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

“It was a fair price to pay,” Joshua said. “You don’t have to return our money.”

“I almost drowned your friend. I’m sorry.”

“You asked if he could swim before you threw him in. He had a chance.”

I looked at Joshua’s eyes to see if he was joking, but it was obvious he wasn’t.

“Still,” Titus said.

“So perhaps you will be given a chance someday as well,” Joshua said.

“A slim fucking chance,” I added.

Titus grinned at me. “Follow the shore of the harbor until it becomes a river. That’s the Onrontes. Follow its left bank and you’ll be in Antioch by nightfall. In the market there will be an old woman who sells herbs and charms. I don’t remember her name, but she has only one eye and she wears a tunic of Tyran purple. If there is a magician in Antioch she will know where to find him.”

“How do you know this old woman?” I asked.

“I buy my tiger penis powder from her.”

Joshua looked at me for explanation. “What?” I said. “I’ve had a couple of harlots, I didn’t exchange recipes.” Then I looked to Titus. “Should I have?”

“It’s for my knees,” the sailor said. “They hurt when it rains.”

Joshua took my shoulder and started to lead me away. “Go with God, Titus,” he said.

“Put in a good word with the black-winged one for me,” Titus said.

Once we were into the wash of merchants and sailors around the harbor, I said, “He gave us the money back because the angel scared him, you know that?”

“So his kindness allayed his fear as well as benefiting us,” Joshua said. “All the better. Do you think the priests sacrifice the lambs at Passover for better reasons?”

“Oh, right,” I said, having no idea what one had to do with the other, wondering still if tigers didn’t object to having their penises powdered. (Keeps them from chafing, I guess, but that’s got to be a dangerous job.) “Let’s go find this old crone,” I said.

The shore of the Onrontes was a stream of life and color, textures and smells, from the harbor all the way into the marketplace at Antioch. There were people of every size and color that I had ever imagined, some shoeless and dressed in rags, others wearing expensive silks and the purple linen from Tyre, said to be dyed with the blood of a poisonous snail. There were ox carts, litters, and sedan chairs carried by as many as eight slaves. Roman soldiers on horseback and on foot policed the crowd, while sailors from a dozen nations reveled in drink and noise and the feel of land beneath their feet. Merchants and beggars and traders and whores scurried for the turn of a coin, while self-appointed prophets spouted dogma from atop the mooring posts where ships tied off along the river—holy men lined up and preaching like a line of noisy Greek columns. Smoke rose fragrant and blue over the streaming crowd, carrying the smell of spice and grease from braziers in the food booths where men and women hawked their fare in rhythmic, haunting songs that all ran together as you walked along—as if one passed his song to the next so you might never experience a second of silence.

The only thing I had ever seen that approached this was the line of pilgrims leading into Jerusalem on the feast days, but there we never saw so much color, heard so much noise, felt so much excitement.

We stopped at a stand and bought a hot black drink from a wrinkled old man wearing a tanned bird carcass as a hat. He showed us how he made the drink from the seeds of berries that were first roasted, then ground into powder, then mixed with boiling water. We got this whole story by way of pantomime, as the man spoke none of the languages we were familiar with. He mixed the drink with honey and gave it to us, but when I tasted it, it still didn’t seem to taste right. It seemed, I don’t know, too dark. I saw a woman leading a nanny goat nearby, and I took Joshua’s cup from him and ran after the woman. With the woman’s permission, I squirted a bit of milk from the nanny goat’s udder onto the top of each of our cups. The old man protested, making it seem as if we’d committed some sort of sacrilege, but the milk had come out warm and frothy and it served to take away the bitterness of the black drink. Joshua downed his, then asked the old man for two more, as well as handing the woman with the goat a small brass coin for her trouble. Josh gave the second drink back to the old man to taste, and after much grimacing, he took a sip. A smile crossed his toothless mouth and before we left he seemed to be striking some sort of deal with the woman with the goat. I watched the old man grind beans in a copper cylinder while the woman milked her goat into a deep clay bowl. There was a spice vendor next door and I could smell the cinnamon, cloves, and allspice that lay loose in baskets on the ground.

“You know,” I said to the woman in Latin, “when you two get this all figured out, try sprinkling a little ground cinnamon on it. It just might make it perfect.”

“You’re losing your friend,” she said.

I turned and looked around, catching the top of Joshua’s head just as he turned a corner into the Antioch market and a new push of people. I ran to catch up to him.

Joshua was bumping people in the crowd as he passed, seemingly on purpose, and murmuring just loud enough so I could hear him each time he hit someone with a shoulder or an elbow. “Healed that guy. Healed her. Stopped her suffering. Healed him. Comforted him. Ooo, that guy was just stinky. Healed her. Whoops, missed. Healed. Healed. Comforted. Calmed.”

People were turning to look back at Josh, the way one will when a stranger steps on one’s foot, except these people all seemed to be either smiling or baffled, not annoyed as I expected.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Practicing,” Joshua said. “Whoa, bad toe-jam.” He spun on his heel, nearly turning his foot out of his sandal, and smacked a short bald man on the back of the head. “All better now.”

The bald guy turned and looked back to see who had hit him. Josh was backing down the street. “How’s your toe?” Joshua asked in Latin.

“Good,” the bald guy said, and he smiled, sorta goofy and dreamy, like his toe had just sent him a message that all was right with the world.

“Go with God, and—” Josh spun, jumped, came down with each hand on a stranger’s shoulder and shouted, “Yes! Double healing! Go with God, friends, two times!”

I was getting sort of uncomfortable. People had started to follow us through the crowd. Not a lot of people, but a few. Maybe five or six, each of them with that dreamy smile on his face.

“Joshua, maybe you should, uh, calm down a little.”

“Can you believe all of these people need healing? Healed him.” Josh leaned back and whispered in my ear. “That guy had the pox. He’ll pee without pain for the first time in years. ’Scuse me.” He turned back into the crowd. “Healed, healed, calmed, comforted.”

“We’re strangers here, Josh. You’re attracting attention to us. This might not be safe…”

“It’s not like they’re blind or missing limbs. We’ll have to stop if we run into something serious. Healed! God bless you. Oh, you no speak Latin? Uh—Greek? Hebrew? No?”

“He’ll figure it out, Josh,” I said. “We should look for the old woman.”

“Oh, right. Healed!” Josh slapped the pretty woman very hard in the face. Her husband, a large man in a leather tunic, didn’t look pleased. He pulled a dagger from his belt and started to advance on Joshua. “Sorry, sir,” Joshua said, not backing up. “Couldn’t be helped. Small demon, had to be banished from her. Sent it into that dog over there. Go with God. Thank you, thank you very much.”

The woman grabbed her husband by the arm and swung him around. She still had Joshua’s handprint on her face, but she was smiling. “I’m back!” she said to her husband. “I’m back.” She shook him and the anger seemed to drain out of him. He looked back at Joshua with an expression of such dismay that I thought he might faint. He dropped his knife and threw his arms around his wife. Joshua ran forward and threw his arms around them both.