An Alternate Spy Wednesday Narrative

This is an excerpt from my unpublished (and likely never to be published) novel titled The Lost Apostle, a retelling of the Gospel account narrated by Judas Iscariot, which has no place in the world of popular fiction because it presents a heterodox version of Christianity but does not treat the whole enterprise as bullcrap.

The jailer led me back to the center of the city, to a small but well-kept house adjacent to the palace. I followed him through the door and found a single large, dimly lit chamber. Tapestries billowed from the floor up to the high ceiling on either side of the door, and at the far end of the chamber was a single wooden table with two burning candles. Behind the table sat Caiaphas, without his turban, flanked by two Temple Guards. A single empty chair sat across from him.

“The Chief Priest sent me to bring in the followers of the Nazarene,” the jailer said as we walked in. “Hopefully one will be sufficient.”

When we entered Caiaphas looked up and squinted past the jailer. He didn’t recognize me in the darkness until I was halfway across the room. When he did, his dark, heavy eyes grew into white lanterns beneath his thick brows.

I stopped walking when I saw the look in his eyes. The jailer continued, circled around the table and took his place with the guards.

“You,” Caiaphas said. He seemed more confused than angry. Perhaps it had been a long day for him, too.

The jailer gave me a hateful look and flung his arm toward the empty chair. I hurried forward and sat down across from the priest.

“You lied,” Caiaphas said. “You told me you had never heard of the Nazarene. And here you are, one of his disciples.”

His voice was deep, growling, but strangely calm.

“I never said any such thing,” I said. “Princess Salome answered for me, if you recall.”

He arched an eyebrow as he searched his memory. Clearly a different version of events existed in his mind. His recollection was that he was satisfied that I hadn’t heard of the Nazarene and thus he must have heard it from my own lips. The fact that Lilith had misdirected him into this belief had no place in his memory. It was brilliant manipulation by the dark priestess.

“Were you spying on us?” he asked. “At the palace, you heard the King and the Governor and me speaking freely. Was that why you were there?”

“Again, the Princess invited me,” I said. “I was just as surprised to find myself at that table as you were to see me. I am not a spy.”

He pursed his lips and sucked his beard.

“Well,” he grumbled. “Salome is not here to answer for you now. You will answer my questions truthfully. On your own.”

I heard myself laugh. This man and his priests had been humiliated all day by Yeshua. He had already been defeated.

“What information could you possibly need from me?” I said. “Your priests and your Temple Guards have heard everything Yeshua has said. How many counts of blasphemy has he committed? You won’t stone him because the crowds would turn against you. How can anything I say change that?”

Caiaphas put the tips of his fingers together and lowered his eyes, chewing his lower lip again.

“This is no longer a matter of blasphemy” he said.

I looked up at the jailer, who was glaring at me with his pebble-like eyes.

“What do you mean?” I said to Caiaphas.

The priest sighed. “The Nazarene has attracted the attention of the governor,” he said. “His demonstrations have gone beyond the Temple. Beyond our jurisdiction.”

“So what?” I asked. “Why am I here instead of Pilate’s dungeon? Why am I talking to you instead of the centurions?”

“The governor has asked me, as a personal favor, to take evidence,” he said. “As this has become a rather delicate matter among the people of Jerusalem.”

“You’re doing Pilate’s dirty work?”

“I am keeping the peace in this city.”

I snorted, shaking my head. The priest was a sturdy man with bushy black hair and olive skin. He wielded incredible power in Jerusalem. But as I looked at him in the dim light of the dusty room, in his shed outside Pilate’s palace — the Palace of Herod that the Romans had taken over, driving Herod’s heirs into neighboring provinces — he looked like a whipped dog. Shoulders hunched, heavy-lidded eyes dark and droopy over a beard that swallowed his mouth and made him look silent and voiceless.

“Peace,” I said. “The peace of slavery to a foreign power. Were we at peace in Babylon? In Egypt?”

He rolled his eyes and leaned back in his chair.

“You are a Judean, yes?” he said, settling his eyes on me again.

“I am.”

“And how long have you traveled with these Galileans?” he asked. His voice was growing louder. “Because you sound just like them. Thinking that the revolution against Rome is just beyond the horizon. As though any army we could gather could stand against Rome.”

“You don’t believe in the Messiah?” I asked. I had forgotten Yeshua’s speech, the Kingdom with no King but God. Caiaphas’s insult against the Galileans — the people I had devoted my life to for so long — had brought back all of my old revolutionary ideas. The idle conspiratorial fantasies that John and I had shared over so many campfires.

