15 The Father, the Son & the Slave
You know the Passion narrative. This is not that tale. This is the story of a father, his estranged son and the slave caught between them as they journey from Nazareth to Jerusalem. This is Chapter Fifteen.
F I F T E E N
“If God does not speak to you, how do you know what He wants?” Josef still held his weapon, slowly scything the blade back and forth through the wheat stubble above the track, trying to get comfortable with it.
Iesu walked beside him, but out of range of the blade. “Dreams, Father,” he replied. “He is present in my dreams.”
“But He says nothing.” Josef’s blade slowed as he focussed on his son.
Iesu kept his distance. “He conjures visions — dreams within my dreams.”
“Visions of what?”
“Possibilities. Potentials, promises of glory should I answer His call.”
“How does He appear?”
Iesu hesitated. It had taken a long time to define God’s presence in his dreams, and he had never shared his thoughts with anyone other than Metlip. “He does not,” he answered. “His presence is undeniable, yet impossible to define. As if all the strength of a father’s protection was wrapped in all the love of a mother’s embrace, filling the landscapes of my dreams and shaping them to His will. But — ”
”But what?”
“The price, Father. I fear I cannot bear the price.”
“And what is that?”
“My death.”
Josef dismissed Iesu’s fear with a wave of his hand that arced his sword towards his son before he caught himself, but Iesu was not in danger. “That is a risk common to all prophets. So you choose a path where the risk is less.”
Iesu held out his hand, and Josef passed over the gladius. “What path would that be?” Iesu asked as he considered the weapon.
“Go to Aegypt. Spread your new faith there, safe from the Sadducees. In time, your teachings will return here on the lips of others, too many for the priests to counter, and then you may return and claim your place as the Messiah.”
“Is that not defeat in a finer cloak? To turn away from those most in need of my message, abandon those who have accepted me, flee from the central purpose of my work — to show the people they need not accept their oppression by priests who permit access to God by the weight of your purse.”
Josef grasped Iesu’s arm to gain his full attention. “They are many,” he said, “their power as extensive as it is enduring. You are but one man.”
Iesu smiled. “I am. But I may do what they will not. I will give God back to the people.”
No threat appeared, neither bandits rising in ambush nor brigands streaming from the rocks, but tensions in the caravan remained high when Solon persuaded the Sadducee to stop early, and so take advantage of a particular strip of landscape.
Though the Jordan Valley featured a definite, and often dramatic, incline from north to south, the slope varied and, occasionally, even rose briefly before it continued the descent to the Salt Sea.
The rise that the guard captain selected had a secondary benefit, for here the river raced down a long stretch of rapids. The current was too violent for plants and the soil too thin, so the riverbank was clear, making it easier to collect water.
Solon positioned himself near the base of the approach side of the rise, separating the vehicles into two lines. Wagons that housed people he directed along the riverbank. Those vehicles which carried goods he placed about twenty paces further upslope.
Metlip discerned the captain’s strategy, so he was ready when the Greek waved him to join the goods line.
“Your pardon, Captain,” he called. “This is a wagon of goods, but it is also where my master and mistress sleep.”
Solon approached, more curious than vexed. “Where do they sleep?”
“Underneath,” answered Mother. “We have leather panels which we hang from the hooks you can see running below the bed.”
“Fine,” Solon said. “To the right, behind those wagons.”
“My thanks, Captain,” Metlip said as he steered towards the river.
Solon’s plan was a clever piece of spontaneous defence. The two lines of wagons became impromptu walls, creating a long, defensible rectangular space. The lighter, two-wheeled carts in the caravan were set in line across the interior space to separate the pilgrims and the flocks. One group of guards lined their tents between the lead vehicles. Behind them was the common area for cooking and socializing, and a safe space for those pilgrims on foot. Behind the carts, the caravan’s animals were organized by value. Camels and horses were picketed closest to the line of carts, then oxen, donkeys, sheep and goats. A second line of guard tents stretched between the rearmost wagons.
Being forced into such proximity with one another could have raised tensions even higher, but in fact had the opposite effect. The pilgrims took comfort in having others close, and Iesu sensed the first glimmers of community among the evening’s fires.
