by Albert Noyer
The cryptic words puzzled Lucanus. “I don’t understand what you mean, Miriam, but I’ll finish treating your son and leave spirea here. You may be feverish yourself.”
Josep slowly stood up, the trembling of his hands somewhat lessened. “I…I shall have Assia bring the wine and wait for you in the courtyard.”
Lucanus advised him. “Sir, your son should be well in a few days.”
“It pleased the Holy One, Blessed be He, to give glory to Israel.”
I’m not familiar enough with Hebrew writings to understand what Josep or his young wife mean. Lucanus went back to give medications to the child. After he finished the procedure and dipped a cloth in the wine solution for the infant to suck, he noticed Miriam asleep, apparently confident that her son would recover. Before leaving, he extinguished all the lamp flames.
Outside the room, morning sun had heated stones on the house and reflected a sedating warmth onto Josep, who dozed on a bench set against the west wall. The sound of a saw and rasp of a plane came from inside the workshop. The children stopped their game to stare at the young stranger who came out of their grandfather’s room.
Assia left the kitchen to bring a plate of food to her father and awaken him, but kept her glance averted from the Gentile. Josep rubbed sleep from his eyes with the back of a blue-veined hand, and motioned for the physician to sit next to him.
Lucanus waited for Assia to return to the kitchen before telling him, “Sir, your son will be fine, but you told me that your daughter has delivered many infants. If so, her carelessness in this case is…is quite inexcusable.”
Instead of acknowledging the criticism, Josep waved flies away from his plate of olives, warm bread, and a pot of honey set to his right, then held out a cup of wine. “Physician, Ja’acob tells me you had no time to eat. Take this and sit with me to break your fast.”
“Thank you, yet only a bite. I must get back before the caravan leaves.”
For a moment Josep watched Lucanus eat, before saying, “Physician, you are undoubtedly wondering why at my age I took such a young wife.”
Lucanus spit an olive pit aside. “The thought did enter my mind, Sir.”
“I hardly understand myself the strange events that happened recently.”
“What events?”
“I became too feeble to help my four sons with carpentry, but was accepted into service at the Temple, Josep explained. “I…I saw Miriam there when she was twelve. Her parents had consecrated their daughter to the Temple as an infant. Three years ago, the priests decided to find a guardian for Miriam until she was of an age to marry. I was chosen by lot from twelve other aged men.”
Lucanus pushed aside his plate. “How did your children feel about her coming into your household?”
“They had to accept Miriam.”
“Go on, sir.”
Josep hesitated before admitting, “There was no trouble until…until about a year ago. Miriam suddenly changed.”
“Changed? May I ask in what way?”
“She stopped helping my daughters with housework and kept apart from us to brood alone in the fields. She refused to talk to me about what troubled her, until one day I insisted. Then Miriam told me…blurted out…that she was pregnant.”
“Surely, not by one of your sons?”
“No, no,” Josep quickly replied. “My three elder sons have wives. Ja’acob, the youngest, is shy around women. His woodworking and our synagogue is his life.”
“When you asked Miriam about her pregnancy, what explanation did she give?”
Tears misted the old man’s eyes. This time he hesitated so long that Lucanus thought that out of shame he would not continue his explanation to a Gentile stranger.
“Sir?” he prompted.
Josep said almost inaudibly, “I…I was devastated and could neither eat nor sleep. If the Temple priests discovered that I might have violated their trust in me, I…my entire family…would be shunned, and Miriam possibly stoned as an adulteress.”
“So, you offered to marry her yourself.”
“Physician, I was…was told to do so.”
“Told? I recall you also said that you also were told to name the child. What was that name again?”
“Yeshua.”
Lucanus licked a remnant of honey off his fingers. “Who told you to marry the girl? Was it one of the Temple priests that might have sympathized with you?”
Josep looked at Lucanus as if anticipating that the Gentile physician would not believe him. “A mal’ak, a messenger of the Holy One, Blessed be His name, told me in a dream.”
“In Greek ‘angelos’,” Lucanus translated. “Hebrews I knew at Antiochia spoke of such heavenly beings, who visited several of your patriarchs.”
Josep continued as if he needed to tell a non-Hebrew who might be skeptical and yet uncritical of these recent unusual events. “After the child was born almost four months ago, three wealthy Gentiles…brocaded garments, fine calfskin boots, turbans…came to my home, asking about the infant.”
