33 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 Thirty-three.
T H I R T Y — T H R E E
“Sit, Metlip,” Marcus said. “Pacing will not hurry Josef home.”
The slave obeyed, taking his seat on the bench next to Solomon in the garden tent. The scribe poured wine into a thick glass goblet and set it on the table in front of the Nubian, who drank it all at once. Solomon and Marcus shared a look. Marcus gave a slight shrug, so Sol smiled and refilled the cup. Metlip noticed, and his eyes widened, guilt clearly etched on his face even after his companions burst into laughter. He forced a grateful smile, but stood and resumed his pacing.
“What if my master fell victim to the riots?”
“He did not,” Marcus answered, sitting up to tug at his cuirass. The Tribune now wore his uniform, and it showed signs of recent exertion — dry blood stains splattered his cuirass. The studded leather straps of his armoured kilt were dirty and there was a smear on his tunic sleeve where he had wiped blood from his blade.
“How can you be sure?”
The Roman’s thumbnail scratched at a stain on his bull hide chest armour. “I was there.”
“Indeed, Tribune,” Metlip replied. The tension in the Nubian’s features eased.
“Josef’s most likely route held no risk from the fighting,” Marcus added. “If you can call it that — ” The Roman paused a moment and closed his eyes. He gave his head a quick shake as if to shed a memory and continued. “Veteran legionnaires facing unarmed and terrified citizens. There were more casualties than necessary, but that number is far below what it would have been had we used our swords’ edges instead of the flats of the blades. Still, an ugly business.”
“Where else would he have gone?” the Nubian asked of no one in particular and, turning back from one end of the path, asked also, “did he mention a destination, even in passing?”
“Not to me,” Solomon said.
“Nor to me,” added the Tribune.
“Where could he be?”
“Who?” asked a new voice.
“Master,” cried Metlip, fighting a sudden impulse to embrace Josef. “Where have you been?”
Josef seemed not to notice the insolence implicit in a slave questioning his master’s whereabouts. “I wished to visit with my father and forgot time.”
“I worried you had been swept up in the riot,” Metlip added in a rush.
Josef seemed not to hear the Nubian. “Well met, Marcus. And Solomon, you seem to be getting younger by the hour. It is done. The High Priest accepted my terms and promised Iesu would be released today.” Josef looked back at Metlip. “What riot?”
He was answered with silence. Metlip glanced first at Marcus and then at Sol, only to find both looking at him. He straightened and said, “There was a small riot near the Praetorium between Iesu’s followers and another, unknown group demanding he be executed for blasphemy.”
Josef nodded. As if he just recalled something, he twisted his head back and forth. “Where is my wife?”
“She and Maryam went with John and a small group of other disciples to support Iesu at the Praetorium.”
“The bargain is made. Caiaphas agreed to the remainder of the fee within the month. He promised to release Iesu before sunset.” He was confused by their solemn expressions.
Marcus sat forward in his chair. “My dear Josef, Pilate judged him responsible for the riot, because witnesses claimed they heard ‘Nazarene’ shouted first, and ‘blasphemer’ only after. He is to receive forty lashes.”
Josef dropped into Metlip’s chair and swallowed the contents of his slave’s cup. As soon he lowered it onto the table, Sol filled it once again. Josef wrapped his hand around it but did not drink, only staring at it for some moments. Marcus leaned across the table and put his hand over Josef’s wrist.
“Iesu will survive this. The lash is painful, but the damage is light,” the Roman explained. “Take hope from that.”
“Does my wife know she was going to watch her son lashed?”
“No, Master. She left before the Tribune brought that news.”
Once again, Josef drained the cup and stood. “Come, Metlip. Perhaps we may find her in time to prevent her from the horror of Iesu’s punishment.”
“I will accompany you,” the Roman said as he, too, rose. “Solomon, I would remain in your fine company, but I must help our friend.”
The streets were quiet, though some businesses remained open. They saw only minor damage, and what had suffered was contained within a few streets radiating south and east from Herod’s palace. They heard the crowd before they saw the packed mass of people chanting, “Nazarene! Nazarene!”
Marcus used his horse to press through the angry spectators, and his uniform prevented any protest. Josef followed behind, one hand gripping a saddle strap, with Metlip acting as a human shield to guard his back.
This close to the Praetorium and the palace were the high walls of estates or the display areas of merchant businesses whose inventory did not require butchery nor risked spoilage, but evidence of the earlier chaos was visible in the litter of broken tables and shattered ceramics, and in the drying pools of wine and blood.
