Temple Boys (15 page)

“Er, we're fine,” Flea said. “I mean, we hung out with the Chosen One and his followers, didn't we?”

He nodded encouragingly to Crouch. They couldn't get past the madman and they had nothing to fight with. All they could do was buy time.

“We ate with them,” Crouch said. “We saw him cure the sick down at the Healing Pool. We agree with everything he says, glory be.”

“Can you tell us how you save people?” Flea asked.

“With this.” The knife's tip seemed to be unstitching a seam in the air. “This. This. This.”

“You kill people?” Crouch's voice rose to a squeak.

“How else can they be reborn?”

“This is what I don't get,” Flea said. “It's all very well you going around saving people with your … er, knife, but who's going to save you? It doesn't seem fair.”

Doubts flickered across the Dunker's face. The knife stopped pecking. “Who's going to save me?”

“Well, yes. And how are you going to do it?”

“I…” He was looking down at his knife now.

“I mean, we could help.”

“Flea?” Crouch warned.

But Flea was on a roll. “You see, we spent time with the Chosen One and he always went on about this thing. We should try to save as many people as possible. His orders. So if we saved you, it would be saving us.”

The man peered at him. “You would do that?” Flea held out his hand.

The Ranting Dunker held out the knife, then snatched it away. “Let me save your friend first. My way of saying thank you.”

“No thanks are needed. This is my duty.” Flea tried to look calm and reassuring.

“Your duty.” Tears spilled from the Dunker's eyes and filled the fissures of his face.

Flea hoped Crouch would know what to do. The Dunker handed over the knife, bared his neck, and knelt. “Here?” he asked.

“There!” Flea threw the knife as far as he could over the roof of the house opposite.
“Run!”

He grabbed Crouch and they surged forward. Behind them they heard the Ranting Dunker howl. Ahead, the barrier blocking the road loomed, the Upper City rising behind it.

“He's going to catch us,” Crouch said as Flea shook the doors of the houses close by. All locked. “He's coming!”

“Can you climb?” Flea asked, and almost before he had finished talking Crouch was hauling himself up the barrier, hand over hand. Flea followed and helped him up onto the roof, where they collapsed, panting. They climbed half a dozen more parapets before shock caught up with them. Flea could not stop the trembling in his arms and legs. Crouch's skin was gray and pinched from pain. His head kept falling onto his chest as if it were too heavy.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I'll be better in a while. I just need to catch my breath.”

“That's all right,” Flea said. “We'll just … Oh no. That sound.”

He crawled to the edge of the roof and peered over. A crowd was marching down the street toward them. Some people were holding flaming torches; others were knocking on doors.

They sounded angry.

“What do we do?” Crouch asked. He looked exhausted and even more shrunken with pain. Flea knew he couldn't walk any farther, let alone run from a mob.

“We stay put,” he whispered. “Don't worry. Shh. Listen.”

The banging on the door seemed to come from right below them.

Muffled voices from inside the house. “What? Who's that?”

“Temple business,” a gruff voice answered. “We're after two boys. Blasphemers. Trying to disrupt the feast.”

Crouch crawled across to Flea. “Blasphemers? Us? That means they want to stone us.”

“It's not you. It's me, but I don't know what's going on,” whispered Flea. “First the Cutters and now the Temple? I mean, how can the Temple
and
the Cutters be after me? They hate each other, don't they? Why don't I understand, and what am I meant to know?”

“It doesn't matter,” Crouch wailed. “It's too late. Look!” He was peering over the roof's parapet. “They're on the rooftops. They'll see us. They're looking everywhere! If we move they'll see us. If we stay still they'll catch us. We're stuck. We're … Oh no.”

The scrape of wood on wood. A few paces away, a black square appeared as a trapdoor in the roof creaked open.

 

32

Flea looked at Crouch blankly.
He had opened his mouth to say sorry when a quavering voice spoke.

“I was right. I was sure I could hear something up here. I knew I was right.”

