Free Faith of My Fathers by Lynn Austin Page A

couldn’t possibly lift him out, but they bent over the cistern to help, tugging on Joshua’s soaked clothes. Joshua used his legs to push, and after several minutes of heaving they finally succeeded in pulling him from the cistern. He lay on his side on the dirt floor. His drenched robes turned the dirt to mud in a puddle beneath him. He wanted to thank them for saving him, but a spasm of coughing overwhelmed him and he couldn’t talk. The pain in his chest was agonizing.
    “He’s shivering, Abba,” the girl said. “We have to get him out of his wet clothes.”
    “But there’s nothing else for him to wear.”
    “Wrap my blanket around him until his clothes dry. Let him sit by the fire.”
    Joshua lay on the floor, helpless, while they talked about him as if he couldn’t understand. “Untie me,” he begged, but he could say no more because every time he tried to talk he started coughing again.
    “Turn around while I undress him, Miriam. It’s not decent for you to help.” Maki tied Joshua’s ankles together with another piece of rope as the girl turned her back. He briefly untied Joshua’s hands and stripped off his wet clothes, then quickly tied him again. Joshua was too weak to take advantage of his moment of freedom. Maki wrapped a filthy, tattered blanket around him and dragged him over to the hearth.
    Gradually, Joshua began to feel the fire’s warmth. His every breath was audible, like a prolonged gasp. “Maki . . . why?”
    “I told you why, Master Joshua. The king’s soldiers are searching for you. It isn’t safe. You must hide.”
    “How long . . . are you going . . . to keep me here?”
    “I don’t know. I need to find a way to smuggle you out of Jerusalem.”
    Despair engulfed Joshua like the cold waters of the cistern. No one knew where he was. How would they ever rescue him? Maybe he would die here in the hands of this madman before Abba could find him. He shivered with cold and the beginnings of illness while the two ragged boys stared down at him as if he were a captured animal in a cage. He felt like an animal, too, lying naked beneath the blanket, bound hand and foot, stripped of his dignity as well as his clothes. He was an important court official, the future palace administrator. He wanted to weep at the injustice and at his own helplessness.
    “Maybe he’s hungry, Abba. We should give him some food.” The girl was twisting his clothes, wringing the water out of them onto the floor. Maki pushed Joshua into a sitting position, propping him against the side of the hearth, and then held a piece of bread near his mouth.
    “Here. You must be hungry, Master Joshua.”
    “He needs something warm, Abba. I’ll heat up the broth.” She finished wringing Joshua’s robes and hung them on a rope suspended above the fire. As they began to steam dry, the smell of wet wool gagged Joshua. He couldn’t eat the bread.
    “Are you doing this for the ransom money, Maki? Abba will pay any price if you just—”
    “How dare you accuse me of coveting your money! I risked my life to save you. I’m putting these children’s lives in danger, too.”
    “But it doesn’t make sense. Why would someone want to kill me?”
    Maki’s face went rigid with anger. “Once again, Master Joshua, I will tell you everything I know. The soldiers broke into your house, searching for you. They killed your grandfather and your sister. They didn’t tell me why. This morning I returned to your house before dawn, hoping to get my clothes and a pair of sandals, but the house is still surrounded by soldiers. I didn’t dare go in. Then I went to your brother’s house, but it’s well-guarded, too. The same with Amasai the Levite’s house. Soldiers everywhere.”
    “And all of them are waiting to arrest me, I suppose.”
    “You still don’t believe me?”
    “How can I believe you? There’s no reason for anyone to arrest me!” Joshua’s outburst triggered another coughing fit, and it was several minutes