Chapter Twenty-Nine

Verse One

“Thomas, come.”

I tried to wake quickly and make out the whispering face in the dark. Hands grasped my arms and lifted me to my feet. A hand covered my mouth as two dark faces said, “Shhhh,” and I was led to the door. I thought I was being led to my death, although I didn’t know why. Then again the Romans need no reason. My knees folded in terror, and my kidnappers had to grasp under my shoulders to lift me along. I gasped but could not get enough air into my chest. A sound like a drum pounded in my head. I may have mumbled a prayer, but I tried to remain silent for fear that the others might wake and be placed in danger as well.

Outside in the moonlight, I could better see the faces—those of Philip and Thaddeus. We stepped a few cubits from the house. They continued to hold my arms.

“You have to come to Jerusalem,” Philip said. “Jesus was arrested.”

I tried to speak but gagged, bent over, and retched. I stood and threw back my head and gulped a deep breath. My eyes were wet, and this seemed to pull the stars into focus. Not very long after this, I would find myself in Alexandria, where a philosopher taught me the names of all the constellations. On that night, however, the stars formed no pattern, despite my attempt to find something meaningful in the heavens.

“How long ago?”

“The day after you left, we went to Jerusalem,” Philip said. “We ran into Mary and James and John. Mary was sad because she hadn’t found Judas. Jesus told her not to worry and then took us straight to the Temple where, I think, he planned to give a sermon. But something happened to him. He lost control. He began to yell at and curse everyone—the merchants, the coin-changers, even the priests. He turned over tables and scuffled with several of the merchants. Then he just stopped and walked away.”

“No,” said Thaddeus. “First he stood up on a merchant’s table and said that the Temple would destroy us.”

“Yes, he did make a short announcement,” said Philip, “but he said he had destroyed the Temple and that we needed to rebuild it within ourselves. And it was a crate, not a table.”

“That’s not how I remember it.”

“Anyway,” said Philip, “we knew the Temple police were on the way, so we dragged him out of there. It all happened so fast.”

“Many in our group,” said Thaddeus, “never caught up with us. I think they were confused and afraid they’d get in trouble if they remained near Jesus.”

“So when did the police come for him?” I asked.

Philip finally released his grip on me. “Not until much later. We followed Jesus about the city as he greeted everyone we passed, just as calm and cheerful as he had ever been. I guess he was proud of what he’d done at the Temple, but the rest of us were scared. As we walked, Andrew and John and James sent people out to the nearby streets to see if the police were after us. Roman soldiers were everywhere, but they didn’t seem to be searching for us. And because our group was smaller, I suppose we didn’t draw as much attention as we might have.”

I pulled my other arm, and Thaddeus let go.

“Jesus tried to give a sermon,” Philip said, “but the streets were too crowded.”

“And others were preaching or shouting on nearly every street corner,” said Thaddeus. “I don’t think anyone would have paid him any attention.”

“When was he arrested?” I asked.

Philip scratched the ground with his sandal. It was too dark to see what he might have drawn. “We found a place to settle for the night. Merchants had erected tents and charged people to sleep under them. A few people in our group had a bit of money and left us to sleep in slightly better comfort. Then Jesus pulled some of us aside as, you know, he likes to do. The talk was casual, like when you have visitors who drop by to share a skin of wine. He gave us no instructions, no warnings, no lessons, but he did say a few things that were a little strange—like we should take note of the passing of things. Something about spreading like lilies and taking care not to pick them all at once.”

“No, to make sure we don’t get picked all at once,” said Thaddeus.

“Yes, he did say we were like flowers, but then he told us to be like the weeds.”

“And that wild dogs eat the best. Oh, and then we should be travelers.”

“No, passersby,” said Philip. “Bartholomew was writing some of this down. I’d never seen him do that, but he said he’d written down other things Jesus said. He didn’t want anyone to know he’d been doing it. I don’t know why he kept it a secret. How many of us can read, anyw—?”

