by Jamie Buxton
He felt the roughness of the rope on his forehead, then it was over him and the scream was everywhere, inside him and outside him so the white of the sky shifted and shivered and Flea waited for the drop.
48
It didn’t happen.
Thumping footsteps, a panicked stampede, and the crowd scattered in the only direction it could: down the valley side. Arms windmilled. People tripped and tumbled toward the river. Flea looked down and saw a sea of black. Wild People! He’d been rescued by Wild People. One was holding him. He felt the rope around his wrists being cut, and then scampering along the branch toward him was a little girl with painted eyes and a gold chain hooked from her nose to her ear.
She stuck out her tongue at Flea before lifting the rope from his neck. He was lowered to the ground.
“Are you all right?”
Flea looked up into a fierce face with a hooked nose, black eyes, and hollow cheeks. He remembered this man, and the girl, from the early-morning sheep market. Jude had bought a lamb from him. He nodded, his chest heaving.
“Lucky for you my daughter saw through your disguise. She was on watch, just in case you turned up. We were waiting to the south, ready to leave. You’d better come with us.”
“Why did you rescue me?” Flea said. “Why was she looking out for me?”
“Jude,” the man said simply. “Come.”
“He’s dead.”
“We know. He should have paid us to protect him. He would have lived.” Flea looked around. There were about a dozen black-robed figures standing around him in a rough circle, knives drawn. “I don’t understand.”
“We can talk as we walk. We need to get away from here. The farther from the city you are, the better for all of us—you and your friend,” he said with a nod to Tesha, who was standing a short distance away, ready to run. “Jude came to us yesterday. He said he was hoping to meet you here, but if anything happened, I was to make sure you were all right.”
“Did he talk much about me?”
“He said a lot of things and some of them were about you. Walk more quickly. That mob will be at the main gate soon, and whether the gates are locked or not, if they shout out to the guards that they’ve spotted a fugitive, they’ll open soon enough.”
“Won’t you be in trouble?”
“The Temple Police may come to the camp and ask us questions, but we’ll shake our heads and say it was different Wild People who helped you. Bad Wild People. They don’t see our faces—to them we are all the same—so no one will know who was here. But that’s not your worry.”
“Can you tell me about Jude?”
“Yesterday evening? He was sad. He said he’d lost his Master and now he was worried that he’d led you astray, but at least he could leave you something. He talked about some prophecy. Said perhaps it was true after all and, if it was true, then he’d gotten you mixed up in his troubles for nothing. That’s what he kept on saying. For nothing.”
Flea’s face fell. “He thought the prophecy about Yeshua being the Chosen One was true?”
A shrug. “Maybe. Nothing you city people do makes sense.”
“But Jude wasn’t from the city.”
“You’re all from the city. You’re all called back here. This is where the madness lies. He came to the tree. He died. When I heard, I told my girl to watch and wait, and the rest, well, it happened to you so you know.”
“Do you think he killed himself?”
“Among my people it is not a sin.”
“But he said he would meet me.”
“Saying you would do one thing and then not doing it, that is a sin. Do you think Jude was a bad man?”
“No.”
“Then…”
They walked on. The walls followed a slight rise to the part of the city called Daweed’s Hill, then the ground fell to a small plain where the Wild People’s main campsite was stationed. You could hear the bleat of the unsold lambs. The tents were being taken down and loaded onto donkeys and camels.
Flea’s mind caught up with something the Wild Man had mentioned earlier. “You said that Jude left me something. What was that?”
The Wild Man smiled. “Good boy.” He reached into his robes and handed Flea Jude’s purse. “It’s all there. I didn’t even open it.”
The purse was warm and plump in his hand. Flea remembered the last supper and the game of hunt the king. Jude had given the money to him. Jude had wanted him to have it. Jude had wanted him to be safe. He felt the quick rush of tears.
“You’re a rich boy now and that means you have to be even more careful,” the Wild Man said. “If anyone finds out that you have that, you’ll be in even greater danger than now. As well as the Temple Police, the Romans, and the Cutters, every thief in the city is going to be after you, and the people you turn to for help will just be waiting to cut your throat. That is the way of the city. Trust no one, even that girl who’s hanging around.”
“I think she’s all right.”
The Wild Man accepted that with a tilt of the head. “Of course, you could always leave. It is my thought that if you stay, you will become part of this prophecy. Your destiny will be twisted to serve its will, as Jude’s was in the end. Remember your name. Fleas are meant to jump. Do not stay here. You will be crushed. Leap away while you have the choice. We are heading for the desert and you could come with us for a while, or you could go to Bethany and on from there.”
Bethany. Tesha had mentioned Bethany too that morning. Now, like then, it produced an echo in his mind—an echo that had a slightly broken ring. Flea shook his head.
“I can’t,” he said. “I have to stay here.”
“You’ll not live another day, even with your disguise.”
“It’s not just me. My gang’s in prison because of what I did.”
“Because of the Romans. Do not blame yourself for every bad thing in the world.”
“Because of me. Because of the Romans. It doesn’t matter. I’ve got to try to help them. I’m not being good. I just know that if I leave them, I won’t stop thinking of them and then I won’t be happy.”
