CHAPTER 1
MOTHER
Maryam laboured up the Mount of Olives, wondering how this morning could be so like any other.
From over the walls that lined the road came the sound of mothers calling and children squealing. A gateway groaned open and a woman in an apron threw dirty water onto the street. The servant apologized and was startled when Maryam snarled, “Pour blood on me!”
A human beast of burden struggled down the hill, holding back a cart full of firewood. A sweat-stained rag was wrapped around his head; his face was creased down the middle of his cheeks. His eyes caught hers as he passed: you think I endure? Despair in those grey eyes, as if he knew who she was and what had happened. Despair that his own life would only be work, pain, and early death.
Over the flat roofs, the Temple rose like a snowy mountain in sunset, marble and gold. Looking so proud – but it couldn’t stop the Romans. What it had was beauty, and what use was beauty? What use was any of it?
The gate to the house hung open so she slipped in sideways. Their host was waiting in the shade and jumped forward as soon as he saw her.
“What has happened, what has happened?” he demanded.
Maryam felt like a seed popped from an apple, tiny and hard. “Where’s the babe?”
The old uncle said, “I didn’t wake her. What’s going to happen?”
Maryam looked at his anxious, kindly face and found that all of her sympathy had been burned through. “They’re going to kill him,” she said, and went round the side of the house to mount the steps to the upper floor.
The child Rutit was not asleep but lazed under a blanket, singing to herself. Maryam leant over her and kissed her and said, “Come, Baby, we’re going back to be with your mother.”
Maryam took the child’s blanket, found her tiny sandals, and bundled her up. The uncle was leaning against the doorpost.
“What’s this?”
“Don’t make me say it,” she said.
The host was outraged. “They can’t be that stupid. What did the Kohen Gadol do? He’s supposed to defend us. Will they stone him?”
Maryam couldn’t remember the fancy Greek word. “Some horrible Roman thing.”
She pushed past him, but the household had lined the steps and crowded the courtyard. She would have to squeeze past them on the open staircase near the edge. They shouted questions. You left him alone, cowards, why should you know anything?
The householder told them, “They’re executing him.”
The useless cries of dismay or shock. Maryam looked at their faces, round-eyed and undone.
They had expected exile, at worst prison. But this? This was without precedent, bad beyond imagining.
She began to walk down the outside of the steps, turning the infant away from the edge.
Someone took her arm and shouted, “Make way! She has a child with her.”
Down the steps, across the crammed courtyard, each person touched her or bowed or said, “Mother we are so sorry.” Or “Mother be at peace.” She realized someone had knelt to kiss her feet. “Pray for us, Mother.”
Tears came. “Pray for him!”
CHAPTER 2
THE LIONS OF EDEN
Years before, Yoazar barBeothus rose from cushions and gestured for his niece to sit.
Maryam was still standing, uncertain of how to accomplish that. She was used to dining couches, not cushions on a courtyard pavement.
Yoazar began to roll up his scroll. Maryam plonked herself down like a mattress. Her dress – it looked like Yoazar’s tablecloth, all red and blue stripes with tassels. She liked to dress, poor thing.
Yoazar forgot himself in appraisal of his niece. From the front, the girl could be beautiful – those glittering eyes, the long front teeth that made her smile bright and distinctive. From the side she looked like a pigeon – plump cheeks and a beak.
“Uncle.” She hauled in a breath, and her smile faltered. “Rabuli. I have some news.”
Had she found a husband? Yoazar moved the mountains of his face into something like a smile. “I pray it is good news, Maryam.”
“Yes. I suppose.” Her eyes flickered downward then back up. “I am with child.”
Yoazar sagged inwardly. Oh God. Poor stupid girl – all that learning, see what it does for you? Ah well, it is God’s way.
Her hands twisted the tassels of her tablecloth dress. Maybe she had indeed made it herself from a tablecloth – her father was dead and the family was not prosperous.
Hesitant – normally his niece was too confident. “The…the pregnancy came about in an unusual way.”
