Temple Boys (28 page)

Below them the slums looked like a rotten honeycomb. After the earthquake, fires had started all over the city and their smoke mixed with the fumes from the Temple's fire altar.

“What was in it for you?” Flea asked. “Yesh said beggars would become kings, but you're not a beggar.”

Yusuf laughed. “You thought that he was talking about you? Still, I suppose everyone thought Yeshua was talking about them; that was his particular gift. But no one had the faintest idea what he really meant, and maybe that was his gift as well. You could make it mean anything you wanted.”

“So it was never going to happen? The poor were never going to be rich?”

“Everything's relative, boy. When you live under foreign occupation, you learn to talk in code. The Romans make beggars of us all. We grovel to them for favors but they're quite capable of snatching everything away. It's intolerable, you understand. Intolerable. No one can live like this, and that's what I wanted to change.”

Yusuf drew himself up, as if he were giving a speech, then collapsed. “It seemed so straightforward. Poor old Yesh would sacrifice himself like he wanted to and Yak, his brother, would take his place in the tomb. A crowd would gather, the stone would be rolled back, and there he'd be! Not that bruised, ruined figure broken by the cross, but a fit man, reborn bigger and better.”

His voice rose and the words tumbled from his lips. “Have you seen Yak when he sweeps his hair back like Yesh? With a trimmed beard it would have worked. People would have done anything for him. Anything at all. Then it all went wrong. The Romans put the city on lockdown, and then that earthquake … I've got Abbas Barabbas out there ready to take on the Roman garrison with ten thousand citizens behind him all calling out the Chosen One's name and no Chosen One to follow.”

“But…” Flea tried to think. Just before the final quake he'd seen the followers walking toward the tombs across the quarry floor. Yak had been with them; he was sure of it. Or was he?

Yusuf continued. “We could have blocked the gates to the Fortress and taken the governor's palace. Held him as a hostage. They'd have negotiated. The city would have been ours.”

“The Romans knew. They would have been waiting for you. But I'm not here to listen to you boast. I'm here to find out about Jude.”

“Jude? Oh, you mean Judas. Why would I care about him?” Yusuf looked honestly puzzled.

“He killed him.” Flea pointed at the man who stood behind Yusuf. His arm shook with fury.

“Really?” Yusuf looked amused. This made Flea even angrier.

“He was everywhere. When Yeshua first crossed the bridge into the city he was there, carrying a water pitcher. He was at the trial, making sure the crowd called for the governor to save Barabbas. He was in the Pleasure Gardens when Yesh was arrested, so he knew Jude had arranged to meet me under the tree by the city dump. Jude was the only person who was trying to stop the madness. He killed him, all right.”

“And what can you do about it?”

“I don't know. But if I matter so little and you're so important, maybe you can tell me why. I just…” But his voice was trembling too much. He felt Big step up next to him.

“Come on,” Big said. “Tell us. Whatever the story is, we can't do anything about it. Or maybe you're not as powerful as you claim to be.”

Now Tesha was on his other side and Flea felt stronger.

The silence stretched, seconds that Flea counted with the thud of his heart. At last Yusuf spoke, an odd twist to his face and tension thinning his voice. “It's true, Jude could have made things very difficult. He didn't get through to Yeshua because my nephew was a very remarkable man, but he could have influenced the others. In any movement there are leaders and followers, there are doers and there are passengers, people along for the ride. I thought Jude was a passenger. Oddly, he was a doer. He should have been eliminated weeks ago.”

“Eliminated. You mean murdered.”

“You think any of this has been easy for me?” Yusuf's eyes were suddenly hot. “You know, Yeshua used to love my stories when he was a boy. I used to fill his head with sailors' tales, from the east, from the west. He listened, oh, how he listened. I told him about a land where the teachers go around with a begging bowl because they think happiness only comes from having nothing. I told him about green lands to the north and west where they spill their gods' blood on the ground every spring to make sure they have a good harvest. I told him about lands of ice and fire where the people don't feel the cold. I told him how we could travel there together, but he wanted to die! Do you understand? He wanted to! I just wanted to make sure he didn't die in vain.”

