The Book of Feasts & Seasons (21 page)

At this, the other men hanging to the left and right now stirred and began crying out, some in tongues I did not understand, others in Greek and Latin.

But I understood them. They were crying for water.

I remembered reading somewhere that starving men lose their sensation of hunger after a while, but men dying of thirst merely get more and more thirsty as they die.

The mummified man I had thought was dead now stirred to life and called out to the soldier in Latin, “Break my legs, break my legs! Die! Let me die! The land of shadows!”

They were calling out to the soldier, their tormentor, for water or for a merciful death, not to me.

The soldier was now close enough to prod me with the butt of his spear, which was a lump of lead the size of a child’s fist. “Is your head in the air? No gathering blood, necromancer! We don’t want your black magic. You barbarians are civilized now!”

Necromancer? He could not even imagine I was looking for a way to help the dying man.

I said to the soldier, “I am a stranger here, and have lost my way–”

He wasn't interested. He stepped close to me, so close that I could smell the fish and alcohol on his breath, and backhanded me across the face hard enough to knock me down.

My Latin classes had not encompassed First Century cursing, so there was a lot in what he said that I did not follow. But I got the gist. “Is this the way you talk to your betters? I march under the arms of Rome, cur. My children will be citizens. Don’t lift your eyes to me!”

I started crawling backward, inching toward the time machine, but he stepped forward and stepped down with the iron sole of his marching sandal upon my hand, driving it into the warm, bloodstained stones of the execution ground, pinning me in place.

“I did not give you leave to go!”

“I lost my way, sir,” I pleaded, gasping with the unexpected pain.

Only now did he seem to take in my untimely clothing. “I’ll say. What are you? A Saxon? A Scythian?” He peered suspiciously at the machine. “Your cart seems to have lost its wheels.”

I did not raise my eyes to him, not wanted to be beaten again, and reviled myself for my cowardice.

“Robbers,” I said, “They took my horse, too.” It is hard to know a man’s mood if you are afraid to look him in the face. That makes it risky to lie, because you cannot gauge his reactions.

“Horse?”

“Donkey,” I corrected. Horses were creatures of war, not used for other purposes. I was in a time before the invention of the horse collar. The plough-horse was a thing of the future. Slaves ploughed the fields.

“Why didn’t they take your–what is this?” He was no longer stepping on my hand, but had strolled over to the machine. “This big copper disk?”

“It is for astrology. To read the stars.”

“Ah? You tell fortunes?” He raised his voice and called out to the other soldier. “Hoy! Cratus! Come find out if your wife is whoring around on you! We have a soothsayer here!” The other soldier grunted a word I did not know, probably another swearword.

“If I may be permitted, sir,” I said, “I can show you the secret. May I rise?”

He was curious, and waved me over to the machine, and he did not stop me as I slowly seated myself on the saddle. I had never opened the double throw switch, so I need only tap the handle once, clicking the second wheel over, and this put ten days between us.

This time, it was raining, and there were still crosses along the roadside, but no one was occupying them. My landing startled a pack of dogs snuffling hopefully at the foot of one and they ran off yelping.

The time machine did not have an umbrella or hood, and I wondered how well the works would stand up to being rained on. I squinted at the dials, and added up days by the tens and hundreds, and arrived at a figure. I was sure I had made a mistake, and then checked it again.

I had not arrived in 33 AD, the date I expected the memento of the crucifix to land me. I am not sure if I had counted correctly, or added leap-year days correctly, or remembered the date when the Julian calendar switched to the Gregorian. I had landed in 3 or 4 BC–the nativity.

I could see, despite the rain, that the country around here was pockmarked with small caves. I picked the nearest one, and began hauling the machine toward it on its skids, seeking a place to hide it. After about an hour of sloshing through the rain, and, later sweating in the sun after the end of the brief shower, I had a bright idea. I walked to the cave, looked around, picked up a small chip of rock, walked back to the machine, sat on it, held the rock to the cylinder axis, and tapped the lever lightly.