There is only one way of getting pregnant, and there’s nothing unusual about it. A handsome young scribe? Her cousin? Sex with another woman who’d just had sex with her husband? In his years in the courts, Yoazar had heard all of that, and more. He indicated she should help herself to figs and bread. “Unusual how, cousin?” He hoped his voice was sympathetic.
“Well. I didn’t do anything.” Her hands, her cheeks, all quivering.
What did that mean? Yoazar reached for her hand, but stopped before taking it. “You were forced?”
She shook her head, but she was smiling, almost swollen with joy, her eyes closed as if in prayer.
Then she told him. Angels, annunciations.
Yoazar’s hand jerked back. First her cousin Elisheba with her miracle birth and now this. A fashion for religious mania.
Women who are unfulfilled, they flap like doves without realizing it. A friend of his mother’s would sit in the market, legs apart, skirts hoisted high. A poor pigeon seller finally did what any man would do. Yoazar had helped the simple fellow escape the usual punishment. It was so unfair,
given the provocation.
“No point then asking who is the father.” Yoazar realized that he’d said that out loud – but perhaps it was just as well. “Can you find a man to support you?”
She looked surprised, then smiled. “It could be that God will protect me.”
Sometimes women only thought they were pregnant. Poor Maryam. The glittery eyes.
Yoazar rumbled. “Well. There will always be a place for you to live here. What has your mother said?”
She looked downcast then. “I haven’t told her yet. I was hoping you would explain to her the wonderful thing that’s happened.”
Yoazar had worked his way up the priestly hierarchy by taking on difficult instances and helping. (A donation from his supporters to Herod the Great had not gone amiss either). He was shocked by nothing. Human folly, anger, weakness, all of these made him sad and slow, but never angry. He’d long ago realized that God rarely granted miracles to individual people. Religious authority had to be used sparingly. “Maryam. I will do everything I can.”
Her hand was on her belly and her face was cocked to one side. “I felt it. There was a strange sensation – a kind of cramp and a warmth. I could tell something – unusual? – had happened. To be honest, I thought it was sickness.”
Perhaps it is. Women get growths and die. Yoazar found he had nothing further to say. His servant girl flapped out of the kitchen with some mint water. This time of year, after the rains, delicious spring water trickled through the Kohen Gadol’s fountain.
The Kohen Gadol and his niece talked for a while about Maryam’s mother Avigayil; about how after all these years she still mourned her Damascene husband.
“If you or your mother ever need anything,” Yoazar began.
Maryam held up a hand against the offer. She’s tough, Yoazar thought, and that comes neither from her father nor her mother.
Finally the priest apologized but he had work to do. “Peace be to you, Maryam.”
The overdressed, haughty little thing marched out of his house bunched like a fist. She knows I won’t tell her mother about the angel. She knows what I think of her.
Yoazar’s wife Tara stood waiting, half hidden behind the pillars. He saw his wife’s anxious face and flicked her forward with a wave of his hand. “So she’s told
you this nonsense as well.”
Tara nodded once, hugging herself; she was the twin of Maryam’s mother. “She believes it.”
They were members of the Kohanim. There was no question of someone in the family or their class being held up to public shame.
Tara sighed. “She really is the most moral woman.”
“She’s mad. I don’t suppose you know of any man mad enough to marry her?”
Something about his wife’s bunched cheeks. Ah. The seriousness, the shaking, the sideways approach.
“There’s Yosef,” she said.
My goodness. The cleverness of women. Yoazar blurted out a laugh. “He’s crazy enough.”
Tara seemed to melt with relief. She laughed too. “He’ll believe her.”
They both laughed. Yoazar loved his wife.
Yosef had gone about proclaiming that Adam and Hawa were not a man and a woman.
Plainly a man could not give birth to Hawa as Adam did (so Yosef said). Hawa was called helper, companion, servant, even soldier – “ezer” – the male form of the word, and thus neutral of course. But for a woman?
Yosef had said in public in the Place of Gentiles, (and here Yoazar had felt faint and faltered) that Adam had not been a man and Hawa had not been a woman.