“Get to the important things!” I said. We squatted and listened for signs that someone had been awakened. “This isn’t what you came to tell me,” I said, more quietly. “Now, the arrest.”

Philip rubbed his mouth and inspected his hand as if worried he might find blood. “Peter and Judas found us. We greeted them with kisses and Jesus was thrilled. Mary danced when she saw Judas and sang a song about the Lord leading our footsteps. But Peter and Judas were serious and didn’t talk much. Jesus asked Judas if he’d located his comrade, and Judas just said ‘yes.’ He didn’t seem to want to talk about it. Then things happened. Mary and Peter got into a quarrel.”

“No,” said Thaddeus, “first Jesus and Peter stepped away and talked in private.”

“That was after Mary grabbed Jesus and tried to pull him away.”

“Couldn’t have been, because Mary got angry when Peter said she couldn’t join their discussion.”

I told them to get on with it, or perhaps I growled.

“Some whispering and some quarreling took place,” said Philip. “That much is certain. Then, I think, Judas stepped aside with Mary. I just know that she was not in sight when the police came, but we were all so focused on Jesus and Judas and Peter, who were having a—well, not a fight, but tense words. It could have been anger or it could even have been joy. I can’t say what they were doing.”

“It was like they were talking in another tongue,” said Thaddeus.

“And then some of the police―maybe five or six―walked straight up to Jesus as if they knew him while another twenty or more police stood back among us. One of the police clubbed Jesus with the flat of his sword. I thought at first that he had tried to slice off Jesus’ head. Jesus staggered back, stunned, and two Temple guards threw ropes around him and dragged him away.”

I sank into a squat and retched again. Phillip bent beside me and patted my back.

“Everybody panicked,” said Thaddeus, “and some of us tried to help Jesus. The police easily overpowered us, and they had some Roman soldiers with them, but it was as if they weren’t interested enough in us even to hurt us badly.”

“I lost two teeth,” said Philip. He pulled down his lip and showed me. I couldn’t see much by the moonlight, but he slipped in a finger where teeth should have been.

“James and John, the brothers, were hurt most,” said Thaddeus, “because they would not stop fighting. They knocked down a couple of police. One of them got a soldier’s sword but, before he could use it, he was clubbed in the back of the head. I’m surprised the Romans didn’t kill them.”

“Did anyone follow Jesus?” I asked.

“After the fighting was over,” said Philip, “nearly all the followers scattered. As best I could tell, only Jesus was arrested. Those few of us who hadn’t run gathered together. James and John tried to join us, but they could not do much more than groan. Andrew took charge—”

“Not Judas or Peter?” I asked.

“They were gone. Andrew said he and a couple of others would find out where Jesus was taken, but he told Thaddeus and me to come fetch you. We left that very moment.”

I knew my brother was already dead, but I still had to go to Jerusalem. I was more concerned with how I should deal with my mother. If Jesus had been executed, word could get back to her before I returned. Shouldn’t I be the one to tell her, or would she just drive me away regardless of how she heard? Perhaps I should never return to Nazareth if I got to Jerusalem and found Jesus dead.

“Let’s go,” I said.

“Are we taking James?” asked Philip.

“No.”

“You’ll tell him what’s happened, though, right?”

“No. Not a word to anyone. Give me a moment to go inside and get a couple of things.”

“Thomas,” said Thaddeus, “we hurried here as fast as we could. Can you feed us?”

Verse Two

We arrived in Jerusalem exhausted. I was too worried about Jesus to obey the law about not traveling on the Sabbath or to fear the Samaritans. Neither Philip nor Thaddeus even mentioned our ignoring the Sabbath and marching straight through Samaria. We entered the city against the flow of pilgrims ruefully returning to their dolorous villages. They were cursing themselves for breaking their oath of last year that they would never again be cowed into this pointless and costly ceremony and instead remain home to tend scrawny sheep or tote vessels of water to dry fields. Their empty promises to themselves annoyed me as much as their idiotic obedience to ancient tradition, and I wanted to shout at them all that something of immeasurable gravity had happened while they were busying themselves with petty concerns.

