Temple Boys (23 page)

A man with a sharp face and a shock of dark hair answered. “Don't know if it's pure. They've been doing it for centuries. And that's where they bury all the criminals and beggars. Temple Police cut him down this morning and carted him off. Something odd about it, if you want my opinion. I reckon it's a cover-up.”

“A Temple cover-up?” Another voice.

“Quiet! There'll be spies about.” Yet another.

“I don't care about spies.” The Samaritan again. “They'll have more on their hands than they can deal with soon enough. You want my opinion? He was one of those troublemakers who want a revolution. The Temple finished him off like they finished off that magician.”

“That was never the Temple. That was the Romans!”

An argument started and Flea wheeled away, horrified. No one was thinking of Jude. They'd turned him into an idea to be batted around like a scrap of rubbish.

And Flea should never have come here. He knew that now. What could he do, a stupid little beggar boy? And more than that, what did it matter? It was like being at the bottom of the city dump as it fell in a stinking, steaming mound from the walls into the valley. You could stand at the bottom and try to stop it slipping farther down, but more and more rubbish would just come tumbling on top of you and in the end, for all your efforts, you would end up buried in other people's—

“You all right?”

In turning to get away, Flea had cannoned into a farmer. He felt rough, protective hands on his shoulder.

“You're trembling. Not surprised. This is no place for a girl. Where are your people?”

Flea made the mistake of looking up. The farmer's face was blunt and weather-beaten, his teeth worn down to little brown stumps from eating too much grit in his bread. His expression changed from concern to something else.

“Hey…”

Flea knew his face would be dirty, the dirt made more obvious by the tear marks and snot trails.

“You don't…”

Also his hair had begun to escape from underneath his scarf.

Tesha saw the danger and shrieked, “Mistress, mistress. What's happening?” That attracted even more attention. Heads turned.

The farmer said, “That's not a mistress. That's a bloody boy!”

He tore off Flea's headscarf and waved it above his head, then grabbed Flea and held him up. The crowd bustled around, keen to have something else to think about.

“That's not any boy either,” a voice in the crowd said. “That's the boy everyone's looking for, I bet.”

“What? The one with the power?”

“You mean the blasphemer.”

“You mean the little traitor.”

“What does it matter? Hang him!”

“There's some rope here!”

“Come on.”

Flea struggled but was held fast by several pairs of hands. He felt himself boosted high above the heads of the crowd and passed along like a parcel toward the tree.

“No!” he shouted. “You don't understand. Jude was my friend. He wasn't a bad man! He just wanted—”

Flea's hands were tied behind his back and he was lifted higher. Someone had climbed the tree and shinned along the branch. Now he was tying the dangling rope into a rough noose. Flea struggled and fought. A scream built inside him. Through wide eyes he saw the valley and the hills beyond. He saw a white sky with the sun trying to break through and play on the lion-colored blocks of the city walls. He saw the roof of the Temple and then, above his head, he saw the noose.

He felt the roughness of the rope on his forehead, then it was over him and the scream was everywhere, inside him and outside him so the white of the sky shifted and shivered and Flea waited for the drop.

 

48

It didn't happen.

Thumping footsteps, a panicked stampede, and the crowd scattered in the only direction it could: down the valley side. Arms windmilled. People tripped and tumbled toward the river. Flea looked down and saw a sea of black. Wild People! He'd been rescued by Wild People. One was holding him. He felt the rope around his wrists being cut, and then scampering along the branch toward him was a little girl with painted eyes and a gold chain hooked from her nose to her ear.

She stuck out her tongue at Flea before lifting the rope from his neck. He was lowered to the ground.

“Are you all right?”

Flea looked up into a fierce face with a hooked nose, black eyes, and hollow cheeks. He remembered this man, and the girl, from the early-morning sheep market. Jude had bought a lamb from him. He nodded, his chest heaving.

“Lucky for you my daughter saw through your disguise. She was on watch, just in case you turned up. We were waiting to the south, ready to leave. You'd better come with us.”