Yosef was like an ever-blooming flower of foolishness. He was a Levite, with a role to play in the temple, but he had no authority. He had said in public, declaiming not one hundred steps from the Beth Yahu, that Adam and Hawa had the sex – or sexlessness – of angels. They were neither or both, and since they were immortal, plainly they had no need to reproduce.
The audience were devout people waiting to enter the Court of Women. Yoazar had heard them growl, so forced himself to laugh and airily say, “Oh, Yosef, that is so clever, you keep us so amused.”
Yosef held a finger to the sky. “Amusing? Kohen Gadol, for me, it is a catastrophe.” You could
see in the man’s swimming eyes that he meant it. “The loss of half our selves is a separation as devastating as Babel.”
In the crowd, smiling grimly was Eyanaphon, Eyanaphon the Sadduci, so young and small, beautiful like a woman, with dark gazelle’s eyes and something eager in his face. He was already leading young fierce men in immaculate white. Yoazar had known then: there will be trouble.
Yosef came back the next day to say the same thing. Eyanaphon was not there, but his party were. And they said, “You talk of such things in public?”
Before Yosef could answer they said, “And how would we have children? You are counselling the end of the Yehudai?” Followed by: “You think God wants his sons to perish from the Earth?”
The term “Son of God” – barYahu in the Common Tongue – simply meant you worshipped the God of Yisrael and to do that (unless you were one of those Shomeronai who worshipped at that mountain) you had to live in Yehud. You had to be near the Temple or at least make pilgrimages to it.
Women, of course, could not be Sons of God.
Yosef looked miffed. “It is not for all. But. If a man were to take a knife to his private parts, he would be moving closer to Godliness.”
Some people laughed. Some shook their heads. Yosef was a Levite; a member of a tribe with complex relations with the priestly clans. He had gone beyond bounds.
One of Yoazar’s innumerable cousins nodded knowingly and muttered to him sideways. “They say he tried to do it to himself. Uh! That unspeakable thing, when he was younger.”
Yoazar loomed over Yosef and said, in a low voice. “You are coming with me now before you get yourself killed.” That was only a slight exaggeration.
A day later, a story started to spread that a boy of thirteen, at that crucial age, inspired by Yosef’s lunacy had done this dreadful thing, emasculated himself. It couldn’t be true. The Kohen Gadol would have been told at once. But people love stories that give them a chance to be outraged.
Yosef was in danger of being stoned. Yoazar had attendants arrest Yosef and hold him in rooms in his own house. Yoazar then went to the Sanhedrin in their circular room at the east end of the Stoa, and asked: can anyone name this thirteen-year-old? Could anyone take Yoazar to him? Yoazar had only recently ascended and was still in a period when everyone wanted him to do well. So they talked to him, and asked questions for him. He visited the most sensible of the families.
No name. No boy. In each house he said, “I am beginning to think this is just a story.”
Yosef barLevi was to be sent into exile.
Dangerous religious radicals were sent in exile out of Yehud, north even beyond Shomeron, to the Galil. The people there were crude, rough, not really Beni Yisrael at all. The land had been forcibly converted to belief in the God of Yisrael by the Hasmonean kings only ninety years before. And the way the Galilai spoke! Blurring consonants and vowels.
There had even been a suggestion that the Galilai be barred from the Temple lest they mispronounce a word in the liturgical tongue and offend God.
God moves through talk.
That’s what the Perisayya said, at least those who lived among the elite of Yerusalam.
Most of them spoke Greek too. The word hairesis simply meant school of thought, not something to be punished. And how many schools of thought flourished:
the Perisayya who argued that the spoken word had the value of the written, the Sadducai who ran things, and of course the saintly Essenai who now mostly lived in the wild (who just to add to the richness also called themselves Zadokites, basically the same word as Sadducai).
Yosef was given the freedom of Yoazar’s courtyard.
Yosef’s breath smelled of the meat that was caught between his teeth, and of a dental abscess. On days when he didn’t ritually bathe for the Temple, a stink as sharp as a dagger thrust itself out of his armpits.
