send the apostles to get him. The soldiers will give the body to Maggie and Mary. James, since you’re his brother, they’ll allow you to come along to help carry him. The rest of you should keep your faces covered. The Pharisees will be looking for Joshua’s followers. The priests have already spent too much time on this during a feast week, so they’ll all be at the Temple. I’ve bought a tomb near the hill where they’ll crucify him. Peter, you will wait there.”

“What if I can’t heal him?” Peter said. “I’ve never even tried to raise the dead.”

“He won’t be dead,” I said. “He just won’t be able to move. I couldn’t find the ingredients I needed to make a potion to kill the pain, so he’ll look dead, but he’ll feel everything. I know what it’s like, I was in that state for weeks once. Peter, you’ll have to heal the wounds from the lash and the nails, but they shouldn’t be mortal. I’ll give him the antidote as soon as he’s out of sight of the Romans. Maggie, as soon as they give him to you, close his eyes if they’re open or they’ll dry out.”

“I can’t watch it,” Maggie said. “I can’t watch them nail him to that tree.”

“You don’t have to. Wait at the tomb. I’ll send someone to get you when it’s time.”

“Can this work?” Andrew said. “Can you bring him back, Biff?”

“I’m not bringing him back from anything. He won’t be dead, he’ll just be hurt.”

“We’d better go,” said Joseph, looking out the window at the sky. “They’ll bring him out at noon.”

A crowd had gathered outside of the praetorium, but most were merely curious; only a few of the Pharisees, among them Jakan, had actually come out to see Joshua executed. I stayed back, almost a half-block away, watching. The other disciples were spread out, wearing shawls or turbans that covered their faces. Peter had sent Bartholomew to sit with Maggie and Mary at the tomb. No shawl could disguise his bulk or his stench.

Three heavy crossbeams leaned against the wall outside the palace gates, waiting for their victims. At noon Joshua was brought out along with two thieves who had also been sentenced to death, and the beams were placed upon their shoulders. Joshua was bleeding from a dozen places on his head and face, and although he still wore the purple robe that Herod had placed on him, I could see that blood from the flogging had run down and left streaks on his legs. He still looked like he was in some sort of trance, but there was no question that he was feeling the pain of his wounds. The crowd closed in on him, shouting insults and spitting on him, but I noticed that when he stumbled, someone always lifted him to his feet. His followers were still scattered among the crowd, they were just afraid to show themselves.

From time to time I looked around the periphery of the mob and caught the eye of one of the apostles. Always there was a tear there, and always a mix of anguish and anger. It took everything I had not to rush in among the soldiers, take one of their swords, and start hacking. Afraid of my own temper, I fell back from the crowd until I came alongside of Simon. “I can’t do it either,” I said. “I can’t watch them put him on the cross.”

“You have to,” the Zealot said.

“No, you be there, Simon. Let him see your face. Let him know you’re there. I’ll come up once the cross is set.” I had never been able to look at someone who was being crucified even when I didn’t know them. I knew I wouldn’t be able to stomach watching them do it to my best friend. I’d lose control, attack someone, and then we’d both be lost. Simon was a soldier, a secret soldier, but a soldier still. He could do it. The horrible scene at the temple of Kali ran through my head.

“Simon, tell him I said mindful breath. Tell him that there is no cold.”

“What cold?”

“He’ll know what it means. If he remembers he’ll be able to shut out the pain. He learned to do that in the East.”

“I’ll tell him.”

I wouldn’t be able to tell him myself, not without giving myself away.

I watched from the walls of the city as they led Joshua to the road that ran by the hill called Golgotha, a thousand yards outside the Gennath Gate. I turned away, but even from a thousand yards I could hear him screaming as they drove the nails.

Justus had assigned four soldiers to watch Joshua die. After a half hour they were alone except for perhaps a dozen onlookers and the families of the two thieves, who were praying and singing dirges at the feet of the condemned. Jakan and the other Pharisees had only stayed to see Joshua hoisted upright and the cross set, then they went off to feast with their families.

“A game,” I said, tossing a pair of dice in the air as I approached the soldiers. “Just a simple game.” I had borrowed a tunic and an expensive sash from Joseph of Arimathea. He’d also given me his purse, which I held up and jingled in front of the soldiers. “A game, Legionnaire?”

One of the Romans laughed. “And where would we get money to gamble with?”

“We’ll play for those clothes behind you. That purple robe at the foot of the cross.”

