Saul counts them down and they throw the first stones together: nine from the guards and another ten or twelve from the rabble. Most of the volley misses. A few stones hit the man on the body, making him grunt with pain and knocking him more completely to the ground onto his flank. Though his hands are still tied to his feet, he seems to be trying to move away, in strange erratic twists like a broken-spine snake. The throwers pick another stone each. Their speeds are different now. Some stones thud onto the baked ground around the man’s head. A stone hits him on the thigh. Another on the shoulder. He wails. He pleads, in Aramaic then in Greek. A stone hits him on the forehead: it opens and blood runs sideways down it straight to the ground. More stones hit him on the body. More stones hit him on the legs, the arms, the ribs. It is impossible to imagine the pain he is in, but he deserves it. Surely he deserves it. Someone has to keep the peace. Still the stones come. Even when the soil around him is covered with blood and his head is gashed open, a mangled mess, the man still writhes. Panting. Backwards hands clawing at the soil he supposedly wanted to free from Rome. The throwers run out of stones. They have to go further in, to collect the stones they’ve already thrown. Some are coated with blood. It gets on their hands. They wipe them on their tunics. Grey tunics of the guards. Rough cloth of the porters and idlers. In the pause the man raises his head. He stares into Saul again. ‘God forgive you,’ the man says. ‘God forgive you.’ It sounds more like a curse than a blessing. His teeth are broken and his mouth bubbles blood. For the second time today Saul feels queasy. But this man deserved it; he deserved what he got. Like his so-called Messiah leader did. Saul and his guards are the real holy ones. Preserving what is good for Judaea. Saul, who has not cast a stone, but stands with the cloaks of his men at his feet, ordering and approving it all. And guards like Korach, who now throws a big rock, which hits the man directly in the centre of his face. Smashing what remained of it flat. Blowing blood out from it, as if from a child’s toss into a puddle. He no longer looks like a man, the man who deserved this. But sometimes brutality is necessary to preserve the peace. A little bloodshed can prevent a tide of blood. Someone has to take responsibility. Someone has to act. Someone has to face up to what is needed. We can’t all escape into fantasies to flee the horrors of this world. It would be nice if we could. But we can’t. We have to deal with life as it is. Stones bounce from the man’s body. It does not even twitch now, as each fresh blow lands. Occasionally a low moan comes. The throwers’ arms are tired by the time the moaning stops. Some of the makeshift mob have left. One of them vomited as he did so. Already dun sparrows peck at the vomit he deposited. The birds are too nervous to make their way to the blood-food that oozes from the man lying in the middle, but they would like to, you can tell they would like to. ‘Stephen’ he was called, the man. A Nazarene. A dead man who believes in dead men. And he deserved what he got, for that. He must have deserved it. Because that was what he got. And people get what they deserve in this life, so the Sadducees say at least. But Saul didn’t. Saul hasn’t. Saul deserved Mariamme, but he didn’t get her. So what does that mean? And Stephen’s bubbling lips won’t shift from his mind. Is that face going to replace Mariamme’s now, in his dreams? ‘God forgive you,’ Stephen said. ‘God forgive you.’ Why would Saul need to be forgiven? Stoning means no one man is responsible for the death. And, anyway, the man deserved it. And, anyway, all Saul did was hold the cloaks.
One Day before the Crucifixion
The master told them to follow the man they would find collecting water, which seemed strange, because collecting water is women’s work. But there he was, an ambiguous sister-brother, gathering and chattering with the women. They say that all things exist in Jerusalem, that if a thing is, it is there. And so, here was this thing. Here was this. Here was the man who collects water like a woman and the master says they must lodge with him. Perhaps other pilgrims did not like to lodge with this man-woman. Perhaps that was why he would have space when no one else did. Perhaps the master knew this. Or perhaps this was just one of the things that in Jerusalem are.
So they followed the cow-sway steps of the water-carrying woman-man. He had a head too big for his slight shoulders, like an ant, but must have been strong, like the ant is, too, because the clay urn of water he carried was large, larger than a full woman could carry. Its pottery painted with simple bands, a design timeless as the Torah.
Maybe he sensed that they followed him because he started to jerk quickly down alleys, only in the moment of passing, as if he tried to lose them. Perhaps he had been beaten before, by drunks or Temple Guard thugs, who didn’t care for one who wore a headscarf like a woman, but had a boy child’s wisps of beard, visible but faint, like smoke in the daylight.
The man moved erratically, as a polecat will, unsure if it is pursued, but anxious in any case to be less exposed. But he also carried an urn and even though they didn’t know the wool-tangle of streets, Cephas and Jochanan easily stayed with him.
The woman-man had eyes like a gazelle, wide and painted with kohl at the edges. Cephas stared into them and saw the fear as the sister-brother tried to close his gap-slatted door on them.
‘We won’t hurt you,’ Cephas said. ‘It’s just that our master says you have a room here. A big room we can rent.’
And it was so.
Yeshua pronounced the Kiddush — the blessing — over the cup of wine. As was done at every significant meal by all the Jews of the world. It might seem magical, that blessing, to one who didn’t know the rituals of the Israelites. Though perhaps it is no less magical in the knowing. Magic either exists or it does not. Then — also according to Pharisaic custom — to signal the beginning of the meal, Yeshua removed the cloth that covered the bread and he broke the bread and handed a piece to each of those present. It was a large room, but even large as it was, it could not nearly have contained all of the people who would one day say they had been in it that night.
All who really were there would attest that the blessing of the bread and the wine were no different from those they had all seen Yeshua perform before, and their fathers perform and their uncles perform and themselves perform in their turn. But it is true that Yeshua then spoke words uncommon, though not unknown, a Nazirite Vow: ‘After this wine, I will not now drink again of the fruit of the vine until I drink it anew in the Kingdom of God.’
Because Yeshua knew what was to happen that night, if all came good. And he had to believe that it would. Because either everything would be won or all would be lost. He was in expectation and excitation of the imminence of the Kingdom. Which was why his hand shook when he held the cup of wine, so much so that tiny tremulous waves flowed across the red of its top. And why his long fingers clutched too tightly into the lumps of soft, blessed bread he passed, leaving imprints in the dough, like footprints in a desert.
They ate on mats on the floor, as always, and Yeshua held the disciple he loved close to him. Both men seemed to take strength from the other’s presence. The disciple Yeshua loved reclined against him. At times lay back in Yeshua’s lap, or alongside him, cupped in one another’s curves. Two men accustomed to the consolation brought by the other in times of difficulty.
The room was full of unease and tension. For all of them knew some of what might come to pass that night and even the best would be a terrifying ordeal and the worst would be unthinkable.
Yeshua and his beloved shared not only this fearful future but also their past. And they whispered together a lot during the meal. Of revelation, perhaps, or of love. No one but them knew. And why should they? Even a king must have secrets. Especially a king. And the one he loves should be the one to share them.