Pagan's Crusade by Catherine Jinks

Author:Catherine Jinks
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: JUV000000
ISBN: 9781741762624
Publisher: Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd
Published: 2007-07-01T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

‘Let us lift up our hearts unto God in the heavens! We have transgressed and have rebelled! Fear and a snare is come upon us, desolation and destruction!’

‘Be quiet!’

‘Our end is near, our days are fulfilled, for our end is come!’

‘Shut up!’

‘Push off!’

‘The punishment of thine iniquity is accomplished, O daughter of Sion!

’ The Patriarch’s puny warble doesn’t stand a chance. Not against this mighty tide of sound. Pure, unbridled, skull-cracking sound. Such a big noise to come out of such a little old man. It’s uncanny.

So what should I do? Should I drag him off ? Knock him out? Shout him down? (Impossible.) He doesn’t look very tough, but you never can tell with these maniacs. He might have the strength of Samson’s big brother.

If I don’t do something soon there’s going to be a fight. That’s obvious enough from the hisses. And the shouts. And the fruit stones bouncing off his naked skull. Perhaps I should turn my back and let them do their own dirty work.

But what’s this? Oh dear. Support from the spectators.

‘It’s true! It’s true what he says! Jerusalem has sinned with the heathen, and now we’ll all be punished!’

A tall young foreigner. You can tell he’s a foreigner: the clipped beard, the fresh, white skin, the dull, muddy clothes on his back. Why do foreigners always dress as if they dye their clothes with vegetable scraps and store them in peat bogs? He has that red-eyed, raw-nerved, wild look – the look you see on penitent pilgrims staggering out of the drinking shops at dawn.

‘Jerusalem has sinned! You are all sinners! You wear heathen costume and eat heathen foods and take baths and shut up your women like Infidels! You even trade with the heathen! And now God has punished us all for your sins!’

God help us. That’s done it. A gigantic slab of solid gristle shoots to its feet, as taut as a bowstring. Red-faced with rage. Deeply offended.

‘Sins?’ it roars. ‘What sins? You’d better shut your festering mouth, my friend, or I’ll damn well shut it for you!’

Nicely put, but it’s pointless. The foreigner just ploughs on. Doesn’t even realise he’s risking a mouthful of knucklebone.

‘This is supposed to be a holy city, but look at it! Look at it! It’s a sink of vice! A pit full of thieves and cut-throats and whited sepulchres – !’

‘Are you calling me a thief?’

All right. Enough’s enough. If I don’t do something now, I’m going to get a kick up the backside for letting five thousand innocent churchgoers spill each other’s brains all over the steps of the Holiest of Holies.

But what the hell can I do?

‘Citizens! Citizens! People of Jerusalem!’

Nobody blinks an eyelid. I might as well not be here. Time for the Kidrouk double-strength bone-breaker street alarm whistle. Guaranteed to burst eyeballs and shake the fleas out of a dog’s coat at fifty paces.

‘Twe-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-ep!

’ Whoops! That’s done it. You can practically see the hairs leap from their scalps and run for cover.

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