“You will lead? What makes you think you can lead a band such as mine, Red Hair?”
“I have been saving and preparing for this moment from the day I realized it possible. Romans destroyed my family. Listen,” I rushed on, “I am the grandson of Judas of the Galilee, and I swore many years ago to finish what he started and make them pay for what they did to me and mine. And now I have come to you prepared to do it.”
“And that makes you special, Red Hair? Your grandfather, if indeed he was…” He looked at me and at my hair. “More than half the people in the Galilee and at least a third of those in all of Judea have suffered at the hands of the Romans. It comes from being a conquered people. Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and now Romans, one after the other, have taken this land and done terrible things to its people. And when they are gone, someone else will take their place.”
“Not if we raise men to fight,” I said, and wondered at his lack of enthusiasm. This did not sound like the great Barabbas described to me.
“To do such a thing,” he said slowly, “would require a great deal of money.” He gave me an appraising look and I squirmed under his gaze. “You have such sums, no doubt, in that little pouch you carry? Or maybe they are in your belt. No, you’ve got them in your sandals.”
He wished to provoke me, I knew. I stayed calm. I had the resources he needed and I decided to wait until he came to me. “Letters of credit,” I said quietly, “guaranteed by Silvanus Quintas, a Roman banker, in fact.”
His eyebrows lifted again, just a little this time. “No, you are not just one of the little boys who come to the wilderness to fight, only to run away, are you? You have thought this out.” He said this slowly, thinking aloud. “Letters of credit could be hidden in many places, could they not? In one’s cloak, for example, or tunic or even one’s headdress. Isn’t that so?”
I knew I had missed something important. I pressed on. The prospect of assembling a band of warriors from among Barabbas’ best men blocked any second thoughts I should have had. My instincts told me to be careful but my heart urged me on. My mind was as cloudy as the smoke filled cave in which I sat. It never occurred to me that he might turn on me.
He scratched his head and then, having reached a decision clapped his hands. “Good. We will proceed. Red Hair and Barabbas will free the country from the invaders,” he laughed. “We will drink some wine to seal the pact.” He reached for a wineskin and started to hand it to me but stopped. He pulled back the skin and his smile disappeared. “You wish to kill Romans, yes?”
“Yes,” I said, a little too loudly and wishing I had the wine.
“Who else are you willing to kill, to accomplish this end?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Red Hair, the Romans rule because they have power. Others, the people of this land, fear this power, and so they help them. Rome requires only a fraction of the men to occupy the country as it needed to conquer it in the first place. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I suppose that must be so.”
“You suppose. No supposing. That is the way it is. Now, if we can create an opposite fear in the hearts of these sheep, a fear that will persuade them to stop helping the Romans, wouldn’t that make it easier to attack our enemies?”
I heard his logic but was uneasy with the conclusion I expected to follow. I nodded my agreement.
“So, sometimes we must kill our own. We must take what we need from those who cannot stop us, so we can fight against those who can.”
“You rob our people?”
“Rob, and if I have to, kill them. Who else? You have other candidates?”
What he said made sense, but surely, if there was to be a general uprising, people must be willing to follow a leader. If the leader turned out to be someone who had just stolen their goods or killed one of their family… My mind reeled.
“So, let us return to the Romans. I can see the idea of going against your own will take time for you to accept.”
Not my own. Those people were no more my people than their god was my god. I was about to say so when he heaved himself to his feet and, crouching under the cave’s low ceiling, moved back into its dark recesses.
“You wish to kill Romans, you said?” he asked from the darkness.
“Yes. As many as I can.”
A moment later he reappeared, dragging what I thought was a very large bundle. The cave must have been deeper than I thought. There may have been many such bundles and who knew what else he had stored in its depths.
He tore the sacking away to reveal a man, a boy, hands and feet bound with a thick rope and another across his mouth to prevent his speaking. He wore only a soldier’s soiled undergarments. His body armor had been stripped from him. How much of the conversation he had heard and understood, I did not know, but the look of terror in his eyes made me believe he had at least grasped the essentials.
“Very well, Red Hair,” Barabbas said. “Kill this one.” He picked up my knife, tested its edge, and handed it to me. “Cut his throat.”
I held the knife in my left hand. I shifted it to my right. Sweat broke out on my forehead and my palms were so wet I thought the knife would slip away.
“Here…now?”
“Why not? You told me of your great hatred for the Romans, not just this Roman or that Roman, but all Romans. ‘They destroyed my family,’ you said. ‘I am the grandson of Judas of the Galilee,’ you said. So here is one. Kill him.”
Time stood still. The soldier moaned, his eyes as big as bread rolls. He could not have been more than sixteen, I thought, probably just someone like me, who survived the streets and found his way into the service of Rome as an alternative to starvation. We stared at each other. We could be brothers. But he was a Roman soldier and my enemy.
“Kill him, man. Kill him, now.”
I raised the knife. An eternity passed. I looked into the terrified eyes of that defenseless soldier and lowered the knife.
“Not such a killer as I was lead to believe,” Barabbas said, voice flat.
