The Making of the Lamb (35 page)

Daniel and Jesus spent the night as guests of one of the Lake Villagers. Several times during the night Daniel awoke to a cry from his cousin or the noise of him thrashing about. It was so unusual for dreams to trouble Jesus; Daniel could only remember the time the fever had taken Jesus back in Lugdunum after he’d witnessed that crucifixion.

When will God set Jesus straight on his destiny? Jesus has found sparring partners among the Lake Villagers, and he still works on his swordsmanship whenever he has the time. Despite his deep sorrow for the loss of Fedwig, he seems as intent as ever perfecting his fighting skill to become the heroic Messiah of the Jews.

Daniel felt Jesus’s forehead. It was cool to the touch, so at least it was not fever again. Jesus did not seem to be in torment this time, but he seemed very sad. Daniel could not make out what his cousin was saying. Here and there, he heard him say “Joseph,” which was strange because Jesus always addressed Daniel’s father as “Uncle.” Then, for no apparent reason, Jesus smiled in his sleep and stopped muttering.

Daniel looked across the hut to Jesus’s bed. His cousin was already up, and Daniel could hear the sounds of the Lake Village coming to life. He found Jesus leaning on the deck rail and gazing into the mist that filtered and softened the morning sun.

Daniel approached and noticed a warm smile on his cousin’s face. Jesus certainly appeared untroubled by his dreams. “There is something I must do here,” said Jesus, “and I want to do it alone.”

“Can’t this wait?” asked Daniel. They were planning to return to Priddy with a small crew of hired workmen, to start extracting ore and building huts for the workers. More men would join them as soon as the harvest was in. “We won’t have much to show Papa if we don’t extract some ore before winter sets in.”

“It’s something I need to start now. It will take a few weeks. You will be fine without me. You are the one who organizes the workmen best; you don’t need me getting in the way.”

“Is this something God told you to do?”

“Not in so many words, but I feel called to do it.”

Curiously, Daniel studied Jesus.
Whatever he’s up to, he doesn’t want to talk about it. There isn’t any point in trying when he gets like this.
“Will I be able to find you if we run into a problem?”

“Grengan will know where to find me.”

Daniel left for Priddy as soon as he had gathered his men. After Jesus saw them off, he waited for the mists to clear. Then he set out in a coracle with some tools. He paddled to Ynys Witrin but steered to the left of Wearyall, landing at the outlet of a small stream that seemed to flow from the Tor. He followed the stream to its source in a spring at the foot of a smaller hill. It was a pleasant spot, with bees buzzing through a grove of apple trees. He found a tidy stack of seasoned wooden posts, which he had purchased from the villagers. This was not going to be like the hut they had built in Priddy.
I feel the guidance of the Spirit helping me make a structure that will last.

He took his time digging post holes in a perfect circle. He drove each post into the ground, then carefully notched the upper end of each post the way Papa had taught him.

Jesus daubed the hut, after which he had several days of waiting for it to cure in the sun. He walked to Priddy to help with the mining. Daniel already had the operation well under way. At one point during their labors, Daniel paused. “I heard from one of the workmen that you’re building a hut in Ynys Witrin.”

Jesus kept his silence.

After a few days, Jesus returned to Ynys Witrin. By then the sun had cured the walls, and he was ready to construct the conical thatched roof. He cut trees for the upright beams that would rest on the wall and then rise at an angle to a high point above the center of the hut, where they would be gathered.

The next day Jesus started chopping down trees for the angled upright members. After cutting down several and trimming the trunks to form each upright piece, he cut a notch in the bottom ends to form the joint with a corresponding tongue he had carved into the exposed upper ends of the upright posts, which were imbedded in the wattled walls. He looked up from his work and was surprised to see Grengan leading a large contingent of workmen to the site.

“You’re early,” he said.

Grengan laughed. “It’s our custom to gather from the surrounding villages any time a roof is being raised—we can finish in a day. We call it the ‘roof-raising.’”

They marveled as Jesus finished the joinery to secure the roofing uprights to the wattle-work. It was more stable than the lashings the Celts used, which had to be redone from time to time as their buildings aged.

Grengan assigned a few men to help Jesus finish off the remaining uprights, while the others raised the structure. Within hours the framework was done, just as the women of the village approached bearing mead and food for all. For the next hour they feasted and sang, and then they began the thatching. Grengan organized the men into teams that began competing to bundle up the thatch reeds and secure them to the roof frames the fastest, as the women and children cheered them on. As the sun set it was done.

The next day, while the men went to work on their harvest, Jesus brought out several amphorae of wine from his stocks, and with the help of a few women he prepared a special feast. At the end of the day, the villagers gathered.

Jesus stood before them. “I want to thank you all for completing the roof.”

Grengan scoffed. “It is unnecessary for you to go to all this trouble.”

But the villagers, eager to partake of the feast, quickly shouted him down.

Jesus laughed and poured out the Gallic wine.

In the middle of countless toasts, Grengan rose. “What is the purpose of your hut, since everyone in your party is welcome to stay at the Lake Village?”

“That is the secret of the Lord,” said Jesus. “But it will soon be revealed.”

The name for the structure near the spring at the foot of the Tor quickly caught on among the villagers. When families passed by the lonely oversized hut on Ynys Witrin, Jesus often heard parents telling the children it was called the “Secret of the Lord.” He spent several more days constructing interior walls and furnishings, including a large bed with a wattle platform. It was now the most grand and comfortable house on the island, but Jesus returned each night to stay among the Lake villagers.

The harvest season began in earnest a few days after Jesus completed the mysterious hut on Ynys Witrin. Over several weeks, the people of Lake Village and the surrounding places raced to gather in the harvests from the fields before the onset of cold weather. Possible storms could lay the crops to waste if they struck when fruited stalks were rising high on the fields.