“We're just beggars. We're lost. We haven't done anything wrong,” Crouch squeaked.

“And I've got a knife.” Flea tried to sound menacing.

“Oh dear,” the voice said. “Miriam, they're scared. Bring a light so they can see me. That should reassure them.”

A small oil lamp was passed up from below. Its light showed a very old man with long white hair and a white beard. “Two little angels fallen on our roof. Our prayers have been answered. Come quick.” The light played in the hollows and wrinkles of his face.

“How do we know we'll be safe?” Flea said.

“Dear child, you don't. But there's no safety up here and the mob's closing in. Even my deaf old ears can hear them. I beg you, come in.”

And before Flea could think of anything else, Crouch was crawling across the roof to the trapdoor and climbing down.

Flea followed him into a small square room. In one corner a fire burned in a simple clay oven. A roll of bedding was laid out in another. There was a rush mat in the middle of the floor and a few pots and plates stacked along the wall.

“Welcome,” the man said. “We heard you … arrive … just as we were saying our prayers. We have no interest in following the mob. The night before the Great Feast is a time for prayer and kindness.”

“We were praying for guests,” the woman said. “Our prayers have been answered.” She was a tiny concentration of sweetness and wrinkles. On her forehead and chin were tattooed small crosses the color of the sky at the end of a dusty summer's day. “Sit, please. They are here.”

“Open up by the authority of the Temple,” a voice called out. The banging on the door made Flea wince.

“We have to run,” he hissed. Panic made him feel sick.

“Have faith. The Temple has no authority here,” the old woman said, with a smile. “Husband, send them away.”

The old man climbed down the stairs to the lower room. Over the flustered clucking of chickens they heard him calling out to wait and be patient as he unbarred the door.

“We're looking for two children. Lawbreakers. Blasphemers. Have you—”

“Children?” the old man said. He sounded honestly confused.

“They come from a street gang. Been involved in terrorist activity. Have you seen anyone like that?”

“Nothing like that, but these old eyes…”

“Alone, are you?”

“I live with my wife.”

“Well, be careful. These are dangerous times.”

“Oh I know,” the old man said. “I know.”

He was smiling when he returned to the room. “Well, I didn't lie, did I?”

“No, indeed you didn't.” The old woman returned the smile. “You did very well.”

“When he said, ‘Have you seen anyone like that' … the truth is, I have seen the thing itself, so nothing like it.”

“You'd split hairs with the barber,” the old woman said. “What these boys want is a cup of milk and a place to rest, not a lecture on how clever you are.”

“Whatever happens, we don't like the idea of grown men chasing children down the street. We've lived through this kind of madness before. There's always trouble at the feast, especially when the latest one turns up at the east gate.”

It took a second for the words to sink in. “The latest one?” Flea said. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, every other year someone rides into the city on a donkey claiming to be the Chosen One. You know the old prophecy: ‘Behold your king is coming for you. He is just and will save you. He is humble and mounted on a donkey.'”

Flea shook his head. “I'd never even heard of the Chosen One before yesterday. We just went to see Yesh because we thought he did tricks, but then it all got complicated. I don't know how it happened.”

“Poor child. Life can be very simple but people like to make it complicated. They go through the old books looking for prophecies, for example. This ‘Yesh': can he heal the sick, do you know?”

“Yes,” Crouch said quickly.

“Of course you know the verse from the Holy Book?” the old man said hopefully.

When Flea and Crouch looked at him blankly, he said, “‘The lame will leap like a deer and the dumb will shout for joy.' Did he go into the Temple?”

“Yes,” Flea and Crouch said together.

“‘And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly go to his Temple.' It's all there, written down in the old books. All you have to do is look. But the problem is, people just don't seem to study the texts the way they used to.”

“Are you saying that if he did all these things, then he must be the Chosen One?” Crouch asked.