“Why did you rescue me?” Flea said. “Why was she looking out for me?”

“Jude,” the man said simply. “Come.”

“He's dead.”

“We know. He should have paid us to protect him. He would have lived.” Flea looked around. There were about a dozen black-robed figures standing around him in a rough circle, knives drawn. “I don't understand.”

“We can talk as we walk. We need to get away from here. The farther from the city you are, the better for all of us—you and your friend,” he said with a nod to Tesha, who was standing a short distance away, ready to run. “Jude came to us yesterday. He said he was hoping to meet you here, but if anything happened, I was to make sure you were all right.”

“Did he talk much about me?”

“He said a lot of things and some of them were about you. Walk more quickly. That mob will be at the main gate soon, and whether the gates are locked or not, if they shout out to the guards that they've spotted a fugitive, they'll open soon enough.”

“Won't you be in trouble?”

“The Temple Police may come to the camp and ask us questions, but we'll shake our heads and say it was different Wild People who helped you. Bad Wild People. They don't see our faces—to them we are all the same—so no one will know who was here. But that's not your worry.”

“Can you tell me about Jude?”

“Yesterday evening? He was sad. He said he'd lost his Master and now he was worried that he'd led you astray, but at least he could leave you something. He talked about some prophecy. Said perhaps it was true after all and, if it was true, then he'd gotten you mixed up in his troubles for nothing. That's what he kept on saying. For nothing.”

Flea's face fell. “He thought the prophecy about Yeshua being the Chosen One was true?”

A shrug. “Maybe. Nothing you city people do makes sense.”

“But Jude wasn't from the city.”

“You're all from the city. You're all called back here. This is where the madness lies. He came to the tree. He died. When I heard, I told my girl to watch and wait, and the rest, well, it happened to you so you know.”

“Do you think he killed himself?”

“Among my people it is not a sin.”

“But he said he would meet me.”

“Saying you would do one thing and then not doing it, that is a sin. Do you think Jude was a bad man?”

“No.”

“Then…”

They walked on. The walls followed a slight rise to the part of the city called Daweed's Hill, then the ground fell to a small plain where the Wild People's main campsite was stationed. You could hear the bleat of the unsold lambs. The tents were being taken down and loaded onto donkeys and camels.

Flea's mind caught up with something the Wild Man had mentioned earlier. “You said that Jude left me something. What was that?”

The Wild Man smiled. “Good boy.” He reached into his robes and handed Flea Jude's purse. “It's all there. I didn't even open it.”

The purse was warm and plump in his hand. Flea remembered the last supper and the game of hunt the king. Jude had given the money to him. Jude had wanted him to have it. Jude had wanted him to be safe. He felt the quick rush of tears.

“You're a rich boy now and that means you have to be even more careful,” the Wild Man said. “If anyone finds out that you have that, you'll be in even greater danger than now. As well as the Temple Police, the Romans, and the Cutters, every thief in the city is going to be after you, and the people you turn to for help will just be waiting to cut your throat. That is the way of the city. Trust no one, even that girl who's hanging around.”

“I think she's all right.”

The Wild Man accepted that with a tilt of the head. “Of course, you could always leave. It is my thought that if you stay, you will become part of this prophecy. Your destiny will be twisted to serve its will, as Jude's was in the end. Remember your name. Fleas are meant to jump. Do not stay here. You will be crushed. Leap away while you have the choice. We are heading for the desert and you could come with us for a while, or you could go to Bethany and on from there.”

Bethany. Tesha had mentioned Bethany too that morning. Now, like then, it produced an echo in his mind—an echo that had a slightly broken ring. Flea shook his head.

“I can't,” he said. “I have to stay here.”

“You'll not live another day, even with your disguise.”

“It's not just me. My gang's in prison because of what I did.”

“Because of the Romans. Do not blame yourself for every bad thing in the world.”

