Eden (19 page)

“Did you not know him?” the Chief Rat demanded. “Was he not your master from birth? Did you not know him better than anyone here?”

At first Eden did not know what to say. Was this low creature worth answering?

But dogs cannot lie. And even rats deserve an answer.

Of course, Eden knew him. Everyone knew her master
.

Too bad this ugly rat didn't know him—it might have done him good
.

She stared grimly at the Chief Rat, her lip raised, wondering whether it would be better just to grab him by the neck and shake him to death.

But then the strangest thing happened. A familiar smell touched Eden's nose, a scent from within this courtyard.…
Ahhh
, one of their master's companions huddled by the fire. One of the first gathered back by the banks of the river. The fisherman who cast nets upon the sea, the one named Peter. Long had he followed her master's footsteps from village to field, and slept beside the lambs in every orchard. This companion was always kind to her, but Peter talked more to men than he ever did to animals. Now sitting before the fire pit in the courtyard of this grand house he hugged his knees to his chest, staring hard into the flames. Every so often he looked nervously about as if listening for some signal. The dog could tell he strained his ears to the thick walls, laboring to hear everything that was going on beyond the bolted doors.

But even as the voices died within, one voice from the fire pit demanded:

“Did you not know him? Were you not his friend?”

Everyone staring into the fire went silent, waiting for an answer. And Eden realized that Peter's mind
was not
troubled like either Judas or Maryam, but frozen from within,
petrified
like the salt statues by the great dead water. Now he cowered under the shadow of the Hollow Man—making his denial all the more shameful.

This companion's voice so soft Eden could barely hear it:

Not I
, he swore,
not I
.

But what the dog saw on his face was worse.

The one named Peter shrank inside himself.

Wishing only to disappear.

To be gone and never have been born.

A cock on a rooftop crowed—the first herald of sunrise—for somewhere over the horizon the bird could feel the dawning of a black day.

At that very moment, the doors of the great house opened and the soldiers prepared to bring Eden's master forth, and the travelers and those who sought shelter rose and fled the fire's light. All those who waited scuttled into the shadow of the walls. The rats screamed as they were stepped on. The Chief Rat ran into the first crack in the wall he could find, tail wriggling in fear as it disappeared into the stone.

But Eden caught him by the tail, and dragged him from the wall. She shook him, his shrill squeals echoing in the courtyard. And when the Chief Rat went limp in her teeth, Eden spat his body out.

Let the Romans Decide

Dawn broke against the high walls of the city, an overcast, ugly day. Damp clouds blew across the rooftops, smelling of rust and ash. The sun slid into the gray metal sky and Eden felt a great weight overhead, gazing down with hooded eyes. After the cock crowed in the courtyard of the grand house no birds chimed in, no starlings chirruped, no doves cooed in the corners of the houses.

Eden noticed a scrawny cat slinking along an open drain at the side of the road.

The cat halted to wipe her face with her paws.

“Where are the mice?” the cat asked of no one.

Looking about again she shook her head. “No mice. All hiding, all gone.”

A kind of horrible quiet descended on the world, a dawn like no other the dog had ever seen. The silence broken only by the muffled stamp of the soldier's feet as they marched Eden's master toward the city.

At the base of the hill she was surprised to find Samson waiting with the littlest of the lambs by a deserted crossroads.
Why did you leave the safety of the garden?
she almost growled.

But the growl died on her tongue as she saw what the two animals were looking at. A withered, wretched tree with a man hanging by his neck, a common enough sight this close to the city walls, and the soldiers marched their master past without a second glance.

But Eden knew whose legs dangled dead off the ground. She knew that sandal, fallen from his foot. How could she not have known Judas was dead? She should have missed his living mind. She should have known if only because she knew the man.

A long thread of sweat had rolled down his leg and clung to his bare heel.

“We found him this morning,” Samson told her. “The littlest one told me there was a lost lamb down below, and we came in search of it. Not a lamb,
a man
. We would have brought Judas back with us to the garden. We might have helped him. But we came too late. Too late.”

Eden didn't know what to say. She never thought the one named Judas a bad man, but the troubles of his mind devoured him and now this was all that remained. Perhaps the littlest lamb and the donkey were right; perhaps Judas was like a lost lamb. In the gray light of morning his body did not cast even a shadow. She sniffed the sandal on the ground, but all she smelled on it was grit and dust and sorrow. Eden noticed a threadbare pouch lying at the base of the tree. A few silver coins spilled from the purse's mouth and beside the coins two pebbles, a black pebble and a white one, lying on the ground. The Hollow Man had done his work well, taking the human being, the earthly Judas, and leaving only the purse behind.

But even as Eden stared at the abandoned purse a beggar pushed Eden aside, stooped to the ground and snatched the coins. The wretched creature clutched the purse to his chest, and hurried after the Romans approaching the city. He threw a grin over his shoulder as he ran toward the city walls. And Eden recognized him again. Who else? The Hollow Man.

The soldiers were crossing the threshold of the city now, marching under the gate.

