The End of the Magi

by Patrick W. Carr

  “That thought did occur to me, but how do you account for the crowds? They didn’t just proclaim Him, Roshan, they were worshiping Him. I didn’t think there could be a power strong enough to cast the Romans from Judea. Now . . . I’m not so sure.”

  The light streaming in from outside dimmed as a figure filled the doorway and Yehudah entered, his eyes filled with too many thoughts and emotions for Myrad to count. His guards and Mikhael came after, along with several others, but not Hakam.

  “Did you see him?” Mikhael asked.

  “Yes, but we couldn’t follow through the Golden Gate for the crowds. What happened? Did He go to Herod?”

  Mikhael gaped as though he could scarcely credit his own memory. “No. He went to the Temple and drove out the moneylenders.”

  Yehudah’s head dipped. “Zeal for my father’s house will consume me,” he said. The magus sounded as if he were quoting someone else.

  Myrad’s attention kept slipping to the street outside the inn, where people passed singly or in pairs with their heads close together, their lips relating wonders. “Where are the others?”

  “When the Messiah left the city, they followed Him,” Yehudah replied.

  Mikhael’s mouth pinched in disapproval. “You should have stopped them. It is not their place to tell the Messiah His role.”

  “I have no power to stop them.”

  “What are they going to do?” Myrad asked.

  Mikhael’s frown deepened. “They wish to make the Messiah a prince of Parthia, so that when Artabanus dies, He will contend for the throne.”

  “What? None of the families would have Him.”

  Surprisingly, it was Yehudah who disagreed. “They would. Many of the families remember the civil wars after Musa killed Phraates. They’re tired, Myrad. They want peace. Many of them would support a man who can inspire whole populations the way Yeshua did today.”

  “Will He accept?”

  “We have only to wait and see.”

  It was well past dark when the rest of the magi came back to the inn, led by Harel and Ronen, disappointment engraved on their faces. Hakam wasn’t with them. They took their places around the table and asked that food and wine be served them. Myrad waited for their tale, impatient to hear more of the man who could command such adoration from an entire city.

  “He refused,” Harel said. “The Messiah—”

  Ronen held up his hand. “They deserve the entire tale.”

  Unshed tears pooled in Harel’s eyes. “Will any amount of context make it bearable?”

  “Still,” Ronen said.

  “Then you tell it. I have no heart for it.”

  “We followed the Messiah from the Temple back to Bethany,” Ronen began. “The crowd thinned as we left the city when it became apparent He wouldn’t challenge Herod today. When He passed through the village of Bethphage and it became obvious He meant to continue, most of those remaining turned back to Jerusalem. We continued to follow Him, hoping to approach Him quietly. He stopped in Bethany, at the house of friends.”

  “The friend,” Harel corrected. “Tell them.”

  Ronen took a half step forward. “We spoke with those close to Him: Mary, Martha, and Lazarus.” He shook his head. “How can I say it? Lazarus died.”

  Yehudah leaned forward. “While you were there? What did the Messiah do?”

  “No,” Ronen said. “He died. This Lazarus fell ill while Yeshua was away. They buried him. The Messiah raised him from the dead, days after Lazarus had been placed in the tomb.”

  “There were witnesses?” Yehudah asked. When the magi nodded, Myrad saw unfamiliar hope flare in his eyes. “What happened next?”

  “We found a man, Philip, who knew His disciples, and we asked to see the Messiah.”

  “And he denied you?” Yehudah asked.

  “No,” Harel answered. “He saw us. He knew us. How could He not? Even His friends proclaimed us magi by our dress and speech. We went before Him, dropped to our knees, and asked Him to be a prince of Parthia, that He might take the throne and rule its kingdoms . . .”

  When he stopped, Yehudah’s hand made tiny circles in the air. “And?”

  Hints of anger or defiance came into Harel’s expression. “He declined. He said He’d already been offered that and more. Then He spoke of death. His death.”

  Ronen nodded. “We heard Him, then heard thunder from a clear sky. We were fools. If He can raise a man from the dead, what need has He of Parthia?”

