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You take the place of poor dear Judas, who was killed by his own love and innocence.' They all looked at each other uncomfortably. He had always been one for mentioning the unmentionable. 'And you, Barnabas it must be, are the unlucky thirteenth. Well, there'll be trial and tribulation for everyone, no shortage of that.' He grinned at Thomas as he sat next to Barnabas on the rocking bench, saying: 'And how are the doubts today?'
           'Ye know what I thought,' Thomas growled in his rough North Galilean accent, 'and I was in the right to be thinking it. There's too much trickery about these days. There's not many as comes back from the grave. I know there was Lazarus who got himself killed in a tavern brawl three days after, something of a waste of effort I always thought. And there was the girl where I was working and ye first dragged me into the fellowship, saying ye needed what ye called a sceptic. Well, we've seen enough of false prophets about, and what was to stop one going the rounds with a dab of red paint on his wrists and ankles. I was in the right to say seeing is believing.'
           'I say again,' Jesus said mildly, 'blessed are they who believe and have not seen.'
           'Ye'll no convince me of that. Well, not all the time.'
           'Listen. And eat while you're listening.' The wooden trenchers clattered dully and the cheap winecups clanked. Matthew's knife made heavy arithmetical work of dividing the fish into fourteen pieces. 'You must all try and impart this power of innocent belief to those who hear the word. My word but now also yours. This is the last time you will see me in the flesh but do not forget I stay with you in these simple gifts of God. I will start the ceremony, you must finish it. I take this bread and break it. This is my body. Do this in remembrance of me.'
           He tore at the loaf roughly. The wrist wounds seemed nearly healed. He threw the pieces to the farthest, handed them to the nearest. Peter said, chewing Jesus's body and then gulping it, 'The last time, Lord?'
           'Yes, I leave you tomorrow at dawn. Don't ask me where I'm going.’
           ‘We're well aware of where ye're going,' Thomas said, 'and we don't have to see it. Ye're going back to your father.'
           'Difficult,' Jesus said, picking out the bones from the piece of fish in his hand, 'for this flesh to become spirit. But take it that that is what is going to happen. I will take none of the flat roads out of Jerusalem. I'll climb Mount Olivet and disappear at the top, and that will be the last of me. You may come and wave farewell if you wish. Then you have to wait for a particular visitation. You won't have long to wait. I'm going now to have a word with my mother. Complete the ceremony, Peter.' He stood and put his fingers to his lips. With the other hand he motioned that they remain seated. He opened the door, letting in no wind, and closed it. They could not hear his feet going down the outside wooden stair. Silence. Peter sighed very deeply, took the winejug, filled his own cup, said:
           'Now his blood.' He passed it round. They all sipped.
           'A matter of waiting, is it?' Thomas said. Nobody else said anything. That last brief sight of the living God, capricious, unhelpful, gave them little comfort. They needed comfort badly. The dry wind grew stronger and rattled the catch of the window shutter.
           'A young man, your honour,' Caleb's mother was saying, 'and you know what young men are like — full of wild ideas. He has no father to keep him on the right path. A mother can do nothing when a young man's head is filled with mad notions. Freedom and suchlike nonsense.'
           'So freedom is mad,' Quintilius said. 'Freedom is nonsense. What do you think — you?'
           He meant the elder daughter Sara, eighteen years old, paleskinned, tall, unveiled, who looked steadily at him, without sexual appraisal, rather with a