Temple Boys

by Jamie Buxton

  “So leave,” Flea said.

  “Quit? That would be like giving up. Anyway, who’d look after Yesh?”

  “You don’t trust the others?”

  “I don’t trust him,” Jude said.

  “So why should I care?” Flea tried to growl. “Anyway, what do you want?”

  Jude blinked, then laughed. “You’re a horrid little brat. I was going to hire you for a day’s work—good wages, too—but if you’re—”

  “How much?” Flea said quickly. The thought of money snapped him out of his bad mood.

  “That got you interested. How much do you make in a typical day?”

  “A shekel,” Flea lied.

  “Nice try. I know how these things work. I bet you have to pool it anyway, or pay off Big.”

  “Half a shekel.”

  “I’ll pay you half that,” Jude said. “And feed you. And I promise not to tell anyone that I caught you red-handed trying to rob me…”

  Jude broke off and looked over Flea’s head to the far distant southern end of the Temple. It was where the money changers took the visitors’ coins and exchanged them for Temple silver. You often got arguments there—the exchange rate was crippling and the actual cost of buying a dove or a lamb for sacrifice was high—but this was different.

  “It sounds like a riot,” Flea said.

  “That’s what I’m worried about. They said they were planning something.”

  “Who? What?”

  “Yeshua. The others. I said it would make enough trouble just coming to the city but no, he said he had to make a big statement and really show people what he was about.”

  “And what is he about? At first I thought he was a magician, but then…” Flea protested.

  “That’s just what people call him when they want to put him down. Don’t you understand? He hasn’t come here to turn water into wine or pull eggs out of children’s ears, he’s come to … What’s going on now?”

  Because the sound was growing even louder. Howls. Screams. And now fighting.

  The magician’s words had obviously hit home with the crowd. They seemed to be determined to rid the Temple of all symbols of money and trade. As Flea watched, a money changer clutching a bag broke free from the crush, but he was chased down and disappeared under a billowing sea of robes. Flea saw a trader trying to sneak toward the western gate with a wicker basket of white doves. He was spotted and started to sprint, holding his tunic up with one hand and the basket with the other. A small mob gave chase and surrounded him. A dove fluttered upward, bloodstained and panicked, and just as it looked as if it might fly free, a hand reached out and dragged it back.

  The trumpet blast was harsh and shocking. Jude grabbed Flea. “The Temple Police! Will your gang have the sense to get out?”

  “The ones that can run will. But the others will be in big trouble—Clump and Crutches especially. They’re breaking the Laws of Perfection.”

  “And things will be even worse if the Imps wade in,” Jude said. “He’s gone and done it this time. Look, get out now! I’ll find your friends and if I don’t see you later, see you tomorrow. Outside your shelter!”

  And he was gone.

  11

  Flea huddled in the entrance to the shelter along with Big, Little Big, Crouch, Halo, and Crutches. The woman who lived in the hovel opposite was beating out a rug, and her stuck-up daughter was airing the mattresses and giving them a good beating—they crammed their house full of out-of-towners for the feast and lived off the rent for the rest of the year.

  Dust flew. The daughter stared at them. Flea made faces at her, but it was pretty clear why she was interested. Big had a split lip, Little Big had a black eye and seemed groggy. Crutches had been knocked over and kicked. Crouch was curled up on his side, his hair still wet from spit and his tunic torn. There was no sign of Snot, the twins, Gaga, Clump, Hole-in-the-Head, or Red.

  Halo was sobbing loudly and when Big cuffed him, Flea exploded. “What are you doing? You should never have gone into the Temple. You were meant to rob the magician, not join up with him and his washed-up followers.”

  “Flea,” Big said. “Shut up before I hang you upside down.”

  Flea ignored the threat. “What happened to ‘Never trust anyone bigger than yourself’? We could have cleaned up. At least I had a go.”

  “Flea!” Big’s tone became more urgent.

