by Jamie Buxton
“Only Jude was there when the Imps got him. The others must’ve run away when they heard the soldiers,” Flea told her.
She gave him a sharp look. “You were there?”
“I’m a friend of Jude. We were trying to stop this.”
“And where is Jude? He said we were all going to meet up! He promised us. We thought we’d be eating with Yesh tonight. It’s the Great Feast. Families should be together.”
“You’re his family?”
“This is his mother. Matta and I … we’re friends.” She nodded to the woman with the weather-beaten face.
The crosses were so low and Mari was so tall that her head was on the same level as Yesh’s. His head was down on his chest and the circlet of thorns had slipped down across one eye, but the other was open. Flea could not imagine anybody suffering that damage and living. He couldn’t imagine anybody suffering that much damage at all.
Matta reached out a hand to stroke Yesh’s cheek, but jerked it back as the guard shouted a warning.
The guard marched over, grabbed Yesh’s cheeks to force his mouth open, and peered inside. “I said, no touching. You’d be surprised what people do—try and slip ’em all kinds of poison. Mind you, this one won’t last long and, between you and me, we’ve been told to finish ’em off early today so the … er, correct procedures can be undertaken before your holy day.”
“Correct procedures?” Mari asked.
“Burial and suchlike before your rest day. It’s a respect thing.”
“You call this respect?” Mari’s voice would have frozen Temple oil.
The guard pursed his lips. “Look, lady, I don’t know what it’s called. I just follow orders, and I know that we have to tiptoe around your people’s rules at the present time to avoid so much as a whiff of trouble. I thought it was doing you a favor, but if you don’t appreciate it, well, that’s as much as I’ve come to expect.”
He sniffed and stumped off. Mari clasped her head, and it looked to Flea like she was screaming silently until she managed to force out the words, “How could they? How could they? We don’t even know where to bury him. How did it end like this? He was going to shine for all of us. He was our hope.”
Flea looked at her ravaged face and suddenly two thoughts fitted together like two hands meeting.
“He thinks his death is your hope.” The simple words seemed to burn away the puzzlement and confusion of the night before so that more of a new truth was revealed. No, not new. It had always been there, it was just that Flea had not been able to see it. “It wasn’t just that he wanted to die. He thought—”
“What? He wanted to die?” Mari looked at Flea as if he had slapped her.
“He set it all up. I even know where his tomb is. It was all arranged. Every detail.”
And now that the fog of confusion had been burned away, the truth had shape. It was all so clear that Flea could walk around it, see it, feel its shape and horror.
“Arranged?” Mari said again.
Flea spoke slowly. “Yesh wants to change the world. He thinks he needs to die to make that happen, but we’ve got to stop it. The Romans know what’s going on. They think they can borrow his power … I don’t know how but I just know they want a bit of it. He can’t die. He mustn’t die!”
“Are you insane?” Mari said. “Of course he mustn’t die.”
“No, no! He wants to die and the Romans want him to die and his followers want him to die but he mustn’t, because if he does—”
“Quiet!” The cry came from Matta. “He’s trying to talk! The Master is talking!”
They crowded round the cross, hands behind their backs so the guard could not object. Yesh had managed to lift his head. His eyes, black and soft as plums, moved from side to side until they came to rest on Flea. His lips moved. “Find Jude. Tell him I’m … sorry. Tell the others they must forgive him. He was … part of the story.”
Memories from the night before, sharp and dark and bitter, suddenly rushed into Flea’s mind and he was overcome with rage. “He was right!” he shouted. “Don’t you understand? He was right and you were wrong! I wish I hadn’t met you. I wish you’d left us alone because things weren’t great then, but they weren’t as bad as this!”
Yeshua’s back arched as if he were trying to tear himself off the cross but all he did was open the wounds in his wrists and ankles. Blood began to drip and his head collapsed back onto his chest.
