overhanging rock, the canker thorn, the crumbling contours of
the cliff. The ravens made their last assault onJesus's protruding,
swinging feet, but nothing could prevent the burial of Jesus
now.
'No need to dig a grave,' said Musa, coming up with Aphas
and his wife to join the other two. 'We have a grave. My little
donkey's grave. It must be meant for him . . . It was always
meant for him.'
'You mean we should use the cistern?' said Shim.
'It was a grave before it was a cistern.'
'What will we drink?'
Musa shrugged. He didn't care what anybody drank. He
wouldn't stay another day and so he didn't need to know about
their thirst.
'You can't bury him in the water that we drink,' persisted
Shim.
'Whose land is this? Go somewhere else for water. Go down
to Jericho and drink your fill. There's an empty cave below that
you can have for free, if you're not frightened of those birds.
Climb down. Do what you want. But this man has a grave
already dug for him.'
Shim and the badu carried Jesus to the tent and rested there
while Miri gathered extra water-skins to fill before they used
the cistern. She found some food for them to eat as well, and
some blanket cloths. Everyone would have to spend the night
in caves. The tent was useless now.
They took the body through the pans of mud and up the
scarp, with Musa, Miri and Aphas following as mourners. They
should have put a flower on the Gaily's lips, but there were none
left standing. They had to make do with some blackened poppy
petals. And then they put the body in the same cave that Musa
had used the night before, for safe keeping, until everything was
ready for his burial. They blocked off the entrance with uprooted
2 12
thorns, and lit a fire close by to keep the flies away. The wood
was damp; its smoke was black, then purple-grey, the proper
colour for a funeral.
'Where's Marta?' Miri asked.
'You'd better make a sacrifice to speed the Gaily on his way,'
said Musa.
Shim and Aphas nodded warily. Their landlord was being
uncharacteristically comradely with them; anything to hold their
attention and keep their minds off his wife. They could hear
Miri searching in the rock falls beyond the caves, calling 'Marta,
Marta,' with rising desperation in her cries. But Musa raised his
own voice to drown hers out. He did not want the men to help
Miri. If one of them found Marta alive, sobbing and bruised,
what might he ask her? What might she reply?
It would suit Musa if he never saw the woman again. He was
angry with her. She had not been sensible. If she'd had any brains
she would have packed her few belongings and set off home
already, saving trouble and embarrassment for everyone. But
Miri had searched inside the cave and Marta's clothes were still
there. A woman would not leave without her spare clothes. So
she was either hiding in the scrub, or something bad had happened
to her. Something fatal, Musa hoped. She brought these problems
on herself If she were dead, they'd have to hold a double burial,
the Gaily and the woman in one grave. She could be a handmaiden
for Jesus for eternity. An honour, actually. Too good for her.
But if she were still alive, then the very sight of her would spoil
the Gaily's funeral. Musa wanted to despatch the healer with
proper, blameless piety. He did not want his little sins to stand
as mourners at his side.
2 1 4
'You cannot send him to his maker without a sacrifice,' said
Musa, breaking his own silence. 'Come on, come on. What will
you do for him?'
'What kind of sacrifice?' asked Shim. Was this to be a sacrifice
of principle or dignity or money? He was running short, although
he still had some coins hidden in his cloak, and didn't want to
part with any.
'What do these people sacrifice? Their daughters, probably.
Some animal, then. We have to spill a little blood for the man,
to wet our funeral prayers. That's how it's done in the Galilee.
They take an ox and slit its throat. '
'Regrettably, I cannot lead you to an ox,' said Shim, much
relieved. 'I haven't noticed any oxen hereabouts . . .'
'There are your goats,' said Aphas helpfully. 'Kill one. It would
be generous. '
'Wasteful, too,' said Musa. 'And only generous for me. What
would be your part in it?' He would not agree to sacrificing
merchandise, not even for the Gaily. Goats provided milk and
meat and fuel and skin. Killing one without a proper purpose
would be a four-fold waste. 'Send him,' he lifted his chin towards
the badu. 'He's the hunter, isn't he? He's already poached enough
birds and deer from off my land. Send him to catch something
for us. I think I can afford him that.'
Musa threw a stone at the badu to draw his attention. 'Explain
what we want,' he said to Aphas. 'He's used to you.' He watched
the old man mime the catching and the slaughter of an animal.
The badu did not seem to understand. He grinned and shook
his head, until Musa took his ornamental knife out of its cloth
and made a motion with its blade across his throat, followed by
the hand-sign for a prayer. Then the badu nodded. 'See, he's
not as stupid as he looks,' said Musa. 'How could he be?'
The badu hurried off towards the valley. He'd almost understood. He was to catch a bird for Jesus. The smallest funeral 2 1 5
offering. He had mistaken Musa's praying hand-sign to be a
bird, the fingers pressed together like closed wings, the thumbs
protruding like a little head. The badu knew exactly what to do.
Catching birds was easy. He'd been doing it for years.