  “This is what happens when you suck up to adults … tramps!… northerners!… con artists!… show-offs!…”

  “Flea!”

  “What?” Flea screamed back.

  Everyone was laughing at him, then looking past him, then at him and laughing some more.

  “What, you stupid bastards?”

  “Behind you, fool.” He turned.

  The missing gang members, the magician, and his followers were filling the alleyway. Yesh had his hands on Clump’s and Gaga’s shoulders, eyebrows raised. The others, with the rest of the Temple Boys, stood behind him.

  Everyone seemed amused.

  To cover his confusion, Flea decided to carry on where he left off. “So? So they’re not dead? Big deal. We meet a magician and he doesn’t kill us. Great trick. It was a riot! Halo and Crouch could have gotten stoned to death for taking part in that stupid conjuring trick. People were saying they were witches. The rest of us could have gotten killed or trampled to death. We didn’t know where you were!”

  “You should have stuck with us,” Red said. “It was fine.”

  “And what happens tomorrow if there’s a curfew? Or a lockdown? How do we beg? How do we eat? Does the magician know how to fix that?”

  A short silence was followed by sniggers. Flea realized that he’d missed something.

  “Keep up, moron,” Big said. “They’ve invited us to eat with them tomorrow night. It’s a big deal, a feast with wine and everything. And there’s no curfew, either. The Temple wouldn’t dare.”

  “No one told me!”

  “Do us a favor,” Big said. “Don’t say another word.”

  “And do me a favor,” Yesh said. “Spend some time with us and get to know us a bit better. Will you, Flea? Please?”

  Flea felt the force of the magician’s clever, intense eyes and looked away.

  Yesh said, “We’ve got a tough one here, friends. Going to have to do more than my usual tricks to get him interested.”

  Flea looked for Jude, but he wasn’t there. “One day you’ll meet a real magician who’ll blast you off the face of the earth with lightning bolts,” he muttered.

  “Until then, you’ve just got me.”

  “We should have robbed you.”

  “You wouldn’t have gotten much.”

  “I mean after you’d collected from the crowd.”

  “We don’t do that.” He smiled a steady, warm smile that somehow spread beyond Flea to take in the rest of the gang. “Now, can we join you? That looks like a fine shelter. Did you make it yourselves?”

  And in no time at all, Yeshua and his followers were crowding into the gang’s alleyway, and then they were sitting down by the shelter as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

  Flea shook his head. All he felt was a profound suspicion. He had to admit that the magician had a sort of power—he couldn’t think of any other word—that could pull smiles out of a person like a butcher dragging the guts from an animal, but did it really make them happier? Did it change a thing?

  When Clump asked Yeshua how he did the trick with the egg and the dove, Yeshua opened his eyes wide and said, “Trick? How dare you? Have none of you heard of magic?”

  “But can you…” Clump’s voice trailed off.

  The gang exchanged glances. They knew exactly what he wanted to ask. A month ago Clump had stolen the gang’s takings and bought a cure for his twisted foot from a traveling doctor. The foul-smelling ointment had done no good at all except earn him a black eye for taking the money and a foot that reeked of camel dung and rancid lard, which was probably what the ointment was ma
de of.

  “I know what you want,” the magician said. “You want to know if I can cure people. The answer is yes, I can sometimes.”

  The magician looked around the gang, meeting and holding their eyes. Once, twice, he did it and then, without anyone uttering a word, Gaga stood and approached him as if he were on a string. The magician put his hands on Gaga’s head, looked upward, muttered something, then bent down and whispered in Gaga’s ear. Gaga smiled uncertainly, cleared his throat, smiled shyly, and said, “Thank you,” in a little hoarse voice.

  They were the first words any of the Temple Boys had ever heard Gaga speak. Everyone got up and made a fuss of him—slapping him on his back, asking him to say something else. Everyone apart from Flea, who felt sick in a way he could not understand.

  He slouched to the end of the alleyway where the woman and her daughter were standing by their carpet and staring at the gathering with undisguised curiosity.