I suggested to Philip and Thaddeus that we pull our cloaks up around our heads in case the Temple police had decided to gather up anyone they suspected was associated with Jesus and, in my case, anyone who looked exactly like him. We saw no one from our inner circle. We saw a man and woman―I think their names were Jonathan and Abigail―who had been with us since Bethsaida. I was surprised that any of them were still in Jerusalem.

“Here,” I said to the man as I stepped close to him. “It’s Thomas.”

He put his arm around the woman and hurried away. He looked over his shoulder once.

“You!” Philip called. “Should I fetch him, Thomas?”

“No,” I said. “They must be frightened.”

Later that day, we saw three or four more of Jesus’ followers on their way out of the city. When we spoke to them, they too quickened their pace and pretended not to hear us.

We sat in a tent where a merchant sold bowls of barley soup. I had no idea what to do next. Philip said that if we went to the high court and inquired about Jesus, they’d be bound by law to give us the information. I don’t know where he got such an idea, but asking the high court would have been useless. During Passover, the court was overseen by the Roman prefect, even when the Temple police made the arrests.

Seeking information from the Romans would probably get us arrested, too. Thaddeus thought an arrest for something the Romans considered just a minor annoyance—one that probably would result in only a few days in jail—might be our only hope of finding Jesus.

“I’ll do it myself,” Thaddeus said. “I’ll go to the prefect’s headquarters—that shouldn’t be hard to find—and demand information. They’ll knock me to the ground to get rid of me, and I’ll jump up and insist they hear me, and they’ll put me in a cell. They probably have all their prisoners in the same place.” He leapt up as if he were about to march off.

I was about to say that, if Jesus had not yet been released, he had surely been executed, and that we would have better luck trying to find where the Romans dumped insurgents’ bodies. Then someone grasped my arm. I jumped and turned to see a woman’s covered face. Only the eyes were exposed, swollen and bloodshot yet unmistakable.

“Leave, Thomas,” said Mary. “There’s nothing to do. It’s over. I can’t go on.”

I embraced her. Several people stood together nearby and watched. I didn’t examine them with any care but wondered if they were followers who had stayed only because they looked to Mary for guidance.

“What happened, Mary, after the arrest?”

Mary tilted her head at the group beside us. “These are some of my family. You remember my brother Balkai? They came for Passover. I’m going back with them. There’s nothing for me now. Nothing for any of us.”

I had not recognized them. I nodded to Balkai and to the others, then took Mary’s face into my hands. Her breath was sour, as if she had not eaten in a long time. “Mary, tell me what happened. What’s happened to Jesus? Where’s Judas?”

Her face fell into my chest like dropped fruit. She moaned and choked, a sound erupting from a grief far beyond weeping. Her family members shifted their gazes among each other, each probably waiting for another to give me the news that they must have known I’d already figured out. Mary looked up at me and untied the scarf from her face. “They’re both dead,” she said. “The Romans crucified Jesus. I watched him hang on a pole, Thomas. I haven’t been able to sleep—that vision of him fighting for breath for hours and hours.”

I was dizzy, like the time when I was eight or nine and a donkey that Jesus and I were pestering with a pointed stick hoofed me in the stomach and I shat on myself. I remember that Jesus doubled over in laughter as I lay in the dirt whimpering. I could hear Mary sniff back tears, but I could see only an image of Jesus, his face twisted in agony. Did he at least die with the slight comfort that I did not have to witness that horrid scene? I felt drool on my chin. “Where’s the body?”

Mary wiped my mouth with her sleeve. “The Romans chased us off. They beat James and John. I heard that the bodies of the executed are dumped on a trash heap outside of town, and the soldiers will not let anyone near it. I don’t know. I haven’t had the heart to go look.”

