Iscariot: A Novel of Judas (24 page)

"I have no hand in his fate!" I said.

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"Don't you? What do you think they are doing with all that you tell them, if not pulling the strings of their sources in the Temple or in the courts of Pilate or Herod even as they rile up the young students, those zealots ready to die or kill for the law, unaware that they will never be free as you and I are free?"

"What do you mean never be free? What are we here for if not for that? And we are not free yet!"

"Are you listening to nothing? Do your ears hear nothing? Do you think your anxious heart will be silent if the Romans are gone?"

"Yes!" I roared.

He was shaking his head. "I will not go back to them." He got up. "Tell them whatever you like. My family may suffer. They have all but threatened my brother in this--"

"Zadok cal ed me to his house."

"Of course he did. These are men of consequence, and they wanted you to know that. Rich and powerful men and Pharisees."

"Pharisees!" Our master had done nothing but offend Pharisees as long as I could remember!

"Who do you think wants to see a Messiah come to Jerusalem more than anyone? I'll tell you. The Shammaites. The militant Shammaites. Students of my teacher, as I once was--many of whom in Jerusalem are Pharisees."

I stared.

"Ah, but what if our master doesn't do it the way they want him to? If Jesus is too peaceful, what do you think they will do? Do you not see this deadly game you are involved in, Judas of Kerioth? The Shammaites will grow to hate him. I've already seen it. He will not move the way they want. It is not his way. Didn't you hear him the other day, preaching the turning of his cheek after one strike to

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receive another? The giving away of one's mantle should another need it?"

"I thought--I gave him my mantle after he gave his to the demonized man . . ."

"Judas! Judas," he chuckled, but the sound had no mirth in it. "Is it a demoniac who demands our mantles of us . . . or is it the Romans who may demand anything they wish?"

I felt sick.

"You're saying . . ."

"I'm saying that you must be wise. Look around. Do you look for a reign of peace? There will be no peace. Do you think to usher him in to his seat in the Temple? The Pharisees will not have it. The Shammaites tire of him because they are confused by him. He is not one of them and so they will condemn him. And the Sadducees--they would have him put to death now, before the talk about him grows any further. Before Rome comes in and deals with him themselves and they lose any more privilege than they have."

I was stuck on something he had said earlier.

"You said they threatened your brother . . ."

"Who knows," he said, reaching up to clutch at his head. "I asked my brother to move. I spent the entire Feast of Tabernacles begging him to go away, trying to convince him to return with his family to Galilee, to Gamala. But how can he go away? No, of course it's ridiculous. There is the business. My family is too wealthy to move. They are weighted down with it like a millstone. I fear for him. For his wife, his children. He has said it, you know.

Our master. That brother will turn against brother."

"Why? If you fear for them--why?"

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"Because this is where I belong. I belong . . . with him." His voice cracked.

"And because despite all I have told him, he will have me. I have told him everything, including things I have not told you, Judas, that I dare not, because you are so very good and so very tortured in your goodness already--how can I tell you? You, who are perfect--you love the law better, even, than I."

"That's not true. If only you knew. And you, Simon, have been called zealous all your life."

"Yes. I am zealous," he said, sounding very tired. "And everyone loves me for it. But they do not know me. He--" He pointed in the general direction of the hills, where I knew Jesus to have gone, as he did nearly all the time now since John's death. "He knows me, and he loves me in spite of who I am.

No--because of who I am. I am not worthy, and yet he loves me."

"Simon! What are these secrets? What terrible thing can you have done that a man would hate you? You have lived for this kingdom as much as I!"

"You do not know the things I have done--in Gamala, when I first joined the Sons before coming to Jerusalem. I have spilled blood for them, Judas, and no amount of zeal has atoned for it. He alone has."

Simon--a murderer? But Gamala was a hotbed of nationalism. Surely he killed a Roman?

"When--what . . . ?"

"Don't ask these questions," he said, looking up at me, a dangerous expression on his face. "Unless you truly want to know."

"The Sons know?"

"They've known for years and have kept my secret. But now I've abandoned them and they could use it against me at any time."

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"Write to them. Tell them you'll return to them. We'll work together to protect your family and one day soon it won't matter--"

Though even as I said it, I thought: Here is a man who by his own admission deserves to die.

He shook his head with a faint laugh. "Still the idealist, Judas. No. No more.

My future is here. I have come here with all I am, and our master has accepted me. I cannot go back."

"But your family--"

"This is my family. He is my family. You, Judas, are my family now. And I beg your forgiveness for every deception or for disappointing you. For the blood of that man, whose name I never knew, did not want to know. For that as well. So now you know my secrets. I know none of yours, though I have surmised many about your past. Yet it doesn't matter. You are my brother."

I didn't want a brother who was a killer. I felt, inexplicably, as though by knowing it, I had blood on my own hands.

"You'll immerse tonight, having heard this, I know."

I looked away.

"The law says--"

"I don't care what the law says," he said quietly, and I could not believe my ears.

