“Before this is finished,” he said, “you will all have to deny me.”

“No we won’t,” said Peter.

“You will deny me three times, Peter. I not only expect this, I command it. If they take you when they take me, then there is no one to take the good news to the people. Now, Judas, my friend, come here.”

Judas went to Joshua, who whispered in his ear, then sent him back to his place at the table. “One of you will betray me this very night,” said Joshua. “Won’t you, Judas?”

“What?” Judas looked around at us, but when he saw no one coming to his defense, he bolted down the steps. Peter started after him, but Joshua caught the fisherman by the hair and yanked him back off of his feet.

“Let him go.”

“But the high priest’s palace isn’t a furlong away,” said Joseph of Arimathea. “If he goes there directly.”

Joshua held his hand up for silence. “Biff, go directly to Simon’s house and wait. Alone you can sneak by the palace without being seen. Tell Maggie and the others to wait for us. The rest of us will go through the city and through the Ben Hinnon valley so we don’t have to pass the priest’s palace. We’ll meet you in Bethany.”

I looked at Peter and Andrew. “You won’t let him turn himself in?”

“Of course not.”

I was off into the night, wondering even as I ran whether Joshua had changed his mind and was going to escape from Bethany into the Judean desert. I should have known right then that I’d been had. You think you can trust a guy, then he turns around and lies to you.

Simon answered the door and let me in. He held his finger to his lips, signalling me to be quiet. “Maggie and Martha are in the back. They’re angry with you. All of you. Now they’ll be angry with me for letting you in.”

“Sorry,” I said.

He shrugged. “What can they do? It’s my house.”

I went directly through the front room into a second room that opened off to bedchambers, the mikveh, and the courtyard where food was prepared. I heard voices coming from one of the bedchambers. When I walked in, Maggie looked up from braiding Martha’s hair.

“So, you’ve come to tell me that it’s done,” she said. Tears welled up in her eyes and I felt as if I would break down with her if she started sobbing now.

“No,” I said. “He and the others are on their way here. Through Ben Hinnon, so it will be a few hours. But I have a plan.” I pulled the ying-yang amulet that Joy had given me out of my tunic and waved it before them.

“Your plan is to bribe Joshua with ugly jewelry?” asked Martha.

I pointed to the tiny stoppers on either side of the amulet. “No, my plan is to poison him.”

I explained how the poison worked to Mary and Martha and then we waited, counting the time in our imaginations, watching in our mind’s eyes as the apostles made their way through Jerusalem, out the Essene gate, into the steep valley of Ben Hinnon, where thousands of tombs had been carved into the rock, and where once a river had run, but now was only sage and cypress and thistles clinging to the crevices in the limestone. After several hours we went outside to wait in the street, then when the moon started down and the night made way into early morning, we saw a single figure coming from the west, not the south as we had expected. As he got closer I could tell from heavy shoulders and the moon shining on his bald pate that it was John.

“They took him,” he said. “At Gethsemane. Annas and Caiphais came themselves, with Temple guards, and they took him.”

Maggie ran into my arms and buried her face in my chest. I reached out and pulled Martha close as well.

“What was he doing at Gethsemane?” I said. “You were supposed to be coming here through Ben Hinnon.”

“He only told you that.”

“That bastard lied to me. So they arrested everyone?”

“No, the others are hiding not far from here. Peter tried to fight the guards, but Joshua stopped him. Joshua negotiated with the priests to let us go. Joseph came too, he helped talk them into letting the rest of us go.”

“Joseph? Joseph betrayed him?”

“I don’t know,” said John. “Judas was the one that led them to Gethsemane. He pointed Joshua out to the guards. Joseph came later, when they were about to arrest the rest of us.”

“Where did they take him?”

“To the palace of the high priest. That’s all I know, Biff. I promise.”

He sat down hard in the middle of the street and began to weep. Martha went to him and cradled his head to her breast.

Maggie looked up at me. “He knew you would fight. That’s why he sent you here.”

“The plan doesn’t change,” I said. “We just have to get him back so we can poison him.”

John looked up from Martha’s embrace. “Did you change sides when I wasn’t here?”

At first light Maggie and I were pounding on Joseph’s door. A servant let us in. When Joseph came out from his bedchamber I had to hold Maggie back to keep her from attacking him.

“You betrayed him!”

“I did not,” said Joseph.

“John said you were with the priests,” I said.

“I was. I followed them up to keep them from killing Joshua for trying to escape, or in self-defense, right there at Gethsemane.”

“What do you mean, ‘in self-defense’?”

“They want him dead, Maggie,” Joseph said. “They want him dead, but they don’t have the authority to execute him, don’t you understand that? If I hadn’t been there they could have murdered him and said that he’d attacked them first. The Romans are the only ones who have the authority to have someone killed.”

“Herod had John the Baptist killed,” I said. “There were no Romans involved in that.”

“Jakan and his thugs stone people all of the time,” Maggie said. “Without Roman approval.”

“Think, you two. This is Passover week. The city is crawling with Romans watching for rebellious Jews. The entire Sixth Legion is here, plus all of Pilate’s personal guard from Caesarea. Normally there’d only be a handful. The high priests, the Sanhedrin, the Pharisee council, even Herod will think twice before they do anything outside the letter of Roman law. Don’t panic. There hasn’t even been a trial in the Sanhedrin yet.”

“When will there be a trial?”

“This afternoon, probably. They have to bring everyone in. The prosecution is gathering witnesses against Joshua.”

“What about witnesses for him?” I asked.

“That’s not how it works,” said Joseph. “I’ll speak for him, and so will my friend Nicodemus, but other than that Joshua will have to defend himself.”

“Swell,” Maggie said.

“Who is prosecuting him?”

“I thought you’d know,” Joseph said, cringing slightly. “The one who started the Sanhedrin plots against Joshua the other two times, Jakan bar Iban.”

Maggie whirled around and glared at me. “You should have killed him.”

“Me? You had seventeen years to push the guy down the steps or something.”

“There’s still time,” she said.

“That won’t help Joshua now,” said Joseph. “Just hope that the Romans won’t hear his case.”

“You sound as if he’s already convicted,” I said.

“I’ll do my best.” Joseph didn’t sound very confident.

“Get us in to see him.”

“And let them arrest the two of you? I don’t think so. You stay here. You can have the upper rooms to yourselves. I’ll come back or send word as soon as anything happens.”

Joseph hugged Maggie and kissed her on the top of the head, then left the room to get dressed.

“Do you trust him?” Maggie said.

“He warned Joshua before when they wanted to kill him.”

“I don’t trust him.”

Maggie and I waited all day in the upper room, jumping to our feet every time we heard footsteps going by in the street, until we were exhausted and shaking from worry. I asked one of Joseph’s servant girls to go down to the palace of the high priest to see what was going on. She returned a short time later to report that the trial was still going on.