The guards and the jailer tensed up at the word Messiah, but Caiaphas barely reacted, keeping his look of heavy disdain hanging over me like a dense cloud.

“I believe that God keeps his promises,” he said. “I do not believe we need to keep them for him. The Kingdom will come when it comes. But here in Judea, we understand the world that we live in. The Romans let us be. We keep our commandments. We honor God. And we have protection from the outside. From the many, many other empires who have eyes on this land.”

“Yes,” I said. “In Judea you enjoy Roman security. While in Galilee your own people break their backs working for the wealthy Romans — and Jews — in the cities. They scrape their shekels together and bring them to the priests in the synagogues and the Temple to make their sacrifices, feeding you to stave off God’s wrath. Are these people enjoying your Roman peace and security?”

“And you think these people are going to overthrow Rome?” he said.

I froze. Yeshua’s final message came back to me. And I realized that I was running headlong into Caiaphas’s trap. I couldn’t even recall how we had gotten here, but here we were.

I settled back in my seat and smiled curtly.

“We’re beyond that,” I said. “If you had listened to Yeshua’s words, you would know. The world belongs to God, with or without Rome.”

“And we come back to the Nazarene,” Caiaphas said. “Do you really believe that this, this . . . unlettered laborer speaks with the voice of God? That he knows more of God than the priests and the scribes and the Pharisees?”

“I do.”

“Do you believe that he is the Messiah?”

The question spilled out so casually that I nearly fell from my chair. It was as though I had steeled myself for a strong blow, been hit with a light tap, and overcorrected, throwing myself off balance.

It was a question whose answer could be a death sentence. And having spoken it so calmly, as though he were asking where I had grown up or what my father’s trade was, he sat equally calmly, hands folded in front of him, staring at me with half-lidded eyes and a relaxed, sagging chin.

I breathed in sharply and narrowed my eyes.

“You ask what I believe,” I said. “I will tell you what I know. I know that Yeshua is the greatest man to walk the Earth since Elijah. Since Moses. I know that he has devoted his entire life — his entire being — to fighting a war against darkness. A war that you and your priests have abandoned. I know that he brings healing to the sick and comfort to those in need. I know that countless multitudes have left their lives behind to walk in his footsteps, to hear his voice, to gain his wisdom. And I know that every single thing he does is driven by one thing and one thing only — love. The purest force of God’s will. Love for God’s children. And his love will raise up God’s people — all of God’s people. And those who refuse to accept God’s love will be torn down.”

I leaned forward, gazing into his unmoved eyes.

“And I know, Chief Priest,” I said. “That if you choose to stand against Yeshua, you have already lost the war.”

“Enough of this!”

The jailer lurched forward, hand on the hilt of his dagger. Caiaphas raised a hand irritably without looking behind him.

“I will not listen to this . . . apostate slander us,” the jailer said.

“Saul, stop!”

The Chief Priest turned his head only slightly in the jailer’s direction, not granting him the dignity of eye contact. It was the loudest and angriest I had heard the priest speak since I entered the room. He was like a master barking at a begging dog.

The jailer had no choice but to obey. He stepped back alongside the motionless Temple Guards, never taking his eyes off of me. I began to wonder if I would make it out of the room alive once Caiaphas finished his interrogation.

Caiaphas turned back to me and resettled himself, leaning forward slightly with his fingers still clasped in front of him.

“I am going to ask a different question,” he said calmly. “And I want you to listen carefully, because I am only going to ask it once, and I want you to tell me the truth. It is a simple yes or no question, and I expect a yes or no answer.”

He licked the insides of his lips and swallowed.

“Has Yeshua the Nazarene,” he said slowly and carefully. “Proclaimed himself the Messiah?”

I sat silently, letting the priest’s question linger. In the corner of my eye I caught a smirk from Saul, who knew the answer from my silence.

Caiaphas, too, knew the answer. But he sat calmly, waiting for me to speak the words he needed to report to Pilate. Waiting to see if I would.

Waiting to see if I had the courage to speak the truth, knowing what horrors the truth would bring.

I thought of John. Gazing into the dark, infinite desert. I thought of Yeshua wandering into the water, John collapsing at his feet. John’s total lack of fear, total faith, total devotion to the God he knew he served. John’s undying faith that died nonetheless.

I thought of the maddening speculation, the soothsaying, the puzzling and guessing and divining that had soaked up so much of my time with Mary, putting our minds together to try to reason our way out of a question that could only be answered with faith. Searching, aching for a sign of the truth that we could grab and see and feel. The truth that we both believed but couldn’t know. The belief to which neither of us would give voice.