He ran down to the tent and hunted through the goatskins
until he found Miri's cooking chest. He popped a little cube of
hard salt between his lips, and unravelled a fraying length of
green cotton thread from one of Musa's ruined samples. He
wrapped the thread around his finger and tiptoed amongst the
goats, which had been let loose to graze on the tattered fabrics
and any food that they could find. To anyone that watched it
would seem that he was whispering in their ears, more evidence
of lunacy. A madman speaking to the goats. What did he want
with them? To tether them with his thin thread? To strangle
one of the goats for Jesus, perhaps?
The badu searched the goats until he found one with a bloodfilled tick in the skin folds of an ear. Easy to see, but not so easy to get out. Some smoke, blown from a burning stick, would
usually make a tick detach itself But the badu hadn't any smoke.
Instead he took the now softened cube of salt out of his mouth.
He crumbled it into the goat's ear and rubbed it into the skin.
Salt was better than smoke for catching ticks. A goat with a
burning ear would not stay still. The tick, however, hated salt.
It contracted, darkened, and fell into the badu's palm. That was
the easy part.
The hard part was to tie the thread around the tick's abdomen
without popping its blood sac, and without the tick attaching
itself to the badu's finger. But he was practised. He had harnessed
hundreds of ticks since he was small. He could have pulled a
chariot with them.
The badu took the fastened tick into the nearest stand of
thorns. What little rain there'd been in the night had tempted
last year's seeds to hazard their first green shoots. Insects, tempted
2 ! 6
by the moisture and the exposed sap of wind-snapped branches,
competed for a meal. So did the birds. Finches, wheatears,
warblers had come from nowhere to gorge themselves. And
there were circling hawks, of course, waiting for the plumpest
opportunity.
The badu put his tick on an exposed flat rock amongst the
bushes, a little grape of blood, and weighed the thread down
with a stone, a finger-length from the tick. It could not wiggle
away, out of the unforgiving light. It couldn't even fall very far,
but it had just freedom enough to advertise itself with its struggles.
It didn't like the thread around its abdomen; it didn't like the
sun. The badu backed away, downwind, running the remainder
of the thread through his fingers, until he found a hiding place
behind a bush where he could not be seen but from where the
twisting tick was visible. Now he would fish himself a bird.
He was an expert at keeping still, though anyone who'd seen
him in the past thirty days, running in the rocks, tugging his hair
and hands unceasingly, would have been amazed that one so
plagued by movement and loose limbs could be so quiet and
patient when it suited him. Perhaps the truth was this: he was a
madman only when observed, the cussed opposite of those who
conspired to be rational in company and cultivate their manias
alone. The badu, without any witnesses to click their tongues at
him and shake their heads, appeared entirely sane. He crouched
beneath a thorn bush in the scrub, a blood tick offered on a
thread to passing birds. And he was happy, too. He had his plans.
He'd do his duty to the Gaily who had died, and then he'd make
a rich man of himself
It wasn't long before a banded wheatear came, a male, on its
way north to breed. For all its mating splendour, its damask eye
plumes and its black flights, it was tired from its long journey,
and glad to have such easy and nourishing prey. The trick, it
knew, was not to peck the tick. The bulb ofblood would burst.
2 1 7
Instead, the wheatear turned its head and took the tick whole.
It lifted up its head to let the feast fall into its crop.
The trick for the badu was to wait. Ifhe pulled on the thread
too soon, before the wheatear's throat had ended its spasm of
swallowing, the tick would pop out of its mouth again, without
the blood. If he pulled on the thread too late, the wheatear's
flight might be strong enough to snap the cotton. The badu
waited until the wheatear spread its wings, two beats, and then
he jerked the thread. The wheatear tumbled in the air, and fell
on to its back. The badu was already there. The bird was his.
Not quite the perfect sacrifice, of course. Not quite as generous
as a goat, not quite as heavy as an ox. But better than no sacrifice
at all.
The badu only broke one wing so that the wheatear could
not fly away. He held it, quivering, in both hands. It didn't peck
at him for long. Only its trembling chest showed that it was still
alive. He snapped the thread off at its beak and carried the bird
to the men, waiting at the grave. They were disappointed. They
had hoped that he would catch a little deer at least.
'If that's the best that this mean land will offer us, then damn
it and so be it,' Musa said. 'We'll make do.'
'This is, undoubtedly, the meanest place I've ever seen,' said
Shim, with feeling, kicking at the stones and waving his hands
around at all the unrewarding wilderness, the unremitting sun,
the unrelenting landlord. He was already persuading himself that
it was time to leave.
It was not fair of them to blame the scrub for being stingy
with everything except for space and light and stone. Even if it
had not displayed much magnanimity towards the men, it had,
at least, been generous to Miri. It had not maddened her or
lamed her, yet. It had not made her ill or thin. In fact, she was
the only one of them to put on any weight during the thirty
days. It had allowed her to complete her birth-mat; there'd been
2 1 8
delights in that, despite the wools. And, in the night, it had even
conspired with the wind to free her from the family tent. An act