As he watched his fellow travellers perform their family rituals of meal preparation, he flipped a coin back and forth across his knuckles. It was a trick taught to him by Shen Wu, one of the Han twins in Nebuzatan’s circus. He was sure it was Wu, because he was the twin with the slight deformation in his left earlobe. When no one else could tell the brothers apart, Iesu was never wrong. Before he left the circus, he had passed the secret to the old physician, who thought it was like having a piece of mystical lore revealed.
Chased from the cooking fire by the women, Metlip sat, folding his limbs as he sank. Iesu saw his brother’s attention lock onto the coin, so he made the coin vanish — another trick from the Shen twins.
Metlip was not alone in noticing Iesu’s dexterity. Some children at a nearby fire teased a boy with a disfigured hip. The boy took advantage of something that distracted the children and made his escape, lurching past Iesu. He saw the coin flipping across the back of Iesu’s hand and stopped dead in his tracks, all thoughts of escape forgotten, when the coin disappeared.
“Where is the coin?” the boy asked.
“This coin?” replied Iesu as he opened his other hand to show the coin it held.
“How is that done? Will you show me?”
“Sit,” said Iesu, but the boy hesitated. Iesu stood and helped him to the ground. “The trick itself is easy to learn, yet it takes practise to master. It was some days before I could work it without error. If I share the secret of it with you, will you allow the initial difficulty as excuse to abandon it?”
“No, on my word.”
A few minutes later, the boy carefully rolled the coin across his fingers, his brow furrowed. One of the other children ran up, a taunt on her tongue. As she watched the boy’s hand, her malice relaxed into laughter.
Iesu took the coin back and expertly moved it back and forth.
“Teach me! Teach me!” the child squealed as her fellow tormenters arrived.
The coin stopped, and the girl looked at Iesu. “No,” he said, “I will not teach you.” He thought she would cry then. He nodded at the boy. “Perhaps he might.”
Iesu helped the boy stand, then gifted him the coin. The children again crowded around him, but now they were clamouring for his attention.
A short time later, Iesu noticed a man studying him from a distance. His mantle was worn and stained, the man himself much the same. Taking some hesitant steps forward, he seemed to change his mind and turned away. He approached a second time, but when his gaze met Iesu’s, once again he changed direction.
“Friend,” Iesu called, and the man looked back. “Come. Be welcome.” Once there, the man seemed unsure of what to do next.
“What would you ask me? Sit, if it please you.”
The man tried to ask his question, but managed only a few syllables before starting a different question, as if he was not sure how to ask what he wanted.
“Friend,” Iesu said, resting his hand on the stranger’s arm and trickling a narrow stream of Grace into him. The man sat straighter, his gaze sharper.
“What did you say to those children that so changed their treatment of my son?”
“I said nothing. People treat you based on the value they see in you. I only showed the children to see your son’s worth. I taught him a simple trick with a coin and then refused to teach the others. I told them they would need to learn it from your son. Now the children recognise his value.”
The man wiped a tear away. “Bless you, my friend. In just a few minutes, you have improved his life more than I have since his birth.”
“Has your son been crippled all of his life?”
“Aye. And his birth took my wife.”
“Tell me, friend, what is your name? I am Iesu, and this is my brother, Metlip.”
“I am Shem. My son is Javan.” Shem took in Metlip. “This is your brother?”
“In every way that matters. Shem, I am a healer. Would you permit me to examine Javan? I wish to tell a story that may teach these children that everyone has value, but after, I may ease his affliction.”
“I have a little coin, Iesu, saved over years to pay the priests at the Temple so they might pray for my son’s healing.”
“I would not take your coin if you offered it, Shem. Find me after my tale, and bring Javan.”
Shem walked away, his steps sure, as if Iesu had lifted a burden from his shoulders. Iesu fought back the tears that always threatened whenever he helped another.
“Iesu.”
He turned to Metlip, who held a coin in his fingers. “Will you teach me your trick?”
