Lamb The Gospel According to Biff Christs Childho - By Christopher Moore Page 0,52

Joshua said. "You don't have to return our money."

"I almost drowned your friend. I'm sorry."

"You asked if he could swim before you threw him in. He had a chance."

I looked at Joshua's eyes to see if he was joking, but it was obvious he wasn't.

"Still," Titus said.

"So perhaps you will be given a chance someday as well," Joshua said.

"A slim fucking chance," I added.

Titus grinned at me. "Follow the shore of the harbor until it becomes a river. That's the Onrontes. Follow its left bank and you'll be in Antioch by nightfall. In the market there will be an old woman who sells herbs and charms. I don't remember her name, but she has only one eye and she wears a tunic of Tyran purple. If there is a magician in Antioch she will know where to find him."

"How do you know this old woman?" I asked.

"I buy my tiger penis powder from her."

Joshua looked at me for explanation. "What?" I said. "I've had a couple of harlots, I didn't exchange recipes." Then I looked to Titus. "Should I have?"

"It's for my knees," the sailor said. "They hurt when it rains."

Joshua took my shoulder and started to lead me away. "Go with God, Titus," he said.

"Put in a good word with the black-winged one for me," Titus said.

Once we were into the wash of merchants and sailors around the harbor, I said, "He gave us the money back because the angel scared him, you know that?"

"So his kindness allayed his fear as well as benefiting us," Joshua said. "All the better. Do you think the priests sacrifice the lambs at Passover for better reasons?"

"Oh, right," I said, having no idea what one had to do with the other, wondering still if tigers didn't object to having their penises powdered. (Keeps them from chafing, I guess, but that's got to be a dangerous job.) "Let's go find this old crone," I said.

The shore of the Onrontes was a stream of life and color, textures and smells, from the harbor all the way into the marketplace at Antioch. There were people of every size and color that I had ever imagined, some shoeless and dressed in rags, others wearing expensive silks and the purple linen from Tyre, said to be dyed with the blood of a poisonous snail. There were ox carts, litters, and sedan chairs carried by as many as eight slaves. Roman soldiers on horseback and on foot policed the crowd, while sailors from a dozen nations reveled in drink and noise and the feel of land beneath their feet. Merchants and beggars and traders and whores scurried for the turn of a coin, while self-appointed prophets spouted dogma from atop the mooring posts where ships tied off along the river - holy men lined up and preaching like a line of noisy Greek columns. Smoke rose fragrant and blue over the streaming crowd, carrying the smell of spice and grease from braziers in the food booths where men and women hawked their fare in rhythmic, haunting songs that all ran together as you walked along - as if one passed his song to the next so you might never experience a second of silence.

The only thing I had ever seen that approached this was the line of pilgrims leading into Jerusalem on the feast days, but there we never saw so much color, heard so much noise, felt so much excitement.

We stopped at a stand and bought a hot black drink from a wrinkled old man wearing a tanned bird carcass as a hat. He showed us how he made the drink from the seeds of berries that were first roasted, then ground into powder, then mixed with boiling water. We got this whole story by way of pantomime, as the man spoke none of the languages we were familiar with. He mixed the drink with honey and gave it to us, but when I tasted it, it still didn't seem to taste right. It seemed, I don't know, too dark. I saw a woman leading a nanny goat nearby, and I took Joshua's cup from him and ran after the woman. With the woman's permission, I squirted a bit of milk from the nanny goat's udder onto the top of each of our cups. The old man protested, making it seem as if we'd committed some sort of sacrilege, but the milk had come out warm and frothy and it served to take away the bitterness of the