Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt (8 page)
Read Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt Online
Authors: Anne Rice
We saw them for the first time, the gathering of men up there above the gates, who could have watched the whole thing from there. I could barely make them out. I think they were in their fine robes and headdresses, but maybe not.
What did they think as they looked on this? And who would come for our dead man? How would this blood be cleaned away? The whole Temple was defiled with it. The whole Temple would have to be cleansed.
But there wasn't much time to look. And I only wanted to get out now. I was not afraid yet. I was wide eyed. The fear would come later.
The soldiers came behind us, crying out their orders. They spoke in Greek, then they spoke in Aramaic.
These were the same now who had killed others. We moved as fast as we could.
There would be no celebration of Passover this year, the soldier called out. "The Festival is over, no Passover! No Passover! You go to your homes."
"No Passover!" Cleopas said under his breath, laughing. "As if they can say there is no Passover! As long as there is one Jew alive in the world there is Passover when there is Passover!"
"Quiet," said Joseph. "Keep your eyes off them. What would you have them do? Mingle the blood of more Jews and Galileans with their sacrifices? Don't taunt them!"
"It's an abomination," said Alphaeus. "We should get out of the city as quickly as we can."
"But is it right to leave now of all times?" asked my cousin Silas. My uncle Alphaeus told him firmly to be quiet with a gesture and a sound.
My uncle Simon, the quiet one, said nothing.
As we entered the tunnel, people hurried past us. Joseph picked me up, and Little Salome with me. The other men were picking up the little ones. Cleopas tried to pick up Little Symeon, his youngest, who was crying to be picked up, but then Cleopas started coughing again, and so the women took him. My mother took him.
This was a good sign. She had the child in her arms, and she would be all right.
I couldn't see very well in the dark. But it didn't matter now. Little Salome was sobbing and sobbing, and nothing Aunt Mary said to her could comfort her. I couldn't reach her as she was too far behind me.
"No Passover!" Cleopas said, then he coughed more before he could go on. "So this King who doesn't wait on Caesar to confirm him on his throne has just done away with the Passover! This King who is as full of blood now as his father, who takes his stand with his father—."
"Don't say any more," said Alphaeus. "If they hear one word, they'll turn on the lot of us."
Yes, and how many innocents did they slay in there just now?" Cleopas said.
Joseph spoke up as he had in Alexandria. You will not say another word on this until we are out of Jerusalem!"
Cleopas didn't answer. But he didn't say any more. No one did.
We reached the bright light, only to see soldiers everywhere who spoke the orders as if they were cursing us.
People lay dead in the streets. They looked like they were sleeping. All the women started crying at the sight of the dead because we had to walk around them or step over them, and the mourners on their knees cried, and some begged for alms.
The men began to give out coins where they could, as others did. Some people were too miserable to want such a thing or they didn't need it.
But everywhere people cried even as they hurried. All of our women were crying, and Aunt Mary sobbed that this was her very first pilgrimage, that all her life in Egypt she had longed for this, and what had been done before our very eyes?
At the synagogue, we found everyone very afraid. Joseph gathered us inside the courtyard only to wait while the women rushed up to the roof for our bundles. He and Alphaeus went to get the donkeys. James told us to stand still and be quiet, to hold on to the babies. I had Little Symeon by the hand. Cleopas leaned against the wall and smiled and said things no one could hear.
The wailing over the dead still filled my ears. I couldn't stop thinking of our dead man, the dead man who had died so close to us. Did anyone come to bury him? What happened if nobody did?
I hadn't looked at the face of the soldier who killed him. I hadn't looked at the face of any soldier. All I saw of them was their strung-up boots and their armor, dark and tarnished, and their spears. How could I ever forget their spears?
"Leave Jerusalem," someone shouted even now in Hebrew here in the synagogue courtyard. "Leave Jerusalem and go to your homes. There is no Passover."
And our dead man. He must have known the soldier would kill him when he threw the stone he had hidden under his robe. He'd brought his stones to the Temple so that he might throw them.