“I watched him die,” Flea said. “He felt he had to. I don't know if that's the same as wanting. I still want to know about Jude.”

“Are you sure?” Yusuf asked.

“Yes.”

“Then…” He nodded to the man behind him.

The man stepped forward. When he spoke, his voice was as dull as everything else about him.

“He was dead when I got there. There was no one else around. For my money, he killed himself.”

“He would never do that. He would never have left me.”

“You have to face it,” Yusuf said. “Who mattered most to Judas, you or Yeshua? Come on, child. He killed himself as an act of faith. He couldn't stop Yeshua from going through with the prophecy, so he decided to join him. If he died, he died with Yeshua; if he came back to life, he would join him forever. At the end, he showed himself to be a coward.”

“No!” Flea screamed. “You're the coward. You sent Yesh to his death while you sat in your palace getting fatter and richer. I hope it falls down around your ears. I hope it crushes you to death! You just use people. You're as bad as the Romans. No, you're worse. They conquer people and exploit them. But you, you screw over your own countrymen.”

“Get out! Get out now before I—”

“What? Have us whipped? Executed? Like I said, you're just like the Romans, except you're not as strong, and I'll get even with you.”

“Leave!”

Yusuf's spit was bitter. He took a step toward Flea, his hand raised to deliver a blow, but before he reached him he staggered. Flea felt himself lurch. Tesha grabbed him. For half a dozen pounding heartbeats, the walls and floors of the palace turned to jelly. Outside the open window he heard wails and the sound of things falling.

“Another earthquake,” Yusuf said. “God save us all.” And that was that.

So Flea ruined Yusuf, and felt no better. He watched the city start to repair itself and get back to normal, as if there had been no earthquake, as if Jude hadn't died, as if Yeshua hadn't died.
That was a lesson to be learned
, Flea thought, but he did not know if it was a good one or not.

And anyway, things had changed for the Temple Boys, who now had to deal with the thirty pieces of silver Jude had left for Flea and that he had managed to hang on to against all the odds. A miracle, of sorts.

They were, however, proving to be a bit of a headache.

Little Big and Clump didn't see coins, just jugs of wine, large amounts of meat, and piles of bread. Big, oddly, got religion and thought they should spend it at the Temple on sacrifices. Flea floated the Wild Man's idea that thirty pieces of silver would buy a flock of sheep and a tent. He saw them all joining the Wild People and becoming another tribe. He'd have to become competent, grizzled, and of few words, but he could learn.

In the end they sacrificed a sheep to keep Big happy, then ate and drank to their hearts' content until fourteen coins were left.

Everyone got one and no one felt much the better for it.

“The thing is,” Tesha said, “I haven't got a clue what to do with mine.”

She and Flea were sitting on a hillside to the south of the city. It was a warm day. Spring, proper spring, had come at last, with blue skies and fresh warm winds. Tesha flicked her coin into the air so it glinted in the sunlight. She screwed it into her eye. She stuck it on her tongue. Below them lay the blood fields. Farmers were digging out the blood-rich mud and loading it onto carts to spread on their fields. Jude was buried down there, but Flea did not like to think of that.

“Maybe drinking it away would be the sensible thing to do,” Flea said. “No one can tell you not to.”

He stole a sideways look at Tesha. Her hair was growing out and her skin was taking on color. He would have liked to kiss her but had no idea how she would react. Getting close to her seemed to heat up his skin in a way that was fantastic but sometimes awkward.

“But there might be other things to do. Better things,” Tesha said.

“Then you have to think of them.”

“What if I can't?” Tesha protested.

“Then go and get drunk for a week,” Flea said.

“You're no good at all.”

“It's the same for all of us,” Flea said. “I was going to hire a professional mourner to wail over Jude but I don't know if that's the right thing to do. I have a feeling it's just a big waste of money.”