“Wait. Judas is dead, too?”

She covered her mouth with her hands and breathed through her fingers as if filtering a foul odor from the air. She exhaled with a low hum. “After Jesus was arrested, everyone was frightened and confused, Judas grabbed me, and we ran to the home of someone he knew. He told me not to leave the house until he returned, and then he went back out into the night. I never saw him again. I found Andrew and some of the others hiding at another house. Andrew said that Peter told him Judas had been killed.”

“Killed by whom?”

Mary just shook her head.

“Are Andrew and the others still at that house?”

“They were this morning.”

“Take me.”

“Mary, we should go now,” said Balkai. He stepped toward us and took Mary by the hand. “Thomas, I’m sorry about your brother, but it’s not safe for Mary here. I understand that you want to find out more, but my advice for you and all your associates is to leave this city immediately. There’s no predicting what these Romans might do next. They could decide to kill as many of us as they can while they have the chance.”

“I thank you, Balkai. I have to at least find our friends, though. Please, I just need Mary to take me to them.”

A look of complete exasperation came over Balkai. “Have you forgotten, Thomas, that you are Jesus’ twin?” he said. “If the Romans who executed Jesus see you, they’ll do the same to you just for being his brother.” He looked around as if soliciting help for his case. “You know how superstitious they are, Thomas, with all their gods and ghosts. Gods taking women. Men becoming gods. People going to Sheol and coming back. They’re crazy, Thomas. They may think Jesus has come back from the grave. And they’ll have to crucify him again.”

Mary pulled away from her brother and turned to me with her mouth agape and her eyes spread wide. “Thomas, we can do it!” She realized that she had yelled and lowered her voice. “We can do it. Listen—” She shook her head. “No. Later.” She pulled her family together. They appeared to have a disagreement. Balkai put his hands on his head and paced around for a moment. Mary hugged the others.

Balkai circled my way and looked me over as if he were buying a slave. “Please take care of her. Will you bring her home?”

I said that I would, although I was not clear about what was happening. After goodbyes, Mary’s family left.

Something had changed in Mary’s face. “Let’s go to Andrew and the others.”

Verse Three

We stopped between a small house and a shed that held a few long abandoned chicken roosts. Mary told me to stay out of sight while she, Philip, and Thaddeus went into a house across the street. While sitting in the broken-down shed, I had time to make ten or twelve little people out of straw, as Jesus and I had once done for our sisters when we were young. I couldn’t remember the trick we used to tie the head so that it would not lose its shape. I was so engrossed with making these dolls that I didn’t notice Mary and Andrew until their feet entered my view. I looked up to see Andrew’s face sag as if he had been ill for weeks.

“Come inside, Thomas.” Andrew’s voice was thin. “James and John and a few of the others are here. We have something to discuss with you.” He sounded like a judge who hated to pronounce a harsh sentence.

Inside, the others were just as solemn: Mary, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Thaddeus, Matthew, and Simon the Zealot, who had joined us when Judas returned, and two or three others I cannot recall now. They looked at me as if I had been away for years—as if they doubted I was even really Thomas.

“Where is Peter?” I asked. “Is Judas really dead?”

They continued to study me. Did they hold me accountable for something? Did they blame me for Jesus’ death because I’d left for Nazareth?

“We can’t find Peter,” Andrew said. “Some here think that Peter . . . that he may have somehow been connected—”

“He killed Judas,” Simon said.

“You don’t know that!” Andrew said.

“I saw the body,” Simon said. “He had been strangled.”

“He was hanging from a rope on a tree,” said Andrew.

“He had cuts on his body and blood on his clothes that did not come from the wounds of hanging,” said Simon. “None of you have the kind of experience I have. Judas had been in a fight and was dead before being hoisted up on the rope. The marks on his neck that killed him were not the same as the rope marks from hanging. He was strangled by a very powerful—”

“What do have you against my brother?” Andrew shouted.

