The crowd drowned out his voice.
Down the hill Nahom, Yitra's father, came running, along with his wife and his daughters. The crowd went into a new wave of insults and invectives, with raised fists and stamping. But Nahom pushed his way through it and looked at his son.
The Rabbi had never stopped calling for this to cease, but we could no longer hear him.
It seemed Nahom spoke to his son, but I couldn't hear it.
And then as the crowd went into a pitch of hatred, Yitra reached out, without thinking perhaps, who could know, and he drew the Orphan protectively to him.
I shouted, "No." But it was lost in the din. I ran forward.
Stones flew through the air. The crowd was a swarming mass beneath the whistling sounds of the stones arching towards the boys in the clearing.
I pushed into the thick of it to get to the boys, James behind me.
But it was finished.
The Rabbi roared like a beast on the roof of the synagogue.
The crowd had gone silent.
The Rabbi, with his hands clasped over his mouth, stared down at the heap of stones below him. Jason shook his head and turned his back.
A howl went up from Yitra's mother, and then came the sobs of his sisters. People turned away. They rushed up the hill, or out to the fields, or over the creek and up the far slope. They fled wherever they could.
And then the Rabbi threw up his arms:
"Run, yes, run from what you've done here! But the Lord on High sees you! The Lord on High sees this!" He balled his fists. "Satan rules in Nazareth!" he bellowed. "Run, run for shame for what you've done, you lawless miserable rabble!" He put his hands to the sides of his head and he began to sob more loudly than Yitra's women. He bent over in his sobbing. Jason held tight to him.
Yitra's women were all gathered and pulled away now by Nahom. Nahom looked back once and then he dragged his wife up the hill, the girls running after them.
Only the stragglers remained, a few farmhands and odd-job workers, and the children gazing on from their hiding places beneath the palms or in the nearby doors - and James and I staring at the mound of stones, and the two boys who lay there, tumbled together.
Yitra's arm was around the Orphan's shoulder, his head on the Orphan's chest. Blood ran from a cut on the Orphan's head. Yitra's eyes were half closed. No blood except in his hair.
All the life was gone out of them.
I heard the pounding of feet - the last of men rushing away.
Into the clearing next to us came Joseph, and with him Old Rabbi Berekhiah, barely able to walk, and the other white-haired men who made up the elders of the village. My uncles Cleopas and Alphaeus were there. They took their place beside Joseph.
All appeared sleepy, bewildered, and then astonished.
Joseph stared at the dead boys.
"How did this happen?" he whispered. He looked to James and to me.
James sighed. The tears slid down his face. "It was . . . like that," he whispered. "We should have - . I didn't think - ." He hung his head.
Above us, on the roof, the Rabbi sobbed onto the shoulder of his nephew who looked away to the open fields, his face the picture of sadness.
"Who accused them?" Uncle Cleopas asked. He looked to me. "Yeshua, who accused them?"
Joseph and Rabbi Berekhiah repeated the question.
"I don't know, Father," I said. "I don't think the witnesses ever came forward."
The Rabbi was choking with sobs.