  Harel rounded on him, and the tension bubbling between the two men boiled over. “If he’s the Messiah, he’s King! He’s supposed to rule!”

  “If?” Ronen shouted back. “Are we not here on the appointed day? Did we not draw lots and send magi here thirty years ago? Is this not the selfsame man they saw as a babe?”

  Harel growled his disbelief. “I wasn’t there. I didn’t see it.”

  Shouting filled the inn then as those present weighed in on one side of the argument or the other. Out of the corner of his eye, Myrad saw Yehudah slip away. The argument pummeled him with blows, driving him from the room to the comparative silence of the street. He followed Yehudah and found him a few paces away, speaking to Walagash. They spoke in quiet tones, made all the more remarkable for the noise he’d just left.

  “The mood in the city is turning ugly,” Walagash said as Myrad stepped within the circle of their conversation. “He didn’t do what they expected.”

  “Or us, it seems,” Yehudah said.

  “I’ve traveled enough to see what happens to a city with too many angry people in it, and this one is filled to bursting with them,” Walagash said. “We should leave.”

  Myrad was tempted to add his voice to Walagash’s, but then a feeling of incompleteness filled him and prevented him from speaking.

  Yehudah shook his head. “We will wait for a resolution,” the magus said. “Yeshua has declined to take up the mantle of Parthia, and His ire seems to be directed more at the Pharisees than Rome.”

  “This city is tinder, and your messiah is the match.” Walagash turned to Myrad. “What do you say?”

  Myrad tried to put words to the sense of deficiency he felt. He’d seen a star descend and alight on the child. What would the man do? He groped for words, but no answer came.

  After a moment, Walagash sighed. “Very well. If you stay, I stay.” He strode up the hill toward the inn’s entrance with his head down, his effort apparent.

  “How much of what’s happening is in the prophecies, the ones outside of Daniel?” Myrad asked.

  Yehudah’s head swept back and forth. “Probably all of it.”

  That shook him. “You don’t know?”

  The magus pulled a breath that seemed to last forever. “The demarcation between the prophetic books and the rest is blurry, difficult to define. Even the songs of King David may be prophetic.”

  The city of Jerusalem, still swarming with people, stepped back from the precipice of riot. But the mood remained hot, a cauldron over a low flame ready to boil over again at any moment. They spent most of the next two days at the inn, with occasional forays into the city to check the mood while preparations were being made for Passover. Myrad, his mind and nerves frayed, distracted himself with the ceremonial search for leaven in the inn. Roshan helped him as he lowered himself to look under cabinets and beds in rooms nowhere near the kitchen, yet questions swam behind her eyes like fish darting in the shallows. Myrad found himself staring at odd moments, remembering Dov and the diminutive poet’s hope for a king.

  “You’re gone again,” Roshan said.

  He ducked his head, acknowledgment and apology together. “I know. I keep thinking of Dov.”

  She put a hand to his chest. “There are souls you meet who are too sweet for this world. If they’re older, it makes you wonder how they lasted so long.”

  “I don’t think Dov wanted an emperor such as Rome has, or even a king of kings like the Parthians,” Myrad said. “He wanted something else. I wonder if Yeshua w
ould have been for him that something else.”

  Passover came, and they washed their hands and feet, then settled in the eating room. All of them listened as Silas the innkeeper led them through the ceremony, beginning with the curse on leaven. Even the guards listened, who knew little of the Hebrews or anything outside of their own customs and the god of the shining fire. Silas related the tale of the Hebrews’ time in Egypt, and Myrad found himself slipping into the rhythm of a ceremony he’d practiced ever since coming into Gershom’s house. Yet here it meant more. Jerusalem was the promised city, after all, the reward for four hundred years of exile.

  Roman soldiers passed by on the street outside, the clanking of their armor and weapons harsh even through the closed shutters. For an instant, Myrad understood Hakam, even agreed with him in some measure.

  After the rituals, the meal, and the dipping of the bread, their host raised his arms high. “‘Then I will take you as my people, and I will be your God; and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians,’” he quoted.