Then Flea felt his anger leave as suddenly as it had arrived. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean … Please don’t die. Please, don’t use your power to change anything. Use it to live. Cure yourself. I’m begging you. Please.” He got his fingers around the square head of the nail that pierced Yesh’s ankles and tried to pull it free.
“Oi. Get away from that prisoner!” The guard grabbed a short stabbing spear and waddled toward them. “It’s time, anyway.”
“Please. Please,” Flea begged Yeshua. “You don’t understand. You don’t see.” He felt tearful and hated it, because now more than ever he needed to explain, but his throat felt blocked and his eyes felt blind. Hands took him and held him.
“Oh, child,” Mari said. Flea struggled but was held against the softness of her breasts. She smelled of musk and cinnamon. “Hush,” she said. “Hush. Hush. Don’t look. Don’t listen. He’s killing the others. We’ll get through it.”
He heard the sob start inside her and was happy to give up and count down the seconds in the drumming of her heart. If the end of the world was coming, perhaps it was better if the others did not know. Yes, that was it. No one would know up here, at the center of all things, what was going to happen, and that was right and proper. He would die with the truth.
Flea heard the guard say, “’Scuse us, ladies. It’s a kindness, really. Oh, as you were, this one’s gone. Yup. He’s dead. Nice timing.”
Flea closed his eyes and waited for the world to end. And waited.
And waited. And waited.
Until the truth dawned.
He pushed himself away and looked around.
“We’re still here!” he shouted. “The wind’s still blowing. The ground…” He jumped up and down. “It’s still here.” He pinched his cheek, he slapped his leg, he wheeled his arms until his hands got pins and needles, and he jumped up and down a few more times.
“Child. Child!”
If Matta hadn’t grabbed him he would have floated away. Flea felt more alive than he had ever felt before, and life was weightless. Life was like the wind. Life was like wings. “The old man was wrong. He said if Yesh died the world would end, but he was wrong. The world hasn’t ended! He’s dead! Yesh is dead but we’re still alive!”
Matta slapped him. “Stop it, child. Stop it!”
“But…”
She shook him and he saw where he was.
“Child, child. Come back to us.”
Flea saw the dead people. He saw the living. Something tore inside him. The world was gray again.
“I thought…” he began.
“Don’t think. You think too much. Don’t talk. You talk too much. Don’t move, either. I don’t know what you saw last night but it’s turned your mind. There is blood on your face and I don’t think it’s yours.”
Flea felt his skin. The flecks of blood and dried flesh were rough. When Yesh was being whipped … He rubbed them away and shook his head. He thought the tears in Matta’s eyes might even be for him. These were nice people. If you cried, they got sad.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I think I must be a bit mad.”
“Child, you have to stop running. What were you talking about? What was all this about the world ending?”
“It was the prophecy,” Flea said. “Yesh thought he was the Chosen One and the Chosen One had to die. Then when he died, the world would end. But it didn’t, did it? So does that make everything all right?”
42
Feast Day Rules or not, the women were bargaining with a man who might be willing to carry Yesh�
��s body off the hill. Flea felt there was no need to find Jude just now; now that the world was not ending, he felt he had all the time in it. He was also sure the skinny girl would have passed the message on to Jude, so he could wait, couldn’t he?
And he couldn’t bring himself to go into the city. Now that he was outside it and looking in, the place seemed terrifying. The houses were piled high behind the walls like a heap of skulls, their black windows empty eyes. He remembered the mob that had chased him and Crouch. He thought of the Temple Police. He thought of the other gangs, his own gang … what was there for him? He didn’t see how he could go back.
To delay his return, and rather hoping the women might decide to adopt him, he showed them the tomb that Shim had visited. He sat on the cliffs above it close to the place where the Results Man had netted him, while they argued with the caretaker, who seemed reluctant to let them open it. The sky grew even darker. The city glowed from countless fires as families gathered for the evening’s feast. Flea could smell the smoke. Last year he had gorged himself on Passover leftovers until he thought his guts would burst. He’d even found wine and that had been good too. This year couldn’t have been more different. Matta had brought food—hard bread, soft cheese, onions—but neither she nor Mari wanted any and gave it to Flea.
