Three

The intruder had been on the other side of the door.

His head was just behind Matthew's ear. "I have no money here," Matthew managed to say in a voice he hoped was calm, "except what I have brought in my pouch. Take that and go."

"I would not touch your money!" said a youthful voice, almost a boy's. It cracked as such voices do when they are changing. "As if it were yours! The money you have stolen! from the poor people who worked so hard for it! No, you pig's droppings, you will have to pay, but not with money!" Matthew turned to see the speaker, but the knife dug in and kept him rigid. He could feel a trickle of blood beginning from where it had pierced him.

If it was a boy, he might be able to survive this, were he able to seem to be in control. He said in as calm and measured a voice as he could manage, "What do you wish of me, then?"

"You will see. Oh, yes, you will see! We will wait until dark, and you will come with me and you will see! And then--and then--well, I will let you agonize about what will happen then."

Since he did not seem to be going to say more, Matthew said, "How came you here? How did you pass the dogs?"

"Your dogs are too fond of meat, as I supposed." He seemed quite proud of his cleverness. "I know dogs, and I was not wrong. A small dose of sleeping-draught inserted in it was sufficient. I had need for care, since I did not want to kill them and warn you, and keep you from entering. You and I will be able to leave together; they will do nothing as long as you are with me."

"I could call to them nonetheless, and--"

"And die."

Matthew decided to venture it. "But you would die also. A horrible death."

"I care not. And I doubt that it would be as horrible as yours, before they killed me. They would not distract me. One slash, and they would be eating your spilled guts when they finished with me." Did Matthew detect a hint of tears through the hatred and the attempt to appear calm? Obviously, something connected with Matthew had upset him greatly; but an emotional state was one that could be circumvented by one who was thinking clearly. And Matthew was marveling at how clearly he was thinking, in spite of his terror at the danger.

The boy had something he could feel in his knife hand, some kind of cord, it turned out, which he quickly whipped around Matthew's waist, pinning his arms. He was a strong lad, not one that Matthew could win a struggle with. Releasing his hold on his neck for the moment, he tied him, and then tripped him onto his face, seized his wrists, and tied them behind his back.

Matthew turned his head to the side, off the packed earth of the floor, and the boy quickly moved to the opposite side, so that he would not be seen. It had not occurred to him to beat him or push his face into the dirt; so he was not habitually violent. All the better. Matthew kept up his tone of authority, but tried not to overdo it. "What have you done with Gideon?" he asked.

"He is lying on his bed, as comfortably as may be under the circumstances, since I had to assure myself that he would be silent. I will return to release him--to free him--after I have finished with you." He sat on Matthew's buttocks.

"They will find you, you realize, the Romans. They go to great lengths to protect their servants, especially those involved in taxation. And there is no comparison between what you will do to me and what will happen to you. But if you let me go, I will not report this. You have been clever, and I have seen nothing of who you are."

The boy leaned over so that his mouth was just above Matthew's ear. He said, almost in a satisfied whisper, "You know me not in any case. But when I am finished, the Romans will not find anything of me to torture but a corpse, and I care nothing of what they do to my corpse. I care nothing about anything except what is to happen to you, because of what you have done!" The tears were definitely in the voice now, and its hatred could almost be seen, spilling out over the side of Matthew's face onto the ground.

"What have I done?"

He straightened up, and for a while did not speak. Because he could not speak? Then he seemed to have regained control, and in a kind of musing way, said apparently toward the window behind them, "That is what you will see. It will not be long. We will have a long journey first, however--and I would advise you not to try to escape, because it would be the same as if you were to try to set your dogs on me--except that in that case, I might manage to escape after killing you."

Fear and tension were making Matthew very cold. The cord bit into his arms and wrists, and the weight of the boy was beginning to make itself intolerable. His nose began to itch. He did not trust himself to say anything, for fear that his voice would betray him as the boy's had.

The two of them remained in silence as the room darkened. Fortunately, when Matthew had arrived, it was already close to nightfall, and at this season, the night did not delay in arriving.

Presently, the boy stood up, seized Matthew's tunic behind his neck, and started dragging him to his feet. Matthew struggled to his knees and then finally managed to stand, hampered by the fact that his hands were tied behind him. "We will leave now," said the boy, and as Matthew turned toward the front door, the hand grasping his clothes made him turn to the back. "No, we will go out this way, past the dogs; and you will go through the door ahead of me, making them leave us alone. If not, you will be my shield against them."

So the rear door was open because of the boy. Of course. But how was it Gideon did not see him cross the yard, even if the dogs were asleep? Well, it was of small consequence.

As they came through the door, the dogs, now fully awake, approached growling menacingly, scenting Matthew's fear and the boy's. Matthew gave them a sharp command, however, and they slunk back to their place under the shelter. He wished they were intelligent enough to wait until they had passed and then bound out after them, but he knew they would not. He had had them trained too well, because they were dangerous beasts, and he had to be sure that they would never attack him.

There was no moon as they left that night, which was perfectly clear and a bit chill. As the sky turned from a deep purple with perhaps a dozen stars in it to solid black, it became full of brilliant tiny lights, accented by the huge cross that the Romans called the "Swan," with the faint river of milk running through it, which lighted the two of them dimly as they walked and sometimes stumbled across the fields.

