Iscariot: A Novel of Judas (34 page)

I turned and seized him by the shoulders, shook him.

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"Nathan! If you love me, do this. This city is not safe."

"Do you mean that your teacher will--"

"It hasn't been safe for decades. And now you will promise me something.

You will take Mother away and you will allow her to die beyond sight of the crosses lining the road to the city."

"What crosses? Judas--"

"No, you listen to me. I have failed you many times. I left you to those who called you a bastard, and I beg your forgiveness. But now, you will do this--

not for me, but for our mother. You will take her to Galilee. And you will be free there to do as your conscience and God dictate. I know you have no cause to trust me, but you will do this for her. You will do this thing. Please, Nathan. Brother." My voice cracked.

He blinked at me in the face of my vehemence, and I drew him hard against my chest.

"There are things we must do, you and I. I will do my part, and you will do yours. And yours is to go. The Sons will let you go. Say you are moving to Gamala, and that Nicodemus has sent you. Go, prepare. You will leave the city as one of the pilgrims returning after the Feast, except that you will be leaving it forever."

I became aware of a presence behind us. I let go of Nathan and we both turned.

Mother.

"You are leaving again," she cried. "You have only returned and already you leave!"

I opened my mouth to speak.

"No, Mother," Nathan said, moving toward her.

I braced myself. Shook my head.

"Good news," Nathan said gently, glancing at me. "I've accepted a job. But we will need to leave."

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"What?"

"Very good news," I said. "And--" I found the courage within me to summon a lie. "And soon I will join you. We are all going away from this place."

She opened her mouth to protest but it was Nathan who cut her off.

"It is decided, Mother. Isn't it, brother?"

I looked at him, gratitude filling me like sorrow. Like pride.

"Indeed. And so I kiss you now," I said, going to her and embracing her.

How small my mother felt in my arms. How tiny, and fragile. For the first time in years, I thought: how good and pure. She was not unclean. She was a mother filled with the courage of love.

"I love you, Mother," I said.

I accepted the embrace of my brother, briefly, fearing that I might weep.

And then I picked up the bundle of food and went out the door, closing it behind me forever.

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39

I stopped twice by the side of the road to retch. I could not think. I could not stop thinking.

He was in danger.

They would kill him.

He, himself, was danger. He would bring danger to us all.

I would go to my master and beg him to leave, to flee with us to Galilee, and to Syria. Perhaps we would go to Alexandria.

But I knew he would never consent to leave. Whatever he intended, he intended to happen here.

I will show you even greater things, he had said.

At every turn he had saved us. The throng that left returned. The storm that rose was silenced.

But by now I was adrift in the middle of the sea and I could not turn back. The storm had blown to a full-blown squall--a tempest, this time, that not even he could extricate himself from.

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40

The chamber at the east end of the royal porch finished in a semicircle, presided over by a lavish gilded arch, its stone dais built with seating enough for seventy.

Seventy-one, to be exact.

Once, I had thought to sit here myself, among the Sanhedrin. But never to stand here like this.

The proceedings happened publicly at the end of the porch where pilgrims regularly came to stare at the members of the high religious court, to gape at the lavish mosaic floors and the carved marble of the upper balcony rail that looked out over those waiting on the benches below the dais.

But today I was the one being stared at. Not by pilgrims, but by those Sadducees from the houses of Phiabi and Hanan, Qathros and Boethus.

Caiaphas was not here, but his brother-in-law Jonathan, who was second in command of the Temple, had come in late as soon as the Temple doors had shut for the evening. His younger brother, Theophilus, sat to his left. There was the teacher Joezer,

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and Jonathan bar Gudgeda, who was a Levite and a teacher of the law and the chief doorkeeper of the Temple.

Malchus, the servant of Caiaphas, offered me wine. It was all I could do to make myself swallow it.

Beside me stood old Elias under whom I had worked so many years, and whom I had begged to bring me to his master so that I might appear here.

"You vouch for this man?" Jonathan, the brother of Caiaphas, said.

"I do. He has served the Temple faithfully," old Elias said in his phlegmy voice. "And now he returns to us, after following the Galilean, Jesus of Nazareth, these last years."

Jonathan leaned forward. "Have you come to inform on your master as the law requires?"

I swallowed, the wine tasting like vinegar in my mouth. "I have come to say that I can take your brother to meet with him. So that he might learn his way.

For the sake of peace."

"You're a man of insight. And my brother is most interested in learning more about your master. But Caiaphas does not go out to meet with renegade teachers," he said, lifting ringed hands. "Surely you realize the risk it poses--

especially when the city is full of foreigners and pilgrims."