“A word of advice: you will stop thinking of them. In a couple of years you can marry a girl and with that money you can buy enough land to keep a family.”
Flea looked at him with such disgust that the Wild Man laughed.
“You’ll see,” he went on. “At least come to the camp. There will be girls there who will be only too happy to wear your dress and you can exchange it for something more … Flea-like. One last thing: the magician’s followers. Jude said that they would be hiding for three days in the Dead Streets. He seemed to think that was funny.”
“Then what?”
Another shrug. “My people and I will be away from here, safe in the desert where the air is clean and this madness does not reach. I cannot say what you will do, because I am not a prophet. I will not bind you with words. I will feed you, you and that girl who does not behave as a girl should, and then tomorrow, when you are properly rested, you can find your destiny yourself.”
TWO DAYS AFTER
49
Side by side, Flea and Tesha peered through the branches of a small bush and looked out into the Dead Streets. Two nights of proper sleep and a day of proper food and Flea felt well again, though different. At the Wild People’s camp the women had taken Tesha off and wailed when they saw she had no gold, but they painted patterns on her hands with henna and lined her eyes with dark pencil. Flea had to admit the eyes suited her.
They were hiding by a dry pool that lay at the junction of three roads. Steps cut into the side of the pool led down into its shadowed depths, where a mangy dog was stretched out on its side. It raised its head and coughed out a bark before lying back down. On the steps a sleepy lizard was trying to warm up in the weak sunshine, and above them a crow flapped slowly across the sky.
The Dead Streets looked peaceful. You could hear the city roaring but the sound was cut off and distant. You could see the Temple sitting on
its hill like a heavy white crown, but you couldn’t feel it. The streets had their own air—Flea did not know how else to put it—and they did something to the pit of his stomach that wasn’t just fear.
Tesha tugged his arm and pointed. Two streets away a thin column of black smoke was twisting in the still air.
Good. She’d been sulking since they left the black tents of the Wild People’s camp. She didn’t see why they couldn’t go with them. It wasn’t the money. She just did not want to risk stoning, disemboweling, or hanging for being Flea’s accomplice.
“Then let me go alone,” he had suggested, but she had not wanted to do that either.
“It’s them,” he said. “And I have to find out if they killed Jude. I owe him that.”
“He paid you to get away.”
“I know, but I can’t leave it.”
“Suppose—suppose he killed himself.”
Flea shook his head. “I don’t believe it. I want to know what he found out. I want to know why he changed his mind about escaping. The Wild Man said the prophecy had crushed Jude. Well, as far as I can see, the people who believed in the prophecy most of all were the rest of Yesh’s followers. If they killed Jude, they can’t get away with it.”
“And you can do something about it? You?” Tesha sneered.
But Flea did not rise to the bait. “I don’t know what. Just something. Anyway, as soon as we find them, you’re going to hide. If we don’t meet up this evening, you’ll go to the Temple and tell them where the followers are hiding. I’ll make sure they know that. They’ll tell me what’s going on and won’t dare kill me. It’ll work. Trust me.”
“Oh, great. And the Temple Police will listen to me, because they’re so kind to beggar girls.”
“You won’t look like a beggar. You’ve got the dress now. You’ll look like a normal girl.” Flea had turned down the Wild Man’s suggestion of bartering the dress in the camp. He had simply swapped it with Tesha’s old tunic.
“Thank you very much,” Tesha said. “I still think you’re an idiot for not getting away.”
“Then what does that make you for coming with me?”
Tesha unexpectedly burst into tears and Flea, just as unexpectedly, felt sorry. But when he tried to tell her, she bit him on the arm. He supposed it was his own fault for teaming up with a girl.
Lizards flickered into nothing as they moved deeper into the Dead Streets. Tiles crunched under their feet. Tiny blue flowers, growing from cracks in the buildings, mirrored the sky. When Flea looked into one of the empty houses he stopped dead.
“What is it?” Tesha whispered. A dusty carpet lay in the middle of the floor, with mats arranged around it as if the room was waiting for people to walk in. But there was more: a jolt of familiarity.
“It’s like I know this place but don’t know it. I can’t explain.”
“We’re all from here,” Tesha said. “Didn’t you know?”
“What?”
“I thought everyone knew. All the beggars our age … their parents … you know … the massacre,” Tesha said. “Don’t you talk to anyone?”
“I…”
“Like I said … Flea. Don’t go all funny on me now. Flea. Flea!”
But Flea could not hear. The house he was looking at seemed to expand, then become so thin and gauzy that he could see through it and into another room just like it, with a window on the street and a courtyard to the side.
Shy memories slid up. He remembered pressing his eyes to the gap in the courtyard gate and peering up and down the narrow street to watch men and women, donkeys, and even the odd camel pass by. The crack in the wall across the alleyway always scared him. There was a time in the evening when the bats began to swoop like charred leaves on the breeze and someone would come up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder.
He looked up and down, half expecting to see the same animals and families. Of course. These were the Dead Streets. This was where the Imps had massacred every man, woman, and child. This was where he had run from. But, more important, this was where he had come from.
