When it came to scriptural law, Lazarus conceded defeat. The laws bored him. He preferred the lions.
Here they come. Their yellowed teeth are deadly as they stalk their den towards Daniel.
Lazarus was best at stories and heroes, the first with every answer as if he were actually there. Here comes the whale. Throw Jonah over. The bad luck he brings to the ship will sink, but the man himself will live, three days and nights in the belly of the beast.
Here comes Delilah. She cuts his hair and he loses his strength, but that comes later. Samson’s weapon of choice is the jaw of an ass. Ask Lazarus. Ask him about Saul back from the dead to visit King Samueclass="underline" ‘Why have you disturbed me?’ he said. ‘Why did you make me come back?’ (1 Samuel 28: 15).
And beyond the synagogue it is Lazarus who knows what boys should do. They run up hillsides shouting out loud. They climb into olive trees, throw stones at birds but always miss, look north to Mount Hermon and vow that one day they’ll climb to the top, if it’s the last thing they ever do.
He and Jesus make a thousand promises. They will never desert each other, however great the danger.
A Sabbath when Lazarus and Jesus are thirteen or fourteen years old. The Nazareth sky is bruised and moody, clouds covering the sun, a perfect day for an excursion: into the fields, down the hill, Amos lagging behind. The city of Sephoris is a two hour walk, no more, but Jesus needs convincing — on the Sabbath they should stay at home. This is typical. Jesus looks before he leaps. Lazarus likes to leap.
‘See that axe by the tree? No, further down. Race you!’
They career downhill, arms freewheeling, the world empty except for them. Lazarus makes it first. He picks up the abandoned axe and swings it two-handed into dry soil. Jesus prises the axe loose and does the same. Then Amos catches up and they fling the axe into long grass and wipe their hands and run again.
The city is deserted. Sephoris is a grand Herodian project, a long-term building site, but on the Sabbath no one works. Even the new amphitheatre has to wait, and the three boys stand awed in the curved shadow of the nearly completed building. They look up at the racks of wooden scaffold rising like the sides of a basket.
‘I’ll go first,’ Lazarus says.
‘You’re not allowed.’ Amos is twelve years old and brown as a walnut. He increasingly has an opinion. ‘Someone might see us.’
Lazarus steps onto the lowest rung. ‘They’re all at home praying their children stay safe. You wait here. Keep a lookout.’
Lazarus is scared but he starts to climb, like boys anywhere. He imagines himself as a biblical hero, someone who isn’t scared.
The wooden scaffold is designed for craftsmen to climb from the inside, in the gap between the building and the poles. From the outside, each level slopes away from the walls, so Lazarus has to climb out as well as up. At the top of each level he lets his legs swing free and hauls himself over onto the next narrow platform.
He looks down from the first level, assuming Jesus will follow.
‘Watch where I put my hands and feet. If I don’t kill myself, copy me.’
‘Come down!’ Amos shouts. ‘You’ll fall!’
‘Give me a proper funeral!’ Lazarus is moving upwards again. ‘Make sure everyone cries!’
Jesus follows, and through the wooden poles Lazarus can feel his friend climbing up behind him. The vibrations are in his toes, in his legs, all the way through to his fingers.
The scaffold creaks like fishing boats.
It starts to rain. The boys are halfway up the side of the amphitheatre, on the outside of the scaffolding. From the ground, and also from a distance and safely from far far above, they may appear very small.
Lazarus’s hand slips, but he catches himself with the crook of his elbow. He blinks grey rain out of his eyes, checks back down on Jesus.
If he falls, he’ll take his friend with him, and no one in Sephoris will be able to save them. Beyond Jesus down on the ground Amos is waving his arms, the rain on his upturned face like tears.
Lazarus makes a last big reach for the safety of the roof. He grunts, pulls himself up, swings his body over. His arms and legs ache with the effort but he is safe. He shuffles round on his belly and peers over the edge.
Several feet below him, Jesus is clutching a pole and refusing to move. His eyes are clamped shut and his body is shaking, his wet face jammed against the scaffold to stop his teeth from chattering. A sparrow flies close, hovers, darts away.
‘You’re nearly there,’ Lazarus shouts. ‘If I can make it so can you. Grab my hand and I’ll help you up.’
Jesus clenches his lips together, slowly ungrips a hand. He slips, grabs on hard.
‘Come on!’
Lazarus leans out further, as far as he can go.
‘Take my hand. It’s great up here. It’s easy.’
Jesus reaches up but not far enough, and he falls. His hands and his arms and his body detach from the scaffold and out he goes, into the air, clear space all around him. Lazarus swipes at his clothes and clings on, hauls him up and over and onto the safe flat roof. It is an impossible achievement, an unbelievable rescue.
They roll onto their backs, panting, swallowing rain, laughing, their doubled heart hammering a hundred times before ordinary breathing resumes. On their hands and knees they look over the edge and wave to Amos below.
He shouts at them to come back down. They cup their ears and shrug, then take in the godview from the highest building in Sephoris, the damp spread of the city, the big rich villas, fields, a glinting river, brown-black mountains. Swathes of heavenly light cut through the distant rainshadow, and Lazarus feels an exhilaration so powerful he imagines there is nothing he and Jesus will not do together, nowhere they will not go.
‘I can fly,’ he says. He has already saved Jesus, so why not another miracle? ‘I’m going to jump.’
He kneels upright, arms out like wings.
Jesus heaves him back and they tumble laughing into the warm rainpools glistening across the roof.
‘We should go back down,’ Lazarus says. ‘Before Amos tries to follow.’
They lie on their backs, hair wet with rain. Jesus turns his head, asks if Lazarus can keep a secret.
‘I don’t know.’ He isn’t old enough to know if he’s trustworthy. ‘Tell me and we’ll find out.’
But Jesus pretends to lose interest, or decides it doesn’t matter.
Lazarus closes his eyes for the touch of raindrops on his eyelids. They will do anything for each other. There is no other secret, and nothing else needs to be said.
*
In the Temple before sunrise the enclosed Courtyard of the Israelites glimmers with oil lamps. The light is diffused by incense and the dawn, flames reflecting from the rounded gloss of marbled pillars. A bench is built into one wall, reserved for the old and frail. Their voices merge with those of the younger priests, standing and rocking on their heels, closing their eyes and reciting cautionary scriptures.
The priests have black leather boxes bound to their arms or foreheads, phylacteries containing extracts from the Psalms or the Book of Judges, reminding them of the supremacy of priests or the promise of the One to come. Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky.
Lazarus stands in the centre of the room, and the nearer priests wince, and draw back. Lazarus has walked from Bethany in the dark, before the heat of the day, but there is a smell around him which is both distinctive and hard to place. It is not a pleasant smell.
The Sanhedrin ruling council has seventy-one members. Lazarus estimates that most of them must be here. The room grows quiet. Isaiah steps forward.