My Glorious Brothers by Howard Fast Page A

out of Modin,” Judas said. There could be an incredible simplicity about him—yet a cunning measure of the people he spoke to. “And if a Jew should not speak, then I’ll be silent”—and he began to climb down. But they shouted at him:
    â€œSpeak! Speak!”
    â€œI don’t come with gifts,” he said simply. “I come with blood on my hands—and there will be blood on yours when you listen to me.”
    â€œSpeak!” they told him. And afterwards, when twenty men from Goumad came armed, to seek him out, they asked in the village:
    â€œWhere will we find the Maccabee?”
    And the people of Modin directed them to the house of Mattathias. Thus it was in the days before Apelles came back…
    I told you how the road ran through our village and through the valley. There was much that Judas did, but this I took on myself, and each morning I posted one of the village boys on a high crag, where he could see the road for miles. Eastward, over hill and dale, through a necklace of villages, the road traveled to Jerusalem, but westward by stages it went down to the forest and through the forest to the Mediterranean. One day it was Jonathan, one day another of the boys, and as long as it was light they perched on the rocks, straining their young eyes for the glitter of a breastplate or the flash of a spear. I knew it must come and come soon; no secret can be a secret in a land like ours, where every bit of news travels like the wind through the valleys and the villages.
    I had none of Judas’s sublime faith. There were the weak and the strong, the poor and the wealthy, and it was well enough to talk about the warden and his men, but what would happen when the test came? Already Eleazar and Jonathan worshiped Judas; his every word, his every wish was their law. How can I deny that I envied the way they listened to him, the way they watched him! When I saw that, the old hatred, the old bitterness, the old resentment welled up in me—so that I asked myself over and over again, Why isn’t he like other men? I soaked myself in guilt, because I knew deep in my heart that if Judas had been here, Ruth would be alive—and somehow I held it against him that there was never a word of reproach, never a word of blame for me, never a word of anger. Yet when John came to me looking for sympathy, I turned on him.
    â€œAre you for this too?” he wanted to know. His wife was heavy with child.
    â€œFor what?”
    â€œFor war, for death? Walk in righteousness, it says, walk in peace. But when Judas speaks, we stop thinking.”
    â€œWhat would you think of, John?” I demanded.
    â€œAt least, this way we live.”
    â€œAnd is life so dear?” I cried. “Is it so good, so sweet, so just?” I caught myself. Was I like the Adon already? Was this my brother or a stranger? Yet in spite of myself, I said the cruelest thing I knew, “Are you a son of Mattathias, or a bastard? Are you a Jew?”
    It was like the lash of a whip, and John cringed visibly; it was worse than the lash of a whip, for this was a saintly man who had never lifted up his voice against any living thing, but accepted God’s will with that gentle Jewish Amen, so be it; and he stared at me for a while before he dropped his head and walked away…
    And then Apelles returned.
    In the morning, Nathan ben Borach, thirteen years old and fast as a deer, came leaping down from the hillside, calling, “Simon! Simon!” But all the people heard, and when I reached him, I had to push through the press of the people. “From where?” I asked him. “From the west.” “And how far?” “Two or three miles—I don’t know how far. I saw the gleam you told me to watch for, and then I saw the men and I came.”
    â€œWe have time,” Judas decided, quieting them. “Go to your houses and bolt the doors and close the shutters—and