Free Iscariot: A Novel of Judas by Tosca Lee

came.
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    People had been talking about the Baptizer for weeks.
    Pilgrims who'd come to the Holy City for the Feast of Tabernacles brought stories about his fanatical preaching and obsession with immersion in the living water of the Jordan.
    They brought stories, too, about his open condemnation of Herod Antipas, who had married his brother's wife in violation of Torah. For these things alone I would have wanted to see him myself.
    But it was the whispers of those who had come from the river that raised the hair on my arms.
    Elijah.
    He is Elijah!
    Elijah. Who was to return before the coming One.
    "I wonder if he really could be a prophet?" Simon said the day I persuaded him to travel from Jerusalem to find this Baptizer. We had gone out with a group of students, Amos and Levi among them.
    "No prophet has been seen in four hundred years," Levi said. "No, my friend.
    He's an Essene for his love of washing or a madman. But an interesting madman."
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    "Who says he's a madman?" Amos said.
    "Who else would speak out publicly against the king? But for that we love him. And so we brave scorpion and jackal to look upon this madman before Herod's men come to kill him. Come to think of it, any mouth Herod would silence must be the mouth of a prophet indeed. We should hear what he has to say before he dies."
    I chuckled, but the sound was hollow. He couldn't know the disquiet his words evoked in me, or that I felt the serrated edge of them all the way to the river. Something had returned to life in me, larger and more ravenous than before. And though I feared disappointment in this madman, this Baptizer, I feared hope even more.
    By mid-afternoon we came to a small scarp overlooking the Jordan--and gaped at the sight before us.
    Lean-tos and tents covered the scrub in a colorful swath all up and down both sides of the river. There must have been three hundred people sitting on the banks or going into and coming up out of the water. Laborers, their skin like dried brick, rich men in fine linen, and children in rags. Women spread garments to dry on the grass and nursed babies beneath the shade of acacia trees.
    And then I saw him--out in the middle of the river, like the eye of a gathering storm.
    He was as sun-dark, nearly, as a Nubian. His hair fell in ropes past his waist, over sinewy shoulders the skin of which looked as though it had baked to the wiry muscles beneath. His beard fell in a black stream to the middle of his chest. But it was his voice, carrying up from the river to our vantage on the scarp, that made him seem feral as a thing uncaged. It was not the voice of the elder who read the scrolls in synagogue, or the scholar debating in the porticoes. But of the man who runs to the village warning of coming disaster.
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    "The time is coming! Hear what I say: Repent now! The kingdom is near!"
    A part of me instantly recoiled. Recoiled because they were the words I had hoped all my life to hear. And from outrage. How dare he arouse false hope!
    How many times had I heard such promises only to find death?
    Compulsion swallowed me and I knew I had to see him closer, if only to tell him to stop his wild and empty talk.
    "Judas!"
    I hardly heard Simon's call behind me; I was hurrying down the stony slope, skidding most of the way, tearing toward the bank, the crowd thick before me. Rather than fight my way through them, I surged into the river's shallows.
    The water was cold in contrast to the hot fall sun that had sent sweat dripping down my back on our day-long journey.
    My robes tangled around my legs as I pushed upriver toward the source of that voice, past an outcrop of reeds.
    I emerged from the reeds panting, up to my knees in the muddy river. And then only one man stood before me, not twenty paces away.
    The Baptizer.
    He turned to look at me and I caught myself. His were not the eyes of a madman.
    "Welcome," he said, holding out his hand to me, seeming not at all surprised by my appearance.
    I did not take his hand. I