“Your son told me that Yeshua was born in a cave.”
“Yes, yes, I…I forgot. My mind…” Josep recovered from his confusion. “The house is small, my family large. When my wife wanted a quiet place to give birth, I ordered a servant to take a brazier and warm the stable while cleaning the manger area. Miriam asked that only Assia be of assistance to her as midwife.”
“Go on,” Lucanus urged, to keep the oldster talking. Perhaps his incredible story would explain the strange words that Miriam had mumbled. “Did you find out who these visitors were?”
“Parthian astrologers, I believe, who study the heavens for portents. They spoke of a new bright star…a sign. They brought gifts of tremendous worth to give the child, treasures that one might offer to an important court official. Then they were gone. I went outside to look for this star, saw nothing. I donated their frankincense for Temple worship, sold the myrrh—”
“Sir,” Lucanus interrupted, “All well and good, yet none of this excuses Assia’s carelessness.”
Josep coughed and glanced toward the kitchen. “My two daughters, my sons, may have been envious of a young wife I could not explain. Her male child would share in their inheritance.”
“Assia deliberately endangered the infant’s health by—”
A loud commotion at the front of the house interrupted Lucanus’s speculation. Angry shouts sounded in Aramaic, answered by replies from Josep’s sons, and screams from the household women. Their children began shrieking in fear.
Alarmed, Lucanus stood and helped Josep stand up. The two had begun to walk toward a hall to the workshop, when several men, holding bloody swords, emerged and blocked them. Their uniforms were similar to those of Hebrew auxiliary troops at Jerusalem, not those of Roman legionaries stationed in Syria.
The leader, a swarthy, bearded brute with a white scar marring his cheek, stopped momentarily when he saw the old man and then shouted to him in brusque Aramaic. Lucanus caught that he was looking for any other male children living in the household.
When Josep did not respond, Lucanus, although nervous, managed to ask the man, “Milate Elinika?”
Asked if he spoke Greek, the leader demanded of Lucanus—in atrocious, guttural Greek—who he was.
“A physician from Antiochia,” he replied as amiably as possible, controlling his voice. “Why do you ask about children? One here is my patient, but what would you want with an infant?”
The man looked past him toward the courtyard. “Greek, where is this child?”
“Who are you?”
The stocky man grinned as if he had trapped a fish in a weir. “Commander of a cohort in King Herod’s guards. Where is the child?”
The women’s screams at the front of the house had turned to a funereal wailing that began to resound throughout the village. Yehudah, one of Josep’s sons, staggered in from another room, his head bloody.
“Father,” he blurted, breathing hard, “Herod has ordered…all children…up
to two years of age…killed. It’s something…about a new Judean king…born recently.”
The commander smirked at Lucanus. “Gentile, did you understand that?”
“Enough of it.”
The officer turned and ordered his two men to search a room on the right of the courtyard.
“Wait!” Lucanus shouted in desperation and moved to block the doorway. “Com…Commander, what is your name?”
The man paused, but his eyes narrowed in suspicion in replying,“Jabez.”
“Jabez, I’ll take you to see the infant. He’s very ill.”
Yehudah and Ja’acob both protested the physician’s apparent betrayal, but Jabez ordered his guards to take the two Judeans to the front of the house with the others.
“Your Greek is very good,” Lucanus lied as he opened the room’s door, hoping to flatter Jabez into being merciful.
The man grunted a noncommittal reply. Sunlight had moved around to the south and the room was dim. Miriam, exhausted by her restless night, lay asleep, breathing in a regular rise and fall of her slight body. The commotion had not awakened her. Her child, sedated by the valerian, also slept.
Unmoved by the physician’s praise, Jabez raised his sword to grumble, “He don’t look sick to me.”
Lucanus lied again. “The child will die soon. See for yourself…” He unwrapped loose abdominal swaddling that he had put over the ointment. The inflammation had not had time to abate. Lucanus pointed to the black, gangrenous tip of the umbilical cord in a dish on the table. “I took this out of him…Ah, no, don’t touch it! Leprosy, perhaps, or the plague.” When Jabez backed away, Lucanus pointed to the man’s facial scar. “A Roman legion physician treated your old wound? Saved you from bleeding to death?”
