The Judas Case, page 15
“My people were tent-makers,” he told me. “At Tarsus on the Orontes. My father sold hides and canvas to the caravans that passed through the city. He was the best. And there were a lot of caravans that passed through.”
I was prevented from hearing more: a squad of our good friends sprawled between the pillars of the colonnade, stood down from whatever light guarding duties they may have been performing. They looked up at us and turned away. Then one looked back, and his eyes lit upon Saul’s uniform.
“Temple Guard? Go on, then…”
They slouched and made a hand’s-breadth wider space between the columns. We picked our way around them and I kept my eyes on their officer as we did. None of them returned my gaze. At last we came to the eastern end of the colonnade, and the high place of the Temple walls.
“I used to come here,” I told Saul and Cassiel. “When I needed to reflect, to tease out the intricacies of a case. For some reason the view always helped. Of course, it was lower and less ornate in those days.”
I looked down. Below us, the Kidron valley receded and for a moment the stream’s waters seemed to rush backwards and the banks moved. Saul stood to one side and looked out across the valley.
“Show me,” I said and pointed to the slopes across the valley. “Show me where you made the arrest.”
“You mean the place where I failed to pursue a fugitive?”
“I don’t think anyone would hold it against you that someone slipped away. Someone of no importance to the case.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Perhaps the interesting question is why the followers of a rural magician from Galilee, even one who taught Torah and had ideas about the end of the world, should include a priest. We’ll come back to that another time.”
Saul reached out his arm as if encompassing the Kidron below us and indicated the sparse greenness of budding trees upon the lower slopes of Mount Olive and the road to Beth-Anya. I thought of Nicanor and his story of the dead man who had been returned to life there. We must go, I decided: we must go and investigate the case of the man who had come back to life, if only to satisfy our own curiosity, whether medical, legal or philosophical. Coming back to life: it was a trick of the old prophets. You didn’t see so much of it these days, however much the enthusiasts for national destruction in the name of religion might wish for it and use it to encourage the uneducated. Our good friends, with their admirable efficiency, have ensured that it simply no longer happens.
The olive grove looked well set out and tended. The slope faced westwards and the trees would wait until late in the day to receive the full light of the sun. In the cool of the evening it must be a quiet pleasure to walk beneath the trees. I wondered how many metretes of oil its master must get from it.
“Who owns the olive grove?” I asked.
“I have no idea. But I will find out. Why?”
“Your squad and our good friends went onto the property to arrest a man. I thought the name of the owner might have been mentioned.”
“No. I don’t believe that it ever was.”
“Never mind. A farmer’s question, that’s all.”
“Oh?” Saul looked up at me.
“When I left the Service, I bought a farm up in the hills and set it to vines.” I let that settle in his mind for a moment but it was obvious that he had never heard of Solomon the Oenarch. But he seemed eager, and this would be a moment to find some common interest or experience. Zenobia had learned in her former career that there was nothing men liked half so much as to talk about themselves.
“Did your father teach you the trade of wine-maker? I thought that you said that you were a scholar?”
“I was,” I said. “And he did not. My people owned land in the Jezreel Valley. But I was the youngest son and there was no room in the family business, so they invested in a more than usually expensive education for me. Scholarship didn’t quite work in the way that they hoped. Though I don’t believe that I ever brought any shame upon them. Do you know what made me want to follow this trade? It was Pesach, in my eighth year. My family had assembled for the festival meal, here in Jerusalem. I was the youngest child present. So I knew what I had to do. I had to ask my family the question – Why is this night not like other nights? And they answered. At that moment, I knew what I wanted: to discover the truth about things. I realised that I could find out the truth, by the power of words and logic. It was Pesach, the festival of our liberation from slavery, that made me a detective. Years later, I studied philosophy for a short while in Athens before I took employment in the Service. I studied rhetoric too. Rhetoric and philosophy teach you the most important skill that you will ever need in this life: to discover the truth, and to recognise a lie. Beyond that, nothing matters.”
“Nothing? But our Law is the only truth, the only good. You must know that. The Law of God is all we need to know or understand.”
“Let me tell you something. I studied the Law too. When I was young, Old Herod awarded me a shawl of excellence for my scholarship. Meeting him was the most terrifying moment of my childhood. Of course, he was no judge of scholarship. Or of truth. Did you know? He had his own very practical way of finding out the truth. If a cup of wine was thought to be poisoned, he would haul a prisoner up from the cells to offer him either immediate execution or a chance of freedom. I believe the prisoner usually risked drinking the wine – and usually died. But Old Herod, the monster, found out the truth. Practical? Perhaps you are lucky, and the truth you know is so great that it fills every moment of your time, occupies every space and every action of your life. Every half-begun thought—”
“You’re insulting me,” his voice rose, “insulting the Law.”
