The Penultimate Supper

Author's note - It's only now I've finished this story that I realize it bears a strong resemblance to another highly successful one written by at least four other authors. Please don't be triggered.

"It must be you", said Yehoshuah, laying a hand on Yehudah's shoulder. It was a heavy hand, one that had shaped wood with saw and adze and auger its entire life. Yehudah's own hands were used to easier, slicker work.

"Master, you are not well", protested Yehudah in a low voice, lest any of the others should overhear. "Have you considered that sometimes, when you hear the voice of God talking to you, it might not simply be", he floundered momentarily, "the delirium of a hot day?"

Yehoshuah smiled as happily as a mad old man making poop angels in his own poop. "This is why it has to be you. You doubt the word of God, but for the very best reasons. Your instinct is to hold back the knife. But you must be as Abraham with Isaac. God will send a ram, my friend. No lamb will die here, you will see. But you are the only one of our flock who can wield that knife. Look at them!" Yehoshuah swept a hand round the inn, at the inner circle of his faithful, as they sat and gnawed the bones of the meal provided for them by the outer circle, the ones who actually had to work for a living. "None of them have anything like your strength! None have souls that will admit the Enemy, God's malevolent servant, nor hands that remember the handle of a dagger. Look at Shimon and Andreas yonder, nibbling with the deepest suspicion at meat that goes on four legs rather than swimming with fins. Look at Matityahu, still palpably terrified, even now, at being surrounded by men who don't go escorted by slaves bearing their own personal arse-wiping sponges. They are good men, Yehudah. They have lived their entire lives as such. But why are they good? Through choice, or because they are natural sheep rather than natural wolves? But you made a choice!" He clapped both hands around Yehudah's shoulders. "You are a wolf made good! You are of the sicarii!”

“Master, I am of them no more. And they are almost no more. In the first few years after the Catastrophe, when the idolators sacked the city and installed Hyrcanus as their puppet, sicarii sprang from the very rocks and stones to avenge our Holy of Holies. Now, though, in a time of peace, and not to put too fine a point on it by following your own teachings, Master, men are less eager to spill the blood of others –“

“Not men! Devils! You are of a race of men who are fast friends with devils! And this night I have need of a devil, and you will not fail me! I must be betrayed, my friend. I must be wronged. Only thus will my message, our message, kindle the world as a stack of dry wood!"

Weakly, Yehudah took his friend's shoulders, and kissed him on both cheeks.

"Master", he said, and departed.

***

"What did he ask you?" said old Mariam, hobbling up to Yehudah on her stick in the dark alleyway outside the kohanim's house.

"The usual", said Yehudah.

Mariam patted him on the arm. "He is in so much pain. And I am afraid to do what he is asking might be the kindest thing - if the only alternative is for him to make the same end as his father."

"His father?" said Yehudah.

"His father Yosef. Not his father Yahweh. As he has told you himself many, many times."

"He has told us", corrected Yehudah stiffly, "that you are his mother and Yosef was your husband, dear lady."

Mariam sighed. "What Yosef believed in his last days of slavering irrationality and what is the living truth are two separate things, no matter what horrible lies he yelled at Yehoshuah. I only hope the son's descent into madness is not as protracted and painful as the father's. You do realize", she said, her eyes narrowing, "that the very fact that he's having these visions is proof he truly is his father's son?"

"I never knew Yosef", said Yehudah - and then, rather more cruelly, "and according to Yehoshuah, neither did you."

And he left her there stranded in the alley, before she could lay a hand to a solid surface to steady herself with while laying about him with her cane.

***

As he slunk through the City of David - the newly idolatrous City of David, full of so many graven images mandated by the alien overlords - a whistle caused Yehudah to look up. The whistler lounged against the plinth of one of the occupiers' idols - he thought it might be the one that was their god of drunkenness. Rather than celebrating virtue, the invaders seemed to have gods who patronized vice - they had tutelary deities of violence, prostitution and witchcraft. This one was fat and effeminate, and a horned satyr was dropping a bunch of grapes into its marble mouth.

"Betrayer!" said Thomas cheerily, waving a still half full wine-goblet at him.

"Today's betrayer", corrected Yehudah. "You were his betrayer of choice the day before our entry to the Holy City, if you'll recall. He tried to get you to do it, and you didn't have the stomach."

"I don't believe it's necessary for him to be betrayed", said Thomas. "I don't even think he's the son of God. There are times", he said, swilling the wine around in his cup sadly, "when I don't even believe in the Message." He switched from maudlin to merry in a fingerclick, and held the goblet suddenly up in salute. "So alleluia to you, hey! The man actually dumb enough to do it! To light the fire that sets the world ablaze!"

"Nobody’s going to be setting anything ablaze", said Yehudah. "The master's message is one of peace."