"There is a greater law at work here, and a greater redemption. I made the sacrifices. I have done everything I could short of spilling my own blood to atone for the bloodguilt. But in the end, it never did anything to assuage me.

Nothing did, until I came here. And for that, I thank you, Judas. I am so deeply grateful to you. But now, perhaps, you understand why I have distanced myself from you, knowing that it was I who brought you here with me, not the

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other way around. I am sorry for deceiving you. But there are now no more secrets between us."

I turned away. In coming here he had found--what. Atonement? But how could he? For all my belief in him, Jesus was not a priest. He preached the release of sins, he pronounced it. But what did that mean for a murderer?

I held on to the letter for a day more, eventually writing only: They call him seditious because they fear him and his coming kingdom. Be ready. The Sadducees and the others will lose their place in it, but those who support him will be made great. He has said himself that the first will be last, and the last first.

I said nothing of Simon.

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24

They came from Bethsaida, from the Decapolis, where they had heard the tales of the swine--some of them angry, come to harass him. They came from Tyre and Sidon and even Syria.

They came out of curiosity, or because they were desperate. But what they did not know--could not know--was that we were the desperate ones.

We were now north of Bethsaida in the territory of Philip, Herod's brother, where it was safer for us. I had not spoken any more to Simon. I did not look at him when he was near, nor did he seek me out.

I had thought in coming north we might lose more of our number. But after three days the crowd swelled to the largest I had ever seen it. By early afternoon of the third day I counted nearly five thousand people carpeting the hills and foothills. We moved among them constantly, repeating the familiar stories and blessings, even recruiting a few of our staunchest among the throng to help us.

By mid-afternoon, the sun was hot overhead. Hunger churned all of our stomachs.

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"Teacher," Andrew said. "We need to let them go to find food and lodging.

Some of them will have to go as far as Capernaum or Heptapegon. There's not enough in Bethsaida alone to feed them all."

Jesus, seemingly lost to his own thoughts--it was the way he had been ever since John's death--glanced up at him. "Why don't you give them something to eat?"

Andrew blinked at him. "Teacher, there are so many."

He looked around. "Do we have any food?"

I stared at him and then looked at Andrew as though to say, Is he even with us?

"There's some here," Thomas said. Thomas, always the literalist. He had been carrying the basket of what food we had, which had dwindled.

"There's hardly enough in there for James alone, Master!" Andrew said.

"Make the people sit down."

"To what end?" Andrew said, visibly exasperated.

Jesus looked up at him, the expression on his face weary. "Make them sit down in groups of fifty. And then give them something to eat."

"I'm telling you we hardly have enough to feed--" Andrew started.

Jesus gestured impatiently for the food as though we were the ones who did not see. Andrew turned away, shaking his head.

Lifting the fish and then the loaves, my master said the prayer for the breaking of bread. His face was haggard. I thought, with a tinge of fear: He is not in his right mind.

He laid the food in the basket and then handed it to James as though it were settled.

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I closed my eyes in wordless frustration, trying to tamp down the desperation I felt growing within me. We had plans. For the spring. For the mob, for our advance on Jerusalem. Plans and hopes! How long would he wallow like this?

I had loved his question to me just before dawn: Do you love me, Judas? He asked it near-incessantly now, and it had been with pleasure that I had said,

"Yes! Yes. I love you." Again and again. And I had meant it. Had found pleasure and purpose in knowing that this man, this teacher ... this friend ...

who healed lepers and calmed the very wind asked me with such urgency: Do you love me?

I had relished that I could hold sway over such a heart. That for as many as looked to him . . . he should look to me. As though none of it mattered without my love.

And as he had wept through the night, my heart had soared with the knowledge that I was known and not rejected. That I was somehow necessary to this enigmatic man, this powerful man . . .

This broken man . . .

In ways I did not understand.

I glanced at James, still holding the basket. The look on his face was strange.

"What is it?" I said, wondering if there were an insect or a scorpion in it.

"Bring another basket," he said, oddly.

Andrew, still standing a little ways away, shook his head and chuffed.

Matthew brought him another and James began to pour bread and fish into the empty one in Matthew's arms.

Bread.

Fish.

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So much bread. So much fish.

"Another!"

Matthew's laughter rang out and someone brought them another. He hastily put down the one and hoisted the empty as James poured.

Bread. Fish. Another basket.

It went like this until there were ten in all. By the time we had poured the last of them and taken them out to the throng and sat down ourselves to eat, we were laughing, the heat of the day forgotten, the tension over us breaking like a spring thaw, like ice cracking beneath the sun.

Elijah had given bread once, to only a hundred men. If Elijah fed a hundred, how much greater was the man who fed five thousand?

Hope. It was the one thing that the countryside cried out for. Food. It was the main requirement of an army. It was for that reason that Rome had coveted the wheat fields of Egypt. But we would be invincible beyond even Rome.

Because what man here would not follow a man who could give him food without end? Who might heal him if he fell ill?

That night my master went off alone. I wanted to talk to him. I felt humbled, broken by my doubt. But he slipped away before any of us could follow him.