Free Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt by Anne Rice

live like pagan tyrants!"
    Joseph took Cleopas by the arm and pulled him away.
    "Don't talk," said Joseph, staring at Cleopas. "No more of this here, you understand me? I don't care what you think, you say nothing more."
    Cleopas said nothing. He began coughing again. And he made sounds under his breath as if he was talking but he wasn't talking.
    Joseph went to the task of tying the bundles on the donkey. In a softer voice he said, "Nothing now, you understand me, brother?"
    Cleopas didn't answer. My aunt Mary came to Cleopas and wiped some of the sweat from his forehead.
    So I was wrong that Joseph never answered him.
    But Cleopas gave no sign that he had heard. He was lost in his laughing and staring away, as if Joseph hadn't told him these things. And there was sweat all over his face now, and the day wasn't hot.
    At last the clans were all together, and Joseph and Zebedee led us out of the courtyard.
    "My brother," Joseph said to Cleopas. "When we get outside the gates, I want you to ride on this animal."
    Cleopas nodded.
    We were packed tighter than a herd of sheep as we tried to move up the street.
    The sound of the women crying was loud under the archways and in the narrow high-walled places through which we had to go. I saw that windows and doors were shut tight. The wooden gates of courtyards had been closed. People stepped over the beggars and those huddled here and there. The men gave out coins. Joseph put a coin in my hand and said to give it to a beggar and I did, and the man kissed my ringers. He was an old man, thin and white haired with bright blue eyes.
    My legs ached and my feet hurt me on the rough paving, but this was no time to complain.
    As soon as we came out of the city, we saw all around us a sight that was even worse than what we'd seen in the Temple Court.
    The tents of the pilgrims were torn apart. Bodies lay everywhere. Goods were scattered and people had no thought to pick them up.
    And the soldiers rode wildly back and forth through the helpless people, crying out their orders, with no thought to the dead. We were to move on, everyone was to move on. They held up their spears. Some had drawn swords. They were all around us.
    We could not stop to help anyone here any more than we could have stopped in the city. The soldiers even pushed at people with their spears, and the people hurried so as not to be touched in this shameful way.
    But more than anything else, it was the number of the dead that caught our eyes. The dead were beyond number.
    'This was a massacre," said my uncle Alphaeus. He drew his sons, Silas and Levi, to him and Eli, and said so all of us could hear: "Look on the doings of this man. See it and never forget it."
    'I see it, Father, but shouldn't we stay! Shouldn't we fight!" Silas said. He said it in a whisper but we all heard it and at once the women cried out low and secretly to him that
    he must not say such a thing, and Joseph told him firmly there would be no talk of staying.
    I started to cry. I started to cry and I didn't know why I was crying. I felt I couldn't breathe, and I couldn't stop it.
    My mother said, "We'll be out in the hills soon, away from all this. You're with us. And we're going to a peaceful place. There is no war where we're going."
    I tried to swallow the crying, and I became afraid. I don't know that I'd ever been afraid before in my life. I started to see in my mind our dead man again.
    James was looking at me. And so was my cousin John, the son of Elizabeth. Elizabeth rode on a donkey. And when I saw these two looking at me, James and my cousin John, I stopped crying. It was very hard.
    The walk was getting hard. And that was a thing to think about, climbing the road as we went up and up until we could look down on the city. The harder we climbed, the less afraid I was. And soon Little Salome was up with me. We couldn't see the city over the big people even if we wanted to, but I didn't want to see it now, and no one stopped to say how beautiful