Curiously, the noise level diminished somewhat as they neared the palace. The chanting gave way to demands for information and the returning answers as to the proceedings ahead. Legionnaires lined the street, spears and shields held ready, and the crowd voluntarily left a gap between themselves and the Romans. Marcus angled his horse to the right — they could use the makeshift alleys to move more quickly.
As the Tribune dismounted and handed his reins to a soldier, the Procurator appeared on his balcony.
“Jerusalem,” he called, “I have long laboured with your leaders to fashion peace and order between all the people of this great city. Today’s events shamed us all. Romans and Jews alike died here today. Many more were injured. Who is to blame? Not I. Not my legion. Who, then? Witnesses both Hebrew and Roman are unanimous in their testimony that the first assaults were accompanied with the shout ‘Nazarene’. I cannot punish all of those who support this man, so I will punish him. You will watch your leader take forty lashes. This will remind you of the value of peace and the price of discord.”
Pilate looked over the balcony’s railing and waved his arm. Metlip’s attention dropped to the Praetorium’s floor. A shield wall of legionnaires, swords bared and shields up, surrounded a wagon on which a torture frame stood at one end. A soldier holding a coiled whip stood at attention at the other end. A drum roll echoed from the tunnel, then was joined by others. Three drums preceded four troopers gripping chains which all led to a metal collar around Iesu’s neck.
They removed the collar only after Iesu’s arms had been firmly tied to the arms of the frame. When the escort had climbed down from the wagon, the remaining legionnaire shook out his whip, took two steps forward and in a fluid, even graceful, wave of his arm, sent the leather snaking through the air. The lash was the primary mode of punishment within the legions and this Roman had delivered thousands of strokes in his time.
The tip struck Iesu’s lower back, leaving a sharp red weal. He cried out, but not so loud as his father. The next stroke left a parallel gash just above the first. A third appeared above those. With each blow, Josef keened, tears drenching his beard. The slave tugged at his master’s arm, but Josef ignored him. Josef ignored Marcus’ urgent words in his ear, shaking his head.
Metlip tore his eyes away from his brother’s agony and his master’s despair, and clarity burst forth in his mind. Leaning close to Marcus’ ear, he said, “Tribune, please see my master home. I will meet you there.”
If Marcus replied, the Nubian didn’t hear as he pushed into the crowd. His size and expression encouraged a path and before long he reached the outer edge of the spectators and joined a group heading in the same direction. Among them was a woman sobbing so uncontrollably she needed support to remain on her feet.
“Metlip!” Hearing his name caught him up, and he looked to see who knew him.
Maryam. “Will you escort your mistress home? I cannot abandon my husband.” Those others with her also turned, and he saw that the weeping woman was his mother. The sight affirmed his resolve. “I am truly sorry, Sister, but I cannot.”
He moved close to his mistress and did what he had ached to do since he was a child. He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her. Into her ear he said, “I could not have wished for a better mother. I love you.”
Metlip kissed Mother’s forehead. Then without another word, he turned away and ran.
He recalled the slaver’s description of where his enterprise was located, and after questioning a merchant in the neighbourhood, found the compound. Hammaret was within.
“Your master has come to his senses,” the slaver said, grinning with satisfaction. “I knew he would.”
“My master would know how high you place my value.”
“Does he? Where is he then?”
“He determined a value and sent me to achieve it by demonstration of my skills and talents. If I can prove my worth so that you meet the price he decreed, then you may have me.”
It did not take long at all. The scarred Aegyptian brought in others to confirm Metlip’s knowledge of the trade languages and, satisfied, named a price. Metlip shook his head.
“I have never offered so much for a slave. Yet you refuse.”
“Not me, Master. My owner refuses.”
So Hammaret had his ledger opened — against the advice of his clerk — and after a time asked the slave about what he had read. He was not prepared for Metlip’s answer.
“Your ledger is incorrect, Master. There are errors in calculations and imbalances in your inventories of what was purchased and what is stocked.”
“Show me,” the one-eared slaver demanded. Then he called for his clerk. The Nubian was still pointing out errors when news arrived of the clerk’s desertion.
“You force my hand,” the Aegyptian lamented. “With my clerk gone, I must hire another. Or raise my offer for you.” He offered a small increase.
Metlip knew time was short if his plan would succeed. He apologised to the man that he had not met the minimum value determined by his current owner and stood to take his leave.
“Wait!” cried the slaver. “Tell me your value and I will meet it.”
The Nubian named the price of his brother’s freedom. “So be it,” the man conceded.
“I will return when the coin is delivered to the palace where my master resides.”
“Wait here. I will send it now.”