The memories grew bolder. They were insistent. Relentless. They swarmed. An earth yard where chickens scratched in the dirt, a dark room where water stood in cool, earthenware jars. Sleeping on a mat next to his parents, his mother singing, a ball of rags he could throw and catch.
But something else was trying to break through—a fist behind a sheet. He tried to shut his memory down but it was too late. He saw the door exploding inward and then the room was full of men and their metal. Metal helmets, metal breastplates, metal swords. One sword in particular was shining as it fell but red when it rose, and then he was falling and when he stopped he was on a street and all around was quiet. He saw people and bits of people lying in the street. There was a lump on the side of his head and a hollow ache in his heart, an emptiness that multiplied in empty doorways and dark windows. No faces looking out. They were all looking up at the sky or down at the ground and their eyes were blank.
Flea had had enough. He began running to escape a pain that was more than hollow; it was the pain of missing whatever had filled the void. First in one direction then another, until the running started to hurt, which was better than the other kind of pain. So he ran more and more—and the only thing that stopped him was when a hand grabbed him by the collar.
50
The hand was not a memory. The hand was real and big and meaty. And he was not the little child about to be set to work in the glue factory; this was Flea, who’d survived all that and a whole lot more.
He twisted and tried to bite, but the hand lifted him effortlessly and he hung in the air, jerking and twisting like a fish on the line.
“Gotcha!”
Flea managed to twist around and found himself face-to-face with Tauma. He was as thick as a barrel and held Flea easily. There was no sign of Tesha, which was good.
Tauma said, “Call me suspicious and nasty if you want, but I’ve seen rather too much of you lately. What are you doing here?” He pretended to examine him.
Flea, suspended, missed with his kick. “It doesn’t matter what I’m doing. What about you? Skulking here while half the city’s after you,” he spat.
Tauma seemed unimpressed. “Which half?” he said. “The half that’s too scared to come here or the half that doesn’t care?”
“The half that wants you kicked out and sent back to Gilgal where you belong!”
Tauma grinned unkindly and Flea lost it. “Murdering pig! Liar! Coward! You killed your own precious leader, you killed Jude, and now you’re going to die, because no one’s going to let you get way with any of this! Don’t pretend you don’t know. You had him killed. He was standing between you and your prophecy. But you can’t kill me. If you kill me, everyone will know.”
Tauma’s grin died. His eyes went as dead as dust. He tightened his grip and pulled him so close Flea could smell raw onion on his breath.
Shim bustled into the room. “What’s all this shouting?” He caught sight of Flea and his mouth flattened into a red slot. “You.”
“Hoping for someone else?” Flea spat. “Someone you haven’t seen for a while? Last time I saw you, you were too scared to admit you even knew your own leader! Or is that just part of the prophecy? You betrayed him, not Jude.”
“How much does he know?” Shim asked Tauma.
“Your guess is as good as mine. He says we killed Jude.”
“Jude’s dead?”
“Apparently. How—?”
Shim waved his words away. “We can’t let that distract us now. We have to keep on track. He doesn’t understand. The secret is still safe. But we do have to work out what to do with him.”
“I know all about your precious secret and I know you were wrong,” yelled Flea triumphantly. “Yesh is dead. Nothing happened. You’re finished. There’s nothing left for you to do, unless you want to hand me over to the Romans to be crucified!”
Shim slapped him hard across the face. Flea blinked back stars
and tasted blood in his mouth.
“How dare you? Tauma, how dare he?”
Flea spat blood. Tauma looked at him and shook his head sadly. “Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. See, I’m thick-skinned. I don’t care what you say, but Shim’s sensitive. You’re in trouble now. Come on.”
The other followers were all sitting in the back room that opened up onto a small yard. The air was close with the smell of bodies. In the yard broken pots lay scattered in yellowed weeds.
“The return of the prodigal flea,” Tauma said, pushing Flea into the room. He stood, surrounded by the followers, all sitting with their backs against the walls.
No one spoke at first. Worry had roughened them all. Yohan’s dreamy eyes were bloodshot. Mat’s face had sunk and his hair was standing up in a spiked halo.
“What’s he doing here?” he snapped.
“Jude’s dead. He thinks we killed him, so I imagine he’s come looking for us to wreak revenge. There was another kid with him but it got away,” Tauma said.
“And she’s going to tell the Temple where you are if anything happens to me,” Flea added.
“Good planning,” Tauma said. “If they believe a word she says.”
“Of course they will. And now that your prophecy’s failed, you can admit to what you did,” Flea snarled.
“Those two statements will take a lot of untangling,” Mat said.
Flea was having none of it. “You arranged to have Yesh killed. Then you arranged to have Jude killed, too, for getting in your way.”
Mat nodded. “So that’s the second half of the statement covered. Now for the first half. You said the prophecy had failed. How do you know this?”
“Because Yesh is dead. I saw him die, unlike you bunch of cowards. If he’s dead, he can’t be the Chosen One. If he can’t be the Chosen One, you can’t change the world. It’s so simple a child could see it.”