Lamb

by Christopher Moore

  “I’ll be over there looking at the water, Josh,” I said.

  “He’ll probably need some help,” Peter said.

  “Come to me,” Joshua said to the lepers.

  They oozed on over. Joshua put his hands on the lepers and spoke to them very quietly. After a few minutes had passed, while Peter and I had seriously studied a frog that we noticed on the shore, I heard Joshua say, “Now go, and tell the priests that you are no longer unclean and should be allowed in the Temple. And tell them who sent you.”

  The lepers threw off their rags and praised Joshua as they backed away. They looked like perfectly normal people who just happened to be all wrapped up in tattered rags.

  By the time Peter and I got back to Joshua, James and John were already at his side.

  “I have touched those who they said were unclean,” Joshua said to the brothers. By Mosaic Law, Joshua would be unclean as well.

  James stepped forward and grabbed Joshua’s forearm in the style of the Romans. “One of those men used to be our brother.”

  “Come with us,” I said, “and we will make you oarlock makers of men.”

  “What?” said Joshua.

  “That’s what they were doing when we came up. Making an oarlock. Now you see how stupid that sounds?”

  “It’s not the same.”

  And thus we did become nine.

  Philip and Nathaniel returned with enough money from the sale of the camels to feed the disciples and all of Peter’s family as well, so Peter’s screeching mother-in-law, who was named Esther, allowed us to stay, providing Bartholomew and the dogs slept outside. Capernaum became our base of operations and from there we would take one- or two-day trips, swinging through Galilee as Joshua preached and performed healings. The news of the coming of the kingdom spread through Galilee, and after only a few months, crowds began to gather to hear Joshua speak. We tried always to be back in Capernaum on the Sabbath so that Joshua could teach at the synagogue. It was that habit that first attracted the wrong sort of attention.

  A Roman soldier stopped Joshua as he was making the short walk to the synagogue on Sabbath morning. (No Jew was permitted to make a journey of more than a thousand steps from sundown Friday until sundown Saturday—all at once, that is. One way. You didn’t have to add up your steps all day and just stop when you got to a thousand. There would have been Jews standing all over the place waiting for Saturday sundown if that were the case. It would have been awkward. Suddenly I’m thankful that the Pharisees never thought of that.)

  The Roman was no mere legionnaire, but a centurion, with the full crested helmet and eagle on his breastplate of a legion commander. He led a tall white horse that looked as if it had been bred for combat. He was old for a soldier, perhaps sixty, and his hair was completely white when he removed his helmet, but he looked strong and the wasp-waisted short sword at his waist looked dangerous. I didn’t recognize him until he spoke to Joshua, in perfect, unaccented Aramaic.

  “Joshua of Nazareth,” the Roman said. “Do you remember me?”

  “Justus,” Joshua said. “From Sepphoris.”

  “Gaius Justus Gallicus,” said the soldier. “And I’m at Tiberius now, and no longer an under-commander. The Sixth Legion is mine. I need your help, Joshua bar Joseph of Nazareth.”

  “What can I do?” Joshua looked around. All of the disciples except Bartholomew and me had managed to sneak away when the Roman walked up.

  “I saw you make a dead man walk and talk. I’ve heard of the things you’ve done all over Galilee, the healings, the miracles. I have a servant who is sick. Tortured with palsy. He can barely breathe and I can’t watch him suffer. I don’t ask that you break your Sabbath by coming to Tiberius, but I believe you can heal him, even from here.”

  Justus dropped to his knee and kneeled in front of Joshua, something I never saw any Roman do to any Jew, before or since. “This man is my friend,” he said.

  Joshua touched the Roman’s temple and I watched the fear drain out of the soldier’s face as I had so many others.

  “You believe it to be, so be it,” said Joshua. “It’s done. Stand up, Gaius Justus Gallicus.”

  The soldier smiled, then stood and looked Joshua in the eye. “I would have crucified your father to root out the killer of that soldier.”

  “I know,” said Joshua.

  “Thank you,” Justus said.

  The centurion put on his helmet and climbed on his horse. Then looked at me for the first time. “What happened to that pretty little heartbreaker you two were always with?”

