Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt (7 page)

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Authors: Anne Rice

BOOK: Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt
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They weren't Roman soldiers; I didn't know what they were. But the crowd didn't like them. I could see even at this great distance that people were raising fists to them, and the horses were dancing as horses do and I thought I saw stones flying through the air.

I could hardly bear the slow pace of waiting. I think I wanted Joseph to push harder for us to get through the gate. He gave way so easily. And we did all have to keep together, and that included now Zebedee and his people, and also Elizabeth and Little John, and cousins whose names I didn't remember.

At last we entered the gates, and to my surprise found ourselves in a huge tunnel. I could barely see the beautiful decorations all around us. The prayers of the people echoed off the roof and the walls. I joined in the prayers, but mostly I just looked around myself, and felt the breath taken out of me again, just as surely as when Eleazer had kicked me hard and I couldn't breathe.
Finally, we came out into the great open space inside the first court of the Temple and it seemed that everyone shouted at once.
Far, far away on either side of us were the columns of the roofed porches and in between people went on forever, and before us, there rose up high the wall of the Sanctuary. And the people on top of the roofs were so tiny that I couldn't even make out their faces so big was this holy place.
I could hear and smell the animals that were gathered at the far porches, the animals offered for sale for sacrifice, and the noise of everybody rose in my ears.
But the whole feeling of the crowd changed. Everyone was happy to be here. All the children were laughing with happiness.
The sunshine was bright as it had never been in the tight streets of the city. The air was sweet and fresh.
I heard the sound of horses, too, not the hooves, but the whinnying of horses being pulled up short, and I heard shouting.

But for the moment, I was lost in looking ahead at the shining walls in front of me that enclosed the courts of the men and the women. I was too little to be taken to the court of the men. I would be staying with the women today, I knew. But I'd be able to see the men as they were sprinkled with the first purification for Passover.

All of it was such a wonder to me, and the wonder of being inside it was beyond any words in me to describe it. I knew full well there were people around me from all over the Empire who had come to be here today and it was as wonderful as we had hoped it would be. Cleopas had lived to be here. Cleopas had lived to be purified and to eat the Passover meal with us. Maybe Cleopas would live to go home.
It was our Temple and it was God's Temple and it seemed so splendid that we could enter it and come so close to God's presence.
There were many many men running on top of the faraway porches. And men on other roofs, but they were tiny as I said, and I couldn't hear them though I knew they were shouting by the way their arms moved in the air.
Suddenly, we were pushed this way and that. I thought Joseph would fall but he didn't.
A huge cry went up from the crowd.
People broke into shouting and women screamed. I think the children were thrilled. I was still on Joseph's shoulders, and we were packed in so tight that he couldn't move.
For the first time I saw at the far left many armed soldiers on horseback coming right towards us through the crowd. We were all swept backwards as if the crowd were water and then forwards, and my mother and my aunt Mary were screaming and Little Salome was screaming and reaching out to me but we were too far apart for me to catch her hand.
Most everyone around us was shouting in Aramaic, but many were shouting in Greek.

"Get out, get out," men shouted. But there was no way to move. I could hear the bleating of the sheep suddenly, as if someone had made all the animals run. Then came the bellow of the cows or the oxen—a dreadful sound.

The soldiers were coming closer and closer to us, and they had their spears raised. There was no way to move.
Then out of nowhere stones began to fly.
Everyone was screaming. I saw one soldier struck by many stones before he fell from his horse. Hands pulled at him and he went down into the crowd. A man in a robe and mantle scrambled up on the horse and began to fight with another soldier, and the soldier stabbed the man twice in the belly with his sword. The blood just gushed out of him.
I thought my breath had stopped. It was like the kick in the belly from Eleazer. I opened my mouth but the air wouldn't come. Joseph tried to drag me down from his shoulder but the crowd was too tight for him to do it, and I didn't want to come down. Terrible as it was, I wanted to see.
Prayers rose from everywhere, but they weren't the joyful Psalms. They were cries for help, cries for deliverance. Some people were falling to the ground.
But things like this were happening on all sides. All of us went back again like a wave in the sea.
Joseph reached up, and with other hands helping him, he lifted me over his head and down, his arms around me as he dragged me through the tight squeeze of people struggling and screaming.
When my feet hit the marble, I couldn't move. Even my tunic was caught up against those in front and behind me. Little Salome!" I cried. "Little Salome, where are you?"
"Yeshua," she called in the Aramaic. "Reach for me."

