Iscariot: A Novel of Judas (32 page)

Mary was kissing the hands of Jesus' mother and Martha told us to come upstairs, our number spilling up onto the roof. That night, beneath a canopy of myrtle and palm, we ate the Sabbath meal with Mary the mother of Jesus, her sons and daughters and their family, Zebedee, the Magdalene, Susanna, Joanna, and her husband. We ate hungrily the simple meal of lentils, figs, and bread, each dish somehow more sumptuous than the delicacies we had eaten just the night before at the home of a Jericho tax collector.

It was my last night of peace ever.

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A roar went up from the street the moment we came out of the house the next morning.

Hosanna!

The press of bodies. The clamor of the throng pushed past the pilgrims who stopped to stare by the side of the road, obscuring my master from those who craned to see who was at the center of the mob.

Hosanna!

"Come!" I shouted to a group of pilgrims staring dumbly by the side of the road--a bunch of bumpkins from who-knew-where. "Follow us. Here, the son of David!"

"Is this the one?" someone asked me. "Is this the one that raised Lazarus, the brother of Martha?"

"Behold the man," I said.

Others stood back in stupefied awe at the crowd, their gazes going from person to person that passed before them. When I looked back, they had been swallowed by the multitude.

We must have numbers. Zadok was right. Without numbers, we would be put down like dogs. But with enough . . . Pilate did not

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dare risk a riot this size. Not since the exile of Archelaus or the questionable status of his patron in Rome. He dare not risk unrest, but he dare not risk a massacre, most of all.

And so we drew the pilgrims around us like a dangerous cloak. Like a robe of many teeth. No longer a throng, but a mob. An army.

The tenor of our hymns began to change as someone ahead of us sang: I have prepared a lamp for my anointed one.

I will clothe his enemies in disgrace,

while on him his crown shall sparkle.

Soon the entire crowd had taken it up.

We crested the Mount of Olives, the air already warm, the breeze whispering liberation. Ahead of us there was shouting--a group came forward to meet us, and I realized they had been waiting for us on the road. But before we could go out to join them, to tell them "Come!" we stopped to stare--at the hills, blanketed with the tents of pilgrims by the thousands, the gates clogged with those entering the city with their palm fronds and myrtle, the roads bloated with travelers.

Israel's children, returned to her. Next to me, a woman I did not know covered her face and wept.

The group ahead reached us, shouting, waving branches of willow and palm.

Hosanna, son of David!

Hosanna. Save us.

There was an outpost ahead where soldiers kept watch over the 273

road. I saw their faces as we passed by. What could they do against us?

They did not move, and they could not come out.

I sang louder. Hosanna!

We pressed closer to our master. We had tried to buffer the surge of the crowds--everywhere there were branches poking the eye or hands threatening to tear his clothing in grappling for him so that he could only walk in stunted steps as he clasped the fingers of one hand and then another, as he laid his hand on the head of one baby thrust toward him or this child or that. But now I saw James and Andrew coming through the crowd.

I had not realized that they had gone ahead--and what was that with them? A donkey. I recognized their cloaks on it.

I added my mantle atop theirs and helped Jesus onto the animal's back.

Ahead of us others threw down their mantles and palm fronds before him. I stood back just in time to hear the shout of a woman behind me.

"Rejoice, daughter of Zion!"

I could barely breathe. I knew the words of that prophet. They thrummed in my head like a hammer:

Rejoice greatly, daughter of Zion! Shout, daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey . . .

I felt my knees buckle. I fell down to them, dropping to the earth in the middle of the crowd. An instant later, strong hands lifted me beneath the arms.

The bandit Jesus. "This is not the time for falling down. Our brothers are waiting." He was grinning.

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I realized then that I didn't know what brothers he was talking about.

To the gate. No one could stop us. We numbered by now in the many thousands. By the time we came to the roads they were filled with pilgrims waving branches and singing, caught up in the frenzy.

Beyond them I could see guards atop the city wall, and beyond them, the Temple guards pacing the length of the royal stoa, their Levite tunics nearly indistinguishable from those of the Romans.

Just then, a cloud passed beneath the sun, and for an instant it seemed I saw shadows, looming like giants on either side of the road. The grotesque and twisting forms of trees draped with men like morbid banners into the city.

Crosses . . .

I blinked and staggered. Someone bumped into me.

"Is this the one, the man from Nazareth?" someone shouted.

"He healed my cousin, this is the man!" came the reply.

A ringing in my ears. Speckling before my eyes. Jesus rode just ahead of me. He turned his head and I imagined I saw him weeping.

We went into the city, borne through the gate by the crowd as the hapless guards stood back and out of the way.

Next to me, someone grabbed my arm, the nails biting through the linen of my sleeve. I looked over to see the Magdalene. She clasped me as one who sees something she has never thought to see, captured between amazement and fear. Her lips were parted, a flush high on her face. I laid my hand over hers and we went on.

We had gone a little farther when the bandit Jesus slipped away toward several men standing within the gate. Perhaps they were going even now ahead of us to the Temple.

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And then there, through the crowd, I thought I saw the face of my brother.

Was it possible?

"Nathan!" I shouted. "Nathan!" If he heard me, he did not show it, and after another instant he was gone as the crowd flooded the streets like a river that overflows its banks.

Just ahead of me, Jesus' head was bowed as he sat on that donkey, and though the crowd might take it for humility, I could see that he was indeed weeping.

I tore away from the Magdalene and pushed my way through the crowd, trying to gain him--to shake him and tell him this was the time. We had suffered, worked, and spent ourselves on every sick and starving soul for this very moment. How dare he weep? Could he not see the mob--how they welcomed their Messiah?