Jabez nodded slightly, yet kept staring at the child with suspicion: there were few “illnesses” that his sword could not cure, and the deadly plague was one of them.
Lucanus boasted in desperation, “My father is physician to Quintilius Varus, governor of the Syrian Province, and a citizen of Rome, as am I,” then reached into his purse to find a gold Roman coin. “These are rare,” he said, speaking rapidly to control nervousness. “An aureus with the image of Augustus Caesar, the patron…a friend that is…of Herod, your basileus. Owning it would in a sense make you the emperor’s friend. Have a goldsmith fashion a bezel and chain, then wear it with your uniform.”
Jabez hesitated only a moment before grasping the coin and bolting out the door, shouting new commands to his men.
Lucanus had concealed his trembling while trying to convince the brute to spare the child; now as he shut the door behind him, he felt a cold sensation in his stomach at the horror he would find outside.
The courtyard dirt at the front of the house was spattered with blood. Josep’s daughters knelt by the bodies of their slain children, lamenting their murders in hysterical wails and frantic arm gestures: Herod’s soldiers had not been particular about sorting out two-year olds from their older children.
Josep and his sons were comforting wives and daughters, when the unmarried Assia stood and came toward Lucanus. Anger at his betrayal of her family flashed in her dark eyes.
“The infant is spared,” he quickly told her, “yet cannot remain here. Herod’s men may return.” When Josep heard and looked up, Lucanus went to him. “Sir, bundle together clothing, a few necessities, and bring your wife and son to the caravan that leaves this morning for Egypt. It may be the only way to save Yeshua, and that way I can continue to treat him.”
Assia spoke to her father in Hebrew. The Parthian visitors had left a third gift for the child, a chest of gold coins, far more than enough to pay the caravan master and buy asylum in Egypt, which was several days distant from Herod’s jurisdiction.
“My grandchildren,” Josep protested, wiping tears from his reddened eyes. “I must help bury them.”
“Sir,” Lucanus insisted, “there isn’t time if you want your son to live.”
The old man hesitated, but became calmer as he recalled a biblical verse and murmured, “‘When Israel was a child I loved him. Out of Egypt I called my son’.”
Lucanus once more felt puzzled at a saying he did not understand. “What does that mean?”
“Hosea, one of our prophets. He said that—”
Lucanus shook his head in impatience. “Tell me later. Assia, help your father prepare to leave. If that caravan goes to Egypt without us, Miriam’s child is doomed!”
* * *
Bet-Lehem in Judea. XXVI Junius
I continue writing my journal as I prepare to join a caravan that will take me to Alexandria in Egypt. This is the most dangerous segment of my journey, as we must cross the Idumaean desert to reach the Via Maris at Rhinocolura on the Mediterranean coast. From there we are about four days travel from Pelusium. I was told this by our caravan master, an impatient Arab named Malik, who has the dark complexion of well-roasted meat. He is not only conversant in his language, but also Aramaic and Greek, and speaks a fair Latin. Naturally, I mention father’s position at every occasion; as they say, the wheel well-greased turns the most easily!
I write as if things were normal, yet, even as I await assignment to my camel, a tragic event has me still shaking in horror. The Judeans are ruled by Herod, a client king of Rome, an Arab Idumaean who converted to Judaism, but has never been fully accepted by the Hebrew priesthood. He maintains his rule because Augustus Caesar favors this king’s ‘efficient’ way of crushing all opposition to his Roman overlords. Herod is aged about seventy and suffers not only from physical tumors, but also from a paranoia that has led to a slaughter that would repel even the most bloodthirsty of our Roman gods. Apollo, to satisfy his jealous mother, slew all fourteen of Niobe’s children, but when Herod heard rumors about the birth of a child-king who might threaten his reign, he ordered the massacre of all Judean children from the age of two years on down.
Josep brought Miriam and the child to the caravan on a donkey that he had previously outfitted with wooden platforms and large wicker baskets on either flank, for carrying a person and supplies. I recommended that he purchase a sturdier mule for his wife and child, and ride the donkey himself. Malik said that the journey to Pelusium, a port at Egypt‘s eastern delta, would take about fourteen days. This assembly point is a totally pan-demonic scene, an apt description for such overwhelming chaos: camels and mules bray and snort in fright as Jabez’s men search among them, shouting for parents to bring their children out and occasionally pulling a screaming infant from a hiding place that the mother failed to properly conceal among the merchandise. My glance follows the commander I bribed, lest he allow one of his men to take away Josep’s son. Herod has undoubtedly offered a bounty for every male child killed, a tiny severed right hand being the method of counting. I must stop writing for now; my own hand trembles too much from revulsion at what is happening. I wait near Miriam and her son.
