Lazarus felt a chill of fear. Not for himself, but for Jesus. “You aren’t going to desert him, are you?”
“No.” Peter’s answer was quick and sure. “No, I’ll never leave him. But you might think about it some before you ask to follow him. You have sisters who need you, a farm to run. Who’ll take care of all that while you’re gone?”
The thunder rumbled again, this time louder.
“I’m working on that. They will be cared for.” His stomach twisted. Even Penina. “Do you think . . . do you think Jesus will let me follow him?”
Peter picked up a traveling bag and stood. “Ask him when he returns to Bethany. But remember, his ways are not always clear.” He pointed to the sky. “Looks like a storm’s coming. It will hit here soon. Good-bye, my boy.”
With a sinking heart, Lazarus watched Peter leave the courtyard. When would Jesus return to Bethany? It could be months before they saw him again. And Lazarus didn’t have time to waste. Thunder growled, this time closer. He looked to the east. Ominous clouds massed over the horizon. Peter was right. A storm was coming, but would it bring the consolation of rain, or pass over and leave them disappointed?
Chapter Sixteen
Wash away all my guilt; from my sin cleanse me. For I know my offense; my sin is always before me.
—Psalm 51:4–5
HIS THROAT BURNED like he’d swallowed a live coal.
He dragged his body out of the darkness. The thin light of a crescent moon struggled against the dark fists of clouds pummeling the sky. The storm had raged for days, keeping him in his tomb as the voices in his head howled amid the wind and thunder.
He stumbled down the rocky path to the shore and fell to the ground, the sharp rocks biting into his hands and knees as he crawled toward the water and collapsed where the white-tipped waves crashed against the shore.
The voices tore at his mind in a frenzy, but thirst won over their fear of the water. Coughing and choking, he gulped mouthfuls, tasting fish and slime, then rolled onto his side, the voices wailing and urging him away from the water. He crawled a few paces before he collapsed, spent in mind and body.
Rain pounded him, soaking him to the bone. The bitter wind tore at his rags, driving sand into his eyes and lips. His belly—empty for how long? Days? A week?—cramped and threatened to disgorge the briny water. They laughed, reveling in his misery.
After what seemed like eternity, the rain lightened and the wind ebbed. The moon gained a corner on the punishing clouds. Its pale glow illuminated a bulky form gliding over the water, coming closer. For a moment, the clamor within his tormented mind ceased, as though its very breath were stolen. Then terror—a terror such as he had never known—shattered his thoughts.
With a roar he rose to his feet. Utter hatred and primeval fear burned through his veins. Pain ripped through his raw throat as he screamed, but his own voice was drowned by the ones that clawed inside his skull.
Through a haze of red, he saw it charging closer. A boat. And it carried a man. Not him, they screamed. He tried to run, but his legs were rooted in the shore. The screams reached a fevered pitch, and his vision darkened. They threw his body down once. Then again. The jagged stones tore into skin. His bones snapped, and his skull cracked.
His one human thought, a wordless wish for death. Anything to stop the torture.
The man, the one who terrified them, was on the shore now, close enough to touch him. They petrified into a twisted coil of hatred in the corner of his mind.
“Unclean spirit, come out of the man!” The voice cut through him like a knife.
Silence. Blessed silence, like a sudden intake of breath. Then a deep, rasping voice tore at his throat. “What have you to do with us?” He tried to close his lips, but he could no more prevent them from speaking than he could rise from the ground. “Jesus, son of the Most High God,” the voice said. “I adjure you by God, do not torment us!”
They wailed, their voices rising and twisting like a desert sandstorm.
He crawled closer to the man, willing him to speak again. To silence them again. Please. Just for a moment.
“What is your name?” the man—the one they feared—asked.
He tried to remember. Surely he had one. Another voice, low and sibilant, like a hissing snake, slipped from his lips. “Legion. There are many of us. Do not make us leave here. This is our land, not the land of the Jews.”
Shrieks swelled to a feverish pitch. His mouth opened, and a guttural voice begged, “Send us into the swine.”