Iesu cried a short while later — from laughter as he watched Metlip struggle to roll the small coin across his huge knuckles. Thinking of how his brother would react when presented with a larger coin only re-doubled his laughing, and it was several moments before he realised someone in armour stood next to him.
He looked up to see the Greek, Solon. Iesu stood and straightened his mantle, noticing as he did so how much bigger the soldier was. “Captain. How may I aid you?”
“The guard you treated today, Marek, recovers. I am in your debt. If not for your skills, he would be dead now, so thank you.”
“You are welcome, Captain. I am always happy to help.”
“About yesterday, at the well. I beg your forgiveness for my rough arrogance, and I thank you for reminding me of the standards and virtues expected of me.”
“Captain — ” Iesu began.
“Solon. My name is Solon. Only my men call me ‘Captain’.”
“Solon, I am Iesu. There is nothing to forgive, but if you need it, then I grant it. If you will excuse me, I promised our fellow pilgrims a tale. Stay and listen.”
He turned away from the captain, ready to summon those who would listen, only to find more people than he had expected already gathered.
There was a town, much like any other, nestled in fertile hills with ample living water to sustain the residents, their flocks and their vines. The townsfolk followed the law of Moses and respected one another. But then a woman died in childbirth, though the baby lived. Even so, the boy was cursed with an affliction of the mind that restricted his community life. Some wished his death because they believed he would curse the town. The other children teased him and played cruel jokes, making the boy outcast from their play just as their parents shunned his father. Yet while the boy had difficulty conversing with others, his father noticed his son displayed a special affinity to his flock and they to him.
Through the efforts of the village priest, the father and son were permitted to shepherd the flocks of their neighbours. As he grew into adulthood, his fellow villagers continued to spurn him even though they trusted their flocks to his warding. He never once lost an animal in his care, and so a fragile peace silenced the villagers and prevented the young man from being outcast.
Then one day a merchant, his robes torn and bloody from wounds he sustained in an ambush by bandits, entered the village on his dying horse and begged for help. He was, he said, the sole survivor of the attack. He had lost his guards, his wares and all of his family but for his daughters, who had been taken as slaves. With that horrible admission, grief overcame him and he slept. The villagers cleaned and bound his wounds. They dispatched men to locate the bandits and determine if they were a threat to the village. Less than a day later, the scouts returned to reveal that not only were the bandits following the track which led to the village, the group numbered more fighting men than there were men in the village, and none of them were soldiers. Panic flared through the townsfolk. Wives imagined the deaths of their husbands, fathers feared for their daughters. Defence was impossible.
‘Pray,’ the priest said. ‘God will protect us, but we must all pray together so He will hear us above all other prayers.’
The villagers gathered in the town’s centre, men to one side and women to the other, and they prayed. All but one man — the shepherd’s father.
‘What is salvation worth to you?’ he asked the townsfolk. ‘What would you pay for safety from these bandits?’
Some shouted various values of coin. Others named those daughters they feared to lose to slavery.
‘What if the price is far less than anything you have offered?’
‘Name the price,’ called one man.
‘Tell us!’ shouted another. The other villagers clamoured for his answer. He waited for the crowd to quiet.
‘It is a word,’ he said, ‘but the value of its meaning dwarfs all of your offers combined.’
‘Tell us,’ they cried.
‘Acceptance,’ said the shepherd’s father. ‘Will you accept my son and myself as welcome members of this village?’ The crowd turned in on itself and discussed the offer, but it was the priest who answered for them.
‘Yes,’ he shouted, and the rest joined him.
‘Bring food to last four days,’ the father told them. ‘Gather those of your valuables you can carry as well as the food. Tie your animals together so they may be easily led. Do this swiftly.’
The crowd dispersed as if freed from shackles. A short time later they reassembled, hope replacing their earlier terror.
The shepherd’s father issued his remaining conditions. ’Each man is responsible for his family and flock, and you must follow the path my son takes, regardless of your own choice. Are we agreed?’ Only a few voices answered. ‘Are we agreed?’ the shepherd’s father shouted again, louder. This time all agreed. ‘Then come,’ he said and nodded to his son, who turned his back on the townsfolk and walked out of the village.
