by Jamie Buxton
“What are you staring at?” Flea asked.
“Your face,” she said. “What are you doing with Jude?”
Flea glanced across at Jude, who was haggling in a relaxed, practiced way.
“Helping him.”
“Hah! He must be desperate,” the girl jeered.
“He’s paying me.”
“What? A mite? Two?”
“Half a shekel,” Flea lied.
The girl’s eyes widened and she jumped down off the wall. “Father! Double the price! The rumors are true. It’s the end of the world and Jude’s throwing his money away!”
The two men looked at her and laughed. Then they touched hands and Jude walked off with his head up, not looking to left or right.
Flea had to jog to keep up with him. “How do you know them?” he asked. It wasn’t often he felt superior.
“Unlike you, I have a lot of friends.”
“But they’re not … our people. They’re unclean.”
Jude laughed. “You’re not so clean yourself and, anyway, do you really think you know who you are?”
“Huh?”
“Who are your parents, Flea?”
“I don’t know. Dead, I think.”
“Remember them?” Jude asked coldly.
“No, but…”
“So for all you know, you’re a Wild Boy yourself.”
“I’m not!” Flea said, suddenly hot. “I can’t be.”
A lump blocked his throat. He had a memory that he guarded like a dog guards a bone: a courtyard, a storehouse, towering earthenware jars, a woman who looked at him from a doorway. He knew that once this had been his home and she was his mother, but he didn’t like to think about it too often because the feeling choked him.
Jude pulled Flea around and saw the look on his face. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That was wrong of me. I just meant that it doesn’t matter whether you’re high priest or Wild Boy or child of the streets. What’s in here: that’s what counts.” He thumped his chest.
Flea said nothing.
“What?” Jude asked. “You want me to beg forgiveness? Crawl on my knees? Why are you staring at me like that?”
“Just imagining what you’d look like hacked to bits.”
“How many?”
“Fifty.”
“Ouch. I’m hurt.”
“Good.”
“Cut to the quick.”
“That’s such a lame joke.”
“I’m all in pieces.”
“It was funny at first, now it’s not.” They walked on.
“Anyway,” Flea continued. “What did the Wild Girl mean about the end of the world?”
“Hold your idiot tongue,” Jude said urgently. “Talk like that could get you into trouble. Haven’t you felt the mood in the city?”
“No different from usual.”
“Good god. How are you still alive? Use your eyes,” Jude said. “Look!” He pointed to a corner where a group of men were huddled together talking. One of them put his head up, whispered something urgently, and the group dispersed. Then Flea saw three other men approaching, moving smoothly as if they knew no one could touch them: Temple spies. You could always tell them by the way they walked, as if they owned the city but never stopped looking around.
“And there,” Jude said. More spies were closing in from the other direction.
“And in the middle of all that, Yesh starts a riot in the Temple.”
“You thought that was stupid?”
“Stop asking questions, Flea.”
“Or wrong? Why does it matter?”
“It matters. That’s all you have to know.”
“Oh, I get it,” Flea said. “You want to protect him from danger. Nothing bad about that.”
Jude looked Flea straight in the eye. “Stop. Asking. Questions. And. Do. What. I. Say. This is where you start to earn your keep.”
14
Flea’s job was to stick behind Jude, look unimportant, and check to see if anyone was following him. He was good at not being noticed and was pleased that Jude didn’t spot him when he looked back.
Jude turned off the street of the spice sellers and into a small yard where half a dozen donkeys and two camels with patchy fur were tethered to wall rings. He spoke to the groom, who shrugged and shook his head. Around the corner was another yard, and close to that a couple more. In each one, Jude asked questions but always got the same shrug or shake of the head. Flea noted how Jude’s shoulders slumped each time he was sent on his way.
But what was he doing? There was no sign of haggling, so he wasn’t looking to hire a beast. Rather he seemed to ask a couple of questions, often repeating them before moving on. So he was trying to find something out.