Daniel returned to the Lake Village for the peak of the harvest season. With all the workmen needed on their farms, there was nothing for him to do in Priddy. He walked on the deck behind the hut he shared with Jesus in the Lake Village. Sure enough, his cousin was back out on that little spit of ground that extended from the seaward side of the settlement and remained above the water at high tide. He watched his cousin for a while. Jesus gazed toward the sea, as if his vision could pierce the thick fog. Then he turned his attention to working the sand at the water’s edge, using only his hands. Jesus had never told Daniel what the sand structure was, but over a few days it had taken a distinctly recognizable form. There was just enough clay mixed into it to hold the structure together. Eventually Daniel realized that it was a model, marvelously complex and fragile, of Jerusalem.

Daniel continued to watch Jesus, who didn’t seem to be himself. It was a month now since he had left Daniel to his own devices to manage the mining operation at Priddy. First there was that mysterious structure that Jesus had built on the island, and now he was working on this sand castle. True, with all the villagers occupied with the harvest there wasn’t much to be done at the moment, but this wasn’t the first time in Britain where they had encountered a period where the smelting or mining had to stop when their helpers were needed urgently in the fields. That was usually the time for them to head out and explore.
Does Jesus even care anymore about the success of the venture?

Jesus stared intently into his model. He shook his head as if something was not quite right.

The model was a crazy thing to build, Daniel thought, but what could be wrong with it? Everything seemed perfect, just as Daniel remembered David’s City. Then suddenly, Jesus jumped right into the model and began tearing down the temple structure.

“What are you doing?” Daniel shouted. “You’ve been working on this for days. Now you’re destroying it.”

“I am making it what it should be,” shouted Jesus. “This is the New Jerusalem, not the Old.” Jesus tore away the highest section of the slightly hardened sand.

“But you’re ruining the temple. What is Jerusalem without the temple? It’s the house of God!”

“No. God is everywhere,” said Jesus. He was working frantically on his knees in the section of the model where the temple had been, scooping away the remaining bits of the crumbled structure. “The New Jerusalem does not need a temple. I am the only temple the people will need.”

Daniel’s jaw dropped. He recalled his glimpse in Nazareth of his cousin in glory. “What are you saying, Jesus? Will you take the place of the temple as the center of worship for all the people?”

“I’m not the one who said that, Daniel. It was you.” Suddenly, Jesus stood up and pointed out to sea. “Look!”

The fog lifted from the water like a rising curtain, and there—not more than two hundred yards away—Kendrick’s ship came sailing in. Daniel gasped. His father wasn’t due back for another month at least, but there he was, waving to them from the deck.
Who is that woman with him on the deck, and why does he have his arm around her so protectively? Has Papa remarried?

The ship approached, on a course to make its landing on the Lake Village dock. The crewmembers shouted to each other, but the woman paid them no heed. She was smiling at Jesus. Daniel turned his head. Jesus stood in the hollowed section of his model, smiling back at her. Daniel looked back and forth between them as the ship came closer. No. Papa was not bringing a new wife. He could recognize her now, though she looked older than he remembered. She was Mary.

Jesus ran to the dock as Mary walked to the gunwale. She was dressed in the simple, flowing dress she must have worn all the way from Galilee. She still bore herself with the grace that Daniel recalled from so many years ago.

Suddenly realizing that he had forgotten about his own father, Daniel raised his arm in a welcoming wave. Daniel ran after Jesus to the dock. Turning into the wind, the vessel approached the dock slowly. A crewman threw lines to shore, and some of the Lake Villagers pulled them in.

Jesus leaped across the gap onto Kendrick’s ship and into the arms of his mother.

“Oh, Jesus. I missed you so much!” Mary murmured with joy.

Jesus kissed her forehead. He stood a head taller than her now. “It’s been a long time, Mother. I missed you too.”

Daniel watched and listened from the shore just a few feet away. This was no ordinary reunion. Daniel felt the energy of their souls rejoicing, as something inside them was made complete. They came ashore arm in arm as the crewmen made the vessel fast to the dock.

Suddenly Mary stood back. “There is something I must tell you, Jesus. Your father, Joseph, he’s—”

“I know, Mother. He is with God now. I had a vision in a dream, just as he had those visions that led us to safety in Egypt and back home again when the time was right. I knew you were coming, and I have made everything ready.”

So that’s Jesus’s secret—the secret of the Lord.
Daniel smiled.

“There is nothing for me now back in Galilee,” Mary continued. “Not with my husband gone and you here. You are everything to me now.”

“Life is good here, Mother, and we will be happy. The land is fertile, and the people live free of empires and their cruel taxes. They are warm and generous.”

“But they are pagans, aren’t they?”

“When I first arrived in Britain, all I could see was their ignorance of the one true God. But the Father wants me here for a reason; both to learn from these people and to teach them. It’s puzzling. Their priests give me ideas that launch me into a profound spiritual insight, and the next minute they just seem to know nothing but idolatry and their endless array of deities and demigods.”

“Let me look at you. You have grown into a strapping young man. I will miss the boy who used to help me bake the morning bread on the roof of our house in Nazareth.”

“There will always be time to spend with you, Mother,” said Jesus. “We must bake bread together tomorrow morning. We don’t do it on the roof here; the cooking fires are inside. But when we do that, I still can be as a child for a while. I will buy the flour and yeast from the natives.”

Daniel felt awkward as mother and son embraced once again.
Perhaps I should leave them some time to themselves.
His thoughts turned to his own mother, even though he had no memory of her.
Did she ever hold me as a newborn baby in her arms, before she succumbed to the injuries from my birth?