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—”
“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.
“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.
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.”
The soldiers looked at one another and then at the men. “Who are you? Why haven’t we heard of an accident in the wadi?”
“We are friends of this man and have come to take him home.”
The soldiers moved toward the back of the inn as well. “That is the man who killed our comrade.”
“No, you are mistaken,” one said. “Your comrade fell into the hands of Barabbas. Everyone knows that.”
“We have information that on the very day our comrade was found in the road, this man arrived here covered with blood, our friend’s blood.”
“It is true he arrived here in that condition and on that day, but as the victim of a very bad fall into the wadi and in no way connected to your friend’s murder. You should do us all a great service and be out seeking Barabbas. This man is a stranger to these parts and did not know the steep banks and foolishly left the road at dusk. He fell.”
The two groups of men stared at each other as if they could, by sheer force of will, make the other step aside. I never saw anyone stand up to Roman soldiers like these men. I prepared myself for some bloodletting.
“Ask the innkeeper and these good people if we tell the truth,” the first man said.
“It is so. Yes, yes. A very bad fall…” a nervous chorus of support from the small gathering.
The soldiers looked at each other and the people in the inn—unsure. The innkeeper pounded on the table where he kept his supply of wine.
“A drink for you, good soldiers. We are in your debt as you keep the roads clear of brigands and thieves.” He poured out large cups of wine and offered it to them.
“The best,” he declared, “from Cilicia.” The soldiers took the wine, drank, and seemed to make a decision. Clearly, they would get no help from any of this group. Dragging a wounded prisoner any distance would be difficult. After a while the wine’s mellowing effects set in, and they accepted the story about the fall. Life would be easier for them that way.
Once again I had been snatched from the terror of Roman justice, saved from being punished for murder I did not commit. I struggled to understand. I had no friends, yet it seemed whenever I needed help someone was there for me. The only boat leaving Caesarea that awful day fifteen years ago happened to have room for Mother, Dinah, and me. The boy who worked for Amelabib fell and broke his leg, Nahum, and now these men. I wondered if there was a plan, some divine current that kept me alive in spite of the difficulties that followed me.
My newfound friends approached my alcove. I tried to rise. My knotted muscles and the pain in my side from the blows allowed only a small hitch upward. They motioned for me to lie still. A fifth man entered the small space with a crude litter and they gently lifted me on it. One of the men chatted with the innkeeper, who then wrapped some bread and cheese in a cloth and handed it to him along with a full wineskin. They hoisted me up and carried me out into the afternoon sun. I did not know where they were taking me or why. We moved downhill and away, to where, I did not know.