  “Broke our hearts,” I said.

  Justus laughed. “Be careful, Joshua of Nazareth,” he said. He reined the horse around and rode away.

  “Go with God,” Joshua said.

  “Good, Josh, that’s the way to show the Romans what’s going to happen to them come the kingdom.”

  “Shut up, Biff.”

  “Oh, so you bluffed him. He’s going to get home and his friend will still be messed up.”

  “Remember what I told you at the gates of Gaspar’s monastery, Biff? That if someone knocked, I’d let them in?”

  “Ack! Parables. I hate parables.”

  Tiberius was only an hour’s fast ride from Capernaum, so by morning word had come back from the garrison: Justus’s servant had been healed. Before we had even finished our breakfast there were four Pharisees outside of Peter’s house looking for Joshua.

  “You performed a healing on the Sabbath?” the oldest of them asked. He was white-bearded and wore his prayer shawl and phylacteries wrapped about his upper arms and forehead. (What a jamoke. Sure, we all had phylacteries, every man got them when he turned thirteen, but you pretended that they were lost after a few weeks, you didn’t wear them. You might as well wear a sign that said: “Hi, I’m a pious geek.” The one he wore on his forehead was a little leather box, about the size of a fist, that held parchments inscribed with prayers and looked—well—as if someone had strapped a little leather box to his head. Need I say more?)

  “Nice phylacteries,” I said.

  The disciples laughed. Nathaniel made an excellent donkey braying noise.

  “You broke the Sabbath,” said the Pharisee.

  “I’m allowed,” said Josh. “I’m the Son of God.”

  “Oh fuck,” Philip said.

  “Way to ease them into the idea, Josh,” I said.

  The following Sabbath a man with a withered hand came to the synagogue while Joshua was preaching and after the sermon, while fifty Pharisees who had gathered at Capernaum just in case something like this happened looked on, Joshua told the man that his sins were forgiven, then healed the withered hand.

  Like vultures to carrion they came to Peter’s house the next morning.

  “No one but God can forgive sins,” said the one they had elected as their speaker.

  “Really,” said Joshua. “So you can’t forgive someone who sins against you?”

  “No one but God.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” said Joshua. “Now unless you are here to hear the good news, go away.” And Joshua went into Peter’s house and closed the door.

  The Pharisee shouted at the door, “You blaspheme, Joshua bar Joseph, you—”

  And I was standing there in front of him, and I know I shouldn’t have done it, but I popped him. Not in the mouth or anything, but right in the phylacteries. The little leather box exploded with the impact and the strips of parchment slowly settled to the ground. I’d hit him so fast that I think he thought it was a supernatural event. A cry went up from the group behind him, protesting—shouting that I couldn’t do such a thing, that I deserved stoning, scourging, et cetera, and my Buddhist tolerance just wore a little thin.

  So I popped him again. In the nose.

  This time he went down. Two of his pals caught him, and another one at the front of the crowd started to reach into his sash for something. I knew that they could quickly overrun me if they wanted to, but I didn’t think they would. The cowar
ds. I grabbed the man who was pulling the knife, twisted it away from him, shoved the iron blade between the stones of Peter’s house and snapped it off, then handed the hilt back to him. “Go away,” I said to him, very softly.

  He went away, and all of his pals went with him. I went inside to see how Joshua and the others were getting along.

  “You know, Josh,” I said. “I think it’s time to expand the ministry. You have a lot of followers here. Maybe we should go to the other side of the lake. Out of Galilee for a while.”

  “Preach to the gentiles?” Nathaniel asked.

  “He’s right,” said Joshua. “Biff is right.”

  “So it shall be written,” I said.

  James and John only owned one ship that was large enough to hold all of us and Bartholomew’s dogs, and it was anchored at Magdala, two hours’ walk south of Capernaum, so we made the trip very early one morning to avoid being stopped in the villages on the way. Joshua had decided to take the good news to the gentiles, so we were going to go across the lake to the town of Gadarene in the state of Decapolis. They kept gentiles there.

