High in the Antonia Fortress, Cassius pulls aside a gauze curtain. He has flat blond hair and blue eyes, into which this far south nobody can read any meaning. Afternoon sunlight floods the mosaic on the floor of his room — a woman carrying a basket of apples.
Below the fortressed walls he sees the roof of the Holy of Holies, the Temple courtyard, then a drop to Jerusalem’s mazed houses and alleys. The Fortress is the highest point in the city, and on its way to heaven the smoke from burnt offerings rises past the garrison windows.
The smell of blackened fat reminds Cassius that whatever the Romans provide it is never enough. These people want something more, and their prayers are insistent with invocations, horns and trumpets, the howl of dying beasts.
The Judaean people are waiting for the One. This one, that one, anyone. He’s coming and he’ll save them all, yet Rome, in truth, is the saviour. Messiahs pull rank. They appeal directly to a higher authority, making Cassius confident they register as trouble.
He has been tracking Jesus since his first move south towards John the Baptist at the river.
‘He’s harmless,’ the local informants said.
‘And the crowds?’
‘The man was a long time in the desert. He doesn’t talk much sense.’ The riverside spies also reported that Jesus had no obvious strategy. ‘He’ll run out of ideas. He’ll go back home to the Galilee.’
They were right. Cassius rewarded his informers with tax exemptions and gifts of Spanish leather. The carrot, as recommended by Sejanus, not the stick.
Now Cassius is wondering about Lazarus. In his Galilee backwater Jesus has disciples. He has followers, none of whom register as threats, but the one man he calls friend is dangerously local to Jerusalem and in regular contact with Sanhedrin priests at the Temple.
Cassius has not been commissioned to believe in coincidence.
After his engagement to Saloma, Lazarus stops taking risks with his health.
That was two months ago, but he sees no measurable improvement. During the day fatigue overcomes him, and his head can ache as if clamped in a carpenter’s vice. He is sometimes cold, shivering in June daytime temperatures of up to thirty-five degrees. Or so hot in the chill nights that sweat slicks the backs of his hands.
He continues to offer sacrifices, not as many as when he needed to influence Isaiah, but often enough to harm his business. He picks out the best of Faruq’s animals with the softest velvet ears, those he’d usually have reserved for Jerusalem’s most penitent grandees.
‘We can’t afford this,’ Martha warns. ‘You’re sacrificing lambs you should be selling. And we still have to pay Faruq.’
‘I can’t afford to be ill. I’ve got a lot coming up, and I have to look after you two. When I’m feeling better I’ll earn the money back. Don’t worry. All will be well.’
He develops a nasty rash.
It is safe to envisage the rash: the Book of Leviticus is a manual for acting correctly before the eyes of god, and two entire chapters are devoted to skin infections. For a long time these skin diseases were collectively mistranslated as ‘leprosy’ (a disease of the nerves, not the skin), but Old Testament skin problems are more likely to have been caused by the widespread incidence of scabies. A visible rash also signifies the first phase of smallpox, which explains why Leviticus stipulates strict measures requiring prompt action: smallpox could devastate a community.
Lazarus has eight months to live. That much we know, but smallpox would have killed him quicker than that. His rash at this stage must therefore be scabies, caused by parasitic mites beneath the skin.
The mite Sarcoptes scabiei clusters on bedding, clothing and other household objects. Impregnated female mites wait for contact with human skin, then seek out the folds of the body. They make a home in the softness between fingers and toes, inside the elbow or behind the knee, between the buttocks or in the red heat of the groin. They start tunnelling.
Under the skin they burrow an S or Z shape, and inside this tunnel the mite eggs hatch. The larvae start to move, and their activity produces a vivid discoloration of the skin and intense itching. The itching is the worst part — ‘scabere’, Latin for itch.
Lazarus’s most visible infestations spread a scarlet rash along the inside skin of his arms, and at night he lies on his back, eyes wide open, willing himself not to scratch. No need to panic. Leviticus specifies a procedure.
Cassius sends out frequent patrols to Bethany. Since Jesus returned from the Jordan to Galilee his friend Lazarus has rarely been seen in the city. Jesus has gone quiet, and Lazarus has, too. Apparently he is ill, a feeble excuse if he has something to hide. Cassius looks for the connection — he assembles his information.
Several months ago Lazarus travelled to Jerusalem and appeared before a dawn council of Sanhedrin priests. Cassius has spies almost everywhere, but not yet in the Sanhedrin itself, and he suspects they were plotting, talking about Jesus and the Romans.
Since that meeting Lazarus has been spending money on sacrifices, sending in many pairs of sheep from Bethany. This is unusual behaviour for him. The animals could be a way of covertly delivering messages, but Cassius hasn’t worked out how the system might function.
Either that, or the sacrifices are part of a broader ploy. Lazarus wants people to believe he’s genuinely ill (thirty-two years old, regular walker, never a day sick in his life — the Roman informers have asked around), but Cassius is not so easily deceived. He senses there is some kind of plan in action, a longer-term design he can’t quite decipher, and he is not entirely displeased. At some point in this scheme Jesus will come to Jerusalem. Cassius will be waiting, and he will take this chance to get noticed in Rome.
He needs to place a spy close to Lazarus.
Absalom examines his younger friend, first one arm then the other.
‘You have a rash,’ he says. ‘But it could be worse. You’re not dying.’
Absalom sighs for his departed mother. He still can’t understand why she had to die, any more than he can conceive of an all-seeing god who creates bacterial parasites.
‘You’re unclean,’ he says. ‘You need to purify yourself.’
Medically, the cleansing procedure described in the Book of Leviticus remains sound. Lazarus must wash his clothes and his bedding and not leave his house for seven days except for ritual immersion in the village bath.
He wraps himself in a blanket and shambles across the square. For a few seconds the fury of the sun blinds him. It is high summer, with unforgiving sunshine day after day, but slowly the village buildings emerge from the light. A Roman patrol rests and drinks by the well, the soldiers hazed and floating in the heat. Lazarus shivers and heads for the mikveh, a carved pool inside a cave below the village.
He feels his way into the gloom, drops his blanket. Water drips and echoes. Steps are cut into the rocks, and the tepid water soothes his ankles, his shins, his knees, slaps against his thighs. There is a raised shelf to his left for the inflow, and to his right a flat overspill. The water is always gently moving, slowly refreshing itself from a higher source.
Lazarus walks to the far wall, swishing the water with his thighs and hands. He turns and lowers himself onto the smooth stone floor, the water reaching his chin. He breathes out, setting off a skin of ripples, works his arms one way and then the other, checks himself over. The rash spreads down both inner arms, it discolours the top of his legs and his feet. He flexes his toes and fingers. The water eases the itching.