“Samson!” Eden cried. “We're too late for this poor man, we can do nothing here. But there goes our master. We can't let him get away.”

“I'm afraid,” said the littlest lamb. But both her guardians herded her close.

“You're with us,” Eden said.

“And even though this is no day to travel alone,” Samson told her, “no harm will come to you.”

“Come, little one,” Eden told the littlest lamb, “our day is not done. If there is someone to be saved, we must see to it.” Suddenly they realized the soldiers had disappeared into the city. Samson hesitated, for he could not see very far ahead.

“Follow me,” Eden told the other two. “I'll know where he goes. I'll know our master's scent even if he's on the other side of the world.”

The three animals followed the soldiers' footsteps over the hard paving stones. The streets ran off in every direction, bewildering the eye, but Eden kept them true.

There seemed to be no end of the poor and wretched in this city. They gathered in every alley, in every street. No end to beggars, to thieves, to all the angry unfortunates gathered in one cramped place. Some reached out to grab the animals, the littlest lamb especially, but Samson's great girth shoved the hungry ones off and Eden only had to raise her lip to keep the famished and the truly desperate away.

At a cross street the unruly crowd had pinned a woman against a wall, and she struggled to keep from being crushed, crying, “Stop! Stop please, stop!”

Maryam!

The woman who once spoke to flies recognized her animal friends at once, desperately reaching out before being shoved against the wall again. But the three creatures wouldn't stand for this any longer. Samson planted himself against the mob while Eden stood underneath him, raising her lip again and again, keeping the worst ones away. The littlest lamb pressed herself to Maryam's side, nuzzling the woman with her soft muzzle.

After a few moments the crowd backed off. And the people muttered among themselves to see such a strange thing, dumb beasts protecting this lost soul huddled in the street. Maryam petted the littlest lamb, stroked Eden's strong neck and patted Samson's wide flank.

“Oh it's so good to see you all! Eden, I was afraid I'd never see you again. Oh Samson, how strong you are! And little lamb, never leave my side and I'll never leave yours.”

The animals nestled close to Maryam, protecting her. And the woman took Eden's face in her hands. “Do you know where they took him? Can you lead us there?”

As Samson couldn't speak to people, he just nodded his big gray head.
Eden knows, she knows
. And Maryam understood. Looking fearfully over the donkey's back she saw the crowd had calmed at the sight of the animals' strange behavior, at this strange sight of a dog, a donkey, a woman and a lamb huddled as one.

At last they moved—dog, donkey, woman and lamb cautiously leaving the safety of the wall. People gaped at this strange procession. Word of them rippled ahead on a thousand whispers and people backed away, the crowd parting as Eden's nose led them on.

The soldiers had brought their master round a corner, down a back alley and to the rear of the garrison. Eden seemed to know this place, like an old memory hiding in her bones. The garrison had a familiar smell, though she had never been here before. Yet somehow she knew it as a place where dogs guarded the men who guarded other men. Not a good place, but a place where many came to die.

Suddenly Samson shivered down to his hooves. “Oh, let us get away from here,” he said. “Let us get away. This is where my
own master
died. This is where they brought the River Man before the end.”

But Eden couldn't leave. Not yet. And Maryam, unafraid, knelt against the prison wall, placing her hands upon the stone, her face against the mortar. The great stones of the garrison were black. Smudged from endless traffic, from smoky oil lamps, rubbed dark by desperate prayers, countless vigils and blackened from within by a thousand years of cruelty harder than the hardest heart.

Maryam shifted her hands to a cleaner spot, a paler stone, bleached white from the sun, and pressed the stone with all her might. Then lovingly stroked the block, making it speak to her. Cocking her head, she listened.

“I can hear inside,” she told the animals. “They have him there. Shall I tell you what they say?” She listened to the great blocks of stone in the wall. Her lips moved, and she spoke, telling all of what she heard:

“These men do not care whether he lives or dies. They have brought him for questions because the priests are afraid of the people they serve. But the priests in the temple mistake fear of their people as fear of God.” She took a deep breath and pressed her hands to the stone. “Now they put the question.
Is he the son of man or the son of God—or both?”

She held her breath, listening to the stone.

“Well, what does he say?” asked the littlest lamb.

For some time Maryam said nothing.

Then quietly:

“I can barely hear …” Her hands rubbed and rubbed the pale stone. “Wait!” She strained to hear. “He answers.
You say I am. You say it
.”

“The Governor of this garrison is sitting in judgment. I can feel the Roman thinking …
this man is the son of no one. If he were my son, I'd have taken him from his mother and sent him into the Legions long ago. He's as harmless as a fly. And these priests are old women, afraid of their own shadows
.

“Ah … the Governor is speaking now. Someone else is to decide.” Maryam took her face from the wall and looked at the animals. “They're taking him to Herod.”

“Who's Herod?” asked the littlest of the lambs.

“One of the men who rules this terrible land,” the woman answered.

“Did he put me on the chain?” asked the littlest lamb.

“No,” Maryam told her. “But he wouldn't have cared if you died there.”

She sagged from the stone, exhausted.