Christ the Lord - Anne Rice [59]
“But you didn't,” I said, “and he wants to come, and tomorrow when the sun rises . . . we will be there.”
“But what can it mean, this, that one baptizes another, that one does not go down into the river to bathe on one's own as always, but that another . . . And look, will you, at the soldiers? Word of all this will rouse this fool of a Governor, you know it will.”
I knew he needed to have all these cares so that he would not face the one care, that Joseph was dying. So I didn't say anything to him. And soon enough he went off to argue the matter again and again with Jason, Reuben, Hananel, the Rabbi, and the most recent group of the King's soldiers, several of whom accompanied the rich who traveled in brilliantly colored litters—and I stood looking back at the huge company, spilling over the rocky ground, and then up at the darkening sky.
The warm air was sweet with the scent of the river and the green marshes, and I could hear the cry of the birds who always gathered in the vicinity of the river. I liked it, and my heart was tripping, and I too felt that sadness again, as I'd felt it with my mother. It was light yet terrible. It made for a kind of drifting and amazement at the smallest and most trivial things.
Something was changing and forever. The children, summoned now to go to sleep whether they liked it or not, had no sense of this change, only of novelty and adventure, as they might on an excursion to the great sea.
Even my brothers had lapsed into a wary exultation which they defined decisively to one another as they agreed that they would confess, be washed, indeed allow themselves to be baptized if that is what John bar Zechariah insisted upon, and they would return to this or that chore, and this or that problem of life—with renewed strength.
In me there was a wholly different awareness. I did not press for speed, and I did not lag behind. I did not lament the distance one way or the other. I moved slowly towards what was at last going to separate me from all around me. I knew this. I knew it without knowing how or what would actually happen. And the only place I saw this same awareness—and some measure of this same acceptance—was in my mother's soft, habitual gaze.
20
IT WAS MIDMORNING, under a gray and blustering sky, when we came upon the entire baptismal gathering.
Even our own numbers had not prepared us for the size of it, the great spreading mass of people on both sides of the river, stretching out as far as we could see, and many with broad, richly decorated tents, and feasts laid out on their rugs, while others were the masses of the downtrodden who'd come to stand side by side with the Priests and Scribes, in their ragged garments.
Cripples, beggars, the very old, and even the painted women of the streets made up part of the crowd, along with all those who'd mixed with us in coming.
The King's soldiers were everywhere, and we recognized the apparel of those who served King Herod Antipas here, and those who served his brother, Philip, there, and all around were splendidly clad women, flanked by their servants, or just emerging from their sumptuous litters.
When we finally caught sight of John himself, the crowd was hushed, and the anthems being sung were a distant backdrop. Here men and women removed their outer robes, and went down only in their tunics into the water, and some men removed even these to proceed in their loincloths, as they approached the clear figure of John himself and his many disciples.
Everywhere around us were the secretive whispers of those confessing their sins, begging for forgiveness from the Lord, murmuring just loud enough for a voice to be heard but no real words, as eyes were closed and garments dropped in the reeds, and people wandered on into the marsh and then into the river.
The disciples of John were to the left and the right of him.
And he himself was unmistakable. Tall, with this shaggy black hair streaming over his shoulders and down his back, he received one pilgrim after another, his dark eyes shining brilliantly in