2 The Judas Kiss (15 page)

             
He set pen to paper and drew his first sentence in centuries. 
The tale really begins in Alexandria, Egypt, when I was seven years old…

~*~

Mark’s Story

              The tale really begins in Alexandria, Egypt, when I was seven years old.  I was Roman born, my grandfather, Cassius Avitus, a senator, my mother, Aemilia, his only surviving child.  She was a free spirit, or so my grandfather always said when I’d ask him why my mother did the things she did.  She didn’t like to be confined to a role or a home, and by the time I was six we had lived nearly everywhere Rome occupied.

             
I was too young to understand, but even so, I knew my mother’s husband was not my father by the time I was a toddler.  He was a Roman soldier, rising in the ranks, favored by the Caesar and the senators, and would soon join them once his work in the army was finished.

             
My mother, for her part, was a kind woman, but too smart for her own good.  She bore her husband several strapping young boys after I was born, spitting images of their father, and three girls who all died before they reached childhood.  My mother never really grieved for their deaths; she was hardly the maternal type, and I think sometimes she didn’t even know my brothers’ names.

             
She knew mine, though.  Makabi, given to me by our Hebrew servants, and only heard in the confines of our home.  In the presence of Romans my name was Markus Gracchus, after her husband, and I was tall for my age, and smart, just like my mother.  I was also half-Hebrew, which I learned by the time I was four.  We had Hebrew servants and my mother found herself drowning in obsession over their one God, and their curious ways of life.  The man who fathered me had been hired as a teacher, and was reassigned the moment my mother knew she was going to bear his child.  I think she loved me so much because I was the only child of hers that was just hers alone.

             
The Hebrew servants called me Makabi in the home, and they all liked me.  I learned to speak their language as quickly as I learned the Greek my tutors were pounding into my head, and the Latin being shouted in the streets.  I would be a senator, too, or a scholar at least, according to my grandfather. 

             
I think my grandfather always knew about my heritage, but the day I debated him on Roman politics at the tender age of five, I won him over.  The others around us, the grisly old Roman senators with their wrinkled eyes and white hair, gasped in horror at my tongue.  I thought I was sure to receive the worst beating of my life, but my grandfather laughed instead, ruffling my curls and he took me to his chambers to show me the pages upon pages of things he’d written.

             
I think he would have been a great philosopher, had he been able.  He was bogged down by politics, though, and had he existed today, would have been an over-televised politician.  The sort that every woman swoons over, who rises to power early, and dies far too young.

             
I had just turned seven when my mother announced we were going to be occupying a grand home in Alexandria.  The very thought excited me beyond words.  Alexandria was the greatest place in the Roman world.  A melting pot of culture, science, religion and philosophy.  Alexandria, with its ancient roots deeply imbedded in Egyptian history, somehow managing to intertwine the vision of Alexander the Great and his love of the world, with the rich history of the city’s past.  It was every philosopher’s dream to settle there, to put their works inside of the great library, and spend hours debating in the shadows of the great building overlooking the sea.

             
The journey felt impossibly long, and half-way there my mother fell ill.  My second oldest brother, Paulus, was with us on the road, but he was just six, and was not much help.  My father was supposed to meet us there, but as we were delayed while my mother healed, by the time we arrived at our massive palace-like home, he had set out on the road again the very same day.

             
My mother wasn’t sad to see him go.  “Every time he’s around I end up with child,” she’d complain to me as she sat in front of her mirror brushing out her hair.

             
I often just sat, listening to my mother talk.  Sometimes she’d tell me of her feelings, and sometimes of the current politics.  Every now and again she’d recite poetry, or tell me the tales of the ancient gods and the beginning of the world.

             
We were there less than a month when my mother fell ill again, and this time she didn’t recover well.  My father sent word that Paulus and I were to be sent back to our house in Rome with the rest of my brothers, but my mother wouldn’t let the servants take me.

             
I was happy to see my brother go, for he was my father’s son, and we had nothing in common.  I didn’t wish my mother ill, but with her bound to the bed and the burden of Paulus gone, I was free to roam around as I saw fit.

             
Alexandria was the city for me, bustling with people on every corner, the air full of heat and spices, and languages that had never touched my ears before.  Alexandria was a port, ships pulling in and out daily, with wares from lands I had never heard of.  There were cages of strange animals and birds perched on the docks, and fruits and nuts in bins that I hadn’t known existed before setting eyes on them in that great city.

             
So often I would find myself beside the water, watching the people come and go, wondering what it would be like to be a merchant, to sell wares, to feel utterly dependent on the money inside another man’s purse.  They were rough, these people, with crude tongues, and very little to say about the rest of the world, or the city’s past.  They cared only that you were going to pass them the coins in your pocket so they could fill their stomachs with food and the rich Egyptian beer.

             
They didn’t have Greek teachers cramming the ancient prose into their brains, whipping them when they couldn’t recite the exact line from Homer as commanded.  They had never touched a lyre, or put a drop of ink onto parchment to write a single line of poetry.  They would never be remembered by anyone, not really, and that was what made them so beautiful to me.  It was a place and a people that, while time forgot them, I never did.  In the two thousand years I’ve walked the earth, my dreams are always filled with Alexandria.

