Christopher Moore - Lamb - The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal

“Where have you been?” Joshua said. “I need to wash your feet.”

“Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a ham in Jerusalem during Passover week?” I said. “I thought it would be nice, you know, some ham on matzo with a little bitter herb.”

“He washed us all,” Peter said. “Of course we had to hold Bart down, but even he’s clean.”

“And as I washed them, they will go out and wash others, by showing them forgiveness.”

“Oh, I get it,” I said. “It’s a parable. Cute. Let’s go eat.”

We all lay around the big table, with Joshua at the head. Joshua’s mother had prepared a traditional Passover supper, with the exception of the lamb. To begin the seder, Nathaniel, who was the youngest, had to ask a question. “Why is this night different from every other night of the year?”

“Bart’s feet are clean?” said Thomas.

“Joseph of Arimathea is picking up the tab?” said Philip.

Nathaniel laughed and shook his head. “No. It’s because other nights we eat bread and matzo, but tonight we only eat matzo. Jeez.” He grinned, probably feeling smart for the first time in his life.

“And why do we only eat the matzo on this night?” asked Nathaniel.

“Skip ahead, Nate,” I said. “We’re all Jews here. Summarize. Unleavened bread because there was no time for it to rise with Pharaoh’s soldiers on our tail, bitter herbs for the bitterness of slavery, God delivered us into the Promised Land, it was swell, let’s eat.”

“Amen,” said everyone.

“That was pathetic,” said Peter.

“Yeah, was it?” I said angrily. “Well, we sit here with the Son of God, waiting for someone to come and take him away and kill him, and none of us is going to do a damn thing about it, including God, so forgive me if I’m not peeing all over myself about having been delivered out of the hands of the Egyptians about a million years ago.”

“You’re forgiven,” said Joshua. Then he stood up. “What I am, is in you all. The Divine Spark, the Holy Ghost, it unites you all. It is the God that is in you all. Do you understand that?”

“Of course God is part of you,” James the brother said, “he’s your father.”

“No, in all of you. Watch, take this bread.” He took a matzo and broke it into pieces. He gave a piece to everyone in the room and took a piece himself. Then he ate it. “Now, the bread is part of me, the bread is me. Now all of you eat it.”

Everybody looked at him.

“EAT IT!” He screamed.

So we ate it. “Now it is part of you, I am part of you. You all share the same part of God. Let’s try again. Hand me that wine.”

And so it went like that, for a couple of hours, and I think that by the time the wine was gone, the apostles actually grasped what Joshua was saying to them. Then the begging started, as each of us pleaded for Joshua to give up the notion that he had to die to save the rest of us.

“Before this is finished,” he said, “you will all have to deny me.”

“No we won’t,” said Peter.

“You will deny me three times, Peter. I not only expect this, I command it. If they take you when they take me, then there is no one to take the good news to the people. Now, Judas, my friend, come here.”

Judas went to Joshua, who whispered in his ear, then sent him back to his place at the table. “One of you will betray me this very night,” said Joshua. “Won’t you, Judas?”

“What?” Judas looked around at us, but when he saw no one coming to his defense, he bolted down the steps. Peter started after him, but Joshua caught the fisherman by the hair and yanked him back off of his feet.

“Let him go.”

“But the high priest’s palace isn’t a furlong away,” said Joseph of Arimathea. “If he goes there directly.”

Joshua held his hand up for silence. “Biff, go directly to Simon’s house and wait. Alone you can sneak by the palace without being seen. Tell Maggie and the others to wait for us. The rest of us will go through the city and through the Ben Hinnon valley so we don’t have to pass the priest’s palace. We’ll meet you in Bethany.”

I looked at Peter and Andrew. “You won’t let him turn himself in?”

“Of course not.”

I was off into the night, wondering even as I ran whether Joshua had changed his mind and was going to escape from Bethany into the Judean desert. I should have known right then that I’d been had. You think you can trust a guy, then he turns around and lies to you.

Simon answered the door and let me in. He held his finger to his lips, signalling me to be quiet. “Maggie and Martha are in the back. They’re angry with you. All of you. Now they’ll be angry with me for letting you in.”

“Sorry,” I said.

He shrugged. “What can they do? It’s my house.”

I went directly through the front room into a second room that opened off to bedchambers, the mikveh, and the courtyard where food was prepared. I heard voices coming from one of the bedchambers. When I walked in, Maggie looked up from braiding Martha’s hair.

“So, you’ve come to tell me that it’s done,” she said. Tears welled up in her eyes and I felt as if I would break down with her if she started sobbing now.

“No,” I said. “He and the others are on their way here. Through Ben Hinnon, so it will be a few hours. But I have a plan.” I pulled the ying-yang amulet that Joy had given me out of my tunic and waved it before them.

“Your plan is to bribe Joshua with ugly jewelry?” asked Martha.

I pointed to the tiny stoppers on either side of the amulet. “No, my plan is to poison him.”

I explained how the poison worked to Mary and Martha and then we waited, counting the time in our imaginations, watching in our mind’s eyes as the apostles made their way through Jerusalem, out the Essene gate, into the steep valley of Ben Hinnon, where thousands of tombs had been carved into the rock, and where once a river had run, but now was only sage and cypress and thistles clinging to the crevices in the limestone. After several hours we went outside to wait in the street, then when the moon started down and the night made way into early morning, we saw a single figure coming from the west, not the south as we had expected. As he got closer I could tell from heavy shoulders and the moon shining on his bald pate that it was John.

“They took him,” he said. “At Gethsemane. Annas and Caiphais came themselves, with Temple guards, and they took him.”

Maggie ran into my arms and buried her face in my chest. I reached out and pulled Martha close as well.

“What was he doing at Gethsemane?” I said. “You were supposed to be coming here through Ben Hinnon.”

“He only told you that.”

“That bastard lied to me. So they arrested everyone?”

“No, the others are hiding not far from here. Peter tried to fight the guards, but Joshua stopped him. Joshua negotiated with the priests to let us go. Joseph came too, he helped talk them into letting the rest of us go.”

“Joseph? Joseph betrayed him?”

“I don’t know,” said John. “Judas was the one that led them to Gethsemane. He pointed Joshua out to the guards. Joseph came later, when they were about to arrest the rest of us.”

“Where did they take him?”

“To the palace of the high priest. That’s all I know, Biff. I promise.”

He sat down hard in the middle of the street and began to weep. Martha went to him and cradled his head to her breast.

Maggie looked up at me. “He knew you would fight. That’s why he sent you here.”

“The plan doesn’t change,” I said. “We just have to get him back so we can poison him.”

John looked up from Martha’s embrace. “Did you change sides when I wasn’t here?”