But Flea's mind had raced ahead. “No! Don't you see? If they're all written down, he just has to follow them, so that they look like the prophecies working themselves out. The donkey on the bridge: that had been set up in advance. The trouble in the Temple—all done for a reason. The healing and probably everything else he did. That was the plan!”

Crouch stuck out his bottom lip. “It doesn't matter,” he said. “If it was prophesied and he did it, then…”

“But if he knew about them, then they're not prophecies at all. They're more like … instructions. You must see that.”

“It doesn't matter if he really is the Chosen One.”

“It does matter. It has to matter!” Flea's head was like a room full of voices he could not understand. They were getting louder and louder. He thought his head would burst.

“Enough, enough.” The old woman bustled over. “Time for talk tomorrow. You look exhausted, you poor things. Rest here. Stay with us and, tomorrow, join us for the feast.”

The old man put a comforting hand on Crouch's shoulder. “Come now. I can tell you've been pinning your hopes on this Yeshua. Well, in spite of what your friend thinks, he has a lot going for him. We heard he's from Gilgal, and that's part of the prophecy you can't fake. He's got quite a following up there, and that counts in his favor. And of course there was that desert prophet who recommended him. Yohan, he was called. Yohan the Dunker. So don't lose heart, that's the main thing. And if you…”

Flea stood suddenly. The voices had come together to form a single clear question. “What comes next in the prophecy?” he asked.

Silence. The old man looked away. “It is best not to meddle, child. Stay with us for the feast. We shall kill the lamb, cook it, and mark our door with its blood so the Angel of Death passes overhead.”

“But I need to meddle! I've messed things up. I don't know how, but if I know the next stage of the prophecy, maybe I can do something!”

“Really, child…”

“You know. Why won't you tell me?”

“Because it is a terrible thing.” The old man looked at his wife, who nodded sadly. Then he took a deep breath and chanted, “He was pierced through for our sins, he was crushed for all the unfairness in the world. He was punished for our comfort and we can only be healed when he is whipped. That's what the writings say. It is not good. You don't want to trouble yourself. Many pretenders claim to be the Chosen One, but all fail when they are faced with the ultimate test.”

Flea swallowed. “Whipped? Crushed? You mean tortured?” He thought of the whipping post in the Fortress's courtyard and the awful instruments in the Results Man's cellar. He felt sick.

“He will be betrayed, tortured, and suffer a miserable death. Is it any wonder that none of these pretenders has ever gone through with it?”

“Betrayed? Did you say
betrayed
? I've got to go,” Flea said.

“Child, you should not meddle in these matters,” the old man said.

“But he has been betrayed. Shim, one of his followers, has betrayed him to the Romans. The Romans are torturers. It's happening like the prophecy says, but I can stop it! I can warn them. I know where they are!”

“Hush, child. What will be, will be. If this is Yeshua's destiny, then trying to stop it will be pointless. A true prophecy is like a river—you can try to block it, but it will always find its way.”

“No,” Flea said. “It'll be my fault! If I'd just done what I was told in the first place, Jude could have already done something about it. That's what he wanted. But now that I know what's going to happen, I can make it right. Crouch, come on. I'm sorry. We really have to go now. They can't be too far from here.”

But when he held his hand out, Crouch would not take it. Instead he turned to the old man. “If he is the Chosen One, what will happen when all the prophecies come true?”

A little smile lit up the old man's face and his eyes crinkled in delight. “Ah, now, that is very interesting. If all the prophecies come true, it is said that this world will end and a new world will begin. A world of peace and plenty. A world that will make this one seem like a sad memory. Pain and hunger will be no more—fading shadows on the golden fields of paradise.”

“And the poor will be rich?” Crouch asked.

“All will be rich.”

“And the lame?”

Flea read the twist in Crouch's face and the longing in his eyes and did not like it. “Snap out of it, Crouch,” he said. “Yesh might be tortured. Your precious magician might be tortured. And the world will end. Don't you get it? The. World. Will. End.”

Crouch's face was anguished. “But then there'll be a better one. What will happen to the lame?”