“Stop it!” said Mary. Her face was streaked with tears. “None of this will resurrect Judas.” She turned to me and held out her hands. I took them in mine. “But resurrection, Thomas, is what we must talk about.”

The others shifted in their seats. Andrew and Simon glared at each other. Someone passed around a wineskin. I took a long draft. It was as if there was a box and they all knew what was inside, but each was unwilling to lift the lid for me.

“Do you know what they did with Jesus’ body?” I asked.

After a long pause, Andrew spoke. “It’s in the trash pit. I saw them put it on a cart with a few others and take it there.”

“Can we get it?”

“They guard it, Thomas. They pay people to catch stray dogs and bring them there to eat the pile of bodies. You cannot imagine how many they execute each day. They’re monsters, and even worse are our people who collude with them.”

“Let’s get back to our plan,” Mary said.

“Plan?” I asked.

“Dearest Thomas, Jesus is dead, but again he is not. His vision lives in us, and we owe it to him to continue.”

“This is crazy!” said Philip. “You’ll make fools of us all. This isn’t Greece, where they believe in such nonsense.”

Mary spun her face toward Philip. Her eyes widened and her lips parted as if she were about to speak to him. Philip looked down at the floor. Mary turned back to me and slid the back of her hand across my cheek. “Many of his followers have left, but some are gathered just outside of town, too shocked to believe their dreams are over. Some new followers have joined them. They saw or heard about Jesus’ disruption at the Temple, and he inspired them. Hearing he had been executed even seemed to give them more inspiration. Some of that spirit is being picked up by the older followers.”

“I can’t believe this,” said Philip.

“Silence!” said Matthew. He gave Philip a fierce look and inflated his chest like Peter used to do when he wanted to intimidate someone.

Mary kissed my hand. Tears fell down her cheeks. “We, too―those of us here― were in shock. We tried to keep all the followers here and convince them that we could continue. We brought all we could gather to this house and spoke to them. Andrew addressed them and gave a moving plea to continue in Jesus’ name, just as he would have wished. Matthew spoke, comparing Jesus to Moses and reminding them that after Moses’ death, our people continued on their mission to reclaim their homeland. I led them in song, but they just didn’t respond with any enthusiasm. We—those of us sitting here with you—didn’t think we had the charm, the spiritual power, to keep the movement going. When you saw me leaving today, I had abandoned all hope. I had lost my husband, my true love, Thomas, and the hope that Jesus gave us for a new life. I didn’t really want to return to Magdala with my family. I didn’t want to go anywhere or do anything. I could just walk the streets of the city where Judas and Jesus died. Thomas, I comforted myself with the thought that I could at least make a living as a whore.”

She took a deep breath and looked around the room. “I think everyone else here felt the same loss of purpose.” Some of the others nodded. Mary wiped her eyes and cheeks, then placed both her wet hands on the sides of my face and moved in close to me. I thought I could hear the breath of the others quickening. Mary was about to open the box.

“Mary,” I said, “I’m not Jesus. I don’t have that charm or spiritual power either. I—”

“Shhhh,” she said, and placed her tiny hand upon my lips. “Thomas, that’s not quite what we’re asking you to do. Dearest Thomas, to keep Jesus’ spirit alive, to keep this movement growing, to give you and me and these others the hope that they have not made all these sacrifices and done all this work in vain, that Jesus did not make the ultimate sacrifice in vain, they need a miracle. Think of how they reacted to Jesus’ miracles—to Lazarus’ resurrection.”

Mary pressed my face until it hurt. Her voice sharpened to a whistle, as when the wind tightens through an alley.

“My precious Thomas,” she said. “You are Jesus’ twin. Even those of us who know you well have often had a difficult time telling the two of you apart. If these followers believe Jesus has returned to them from the grave, can you imagine their zeal?”