  The followers pooled their money and two of them went off with Big and Red to get some food. When they came back with bread, cheese, and fresh vegetables, one of the followers produced a cloth and they spread the food out, then sat around it.

  “Flea, come and join us,” Yeshua called.

  Flea felt as if he were being torn apart, with half of him wanting to accept Yeshua’s invitation but the other half too proud. He went around the corner and sat down, hugging his knees with his back against the alley wall and the sound of people having fun burning inside him. What was wrong with him? The man had just cured Gaga and even that didn’t impress him. There was just something about Yeshua, something that tried to draw you in. That was it! He wanted to draw you in, but to what?

  “What are you doing?” a voice said. Flea looked up in surprise. The skinny girl who was always hanging around was standing in front of him. She was about Flea’s height, with gangly, skinny limbs. Her tunic was even shabbier than Flea’s. She had half a loaf of flatbread in one hand and an orange in the other.

  “What does it look like?” Flea snapped.

  “It looks like you’re sulking,” the girl replied. “Here, want some bread?” Flea tried to wave her away.

  “What’s going on?” she persisted. She pointed at the magician and said, “Who’s that man?”

  “Don’t you know? He’s only meant to be the Chosen One,” Flea said.

  “Who chose him?” the girl asked.

  Flea opened his mouth to answer, then realized he didn’t know.

  “If you ask me, he’s trouble,” she went on. “I heard people talking about him. They said he’s come to the city to mess things up.”

  “How?”

  A shrug.

  “Well, if you don’t know, there’s no reason to hang around, is there?” Flea snarled.

  “No reason for you to, either,” the skinny girl said calmly. “Why don’t you come with me? You could have some bread. I’ll even give you a bit of orange.”

  Flea’s mouth watered but he said, “You think I need your food? Anyway, I’ve got to stay here. Someone has to look out for the gang.”

  The girl gave him a level look that made him hate her. Another shrug. “See you, then,” she said, and walked off slowly.

  But she had given Flea an idea. If he found out more about Yeshua, then he could go to the gang and tell them.

  When Yeshua and his followers finally got up to leave, Flea hid. When Big and Little Big came looking for him, his heart lifted—for a moment.

  “That’s it,” Big said. “You’ve just proved you’re a total loser.”

  “Yeah,” Little Big said. “Loser.”

  “What do you mean, loser?” Flea protested. “You’re the loser. Who’s hanging out with—”

  “Just shut up, Flea,” Big said. “No one cares what you say. In fact, we’ve decided to kick you out.”

  “You what?”

  “We’re kicking you out of the Temple Boys. Not that you were ever in the gang. You just bored us into letting you stay.”

  “But I do stuff. I get the water. I—”

  “Yeah, you were useful, but now you’re not. You’re just annoying. We’re moving on and you’ve made it clear what you think.”

  “But I’m allowed to say—”

  “Shut up.”

  “… to say…”

  Big picked up a stone and tossed it from hand to hand.

  “… what I think.”

  The stone thumped hard into the middle of Flea’s chest and suddenly he was sitting down, feeling as if the air had been sucked from the world around him.

  “But—” he managed to gasp.

  “Just get out.”

  Big picked up another stone and Flea staggered to his feet and out of the alley, folding his arms against the pain.

  12

  It was the worst night of Flea’s life. Worse than the night he left the glue maker (even though it had been snowing then), worse than the night he escaped from Mosh the Dosh’s house (he had picked a hole in the roof and scraped his back on a nail), worse than the night after the rats in the tomb had bitten his mouth and his lips had swollen up and he’d had feverish nightmares of giant rats wearing grave shrouds and dancing.

  Why was it worse? Because everything was his fault. He had suggested they go and see the magician. He had argued against them taking their chances in Temple Square. And he had refused to join the others when Yeshua had invited him to.