Most followed reluctantly but obediently. A few individuals thought they knew a better path.
‘Feel free to take it,’ the father said, and left them behind. The shepherd led the villagers on a route that seemed, at times, as fractured as this mind, but as the sun set, a narrow defile opened into a lush valley cradling a small stream and protected by steep cliffs. The villagers could smile again.
Each dawn, with nowhere to go, the townsfolk witnessed the skill and care the shepherd showed with their animals, whatever the breed. Their distrust and fear of him departed, replaced by respect and admiration. Each afternoon, the shepherd and his father left the valley to lead the bandits on false and dangerous trails, returning each evening with portions of the bandits’ treasure. On the third eve, they returned with the merchants’ daughters. So overjoyed was the merchant, he offered the youngest to the shepherd to wed.
On the afternoon of the fourth day, the shepherd’s father claimed that the danger had passed, and the villagers accepted the shepherd’s lead on the path home. As they entered the silent village, they noticed some bodies with hideous wounds. These were the men from the group that went their own way. The women were missing. No one ever teased the shepherd again.
As the crowd dispersed to their pallets and blankets, Maryam slipped from the throng, wrapped her arms around Iesu and rested her head on his shoulder.
“Enough, my Love. Come to your rest.”
“I have one task yet,” he replied.
Tilting her head back so she could see his eyes, she asked, ”What task is that?”
“I wish to cure a lame boy.”
Maryam stepped out of the embrace. “But the risk — ”
“Javan has been crippled from a birth that claimed his mother’s life. How can I turn away from that?”
“To prevent discovery.”
“You make a valid point, my Heart. I have no wish to be revealed, so I will administer to him in the morning, at rest and in the evening. I will disguise my efforts with Han muscle stretches and salves. I promise to be cautious.”
She kissed him then. “Be in my blankets before I catch a chill.” Something caught her attention behind him, and he turned to find Shem and Javan waiting nearby.
“She has instructed me to be quick,” he said to them, cocking his head at Maryam. “Javan, first I need you to stand still while I study your affliction. Then, I will watch you walk and sit and lie down.”
Javan did as he was told. Iesu circled him, his fingers tracing the boy’s spine and then his pelvis. These disguised his effort to use Grace to discover the nature and extent of Javan’s deformity.
He saw that the boy’s suffering was due to the top of his bad leg being offset from where it joined his hip, and intervening years had allowed layers of bone to grow over the joint like the rings of a tree. It was a simple repair and required but a single session, but that was far too risky. So be it, he thought.
“Javan’s right leg sits properly in his hip, but the left one does not. I think I will be able to correct it over the next two days using some stretching techniques I learned from a man from the far end of the Silk Road, and some salves that I carry with me always.”
“You can fix this?” Javan asked, gesturing at his disability.
“Indeed.”
“In two days?”
“Before we reach Jerusalem.”
The boy stared at Iesu for long moments, so Iesu stepped close to him and clasped his hands on Javan’s shoulders. “I will heal you,” he told the boy.
Javan’s tears were an instant torrent, and he turned to his father, whose tears flowed no less than his son’s.
“I will be healed, Father,” the boy sobbed. “Healed.”
“We may start now,” Iesu said. “If you wish.”
“Truly?” asked Shem.
“Where are your blankets?”
Iesu made a quick detour to collect his satchel and then found Shem’s fire. He explained the treatment required him to touch Javan’s flesh, but the chance to be healed outweighed propriety. Shem knelt behind his son with his arms wrapped around the youth’s chest, anchoring Javan as Iesu stretched and twisted the damaged limb. He released the first measure of Grace into the swollen flesh, separating the whole into small pieces that surrounded the joint, repairing areas of the injury without obvious overall effect. Later treatments would heal intervening areas and give the impression of gradual healing.
“You will notice much less pain in the morning, Javan, and I will return then to repeat what I just did. And again at the rest and again when we stop. The same again the next day should be sufficient.”
“I think it works already,” Javan stated.
“That is excitement, Javan. I will return at dawn.”
Shem rushed at Iesu, embracing him. “Thank you, thank you, thank you a thousand times.”
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