I resisted the temptation to return to our rooms and find out what the others knew. I reckoned the last person they wanted to see, now or ever, would be Judas, the thief, the traitor. But I lingered nearby out of sight. Shortly after sunup, I saw Mary rush into the rooms. Moments later, those few who had not fled the city poured out and raced in the direction of Golgotha. When I saw Mary reappear, I signaled to her. She looked my way, hesitated, and then came to me.
“Judas,” she said. She had the same expression on her face my mother had the day we parted. “What you have done…you cannot stay here.” Again, a memory that refused to fade.
We cannot stay here.
She added, “You must go.”
I retrieved my few belongings and slung them in a bundle over my shoulder.
“There is one last thing I must tell you,” she said as I turned to leave. “He is risen.” She saw the blank look on my face. “Jesus was not in the tomb.” She stopped and looked at me, her eyes pleading.
“Are you sure?” I thought of Thomas, and his resemblance to Jesus,
Didymus.
I wondered if she had mistaken the one for the other.
“I spoke to him. He…What are we to do?”
***
I tried to return the silver but the high priest refused to see me. He sent a clerk who would only speak to me through a bronze grating set in the door.
“That is blood money,” the clerk said. “We cannot accept it.”
“But it is the money you gave to me less than two days ago. If it is blood money now, it was blood money then. I do not want it. It is like fire in my hand.” I shouted at him and threw it through the grate.
“Very well,” the smug clerk said, “we will use it to buy a burial field near the rubbish pile, and we will buy it in your name.”
***
At the seventh hour, I found myself outside the city walls with no place to go, no one to speak to, and no future. I had finally become the murderer the empire wanted me to be. I did not kill Leonides, I did not push that boy over the sea wall in Cenchrea, and I did not kill the Roman soldier, but I had murdered Jesus as surely as if I stabbed him in the heart.
As I walked away from the city, an assortment of petty merchants and artisans caught my eye. They were haggling with one another over the price of this or that. I paused to listen; I’m not sure why. I let my eyes wander over this gaggle of honking geese, wondering about each in turn. Did the one with the red nose drink too much wine? Did the sylph-like servant attending a fat wife also serve her master in another way? My eyes fell on a woman, the wife of a leather merchant who, to his credit, seemed calm and deliberate. Her back was to me. She had her hands full with a fussing child. Something about her seemed familiar—the curve of her neck, the arch of her back—something. A plump Israelite matron absorbed in her child, her mind miles away from the men’s haranguing. She turned and faced me. I don’t know why, but I caught her eye first. Our gazes locked like tiles in one of Zakis’ mosaics, unmoving, unmovable.
My mother stared at me across thirty cubits of open space and a lost decade. I stood motionless, unable to breathe. I spent years searching for her in all the wrong places. I thought to find her in the brothels or under the shadowy arches of the city, the places where men seek a quick release for their lust. I sought her in the eyes of every woman who came to us from her broken profession. But she had escaped that. Somehow she had reinvented herself. Unencumbered by children and Darcas, she left the streets and found respectability. All those wonderful fantasies spun for me so long ago in Caesarea; she’d made one of them come true and found someone to believe her. Did this leather merchant think she came from the priestly class, that she was a widow of means? I don’t know. It didn’t matter. She was free.
I started toward her but drew up short when I saw the look of panic on her face, the quick jerk of her head. Her eyes slid first to the boy, then to the man, her husband. Then I understood. “You are dead to me,” she once said. And so I must remain. How would she explain a grown son to her husband? She had found her way home without me.
Our eyes embraced one last time. Disengaging was more painful than the beating I had taken at the hands of Barabbas and his men. I wanted to tell her about Dinah, I wanted to tell her how much I missed her, about the years I looked for her. But all I could do was smile and lift my fingers to my lips. She glanced uneasily at her husband and her son and, seeing them both momentarily distracted, smiled back. I walked away and Jesus’ voice whispered in my ear.
Have you found your treasure yet?