  Myrad shook his head, the motion exaggerated by weariness and wine. How did the Messiah-King fit into such a promise? Where was its fulfillment? Exhausted, he rose from his spot, took Roshan by the hand, and retreated from the weight of ceremony to the room they shared. There, he collapsed on the bed, letting the food and wine carry him into a slumber.

  CHAPTER 38

  “Why? What crime has he committed?” asked Pilate. But they shouted all the louder, “Crucify him!”

  Matthew 27:23

  Rough hands woke Myrad the next morning, shaking him so that his head jerked from one side to the other. A voice mingled with his dream of a Passover, which repeated itself without end, before his eyes opened and he glimpsed sunlight through the cracks of his shuttered window.

  Yehudah was shouting at him.

  “Get up! They’ve taken the Messiah!”

  He snapped awake. Roshan was already up and dressed, the alarm in Yehudah’s voice enough for her to check the dagger she carried. Myrad swung his feet from the bed and hurried to pull on his boots. The aftereffects of wine muddled his thoughts, yet the magus’s words compelled Myrad to ask, “Who took the Messiah?”

  “The Pharisees,” Yehudah replied. “Come. We must get to Herod’s palace at once.”

  He hurried after Yehudah and the others of their party who streamed out of their inn northward from the lower city toward Herod’s palace. Pinpricks of pain shot through his foot at the quick pace. They followed the twists and turns of the streets heading upward, a crowd gathering and joining with them along the way, drawn by the news, while others streamed in the opposite direction where the sounds of doors being shut and barred could be heard.

  Walagash kept pace despite his bulk and years, pointing at the closed-up houses along the street. “We should be doing the same, Myrad. The tinder is lit, and the city will burn.”

  He couldn’t deny the prudence of Walagash’s warning. Yet he’d passed the point where he could simply turn aside or steal away. Daniel’s prophecy—the whole prophecy—had taken root within him in counterpoint to a long-ago dream of a star.

  The crowd thickened as they came to the court of Herod’s palace, where men and women, their faces so suffused with anger they all looked alike, stood screaming at the man on the balcony before them. He pointed to a figure on his left.

  Yeshua.

  “I have examined him, and I find no fault in this man,” the man declared. Those around Myrad called him Pilate, the Roman addressing them from the balcony.

  Myrad watched the crowd in both wonder and horror. Where were the people who had proclaimed Yeshua as king? Were any of them here?

  “NO!” Several people scattered among them screamed back at the Roman. They shouted the word repeatedly, until soon the entire crowd took up the chant. “No! No! No!”

  Someone grasping Myrad’s arm drew his attention. Walagash leaned in to speak to him. “Your messiah is in more trouble than he knows,” the merchant said. “There are plants all throughout this crowd.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because they’ve been placed evenly throughout the courtyard, and they shout in unison.”

  “But the Roman said he is innocent.”

  “The Romans are no different from the Parthians, Armenians, or anyone else who holds power. They don’t care about innocence so much as they do order. If your messiah has to die to keep this city under control, then he’s going to die.”

  Chants and waving arms pulled Myrad’s attention back to the throng. The cacophony took bare seconds to resolve into a brutal rhythm. “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

  He swallowed, starting to back away as if the crowd might see his distress and attack him for it. Again, Pilate sought to appease the unruly crowd, his expression marked now by concession, surrender. A woman dressed in silk came running forward to whisper in his ear, and a few moments passed before he turned back to the enraged crowd.

  “I have found no guilt in this man—” Pilate repeated.

  The people erupted, hissing and hurling threats toward the balcony.

  “But so that you may be satisfied,” Pilate continued, “and because he is of Galilee, I have resolved to send him before the Tetrarch, Herod Antipas. He will determine this man’s guilt.”

  A full score of soldiers rushed forward from the shadows behind Pilate to seize Yeshua, forming up around him with shields and weapons ready. They disappeared back into the palace while the crowd surged east to follow the soldiers with Yeshua in their custody, people from all stations with their ordinary clothes mixed with men in robes and tassels and still others wearing garments nearly as fine as Pilate’s. Not all of them wore expressions of scorn, but those whose faces were grief-stricken were few. Here and there, Myrad recognized some of the ones who’d celebrated and hailed Yeshua as the Messiah mere days ago, the day he entered Jerusalem atop a donkey.