The world blinked, and I was in the cave. I returned the wheels to their original setting, worked the lever again, and poked my head carefully out of the cave, and heard myself talking to the soldier a hundred yards or so away. I pulled some dry bushes in front of the cave mouth, and walked parallel to the road for some time, afraid being seen by any soldiers, and horrified by the nightmarish line of crucified victims dying in the sun.

Eventually, I passed the last occupied cross. Not many minutes’ walk after that, I came across a line of people walking the road, some driving laden donkeys. They were not dressed as colorfully as one might expect from a Hollywood costume drama, and no one there even came up to my shoulder height. I am not sure how odd my clothing looked, in dark trousers and a white shirt (I had removed my coat and tie, leaving them in with the cave with the machine), but no one gave me any close looks as I started walking alongside them.

I tried once or twice to start a conversation with my fellow wayfarers, first in Latin, then in Greek. No women would talk to me at all, as each pulled their shawls in front of their faces and turned away. The men flinched, and mumbled something apologetic in tone, and cast their eyes down, and would not answer more than that.

Something in the foot-weary way they shuffled, the way they kept their eyes down, reminded me of photos I seen in various war torn times and places. These people looked like refugees.

At one point, we all walked past something that looked something an energetic troop of Boy Scouts had made: tall poles lashed together with line, with a small platform topmost. I almost did not recognize it as a watchtower, until I saw the eagle on a pole above it: the all-conquering eagle of Rome.

At the foot of the watchtower, two soldiers were beating a man and taking his donkey, which was a young, healthy animal. They threw his bundle off its back into the dirt, and drove him back with blows from the butts of their lances. They led the young donkey away, laughing at their good fortune, to a paddock that had that same Boy Scout precision lashed-together-expertly look as the watchtower.

I should mention the clothing and gear of the Romans was handmade, like that of the natives, but it looked as if it were handmade by better, more competent hands. It made them look like a superior race of beings, and that superiority showed in their voices and postures and the light in their eyes. It was the immense confidence, no, the pride that comes from knowing you can trample another man’s face, and tell him to kiss the sole of your boot. And knowing that he would.

Not refugees. I did not recognize what was I was seeing because, well, frankly, no one has ever occupied Kansas City, or hung rebels up on trees by the roadside to die slowly in the sun with spikes through their forearms and thighs.

They were a conquered people.

All the hope had been beaten out of them. The conquerors methodically killed anyone who caused them trouble, anyone who showed too much leadership, too much initiative. They killed the hopeful ones.

A trio of small raggedy children now darted out of the crowd of the road, and made as if to snatch the bundles and fallen belongings of the beaten man. His head was bloody, and maybe he was dazed, because he did nothing to stop them. I ran forward, shouting, slapped the biggest child, the pack leader, across the back of his head hard enough to make him drop his loot—it was a crudely woven cloak or bedroll, nothing more—and the other urchins screamed like birds and fled. I put the bedroll back with the pile. The pile was more than one man could carry, which was why he had been using a donkey.

He stood there looking at me with big eyes. I saw the look in his face, the empty, wary look. He was expecting me to pick up some choice possession and make off with it. He thought I was a lion beating off jackals, not someone trying to save the deer.

Instead I passed him my handkerchief. I motioned to his head. I pantomimed daubing the wound.

He said something, in a dull, dazed tone.

I said, “Do you speak Greek?” I actually used the word
koine
which I remembered was the word for common Attic.

In the same tongue, he whispered, “Beware. They watch.”

It was true. The Roman soldiers were looking at me with flat, cold-eyed stares. They probably did not like my height, and my straw-colored hair. It is not my fault I was raised in Kansas. We have to be tall enough to see over the cornrows.

“Let’s get back with the others,” I said. “I’ll help carry the load.”

He looked a little stunned. Maybe he was just surprised, or perhaps he was literally stunned from the blow to his head. He tied the bundles together neatly and quickly with a rope, and I took the larger of the two and slung it across my shoulder.

We stepped back on the road, and the people near us quickened the pace, or slowed, to give us a wide berth.

“What’s the matter?” I said. “Why didn’t anyone else give you a hand?”

He looked confused. “Hand?”

Idioms don’t translate that well. “Help. Aid.”

