The Stones of My Accusers

by Tracy Groot

  “It’s not true!” Jorah cried. “Orion Galerinius, it is not true!”

  “Explain, Joab.”

  “I won’t explain anything to you,” Joab replied, watching his blood drip. He ran his tongue over his front teeth. He’d lose one or two of them.

  “Why do you question him?” Prometheus demanded incredulously. “I just told you what happened. Do you disbelieve me, Orion?”

  Orion only gave him a considering glance and looked again at Joab. “Tell me exactly what you were doing when Prometheus came upon you,” Orion said.

  “Kissing her,” Joab slurred. His lips were fast growing thick. He lifted his head. The warmth of the blood felt queasy-strange on his numb lips. It dripped off his chin and he went to wipe it—but suddenly it seemed, by the silence around him, that his response was a very wrong one. What had he said? His head still rang from the wall. He went to rise, but Orion planted his foot on his back, pushing him flat.

  “My word was not good enough for you.”

  “Please, Orion Galerinius! It’s not what you think!”

  The men ignored her.

  “No, you had to question him.”

  “Put him in a cell,” Orion said to Marcus, and pulled his foot away.

  “It’s not what you think,” Joab said, though it was useless to protest. Jorah continued to plead with Orion, but Joab said, “Don’t bother, Jorah. He wants this.”

  Marcus came and hauled him up by the neck of his tunic. As he led him away, Joab said over his shoulder, “You think I’m just another Zealot.”

  “He assaults a Roman officer, and you . . .” was the last thing Joab heard from Prometheus before Marcus guided him around a corner.

  The jail cell still smelled of plaster and was quite small. It had only three walls. A rolled pallet stood in one corner and a bucket in the other. It had no windows. The only light came in at the top and bottom of the door. This room was at the very end of the Praetorium; if Joab pressed his ear to the long wall he could hear faint cheering from the Great Stadium. Theron had told him there was a chariot race today.

  Four paces on the door side, five on the stadium side. A tight pivot, and three paces back to the door. The room was the size of a sneeze, so small the pallet went up part of the wall when he unrolled it. That wasn’t the problem, Joab could sleep in a tight place. The bucket was the problem. Its stink would fill the tiny room. He would hold off using it as long as he could.

  He sat against the five-pace wall, knees up. He waited maybe an hour, wondering if Orion would show up to question him or at least let him know his fate. What consequence followed an assault on a Roman officer? With luck, with a great deal of luck, Jorah could set the matter straight. She would explain it to Theron, and Theron would come and demand justice. Orion would listen to him. With luck he would be out of here soon. Maybe Theron was on his way right now. It was nearly sundown—Sabbath. Poor Marina. What would become of her meal? What would she tell her mysterious guests?

  An hour now, at least. It did not look as though Orion would come. So he let out the reins of thought inch by inch.

  That puffy blotched face. Then she was self-mocking, with that grin and the flourish of her hands to display her face like a daisy. He put his head against the wall. Did it matter that his own face felt like a plate of mashed olives? Jorah cried for him. That was enough to think on for the next hour.

  And what of the words that had troubled him since Jerusalem?

  He had debt to Nathanael. He was charged to carry the words of a dying man. The words brought up images: Jesus with his followers. Indignant men dragging a woman.

  She has been caught in adultery—the very act! The Law of Moses commands us to stone such a woman. What, then, do you say?

  They waited for his response, heard only an echo of Torah-backed judgment. Maybe that’s why he waited, down in the sand—so they could hear their own words again and again before he responded.

  He ignored them, and it wasn’t very polite. Because they didn’t know what else to do, because they had to save face, because they couldn’t just walk away, they pressed him for an answer. And he spoke the words of infamy.

  He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.

  He went back to his scrabbling in the sand, and the accusers regretted getting out of bed that morning.

  Joab knew now why they did it: they dropped the stones because Jesus disarmed them.

  The words made him want to pull a carpet of earth over his head. They were the biggest words he had ever heard. Words to explode, expose, destroy. Words to make utterly new. Full of terrible hope.