To the west of the sheep pens Jude followed a series of twisting alleyways so narrow the houses almost met above their heads, and the air was as still and thick as a stagnant pond. Flea did not know this part of the city, and he became even more cautious. He watched as Jude squeezed down an alleyway beside a half-ruined warehouse. In front of the sagging doors, traders were selling stale vegetables laid out on the ground. From inside came the sound of hammering. Smoke was belching from a chimney, which probably meant it was some kind of factory.
Cautiously he followed Jude down the alley and peered around the corner into a dank, sunless court that stank of animal dung. At the back of it was a shelter where a stringy brown donkey nosed at an empty manger, and a camel stared haughtily at a wall.
Jude was talking to an old man.
Suddenly the scene on the bridge from the day before flashed into Flea’s mind. That old man was the donkey driver and here, surely, were the two useless beasts that had caused the traffic jam. What were they both doing here, sharing the same stall? Jude was arguing and the old man was shrugging and looking blank, but there was something sly about him. Now Jude was reaching into his purse and pressing coins into the hand of the old man, who shrugged, then said something. Jude seemed to ask for confirmation, then nodded and walked away, a very different expression on his face. Thoughtful, worried, but more determined.
As Flea followed Jude out of the alley, he noticed a man stooping in front of one of the vegetable sellers. The man was pretending to smell the herbs, but his eyes were darting left and right. When Jude turned in his direction, he looked away quickly. No reason to do that, Flea thought, and he hung back.
Jude set off. The man standing at the vegetable stall put down a large green bunch of parsley, straightened up, and ambled off in the same direction. Even though he was tall, he managed to look apologetic and insignificant as he bobbed and weaved through the crowd.
Flea followed them south into the heart of the city, wondering how he could warn Jude without being spotted. When Jude paused at the entrance to the covered market—a warren of narrow streets, roofed over to keep the sun out in summer and the rain out in winter—Flea moved near a large woman whose bags were being carried by an equally large slave.
He pushed closer, then waited while the tall man fiddled with his sandal strap. As soon as Jude plunged into the gloom of the market, the tall man followed and so did Flea.
This is better, Flea thought. He knew the covered market. He’d spent days in here the winter before; sheltering from the cold and the gloom made it easier to steal from the stalls. He liked the smells that enveloped him: the head-rush of spices, the nose-tickle of soap and oil, the wide stink of blood and butchery. A shard of light speared through a hole in the roof and lit up the tall man. Flea could now see him more clearly. Thin lips in a bony, clean-shaven face curled into an empty, tortoise smile. Questioning, arched eyebrows cloaked quick, darting eyes.
Flea squatted by a bucket of skinned sheep’s heads, trying to ignore the naked eyeballs. Maybe he can’t see you, but we can, they seemed to say.
But the man had lost Jude. He swore under his breath and backtracked, stopping right in front of Flea, so close that the hem of his tunic brushed up against Flea’s upturned face. Flea smelled old smo
ke, but, more important, he saw a little pocket sewn into a fold of the garment right in front of his nose.
Destiny! Flea thought. It would be criminal to let an opportunity like this pass.
Flea’s hand dipped into the pocket and felt something small and smooth. He caught it between two fingers and when the man moved away, he just seemed to be left holding it. Palming it, he was about to set off again when two hands clamped down heavily on his shoulders.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Jude hissed in his ear. Flea had no idea where he’d come from.
“That man was following you,” he hissed back.
“The tall one? Where did he pick me up?”
“Just outside the alleyway where you found the old man, the camel, and the donkey.”
Jude’s eyes momentarily widened. “That far away? I only just noticed him. How close did you get to him?”
“Close enough to get this.”
Flea opened his hand to show the thing he had stolen: a small, carved ivory tube, about the size of a man’s middle finger and still pocket-warm.
“Not so clever. He’s going to miss it. Wait a minute: describe him.”
