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Even the men listened to her. There were nods and murmurs at this name and that name. The men didn’t look at her, or at the maidservant, but they walked close to the women, and they were quiet, and they listened.
“Judas bar Ezekias—he’s the rebel,” the woman said. “Old Herod had him in prison. But he didn’t execute him, which he should have done. Now he’s stirring up the young men. He’s set up court in Sepphoris. He’s raided the armory there. He rules from there, but the Romans are already on the march from Syria. I weep for Sepphoris. All those who don’t want to die should flee from Sepphoris.”
Now I knew the name of the city, Sepphoris. I knew that was where my mother had been born, that her father Joachim had been a scribe, and his wife, A
When I thought about it, it came clear to me that I didn’t know parts of the story. I did know that Joseph and my mother had been married in Bethany, in the house of Elizabeth and Zechariah, and that house was near to Jerusalem. But Elizabeth and her son John didn’t live there now.
No, they had gone into hiding, as my cousin Elizabeth had told us.
And when I thought of this, all the questions came back to me.
But I was too eager to see Nazareth to think of all this just now. It hurt too much to think of all this. And the land around me was so beautiful. I knew that word from the Psalms and when I looked at this land I knew what the word meant.
Old Sarah and Old Justus were waiting in Nazareth. We’d written to them. We’d told them we were coming home. Old Sarah was the aunt of my grandmother A
The land was greener and greener as we moved on. And when there came a light rain we didn’t even stop.
We’d listened to her letters many times, and she thought to name all of the children when she wrote to us, and she knew by now we were coming home.
The men were not talking much, but Bruria and Riba talked on and on, and the men listened, or so I thought. Finally Bruria said she would confess her worst sorrow. She couldn’t keep it inside. Bruria’s son had run off to join the rebels in Sepphoris! His name was Caleb, and Caleb might as well be dead, said Bruria. She had no hope of seeing him again.
The men said nothing. They only nodded.
“Who would bother with Nazareth?” Cleopas said under his breath.
“It will be good,” said Joseph. “I know it.”
And the sun moved high in the sky. And the clouds were clean and like the sails of ships, and there were women in the fields.
We’d been walking up and up into the hills for a long time when we came to a small village that was broken down and empty. The grass was high. The roofs had fallen in. People had gone from here a long time ago. Nothing was burnt. Most of the people on the road walked on.
But all our kindred stopped here.
Cleopas and Joseph led us past the broken buildings.
We found a small spring coming out of the rock, and water filling a big basin surrounded by heavy, leafy trees. It was a beautiful thing to behold.
We made a camp, and my mother said we’d stay the night and go on to Nazareth in the morning.
The men went alone to the spring to bathe, and the women brought fresh robes for them. We waited. Then the women took all of us little ones, and we bathed and dressed the same. The women had a tunic and robe, each, for Bruria and Riba.
The water had been cold, but everyone had laughed and had fun, and the clean clothes smelled good. They even smelled like Egypt.
“Why can’t we go on to Nazareth?” I asked. “It’s early in the day.”
“The men want to rest,” said my mother. “And it looks like rain again. If it rains we’ll go into the old buildings. If not, we stay here.”
The men were not themselves. I hadn’t thought much about it until now. But they had been quiet all day.
With all the troubles, we changed every day. And we had to make do with what we found. But this time the men were different. Even Cleopas was quiet. He sat with his back to the bark of a tree, looking out over the hills, and he didn’t seem to see the people passing down on the road, going on to Galilee. But when I looked to Joseph as I always did at such times, he was steady. He had taken out a little book to read, a bound book with cut pages, and he was whispering to himself. The letters in the book were Greek.
“What is it?” I asked him.
“Samuel,” he answered. “About David,” he said.
I listened as he read. David had been fighting, and he wanted a drink of water from the well of his enemies, and when the water was brought to him, David couldn’t drink it, because men had put themselves in great danger to get the water. Men might have died in the getting of it for David.
Joseph got up after he was finished, and told Cleopas to come with him.
The women and the children were all gathered around Bruria and Riba, and they talked on and on of the many things that had happened in the country.
Joseph and Cleopas, and Alphaeus, and his two sons, and James—they all asked for Bruria to come and talk to them.
They went off towards a grove of trees that were moving in the wind in a way I liked to watch.
Their voices were small but I could hear some of it.
“No, but you lost your farm. No, but you …And everything that you owned…”
“I tell you, you have a right…”
“It’s ransom.”
Ransom.
And the woman with her hands up, shaking her head, left them. “I will not!” she called out.
They all came back and lay down, and became quiet again. Joseph was thinking. He was worried. Then he became steady.
People passed on the road without even seeing us. Horsemen passed.
And after the meal, when everyone slept, I thought about the man in the darkness, the drunken man.
I knew they’d killed him. But I didn’t say so to myself. I just knew it. And I knew why they’d killed him. I knew what he meant to do to the woman. And I knew that the men had washed and put on new garments according to the Law, and they wouldn’t be clean until sundown. That’s why they didn’t go on to Nazareth on this day. They wanted to be clean to go home.
But could they ever be clean of such a thing? How to wash away the blood of a man, and what do you do with the money he had, the money he stole, the money soaked in blood?