  Deep in their hearts they wanted what he said. Deep in their hearts they cried out for such an answer. Else they never would have dropped the stones.

  No wonder Nathanael died as though he knew something good.

  12

  “HE DIDN’T DO anything to me, Theron!”

  “Orion wouldn’t have locked up Joab for any old reason.”

  “Theron, please! It’s my fault he’s in there!”

  “Yes, explain that again. What did he do to make you cry? He makes you cry, I’ll make him cry.”

  Jorah took hold of the curtain flap, bunched it up, and screamed into it. She said some words too, but Theron couldn’t catch them. He strained to hear, they sounded interesting. She even stamped her feet a few times. Yes, she had the makings of a great mosaicist.

  It was just as she let the curtain flap go, and smoothed her tunic and her head covering in a nice display of haughty dignity (despite a face the color of a pomegranate), that Marina came in the front door.

  She set down her basket and kicked the door shut, pulled off her shawl, and then froze at the scene before her. “Jorah,” she gasped. “Whatever is wrong?”

  “Trouble at the palace, Marina, and Joab is in the thick of it,” Theron boomed. “He made Jorah cry, and Orion locked him up.”

  “He did not make me cry!” Jorah screamed. Then she burst into tears.

  Theron threw up his arms. “I give up. Maybe you can get it out of her.” He went to the peg and took his outer robe. “I’m going to the palace. Maybe I can talk to the scoundrel and see what he has to say.”

  “Yes! And tell that Orion Galerinius I said—”

  “I was speaking of Joab,” Theron said dryly. He looked at Marina and rolled his eyes. Then he kissed her on the cheek, said “Good luck,” and ducked out the door.

  Marina hurried over and drew her to the kitchen table, where she made Jorah sit. All the while murmuring words of comfort, she dipped a napkin in a bowl of water, wrung it out, and smoothed it over the girl’s face. Then she hurried to the alcove to fetch a crock of watered wine and cups.

  “Troubles, no matter how thickly they come, surely must come to an end,” Marina said in a lilt as she poured wine into Jorah’s cup. “My mother used to say that. There’s more, but I’ve forgotten it.” She sat on the bench next to Jorah. “Now, child, straight from the beginning. I want to hear it all.”

  Jorah stared at the crumpled napkin in her hands. All? Where could she start? That’s what got Theron so frustrated, because when she came right down to it . . . how could she tell them why she cried? At the heart of it all was Nathanael.

  What was she to do? It seemed there should be a consensus for telling everything, but Joab wasn’t here. It would all be over! Maybe they couldn’t work here anymore! Theron would not tolerate liars on his project . . . it would taint the work somehow.

  Suddenly she wondered why it was such a good idea to keep anything secret at all. She could not remember the last time she had told a lie, much less lived one. Suddenly, to keep from them the death of a boy they knew . . . to keep it from his mother . . . was a very horrible thing indeed.

  Jorah pressed the napkin over her face and wailed.

  “Stinks in here,” Theron said, crumpling his face. He held the candle aloft, searching out the reason. When he found it, his face crumpled more. He went to the other
side of Joab and nudged him aside—closer to the bucket—to make room to sit. “It belongs to you. You sit by it, not me,” Theron said when Joab glared at him.

  “You could ask them to empty the bucket for me,” Joab hollered at the crack at the bottom of the door. He resumed his slouch against the wall. “I pounded on the door for an hour, but no one came. I thought you were a guard.”

  “No, but I had to pay one dearly to speak to you,” Theron grouched. “Orion is not around. Where could he be at this hour? He was supposed to come for the Sabbath meal. I looked for him on the way.” He held the candle so he could inspect Joab. “You look terrible. What happened?”

  “If you can’t get them to release me tonight, could you ask them to send some water?”

  Theron set the candleholder on the ground near the door. He grunted as he eased his bulk to the ground. He settled against the wall and folded his hands over his gut. “Take a moment to tell me why you made Jorah cry, and I’ll get you some water.” He looked around the room and shrugged. “A tiny place, but sure is quiet. Wouldn’t mind spending a night here myself.”