“Saul, let me tell you how the Service used to work. In the days of Old Herod, we had a reputation for terror. Why? Because the old monster would not trust us. He had no time at all for reason and logic. Each time he sensed a threat he went and called in his favourite troupe of magicians from Mesopotamia. He ordered them to predict the future for him, when all the while he had the finest philosophers and logicians at his disposal. The magicians’ methods were all sorts of superstition and nonsense. Tests of guilt that involved terrifying their victims. All very well for peasants, but in a modern state, part of our good friends’ settled peace, this sort of nonsense was unnecessary. But he listened to these charlatans, and as a result half his court died agonising deaths. We have moved on, do you understand? We must use reason to find out the truth. We cannot allow ourselves to return to those days.”
I paused and looked at him, eyebrows raised. An interrogation technique that never fails. And he opened: I was granted a sort of entrance. His face shone with pleasure and he even managed to extend his height beyond the assistance of his built-up boots by bobbing onto the tips of his toes with the rhythms of his words.
“My father decided that I should study too, and he sent me here to Jerusalem. There was no place for me in the family business either. Though I could spin rope better than any of my brothers. I could cut canvas and hide quicker than the craftsmen in my father’s workshop and my stitching was faster and more accurate than my brothers’ work. Do you understand?”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“When I was a child my brothers and I would compete to see which one of us could spin hemp into rope the quickest. None of my brothers could equal me. Can you imagine that? The old craftsmen of Tarsus would come to ask my opinion of their work, and the young masters would bring their best pieces to me for inspection and ask me which hides were the most suitable. While I was still a boy. Do you understand?”
I understood well enough that this was the sort of story I had heard from many young scholars in my own youth, and from craftsmen of all sorts when in old age they were looking back and comparing their own efforts with those of the pupils of the day. Saul must truly believe he was the first person to whom this immoderate piece of boasting could apply.
“And what happened when you became a scholar?”
He beamed.
“I was unrivalled! Of all the scholars I was the one whose knowledge of Torah was agreed to be outstanding. I outstripped them all. Gamaliel, my good master, was astonished by my learning.”
There was much else like this too, as we watched the sun begin to illuminate the olive groves across the Kidron and the shadows folded themselves beneath the trees. At last he paused and I was able to ask a question.
“What happened when you were appointed to the Prefect’s office to liaise with our good friends? Remind me – when was it?”
“Last year,” he said. “For three months.”
“And?”
He looked down at his feet.
“It was obvious to me, from the very beginning.”
“What was?”
“That they did not understand.”
“And?”
“And I soon understood that my task was to be with the Temple guards. To ensure that the people are able to live their lives in a good and holy way. And I could not do that if I was spending my days waiting on the Prefect, could I?”
“No. I don’t suppose that you could.”
“And when I was assigned to the Temple Guard, at my own request, you can imagine how it was. The officers,” he announced, his eyes shining again, “were always consulting me on matters of the Law and the correct interpretation of Torah. Me! Not Captain Malchus or the priests, but me. Do you understand? I had the respect of good men in our work of ensuring that the people and the city were kept holy and pure.”
He fell silent, turned away from the view across the Kidron and looked out over the great roof of the Temple where the dark smoke of the afternoon sacrifices rose into the air.
“I was the one,” he repeated. “Can you understand what that means? To direct people into a good and holy way of living. To help our people live every moment of their lives in full view of the Law of God.”
I decided that I preferred Saul bumptious and enthusiastic to his despair of the morning and that we had his piety within the Temple to thank for this. Observance had its uses.
“Cassiel, what hour of the day would you say it is?”
He shaded his eyes.
“About the tenth hour, sir.”
“Just the time,” I said. “Our next step is to pay a visit to the place that I believe Yehuda went to after the arrest. Come on.”
“Where are we going?” Saul asked.
I said nothing. Let him understand and be shocked in his own time. I led him back along the colonnade where the soldiers again grudged us space to pass, and we returned to the Court of Nations and the western gate. As we descended into the depths of the lower city, my knees resumed their aching and Saul was soon beside me, supporting my arm.
“Have you ever worked under an assumed name?” I asked him. “A false identity?”
“No.” He was offended again. “I am Saul, of the tribe of Benjamin. That sort of work is only for—”
“I have. A long time ago. It can be dangerous work, to penetrate a group of people, to become one of them. The fear of exposure runs deep, believe me. But that is not all. It can also be destructive of a man’s true self. To live as someone else for a long time wears out a man’s sense of who he is. Often, it can destroy him completely.”
“I see.” He very obviously did not, but I went on.
“When you are given this kind of assignment, you must be very careful to become entirely the person that you seem. Entirely, you understand? Your life, your self, your childhood, your family, your father, your mother, they are all invented. They all belong to this person you become. You must forget your own childhood, your family, your mother. You must forget your true self. When I was recruiting young men to work for the Service I found that it was wise to pay attention to a man’s background and his sense of who he was. A long period of living like that can destroy a man.”
We stepped down from the stairs and walked to the left, below the aqueduct and the Temple bridge.
“What were these hazards, exactly?”