* * *
We are finally under way, and by my reckoning of the sun’s near-solstice height, it is into the fifth hour. Merchants alarmed at the delay, if not of danger to themselves, combined to loosen their purses and buy off Jabez and his deadly swordsmen. Yet such is the way of evil that the murderous results of this insane command by Herod quickly will be forgotten, swept away in the whirlwind of greater events.
My camel is an Arabian beast—gentle, I was told—named Warda, which means ‘Flower’ in that language. Malik’s irritability matches that of his camels and must derive from having to re-answer every question asked by new members of his caravans. He finally mumbled to me that camels stride along at a bit more than two Roman miles an hour, and thus can cover some twenty miles in a day, but much depends on the location of a watered place he called a waeha, in Greek, oasis. An additional silver denarius secured me a place near Josep’s family, where I can observe the infant’s condition. Assia sits on a young mare camel, side-saddle among supplies that were bought and hastily packed.
* * *
Evening of the first
day. Still fearing Herod’s men, Malik forced the caravan along at a grueling pace not at all to the liking of our ill-tempered camels. We are in a small oasis two miles beyond the town of Hibron, as Malik did not wish to stop in a Judean site sacred to Hebrews—the burial place of one of their patriarchs, Abraham, and his family. Herod’s city garrison might decide on extracting more bribe money to “shut the dog’s mouth,” as the saying has it.
Small groups of merchants who know each other share cooking fires. I was attempting to light a blaze of sticks and dried camel dung, when Ja’acob rode up on an exhausted mule. He belatedly decided to accompany his father and the two women, which pleases me because Miriam has not yet come out of the platform’s tent. I heard her infant crying from hunger. From spite, Assia criticizes that such a young mother will not properly be able to nurse her child. When her brother arrived, she had gone to find one of the few women traveling with the caravan. Assia returned with a husky Arab woman, who offered to nursemaid the infant for a shekel a day. After a spare supper of bread, salt- fish, dates, and wine, I examined the infant and applied new ointment and dressings. Mercifully, the redness has lessened, yet Miriam is strangely quiet, staring at the tent walls as if she were yet in shock. Her lips move in what seems like a repetition of the words—or prayer—she had recited in her room. The Arab woman sniffed at my achillea ointment, threw me a look of disgust, then left to return with a tin of reddish powder she called rumman. As she sprinkled it over the child’s abdomen, Ja’acob told me it was powdered pomegranate rind. Afterward, the woman bared herself to nurse the child, but, I hesitate to say ‘miraculously,’ somehow Miriam’s breasts had filled. She motioned the Arabess away and drew the babe to herself. We men will sleep on the grass under sheepskins.
* * *
Dies V. To make up for time lost on his first day, Malik forced the caravan to travel until dark on the second day, XXIV miles to a crossroads town called Berosaba. We made camp on its outskirts, where I would have given a denarius to sleep on even a straw mattress bed, rather than once again on hard cold earth. The seasoned merchants seem not to mind, but a few novice caravan travelers—like myself—suffer greatly from the sun’s continual glare, blowing sand grains, gnats, daytime heat, nighttime cold, and, not least, the smell, bad temper, and bone-wracking gait of my “gentle” Warda. On the third day we left a caravan trail running alongside a Roman road leading southeast, to enter the Idumaean grasslands, a desolate region partly of sand and inhabited by wandering shepherd tribes called Bedouin. The horizon is flat, broken on our left only by a jagged range of distant, bluish mountains. That evening we reached Elusa, a sun-baked oasis-cum-legionary outpost, surely a punitive assignment for any hapless men stationed there. An unpaved road leads northwest to the Mediterranean and southeast toward a far-distant Arabia Felix, or so Greek-speaking veterans in the caravan told me. They also jested, but with seriousness, that the worse sand wastes were to come on the next and three following days. They only speak to me because I was asked to treat insect bites that had affected the men’s humors. The most serious injury was a scorpion sting, but the man will recover.