“Wearing gray. Long neck. Looked like a tortoise. Black eyebrows. Smelled of smoke.”
“Did he smile a lot?”
“All the time.”
“Can you get us out of here?” Jude’s voice was suddenly urgent.
“Yes, I know this area.”
“Then do it—and lose that thing you stole, whatever it is.”
Flea nodded and was off. He knew many escape routes out of the market. The one he chose took them between a soap seller and a spice warehouse into a gap so narrow even he had to squeeze sideways. Then there was a wall to climb and a view down into a tiny roofless room where dull-eyed children picked through sacks of dried lentils and didn’t look up.
Flea led Jude across the rooftops, crossing streets where the houses came close enough together to jump the gap and on until the streets widened and the houses were built out from the hillside. They stepped from a roof straight onto a small strip of carefully terraced garden.
Jude checked the sun. “All right,” he said. “This is far enough. Now then, Flea. You and I need to talk.”
15
In the narrow garden was a pomegranate tree that had been pruned so thin that twigs spread like fingers from the thicker arms. Dark rows of earth, freckled with ash, were turned and ready for seeding. But it was cold on the rooftops. Flea hugged himself and wondered where spring was.
“Did you get rid of that thing you stole?” Jude asked.
“Chucked it down a chimney,” Flea lied.
“Good. Here’s the money I owe you.”
Flea didn’t look at it. “Don’t you think I deserve a bonus?”
Now that his time with Jude was coming to an end, he was ambushed by sadness. It had been good to feel useful. It had been better to feel needed. What did the rest of the day hold in store for him? Nothing. He had been thrown out of the Temple Boys. He was alone again.
Jude snorted. “For doing what we agreed? In your dreams.”
“For keeping my mouth shut. That’s what you really want, isn’t it?”
“About what, in heaven’s name?”
“About the man who was following you. About the way you went to every donkey man and camel handler in the city until you found the one that blocked the bridge yesterday. About paying him to tell you something.”
“You…” Jude grabbed Flea by the wrist and pushed him back against the tree, thrusting his face in close. Flea could see every hair of his beard, the spit threaded between his lips, the red starburst of the scar on his cheek. “Do you honestly think that if I strangled you here and now anyone would care? Perhaps that’s why I hired you, because I could use you and then throw you away when I was done.”
Fear stuck Flea with a splinter of cold. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I take it back. I’ll leave you alone.”
Jude gave a cold laugh and dropped him. “On the other hand, I chose you because I thought you were clever … and I was right.” Flea looked away over the flat rooftops, eyes narrowed and a muscle pulsing at the back of his jaw. He massaged his wrist and waited for as long as he could manage. “So?” he asked.
“All right. I won’t pay you a bonus but I will pay you for more work. Lucky that you’re working for me—Yesh would just say there are riches waiting for you in heaven. Ground rules first. One: Fleas should learn not to bite the hand that feeds them. Two: Fleas shouldn’t bite off more than they can chew. Three: Clever fleas jump away from trouble, not into it. Got that?”
Flea protested. “I can’t help seeing what I saw. It’s far better you explain so I don’t get it all wrong. Please.”
“Please. He actually said ‘please.’ That’s more like it.” Jude chewed his inside cheek. “Well, if I tell you just enough to keep you out of danger, it might help. I think the man following us was Roman. He’s not … he’s not a man you want to be interested in you.”
“Who is he then?”
“If he’s the man I think, his name crawled away and died of shame a long time ago. He’s got the governor’s ear, the Roman prefect himself—and he’s ambitious. It doesn’t help that the governor’s more or less given up governing, so he’ll listen to anyone with a strong opinion. And this man has a simple idea: If people don’t do what you want, hurt them until they do.”
“So he’s powerful?”
