Soon we were passing the caves where we'd played so often as boys. I didn't know where we were going, and neither did he. It was a long time before he stopped again, and now he grasped me by the arm and looked into my eyes. 'Come with me,' he said.
'Where?'
'Don't ask where, Judas. Just come.'
I've heard it said that others among his disciples made up their minds in the instant of being asked; that some of them just dropped whatever they were doing and followed him. I'm not sure whether that's true, and it certainly would not have been true of me if I had not been so burdened with a grief he alone knew how to assuage. But that was how things were, and that was the outcome. In an instant the next few years of my life had been determined.