I saw her head before me as she struggled, as if she was swimming towards me, through the bodies that closed in on her.

I pulled her right beside me and in front of Joseph, and above me I could hear Cleopas laughing. He stood in front of me and he was laughing his old laugh.
The crowd moved to the side and then forward, so that we fell. Everyone fell. Hands pulled me down, and I pulled Little Salome under me, my right hand on top of her head.
"Get on your knees and stay there!" Joseph commanded. What could we do? We were on our knees and pitched forward.
My mother's voice came up in my ear.
"My son, my son."
Joseph and Cleopas threw up their hands and prayed to the Lord. I held Salome and threw up my left hand.
"Oh Lord, you are my refuge!" Joseph cried. Cleopas said another prayer. "I stretch forth my hands to you, Oh Lord," my mother cried. Little Salome cried: "Oh Lord, deliver me!"
All around us people called on the Lord. "Let the wicked fall in their own snares," cried James right near me.
"Deliver me, Lord, deliver me, from the evil around me," I prayed, but I couldn't hear my own voice. The prayers grew louder and became like a rumbling rising so high it almost rose above the screams and cries of those who fought.
The bellowing of the oxen was terrible, and the high thin screams of the women hurt me.
I looked up, lifting my head as much as I dared, and I saw that everyone all around us was kneeling and bowing. Zebe-dee rose up to implore the Lord and then bowed, but he was only one of so many I couldn't count.

But people came rushing through this big sea of those who prayed, scrambling over us, pushing down on shoulders and backs as they tried to get out.

For a moment, I was crushed right to the marble tiles of the floor, slipping beside Little Salome, my hand not leaving her head.
A wild will came over me and I struggled to get up and free. I pushed and jerked to the side until I wasn't under Joseph, and I climbed to my feet as if I was running.
I saw the great big square. Far ahead of us, people ran in all directions, the sheep were running wild with quick jerky steps, and soldiers rode down on the people, and the people, even the people who knelt and bowed, rose up all over and threw stones at the soldiers.
Some groups of people were like mounds of the dead.
The psalms rose to Heaven. " 'I flee unto you, O Lord, to hide me. ... I cried to you, O Lord—.' "
Soldiers on horseback came racing after the people, both men and women who ran right towards us.
"Joseph, look," cried my mother. "Get him, pull him down."
I pulled free of the hands that tried to tug at me.
The people ran on top of those kneeling, right over them as if they were rocks by the sea. The prayerful groaned and cried out, and as a single horseman drove his way towards us, the bodies fell back to either side.
Down I went with a hand on the back of my head and another on my back. I could hear the snorting of the horse and the clatter of his hooves.
My head was pressed right to the stones.
Yet out of the corner of my eye I saw the legs of the horse right beside us, and as the horse shied backwards, I saw a man rise from the mounds of huddled figures. He drew a stone from under his robe and thew it at the soldier.

