My benefactor gestured to me once more, so I started up the trail and tried to conceal my sense of foreboding.
Despite what I had led Sharon to believe, I had no bag of tricks. How long it would take her to figure that out, I couldn’t be sure; nor did I know whether Herod would set to work on her immediately after she arrived at his palace.
I could only hope not, and “hope” was never a very effective plan. I had to find the others — and soon.
As I got closer to the main structure, I struggled without success to make sense of the chaos. The two assistants had pushed their way without difficulty through a mob of invalids struggling to get inside. Others, though, weren’t so lucky.
One particular unfortunate, a skeletal figure draped in rags and hobbling on makeshift crutches, pressed his way into the crowd. He disappeared for a moment, but shortly thereafter, I watched as he was hurled back and left sprawling in the dirt.
The man gestured and shouted as he struggled to sit up, and I didn’t need translation software to understand that his words would be unprintable in a family publication.
Observing this, my rescuer motioned for me to sidestep around to the eastern side of the complex and then follow him to the north. I complied, though to reach my destination, I had to push my way past a gauntlet of aggressive beggars who lined the stone pathway holding a variety of chipped and dented cups.
What they thought they could get from me, in my deplorable condition, I had no way to know; but I suppose all distress is relative.
One wretch gave my tunic a hard tug and even I struggled not to gag as I looked down and saw the blackened tumor, roughly the size of a golf ball, that marred the left side of the miserable creature’s face.
***
With all the invalids lying about, I guessed that the place was some type of sanatorium — a presumption that turned out to be at least partially correct.
As I got closer, I could see that the complex consisted of two buildings, both square in shape. The southernmost structure, where the action was concentrated, measured about a hundred feet from end to end; roughly twice the size of its northern counterpart.
Their builders had constructed the two story walls with the familiar meleke limestone. Colonnades ringed the perimeters and provided a covered walkway between the structures as well.
I followed the priest around to the back where guards admitted us into what turned out to be the administrative center for the site. We passed through an uncovered patio surrounding a small circular pool about ten feet across. There, the man instructed me to shed my filthy tunic.
I dipped my toe into the water first — I’ll admit to being a wimp when it comes to the cold — and then plunged in. I splashed around for a minute, and then climbed back out, where a servant waited with a towel as well as a clean tunic.
I now felt like a human being again for the first time since coming to. I pointed to the crowds thronging into the other building with a questioning look. He answered, but either he didn’t speak Greek or the translation software wasn’t working quite right, so I only caught a few random words.
Then I experienced something even more bizarre. Another assistant, bald and dressed exactly like his counterparts, emerged from a back closet grasping a handful of docile brown snakes. He lifted them up to his boss, who appeared to bless them.
As soon as the old man had finished, the kid bowed and headed toward the main building.
This I had to see.
I gestured my request and the priest nodded his approval, signaling me to follow. Surprisingly, given what I had observed earlier, the mob let us pass through with only a minimum of pushing and shoving.
But as soon as I got inside, I wished they hadn’t.
An indescribable stench assaulted my senses. Surrounding an irregularly shaped pool at the courtyard’s center was a veritable sea of human misery. Hundreds of men — they were almost all men — with twisted and broken limbs lay packed, sardine-like, on woven pallets.
Others, who had been shunted off to one side, bore a ghastly array of tumors, pustules, and open wounds. Most of them simply stared up at the sky, alone in their thoughts, while friends or relatives attended to a fortunate few.
My companion, though, paid none of this any heed. Instead, he deposited his serpentine burden at various places near the pool and then scooted out the opposite door, with no more emotion than a package delivery service.
The reptiles slithered out of sight almost immediately, though to my surprise, none of the assembled wretches showed any consternation at their presence.
This seemed to be normal, or whatever passed for normal in this strange place.
And that wasn’t the half of it. A short time thereafter, the air began to buzz in a cacophony of languages as the more vigorous of the sick and injured jostled for position at the edge of the water, pushing and shoving in search of a favorable spot.
I could sense the energy of the crowd. They were waiting for something with eager anticipation, though I didn’t know what.
I gestured to a priest, but he just kept his eyes on the water and shrugged.
A few minutes later, I felt a low rumble, and the crowd suddenly stilled, with every eye riveted on the pool.
Seconds afterward, a bubble broke the surface.
As if a starter’s gun had fired, the entire mass of humanity surged forward as best they could in a pell-mell scramble, leaving dozens of the front ranks to flail about wildly in the churning water.
This went on for some time, until the thrashing finally started to slow. At that point, a priest gave a signal, and a group of younger men — apprentices, maybe — began to shove the crowds back with wooden batons.
Once they had cleared sufficient space to work, a second crew began to fish the soggy unfortunates out of the pool and carry them back toward the walls as the poor creatures squawked in futile protest.
As the laborers were about to leave, though, one of their number pointed down into the water and signaled to an older priest. He sauntered down with a long wooden hook that reminded me of the ones used by theater impresarios in Saturday morning cartoons to yank dreadful performers off the stage.
Only this time, I didn’t laugh. After two tries, the man snagged his quarry and pulled the drowned body to the surface.
Except for that priest, not another soul in the building cared.