  “That’s because you can leave,” Joab answered absently. An uneasy feeling was settling on him. For the first time, he wondered . . . what did Jorah say to Theron and Marina? Why hadn’t he thought of that until now? He had all that time to come up with something to tell Theron when he arrived, but no, he had spent it musing on the Teacher.

  What on earth did she say? How did she explain her tears? It all came to Nathanael, and their deception toward Rivkah. Their stories would never ever match, not this side of the sun, unless they both told the truth.

  “Oh, Theron,” Joab groaned. He went to drag his hand down his face, but that was a mistake. His nose was broken. “We’re going to be here a very long time.”

  “We are?” Theron laboriously stood to his feet. “Then first I see about that bucket.”

  Marina had no jaunty quips now. Nothing her mother taught her could be given to this maiden. Jorah had done more living and dying than Marina ever had, and she was thirty years older.

  Shock-faced, she sat next to Jorah. The wine gathered fruit flies she no longer brushed away. She heard the shofar sound, telling people to begin to prepare for Sabbath, but she could not move. Rivkah would arrive soon; Marina had a dish of vegetables in the common oven; the pistachio pastry needed another coat of honey. She could not move.

  She could tell Jorah of the pain of not having children. Twenty-five years married to Theron, with a womb as dry as the Judean desert; twenty-five years of bringing meals to new mothers and watching the children of her friends while they went to the market or stole a moment of peace with their husbands. She could tell of that pain, to join their sorrows and gain strength in the joining . . . but Marina had never lost a lover to a Zealot’s knife, much less a brother to the agony of a Roman cross.

  This sweet, honest, precious girl next to her—no, not a girl. A woman, for all her pain. A woman, she was seventeen. This woman . . . this child . . . what could Marina say to her?

  “Do you hate me?” Jorah said at length.

  “Do I—” Marina gasped. “Child . . .”

  “I lied to you, Marina. Lied by not telling the truth.”

  Rivkah’s boy was dead. That bouncing sprite Nathanael, such a wild little thing who couldn’t sit still to save his life, who gave them such bedevilment, who made Theron laugh . . . the last they’d seen him he was about ten. So long ago, and now he was dead.

  Rivkah sat vigil at the tree of her dead son. Rivkah went yearly to prune it like the other mothers who had planted wedding trees. She had fought Rome for her tree, like a fierce little gladiator, Orion said. That tree was the only dignity Rivkah afforded herself. The only claim to a normal, untarnished life she had allowed. There would be no wedding canopy for Nathanael.

  “I don’t know how to tell her,” Jorah whispered.

  Heart laden with misery, Marina looked at the door. A knock would soon sound there. What Jorah did not know how to do, she would do soon.

  The bucket was emptied, Joab had his water, and Theron helped him clean up his face. Then the boy told a story Theron did not expect at all.

  The candle had only a few inches left. Theron had stared into it for the duration of Joab’s tale. Its white wavering flame was clear reality in a tale as surreal as it was heartbreaking. Poor Jorah, his own Jorah.

  “He died the day after her brother did,” Joab said in that soft murmur. “I took the box to him. I thought it could heal him. Seemed right at the time.”

  That poor child. So much for one so young to carry. The murder of her lover, the murder of her brother. He felt old and weary of a wicked world.

  That little Nathanael.

  “You have to tell her,” Theron said, staring at the flame.

  “I know.”

  “Orion needs to know. It’s the only way you’re going to get out of here.”

  Joab groaned and gripped the sides of his head. “I’d rather stay here than tell him the whole thing.”

  Theron eyed his apprentice. “Your contempt is misplaced. Orion Galerinius Honoratus deserves his name. He’s one of the few Romans I’ve seen with a conscience. You don’t know him, Joab.”

  “I know how he makes me feel.”

  Theron shrugged. “So who is perfect? But if I’m going to get you out of here, I’d better go see where he is.” He moved to get up.

  Joab looked at him. “Theron? How do I tell a mother her son is dead?”