The Roman lifted the robe with a spear point, then looked up at Joshua, whose eyes went wide when he saw me. “Sure, it looks like we’ll be here a while. Let’s have a game.”

First I had to lose enough money to give the Romans something to gamble with, then I had to win it back slowly enough to keep me there long enough to accomplish my mission. (I silently thanked Joy for teaching me how to cheat at dice.) I handed the dice to the soldier nearest me, who was perhaps fifty years old, built short and powerfully, but covered with scar tissue and gnarled limbs, evidence of broken bones mishealed. He looked too old to be soldiering this far from Rome, and too beaten down to make the journey home. The other soldiers were younger, in their twenties, I guessed, all with dark olive skin and dark eyes, all lean, fit, and hungry-looking. Two of the younger soldiers carried the standard Roman infantry spear, a wooden shaft with a narrow iron spike as long as a man’s forearm, tipped with a compact three-bladed point designed to be driven through armor. The other two carried the wasp-waisted Iberian short sword that I’d seen on Justus’ belt so many times. He must have had them imported for his legion to fit his own preference. (Most Romans used a straight-bladed short sword.)

I handed the dice to the old soldier and dumped some coins out in the dirt. As the Roman threw the dice against the bottom of Joshua’s cross I scanned the hills and saw the apostles watching from behind trees and over rocks. I gave a signal and it passed from one to the other, and finally to a woman who waited back on one of the city walls.

“Oh my, the gods have turned against me today,” I said, rolling a losing combination.

“I thought you Jews only had one God.”

“I was talking about your gods, Legionnaire. I’m losing.”

The soldiers laughed and I heard a moan from above us. I cringed and felt as if my ribs would cave in on themselves from the pain in my heart. I ventured a glance at Joshua and he was looking right at me. “You don’t have to do this,” he said in Sanskrit.

“What nonsense is the Jew talking now?” asked the old soldier.

“I couldn’t say, soldier. He must be delirious.”

I saw two women approaching the foot of the cross on Joshua’s left, carrying a large bowl, a jar of water, and a long stick.

“Hey there, get away from them.”

“Just here to give a drink of water to the condemned, sir. No harm meant.” The woman took a sponge from the bowl and squeezed it out. It was Susanna, Maggie’s friend from Galilee, along with Johanna. They’d come down for the Passover to cheer Joshua into the city, now we’d conscripted them to help poison him. The soldiers watched as the women dipped the sponge, then attached it to the end of the stick and held it for the thief to drink from. I had to look away.

“Faith, Biff,” Joshua said, again in Sanskrit.

“There, you shut up and die,” barked one of the younger Romans.

I twitched and squinted at the dice in lieu of crushing the soldier’s windpipe.

“Give me a seven. Baby needs new sandals,” said another young Roman.

I couldn’t look at Joshua and I couldn’t look to see what the women were doing. The plan was that they would go to the two thieves first, so as not to raise suspicion, but now I was regretting the decision to delay.

Finally Susanna brought the bowl to where we were gambling and set it down while Johanna poured some water over the sponge.

“Got any wine there for a thirsty soldier?” said one of the young soldiers. He smacked Johanna on the bottom. “Or some other relief?”

The old soldier caught the young soldier’s arm and pushed him away. “You’ll be up on that stick with this wretch, Marcus. These Jews take touching their women seriously. Justus won’t tolerate it.”

Susanna pulled her shawl around her face. She was pretty, lean with small facial features except for her wide brown eyes. She was too old not to be married, but I suspected that she had left a husband to follow Joshua. It was the same story with Johanna, except that her husband had followed along for a while, then divorced her when she wouldn’t come home with him. She was more sturdily built, and she rolled like a wagon when she walked. She took the sponge and held it out to me.

“Drink, sir?” Here the timing was critical.

“Anyone want a sip of water?” I asked before taking the sponge. I was palming the ying-yang amulet as I said it.

“Drink after a Jewish dog. Not likely,” said the old soldier.

“I’m getting the impression that my Jewish money might sully your Roman purse,” I said. “Maybe I should go.”

“No, your money’s good enough,” said a young soldier, punching my shoulder in good spirits. I was tempted to relieve him of his teeth.

I took the sponge and feigned taking a drink. When I raised the sponge to squeeze the water into my mouth I dumped the poison over it. Instantly I handed it back to Johanna so as not to poison myself. Without dipping it back in the water she affixed the sponge to the stick and raised it up to Joshua’s face. His head rolled, and his tongue rolled out of the side of his mouth against the moisture.