“He’s effective. Like a knife. Some people say he was once one of us. Some people say he was Idumaean, like Herod the Great. Or a Samaritan. Or a … Well, it doesn’t matter because he’s a Roman now, and that, my friend, is the power of Rome. Anyone who thinks like a Roman, is a Roman. But I don’t understand why he was following me. And that’s a worry.”
“Maybe he made a mistake,” said Flea.
“He doesn’t make mistakes.”
“So maybe it was something to do with the donkey and the camel blocking the bridge.”
“I told you to forget that.” Jude looked away.
But Flea knew he was onto something. “I can’t. You can twist my arm all you like but you can’t make it go away. It doesn’t make sense. I’ll just think and think about it and probably think wrong. There was a traffic jam on the bridge. It was caused by a camel and a donkey. The magician sorted it out, then rode the donkey into the city and everyone went mad. Then you found the owner of the donkey, and the camel was there too. You gave him money…”
“Flea! Back off!”
“Saying ‘back off’ doesn’t work with me. You told me to follow you, so I followed you. If you’d said, ‘Watch out for anyone who’s interested in me but keep away from them,’ I’d have been more careful.”
Jude rolled his eyes upward. “I didn’t know he was following me,” he said between gritted teeth.
“Exactly. You can’t possibly know everything that’s going to happen, so you might as well tell me everything.”
Jude raised his arms and looked at the sky. “What sort of creature have I hired? All right. All right. But if I’m going to hire you again, it will be for your low cunning and sneakiness, not for your endless questions. Is that clear?”
“You’re hiring me?” Flea felt a smile creep across his face.
“One more day.”
Flea had to stop himself from punching the air. He folded his arms and leaned back against the terrace wall like this sort of thing happened all the time, like he was taking it all in stride. “So, you were about to tell me about the old man, the camel, and the donkey.”
“It was part of a plan,” Jude said, after thinking for a moment. “It was part of a plan cooked up by Yesh and all the other followers. The trouble is, they didn’t tell me. That’s why I needed to find out about it.”
“Let me get this right,” Flea said slowly. “The others, Yeshua and the others, wanted there to be a big snarl-up on the bridge.”
“Correct.”
“And they wanted Ye
sh to sort it out?”
“They wanted to be certain there would be a crowd and, above all, they wanted a donkey.”
“But there are donkeys everywhere.”
“There had to be a donkey on the bridge and obviously it had to be the right donkey, so the donkey owner didn’t make a fuss. It was all set up. Remember the guy with the water pitcher? I think he was probably the signal that it was all arranged. It meant everything was in place: the camel, the donkey—everything.”
Flea felt dizzy. It was like peering into a pool of water. You saw the surface, but then, suddenly, you could see below the surface, farther and farther down.
“But why?” he said.
“That’s a very short question that has a very long answer. Do you really want to know? Good, so sit down and listen, because I’m going to tell you a story.”
Jude settled down with his back against the pomegranate tree and Flea sat next to him. After a quick look around the little garden to make sure they were alone, Jude began.
“A long time ago when the world was young, me and Yesh used to travel around the villages of Gilgal doing tricks. Doesn’t sound like much, but it was a living and the best time of my life. Sometimes he did the patter and I did the magic, and sometimes it was the other way around, but people paid us wherever we went—maybe with coins if we were in a town, maybe with a meal and a place to bed down if we were in a village. Sometimes we’d wind up in a huddle of huts in the middle of nowhere—howling desert all around and wild dogs and lions. You couldn’t imagine how anyone scratched a living from the rock and sand, but there’d always be a bite or two to eat and a pile of hay to sleep on and the stars up above in the desert sky if you wanted something to look at. We were … I was … happy. I knew it wouldn’t last. Yesh’s father was a carpenter, but Yesh was never going to settle down to that. I just thought if I could keep him moving, keep him living on his wits, he might forget…”
“What?”
“His difference. Yes, that’s the word. I thought he might be busy enough to forget his difference. And then things changed. It all happened so slowly I didn’t even notice, and by the time I did, it was too late.”