Flea did not know how he felt. It was as if watching Yesh being broken had pulled his own body apart. His hands were not quite connected to his arms and his arms not quite connected to his shoulders. The bread and cheese sat in his stomach like groceries in a bag.
Then the women started mourning in earnest, and for some reason that was more than Flea could bear. He followed a track that led around the city walls to the north, passing the Black Valley Bridge on his left. His feet pushed through the dry palm branches that had waved so happily when Yesh rode into the city on his donkey, and the dry rustling followed him like a ghost. He whipped around. Had a shadow flitted into the deeper shade where the crossing places opened out?
“Who’s there?”
No one and no thing. The only movement was the clouds and the only sound was the river.
An echo, then. Just an echo. No wonder he was jumpy.
Up against the city walls Flea began to feel better. The wind was doing something useful by tearing the clouds to shreds so that he could see by the light of the moon.
Low in the sky as it filled with light, it was a couple of days from full. When Flea looked up and saw how it seemed that the walls were toppling, he just smiled to himself because he knew they weren’t. They were safe, solid, and real; he could rub his hand across the stone and feel its comforting roughness. And wait a minute, if he followed them round to the left, in no time at all he would be at the tree by the city dump where Jude was waiting for him.
He laughed when he stubbed his toe and he laughed when he scratched himself on a thorn bush and again when he saw the dark figure under the tree. Jude was there, as he had promised!
Flea’s heart lifted and he punched the air in triumph. He’d made it!
The tree leaned over the valley, roots wedged under the walls, branches fingering the air. Jude standing under the tree, very still and upright.
Flea only just managed to stop himself from calling out. His heart began to thump nervously. First thing, grovel. Second thing, explain. Third thing, do whatever Jude said and stick to it this time.
Almost there now. Close enough to hiss, “Jude?”
Jude didn’t answer. He just turned toward Flea slowly, then turned away again, his head tilted to one side rather quizzically.
Flea raised his voice a little. “Jude? Jude?”
Still no answer. But when had an adult ever given him an answer to anything? When had anyone?
An owl called, another answered it, the wind panted hard, and Flea watched Jude turn again. Toward him and away. Toward him and away. A horrid, easy, smooth motion.
The tree hung over a void. Could Jude be floating? Was this another of his brilliant tricks?
Flea forced himself to move close, then closer still, and as he did so horror bunched in his throat. He saw the rope, and then he saw the kink in Jude’s neck.
Jude was hanging, not floating. And not waiting for him.
Dead.
43
The world rushed away from Flea without getting smaller, then knocked him over as it rushed back. His face hit the earth. It crinkled between his teeth. He was dismantled by this final, ghastly blow.
For a while he lay still. He felt he was floating in a world of nothingness. Nothingness that reached into his body and mind, that curled nothing tendrils around every bit of him until there was nothing inside him, nothing outside him. He was not dust. He was the nothing between the motes of dust.
After a while he pushed himself up and forced himself to look properly. Jude continued his patient revolutions, turning his face toward him and away. Flea came back to the world. Shock gave way to sickness, sickness to rasping grief, grief to a sudden, surprising swoop of anger.
Who had done this? Who could have done it now, when it was all meant to be over?
Flea became aware of voices and the crunch of feet on gravel. He stood and looked for a place to hide, because the last thing he wanted was to be found by anyone here. He knew what it would mean. First the questions. So what’s a brat like you doing next to a dead body? Outside the walls when the city’s on lockdown—what are you playing at? Want us to turn you in? Do you? Do you? Then the roughing up …
His feet loosened a rock that went crashing down the valley side. A voice called out, and then Flea was running, because that’s what he always did. And not thinking, ditto.