***
The morning’s early chill gave way to scorching heat. Although spring, it felt like summer in the valley of the Salt Sea. Lost in my thoughts and feeling sorry for myself, I did not notice where my footsteps had taken me. Only when I stumbled did I realize I had wandered to the rubbish heap outside the city walls. All the city’s trash, garbage, and offal was deposited there along with animal carcasses, the contents of thousands of chamber pots, mixed in with shattered dreams, lost lives, and broken promises. Fires smoldered here and there. Gehenna
they called it, the Hinnom Valley—Hell. Sensible people avoided this place. The only signs of life were dogs—the pariahs—digging through the rubbish, snapping at rats bold enough to challenge them, and rooting for something to eat. Occasionally a fight broke out over a bone or a scrap. Then, teeth bared, they tore into each other with desperation known only to the starving. I knew that feeling, had even fought like that—pariah dogs and Judas, cousins.
I noticed other pariahs as well, human refuse from the city—abandoned children, the infirm, lunatics, all of the city’s unwanted human surplus. They, like the dogs, scavenged through rubbish. Each carried a club or stout stick used to poke in the piles of trash or to protect themselves from the dogs and each other.
I made a wide circuit around the stinking pile and plodded onward, up and away from the city. It occurred to me I ought to be near the field purchased in my name by the clerk and his masters. I may even be standing on my own land. That was something I had never been before. Imagine—Judas the Red, landowner.
As I neared the crest of the hill, I saw a small boy sitting by the side of the path—one of the denizens of Gehenna. As I drew near, he leapt to his feet. He may have been asleep, startled by my approach, or just frightened. I raised my right hand, palm out, to show him I meant him no harm. His face was so incredibly dirty, when he looked up at me his eyes glowed like twin moons in the night sky.
“I wouldn’t go up there, sir.”
I took in the sores and the bruises on his body and I saw in him all the children I had known in my past. I thought of Gaius and his pack of urchins working the streets of Cenchrea—all of them dead before they were twelve.
“Why should I not go up there, boy?”
“There’s a dead man up there, sir.”
“A dead man? What sort of dead man?”
“Soldiers come up here last night, and when Barak thought they were sleeping, he tried to steal their things. They woke up and caught him. Now he’s dead.”
“That was very foolish of Barak. Was he a friend of yours?”
“No sir, he’s just one of us what lives up here. Sometimes he was nice to me. When he found some food, he would sometimes give me some, that’s all.”
The boy was dressed in rags so filthy it was nearly impossible to tell what color they were. His sandals were an adult’s and his cloak dragged on the ground. I reached in my purse and gave him a few coins. His mooneyes waxed at the sight. It will hold him a week or two, I thought, if someone does not steal them from him in the meantime. Unfortunately, the sores on his legs were already festering and I did not hold out much hope for him. I wondered…what would Jesus have done? Probably healed him and told me to get him clothes and food. Then he would have sent him to Bethany to the women. But we could not do that anymore. Whatever power I had to heal had surely been taken from me.
“Run along boy. Get away from this place. Go to the Jericho Road. Do you know where it is? Yes? When you get there, go down to Qumran, Masad Hasidim. They will help you. Do you hear me? Masad Hasidim. Go.”
He dashed off and, I hoped, away. It is never easy to leave the familiar, even when you know it will eventually kill you.
What would Jesus have done?
…What had he done? I stopped in my tracks…dumbstruck.
He knew!
He knew what the consequences of my foolish pursuit of Ehud and his cronies must surely be. He knew, and yet…he sent me on my way. At the meal in the upper room, a simple word from him and I would have stayed. Yet, he sent me out. He
wanted
to set in motion the events that led to the cross. He’d chosen me to be the instrument of his destruction. Did he think I shared that knowledge?
Did I?
How could I have missed it?
I don’t know how long I stood there—heartbeat, an hour? I will never know.
He knew!