I though carefully about that moment in Nazareth. When Peter, terrified but no longer able to resist the power of his own faith, confessed his belief that the Messiah had come and that he had been following him with love and devotion. When Yeshua himself smiled warmly, praised Peter, and said yes, at long last, that he was the Messiah, the man who would bring about God’s Kingdom. Who would deliver us from the slavery of darkness.

I thought of the synagogue in Capernaum.

You may find yourselves standing before kings and governors.

When you open your mouths to give testimony your voices will carry the truth of God.

You have nothing to fear from the truth.

What I tell you in darkness, speak in the light.

I felt a jolt of excitement as the word rose to my lips. Like something over which I had no control.

Your faith will sustain you.

The idea, the thought, the word, was coursing through my entire body. A divine spirit using me as its vessel.

But only if you let it.

“Yes.”

Caiaphas didn’t move, but the corner of his mouth kinked ever so slightly as he seemed to fight off a smile.

Loud rustling and the scraping of metal came from behind me. I sprang up and spun around and saw two fluttering tapestries and two centurions hurrying out the door.

I turned back to Caiaphas, who was grinning broadly now. Behind him, Saul’s face was pure, defiant hatred.

I ran across the room and out the door into the night. The centurions were jogging in the direction I had come from. I set off after them at full sprint and passed them. I heard them pick up their pace behind me, but they were slowed by their armor, by their heavy shields and weapons.

I sped along the empty streets in the dead silence of the night, guided by the blue light of the coldly burning moon overhead. I ran past the inn to the gates of the city and out into the wilderness.

I followed a path down a hill to a small walled garden. Yeshua had said he wanted to pray. Perhaps he was still there.

I ran into the garden, overgrown with shrubs bursting with spring flowers, and found Peter and James dozing in the dirt. Mary was sitting glumly on a fallen long and the others were scattered around chatting or sitting silently. Beyond them, in the midst of a clump of small trees, Yeshua knelt over a rock, his back to me, head lowered in prayer.

I ran to him, past Mary, past the others. In the time I had spent stopping to find him I heard the centurions catch up. There was little time.

Yeshua stood up as I approached and he turned to meet me. His eyes were red with tears and exhaustion, but he was smiling at the sight of his friend, his earliest surviving disciple.

When I reached him I could barely breathe. The air forced its way in and out of my throat in hoarse, scratching gasps. I tried to force out words but my throat squeezed shut at every attempt.

The centurions were right behind me and getting closer. I heard shouts and cries from the others.

Unable to speak, I threw my arms around Yeshua and kissed him on the cheek.

I pulled away, clutching his shoulders with trembling hands.

“I’m sorry,” I said at last.

I saw the slightest hint of a smile and then felt a rough hand on my back before I was tossed aside like a child’s doll.

I stumbled in a small circle and righted myself, then turned to see the two centurions standing in front of Yeshua. He stood still as a stone, staring at them without expression.

I wanted to burst forward and put myself between them but something held me in place. It may have been Yeshua’s absolute calm, the sense that he knew what was happening and he was at peace with it.

“Are you the man they call the Nazarene?” one of the centurions asked. He was taller and broader than his companion, who stood slightly behind the other.

“I am,” Yeshua said.

“You’re under arrest for sedition against Rome,” the larger one said. “Come with us.”

“No!”

Peter came lumbering toward them, waving a small sword over his head. He swung it awkwardly at the smaller centurion, who reflexively recoiled and seized up, turning his head away and lifting his shoulder against the attack. Peter’s blade came down on the centurion’s ear, and dark red blood began gushing onto his armor.

The centurion didn’t scream, but instead hissed in pain as his hand shot up to his mangled ear.

The larger centurion spun around, drew his sword, and crept toward Peter, his eyes burning with rage. Peter held the bloody sword in front of him with two trembling hands, backing away from the hulk of Roman terror that bore down upon him.

“Stop,” Yeshua said.

The larger centurion froze in place. Peter’s tremors ceased and he was still. Both men looked at Yeshua in wonder.

We all watched as Yeshua slowly approached the smaller Roman, still doubled over with his hand pressed against the side of his head, rocking back and forth. Yeshua gently touched his arm and the young man looked at him, wide-eyed, and lowered his hand.

Yeshua touched the tip of his finger to the gash. The man trembled all over and then jolted upright, stiff as a tree. The blood running down his face and neck reversed course and flowed back into the wound, like water absorbed into a cloth. When the blood was gone, the wound closed.

