"We will have a trial here, I tell you!" he demanded. "And I want the witnesses, where are the witnesses? The witnesses will step forward and declare what they saw."
Yitra and the Orphan stood apart as if an impassable gulf separated them from the angry villagers, some of whom were shaking their fists while others cursed under their breath, the oaths that don't require words to convey their meaning.
Again, I moved forward, but James pulled me back. "Stay out of it," he said. "I knew this would happen."
"What? What are you saying?" I demanded.
The crowd broke into shouts and roars. Fingers were pointed. Someone cried out: "Abomination."
Yitra, the older of the two accused, stood still glowering at those before him. He was a righteous boy whom everyone loved, one of the best in the school, and when he'd been taken to the Temple last year, he'd made the Rabbi proud in his answers to the teachers.
The Orphan, smaller than Yitra, was pale with fear, his black eyes huge, and his mouth trembling.
Jason, the Rabbi's nephew, Jason the Scribe, stepped forward on the roof and repeated his uncle's declarations.
"Stop this madness now!" he declared. "There will be a trial according to the law, and you witnesses, where are you? Are you afraid, those of you who started this?"
The crowd drowned out his voice.
Down the hill Nahom, Yitra's father, came running, along with his wife and his daughters. The crowd went into a new wave of insults and invectives, with raised fists and stamping. But Nahom pushed his way through it and looked at his son.
The Rabbi had never stopped calling for this to cease, but we could no longer hear him.
It seemed Nahom spoke to his son, but I couldn't hear it.
And then as the crowd went into a pitch of hatred, Yitra reached out, without thinking perhaps, who could know, and he drew the Orphan protectively to him.
I shouted, "No." But it was lost in the din. I ran forward.
Stones flew through the air. The crowd was a swarming mass beneath the whistling sounds of the stones arching towards the boys in the clearing.
I pushed into the thick of it to get to the boys, James behind me.
But it was finished.
The Rabbi roared like a beast on the roof of the synagogue.
The crowd had gone silent.
The Rabbi, with his hands clasped over his mouth, stared down at the heap of stones below him. Jason shook his head and turned his back.
A howl went up from Yitra's mother, and then came the sobs of his sisters. People turned away. They rushed up the hill, or out to the fields, or over the creek and up the far slope. They fled wherever they could.
And then the Rabbi threw up his arms:
"Run, yes, run from what you've done here! But the Lord on High sees you! The Lord on High sees this!" He balled his fists. "Satan rules in Nazareth!" he bellowed. "Run, run for shame for what you've done, you lawless miserable rabble!" He put his hands to the sides of his head and he began to sob more loudly than Yitra's women. He bent over in his sobbing. Jason held tight to him.
Yitra's women were all gathered and pulled away now by Nahom. Nahom looked back once and then he dragged his wife up the hill, the girls running after them.
Only the stragglers remained, a few farmhands and odd-job workers, and the children gazing on from their hiding places beneath the palms or in the nearby doors - and James and I staring at the mound of stones, and the two boys who lay there, tumbled together.
Yitra's arm was around the Orphan's shoulder, his head on the Orphan's chest. Blood ran from a cut on the Orphan's head. Yitra's eyes were half closed. No blood except in his hair.
All the life was gone out of them.
I heard the pounding of feet - the last of men rushing away.
Into the clearing next to us came Joseph, and with him Old Rabbi Berekhiah, barely able to walk, and the other white-haired men who made up the elders of the village. My uncles Cleopas and Alphaeus were there. They took their place beside Joseph.
All appeared sleepy, bewildered, and then astonished.
Joseph stared at the dead boys.
"How did this happen?" he whispered. He looked to James and to me.
James sighed. The tears slid down his face. "It was . . . like that," he whispered. "We should have - . I didn't think - ." He hung his head.
Above us, on the roof, the Rabbi sobbed onto the shoulder of his nephew who looked away to the open fields, his face the picture of sadness.
"Who accused them?" Uncle Cleopas asked. He looked to me. "Yeshua, who accused them?"
Joseph and Rabbi Berekhiah repeated the question.
"I don't know, Father," I said. "I don't think the witnesses ever came forward."
The Rabbi was choking with sobs.
I moved towards the stones.
Once again, James pulled me back, but this time more gently than before. "Please, Yeshua," he whispered.
I stayed where I was.
I looked at them, the two, lying there as if they were children asleep, amid the heap of stones, and not enough blood between them, really, not enough blood for the Angel of Death even to stop and turn and take notice of them.
Chapter Three
WE CAME TO THE RABBI'S HOUSE. The doors were open. Jason stood in the far corner against the racks of books, his arms folded. Old Rabbi Jacimus sat hunched over his desk, his elbows on the parchment, his head covered.
He rocked back and forth and he prayed or read, it was impossible to know. Perhaps he didn't know.
" 'Don't be angry with men because we are nothing,' " he whispered. " 'And don't take account of what we do; for what are we?' "
I stood quietly beside Joseph and James, waiting and listening. Cleopas stood behind us.
" 'For behold, by Your will we enter this world, and we don't go out of it by our will; who has ever said to his father and mother, "Beget us." And who goes into the realm of Death saying, "Receive us"? What strength do we have, Lord, to bear Your anger? What are we that we can bear Your justice?' "
He turned; he realized we were there, and then he sat back and sighed and turned a little towards us but went on with his praying. " 'Shelter us in Your grace, and in Your mercy give help to us.' "
Joseph repeated these words softly.
Jason looked for a moment as if all this was beyond his endurance, but there was a wistful softness to his eyes that I'd seldom seen in him. He was a beautiful man with dark hair, always finely dressed, and on the Sabbath his linen robes often gave off the faint scent of frankincense.
The Rabbi, who had been a man in his prime when I'd first come home to Nazareth, was now slightly crippled by his age, and his hair was as white as that of Joseph or my uncles. He looked at us as if we couldn't see him, as if we didn't stand waiting on him, as if he were merely looking from some safe place at us and wondering, and then he said sleepily,