He took the knife from my hand and with one quick motion drew it across the soldier’s throat. The young man’s eyes closed and then snapped open as his body jerked against his bonds as if it was trying to run after the life that drained out of him into a crimson pool at my feet. Then he went limp. Barabbas wiped the blood from the blade on the poor man’s clothes and glowered at me.
“That is how you kill Romans, Red Hair. Not with words or letters of credit, but with knives and clubs and swords, with fists, and teeth, and nails, and anything that comes to hand.”
“I know, but—”
“He was one of a squad of ten men who captured and then crucified one of my men. They nailed him to a cross, laughing at his screaming. They laughed and drew straws for the miserable clothes he had on his back. They sat, ate their midday meal, and watched him die as calmly as they would step on a beetle. No, this one was lucky. We were going to crucify him, too, on the Jericho road—one of theirs for one of ours. Now we must find another.” As he said that, he looked steadily at me.
I thought I would be sick.
“You fool. Do you think killing Romans because they hurt your family will have an effect on anything? We kill one of them, they kill ten of us. I do not live out here in this godforsaken wilderness because I think I can save the world from Rome. No, Red Hair, I am here because this is what is left for me to do, to rob and plunder whatever comes my way. If they are Romans, so much the better, but for me, anyone, you understand, anyone is fair game.”
Something had gone wrong. I had borne my hatred for years and believed if given the chance, I would gladly dispatch a Roman soldier. Yet something held me back. When presented with the choice to be the person I thought I was, I failed and, instead, made the choice Patros would have labeled as moral. I shook my head in frustration.
“Barabbas,” I said, “I will not hesitate the next time. Listen, you need me. I can provide you with materials and resources—�
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“Next time? With Barabbas there is no next time, boy.”
I heard a sound behind me and, for the second time in my life, my world went black.
Chapter Eighteen
“Don’t touch them. They are unclean.”
“How can you tell, Ezra? That one looks like he might be breathing. We should be sure.”
I heard the voices, men’s voices, angry voices. My head buzzed like a beehive. I ached all over. Pain that failed to mask a sense of overwhelming foreboding.
“Alive or dead, Joseph, they are pagans. Look, the one in the ditch is not circumcised and this one, well, look at that hair. Did you ever see an Israelite with hair like that?”
“No, well not often but—”
“Even King David did not have hair like that. No, I think they are Romans or Samaritans. I think they have fallen into the hands of outlaws and if so, we do not want to be anywhere near them when the next patrol passes by.”
Patrol? What patrol? Who would be patrolling? The sun beat down on my back and I could not move my arm.
***
I tried to open my eyes but they were plastered shut. Pain radiated along my side and down my leg. I remembered something about a journey and painful legs, but this pain came from somewhere else. I knew something had gone wrong but in my broken state, I could not think what. Where did my right arm go? I rubbed my eyes with my left hand. They felt gritty, sandy like the beach. I managed to get one opened, then the other. I saw a pair of sandals and the feet that occupied them.
“That one is alive. Look, he is moving.”
“Cross over to the other side of the road. Do not get near them. We may not touch them.”
“Yes, yes, I know. Who can they be?”
“Men foolish enough to travel this road at night, I suppose.”
I turned my attention away from those carrion crows. An arm’s length away someone lay in the ditch. I squinted through swollen eyelids at the feet, the legs, and finally the face of the murdered Roman. Barabbas had slit his throat the night before. I stared at his severed throat and the look of astonishment locked permanently on his face.
They left me naked except for the small loincloth around my waist. My Roman companion lacked even that.
Naked. No Clothes. No cloak, no tunic.
They’d stolen my clothes. A long time passed before that sank in. If they took my clothes, they also had my letters of credit and money. Everything, even my knife, the one I took from the desert man, all gone, taken by the one man I most wanted to help, the man I would have freely given them to, if asked.
I revised my opinion of Barabbas. His reputation as a liberator, a patriot, or even a nationalist needed amending. I had acquired another cause to avenge. He cared nothing about freedom. He roamed the wilderness a murderer and a thief, and the two of us lying on the road were merely his latest victims, nothing more. My eyes burned. Someone or several, I suppose, had beaten me and left me in the road to die next to this wretched soldier. Once again, just when I thought I managed to do the right thing, my resolve, like a leaf in the winter wind, blew away.
I lay on my stomach in the middle of a road somewhere, broken but alive. Barabbas did not leave me in the road, still breathing, out of any sense of mercy. Mercy could not last an hour with that man. And yet, I lived. Why? I really needed to know the answer to that question.
***
The sun came from a different angle. Not as hot as before, but I could still feel it on my back, which I knew must be badly burned. In the delirium of the moment, I turned philosophical. I knew I had been in this state before, not the first time I lost everything, and at least I was alive. With some luck and a little cunning, I could replace most of what had been taken from me. But then, the pain and urgency resurfaced. I knew that I had to get up, to stand, and leave this place.
My head ached. I lost my train of thought while I wrestled with why Barabbas did not kill me along with the Roman. Then everything went black again.