"All he cares about is not dying of the creeping madness that killed his father! He wants to go out in a blaze of infamy. The Romans' caretaker wants to slap him on the wrist - he's in a bad position, after all, there can't be much more than five hundred Roman soldiers in the whole province, after all. So the boss needs to provoke Pilatus, or he doesn't get his name screamed down the centuries. Causing that ruckus in the Temple earlier today didn't quite tip it, so now he has to rely on someone to swallow his bull about being willingly entered by Satan."

Yehudah bristled. "But what if it's true?"

"How can it be true? He doesn't even think it's true! He's just so wedded to the idea of his precious Love-Thy-Neighbour-As-Thyself that he thinks any way of getting the Word out, any lie, no matter how big, is acceptable!"

"He says he talks with angels", said Yehudah.

"And Nebuchadnezzar believed grass was bread for seven years, but that didn't make it so."

Yehudah had had enough. His right hand grew something small and sharp that glinted in the moonlight.

"And there it is! Bravo, sicarie!" said Thomas, too drunk even to care. "I can see our master has chosen wisely. Go, and let the Enemy enter in!" And he swept away grandly towards the Upper City and its many wickednesses.

Yehudah walked on, towards the temple mount, up the steps, into the Courtyard of the Gentiles, through the anti-Gentile screen to the Court of Israel itself. The temple sanctuary beyond was, of course, closed to men such as him, but he could at least be close to it. Not the only supplicant in the court, even at this time in the evening, he sank to his knees and looked up at the sanctuary gates.

"Lord", he said, "what should I do?"

"Kill him", said a voice from behind him in the dark, "that he might never die."

He turned to see a hooded figure silhouetted in a gateway, leaning on a stick.

"You should not be here", he said.

The figure looked up at the arch above it. "I am technically one inch within the Court of the Women", it said. "I am within my rights."

"What are you doing here, pythoness?"

"Preventing you from making one of your many stupid decisions. You need to betray him to the sanhedrin - identify him tomorrow evening, at supper. It has to happen then. Since none of you will take the responsibility, it has fallen to a woman to arrange it. To women", she corrected herself.

"Old Mariam", guessed Yehudah. "She does not want him to live in pain."

"Oh, he will live, for a brief while. The Romans will crucify him. But I have bribed one of the legionaries to give him, when he begs for water - all crucifixion victims do, not that it helps them - a medicine of my own making. In the lands of trees far to the south of the great desert, there are Libyan sorcerors who trick men into believing they have died. They know the secret of a drug that slows the heart so significantly that a man appears, to all observation, dead, and can then be buried. Shortly afterwards, the sorceror will return and exhume the living man, who now believes himself to be dead and in the thrall of the sorceror. It helps that the drug also dulls brain function, though if only a small amount is used, that effect is minimal -"

"His brain function", said Yehudah sourly, "is already dulled."

"His intelligence still shines, even through the glass of madness. The drug will be administered via a sponge soaked in myrrh and gall, to make it appear that the soldiers are simply taunting him. I have also bribed a centurion to administer a mercy stroke that will appear to have killed him, but in fact only cause heavy bleeding. After that, doctors will certify that his heart has stopped and he will be taken down from the cross and buried, and a rock rolled over the entrance - a rock so large that no mortal man can possibly roll it aside with his hands -"

"And this mortal man will miraculously roll that rock aside himself?"

"No. A mortal woman will." Young Mariam banged the stick she carried on the flagstones, and it rang like metal. "If a thing cannot be moved with bare hands, some sort of lever is evidently in order. He will survive, for a while, at least, and be madder than ever. He knows nothing of this, of course. He must believe that he has indeed died and resurrected, for if he believes it, all the world will. The Word must spread, Yehudah. It is more important than any one man." Her eyes gleamed in the dark as she added: "Than any two men. To that end, we need to ensure the priests actually do arrest him. If there is one truly bad thing about dreadful men, it is that they cannot be relied upon to be dreadful." She threw a chinking bag of coin down at Yehudah's feet. "Take this with you. There are thirty shekels in there. If they hold out for a bribe, give them that. If they don't, keep it", she smiled serenely, "for your trouble."

Yehudah looked down at the money. "I don't know", he started.

"But you do. You know how important this is. Yehoshuah's Word will reverberate through history - men will, for the very first time, know that they do not need to rob their neighbours, do not need to judge them, do not need to kill." Her eyes shone. "That's why we need to kill him. Think of it, Yehudah. A world without kings, without emperors, without frontiers, without soldiers. War is over, if we want it."

Yehudah sighed, and eventually bent down to the bag of silver, and took it.

She blew him a kiss in the dark. "Thank you, brother. You will be remembered as the greatest of his followers."

Mariam turned and moved off towards the Beautiful Gate, her iron staff clanking on the cobbles with every step. Yehudah emptied the coin purse into his own and looked up towards the great temple doors.

"I fear", he said, "I will rather be remembered as the one who left before they became famous."

Feeling sick inside, he left the temple and slunk off towards the house of Caiaphas.