  Twilight turned to night and the dark was cold. He walked up and down the street outside the alleyway, flapping his arms, then headed for the water fountain: sometimes a street seller would set up a charcoal brazier that you could huddle around. But the weather was too foul and no one was out. Once he thought he saw the skinny girl disappear around a corner in front of him and he ran to try to find her, but there was no one there. He was chasing shadows.

  Wherever he went the cold wind found him. He settled down in the street close to the gang’s shelter, his back against the wall, hugging his knees.

  TWO DAYS TO GO

  13

  It wasn’t the cold that woke Flea but pressure under his ear. In the end, he’d curled up on the woman-across-the-alleyway’s rubbish dump. The faint warmth of decomposition made it less frigid than hard earth and paving stones.

  He opened his eyes. A very black sky, very bright stars, and a man-shape blocking them.

  “Here. Too cold to be lying around.”

  Flea recognized Jude’s voice. He started as something warm landed in his lap.

  “Don’t unwrap it! It’s a hot stone. You don’t do that in the city?”

  “D-do w-what?” Flea had to clamp his teeth to stop them from chattering.

  “Heat stones during the day and put them in your bed at night. Maybe it’s a northern thing. You have to be careful, though. Some stones explode when they get too hot. How does that feel?”

  “All r-right.”

  In fact, it felt wonderful. Wrapped in his hands, cradled against his belly, the stone felt like a small, personal sun.

  “How did you find me?” Flea asked.

  “My keen sense of smell. That was a joke. I was going to roust you out of your shelter but Shim, one of Yesh’s followers, said you didn’t join them, so I kept my eyes peeled. Anyway, if you’re warm enough, stand up. We’ve got a busy day.”

  “We?” Flea rubbed his eyes.

  “I’m paying you for a day’s work. Part of the deal?”

  “The whole deal, as far as I can remember.” Flea felt both light-headed and sharp. He saw a flash of teeth in the starlight.

  “Well, that’s good.” Jude sounded amused. “I don’t imagine you have a better offer.”

  Flea bridled. “If you think I’m desperate…”

  “You? Desperate? Never. It’s me that needs the help.”

  “Say something that surprises me,” Flea replied. But when he looked up, the moonlight had caught Jude’s face and he was not smiling.

  Quite the opposite. His face was twisted into an odd shape, almost as if
he was trying to stop himself from crying.

  Flea opened his mouth to jeer, then thought better of it. He heard himself ask, “So what … do you want?”

  “Fewer questions from you.”

  Jude set off quickly down the twisting alleyways of the dark city, heading north in the direction of the sheep market. He was wrapped in a blanket, and, hot rock or not, Flea wouldn’t have minded a corner of it. He blew clouds of vapor from his mouth and tried to keep up.

  By the time they reached the sheep pens, the sky was getting lighter and the market was waking up. Sellers haggled with buyers. Priests were on hand to bless the new sacrifices, slaves throwing down straw in front of them to stop their holy robes from being despoiled by unholy dung. Trembling lambs glared white in the gray light. The air was thick with sheep stench and bleats.

  “What are we doing here?” Flea asked. He hated the sheep market; the lambs seemed to know what was about to happen to them.

  “My official duties for the day are to go and buy a sheep for our feast.”

  “Shouldn’t take long.”

  “And a couple of other pieces of business. That’s where you come in.”

  “What do I do?”

  Jude looked at Flea. “Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut. If it works out, I’ll be back in favor and that might help you.”

  “How?”

  “If your gang wants to hang out with mine and I say you’re part of my gang, then your gang will start sucking up to you as sure as this little lamb’s going to be grilled.” Jude turned swiftly to business. “Here! What do you want for this one?”

  He was calling to a Wild Man, a nomad from the eastern desert dressed from head to toe in black. The man’s daughter, with hair the color of desert sand and eyes lined heavily with black pencil, was kicking her heels against a wall. She stuck out her tongue at Flea. Her feet were bare, her clothes were rags, and the chain that looped from her nose to her ear was gold.