***
My mind, finally alert, brought me back and I knew why. Barabbas wanted me found with the dead soldier. He wanted the patrol or whoever monitored the road to think I had killed that miserable man. It would look like we had a fight, which ended in his death. The poor living in the wilderness often stripped corpses, which would explain why we were naked. Let stupid Judas the Red assume the blame for yet another murder. Barabbas and the Romans had more in common than either would admit.
Every bone in my body felt broken. Barabbas and his men must have beaten me for hours before they dragged us down to the road. Maybe they believed me dead after all. For a brief moment I wished it were so. I welcomed any end to the pain and humiliation I felt, even if it meant death. I staggered to my feet. I tried to run. I managed only a shuffle and careened down the road, I do not know in which direction I went. I just knew I needed to put some distance between me and that dead boy. I may have gone two hundred paces, maybe more, when everything went dark one last time.
***
I woke, staring at the ceiling of a building of some sort. I did not know what or where. A lamp burned nearby. Pain coursed through my body and I could barely lift my head or see anything except lamplight dancing on the wall. I heard men speaking quietly to one another and the clatter of crockery.
“Are you awake?” A woman’s voice, a young woman by the sound of it. The last thing I remembered was heat, sun, and a dead soldier. I rolled my eyes toward the voice. Even that hurt. I could make out a girl’s face, not a particularly pretty face, but a kind one with a lovely smile. I tried to speak but all I could manage was a croak.
“Shhh…” she whispered. “Do not try to say anything just yet. You have been injured. The healer said you were hit in the throat and it will take time to heal. Shhh…”
I tried again with the same results. I wanted to know how I came to this place. I tried gestures and finally she seemed to understand.
“Your friend, Nahum, brought you here.”
Did I know someone named Nahum? I closed my eyes and tried to remember a Nahum.
“Your friend said he found you on the road. He said there were two of you. The other one seemed to be a dead Roman soldier. The patrol stood over him, stopping everybody and asking questions. He found you farther down the road and around a small bend. As they had not discovered you, he brought you here. We are only a short distance away.”
With great difficulty and even more pain, I rolled my head around to see what sort of place I’d been brought to. With the girl’s help, I managed to sit up, too quickly as it turned out, and the pain almost made me faint.
“It is the Inn of the Three Camels,” she said.
I guessed the inn must be on the Jericho road, a small inn, no more than one large room with a few tables and benches. I lay on a pallet in an alcove at the rear, opposite the door. Did she say a patrol? I looked at her again. How to communicate with this woman? I waved my hands about…how to signal patrol? Finally after I acted out spears and shields—not without pain, she seemed to understand.
“The patrol? No, I don’t think they will come. They did not then, and so it is not likely they will now.” She said this with great confidence and smiled. I closed my eyes and tried to think. How long had I lain here?
“Oh, you have been here two days. Your friend, Nahum, paid for your stay and for your care and said to tell you he hoped you had nothing to do with what he saw on the road.”
Nahum…Nahum…Nahum…I racked my brain. I could not remember anyone named Nahum and certainly not anyone generous enough to do such a thing for me. Ah, the Essene, it had to be him. What would he be doing here? So, I had been right when I said I might need his service in the future. How these things happen is, I think, a great mystery. My mother would have called it “an act of the Lord.” Her god, she would insist, provided this good fortune. Well, I did not believe her god or any other had anything to do with it. Just a stroke of good luck, nothing more.
Chapter Nineteen
&nbs
p; I must have dozed off. When next I raised my head the girl was gone. I tried to look around. I gritted my teeth and heaved myself up again.
A screen woven from river reeds separated me from the rest of the room. I was covered with a thin blanket. I discovered I had been dressed in a robe of some sort but my feet were bare. I had a bandage as big as a turban tied around my throbbing head.
As I took inventory of my situation and condition, I heard a commotion at the front of the inn. I craned my neck. Three soldiers pushed their way through the entrance and shouted at the innkeeper. He shook his head. They drew their short swords.
“We know someone was brought here two days ago, an injured man. Where is he?”
I blew out my lamp. The girl had been mistaken about the patrol. The innkeeper hesitated. Nahum had paid him to give me sanctuary. His honor was at stake. To turn me over brought disgrace on him and his family. At the same time everyone knew the soldiers could do a great deal of damage to his inn and to him personally if he refused to cooperate.
I waited. Only shadows and the reed screen kept me from discovery. When their eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, the soldiers would have me. One of them raised his sword. The innkeeper swallowed hard and pointed in my direction. I gulped and almost cried out in pain as my crushed throat contracted. The soldiers wheeled in my direction and peered into the darkness. No escape. I resigned myself to my fate, first Barabbas and now this.
At that moment four other men shouldered their way in. They pushed past the Romans and walked straight toward me. The soldiers started to follow, then paused in confusion. Nemesis, I thought. Romans or the family of Leonides, which would be worse? Either way I would die.
“This is our brother who fell from the edge of the wadi. Isn’t that right, Innkeeper?”
“Yes, that is so,” he said, relieved. “The very one.”
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