Holding his breath, Yoazar said, “We are deeply saddened by your troubles.”
Yosef was silent, cradling his belly as if proud of it. Two miracle births, thought Yoazar.
Yosef rejected wine, even much watered. Yoazar made a point of filling a pitcher of water from his little fountain. “As fresh as the rain. It is such a luxury when someone doesn’t have to go fetch it. And it means this house has living water for the miq’va.”
Yoazar hoped for a good response – Yosef was famously exact on purification for priests in the Temple.
But Yosef’s lips turned inward and his beard bristled. He was a smart man, and no smart man should ever be utterly discarded. Yoazar looked in the man’s black eyes and saw loneliness. Swallows screeched at each other over the water.
Yoazar poured him a cup. “A very interesting point you raised. You point out that in Eden, the animals are paired, but Adam not, and that what he envies is the companionship.”
Yosef’s pudding face was unmoved.
So Yoazar kept talking. “The point being that marriage was created for companionship. Not reproduction.”
“Exactly so. Creatures without death, why would they need to reproduce? How would they reproduce? Do you think angels copulate?” Yosef’s lip curled.
He hates sex, Yoazar thought. Some men are not male. “So. Marriage existed before Hawa disobeyed. It existed for companionship. Have I understood, Yosef?”
The man eyed him suspiciously. “If you understood, you would agree with me.”
“Maybe I do. At least in part. Yosef, I can’t do anything about the exile. It could have been worse, but Nazareth – there’s nothing there. Though there are worse things than living among simple people in the hills.”
Yosef chin was tilted upwards, as if to pour tears back into his eyes. “There’s nothing worse than being in exile from the Temple. Though of course if God was in Eden it is clear He cannot be only in the Temple. He is a God.
who covers the whole world.”
The man is a quagmire of original ideas.
“I will do what I can to make your life easier there. I will send you food, things to read. But you must help me out. Maryam, my wife’s niece, she’s confused, she’s with child. Would you marry her? For companionship?”
Like the lions of Eden.
“You want her in exile too,” said Yosef.
“I want her protected.” Though I can’t see you protecting anyone. “To be fair, a man of God should know how she says the child came about.”
There the Kohen Gadol paused. He could not bring himself to state such an offensive thing. “You know the heathen Egyptians, their goddess Isis? A god whispers in her ear and she magically conceives a child. Without a father.”
Something happened in Yosef’s face, a wide-eyed settling that Yoazar recognized as sympathy.
“You are a learned man, Yosef, a kind one. Maryam needs that. And, as I say, we will make sure that you both are comfortable. We’ll ease the exile in any way we can. There would be no question of your having to labour in the fields. You’ll have food. We will send scriptures and tracts. Sadly, of course, we cannot exchange letters or visit. It is exile. It will be hard. I’m sorry.”
On balance Yoazar thought that Yosef had been won over by the promise of not having to work. And the reading.
Maryam’s mother Avigayil was packing.
The forecourt was laid out with wooden ladles, sandals and two dusty pots. On the stones, Avigayil folded clothes and tablecloths, shaking her head. Throughout the packing she had hardly blinked, but stared as if her very eyes had gone pale from shock.
Maryam was counting plates – some of their fine Greek tableware – and knives.
“Oh, Maryam, Maryam.”
Maryam gave her a quick hug. “Ami. Everything comes with a cost. Feel the child, Ami. No. Feel my stomach. This child comes from God. This child will
be something – it is not for me to say. This exile is welcome to me, Ami. It will give me a chance to pray, to contemplate, to study.”
“You talk like a man,” said her mother.
Maryam’s face wobbled as if shaking off a fly. “Tuh. Married to Yosef, I will have to BE a man. Oh, Ami! Come, come. For me that’s good.”
“You’ll have no friends. No one to talk to. No family nearby. And Yerusalam, Yerusalam will be forbidden to you. How can you get close to God when you can’t visit the Temple?”
This was getting repetitive. “God is everywhere, Ami.”
