Free The Liars' Gospel by Naomi Alderman Page A

gloom, found a wet patch on his skull. He was still
     breathing though. She put a palm in the center of his chest to reassure herself of that. Still, yes.
    She looked about. They must be in a stable, probably for a priest’s family so close to the Temple. It had that clean smell
     of horseflesh and dry straw. They were just beneath the window, which was shuttered, but she pressed her eye up against a
     chink in the wood. Arrows were flying in the square—one thudded into the thick shutter, and she thought: what if one were
     to hit my eye?—but she could not look away.
    The slaughter was endless. The soldiers at the Hippodrome had lowered the metal gate to keep the attackers out. They had the
     upper ground now, looking down the steps on the mass of Jews running up towards them. They fired arrows through the grille
     and she saw twenty men brought down as she watched, pierced through the stomach, the chest, the groin. Near to her hiding
     place a man slumped with an arrow sticking out of his thigh. He tried to pull it out and screamed. He was young, she thought,
     maybe eighteen or nineteen. There was a sheen of sweat on his brow. He looked around for a safe place to shelter. What if
     he came here? What if he opened the door and they were discovered? And if the soldiers came, what then? Another arrow found
     his neck with a crunching snapping sound and he fell back, dead. God forgive her, she was grateful.
    As she watched, the Jews, unable to sustain the heavy losses from the archers, fell back into the surrounding streets. The
     square in front of the Hippodrome was dark with bodies, and running red—Roman blood and Jewish blood, she thought. One of
     the soldiers was still moving, moaning. She wondered how long his comrades would leave him there. Her father was still breathing.
     She moistened his lips from her water skin. He licked them. It was a good sign. It would be dark in two or three hours—perhaps
     he would be able to move then.
    She heard cheering from the street outside. Were the Romans celebrating their victory? But the noise intensified. Not a cheering.
     A rising again of the raging voices. The clash of arms. She put her eye to the shutter a second time. From the roofs of nearby
     houses, the Jews had raised ladders and ropes, and had hoisted themselves to the upper levels of the colonnade. From there,
     they had the upper ground and were throwing down rocks, bricks pulled from the structure itself. There were boys with their
     slingshots, hurling down missiles—the more the Roman soldiers looked up, the greater the danger to them. She saw one man smashed
     in the mouth with a brick, his upper lip gone, his teeth out and the whole center of his face pouring blood and gouts of flesh.
     The Romans tried to fight back at first—they sent their arrows upwards and even pulled some of the men down bodily, and set
     on them with swords, cleaving their limbs and heads from their torsos.
    But the advantage of holding the higher ground was too great. The Romans withdrew, sheltering in the back of the colonnade.
     The center of the Hippodrome, Miryam could see, was piled with the bodies of the fallen. There was a great cheering from the
     Jews on top of the Hippodrome, a victory cry. Miryam could not see what the Romans were doing. The Jews atop the colonnade
     could not see either.
    She turned back to her father. His lips were moving. She wet the sleeve of her dress in her water skin and dripped a few drops
     into his mouth. He swallowed. The stable was dark and cool. She leaned close to his lips.
    He was whispering, “Run, Miryam, run to your uncle Elihu’s house. Run now.”
    She looked outside again. The square was quiet. She saw a weeping woman walking at the edge find a particular corpse and kneel,
     cradling a head in her arms. If she were to run, this would be the time for it. But if she ran, and soldiers retreating from
     the Hippodrome found her father here, they would kill him. At least if she were