"The advantage for you is that I will do it at a time that will not cause a scene."

"No. He must come here. Let us send an escort for him--for his safety. We will do it at night, when it won't cause a riot or other excitement." He sat back with a hint of noticeable relief, I thought. "He'll be the guest of my brother, who has many questions for him. Meanwhile, we won't need to worry about how he might further

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stir up the city, or how Pilate will respond to another incident." His voice hardened on the last word: incident.

"You say he'll be the guest of your brother as though your brother never called my master 'blasphemer.' "

"If he's not a blasphemer, he has nothing to fear, does he?"

"You've tried to entrap him every time he's been here," I said.

"Of course. We are concerned. Do you know that he has said he will tear down the Temple?"

"You've no doubt heard many disturbing things, but hear him for yourself and you'll understand that he speaks in metaphor and parable. Then you'll see that he isn't the threat you believe him to be."

"I have no doubt of that. Some, we hear, have even called him 'Messiah.'

Tell us, Judas bar Simon . . . do you who call him 'Master' also call him

'Messiah'?"

My heart hammered. In that one word--Messiah--I heard all my doubts and hopes and fears at once. I saw the hand that healed the leper, the blind man, and the paralytic. That freed a tax collector and prostitute from shame and raised a dead man from the grave.

And I saw the man who offended Pharisee and Sabbath alike and voiced the profane. Who spoke out for the oppressed, but did not condemn the oppressor . . . The man who had risen up in rage in the court of God himself against his own countrymen. How could that be messianic, when by every angle of the law it wasn't even justice?

"Well?" he said, brows lifted.

"No," I said, softly, the word like a spear through my side.

"You see?" Jonathan said, glancing at the others. "Even his own followers don't believe it."

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What have I done?

What I must.

I had examined the law and knew that they could not rule without testimony, without a majority, or during Feast days. They could not use anything he said against himself.

He would confound them. They would not know what to do with him. Like the dangerous days in the porticoes, he would live.

He must live.

And so I made my bargain with surety.

"I'll do it, but I require a price."

"Of course you'll be paid."

"Not that." Inside my tunic, sweat rolled down my sides. "If I deliver him to you, I want guarantee that he won't be tried for blasphemy."

They could not kill him for blasphemy, even if they wanted. They didn't have the authority under Rome; only the procurator--Pilate himself--had the power to invoke a death sentence.

But I wanted surety. Surety that would save him.

A few of the others threw up their hands, and one said, "Who are you to demand guarantees of the Sanhedrin?"

"After all these teachings, so many deceived--" Joezer murmured, his hand cradling his head so that his thumb pressed against his forehead. But Jonathan glanced at him with the barest shake of his head as though to say, No, don't speak of that now. The teacher lowered his hand, but the thumbprint remained upon his forehead.

Like the mark of Cain, I thought.

Jonathan said, mildly, "That is an obstacle for us. This is a great thing you ask, considering all that your master has said and done to indicate that, indeed, he blasphemes. You all but admit you deliver him to us to keep him alive."

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"Yes," I whispered.

"This is great devotion. And such devotion should be rewarded," he said, glancing at Annas. "My brother is a reasonable man, and as you say, he would like very much to speak with your master. And so I believe he will accommodate you."

"I want it in writing, that he will not lay charges of blasphemy against him."

"In writing, then."

Jonathan sat back.

"Well then, Judas bar Simon. To take him into custody, we require a formal charge. Do you lay a formal charge?"

I felt ill.

"Yes." My voice cracked. I cleared my throat. "Yes. I lay a formal charge. He has done the things people say of him."

"There. I think we have what we need," he said, glancing at Joezer and a few others.

Jonathan tilted his head toward a servant who came in and took his dictation of the charge. When it was done, he brought it to me and I signed it.

"What will you give me to broker the deal?"

Without payment, it would not be binding.

Jonathan gestured to the servant, who returned a moment later with a small purse. "There are thirty shekels here."

It was the coin used for paying the Temple tax--Tyrian silver. Thirty silver, the price of a slave. The compensation price of an animal that falls into a hole in a neighbor's land.

Thirty silver. For a man who fed thousands. Who raised the dead and cast out demons.

I watched a hand I did not recognize as my own reach out to take it.

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"You have done a service to your people, Judas of Kerioth."

I had done a service. I was absolved.

Why, then, had my hands begun to shake?

I left, those words in my ears. I looked back once as Caiaphas' man, Malchus, escorted me out. But they did not see me, having already leaned in to heated talk between themselves.

In the courtyard, I passed two soldiers playing at knucklebones. There, in the Temple court, beneath the nose of the Sanhedrin, they played at basalinda.