Josef followed the push and pull of Marcus’ guiding hand as if he were blind. He felt every slice of skin cut from Iesu’s back, not physically, but deeper, where his trauma met with his fears and together resurrected his dread of the consequences of his son’s choices. The result churned his gut into a nauseous pit of hopelessness that left him shaking.
Waiting just inside the black wood and iron gates of Solomon’s estate wasn’t Metlip, as Marcus had promised, but while Josef struggled to form his question, the answer struck him. Three men waited for him, one bearing a substantial purse and two others to keep it safe.
“My master has met your price for the Nubian,” the purse-bearer recited. “He said to tell you he would not have paid as much for his own mother.” The man held the purse for Josef to take, but Josef just stared at him in disbelief. The slaver’s man was not sure what to do.
Marcus lifted the bag and raised his eyebrows in surprise. “How much is here?” he asked. The amount raised his brows even higher.
“Should we wait while you count it?” the man asked.
“No,” Marcus replied. “But tell your master if the coins are short, he will not face Roman justice. He will face me.”
“You will find every coin as promised, Master,” the man stammered.
“Of course I will. You may go.”
The Roman turned back to the man he loved most and, reading Josef’s utter anguish in his red, tear-soaked eyes, was himself broken. The two men clasped one another with desperate yearning, as if to claim, in this single moment, what had always been denied them.
Marcus cradled Josef’s head against his shoulder and let his friend weep. He thought for a long time before the right words came to him. “Lose both — but know they live,” he whispered, “or have one live and one die. I am not a father, but I know which I would choose.”
At first, Josef made no sign he had heard the choices Marcus offered him. But then his arm came up, and he scrubbed his face with his sleeve. When his breathing settled, Josef slipped out of the embrace and straightened his robes.
“Of course, Marcus. There is no choice. Come with me to free my son.”
“I will,” the Roman replied, then checked himself. “I need but a moment, dear Josef.” The Tribune ran up the palace steps, vanishing from sight. As the minutes passed, so did Josef’s stamina, so he sat on the marble bench beside the steps. Memories clashed violently with intentions in his mind, and though he reached out to grasp one after another, they remained elusive.
When he returned, Marcus was mounted on his horse, leading a palanquin that halted in front of the bench. “Solomon insisted,” the Roman said.
The heavy curtains of the sedan chair shielded him from the heat, the light and the city’s noise, but the isolation also held time at bay. Josef found himself chasing his thoughts like leaves on the wind, and when the bearers gently slowed the palanquin to a halt, Marcus pulled open the curtain.
“This is not Caiaphas’ palace,” he admitted as he helped Josef from the chair. “I thought you might wish to bring the news of his release to Iesu yourself.”
The Praetorium. Josef swallowed a wave of nausea and held to the promise of his message. As he crossed the courtyard to the tunnel’s entrance, Josef’s gaze dropped to the flagstones, but nothing he saw suggested dried blood.
The heavy door of the guardroom opened at Marcus’ order. While one of the troopers used a well-oiled key to unlock an iron gate in the opposite wall, a second legionnaire dipped the rag covered ends of a pair of torches in a bucket of pitch. Marcus pulled a water skin from a peg in the wall, uncorked it and sniffed. Water indeed. The outer door was barred, and the gate opened, revealing a set of wide, shallow stairs.
The cells, being below ground, were pleasantly cool, though pitch black beyond the oily flames spitting from the torches. There was less noise but a greater stench than Josef had expected behind the doors that lined the corridor. He was unable to tell how much further the passage went when their escort halted and turned to face the visitors.
“This is he, sir,” the trooper said. “The one called the Nazarene.”
“Open it,” the Tribune ordered.
Handing his torch to his partner, the soldier unlocked the cell door and pushed it open. The second guard held the torches before him as he stepped into the darkness. Marcus motioned Josef to enter next.
“I probably would have hated being High Priest,” a voice spoke as if from a void, and then coughed. The guard swung the torches in that direction and there, lying on his stomach as much as his chains allowed, was Iesu. He was naked, the shredded remains of his tunic spread over the cut stone floor. Fresh blood glistened across his skin like a wet Sadducee robe. With a wordless cry, Josef rushed to his son and knelt. Shrugging off his mantle, he gently draped it over Iesu’s wounds.
“You are saved,” he said, choking back his tears. “I bargained with Caiaphas for your exile to Aegypt.”
Iesu smiled through his pain. “You have saved my life again, Father. What was the price this time?”
“Metlip. He sold himself to the same slaver we took him from.”