He grunted philosophically. “They are Sons of Israel, whose false temple is Jerusalem. The true temple was at Gerizim. It was destroyed by Yohanan Girhan called Hyrcanus a hundred winters ago, and now the Holy One wanders the Earth without a home.”

Now it was my turn to look confused. This did not refer to anything I knew from history books or Bible stories. “What, ah, is your kindred?” I used the word
genus
, which is vaguer, and could mean anything from race to nation to species.

“Ah! I am the son of Sahir, of the sons of Pincus, of the line of Issachar. And how should this servant address his master?”

I was not used to Middle Eastern exaggerations of politeness, so it took me a moment to realize he was asking my name.

“Jonathon, son of Jacob,” I said. It seemed odd to me that, though I was born in a hemisphere not discovered yet, three millennia away, my name and the name of my father sounded normal here. “At your service, sir.” I finished, and realized that his form of courtesy was not so alien after all.

We shook hands. Or rather, when I extended my hand, he wrapped his fingers around my wrist, which was almost the same.

“Why do you walk the road?” He asked.

“I am lost.”

“You must be very lost,” he said wryly.

“I am seeking Bethlehem of Judea,” I said.

“You mean ‘Bethlehem’?” My ear could detect no difference of pronunciation, but it seemed I said it wrongly. “It is but a short walk hence. This is the road. Where are you from?” He was looking at my blond hair.

“I am from the farthest north.”

“I have heard of your land! No wonder your hands are softer than a woman’s. It is so peaceful there, so unwarlike, that men kill themselves out of boredom, merely to idle away the time! Yes? I thought Farthestnorth just a story.” He had heard me as if I had said Farthest North as one word, which in his tongue was
Hyperborea
.

I grunted, thinking of deaths from drunk drivers and drug overdoses and heart disease caused by obesity. Indirectly, these were all forms of suicide by self-indulgence, which was another word for boredom. “Do you know, there could be some truth to that story.”

“I am northern too, but not so far as Hyperborea. That is why the sons of Israel were pleased to see the Romans fall on me. They walk apart from us, so that any watching Romans know we are easy prey.”

“That is cowardly,” I said. But anger was mingled with pity when I said it. I was from a nation that had never been conquered, dropped down in the middle of a land that had been conquered by practically everyone.

Ben Sahir assumed a wry, philosophical expression. “If it lets them move along the roads without being robbed, who can say a dark word of them? We treat these Jewish swine the same when they are in Shomron.”

Now I understood. “You are a Samaritan! Are you good?”

“Ah. None is good save God alone. When the Romans savage the sons of Israel who walk our roads, we stand aside and look on. Better them than us. And what else can we do? When you fight the Romans, these trees grow fruit.” He nodded at a group of bloodstained and offal-stained crosses topping the rise by the roadside ahead. There were ten crosses together, empty at the moment. But the number of crows hovering in the air, and strutting proudly along the ground, fearless of man, was ominous.

“Men should not treat each other so,” I said.

“As for that, it will be the way the world is until the he comes, the Christ.”

That last almost made me stumble. “What do you know of the Christ?”

He rolled his eyes. “Is that not the word in Greek? We call him
Messiah
.”

“That is the word. What do they say of him?”

“Those who count the generations say the world enters a new age soon.”

“What does that mean? Count the generations?”

“Count the years to the new age. From Father Abraham to David the King fourteen generations, and from King David to the Babylonian Exile fourteen, and it has been fourteen generations since then, so as history waxes and wanes like the moon, the time of waxing is nigh, and the Messiah will be born. He will smite the Romans and the heretical Southerners, and rebuild the one true Temple at Gerizim. The greatest conqueror of all time!” Ben Sahir shrugged. “Of course, those who count the generations also said the Messiah was due three generations ago, but then others said we should omit Ochoziah, Joas, and Amasiah from the king lists, because of their wickedness, and that God adds another generation of waiting for every evil generation. You know how astrologers argue. We wait, and they give a date, and it rolls by, and nothing changes, and the Romans hang out more fruit for the crows to eat. I will believe in the Messiah when I see him with these eyes, not before.”