Lamb: the Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

performed healings. The news of the coming of the kingdom spread through Galilee, and after only a few months, crowds began to gather to hear Joshua speak. We tried always to be back in Capernaum on the Sabbath so that Joshua could teach at the synagogue. It was that habit that first attracted the wrong sort of attention.
    A Roman soldier stopped Joshua as he was making the short walk to the synagogue on Sabbath morning. (No Jew was permitted to make a journey of more than a thousand steps from sundown Friday until sundown Saturday—all at once, that is. One way. You didn’t have to add up your steps all day and just stop when you got to a thousand. There would have been Jews standing all over the place waiting for Saturday sundown if that were the case. It would have been awkward. Suddenly I’m thankful that the Pharisees never thought of that.)
    The Roman was no mere legionnaire, but a centurion, with the full crested helmet and eagle on his breastplate of a legion commander. He led a tall white horse that looked as if it had been bred for combat. He was old for a soldier, perhaps sixty, and his hair was completely white when he removed his helmet, but he looked strong and the wasp-waisted short sword at his waist looked dangerous. I didn’t recognize him until he spoke to Joshua, in perfect, unaccented Aramaic.
    “Joshua of Nazareth,” the Roman said. “Do you remember me?”
    “Justus,” Joshua said. “From Sepphoris.”
    “Gaius Justus Gallicus,” said the soldier. “And I’m at Tiberius now, and no longer an under-commander. The Sixth Legion is mine. I need your help, Joshua bar Joseph of Nazareth.”
    “What can I do?” Joshua looked around. All of the disciples except Bartholomew and me had managed to sneak away when the Roman walked up.
    “I saw you make a dead man walk and talk. I’ve heard of the things you’ve done all over Galilee, the healings, the miracles. I have a servant who is sick. Tortured with palsy. He can barely breathe and I can’t watch him suffer. I don’t ask that you break your Sabbath by coming to Tiberius, but I believe you can heal him, even from here.”
    Justus dropped to his knee and kneeled in front of Joshua, something I never saw any Roman do to any Jew, before or since. “This man is my friend,” he said.
    Joshua touched the Roman’s temple and I watched the fear drain out of the soldier’s face as I had so many others.
    “You believe it to be, so be it,” said Joshua. “It’s done. Stand up, Gaius Justus Gallicus.”
    The soldier smiled, then stood and looked Joshua in the eye. “I would have crucified your father to root out the killer of that soldier.”
    “I know,” said Joshua.
    “Thank you,” Justus said.
    The centurion put on his helmet and climbed on his horse. Then looked at me for the first time. “What happened to that pretty little heartbreaker you two were always with?”
    “Broke our hearts,” I said.
    Justus laughed. “Be careful, Joshua of Nazareth,” he said. He reined the horse around and rode away.
    “Go with God,” Joshua said.
    “Good, Josh, that’s the way to show the Romans what’s going to happen to them come the kingdom.”
    “Shut up, Biff.”
    “Oh, so you bluffed him. He’s going to get home and his friend will still be messed up.”
    “Remember what I told you at the gates of Gaspar’s monastery, Biff? That if someone knocked, I’d let them in?”
    “Ack! Parables. I hate parables.”

    Tiberius was only an hour’s fast ride from Capernaum, so by morning word had come back from the garrison: Justus’s servant had been healed. Before we had even finished our breakfast there were four Pharisees outside of Peter’s house looking for Joshua.
    “You performed a healing on the Sabbath?” the oldest of them asked. He was white-bearded and wore his prayer shawl and phylacteries wrapped about his upper arms and forehead. (What a jamoke. Sure, we all had phylacteries, every man got them when he turned thirteen, but you pretended that they were lost after a few weeks, you didn’t wear them. You might as well wear a sign that said: “Hi, I’m a pious geek.” The one he wore on his forehead was a little leather box, about the size of a fist, that held parchments inscribed with prayers and looked—well—as if someone had strapped a little leather box to his head. Need I say more?)
    “Nice phylacteries,” I said.
    The disciples laughed. Nathaniel made an excellent donkey braying noise.
    “You broke