Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt

Far off people shouted. I heard screams. It was down the hill. I could barely hear the voices crying out down there, and then turning, I saw flames way off from us down there, and I hated the way they shivered, the flames, but the men didn’t get up. No one moved. We were in darkness. Nothing changed in our camp, and it was the same for all those camped near us. I heard horses down there in the little valley.

Cleopas lay down beside me.

“Nothing changes,” he said.

“How can you say that?” I asked. “Everywhere we go it’s changing.”

I wanted badly for the screams to die away. And they almost did. More flames. I was afraid of the flames.

There was a song of screams coming closer and closer. It was one woman screaming. I thought it would stop, but it didn’t stop. And with it I could hear feet ru

A man’s voice rose in the dark, crying out terrible words, words I knew were hateful and mean as he flung them out, over the woman’s screams.

In Greek he called the woman a harlot, he said he would kill her when he caught her, and terrible oaths came from him, terrible words I’d never heard spoken before.

Our men rose up. I rose up.

All at once the woman’s steps were right near us, pounding up the slope. She was breathing hard and couldn’t scream anymore. The distant fire showed nothing yet.

Cleopas rushed forward, and so did Joseph, and the other men, and I saw through the dark that they reached out for the woman as soon as she appeared, arms waving, against the fiery sky. They brought her down to the ground, and pushed her behind them into the blankets. They stood still. I heard her breathing, and her coughing and sobbing, and the women hushing her as if she was a little child, and pulling her away.

I was on my feet, and James was right behind me.

Against the faraway flames, I saw the man rise up and stop. He was a big black shape like the rocks around us. He was drunk. I could smell the wine on him. I could see him wag his head.

In an evil voice, he called out to the woman, in vile names, names I knew only from now and then in the marketplace, and names I knew were never to be said.

Then he went quiet.

The whole night was quiet, except for his breathing, and the crunch under his feet as he tried to get his footing.

The woman let out a cry, more like a choke, as if she couldn’t help it.

At that the man laughed and he headed right towards my father and my uncles, and they took hold of him. It was one big shape of darkness taking over another great lump of darkness. The night was full of soft, but loud sounds.

Off they went up the hill, all of them, and it did seem now that there were a lot of them, maybe Alphaeus’ two sons, too, because it was so quick and there were so many of those sounds. I knew what the sounds were. They were beating him.

And he had stopped his cursing and raging. And from everyone else nothing except the women shushing the hurt one.

They were gone!

I don’t know why I didn’t move.

I started to run after them.

I heard my brother James say:

“No.”

The woman sobbed softly:

“A widow alone, I tell you, alone with my servant girl, and my husband not dead two weeks, and they come down on me like locusts, I tell you. What am I to do? Where am I to go? They burnt my house. They took everything. They broke what little I had. This is the dregs, I tell you. And my son believes they fight for our freedom. I tell you, all the filth is rising, and Archelaus is in Rome, and slaves killing their masters and all the world in flames.” She went on and on.

I couldn’t see anything. I listened for the sounds of the men. I heard nothing. I felt my skin all over.

“What are they doing with him?” I asked James. I could barely see him. A little bit of light in his eye.

Down below, in the valley, the fire burned but its great flames were finished.

“Say nothing,” he said. “Go back to your bed.”

“My house,” said the woman, her voice full of hurt, “my farm, my poor girl, Riba—if they caught her, she’s dead. There were too many of them. She’s dead, she’s dead, she’s dead.”

The women comforted her the way they comforted us when we were sad. They made sounds, more than they spoke.

“Go back to your bed,” said James again to me.

He was my older brother. I had to do what he said. And Little Salome was crying a little, half asleep.

I went to her and hushed her and kissed her. She curled her fingers around mine, and I knew she was sleeping again.

I lay awake until the men returned.

Cleopas lay beside me as before. Little Symeon and Judas were sleeping all this time as if nothing had happened. Little children like that, once they fall into deep sleep, nothing wakes them up. All was quiet. Even the women weren’t making much noise.

Cleopas began to whisper in Hebrew. I could not make it out, what he said. The other men were whispering too.

The women were all talking in such low voices they might have been praying.

I prayed too.

I couldn’t think of the poor girl, down there where the house was burnt. I prayed for her without thinking about her. And somehow I went to sleep.

Chapter 11

When i woke up, I saw the blue sky and the trees before I said anything.

Nazareth in this land—of trees and fields.

I stood up, said the morning prayers with my arms outstretched.

“Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is One,

“And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”

I was happy.

Then I remembered the night.

They were just coming back from the woman’s house, or so the women told me. The woman was with us, and here also came the maidservant, not dead, and with her proper veil and tunic and robe, who was crying and in the arms of Cleopas who brought her up the slope.

The woman cried out and ran to her.

The men had bundles of belongings from the house below. And a heifer also they brought up, a big slow-walking heifer with frightened eyes which they led with a rope.

They spoke Greek together, the maid and the woman, and hugged each other. When the woman talked to the other women, she spoke our tongue. The women crowded around these two newcomers and hugged them and comforted them and kissed them.

Bruria was the name of this woman, and the servant, Riba, was like a daughter to Bruria. And Bruria was offering prayers of thanks that Riba had been spared.

Finally we joined the crowd of people on the road and headed towards Nazareth.

I learned from the talk that the bandits had taken everything that Bruria had—fine silks and plate, grain, wineskins, and whatever they could carry, and burnt out the whole place. Not even the olive groves were left unburnt. But they hadn’t found what was hidden in the tu

As we walked on towards Nazareth, I learned they would now be with us, these two.

There was more news on the road, too.

Not only Jericho had been burnt but another palace of Herod, the palace at Amathace. And the Romans could not stop the Arabians from their rampaging. They were burning village after village.

But the men of last night’s attack had been common drunkards, said Bruria, and so did Riba, who had barely made it to the tu

A tu

“There is no King, there is no peace,” said Bruria, who was the daughter of Hezekiah, son of Caleb, and she told off all the names of her family going back, and the names of her husband’s family.