  As we waited on the shore at Magdala, a crowd of women who had come to the lake to wash clothes gathered around Joshua and begged him to tell them of the kingdom. I noticed a young tax collector who was sitting nearby at his table in the shade of a reed umbrella. He was listening to Joshua, but I could also see his eyes following the behinds of the women. I sidled over.

  “He’s amazing, isn’t he?” I said.

  “Yes. Amazing,” said the tax collector. He was perhaps twenty, thin, with soft brown hair, a light beard, and light brown eyes.

  “What’s your name, publican?”

  “Matthew,” he said. “Son of Alphaeus.”

  “No kidding, that’s my father’s name too. Look, Matthew, I assume you can read, write, things like that?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “You’re not married, are you?”

  “No, I was betrothed, but before the wedding was to happen, her parents let her marry a rich widower.”

  “Sad. You’re probably heartbroken. That’s sad. You see those women? There’s women like that all the time around Joshua. And here’s the best part, he’s celibate. He doesn’t want any of them. He’s just interested in saving mankind and bringing the kingdom of God to earth, which we all are, of course. But the women, well, I think you can see.”

  “That must be wonderful.”

  “Yeah, it’s swell. We’re going to Decapolis. Why don’t you come with us?”

  “I couldn’t. I’ve been entrusted to collect taxes for this whole coast.”

  “He’s the Messiah, Matthew. The Messiah. Think of it. You, and the Messiah.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Women. The kingdom. You heard about him turning water into wine.”

  “I really have to—”

  “Have you ever tasted bacon, Matthew?”

  “Bacon? Isn’t that from pigs? Unclean?”

  “Joshua’s the Messiah, the Messiah says it’s okay. It’s the best thing you’ve ever eaten, Matthew. Women love it. We eat bacon every morning, with the women. Really.”

  “I’ll need to finish up here,” Matthew said.

  “You do that. Here, I’d like you to mark something for me,” I looked over his shoulder at his ledger and pointed to a few names. “Meet us at the ship when you’re ready, Matthew.”

  I went back over to the shore, where James and John had pulled the ship in close enough for us to wade out to. Joshua finished up blessing the women and sent them back to their laundry with a parable about stains.

  “Gentlemen,” I called. “Excuse me, James, John, you too Peter, Andrew. You will not need to worry about your taxes this season. They’ve been taken care of.”

  “What?” said Peter. “Where did you get the money—”

  I turned and waved toward Matthew, who was running toward the shore. “This good fellow is the publican Matthew. He’s here to join us.”

  Matthew ran up beside me and stood grinning like an idiot while trying to catch his breath. “Hey,” he said, waving weakly to the disciples.

  “Welcome, Matthew,” Joshua said. “All are welcome in the kingdom.” Joshua shook his head, turned, and waded out to the ship.

  “He loves you, kid,” I said. “Loves you.”

  Thus we did become ten.

  Joshua fell asleep on a pile of nets with Peter’s wide straw fishing hat over his face. Before I settled down to be rocked to sleep myself, I sent Philip to the back of the boat to explain the kingdom and the Holy Ghost to Matthew. (I figured that Philip’s acumen with numbers might help out when talking to a tax collector.) The two sets of brothers sailed the ship, which was wide of beam and small of sail and very, very slow. About halfway across the lake I heard Peter say, “I don’t like it. It looks like a tempest.”

  I sat bolt upright and looked at the sky, and indeed, there were black clouds coming over the hills to the east, low and fast, clawing at the trees with lightning as they passed. Before I had a chance to sit up, a wave broke over the shallow gunwale and soaked me to the core.

  “I don’t like this, we should go back,” said Peter, as a curtain of rain whipped across us. “The ship’s too full and the draft too shallow to weather a storm.”

  “Not good. Not good. Not good,” chanted Nathaniel.

  Bartholomew’s dogs barked and howled at the wind. James and Andrew trimmed the sail and put the oars in the water. Peter moved to the stern to help John with the long steering oar. Another wave broke over the gunwale, washing away one of Bartholomew’s disciples, a mangy terrier type.