The swine? Am I the swine?
Again, the man standing before him spoke. “Legion, come out of this man.”
Pain ripped through his chest. He looked down, sure he’d see his heart torn from his body. His torso convulsed, beating him against the rocks. His legs thrashed wildly, and his back arched high, as if to snap his spine. The voices spiraled like a whirlwind. Howling, moaning, fading . . . and then they were gone.
He collapsed on the rocky ground and silence—peaceful, all-encompassing silence—suffused him.
• • •
HE CAME AWAKE, but didn’t open his eyes. He didn’t twitch a muscle.
Silence. Could it be real?
His throat burned, every bone and sinew throbbed with pain, and his body felt as hollow as a broken bird’s egg. No wails. No shrieks. No scrape of claws in his skull. He was empty.
They were gone. All of them. They had called the man Jesus. He had called them Legion.
But who am I?
He opened his eyes. A fire crackled on the beach just a stone’s throw from where he lay. Men sat around it, talking in low voices. A smell—a marvelous, wonderful smell—made his mouth water and his stomach twist. He pushed to his knees and crawled toward them.
The men startled, and one got to his feet as if to fight.
He stopped. Would they drive him away? There was the one who had freed him—the one named Jesus—next to the fire. Would he help him? Please. I’m so hungry.
Jesus held up a hand to the others, then pulled a fish from the spit and brought it to him. The scent made him weak and dizzy, as though he might again descend into blackness; then the meat was in his hands. He ripped open the fish, burning his fingers, and shoved chunks of flesh and charred skin in his mouth, gulping instead of chewing. Needlelike bones stuck in his throat, but he kept eating until nothing remained in his hands but ashes.
He raised his eyes. Jesus stood beside him, watching him. The other men stared at him with open mouths. He licked the flavor from his lips. He wanted to speak, to talk to this man, but no words came to his dulled mind. The demons had called him son of the Most High God. What did that mean?
They were Jews, he could see that. And he was not one of them, he knew that as well. But he wanted to be. He never wanted to leave the presence of this man in front of him.
One of the Jews backed away. “Master, we’ll prepare the boat.” He waded into the water, toward a fishing boat anchored in the shallows.
They were leaving him? No. He couldn’t be alone again. They might come back. One word came to him. “Please.” He clutched at Jesus’ tunic. His voice was new to his ears. It was deep and husky with disuse, but it was his, not theirs. “Please let me come with you.”
A young man with a wispy curl of beard stepped toward him, cautiously, as if he were a wild animal, and held out his hand. He reached for it. His own hand was huge—connected to a muscular forearm and an even thicker upper arm. He pulled, leveraging himself from the ground as the young man staggered against his weight.
He straightened his aching legs, rising taller than both of the men before him. He looked down on a body barely covered with a tattered cloth. Muscles bulged like coiled ropes over his dirt-covered legs and filthy arms. His bare chest was wide and marked with lines of scars, hundreds of them. No wonder these men were afraid of him.
He peeled his tongue from the top of his mouth. “Please.” He bowed to the man who had saved him from the torture. “Let me stay with
you.” Don’t leave me alone again.
A hand, gentle and yet strong, covered his head. Like anointing oil, warmth flowed over his aching body. The hollow, windswept place that had been filled with terror was refilled—saturated—with a calm, with a peace as he’d never known.
“Go,” Jesus said, his voice holding all the authority that he’d used with the demons. “Go home to your family. Announce to them all that the Lord in his pity has done for you.”
He sank to the ground and closed his eyes, reveling in the peace that filled him, that radiated inside him like the sun.
• • •
WHEN HE OPENED his eyes, the sun had won out over the storm. It shone down on the water and turned the sea to pink and gold. The boat was a tiny spot in the distance, the calls of the men as they adjusted the sails as distant as the cries of the seabirds in the brightening sky.
Jesus was gone.
And something else was missing . . . the fear that he’d lived with, that had been his constant companion for as long as he could remember. The fear was gone.