He cried out in Greek:

"There is no one but the Lord Himself who has a right to rule over us! Take those words to Herod. Take them to Caesar!"
Then came another stone from under his mantle and another.
The soldier's spear came down right into the man's chest. It went deep into him and through him.
The man dropped the stone he held, and fell back with his eyes wide.
My mother sobbed. Little Salome screamed, "Don't look, don't look."
But was I to look away from this man in his last moments? Was I to turn away from his very death?
The soldier pulled up his spear and the man rose with it. Blood poured out of the man's mouth.
The body was cast this way and that, and then the spear pulled free and let the body drop.
The man rolled onto his left side, and he stared right at us, right at me.
I couldn't see the horse anymore. I could only hear it, and the terrible noise of its running wild. I saw the soldier in the grip of men all around him, those who had pulled him from the horse which was now gone.
His body was lost in the crowd that covered him, as elbows rose and fell over him.
Our men bowed and prayed.
The dying man if he heard it, if he knew it, didn't care.
He didn't see us. He didn't know about the soldier. Blood came out of his mouth onto the stones.
Terrible cries came out of my mother.

The people who'd taken hold of the soldier got up and were running away. More people got up and ran. Beyond them more stayed on their knees and prayed.

The body of the soldier was covered with blood.
The man who stared at us reached out his hand, but his arm flopped down, and he died.
People ran between us and the man. I heard the sheep again.
I felt my mother slip over on her side on the ground, and I tried to catch her, but she sank down on the ground with her eyes closed.
Again the stones flew from everywhere over our heads.
Who had come into this Temple that did not carry stones for this war?
The stones rained down on us, and hit us on our heads and shoulders.
When Joseph raised his arms in the chanting, I managed to get out from under him, and I got up on my knees.
The crowd was loose and broken. Bodies lay everywhere like heaps of bloody wool for the wash.
Everywhere I looked men fought and men died.
On top of the beautiful porches, men who looked tiny and black against the sky were fighting, soldiers with their swords drawn stabbing those who tried to beat them with clubs.
I saw way out on the stones where there was no crowd anymore another man attack a soldier, rushing right against the spear that went through him. Women ran right to the dead to cry over them. They did not care where they were, these women. They cried and screamed. They howled like dogs. The soldiers didn't hurt them.
But no one came to our dead man, the man who lay on his side with the blood all over his mouth, staring and not seeing. He lay alone.

At last the soldiers were everywhere, so many soldiers I could never count them. They came on foot into the crowd.

They moved through the families of those kneeling and came closer and closer on the left and on the right.
All the fighters were gone.
"Pray!" said Joseph to me, breaking his chant for only a moment.
I obeyed him. I raised my arms and prayed.
"But the souls of the righteous are in the hands of the Lord, and no torment can harm them."
New soldiers came riding out. They raised their voices, and they spoke in Greek. At first I couldn't hear them, but then one of them came nearer to us, walking his horse.

"Leave, go to your homes!" he said. "Get out of Jerusalem, by the King's order."

6

THE QUIET WAS NOT QUIET. It was full of crying and sobbing and the clatter and noise of the horses, and the soldiers shouting at us to go.
Some bodies were dead all alone on the tops of the porches. I could see them. And our dead man was all alone. The sheep wandered everywhere, the sheep without blemish that would have been the Passover sacrifice. Men ran after them. They ran after the oxen that were still bellowing and that bellowing was the loudest noise of all.
At last we rose to our feet, because Joseph rose, and we followed, all of us together, Cleopas very shaky, and laughing still under his breath, but not so any soldier could hear him.
Aunt Salome and Aunt Esther had my mother by her arms. She started to sink again and she groaned. Joseph struggled to get close to her, but the little ones were underfoot. I had hold of Little Salome.
Mamma, we have to go now," I said to my mother, staying close to her. "Mamma, wake up. We're going now."

She was trying to be strong. But they turned her and they pushed her along. Uncle Alphaeus had a time with Silas and Levi who were whispering questions to him, but I couldn't hear them. Now they were each past their fourteenth year, and they took all of this perhaps not the same as we little ones did.

All the people moved to the gateway.
Cleopas was the only one of us like Lot's wife, who turned back and back.
"Look," he said to anyone who could hear him. "See the priests there?" He pointed to the top of the faraway wall of the Inner Court. "They had sense enough to run for cover, didn't they? Did they know the soldiers were going to attack us?"

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