  Water was mid-shin deep in the bottom of the boat. I grabbed a bucket and began bailing and signaled Philip to help, but he had succumbed to the most rapid case of seasickness I had ever even heard of and was retching over the side.

  Lightning struck the mast, turning everything a phosphorus white. The explosion was instant and left my ears ringing. One of Joshua’s sandals floated by me in the bottom of the boat.

  “We’re doomed!” wailed Bart. “Doomed!”

  Joshua pushed the fishing hat back on his head and looked at the chaos around him. “O ye of little faith,” he said. He waved his hand across the sky and the storm stopped. Just like that. Black clouds were sucked back over the hills, the water settled to a gentle swell, and the sun shone down bright and hot enough to raise steam off our clothes. I reached over the side and snatched the swimming doggy out of the waves.

  Joshua had laid back down with the hat over his face. “Is the new kid looking?” he whispered to me.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “He impressed?”

  “His mouth is hanging open. He looks sort of stricken.”

  “Great. Wake me when we get there.”

  I woke him a little before we reached Gadarene because there was a huge madman waiting for us on the shore, foaming at the mouth, screaming, throwing rocks, and eating the occasional handful of dirt.

  “Hold up there, Peter,” I said. The sails were down again and we were rowing in.

  “I should wake the master,” said Peter.

  “No, it’s okay, I have the stop-for-foaming-madmen authority.” Nevertheless, I kicked the Messiah gently. “Josh, you might want to take a look at this guy.”

  “Look, Peter,” said Andrew, pointing to the madman, “he has hair just like yours.”

  Joshua sat up, pushed back Peter’s hat and glanced to the shore. “Onward,” he said.

  “You sure?” Rocks were starting to land in the boat.

  “Oh yeah,” said Joshua.

  “He’s very large,” said Matthew, clarifying the already clear.

  “And mad,” said Nathaniel, not to be outdone in stating the obvious.

  “He is suffering,” said Joshua. “Onward.”

  A rock as big as my head thudded into the mast and bounced into the water. “I’ll rip your legs off and kick you in the head as you crawl around bleeding to death,” said the madm
an.

  “Sure you don’t want to swim in from here?” Peter said, dodging a rock.

  “Nice refreshing swim after a nap?” said James.

  Matthew stood up in the back of the boat and cleared his throat. “What is one tormented man compared to the calming of a storm? Were you all in the same boat I was?”

  “Onward,” Peter said, and onward we went, the big boat full of Joshua and Matthew and the eight faithless pieces of shit that were the rest of us.

  Joshua was out of the boat as soon as we hit the beach. He walked straight up to the madman, who looked as if he could crush the Messiah’s head in one of his hands. Filthy rags hung in tatters on him and his teeth were broken and bleeding from eating dirt. His face contorted and bubbled as if there were great worms under the skin searching for an escape. His hair was wild and stuck out in a great grayish tangle, and it did sort of look like Peter’s hair.

  “Have mercy on me,” said the madman. His voice buzzed in his throat like a chorus of locusts.

  I slid out of the boat and the others followed me quietly up behind Joshua.

  “What is your name, Demon?” Joshua asked.

  “What would you like it to be?” said the demon.

  “You know, I’ve always been partial to the name Harvey,” Joshua said.

  “Well, isn’t that a coincidence?” said the demon. “My name just happens to be Harvey.”

  “You’re just messing with me, aren’t you?” said Josh.

  “Yeah, I am,” said the demon, busted. “My name is Legion, for there are a bunch of us in here.”

  “Out, Legion,” Joshua commanded. “Out of this big guy.”

  There was a herd of pigs nearby, doing piggy things. (I don’t know what they were doing. I’m a Jew, what do I know from pigs, except that I like bacon?) A great green glow came out of Legion’s mouth, whipped through the air like smoke, then came down on the heard of pigs like a cloud. In a second it was sucked into the pigs’ nostrils and they began foaming and making locust noises.

  “Be gone,” said Joshua. With that the pigs all ran into the sea, sucked huge lungfuls of water, and after only a little kicking, drowned. Perhaps fifty dead pigs bobbed in the swell.