He breathed deeply of the fresh air, scoured by the storm and swept clean by the wind. Go home to your family, Jesus had said. Announce to them all that the Lord in his pity has done for you. But where was home? And who was his family? How long had he been in this place of misery?
He had only one word, one clue to lead him where he needed to go. The word that had whispered in his mind as Jesus had touched him. His name.
Isa.
Chapter Seventeen
Then will you understand the fear of the Lord; the knowledge of God you will find.
—Proverbs 2:5
LAZARUS PICKED HIS way through the dried reeds that crackled and snapped under his sandals. The stream that cut between the garden and the orchard was hardly more than a trickle, a meager offering to the Jordan half a day’s journey east. There were faster paths to Simon’s house, but the sound of the trickling water and the breeze rustling in the treetops soothed his worried mind.
Lazarus had put off his visit—his summons—to Simon for almost a week. Whatever Simon wanted to speak to him about, he prayed it wasn’t money; his purse was as drained as the parched land. The storm that had blown in after Jesus’ visit had produced no rain—just howling wind and rumbling thunder—and he’d spent the last four days carting water to the garden.
This morning Lazarus could taste another dry day on the wind as the rising sun cast a dim glow through clouds the color of dust. The days were warming, but even beside the cooking fire he felt chilled, as if his bones were made of cold marble.
His breath was short, but he increased his pace, crossing the market garden that stretched between his home and Simon’s walled courtyard. Simon was a doctor of the law, a Pharisee, and a learned man—what Lazarus had hoped to be, before his father had died. Before he’d learned that Abba had been deep in debt and that most of their land—the wheat fields, the olive groves, even this garden—had been sold to Simon.
In his kindness, Simon had offered them the use of the garden plot to grow their crops for the marketplace, brushing aside any talk of rent. But now that the one-year mourning period was over, Lazarus feared Simon’s kindness had also reached its limit. If rent was what Simon had called on him to discuss, it would be a short visit indeed.
Lazarus surveyed the vegetables he and Zakai had planted months ago. The artichokes were growing fat, and asparagus fronds pushed through the sunbaked soil. Both would bring a good price at the upper market in Jerusalem. By Passover, he’d have enough to pay Simon some of what they owed. Perhaps then Martha would stop worrying.
His hand strayed to his side, below his ribs, where a dull ache had been growing for days. If Martha even suspected he was ill, she wouldn’t let him follow Jesus—she wouldn’t even let him out of his bed.
I’m a man now, the head of the household. I don’t need her permission. But he wished for her blessing just the same.
Mary would support him, even against Martha. She believed that Jesus was the Messiah; surely she would see what Lazarus needed to do. But he couldn’t set Mary and Martha against each other. They would need each other when he was gone.
And Penina . . . she was still barely speaking to him. After her puzzling behavior at the mikvah, he’d tried to make peace with her. He’d teased her, complimented her, even carried water from the well. Finally, she’d given him her special smile when he brought her an armload of the lavender she loved.
Both his mind and his gaze had lingered on Penina in the past days, a strange emptiness filling his chest when he thought of her married to a village man. Finally, he’d concluded that no man in Bethany would do for Nina. No one he knew would put up with her teasing, and surely none of them deserved her smile. He’d have to find some other way to make sure she was protected when he was gone.
He reached Simon’s courtyard and stopped outside the ornately carved entrance. He took a deep breath. The Lord is my strength and my shield.
Simon’s steward, Micah, opened the iron-girded doors as if he’d been waiting since dawn. Lazarus tried not to stare as Micah led him through the courtyard dense with fountains and flowering trees. Simon’s house sprawled on one side, shaded with palm trees and big enough for three families. Servants—surely more than one man and his mother needed—rushed by with urns of water and bundles of parchment.
Simon stepped out of a double-arched doorway at the front of the house. He wore a white linen tunic that fell to his ankles and a belt of soft red leather studded with silver. He placed his hands on Lazarus’s shoulders and leaned forward, setting his lips on Lazarus’s cheek. “Peace be to you and all in your household.” His thinning hair, still damp from his morning immersion, smelled of expensive myrrh.