“Then go and get drunk for a week,” Tesha said with a hint of acid in her voice.

Flea shrugged. The memory of Jude was a cold ache in a very deep place. He should still be alive and he wasn't. He should have wanted to live, but he hadn't. Right now that seemed like the saddest thing in the world.

“I sort of imagined that me and Jude were going to travel,” Flea said, rubbing his newly cut, almost clean hair. “There was a storyteller I heard once. He talked about a shipwrecked sailor who landed on the back of a giant fish, and there was another about a carpet that flew. The Results Man said there's an island at the end of the world where the land's always green and the people are blue.”

“That'd be good,” Tesha said vaguely. “How do you get there?”

Flea made a face. “Dunno. I used to dream about being this magic, powerful person. Flea the Magnificent! Flea the Terrible! I'd tell stories to myself about having fantastic powers. But I don't seem to want to do that anymore. I just want to go far away. I want to find blue people and tell them this story, and I want it to seem as crazy to them as stories about them seem to us. That's what I want. I just want people to shake their heads and say, ‘Who'd believe that?' But we'll know it's the truth.”

“I'll pretend to drink to that,” Tesha said. She had stolen a silver cup from the upper room where Yesh and the followers had eaten their last meal together. She held it up, empty, and tipped it to her lips, then handed it to Flea to do the same.

He wondered where they would end up if they went off together. He didn't care at all and he did care very much, both feelings at the same time. Together they made him happy, excited, frightened. And ready.

“Do you think we could do that?” Tesha said. “I mean, just go?”

Flea looked across the valley to the city on the hill. Smoke drifted gently through the tight pattern of its enfolded streets. To survive in that maze you had to make a plan, find a way, decide you had a destiny and stick to it, or you'd just give up, wouldn't you? But other people had destinies too, and where one plan clashed with another, people died.

That was the problem.

The Imperium, Yesh, the Temple … they all thought that if only they could follow their own destiny, they'd be free. But it was just a dream. They were all stuck together in the maze, forced to turn left or right by the hard edges of what other people wanted, what other people needed.

Then all of a sudden the empty land behind Flea seemed like a deep and generous promise that he could fall into. He understood in a way that made his breath thicken and his heart pound that, if he was brave, he could lean into the future, and if he didn't try to look ahead to the crash at the end he could keep moving until he stopped.

And that would be enough. And that would be good. And that would be the best way to remember Jude, and to keep remembering him.

“Flea?” Tesha asked. “What is it? Suddenly you look all … different.”

Flea sniffed and wiped away a tear. Like morning dew, it had come from nowhere. Somewhere in the city, somewhere in the maze, the old Flea was waving him away, telling him to get lost and that he'd be trapped forever if he didn't make tracks. Standing next to him, Tesha was more or less saying the same: there were other, better things to do.

He closed his eyes and waited for Flea the Magnificent, Flea the Traveler, Flea the Hero to make his decision, but he was gone too. The time for thinking up stories really was over. Perhaps it was time to become one.

“Well?”

“Yes,” said Flea. “Let's go.”

“Just for the record, you did say earlier that you made up names for yourself. Flea the…?”

“Flea the Terrible. And the Magnificent.”

Tesha punched him gently on the arm. “You'll never live that down, you know. I'll keep reminding you of it.”

“I know. And I don't care. I am magnificent.”

“You're terrible.”

“Well … nobody's perfect.”

 

Text copyright © 2014 by Jamie Buxton

Published by Roaring Brook Press

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The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Buxton, J. P. (Jamie P.)

     Temple boys / Jamie Buxton. — First edition.

            pages cm

     Summary: Flea, the least significant member of a gang of teens who sleep next to the Temple walls in first-century Jerusalem, witnesses Christ's passion and resurrection, torn between Jude, who protects Flea and employs him to run errands, and a brutal Roman spy determined to uncover the truth about “the Magician.”