Matthew thought at first that they were going to Magdala, but they passed it to the west, and after a considerable time they also went by Tiberias, their direction generally south-west, directly across fields. The boy had his hand on Matthew's tied wrists, and was pushing him from behind in his silent hurry to arrive wherever they were going. Nazareth? Or perhaps Nain? If that was their destination, it would be a considerable walk.

All this while, Matthew was speculating on what calamity he could be responsible for which called up this murderous response in the boy. Had taxes forced the family out of their home, and was he taking him to show where they had lived, planning to kill him on the site and leave his body there for the new owners to find? But then why was the boy doing this? One would think the father, who obviously was the one Matthew had had dealings with, would be after him. Perhaps the father had simply given up, and the boy had taken this upon himself, not willing to have his father taken by the Romans and probably crucified as an example. He did not seem to have thought matters through, in that case, since both he and the father would suffer if Matthew were harmed--and he would be found. Unless Matthew's body were destroyed, it would be obvious who had killed him.

Even if it were completely burned, say, the Romans would be curious about whose lives had recently been ruined, and would take steps to find out who had made Matthew disappear; and doubtless Gideon would be able to give them some indication of who the boy was. It was not to be thought of that the Romans would allow one of their tax-collectors to vanish, since that would set a precedent, and it would not be long before there would be no one to collect taxes. It was difficult enough to find recruits as it was; even people as desperate for wealth as Matthew had been would not dare to come forward if it were known that the victims of their ministrations could succeed in taking vengeance.

They met the road going east and west and took it west, toward Nazareth, with Mount Tabor on their east; but after a good while it appeared that that was not their destination either, because they turned south and now south-east with the road. It must be Nain.

Matthew mused that he perhaps should not have been exacting quite so much; but he had become impatient of late, as if he wanted to amass a fortune great enough so that he could leave off of himself. He detested the work, and only kept on by convincing himself that he hated the people because they hated him, even though he was performing a service that someone had to do. It was as if he was taking vengeance for their hatred, and that made it bearable.

--Except those times when he did not meet hatred or rage, but merely silent, black despair, which reminded him of the anguish of his own childhood, which had propelled him to seek anything, anything to save himself from life without his father, when his mother, who was never capable of doing anything but complaining, relied on her nine-year-old to save the family, as if he were a man and could take on such a burden. It had completely crushed him, and several times he had thought of killing himself, but then the sight of his father, swinging from the terebinth in his back yard, with the ghastly tongue protruding from the livid lips--

He almost fainted once again. He had not had that image come before him for years and years; he had fought and fought always to keep it out of his mind. His stumbling made the boy cry out with a muffled grunt and push the knife into his back, and fear for his life came to his rescue.

Would they never arrive wherever they were going? The quarter moon had begun to rise around the shoulder of Mount Tabor, and still the boy kept pushing him on.

Then, shortly before they would have arrived at Nain, the boy made him go across the fields once again to the west; he was becoming exhausted from the long, fast walk, and even the boy was beginning to breathe hard, though Matthew thought that he heard stifled sobs in the breathing also.

They seemed to be headed for a farm not far from the road. A pathetic donkey was asleep in a pasture, and a plow was left in the middle of a field, looking as if it had been there for a few days.

The boy brought him round behind a shed, and said, "Now you will see! Now you will see what you have done! Now you will see what you have driven him to! And once you have seen it, you will die!" He was shoving him now, shaking him with his right hand as it grasped his tied wrists and bringing him into a grove of trees.

--And suddenly, he was nine years old again, staring in the moonlight at his father, swinging from the branch of a terebinth. "You see? You see?" shouted the boy, in tears and rage. "You see what you made him do? I found him thus yesterday, and knew that you would have to pay!"

Matthew spun around, breaking the boy's grip, and facing him. "Kill me!" he screamed. "Kill me now! If I brought this about in any way, I am not fit to live! Kill me!" The boy stood there, stunned, as Matthew, who had burst into a flood of tears, looked into his face, which swam and danced before him, unrecognizable, like the hideous figure he had at his back.

They stood thus, facing each other, for what seemed an eternity. "Well?" said Matthew at last, and the boy broke down and fell to his knees, with his head in his hands, dropping his knife. "I cannot do it!" he cried. "Why did you tell me to kill you? I could have done it if you had tried to fight, but now that you want it, I cannot!" He cried as only children can cry, wails loud enough to be heard for miles, trying to cough his heart out through his sobs. Matthew, tears streaming down his own face, stared down at him, unable to move.

When the initial fury of the storm within him had abated slightly, the boy looked up at Matthew and shouted in a rasping voice, barely able to articulate, "Go! Why are you here? I hate you with all the hatred of--I hate you! I hate you! I hate you almost as much as I hate myself for not being able to kill you! Why did you tell me to kill you? I hate you! Go! Go! Go! Go kill yourself, and do the world a favor!"

Matthew turned and stumbled half blind back to the road, still hearing the despairing wails of the boy behind him, as if they were his own screams of agony from years ago, haunted by the sight of that body swaying slightly in the night air, just as his father had done.