“Because of me. Because of the Romans. It doesn't matter. I've got to try to help them. I'm not being good. I just know that if I leave them, I won't stop thinking of them and then I won't be happy.”

“A word of advice: you will stop thinking of them. In a couple of years you can marry a girl and with that money you can buy enough land to keep a family.”

Flea looked at him with such disgust that the Wild Man laughed.

“You'll see,” he went on. “At least come to the camp. There will be girls there who will be only too happy to wear your dress and you can exchange it for something more … Flea-like. One last thing: the magician's followers. Jude said that they would be hiding for three days in the Dead Streets. He seemed to think that was funny.”

“Then what?”

Another shrug. “My people and I will be away from here, safe in the desert where the air is clean and this madness does not reach. I cannot say what you will do, because I am not a prophet. I will not bind you with words. I will feed you, you and that girl who does not behave as a girl should, and then tomorrow, when you are properly rested, you can find your destiny yourself.”

 

TWO DAYS AFTER

 

49

Side by side,
Flea and Tesha peered through the branches of a small bush and looked out into the Dead Streets. Two nights of proper sleep and a day of proper food and Flea felt well again, though different. At the Wild People's camp the women had taken Tesha off and wailed when they saw she had no gold, but they painted patterns on her hands with henna and lined her eyes with dark pencil. Flea had to admit the eyes suited her.

They were hiding by a dry pool that lay at the junction of three roads. Steps cut into the side of the pool led down into its shadowed depths, where a mangy dog was stretched out on its side. It raised its head and coughed out a bark before lying back down. On the steps a sleepy lizard was trying to warm up in the weak sunshine, and above them a crow flapped slowly across the sky.

The Dead Streets looked peaceful. You could hear the city roaring but the sound was cut off and distant. You could see the Temple sitting on its hill like a heavy white crown, but you couldn't feel it. The streets had their own air—Flea did not know how else to put it—and they did something to the pit of his stomach that wasn't just fear.

Tesha tugged his arm and pointed. Two streets away a thin column of black smoke was twisting in the still air.

Good. She'd been sulking since they left the black tents of the Wild People's camp. She didn't see why they couldn't go with them. It wasn't the money. She just did not want to risk stoning, disemboweling, or hanging for being Flea's accomplice.

“Then let me go alone,” he had suggested, but she had not wanted to do that either.

“It's them,” he said. “And I have to find out if they killed Jude. I owe him that.”

“He paid you to get away.”

“I know, but I can't leave it.”

“Suppose—suppose he killed himself.”

Flea shook his head. “I don't believe it. I want to know what he found out. I want to know why he changed his mind about escaping. The Wild Man said the prophecy had crushed Jude. Well, as far as I can see, the people who believed in the prophecy most of all were the rest of Yesh's followers. If they killed Jude, they can't get away with it.”

“And you can do something about it? You?” Tesha sneered.

But Flea did not rise to the bait. “I don't know what. Just something. Anyway, as soon as we find them, you're going to hide. If we don't meet up this evening, you'll go to the Temple and tell them where the followers are hiding. I'll make sure they know that. They'll tell me what's going on and won't dare kill me. It'll work. Trust me.”

“Oh, great. And the Temple Police will listen to me, because they're so kind to beggar girls.”

“You won't look like a beggar. You've got the dress now. You'll look like a normal girl.” Flea had turned down the Wild Man's suggestion of bartering the dress in the camp. He had simply swapped it with Tesha's old tunic.

“Thank you very much,” Tesha said. “I still think you're an idiot for not getting away.”

“Then what does that make you for coming with me?”

Tesha unexpectedly burst into tears and Flea, just as unexpectedly, felt sorry. But when he tried to tell her, she bit him on the arm. He supposed it was his own fault for teaming up with a girl.

Lizards flickered into nothing as they moved deeper into the Dead Streets. Tiles crunched under their feet. Tiny blue flowers, growing from cracks in the buildings, mirrored the sky. When Flea looked into one of the empty houses he stopped dead.