“Have you heard the expression to cross the river?”
“No. I have not.”
Another disappointment. Where had the boy spent his time as a probationer?
“We use those words to describe what happens when someone who is undercover identifies too closely with the person, or the group, whom he is watching. He becomes so much a part of their world that he forgets his duty to the Service. I suspect that is what happened to our Yehuda. There are other dangers too. I knew a man once who, when he came back, no longer knew just who he really was. He had lost any idea of his own true self.”
“What happened to him?” There was both horror and a very plain fascination in Saul’s eyes.
“He killed himself. It was a dreadful thing. I should never have allowed it to happen. So I decided, from then on, that every member of the Service who returned to us from such an assignment was given whatever help they needed to avoid such a thing happening.”
“And how did you help them?”
“I decided they should find that the change from one life to another – the return to their old and unfamiliar life – was arranged for them. We tried many ways of doing this before we found the right one. You can, perhaps, imagine it as helping them to feel the way that a man might feel after he has been cleansed of a devil that has possessed him. If that helps.” It did. There was disgust and revulsion in his eyes.
“One of our people told me that what he wanted, above all else, at the end of an assignment, was to feel the drunkenness that a man should feel when he is celebrating the feast of Purim. To be so drunk that he cannot tell who or what is good and who or what is evil, then awaken a day or two later and remember nothing of what he has experienced except that the nation has been saved through his efforts. He has to feel as if he is new again, as if the old life, his real life, has returned.”
Saul tilted his head, as if pretending to consider the idea, in a more convincing fashion this time.
“We soon found that there was one experience that worked more effectively than any other in securing such a state of emptying out your life.”
We turned a corner into a street of gaudy opulence just below the north-eastern slopes of Zion Hill. We were outside an old palace of Hasmonean times that must once have belonged to a rich and powerful family of priests.
“We found that our men needed to return to the world through this doorway,” I said. The door was of old, green-tinged bronze. Above it, carved in relief upon the stone lintel, was a single Aleph in Hebrew, a single Alpha in Greek. Saul looked up at the sign and the look of revulsion returned to his face. Cassiel was grinning. He knew what was behind the door.
“Shall we go in?”
“No,” said Saul. “Oh no. You cannot make me set foot in such a place.”
“Duty,” I told him. “We must.” And I struck the brass door with my fist, five times, paused, and then twice more. The hammering echoed through the halls of the building and fell silent. Then we heard footsteps within.
Upper City
2nd day of the week,
10th hour
“We’re closed. You hear? Closed.”
The voice rasped through the gap in the door. It came from a face half in shadow. The face bore a dark mole across its visible side, from forehead to cheek.
“May we speak with the Lady Esther?” I asked.
“Never heard of her.”
“Who are you? And what’s happened to Epaphroditus? Why isn’t he on the door?”
“Never heard of him either.”
At that moment the eye caught sight of Saul’s tunic and realised that it was dealing with the Temple Guard.
“If you’ve come for another bribe, you can stuff it. The lady dealt with all that before Pesach.”
“Listen, whoever you are, don’t waste my time. I know Lady Esther and I know this place. Just take me to her.”
The eye looked me up and down. Contempt, not fear.
“Get me Epaphroditus,” I told him. “Now.” It was at that moment that Esther’s new doorman tried to shut the door upon us. I heard the scream before I saw the movement. And I barely saw the movement at all, because I was knocked back by the door swinging open and I fell against Saul. When I looked, the door was wide open and its keeper was decisively on our side of it. He was pinned to the stone column by Cassiel’s left hand. Cassiel’s right hand held a knife at the doorkeeper’s bare throat. My messenger’s action must have been extraordinarily swift and well disguised because I saw it neither begin nor end. I was about to order him to put the man down and put away his knife when I heard shouting inside the house. A pale bulk of flesh and fabric filled the corridor within. Its head was bald and plump, sweat glistened at its temples and its eyes seemed to be popping out of the deep folds of flesh that engulfed them. The scream rose as the flesh approached, and suddenly fell silent. A fat round fist, knuckles glistening, filled my vision and came to a halt within a finger’s breadth of my nose.
“Lord Solomon, sir.” The voice was far more squeaky and excitable than I remembered. “We didn’t recognise you for a moment.”
I was embraced by the mass of flesh in front of me. It seemed to have neither form nor end. Saul looked away. The doorkeeper’s throat crackled and squeaked. At last, I stepped back.
“Epaphroditus, my friend. We’ve come to pay a call upon your mistress. Purely business.”
“You are always welcome in the house, sir.” He glanced at the doorkeeper, who was still pinned to the pillar. “You must excuse Ev; he’s only just joined us.”
I tapped Cassiel on the shoulder and he relaxed his grip. Ev the doorkeeper stepped away, his breath coming in stertorous gasps. He did not take his eyes off Cassiel. My messenger stared back at him. The knife had already slipped silently into the folds of his robe. I did not see that movement either.
