Field of Blood by Wilson, Eric (dar e dil novel online reading .TXT) 📗

I bypassed the gate and went straight to the guard booth, where a different man was seated. He asked how he could help me.

“Is there a museum bookstore?” I said. “I just need some research materials. Please, I’ll pay for them.”

“Too late. There’s no one there. Here, you come with me.”

Unsure of his purpose, I followed along. He led me into the closed museum, past exhibits and three-thousand-year-old relics. Circular stairs took us down a level, where I saw chain-link storage areas full of artifacts. The smell of history hung in the air, and my heart pounded in my chest.

We reached an archive room tucked into the back reaches of the lower level, where I was introduced to a kind-faced, dark-haired woman. Her desk was barricaded by towering shelves on rollers.

“You want to know about the Akeldama?” She pronounced it with a guttural sound. “I suppose I can help. I was the one who drew the cave diagrams and most of the tombs’ inscriptions.”

“What? You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

“Why are you interested? I’ve never had anyone so excited to meet me.”

“Well,” I told her, “I’m writing a book.”

“I hope it’s scary.”

“Why?”

“Because,” she said, “it’s a very scary place.”

The very words I hoped to hear!

She went on to describe her own experiences of crawling into the subterranean site, through tight spaces and piles of bones.

“Do you have any reports or maps?” I requested. “Anything that might help me in my writing?”

“It’s been many years, but let’s look here.” She pointed at shelved files.

With her gracious and enthusiastic help, I amassed page upon page of information. I found inventories of the ossuaries, including the Hebrew and Greek inscriptions identifying nearly all of the dead. I read about the Houses of Ariston and Eros, two distinct groupings within the burial site, and it was from this research I found many character names: Ariston, Erota, Shelamzion, and so on.

I was thanking God and making final notes in the cramped copy room, when the dark-haired woman returned from a fact-gathering jaunt to the museum library.

She was beaming. “Eric, are you sitting down? I think today is your most lucky day. Come and meet one of the men who led the dig at the Akeldama. This is unusual that he is here. But very good for you.”

Incredible was more like it.

At a table in the library, I joined the softspoken and internationally recognized archaeologist. He spread out a topographical map and pointed to the Akeldama’s precise location, confirming that it was indeed where Judas hanged himself, the land bought with thirty silver shekels by the high priests.

An hour later I found myself alone in the spooky quiet of the Akeldama, where olive and almond trees clung to a dusty slope. I saw rugged holes reaching into the ground. I even found the old Charnel House, a boneyard used twelve centuries later by the Knights Templar.

My mind was on overdrive with scenes, ideas, and characters. Already, the story was coming to life . . . so to speak.

—Eric Wilson, March 2008

To my uncle, Frank Guise:

You didn’t live to read this one, but I do believe we’ll see each other again and maybe even go mountain biking on some undiscovered trail—if I can keep up.

And to my grandfather, Alan Wilson:

Long before I was published, you inspired me with criticism and praise in equal measure. You carried yourself to the end with quiet strength.

PROLOGUE

AD 30—City of Jerusalem, Israel

The Man from Kerioth dangled over hard earth. His breath was ragged, his fingers grasping at the noose that clung to a gnarled olive tree. His larynx, nearly crushed by the short plunge, worked against the rope.

Air. One gulp, that’s all he needed. Just one.

Despite this struggle for oxygen, he could not quell the whispers in his head: There is a way back, even still . . .

Impossible.

The sun rose orange and pregnant over the Mount of Olives, giving birth to purple shadows. His lungs heaved. He kicked in desperation, and his body twisted on the rope, providing him a glimpse of the city walls along the opposing ridge.

Those walls, they were were infested with Roman swine. He’d longed—oh, how he had longed—to join an uprising that would restore this city to the Jews. He had even aligned himself with a band of dagger-men, the Sacarii, but when their zealotry floundered amid internal rivalries, he’d hedged his bets instead on the aspirations of a Nazarene.

All for naught.

If he felt any remorse, it was that he’d squandered three full years on empty promises. He’d given himself, heart, mind, and soul, to the cause of the rebel king. He had collected donations for the Nazarene, even dispersed them to the needy, then watched a woman dump costly perfume over the man’s feet. An utter waste—and the Nazarene had allowed it.

In the end, the supposed king was nothing but a shortsighted simple-ton. Innocent, yes. But a fool.

Last night, the Man from Kerioth had made his decision. He refused to play the puppet any longer. For thirty shekels, the price of a common slave, he’d led an armed mob into a garden where the Nazarene kneeled in prayer, and he’d kissed that life away—quite literally.

“My friend . . .” The Nazarene had looked him in the eye. “Do what you have come for.”

And he had done just that.

Yet here he swung. From the end of a rope.

Well, what was he supposed to do? Beg forgiveness? Grovel on his knees? He’d rather rot like the garbage brought out through the nearby Dung Gate, rather burn here in the Valley of Hinnom. Gehenna—wasn’t that the Greeks’ name for this valley? Children had once been sacrificed here to Moloch, and even now death licked at the air.

A way back . . .

Never.

Coarse threads drew blood from the abrasions on his neck, and his eyes bulged. As his throat convulsed against this restriction, something sulfuric seemed to crawl from his esophagus.

Bile? His departing spirit? Or perhaps the fierce presence whose malice he’d welcomed in these last few hours.

Sudden panic