  The soldiers ascended the street along the city wall toward the Temple, striding with the determination of men under siege, until they came to the palace of the man Pilate called Herod the Tetrarch. The crowd streamed after them, filling the colonnaded courtyard.

  A chill spread through Myrad at the sight of Yeshua standing before a man whose dark coloring emphasized a diminutive chin and a mouth that was hardly more than a slash in the face, giving him an appearance of cunning rather than strength. Yet for all of this, he appeared excited, even eager to see the man standing before him. The centurion of the guard stepped forward to give his report, and Herod Antipas nodded, his attention focused on Yeshua and the crowd. When the soldier finished, younger men among the Pharisees shouted accusations against Yeshua, their voices building.

  Instead of commanding silence, Herod grinned. “Do you hear the charges these men are making against you?” he asked. Only when he spoke did the men grow quiet, listening.

  When Yeshua refused to answer, Herod assailed Him with more questions. “Are you stirring up the people? Have you told the citizens of Judea not to pay their taxes?” Herod paused while muttering swept across the frustrated crowd. “Tell me, are you the king of the Hebrews?”

  Still no reply from Yeshua. Herod’s lighthearted demeanor never changed, giving the impression his questions meant as little to him as they did to the man standing silently before him. Then his posture tensed, and his head came forward. The crowd quieted again. “If you perform some miracle for me, I will make sure you live.”

  Hundreds held their breath, but Yeshua, unmoving, said nothing.

  The Hebrews dressed in finery yelled, “Fraud! Trickster!”

  Herod’s mouth compressed until it all but disappeared. He spoke to the soldier at his side, who vanished into the palace only to return a moment later with a robe of purple silk.

  As they placed the robe across Yeshua’s shoulders, Herod stood and gave Him a mocking little bow. “There. Do I not rightfully dress you as a king? You escaped my father’s wrath, and I bes
tow upon you the honor of your people.” He gestured to the crowd with their venomous stares. “Is there no sign you wish to give me to save you from their love and adoration?”

  When no acknowledgment came, Herod flung out his hand dismissively. “Take him back to Pilate.”

  Back down the hill they went, the crowd following the soldiers. The magi clustered around Yehudah, some with unshed tears, some with anger, but most lost in their shock, staring through their surroundings. Within minutes, they gathered again before Pilate’s balcony.

  Pilate took in the crowd once more, his face twisted in defeat. “I have already told you, I find no guilt in this man.” His neck corded with the effort of being heard above the shouts. “Shall I not release him to you in accordance with your Passover?”

  “Passover has finished,” a number of them said. “Crucify him!”

  Pilate’s face reddened. “I have no cause! Passover custom allows me to release a prisoner. Would you rather have Barabbas?”

  “Barabbas!” they screamed. “Give us Barabbas!”

  “You would rather have a murderer of your own people?” Pilate shouted back, incredulous. “I still have no cause.”

  The people roiled, and fights broke out. Soldiers waded into the melee, dispensing blows. Voices screamed in pain and anger, but a few latched on to Pilate’s last statement. “He claimed to be king of the Hebrews. We have no king but Caesar. If you free him, you are no friend to the emperor.”

  Pilate reeled back as though he’d been struck. Slicing the air with one hand, he silenced the crowd. With a curt order, his centurion disappeared into the palace with the group of soldiers who’d taken charge of Yeshua. Long moments passed until a servant with a linen towel draped over one arm brought a bowl of water and presented it to Pilate, who rinsed and dried his hands. “I am innocent of this man’s blood,” he announced to the crowd. “See to him yourselves.”

  The people screamed their approval while the soldiers escorted Yeshua into their midst.

  Myrad followed, his mind numb, incapable of reconciling the vision of Yeshua on the donkey and the man being dragged away. The crowd followed as the soldiers took Him into the center of the Praetorium, the stronghold of Rome’s might in Judea, where they stripped Him of His clothing, bound Him to a post, and ripped out His beard. One of the soldiers took up a whip of nine strands tied with bits of bone at the ends.