The young centurion touched his ear where the cut had been and drew his hand away, gazing in amazement at the dry fingers in front of his eyes.

Yeshua turned to the larger soldier, who was staring at him with the same sense of awe.

“I will not resist you,” he said. “If you will leave these people in peace.”

“N — ” came a strangled, agonized grunt from Peter. The large centurion turned and pointed the tip of his sword at him, baring his large yellow teeth in warning. He then turned to his companion and flung the end of his weapon toward Yeshua before shoving it back in its scabbard.

“Seize him,” he said.

The young man looked timidly at Yeshua, then back at his commanding officer. The larger man cocked his head and widened his eyes, another wordless warning.

The young man crept toward Yeshua and lightly grasped his upper arm.

“Please come with me,” he said.

Yeshua smiled kindly and nodded.

The three of them marched silently out of the garden, into the darkness of the night.

A rough shove struck my back and I stumbled forward. I twirled around and James was upon me, grabbing the folds of my robe in his fists.

“What did you do?” he screamed.

Peter and Matthew hurried up behind him and pulled him away. He twisted against their grip, his face red and glistening with rage, specks of white spittle in his beard. At last he wrenched himself away, but stayed in place.

He breathed heavily, shoulders heaving as his eyes pierced through me. He seemed inhuman. Possessed.

He swallowed hard, and looked around at the others.

“I told you!” he shouted. “I told you all! And none of you believed me! He was spying for the Romans this whole time!”

“I wasn’t!” I said.

“What did they promise you?” he spat. “What rewards did they tempt you with for betraying God’s prophet? Money? A home in Jerusalem with the rich men? Please tell me it was more than your pitiful life.”

“I wasn’t promised anything!” I yelled. “I was arrested. While all of you fled into the night I tried to fight off that assassin. He turned out to be one of Caiaphas’s agents. He brought me in for — ”

“Liar!”

“James, please,” Mary said, gliding up next to him. Her voice silenced him, but didn’t ease his anger. He seemed all the more enraged to be obeying a woman’s order.

Mary turned to me, giving me the same hurt, questioning look I had seen earlier that day after I had left the palace. “Tell us what happened, Judas,” she said flatly.

I breathed deeply. I had hoped for more confidence from her. But in her inability to muster the slightest hint of tenderness I saw the truth of the state I was in. All twelve of them were viewing me with total suspicion.

“Like I said, when the assassin came for us I tried to fight him off,” I said. “But he overpowered me. He placed me under arrest and took me before Caiaphas.”

“Why?” Mary said.

“Because of Yeshua,” I said. “Remember what I said about the courtyard at the palace? No centurions? A Sicarius slipping in and out? He must have been the same one who stabbed the old man. He followed us to the inn and then tried to attack us when we left.”

“So you led him to us,” James said.

“We all did! He attacked that old man to clear out the crowd. To isolate us so he could follow us back to the inn. If I had been working with him I could have simply led him to us without harming the old man. There would have been no need for the diversion.”

James’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t believe me, but he lacked the mental agility to argue with me. I turned to Mary, whose face had softened as I told my story. I knew that she could not only spot holes in any argument but could tell, instinctively, through divine sight, whether she was being lied to. And she knew that this time I was holding nothing back.

“If he brought you to the Chief Priest,” Matthew said. “Why did Roman guards arrest him?”

“Caiaphas is collaborating with Pilate,” I said.

Matthew clicked his tongue in disgust.

“Of course,” the former tax collector said. “The Romans find their most loyal servants in subjects who wish to keep the peace.”

A nervous laugh escaped my lips. I was pushing through their suspicion. They were believing me.

“What did Caiaphas ask you?” Peter said.

“He asked whether Yeshua had proclaimed himself as the Messiah,” I said.

“And what did you tell him?” barked James.

“The truth, James,” I said slowly. “I told him the truth.”

“Knowing it would get him killed.”

“What was I supposed to say?” I pleaded. “Would Yeshua have wanted me to lie? He never commanded us to deceive others. Even the authorities. He came to bring the truth!”

“You could have stayed silent.”

“They would have tortured me.”

“Yes!” James screamed, balling his hands into fists and leaning his body toward me. “They would have tortured you to death! And you would have gone to your death at peace, in righteousness, knowing you had given your life for God.”

“Is that what you would have done?”

“Yes! Any of us would have!”

James looked around at the others. A few nodded, and mutters of agreement spread around the group. Some repeated Yeshua’s words at the evening meal. Give your flesh and blood.