Pushing himself up, Iesu twisted his chains so he could sit, though he was careful to keep his back away from the wall. Marcus unstoppered the water skin and offered it to him. Iesu drank in small sips, rubbing his jaw between them.
“Even now, my brother shows me my path,” he said. He looked at his father. “I will not allow it.”
“Am I your father?”
“In all the ways that matter.”
“Then hear me. This is the only way to effect your release.”
“In exchange for my brother? Never.”
“It is done.”
“My fate is cast, Josef — Father.”
“Not while you breathe.”
Iesu grasped the length of chain that bound him to the wall and used it to rise. Josef stepped forward and helped him stand, though when he loosened his hold on his son, Iesu fought for balance.
“Guard!” Iesu shouted. “Guard!”
A soldier stepped into view.
“I have a message for Pilate. Tell him it was I who turned his wife from the Roman gods.”
The soldier disappeared, the staccato rhythm of his hob-nailed sandals echoing through the passage.
“You seek your death!” cried Josef.
“Did I not say I would know the time of my sacrifice? I must do this. Or all I have said and done means naught. Through my sacrifice my words gain the weight they need to persevere. My death promises salvation to all who follow the path I set.”
“But I — “ Josef gestured at Marcus, “we had saved you.”
“I must do this. Save Metlip before it is too late.”
“And me? Is it too late for me?” asked Josef.
“Never,” replied Iesu. “The Father Above is eternally patient.”
Iesu clasped his father’s shoulder. “Yet time is short,” he continued. “Kneel, Josef.”
His father lowered himself to his knees.
“Do you accept the Father Above into your heart, Josef?”
“I do.”
Iesu turned to Marcus. “The water, please.”
Marcus handed Iesu the skin.
Placing his right palm on his father’s bowed head, Iesu said, “Josef of Nazareth, husband of Maryam and father to me, confess your sin.”
“There are so many,” Josef sobbed.
“No,” his son replied. “Only one matters.”
Josef took a deep breath, held it for a moment then released it with his answer. “I have lain with another man.”
A distant door crashed shut, followed by the staccato of iron studs against stone. The guard was not returning alone.
“No, that is merely law, not sin. What shames you so that you refuse to face it?”
Josef’s features shifted with his thoughts, then he gazed up at Iesu. “Metlip?”
“As much my brother as you are my father. And as much a son to you as I.”
Tears streamed down Josef’s cheeks, running into his beard.
“I have sinned against my son.”
“In the name of the Father Above, I forgive you. Will you enter a covenant with God to correct your sin and live to honour Him?”
“I will.”
Iesu poured some water onto Josef’s forehead, the rivulets mixing with his tears.
“I relieve you of your sins and baptize you in the love and mercy of the Father Above. Rise.”
The footsteps were louder, now, closer.
Marcus helped his friend to his feet, embracing him, but he looked at Iesu. “Must your followers reveal themselves as such to meet your expectations?” he asked.
“Keeping your covenant with the Father Above is the only measure of your faith. All else matters not.”
Releasing Josef, Marcus dropped to his knees. “I wish to share all I can with Josef. Will you accept a Roman into your faith?”
The footsteps sounded as if they were just outside the door, but Iesu didn’t falter.
“Marcus Salvo, name your greatest sin.”
“I killed innocents. So many innocents. Not by choice, but that makes little difference to the guilt I bear.”
“Do you feel remorse?”
“Yes. Oh, yes. I yearn to be free of their faces. They haunt me day and night.”
Iesu held his hand out and took the water skin from Josef.
“In the name of the Father Above, I lift your guilt from you and forgive your sin. Will you enter a covenant with God and live to honour Him?”
“I swear.”
The Roman lowered his head as he had seen Josef do. Iesu poured water over his head.
“I baptize you in the love and mercy of the Father Above.”
Iesu helped the Tribune stand, kept his hand and led him to Josef. Taking Josef’s hand also, Iesu joined them in his.
“There is no shame in love. Who you love is not important. That you are able to love, is.”
The footsteps halted outside and the cell door swung open to admit four soldiers, two wielding short clubs, the others, chains. A flurry of blows sent Iesu staggering backwards into the wall.
Josef moved to intervene but Marcus held his arm.
As his chains were tightened, Iesu looked at his father. “Our Father Above brought the two of you together,” he said in Hebrew so the soldiers would not understand. “Your love is but a reflection of His. Make the most of it.”
Two of the men held Iesu upright, dragging him past Josef.
“Iesu, my son. I love you.”
Iesu smiled then, a smile that promised Josef all was as it should be. “I love you, Father. You have another son to save. And Nali.” And then Iesu was gone.
