David Epperson - The Third Day

“Or provided a good place to shuffle off grandpa,” said Bryson. “You could dump a sick relative there and not feel bad about it.”

***

I encouraged the others to continue this line of discussion, but despite my best efforts, I couldn’t evade the inevitable question.

“Where’s Sharon?” asked Lavon.

I explained what little I knew.

Once I had done so, Bryson and Markowitz immediately began arguing about the best way to rescue her. Their schemes, though, struck me only as efficient ways to commit suicide. None would have done Sharon any good at all.

Lavon didn’t seem to think so, either, but he stepped away from us for a moment, lost in thought.

“I think she’ll be OK,” he finally said,

“We can’t just abandon her!” said Markowitz. “You know what they’re going to do.”

He nodded. “Yes, but we have a little while to work out a plan. Ancient documents describe a regimen of baths and beauty treatments to be completed before a girl was deemed fit for the king. This will take time.”

“How much time?” I asked.

“At least a day,” said Lavon. “Possibly two or three.”

“Today’s Wednesday, right?” I asked.

They nodded.

“Then we have until tomorrow night at least,” I said, “Friday if we’re lucky.”

I didn’t have to add that we hadn’t exactly had the best of luck so far.

“This is my fault,” said Lavon. “Kings sent retainers to round up pretty girls all the time. I just thought we’d be safe in the Antonia, in addition to the story of her being royalty.”

“Obviously they didn’t believe that,” said Bryson.

“That was my fault, too. We all slept in the same bed last night. If she had been a real princess, she would have had the bed to herself and the rest of us would have spent the night on the floor. I just got carried away watching everything else; it slipped my mind.”

“What do you think they really take us for?” asked Bryson.

“Our hands, even yours Bill, are not the rough hands of manual laborers, and our clothes are too well made to be peasant garments. I’m guessing they see us as prosperous merchants.”

“Exactly what we started out pretending to be,” said Bryson.

Lavon nodded. “Ironically, whoever did this might even think they’re doing us a favor. If she pleases the king, she could open up profitable trading opportunities.”

“I can’t imagine her feeling very good about that,” said Bryson.

“No,” said Lavon, “but this is the first century; she is a woman. Her feelings are of no consideration at all.”

At that point, the only sensible thing to do was to head straight back to the Antonia the way we came. That would allow us to avoid the worst of the crowds, and with Lavon able to speak for us, I was certain that we could eventually persuade a soldier to fetch Publius.

I suggested this, but my comment had the opposite effect. Markowitz and Bryson strode forward toward the city, while Lavon just rolled his eyes and followed.

In truth, he wanted to see the Temple as badly as the others did; he just wouldn’t admit it.

We pushed our way back into the line of travelers and passed through the gate without incident; and once we got inside the walls, we could not have turned back even if we had wanted to. The stream of itinerants had become a river, flowing in only one direction, to the north.

We passed a spring where a gaggle of angry women stood in line with buckets, and I realized then that if the area surrounding Herod’s palace was Jerusalem’s high-rent district, we had now crossed over to the wrong side of the tracks.

The main path leading north from the Tekoa Gate followed along the western edge of the ridge bisecting the city all the way past the Temple Mount. West of our path, the ground sloped down into a deep valley, filled with densely packed structures that reminded Bryson of a colleague’s research facility at MIT.

From what I could see, the lab rats probably had it better. At least they didn’t have to live under a pall of acrid smoke.

Bryson coughed and struggled not to gag. “What is that smell?”

“Firewood is expensive,” said Lavon. “They use dried animal dung as fuel.”

I had seen this before, in India, but never on this scale.

Off to our right, Lavon pointed to a collection of shabby stone buildings, noting that this area constituted the original Jerusalem, the City of David.

“Who could have figured it?” he said.

We each had to acknowledge the peculiarity of it all. David’s Jerusalem extended only a few hundred yards in each direction, covering ten acres at most. At its peak, it probably housed fewer than a thousand inhabitants.

Yet such a place, the headquarters of a man who was in reality more of a tribal chieftain than a king, became the focal point of three global religions with billions of adherents.

***

I was still reflecting on this oddity a few minutes later when I heard a loud yell. I ducked out of the way just as a boy, about ten years old and sporting a ragged tunic at least one size too small, ran past us with two angry men in hot pursuit.

The kid probably would have made his getaway but for a loose paving stone that protruded up about half an inch.

Seconds later, he tripped over the block and went sprawling face-first onto the ground. He attempted to rise, but the men were on top of him in an instant, pounding his body with wooden staves.

The boy cried out but soon fell silent under the weight of the blows. One of his pursuers reached down and grasped a cloth pouch. He displayed a brief expression of triumph; then both men trotted back down the street without giving the child a second thought.

Bryson stood aghast. “We’ve got to help him.”

The crowd, however, continued to push us forward, and no one else expressed the slightest concern over the boy’s fate. A street urchin, they had most likely concluded; and good riddance.

Lavon tugged Bryson’s robe. “Come on; there’s nothing we can do.”

***

After we passed the City of David, our pace slowed even more as side streets fed additional pilgrims onto the primary thoroughfare. Given that we had a little time, I finally had a chance to ask Bryson a question that had been bothering me since the beginning of our excursion.

“Professor,” I asked. “How did you know where to find the tomb?”

He hesitated briefly.

“Its location is well-accepted, is it not? Ironically, we can thank Hadrian. The emperor was so fervently anti-Christian that he razed the impromptu shrine the early believers had built on the site and erected a pagan temple in its place, inadvertently marking the spot for all time.

“When Constantine legalized Christianity two centuries later, all the followers of Christ had to do was tear down Hadrian’s monstrosity and build their own church.”

That sounded plausible enough, though I could read the skepticism on Lavon’s face. He told me later that this theory was probably correct, with an emphasis on probably . An alternative site, the Garden Tomb, lay to the north of town. Modern archaeologists continue to debate the matter.

But that wasn’t the most pressing issue.

“How do you plan to find it today?” I asked.

“I just told you.”

“No,” said Lavon. “You told us how a twenty-first, or a fourth, or even a second century man would locate it; but there’s nothing there now. According to the Gospels, it’s Joseph of Arimathea’s family plot. Did you plan on walking into a meeting of the Sanhedrin and asking him to show you where it is?”

“I’ve taken satellite photos and overlapped the Holy Sepulcher with known archaeological coordinates from this era. We can triangulate between the Damascus Gate and the Phasael Tower. Both of those structures survived into modern times.”