But the crowd shifted and I fell back as a new group intersected ours, trying to get close to Jesus. They were dragging a litter of some kind, those near it shouting and trying to keep the person on it from getting trampled in the chaos.

I fell back, staring after him.

Beyond the noise, the utter chaos and shouting, there came the slightest distant rolling, back from the direction of the Judean hills. Far thunder, like the rumble of dark laughter.

We came to the Temple's southern steps and held the donkey so that Jesus could dismount. Just as he did, a cluster of Pharisees came to the edge of the mob.

"Make them quiet--send them away!" one of them said. "You're causing a scene, don't you know what could happen?"

I saw the fear in their eyes, the desperate panic.

Let them reap what they sow.

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But then the mob was pushing them back and they hurried away.

I glanced in the direction of the mikvot, craving the smell of water, of the bath cut into the stone. It only seemed right on this occasion to be cleansed of road dust, the sweaty hands that had been grappling at us for miles. But my master was already making his way up the steps.

We went after him, hurrying to keep up, our shouts of "Hosanna!" echoing off the gate, the high arches of the royal porch, ricocheting off the very columns as we emerged into the outer court . . .

Into a marketplace that stank of animals, hay, and manure.

I stopped, dumb, and stared. I had never seen it so full. It was as though the entire market from the Mount of Olives had been relocated here, to the outer court of the Temple--from animal merchants of every kind to the moneychangers, their tables covered with coin and scale.

It might have been all right. We might have salvaged the situation if no one had been so rash, so bold, so mad as to throw away our mission over the indiscretion we saw in the Temple court.

We could have continued with the liberation of our people if someone hadn't cried out in rage and knocked over a cage of doves, sending them into wild flight.

But someone did.

And that someone was Jesus.

I watched in horror as he leapt to the next table, planted his hands against the edge, and threw it over. Coins skittered across the stone courtyard.

His face flushed red above his beard. "Isn't it written that my house will be called a house of prayer?" he shouted.

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A moneychanger--a man I recognized from the counting house--leapt back as, with a swipe of his arm, my master swept coin and abacus and scales at once from his table.

"And you've made it a den of robbers!" Jesus cried.

Pilgrims fell to the ground, scrabbling for the coins. Another merchant whisked a stack of coin off his table and into his apron. Someone shouted for help, for the guard.

Jesus surged into a stack of cages. He tore them open, sending more birds into the courtyard, into the faces of the mob, and fluttering up into the air.

Guards ran along the royal porch. Others were coming from the porticoes and gates, but it was too late--more of the mob was swarming through the double and triple gates, into the courtyard, grappling for the birds running between their legs, launching themselves at the money tables, grabbing the choicest lambs.

Another crash--someone had overturned another table. Several goats ran into the middle of the courtyard only to be caught by those who had not stopped to wash but marched right in.

A roar past them--an inhuman roar. My master. A rope bridle sailed overhead and came down with a crack. I staggered at the sight of him as he drove several merchants like animals toward the porticoes, their hands over their heads.

The clouds had come in, obscuring the sun, throwing the entire scene in shadow. Guards rushed into the fracas, swords drawn. Pilgrims fled for the gates only to be pushed back by the crowd still streaming in from the stair.

They clasped their animals, the hands of their children, veering off toward the inner court, if only to get away.

There! The bandit Jesus. I saw him in a flash of motion, sword in his hand, surrounded by those others who had met us inside the gate.

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My hands were shaking so violently that when I tried to grapple for my knife I dropped it, unable to hear the clatter of it against the stones over the sound of the fray. Farther ahead of me a man fell down to his knees, his nose bursting crimson. Someone was standing over him, but not for long--he threw his arms up in victory too early. A nearby guard slashed at the back of his leg and he went down. And then my line of sight was abruptly cut off by a wild-eyed cow, hurtling through the riot.

A cheer from the group of bandits. They were circled around someone down on their knees. Temple guards fringed the edges of the porticoes, swords drawn, but only in self-defense; they were outnumbered.

Overhead the rope whistled and cracked as Jesus dashed another table's worth of coins to the floor. He cried out, "Isn't it written that in that day there will no longer be a merchant in the house of the Lord?"

It was the cry of vendetta.

Of a man with a death wish.

We had come for an anointing, for a king. But we had brought chaos, riot, and unforgivable offense instead. Not to the Romans or to Pilate, or to any Gentile . . . but to our own Temple.

In a flash of clarity, I suddenly saw not a Messiah but a man on the brink of self-destruction, grappling to pull down all that the God of Abraham himself had established.

And as I saw the rage on his face, I finally realized what the Pharisees, priests, and teachers of the law--and yes, the Sons of the Teacher--had seen long before me.

Nathan was right. I had been deceived.

I pushed my way through the southern entrance. It was pumping like an artery, spurting more and more people into the yard.

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Shouts outside. Soldiers from the Antonia Fortress streamed along the western wall toward the upper gates.

Hosanna.

Pray save us.

I ran. Down, onto the congested street, into the crowd. A chorus of shouts sounded from the way I had come, a strange and distant cheer.

I had believed him. I had made excuses for him, had pitted myself against the Pharisees and the priests in his name, calling him the son of God.

I spun into a narrow alley and bolted down a side street.

I ran until my lungs burned, until I was as far away from the Temple as I could get. North, to the New City, but I dared not go home.

Behind a line of houses, I fell down against a low wall and covered my face, my hands still trembling. I had lost the others somewhere on the steps, but I knew where they would meet. If I didn't join them, they would think I had been lost in the riot or even killed.

Instead, I stayed there through fits of cramps that seized my legs and questions that seized up my lungs.

What had we done?

How would Rome come down on us now, worse than before? How was Jesus any better than Judas bar Hezekiah, wreaking the havoc that would