“Drink,” Johanna said, but Joshua didn’t seem to hear her. She pushed the sponge harder against his mouth and it dripped on one of the Romans. “Drink.”

“Move away from there, Marcus,” said the old soldier. “When he goes he’ll lose his fluids all over you. You don’t want to sit too close.” The old Roman laughed raucously.

“Drink it, Joshua,” said Susanna.

Finally Joshua opened his eyes and pushed his face into the sponge. I held my breath as I heard him sucking the moisture out of it.

“Enough!” said the young soldier. He knocked the stick out of Susanna’s hands. The sponge went flying off into the dirt. “He’ll be dead soon.”

“Not soon enough, though, with that block to stand on,” said the old soldier.

Then time began to pass more slowly than I could ever remember. When Joy had poisoned me it had taken only seconds before I was paralyzed, then when I’d used the poison on the man in India he’d dropped almost immediately. I tried to pretend to pay attention to the game, but I was looking for some sign that the poison was working.

The women moved away and watched from a distance, but I heard one of them gasp and when I looked up, Joshua’s head had lolled over. Drool ran out of his open mouth.

“How do you know when he’s dead?” I asked.

“Like this.” The young soldier named Marcus prodded Joshua in the thigh with his spear. Joshua moaned and opened his eyes and I felt my stomach sink. I could hear sobbing from Johanna and Susanna.

I threw the dice, and waited. An hour passed, and still Joshua moaned. I could hear him praying softly from time to time over the laughter of the soldiers. Another hour. I had begun to shake. Every sound from the cross was like a hot iron driven in my spine. I couldn’t bring myself to look up at him. The disciples moved closer, less concerned now about staying hidden, but the Romans were too intent on their game to notice. Unfortunately, I was not intent enough.

“That’s it for you,” said the old soldier. “Unless you want to gamble for your own cloak now. Your purse is empty.”

“Is this bastard ever going to die?” said one of the young soldiers.

“He just needs help,” said the young soldier named Marcus, who had stood and was leaning on his spear. Before I could even get to my feet he thrust the spear upward into Joshua’s side, the point went up under his ribs, and his heart blood pulsed down the iron in three great gushes, then ran out in a trickle. Marcus yanked the spear out. The entire hillside echoed with screaming, some of it my own. I stood transfixed, shaking, watching the blood run out of Joshua’s side. Hands latched onto my arms and I was dragged back, away from the cross. The Romans started to pick up their things to head back to the praetorium.

“Loony,” said the old soldier, looking at me.

Joshua looked at me one last time, then closed his eyes and died.

“Come away, Biff,” a woman’s voice said in my ear. “Come away.” They turned me around and started marching me toward the city. I could feel a chill running over me as the wind came up and the sky started to darken under a sudden storm. There was still screaming, going on and on, and when Johanna clamped her hand over my mouth I realized it was me who had been screaming. I blinked tears out of my eyes, again and again, trying to at least see where they were leading me, but as soon as my sight would clear another sob would rock my body and the water would rise again.

They were leading me to the Gennath Gate, that much I could tell, and there was a dark figure standing on the wall above the gate, watching us. I blinked and caught a single second of clarity as I saw who it was.

“Judas!” I screamed until my voice shattered. I shook off the women and ran through the gate, swung myself up on top of one of the huge doors, and leapt to the wall. Judas ran south along the wall, looking from side to side for a place to jump off.

There was no thought to what I was doing, nothing but grief gone to anger, love gone to hatred. I followed Judas across the roofs of Jerusalem, tossing aside anyone who got in my way, shattering pottery, crashing down rooftop chicken cages, pulling down lines of hanging clothes. When he came to a roof that led no further, Judas jumped two stories to the ground and came up limping as he ran down the street toward the Essene Gate at Ben Hinnon. I came off the roof full stride and landed without losing a step. Although I heard something tear in my ankle I couldn’t feel it.

There was a line of people trying to get into the city at the Essene Gate, probably seeking shelter from the impending storm. Lightning crackled across the sky and raindrops as big as frogs began to plop onto the streets, leaving craters in the dust and painting the city with a thin coat of mud. Judas fought through the crowd as if he were swimming in pitch, pulling people past him on either side, moving a step forward only to be carried back a step.