He jumped a bush, nearly fell where the path kinked round a boulder, and saw the steaming mound of the city dump blocking his way, too steep and too soft to climb. If he couldn’t go up …
He skidded downward, bounced onto a goat track, and doubled back toward the bridge. More shouts from above. He chucked a rock far down into the valley, hoping to misdirect them. When the big, dark silhouette of the Temple sewer pipe jutted out in front of him, he stopped. The mouth was protected by iron bars but he thought he could wriggle through.
What stopped him was the thought of rats.
Behind him he heard the pursuit catching up. They’d kill him like they killed Jude, and anything was better than that. Even rats. The black mouth of the pipe gaped and dribbled blood, runoff from the Temple’s killing floor. He threw another rock down the side of the valley, gripped the bars, and wriggled in.
Wriggling was an art. If you could get one arm and your head through a gap, the rest generally followed. Flea found the bars widened at the bottom, which meant sliding through the foul-smelling liquid, but he managed to scrape himself into the pipe. The harder it was for him, the harder it would be for anyone following.
Farther back, in the blackness, he heard a dry scrabbling. Rats. Rats?
He closed his eyes and crawled forward, his back just touching the top of the pipe and one arm waving in front of his face. After crawling only a couple of arm’s lengths in, he reached the end.
Not far enough! And now he could hear the pursuit—they’d found the goat track and were questing along it, calling out as they walked.
Wait. Suppose there was a bend in the pipe? Flea rolled onto his back and felt above him. Space! Was there enough to stand? His eyelids retreated into their sockets; each pupil banged up against its rim. Above his head was utter blackness.
Men were at the pipe mouth now, rattling the bars. “Pass me that spear,” he heard one of them say.
Flea stood. The sides of the pipe were vertical and slippery. He felt higher and higher. He just needed something to hold on to: a gap in the stonework, anything. And there was a ledge! He hauled himself up on trembling arms, managed to hook his elbows over it, and swung his legs up out of the way. The spear tip knocked sparks off the stone below him.
“Anything?” The voice echoed up the pipe again.
More jabs. Then, “Nah. Little s
od must’ve gone down the valley.”
“Told you I heard a noise.”
“Leave it…”
Grumbling, the men moved off.
Flea held his breath so he could hear the men walk away, then exhaled very, very gently. The sweat cooled on his skin. Just as he was about to move, he heard a man suppress a cough. They’d left one behind to trick him. He hung on. His shoulders and neck started to cramp. His arms began to shake. He gritted his teeth. A little longer, a little longer …
“Oi! Wait up!” The call came from outside the pipe. He heard the last man move off and at last he could relax.
He almost lost it as small, cold fingers wrapped themselves in his hair.
44
Flea’s cry was smothered by another hand clamping down across his mouth. He heard a hissing in his ear and froze.
“Quiet. It’s me.”
He recognized the skinny girl’s voice.
“I’ll help you up.”
The hands moved from his mouth and hair to under his arms. With their assistance he struggled up onto another ledge. In his ear: “Don’t talk.”
Flea curled up and shivered. He couldn’t talk anyway. He clamped his jaw to stop his teeth from chattering, but the shudders moved down his body. He wasn’t cold, at least not in any normal way. It was the memories. Jude hanging. Yesh dying. The spike in his ear, his eye. The memories danced in his head like the mad, murderous Ranting Dunker in the Dead Streets. Flea wasn’t scared of the future. He was scared by what had come and gone.
“We have to leave.”
“N-n-n-n-no.”
“If you stay, you’ll drown. They sluice out the Temple sewers first thing. This is where it all comes out in a huge gush. You don’t want to be here. Trust me.”
Flea tried to uncurl but couldn’t. As an option, drowning was fine.
“I’m going. I’ll leave you.”
Flea stayed still.
“Of course, there are rats. Big ones that live off all the blood and guts that get washed off the Temple’s killing floor.”