Yet he had looked just like the rest of us. Same simple mantle, tunic, same dark curly hair, a beard like the beards of Joseph and my uncles. A Jew like us, though he shouted in Greek, why Greek, and why had he done it? Why had he almost flung himself at the soldier, when he knew the soldier had the spear?
I saw in my mind the spear go into our dead man. I saw it over and over, and the look on his face. I saw the dead all over the court of the Temple and the wandering sheep. I put my hands over my eyes. I couldn't stop seeing these things.
I felt cold. I huddled near to my mother, who at once opened her arms. I stood against her, against her soft robe.
We stood beside Cleopas, letting Little Symeon twist and turn and play. I said to my uncle,
"Why did that man throw those stones when he knew the soldier would kill him?"
Cleopas had seen it. We had all seen it, hadn't we?
Cleopas appeared to think, looking up into the bit of light that came in over the high walls. "It was a good moment to die," he said. "It was the finest moment perhaps that he'd ever seen."
"Did you think it was good?" I asked.
He laughed his soft slow laugh.
He looked down at me. "Did you?" he asked. "Did you think it was good?"
He didn't wait for my answer.
He said in my ear:
"Archelaus is a fool," Cleopas said. He spoke Greek. "Caesar should laugh him to scorn. King of Jews!" He shook his head. "We're in exile in our own land. That's the truth of it. That's why they were fighting! They want to get rid of this miserable family of Kings who build pagan temples and live like pagan tyrants!"
Joseph took Cleopas by the arm and pulled him away.
"Don't talk," said Joseph, staring at Cleopas. "No more of this here, you understand me? I don't care what you think, you say nothing more."
Cleopas said nothing. He began coughing again. And he made sounds under his breath as if he was talking but he wasn't talking.
Joseph went to the task of tying the bundles on the donkey. In a softer voice he said, "Nothing now, you understand me, brother?"
Cleopas didn't answer. My aunt Mary came to Cleopas and wiped some of the sweat from his forehead.
So I was wrong that Joseph never answered him.
But Cleopas gave no sign that he had heard. He was lost in his laughing and staring away, as if Joseph hadn't told him these things. And there was sweat all over his face now, and the day wasn't hot.
At last the clans were all together, and Joseph and Zebedee led us out of the courtyard.
"My brother," Joseph said to Cleopas. "When we get outside the gates, I want you to ride on this animal."
Cleopas nodded.
We were packed tighter than a herd of sheep as we tried to move up the street.
The sound of the women crying was loud under the archways and in the narrow high-walled places through which we had to go. I saw that windows and doors were shut tight. The wooden gates of courtyards had been closed. People stepped over the beggars and those huddled here and there. The men gave out coins. Joseph put a coin in my hand and said to give it to a beggar and I did, and the man kissed my ringers. He was an old man, thin and white haired with bright blue eyes.
My legs ached and my feet hurt me on the rough paving, but this was no time to complain.
As soon as we came out of the city, we saw all around us a sight that was even worse than what we'd seen in the Temple Court.
The tents of the pilgrims were torn apart. Bodies lay everywhere. Goods were scattered and people had no thought to pick them up.
And the soldiers rode wildly back and forth through the helpless people, crying out their orders, with no thought to the dead. We were to move on, everyone was to move on. They held up their spears. Some had drawn swords. They were all around us.
We could not stop to help anyone here any more than we could have stopped in the city. The soldiers even pushed at people with their spears, and the people hurried so as not to be touched in this shameful way.
But more than anything else, it was the number of the dead that caught our eyes. The dead were beyond number.
'This was a massacre," said my uncle Alphaeus. He drew his sons, Silas and Levi, to him and Eli, and said so all of us could hear: "Look on the doings of this man. See it and never forget it."
'I see it, Father, but shouldn't we stay! Shouldn't we fight!" Silas said. He said it in a whisper but we all heard it and at once the women cried out low and secretly to him that
he must not say such a thing, and Joseph told him firmly there would be no talk of staying.