“And may the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob bless you,” Lazarus responded. He’d always thought Simon a tall man, but as he accepted the kiss of peace, he realized he had grown taller than his neighbor in the year since Abba died. Lazarus straightened with a little more confidence.
Simon motioned for Lazarus to sit on a stone bench and snapped his fingers. A young woman with black hair and the dark skin of Egypt knelt before him. A young man who looked like her brother brought a bowl of water with rose petals floating on top.
“I thank you for coming to see me today, Lazarus. I wouldn’t wish you to neglect your family or your work in favor of me.”
Lazarus felt his shoulders tense. Did Simon think he wasn’t working hard enough?
Simon signaled the girl to untie Lazarus’s sandals and wash his feet with the scented water. When Lazarus’s feet were bathed, Simon led him into the house. His two guards stood just inside. Simon ignored them but touched the elaborate mezuzah on the door frame and closed his eyes. “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.”
Lazarus did the same, then followed Simon into a spacious chamber with a high ceiling and many doorways leading from it. A servant knelt nearby, scrubbing the tile floor, and another scurried past with a stack of folded linen. The walls were hung with woolen tapestries, embroidered with the words of the Torah. Each of the doorways—he counted eight—were adorned with ornate mezuzahs.
Lazarus followed Simon through one doorway, both of them again touching the mezuzah and repeating the prayer. Simon was a devout man indeed.
The room they entered held a tall table, a stack of wax tablets, and neatly arranged rolls of parchment. Simon motioned to a carved chair with a woolen cushion. “Please, Lazarus, sit.”
Lazarus sank down gladly. Simon settled on a simple wooden chair with a hard-looking seat while the Egyptian boy appeared at his elbow with a tray of plump figs and roasted pistachios. Simon passed Lazarus a cup of wine, and he drank. It was a good vintage, fruity and rich, and soothed his tight throat.
Simon silently watched the slave leave the room, then turned to Lazarus with a small smile. “Lazarus, I’ve known you since you were a boy.”
He nodded and took another gulp of wine, feeling like a child cal
led in by his teacher. It should be Sirach sitting across from Simon. It should be Sirach telling Simon they had no silver. Lord, be my help.
“You are a grown man now. A man who honors your father’s memory. I’m sure you know why I’ve asked you to come to me.” Simon straightened the rolls of parchment on his desk and didn’t meet Lazarus’s eyes, as if what he was about to say was difficult.
Lazarus braced himself. He knew what was coming.
Simon finally looked up at him. “Martha has spent her best years caring for you and for her sister, Mary.” His mouth curled down at Mary’s name. “And then for her father as he declined. Surely you can see that now it is time for her to have a family of her own.”
Lazarus swallowed quickly and almost choked. Martha? He wanted to talk about Martha, not the rent? And what would Simon have to say about his sister? He bit back his questions. A man of understanding keeps silent.
Simon rubbed the side of his neck. “There was a time when your father and I talked of my marriage to Martha, but that was before . . .” His jaw tensed, as though in remembered pain.
Before he was a leper. Lazarus had been twelve, studying under the rabbis in the synagogue, when Simon left Bethany. They said Simon was being punished. He was gone for at least a year, and then he came back. But he was different. Everyone in the village said it. He was more serious, and even more devout. He didn’t marry, but spent his days studying the law and praying at the Temple. As he prayed, his crops flourished and his flocks produced in abundance.
Simon laid his hands flat on the table and leaned forward. “Martha is a pearl without price, Lazarus. She is devout and pure, a woman of unequaled virtue. I ask to marry her.”
Simon wanted to marry Martha? Lazarus had prayed for this, prayed for a righteous husband for Martha. But Simon? What would the most devout man in Bethany do when he found out his sister was not as pure as he believed?
Lazarus reached for a fig and put the whole thing in his mouth, chewing slowly. The betrothal contract was clear; it stated that the woman being betrothed was a virgin. Lying went against the commandments—and lying about a woman’s virtue must be even more grievous—yet he’d sworn never to expose Martha’s secret.
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