Barak swung slowly in the slight breeze, suspended by the cord I guessed once served as his cincture. A large boulder was positioned a short distance behind him. The soldiers must have stood him on it, drawn the noose tight, pushed him off, and watched as he swung back and forth, desperately trying to get his feet, his toes, back on the stone. He probably struggled like that for a long time. I could almost hear the soldiers’ laughter and see the terror in Barak’s eyes.
Carrion crows, their beaks red with his blood, flapped, croaked, and scattered when I drew near. He hung there naked. Barak had been the object of other scavengers as well, it seemed. I recognized the source of the boy’s over-large sandals and cloak. Barak’s face had turned a hideous shade of purple. The heat of the day caused his body to bloat. He looked as if he might burst at any moment. His own mother would not recognize this Barak.
It should be me…
Barak must have been about my size and age. In his condition who could tell? I moved around to get upwind and away from the odor of corruption. As I did so, something—perhaps the wind—caused him to swing around and I saw again what was left of his face. In addition to the ravages made by the crows, I could see he had been beaten badly. The hanging may have come as a relief. Blood caked on his scalp and in his hair. I missed the hair at first because of the blood. But as he swung on his noose, the late afternoon sun glinted off the same awful red hair as mine.
Could this be one of my father’s “red-haired bastards” he had seeded this land with? This Barak could be my brother. Where else were the bastards of these Roman brutes to go but to the streets, the rubbish piles, and the gallows?
It could be me…
It seemed indecent to leave him this way—my newfound brother. I stood on the rock and cut him down. I expected a thump or a crunch when he landed, but what I heard sounded more like a large, half-filled wineskin hitting the ground.
***
The sun hovered just over the western horizon, and I still sat
shiva
with poor Barak. The air cooled and, in the half-light, he looked almost peaceful. Some might say he went to a better place, better than when he rooted in the garbage like a pig.
I heard a footstep and the crunch of pebbles. I do not know why, but I felt Him, felt his presence, and I knew. Another footstep and his shadow captured the sun at my back.
“Lord? Is it you?”
“See for yourself.”
“I cannot. I cannot face you.”
“Do you think your denial worse than Peter’s?”
“They will say so.”
“But what will I say?”
“That you willed me to this place.”
“I sought the cross so all might live, do you see?”
“All, Lord? Surely not all; how can I live?”
“Do you believe that I am here with you now and I live?”
“Yes.”
“Then you must live, too. You did not walk all those miles, did not proclaim the Kingdom, and did not see the wonder of God’s mercy, to die alone on this hill. What did I tell you that morning?”
You of all who come to me will be asked to sacrifice the most and receive the least. It is why you were chosen, because you understand these things.
He was gone.
***
I sat on the boulder a little distance from poor Barak and contemplated the turn of fate that brought the two of us together. What if we had met earlier?
I untied my bundle. I put my old sandals on Barak and covered him with a tunic.
If you have two tunics and your brother has none, give him one of yours…
I put the few remaining shekels into my old purse and placed it beside Barak’s body. It was probably the most money he ever possessed. The other coinage I put in the now empty purse the temple money came in. I dropped my wax tablet, the one on which I did my accounts, by his hand. I would not need it anymore.
I left my brother, Barak, in my stead. It was time to leave, time to be about the business given to me. My mother found her way home and so would I. I had my treasure. Now, I needed to spend it.
I would go west, across the Great Sea and the land beyond. I would take from my father the one thing he could not give me at birth, the only thing he had of value, the thing that could have set me on a different path…I would take his name. I would be Ceamon, Ceamon the Red. I would travel first to the temple of Aphrodite in Corinth and then to the land across the seas where even the mighty Roman Legions dared not go. I would go where all the men have red hair and paint their bodies blue and I would tell this story. And someday, when it has been told enough times to enough people, the Romans and those like them—the oppressors of the world—might yield to it. Then his Kingdom will come.
In the distance I heard the grunts of camels assembled in a caravan on the Joppa road, then “
Sah, Sah
,
Sah
,” from the caravan master. If I hurried, I could catch them.