I saw a ladder leaning against the city wall and ran up it. There were Roman soldiers stationed here on the wall and I brushed by them, ducking spears and swords as I made my way to the gate, then over it, then to the wall on the other side. I could see Judas below me. He’d broken out of the crowd and was making his way along a ridge that ran parallel to the wall. It was too far to jump, so I followed him from above until I came to the corner of the battlement, where the wall sloped down to accommodate the thickness required to hold the corner. I slid down the wet limestone on my feet and hands and hit the ground ten paces behind the Zealot.

He didn’t know I was there. The rain came down now in sheets and the thunder was so frequent and loud that I could hear nothing myself but the roaring anger in my head. Judas came to a cypress tree that jutted over a high cliff with hundreds of tombs gouged into it. The path passed between a wall of tombs and the cypress tree; past the tree was a fifty-yard drop. Judas pulled a purse from his belt, pulled a small stone out of the opening to one of the tombs, then shoved the purse inside. I caught him by the back of the neck and he shrieked.

“Go ahead, put the stone back,” I said.

He tried to wheel on me and hit me with the stone. I took it from him and fitted it back into the tomb, then kicked his feet out from under him and dragged him to the edge of the cliff. I clamped onto his windpipe and, holding the cypress tree with my free hand, I leaned him out over the cliff.

“Don’t struggle!” I shouted. “You’ll only free yourself to the fall.”

“I couldn’t let him live,” Judas said. “You can’t have someone like him alive.” I pulled the Zealot back up on the cliff and whipped the sash from around his tunic.

“He knew he had to die,” Judas said. “How do you think I knew he’d be at Gethsemane, not at Simon’s? He told me!”

“You didn’t have to give him up!” I screamed. I wrapped the sash around his neck, then pulled it tight over the crook of a cypress branch.

“Don’t. Don’t do this. I had to do it. Someone did. He would have just reminded us of what we’ll never be.”

“Yep,” I said. I shoved him backward over the cliff and caught the end of the sash as it tightened around the branch. The sash twanged when it took his weight and his neck snapped with the sound of a knuckle cracking. I let go of the sash and Judas’ body fell into the darkness. The boom of thunder concealed the sound of impact.

The anger ran out of me then, leaving me feeling as if my very bones were losing their structure. I looked forward, straight over the Ben Hinnon valley, into a sheet of lightning-bleached rain. “I’m sorry,” I said, and I stepped off the cliff. I felt a bolt of pain, and then nothing.

That’s all I remember.

Epilogue

The angel took the book from him, then went out the door and across the hall, where he knocked on the door. “He’s finished,” the angel said to someone in the room.

“What, you’re leaving? I can just go?” asked Levi who was called Biff.

The door across the hall opened, and there stood another angel, this one seeming to have more a female aspect than Raziel. She too held a book. She stepped into the hall to reveal a woman standing behind her, wearing jeans and a green cotton blouse. Her hair was long and straight, dark with reddish highlights, and her eyes were crystal blue and seemed to glow in contrast to her dark skin.

“Maggie,” said Levi.

“Hi, Biff.”

“Maggie finished her Gospel weeks ago,” said Raziel.

“Really?”

The Magdalene smiled. “Well, I didn’t have as much to write as you did. I didn’t see you guys for sixteen years.”

“Oh, right.”

“It is the will of the Son that you two go out together into this new world,” said the female angel.

Levi went across the hall and took her in his arms. They kissed for a long time until the angels began to clear their throats and murmur “Get a room” under their breaths.

They held each other at arm’s length. Levi said, “Maggie, is this going to be like it always was? You know, you’re with me, and you love me and everything, but it’s only because you can’t have Josh?”

“Of course.”

“That’s so pathetic.”

“You don’t want to be together?”

“No, I want to, it’s just pathetic.”

“I have money,” she said. “They gave me money.”

“That’s good.”

“Go,” said Raziel, losing his patience. “Go, go, go. Go away.” He pointed down the hallway.

They started walking down the hallway, arm in arm, tentatively, looking back at the angels every few steps, until at last they looked back and the angels were gone.

“You should have stuck around,” the Magdalene said.

“I couldn’t. It hurt too much.”

“He came back.”

“I know, I read about it.”

“He was sad because of what you had done.”

“Yeah, so was I.”

“The others were angry with you. They said that you had the greatest reason to believe.”

“That why they edited me out of their Gospels?”

“Good guess,” she said.

They stepped into the elevator and the Magdalene pushed the button for the lobby. “By the way, it was Hallowed,” she said.

“What was Hallowed?”

“The H. His middle name. It was Hallowed. It’s a family name, remember, ‘Our father, who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.’”

“Damn, I would have guessed Harvey,” Biff said.