I started to cry. I started to cry and I didn't know why I was crying. I felt I couldn't breathe, and I couldn't stop it.
My mother said, "We'll be out in the hills soon, away from all this. You're with us. And we're going to a peaceful place. There is no war where we're going."
I tried to swallow the crying, and I became afraid. I don't know that I'd ever been afraid before in my life. I started to see in my mind our dead man again.
James was looking at me. And so was my cousin John, the son of Elizabeth. Elizabeth rode on a donkey. And when I saw these two looking at me, James and my cousin John, I stopped crying. It was very hard.
The walk was getting hard. And that was a thing to think about, climbing the road as we went up and up until we could look down on the city. The harder we climbed, the less afraid I was. And soon Little Salome was up with me. We couldn't see the city over the big people even if we wanted to, but I didn't want to see it now, and no one stopped to say how beautiful the Temple was.
The men had made Cleopas get onto one donkey, and Aunt Mary was told to ride on the other. Both of them held babies in their arms. Cleopas was talking under his breath.
And on went the caravan.
Yet it seemed a wrong thing to me to leave Jerusalem in this way. I thought of Silas, and what he'd said. It did feel wrong to be going. It felt wrong to be hurrying away from the Temple in the hour when the Temple was in need of care. But then there were hundreds of priests, priests who knew how to cleanse the Temple, and many of them lived in Jerusalem, and so they couldn't go away. And they would
stay—they and the High Priest—and they would cleanse the Temple the way it ought to be cleansed.
And they would know what to do with our dead man. They would see to it that he was washed and wrapped and buried as he ought to be. But I tried not to think of him because I knew I'd start crying again.
The hills closed us up. Our voices were echoing off the sides of the mountains. People began to sing, but this time they sang mournful Psalms of pain and affliction.
When riders came through, we pressed ourselves to the side. The women screamed. Little Salome was asleep on the donkey with Cleopas, who slept and talked and laughed to himself and they were slippery bundles.
I started to cry. I couldn't help it. So many riders passing us, and so quickly and no more Jerusalem.
"We'll be there again next year," Joseph said to me. "And the year after. We're home now."
"And maybe there will be no Archelaus by next year," Cleopas said under his breath without opening his eyes, but James and I heard it. "The King of the Jews!" he scoffed. "The King of the Jews."
7
A DREAM. Wake up. I was sobbing. The man went down, the spear through his chest. He went down again, the spear through his chest. Wake up, they said, more voices. Something wet was against my face. Sobbing. I opened my eyes. Where were we? "Wake up," said my mother. I was in the middle of the women, and the fire was the only light, except that something out there was lighting up the sky.
"You're dreaming," said my mother. She held me.
James ran past us. Little Salome was calling to me.
"Jesus, wake up!" said my cousin John, who'd never spoken a word until now.
What was this place, a cave? No. This was the home of my kinfolk here—this was the house in which John and his mother lived. Joseph had been carrying me by the time we got here.
All the women were wiping my face. "You're dreaming." I was coughing from so much crying. I was so afraid, afraid and never never would I ever be not afraid as I was now. I clung to my mother. I pushed my face against her.
"It's the royal palace," someone shouted. "They've set it on fire!"
There was a loud noise, the sound of horses. A darkness fell. Then the red light flickered on the ceilings.
My cousin Elizabeth prayed in a low voice, and one of the men said for the children to get back from the door.
"Put out the lamps!" said Joseph.
Again came the noise, the noise of horses rushing past, and screams outside.
I didn't want to see what they were talking about, all the children screaming and shouting, and the prayers of Elizabeth running underneath. The fear swallowed me.
Even with my eyes closed, I could see the red flashes of light. My mother kissed the top of my head.
James said: "Jericho is burning. The palace of Herod is in flames. All of it's burning."
"They'll rebuild it," Joseph said. "They've burned it before. Caesar Augustus will see to it that it's rebuilt." His voice was steady. I felt his hand against my shoulder. "Don't you worry, little one. Don't you worry at all."
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