             
It all changed for me one afternoon as I allowed myself the temptation of standing in front of the Great Library.  She stood there tall, looming in the midday sun, the statue of Alexander the Great lording over any and all who walked by, holding the delicate goddess of Victory in his hand.  Inside of those walls were the greatest minds of the world, talking, writing, reading.  The Library of Alexandria would last forever, it just had to.

             
I had attempted to sneak inside at least a dozen times, caught every time and thrown out.  But I had vowed that someday I would be let in.  Some day they would hear what I had to say and they would all stop and stare in awe at me.  I would be one of them, those scholars, those great minds that worked to shape the world to what it would become.  My writing would adorn those walls, read into the centuries beyond my death.  I would never be forgotten.  I would not be those fruit peddlers or fishermen at the docks.

             
I sat on a low wall across the street, a bundled sack of tropical fruit unwrapped across my lap, and I was staring at a few of the Hebrew Rabbis standing under Alexander the Great’s massive shadow.  They were arguing, hands flying in the air, faces contorted.

             
They did this often, the Hebrews.  They had such passion and drive for their beliefs and their way of life, and at times, I envied them.  I wanted to be part of something great; a greatness that surpassed the Caesar and the senate, but I wasn’t sure how.  I had little passion in my life, and little mattered when I could receive whatever I wanted moments after I asked for it.

             
I was lost in my own thoughts and didn’t see the child, just a year or two older than me, come flying around the corner.  He hadn’t seen me either, so it took us both by surprise when he tripped, hurtling into me, sending me flying back, and my fruit toppling into the street where it was almost instantly trampled.

             
Dazed, I stood up, wiping the dust from my face and I squinted against the harsh sun as I tried to see who my assailant was.  He was tall, too-thin and trembling as he righted himself.  One look at my clothing and he knew that I was not someone he should have sent tumbling into the dust.

             
He began to tremble, his thin face contorting into fear and panic and he rushed over to help me up.  “Oh forgive me, please,” he said in fluid Latin.  “I’m so sorry.  Please, my Lord…”

             
“I’m no one’s lord,” I said, feeling a little grouchy and sore from the fall.  I brushed the thick, yellow sand from my backside and looked mournfully at my meal which was now pulp on the dirt street.  I sighed and turned back to him.  “Who are you?”

             
“Yehuda,” he said, his voice trembling along with his hands.  He clearly thought he was in trouble and I felt instant pity for him. 

             
“I’m fine,” I said swiftly, attempting to ease his panic.  “My name is…” I hesitated, and then, though I almost never did this, offered him my Hebrew name, “Makabi.”

             
He paused, staring at me, his trembling ceasing for the moment.  “Makabi?”

             
I looked around to ensure no one else was listening.  “It’s my secret name,” I explained.  “My mother is a senator’s daughter, so no one can know.  You can call me Markus in public.  Will you keep my secret?”

             
His eyes lit up, and he brushed a strand of long, curly hair that had come free of its tie.  He offered his hand to me after that, his face calm and stoic, and he grinned.  His palms were calloused, signaling that whatever work he did with his family consisted of hard labor, and I wondered then, what he thought of me.

             
“I’m sorry about your food,” he said miserably after a moment, remembering that it wasn’t just me he had knocked into the dirt.

             
I shrugged.  “That’s okay, it was interesting but it wasn’t that good.  I can go and get more at the docks.”

             
Yehuda looked around a moment, his hand shielding his eyes from the sun, and when he looked back at me, he looked defeated.  “Have you seen a boy come by here who looks exactly like me?”

             
I frowned, confused by what he meant.  “No, just you.  You and those men over there arguing,” I said, nodding to the Hebrew men who had moved a few feet to the left, following the shadow as the sun moved across the sky.  They were still debating as though their lives depended on it.

             
He sighed and hung his head.  “My brother is missing.  My father sent me out to find him, but I have no idea where he went.”

             
“And he looks just like you?” I asked, perplexed by this idea.  Even my brothers who shared a father didn’t resemble each other much.

             
“We’re twins.  We were born from my mother at the same time,” he explained. 

             
I’d never met a twin before, but the idea wasn’t foreign to me, and I smiled, excited to be introduced to something new.  “I’ll help you find him!” I declared.

             
Yehuda looked panicked.  “Oh no, you mustn’t trouble yourself.  If my father finds out that I asked a Roman to help me…”

             
“You didn’t ask, I offered,” I replied with a shrug.  “On the way we can get more fruit.  Are you hungry?”

             
He didn’t answer me, but didn’t dismiss my request.

             
“How old are you?” I asked him as we turned and navigated the streets.  Alexandria was always busy, and unlike Rome where the elite walked separate from those not absolutely and completely Roman, in Alexandria, no one paid any mind to a young Hebrew boy and a wealthy Roman boy walking shoulder to shoulder.

             
“Ten years,” he said.  His eyes never stayed in one spot, sweeping every corner and every shadow of the streets we walked down.  There was a desperation to his movements, and I was curious.

             
“Is your brother not well?” I asked, peering under some large piles of wooden crates left discarded beside a building.  There was nothing there but the foul stench of a rotting cat corpse.

             
“My brother is well,” Yehuda said absently, walking slightly behind me.  “My parents are just… protective over him.”

             
I smiled a little, unsure what that would be like.  I was well aware that I was precocious, smarter than most boys my age, and disinterested in the things I was being groomed for.  I knew many things, but parental concern was not one of them.  I doubted my mother even knew I’d left the house for the afternoon.