but after a few mouthfuls of soup, he sat up and leaned back against the wall. “Thank you, sir,” he said. “Will you give some to my brother now? He’s only six and needs it more than me.”
“What’s your brother’s name, and how will I know him?”
“Hiram,” Suda replied. “He has a blue head scarf.” Suda surveyed the warehouse. “I don’t see him, but he was sleeping next to me in the caves.”
Peniel touched my elbow. Drawing me aside, he said, “Hiram didn’t make it.”
Returning to Suda, I offered him more broth. “We’ll see to your brother, boy. Right now you must eat and get well yourself.”
Big tears welled in his eyes, and he turned away from me. “He’s dead, isn’t he? I promised to care for him … and I failed.”
With some difficulty, Marcus Longinus finally located a doctor who would come to our aid.
I was attempting to feed another of the Sparrows. Jason was his name, and he said his throat hurt too badly to swallow. “And …,” he gasped, “my chest hurts. Can’t breathe good.”
The physician, a Greek by the name of Sosthenes, asked another boy to open his mouth. By the light of an oil lamp held nearby, he examined the lad’s tongue and throat. What he saw there caused him to narrow his eyes and frown.
Gesturing for me to follow him, he showed me the progression of the disease, from simple fever and cough, to constricted breathing and lethargy, and then to a third patient worse than the rest.
This boy—no one seemed to know his name—was barely responsive to the doctor’s touch. His body was racked by spasms of coughing, and he shivered continuously. Each gasping breath made him raise his shoulders and gulp for air, like a drowning man … or one being crucified.
More horror followed. Lifting the boy’s head and turning it so the flickering light shown into his mouth, Sosthenes called for me to come closer.
What I saw caused me to draw back with disgust. Inside the boy’s lips, his tongue and throat were carpeted with a grayish-green monstrosity.
“What … what is that?” I demanded.
“Strangling sickness,” the physician reported grimly. “They all have it, but this is where it leads if untreated. ‘Leather-hide,’ it’s called.”
“What do we do for it?” I asked urgently. It appeared some evil creature had crawled into the boy’s throat and was choking him to death. “For him?”
Sosthenes shook his head. “For this one, it’s already too late. He’ll be dead by tomorrow.”
“Can’t you yank that … that thing … out of there?”
Marcus put his hand on my shoulder. “I saw this before. Even if you cut it loose, the boy would choke on his own blood and … it grows back.”
I shuddered, then turned to look around the hall. Every conscious soul seemed to be gazing at me, imploring me to save them. The echoing of coughing and sniffling multiplied and resonated as if the warehouse itself were in the grip of the disease. “Dear God, not all of them,” I pleaded.
The doctor’s manner was brusque and businesslike. “You won’t save all of them,” he snapped tersely. “But you won’t lose them all either, if you do exactly what I say.”
Sosthenes prepared a list of medications and a treatment schedule: lemon oil to be added to boiling water to steam the room … oil of camphor in sweet wine, spooned into their gaping mouths … another oil, whose name I had never heard before, used to paint throats three times a day …
Just as the doctor was concluding his instructions, a Roman soldier marched up to Marcus, saluted, and presented a scroll sealed with the mark of Governor Pilate. Marcus read the message, grimaced, and said, “I’m ordered—ordered!—not to provide help. A Jewish problem, the governor says.”
“Someone has pressured him,” I said bitterly. “The Temple authorities want to use this as a trap to bring Jesus back to Jerusalem.” I thought of the dozens of innocent lives being risked by the high priest’s plot, and it made me angry and determined. “I know the power Jesus has,” I said, grasping Peniel’s wrist. “I know he told us to use his name in speaking to the Father … and that’s exactly what we’ll do.”
I expended my silver like water, buying supplies and medicine. Peniel hiked to my home and waited outside the gates. Martha filled a leather pouch with coins and carried on a shouted conversation about the progression of the disease. Peniel purchased what was needed and