  Theron froze on his way up, then dropped his shoulders and settled back down. Nathanael . . . such a funny little kid. Never stopped moving, never stopped talking. Always into everything. And forget trying to have a conversation with him. He never listened, always interrupted, blurting another question before he got the first answered. A naughty little stinker, Marina called him—with a twinkle in her eye.

  She had urged Theron to try and be like a father to him. He’d made a few awkward attempts, once asking Nathanael if he wanted to go fishing with him. The boy seemed embarrassed, as though he knew what Theron was trying to do, and he declared he hated to fish. Then after a while Rivkah stopped coming around.

  Joab stared into the flame. “I don’t know why I thought it would be easier because she was a prostitute. Maybe I thought a prostitute wouldn’t feel as bad. That’s dumb, huh? When I gave her the box I tried to tell her. . . .” He squeezed his eyes shut. “I was looking right in her eyes.”

  “She has pretty eyes,” Theron said sadly.

  “I have more to tell her. Nathanael himself sent me here, just before he died. He said some things I have to tell her. I’m not sure which will be the harder.” He fell silent. “Theron? What am I going to do?”

  “One tile at a time, boy. First we get you out of here. That will take some explaining, and I do not know where Orion is. Perhaps he has returned by now. You may end up spending the night here.”

  Joab shrugged bleakly.

  Theron used Joab’s shoulder as leverage to rise, then patted it. “Don’t worry, boy. If you wish, I will be there when you tell Rivkah. Me and Marina both.”

  “That would . . . I would be grateful, Theron.”

  Theron banged on the door with his fist. The padlock clanked, and a guard slid it out of its fastening.

  Rivkah never came. Orion never came. Theron was still gone. It had to be close to midnight. Strangest, eeriest, worst Sabbath evening Marina had ever passed.

  She sat at the table, head on her fist, watching the flame of the only lit candle in the room. The dish of burned vegetables sat just beyond it. A neighbor had noticed it when she fetched her own dish from the common oven.

  Jorah was curled on one of the couches, fast asleep. She had waited in miserable expectation for Rivkah’s knock, had fallen asleep in the waiting.

  Marina had her suspicions as to why Rivkah never showed. But where was Theron? Where was Orion? What would happen to Joab? Grief for Rivkah and grief for Jorah made her more tired than she�
�d ever been. She should wait up for her husband, but could not stay awake another minute. Marina wet her fingertips and pinched out the flame.

  Orion’s panic was nearly gone. It had abated at the clarity of his fate.

  Well, and his life as a corrupted official did not last long. Perhaps the warning from Janus Bifrons had prepared him. But the panic left behind a nameless dread.

  Now he sat across from Prometheus Longinus at the counsel table in the small audience hall. On the table between them was a scroll.

  A guard stood at the entrance, one who belonged to Prometheus. The loyalty of each Praetorian guard belonged to either Prometheus or to Orion. It should have belonged purely to Rome, but this was the way of things. In Rome, anywhere, men chose allegiance. Problem was, Orion did not know who, if anyone, was allied to him. He’d never thought about it, never really paid attention. Didn’t know it would be important one day. He could trust Marcus, that was all he knew. But Marcus had the day watch and had left after he threw Joab into a cell. He didn’t know Orion Galerinius Honoratus had fallen.

  Orion had been summoned to the audience hall from his private quarters not long afterward. He had been pacing his room, trying to order his thoughts, trying to wrest from a blank mind a course to take. Pilate, by the favor of Theron’s god, did not attend the Tiberateum after all. That allowed Orion to think on Janus Bifrons’s news, and decide whether he should take action before action came to him. He had just decided to leave for Theron’s place, talk it over with them, when the abrupt knock came.

  He should have suspected the manner of the guard; it was a wisp too confident. But he had been too annoyed at the interruption to really notice—too annoyed to realize action had come.

  When he had entered the counsel room, he saw Prometheus’s face first, fixedly impassive; then he saw the scroll. He could not help the initial shock, but had the forewarning from Janus to at least prevent a gasp. And Prometheus’s cold manner actually helped summon his own.