“Leave, go to your homes!” he said. “Get out of Jerusalem, by the King’s order.”

Chapter 6

The quiet was not quiet. It was full of crying and sobbing and the clatter and noise of the horses, and the soldiers shouting at us to go.

Some bodies were dead all alone on the tops of the porches. I could see them. And our dead man was all alone. The sheep wandered everywhere, the sheep without blemish that would have been the Passover sacrifice. Men ran after them. They ran after the oxen that were still bellowing and that bellowing was the loudest noise of all.

At last we rose to our feet, because Joseph rose, and we followed, all of us together, Cleopas very shaky, and laughing still under his breath, but not so any soldier could hear him.

Aunt Salome and Aunt Esther had my mother by her arms. She started to sink again and she groaned. Joseph struggled to get close to her, but the little ones were underfoot. I had hold of Little Salome.

“Mamma, we have to go now,” I said to my mother, staying close to her. “Mamma, wake up. We’re going now.”

She was trying to be strong. But they turned her and they pushed her along. Uncle Alphaeus had a time with Silas and Levi who were whispering questions to him, but I couldn’t hear them. Now they were each past their fourteenth year, and they took all of this perhaps not the same as we little ones did.

All the people moved to the gateway.

Cleopas was the only one of us like Lot’s wife, who turned back and back.

“Look,” he said to anyone who could hear him. “See the priests there?” He pointed to the top of the faraway wall of the Inner Court. “They had sense enough to run for cover, didn’t they? Did they know the soldiers were going to attack us?”

We saw them for the first time, the gathering of men up there above the gates, who could have watched the whole thing from there. I could barely make them out. I think they were in their fine robes and headdresses, but maybe not.

What did they think as they looked on this? And who would come for our dead man? How would this blood be cleaned away? The whole Temple was defiled with it. The whole Temple would have to be cleansed.

But there wasn’t much time to look. And I only wanted to get out now. I was not afraid yet. I was wide eyed. The fear would come later.

The soldiers came behind us, crying out their orders. They spoke in Greek, then they spoke in Aramaic.

These were the same now who had killed others. We moved as fast as we could.

There would be no celebration of Passover this year, the soldier called out. “The Festival is over, no Passover! No Passover! You go to your homes.”

“No Passover!” Cleopas said under his breath, laughing. “As if they can say there is no Passover! As long as there is one Jew alive in the world there is Passover when there is Passover!”

“Quiet,” said Joseph. “Keep your eyes off them. What would you have them do? Mingle the blood of more Jews and Galileans with their sacrifices? Don’t taunt them!”

“It’s an abomination,” said Alphaeus. “We should get out of the city as quickly as we can.”

“But is it right to leave now of all times?” asked my cousin Silas. My uncle Alphaeus told him firmly to be quiet with a gesture and a sound.

My uncle Simon, the quiet one, said nothing.

As we entered the tunnel, people hurried past us. Joseph picked me up, and Little Salome with me. The other men were picking up the little ones. Cleopas tried to pick up Little Symeon, his youngest, who was crying to be picked up, but then Cleopas started coughing again, and so the women took him. My mother took him.

This was a good sign. She had the child in her arms, and she would be all right.

I couldn’t see very well in the dark. But it didn’t matter now. Little Salome was sobbing and sobbing, and nothing Aunt Mary said to her could comfort her. I couldn’t reach her as she was too far behind me.

“No Passover!” Cleopas said, then he coughed more before he could go on. “So this King who doesn’t wait on Caesar to confirm him on his throne has just done away with the Passover! This King who is as full of blood now as his father, who takes his stand with his father—.”

“Don’t say any more,” said Alphaeus. “If they hear one word, they’ll turn on the lot of us.”

“Yes, and how many innocents did they slay in there just now?” Cleopas said.

Joseph spoke up as he had in Alexandria.

“You will not say another word on this until we are out of Jerusalem!”

Cleopas didn’t answer. But he didn’t say any more. No one did.

We reached the bright light, only to see soldiers everywhere who spoke the orders as if they were cursing us.

People lay dead in the streets. They looked like they were sleeping. All the women started crying at the sight of the dead because we had to walk around them or step over them, and the mourners on their knees cried, and some begged for alms.

The men began to give out coins where they could, as others did. Some people were too miserable to want such a thing or they didn’t need it.

But everywhere people cried even as they hurried. All of our women were crying, and Aunt Mary sobbed that this was her very first pilgrimage, that all her life in Egypt she had longed for this, and what had been done before our very eyes?

At the synagogue, we found everyone very afraid. Joseph gathered us inside the courtyard only to wait while the women rushed up to the roof for our bundles. He and Alphaeus went to get the donkeys. James told us to stand still and be quiet, to hold on to the babies. I had Little Symeon by the hand. Cleopas leaned against the wall and smiled and said things no one could hear.

The wailing over the dead still filled my ears. I couldn’t stop thinking of our dead man, the dead man who had died so close to us. Did anyone come to bury him? What happened if nobody did?

I hadn’t looked at the face of the soldier who killed him. I hadn’t looked at the face of any soldier. All I saw of them was their strung-up boots and their armor, dark and tarnished, and their spears. How could I ever forget their spears?

“Leave Jerusalem,” someone shouted even now in Hebrew here in the synagogue courtyard. “Leave Jerusalem and go to your homes. There is no Passover.”

And our dead man. He must have known the soldier would kill him when he threw the stone he had hidden under his robe. He’d brought his stones to the Temple so that he might throw them.

Yet he had looked just like the rest of us. Same simple mantle, tunic, same dark curly hair, a beard like the beards of Joseph and my uncles. A Jew like us, though he shouted in Greek, why Greek, and why had he done it? Why had he almost flung himself at the soldier, when he knew the soldier had the spear?

I saw in my mind the spear go into our dead man. I saw it over and over, and the look on his face. I saw the dead all over the court of the Temple and the wandering sheep. I put my hands over my eyes. I couldn’t stop seeing these things.

I felt cold. I huddled near to my mother, who at once opened her arms. I stood against her, against her soft robe.

We stood beside Cleopas, letting Little Symeon twist and turn and play. I said to my uncle,

“Why did that man throw those stones when he knew the soldier would kill him?”

Cleopas had seen it. We had all seen it, hadn’t we?

Cleopas appeared to think, looking up into the bit of light that came in over the high walls. “It was a good moment to die,” he said. “It was the finest moment perhaps that he’d ever seen.”

“Did you think it was good?” I asked.

He laughed his soft slow laugh.

He looked down at me. “Did you?” he asked. “Did you think it was good?”

He didn’t wait for my answer.

He said in my ear:

“Archelaus is a fool,” Cleopas said. He spoke Greek. “Caesar should laugh him to scorn. King of Jews!” He shook his head. “We’re in exile in our own land. That’s the truth of it. That’s why they were fighting! They want to get rid of this miserable family of Kings who build pagan temples and live like pagan tyrants!”