The Betrayal by Kathleen O’Neal Gear Page A

heart.

EIGHT
    Mehebel
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    NISAN THE 15TH, THE YEAR 3771, MORNING
    Wind rustled the boughs of the fig trees and fluttered Yosef’s cape where he’d drawn it tightly about his legs. The intense darkness on the mountainside made it difficult to see anything clearly, but at least he did not hear horses, or men moving through the trees. In the distance, the lamplit homes of the farmers who cultivated the land gleamed. Both the broad fertile valley bottom, and the terraced hillsides between mounts Ebal and Gerizim were farmed. Vineyards and orchards flourished on the slopes.
    Titus, I pray to God you are safe.
    He rolled over and had to grit his teeth to keep from crying out. The pain in his wounded shoulder was staggering. After they’d taken refuge in this orchard, he’d barely slept. All night long, he’d worried about Titus, and gone over every possible person who might have betrayed them, remembered every argument.
    The traitor must have been one of the inner circle. No one else knew of their plan. But who could have so hated them he would betray even their final act of devotion?
    The scents of damp earth and blossoms blew through the orchard. He
inhaled deeply, and closed his eyes, trying to force himself to sleep. Bone-numbing pain throbbed in his shoulder with each beat of his heart.
    As his breathing dropped to the deep rhythms of sleep, voices whispered to him, and faces drifted before his eyes … .
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    I lean against the doorway of my house just outside the walled city of Yerushalaim and casually watch the passersby.
    The purple gleam of dawn streams through the grapevines that cover the white limestone cliff behind my house, and casts dappled shadows across the road twenty paces away. Titus kneels near the road, apparently mending a leather harness. His job today is to watch for Roman soldiers. As a member of the Council of Seventy-one, I know my house is occasionally under surveillance. The occupiers rightly fear that I have sympathy for radicals.
    In the room behind me, three such men talk in low voices: Yakob and Yohanan, the sons of Zebedaios, and Kepha, the Rock, who is also known as the skandaion, the stumbling block, 31 because of the constant gloom he seems to inflict upon everyone.
    A wagon filled with large clay jars bangs down the road, the wares jostling in the back. I watch it pass. Many people walk the road today, carrying goods for sale in the city. Others are just travelers coming for the Pesach celebration. By the end of the week more than two million people will have arrived from all over the world. 32
    My gaze moves over the nearby houses. Most are carved into the limestone cliff, or built against it so that the cliff makes up one wall. My house is larger than most, but not ostentatiously large. I have six rooms. The recently hewn tomb in my garden resembles a dark hole. I built it out of fear that my ailing father will soon require it. He’s been dying for a month, but soon, I pray, his misery will be over.
    Titus stands and whispers, “The Two are coming, Master.”
    I turn and softly call to the men inside my house, “They’re coming.”
    Behind me, I hear robes rustling, sandals scuffing the stone floor.
    I straighten and smooth the wrinkles from the front of my yellow himation. Beneath it, I wear a simple blue linen tunic and sandals.
    Titus dips his head politely as Yeshua and Maryam walk onto the path. Both wear white tunics tied over their left shoulders, with the other shoulder bare, and white himatia draped over their heads to hide their identities, lest the
crowds should follow them here. Maryam has her wealth of black hair pulled back and tied with a leather cord. The style highlights her perfect face, but also accentuates her worried expression. She keeps glancing fearfully at Yeshua, though he doesn’t seem to notice. He has his gaze fixed on me. He is a slender man, of medium height, 33 but his eyes capture the hearts