Avigayil’s cheeks wattled back and forth. “No, no, no Maryam, God rests only in the Temple. When the Temple of Solomon was destroyed the glory of God was seen moving towards the Mount of Olives.”
Maryam stopped folding floor cloths. “Ami. Why would God need to go to the Mount of Olives?”
“It’s obvious. It’s the second highest mountain and so is closer to Heaven.”
It was all Maryam could do to stop rolling her eyes. “Ami, could you go through my dresses for me? You know I have no taste. You pick those that you want me to wear. And whenever I wear them I can think – Ami picked these for me. After all, I no longer have to dress to get a husband.”
“Oh, Maryam!”
“And practical things too for a rural life. Ropes, towels, hammers, lamps. I rely on you, Ami.” Maryam gave her mother another hug that steered her towards the staircase. “You are my good practical mother. Give the rest of my things to Rut and Eenie, or to the poor.”
“You won’t be allowed to write to me!” Maryam’s mother had clenched her two shaking hands together and had begun to cry.
“Ami. I have nothing to say!” Maryam’s smile felt like the wings of a dove ascending. Her mother laboured her way up the external staircase, hand on the wall.
A cart rumbled into the courtyard, bearing Yosef and his goods. The cart had been loaned
by Yoazar who had also sent his servant Mikael to drive it. It was nearly empty, except for the scrolls of The Miq’ra.
Maryam shook her head. “Ah, Yosef, Yosef.”
He’d brought no furniture. Not one table, no dining couches. Did he eat on the floor?
“I’m not one of these women who care about such things. But…” Maryam had to laugh. “We have been told the house is empty. We’ll need something on which to serve food, something to sit on, and something to cook with. Bedding. And it’s all got to get into that cart.”
But Maryam admired him – Yosef added up. He was whole – lazy, obsessive, observant of the Temple purity laws and otherwise unwashed, but he cared about scripture. Only scripture maybe. There were worse things.
Yoazar’s servant spoke with a voice like boulders rolling down a hill. “My master has furniture. What do you need?”
Everything.
aryam had to list them. “Dining couches. A central table. Folding tables. My aunt has already sent us hangings for doorways. Bedding. Amphorae, a cauldron.”
Yosef hung his head, nibbling his beard.
They unloaded what little was in the cart; a few cushions and old clothes and Yosef’s scrolls. And his Shabbat lamp, in the old style made of fine black clay. His fingers trembled with worry over the delicacy of the parchment and papyrus. Then the cart thundered its way back out of the gate.
Avigayil came back with the dresses. “Good day to you, Yosef barLevi.” She sounded as if she had a toothache.
It’s what you said to strangers. It was funny how much Yosef dismayed Maryam’s mother. The reverse of the desirable son-in-law: poor, smelly, ugly, no prospects and in exile for being too wrong-headed to be tolerated.
“Ami! These are beautiful! My blue embroidery on blue. I don’t suppose we have any smocks and aprons to spare? I will be making my own bread.”
“You’ll dress like a servant.”
“There, there, Ami. Aprons and work clothes, please.”
“Not even a dowry. With child. No one knowing who the father is.” Avigayil start to sob. “Marrying him.” Her mother waved a horrified hand in Yosef’s direction.
It was such an insulting way to talk about your son-in-law that Maryam could not stop herself chuckling. “Ami-dear. Your mouth! Work clothes, Ami. Something that I can stain with soup.”
Off went Avigayil heaving with sobs. She had to lean on the door lintel to keep herself upright.
Then Yosef began to sob too.
Perfect. There was perfection in how far this was from anything those two wanted.
Maryam had kept talking to Aunt Tara for weeks about how clever and original Yosef’s teaching was. An intelligent woman would have understood after three sentences beginning with the word “Yosef”. Yoazar thought it was his idea too. They all felt brilliantly clever. She patted her tablecloths flat as if they were her family’s heads.
The only person who was getting what she wanted was Maryam.
On the road, Yosef walked stoutly beside the mule.
His chest was puffed out as if he was guiding the cart and protecting Maryam. Mikael was actually guarding them – a big, broad-shouldered brute whom her uncle trusted. ...
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