Keeping his eyes on the ground, the boy said, “I could not sleep. And was looking out my window. I saw a man come out of the house. He was not tall. He had a knife. With a strange shape. Then he ran off. And I went back to sleep.”

“Which way?” someone in the crowd shouted. “Which way did he run?”

The boy put a finger to his mouth, then pointed west.

“Let us be off! Let us track him down!” someone cried out.

The men jostled into a pack and, brandishing their knives, fled toward the horizon.

Solomon kept still, watching the light of their torches shimmer into the distance.

If his assumption was correct, they would not find their man. For Judas knew better than anyone how to disappear.

CHAPTER 20

Somewhere in The Narrows outside ancient Palestine—30 A.D.

Anna finished washing her face then strode out her cave’s entrance. Climbing to her usual stone perch, she surveyed the perimeter. The dawn’s powdery light illuminated the new angles sculpted into her body by the hammer and chisel of time. During the past several years, her entire frame had lengthened, growing to a respectable height that rivaled even that of Sister Joan. Her shoulders had filled out broadly above narrow hips and long, powerful thighs. Her skin had darkened to a chocolate color even darker than her mother’s. And her green eyes, if it were possible, had grown more captivating and cat-like. Bejeweled with flecks of gold, they seemed able to compel the truth from all who looked into them. Beneath, her cheekbones rose like confident mountain peaks that sloped down to meet the broad river of her nose then the full delta of her mouth.

Ruth and the other Sisters had expected Anna’s masculine appearance to fade with age. But, to their surprise, it had only amplified. Her wide jaw, strong eyebrows, and trace of dark hair along her cheeks served to further confuse the appearance of her gender. She was, by all accounts, a handsome woman, who could easily have been mistaken for a beautiful man.

Despite Ruth’s having invited her to live among the Sisters, Anna had declined. She had told Ruth that she felt better being close to her flock. But the truth was she did not want to live with the others. It was not that she did not love the Sisters—because she did. And would give her life to protect them! But living among them, and sharing the intimacies of such an arrangement, would only increase Anna’s discomfort at being unlike the other women.

Anna stood before the great sycamore and held her breath. Slices of early sunlight poured through cracks in the cave’s roof.