“Stop,” Mary said.

The others fell silent and all eyes turned to her. Her face was sad and heavy.

“Stop all of this bickering,” she said. “Don’t you see what’s happening? We’re being divided. Just like Yeshua said. This is how the Romans break their subjects. They don’t have to fight us if they can get us to fight each other. This is how the Devil wins.”

The others exchanged glances. Peter looked sadly at James, who returned a defiant look.

“What will happen to Yeshua?” Peter asked, his voice cracking.

I let out a deep breath. “He’ll be brought before the Roman authorities and given a very brief trial on the charge of sedition,” I said. “He’ll tell the truth, and then . . . .”

“What?” Peter said. The tears were already swimming in his eyes.

“The penalty for sedition,” I said slowly. “Is . . . crucifixion.”

Gasps and wails and sobs came from all directions.

“No,” Peter said, sobbing. “That can’t be.”

“That is the punishment for sedition,” I repeated. “And he will go to his punishment willingly, just as he went with the centurions just now. We’ve all heard his words. He’s been telling us this for weeks.”

Peter hung his head and paced away. “It can’t be,” he repeated into the darkness. “It can’t end like this.”

“It doesn’t end,” I said to him. “We’re still here.”

“So what do we do?” Matthew asked suddenly. I gave him a questioning look. “The Romans will come back if we stay here,” he said. “That promise wasn’t worth a thing.”

He was right. Even with swords two centurions would have struggled bringing in fourteen people, conspirators or not. But they could easily send reinforcements, and they could arrive at any minute.

“We need to separate,” I said. “They’ll be looking for a group. If we scatter — ”

“Absolutely not,” James said. “We need to stay together. To protect each other.”

“Protect each other how?” I said. “How many Roman soldiers can we fight off?”

James fell silent, brooding miserably.

“Darkness is what will protect us,” I said. “We need to hide. Each of us returns to the city alone, finds a place to sleep, and when the festival is over we leave with the crowds. The Romans will have forgotten about us by then.”

The others exchanged uncomfortable looks.

“We’ll never find each other,” James said. “We’ll be scattered to the winds. And the Devil will win after all.”

“Peter,” Mary said tenderly. “What do you think?”

Peter’s mouth hung open. He looked as though he felt exposed. Naked. Unprepared for the task that Mary was laying at his feet. The task that Yeshua had laid at his feet just days earlier.

Peter looked at me, then at James, then at me again. His face swung back and forth like a donkey trying to decide between two bales of hay. At last he lowered his eyes and smiled sadly.

“Yeshua chose each of us for a reason,” he said. He looked up at me. “Judas is the only Judean among us. He knows Judean law and how to evade it. He knows Jerusalem.”

I felt myself relax. Peter swallowed.

“We are in a den of lions,” he said. “And Yeshua has given us a lion to guide us.”

He took a deep breath. James sneered at him.

“We should listen to Judas,” he said.

I expected roars of dissent from the others, but they all simply nodded in silence. Even James didn’t protest.

“How then,” James said. “Will we find each other?”

“I know,” I said as a thought came to me. I knelt down on the ground and drew a long curve in the dust with the tip of my finger. I then drew another curve beginning where the first curve started, crossing the opposite end. “Peter’s fish.”

The others gathered around to observe the simple drawing.

“Wherever we go,” I said. “We leave this mark. Simple enough that each of us can make it, but it will go unnoticed by the Romans. This way we can find each other in the city when the time comes.”

James indulged a grin. Peter smiled broadly and nodded.

“Very well,” Peter said. “May God protect us all.”

Slowly the others filed out of the garden into the night. James stayed close behind his brother, avoiding my eyes all the way. Soon only Mary and I remained. She gave me a look that seemed to be attempting mischief but had to settle for fear and exhaustion.

“A young woman by herself in the city,” she said. “May draw undue attention.”

I caught her meaning, and understood why she had stayed behind.

“You’re right,” I said.

“Will you stay with me?”

There was genuine fear in her voice. A sense of helplessness I hadn’t seen in her since that first day I saw her, crumpled in my arms and screaming in pain. Ever since that time she had always been the strongest of us. Her faith never wavered, her confidence in her own ability to reason her way through any problem never faltered. But now, in the black stillness of the night, with her master in the hands of the enemy, at last, she allowed herself to need someone else.

“Yes,” I said. “We can find a room.”

“We’ll say that we’re — ”

“Brother and sister.”

She bit her lip and blushed.

“I was going to say husband and wife,” she said.

I felt my face redden.