Just a Girl

by Jackie French

  But Ma was gone. The menorah would be gone too, for it was made of silver, part of Rabba’s dowry passed down the generations. Most of my family was gone, my village, my life.

  Those who would hunt us down did not hold Shabbat sacred. But Shabbat was still with us.

  I stood, my body aching, and my mind and heart too, and trudged back to the cave.

  I took Baratha just outside the cave with me to wash, where we could hide quickly if we heard anyone coming, and left Rabba and Caius with pots of water and cloths to wash themselves.

  Drinking milk and eating barley porridge. Chamberpots to be emptied. Washing to be done. Already it was a routine that ate my day. This is my life, I thought as Baratha washed in the spring. How long will I live like this, serving those who must stay in the shelter of a cave?

  I would never have a household of my own now. Jakob would have inherited three barley fields, a good orchard and a date farm down on the plains. My dowry had been a field of pomegranates. Neither meant anything now. A betrothal was almost a marriage, but not quite. I was not a widow. I was just a girl.

  Was Jakob alive? If not, I hoped he had died well . . . I shut my eyes, for these were thoughts for the darkness, not the light. How would he have liked to die? Defending the Temple with words of prayer on his lips? Or dying with no pain before he saw the holy Temple burn, Jerusalem destroyed?

  I would never see Jerusalem. Never watch my sons climb the stairs to make a sacrifice at the Temple. I’d hoped my sons would be learned men, not just farmers. I’d decided they would learn the scriptures, debate its points. Jakob’s village was larger than ours and had a synagogue where the men met, and a proper school where boys could learn to write as well as read the laws . . . Jakob’s village would be as empty as ours now.

  ‘Are your ears clean?’ I asked Baratha. I could almost hear Ma’s voice in mine.

  ‘Yes. And my feet and knees and —’

  ‘Good.’ I took her hand.

  The goat glared sideways at us as we passed, as if to say, Don’t bother me. I have grass. I’m happy and I don’t wish to go back to the darkness. Or not until it grows cold and you have barley for me.

  ‘Judith?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Does it hurt . . . being eaten by lions?’ whispered Baratha.

  I wanted to shield her, but if she was to live in this world the soldiers and rebels had made for us, she had to know. ‘Yes.’

  ‘But Ma and Sarah and Rakeal won’t be eaten?’

  ‘No,’ I said. I could not tell her Ma was dead.

  She put her arms about my waist and buried her face in my skirt. I stood there hugging her, then we slipped inside the cave.

  ‘There you are,’ said Rabba. She looked worried, though I doubted she would admit it.

  Baratha is too young to tend her properly if anything should happen to me, I thought bitterly. That’s why she saved me.

  ‘Where is the goat?’ she demanded.

  ‘Tethered outside. She needs sunlight.’

  Rabba considered, then nodded. ‘We all need sunlight. Bones break if you stay in the dark too long. You.’ She poked Caius with her stick. He seemed to be sleeping again. Or perhaps his eyes were just closed and he was imagining he wasn’t here. ‘Where is the Roman army going now?’

  Caius blinked at her. ‘I . . . I’m not sure of the route. They don’t tell a slave.’

  ‘You know enough. Are they heading back to Rome?’

  ‘Notyet.Soonthough.FlaviusTitus’sfather, Vespasian, needs the troops back home. There are still a few rebel groups in Judea that must be put down first, but most of the rebel villages have been destroyed. The main army was heading for the fortress at Masada. A group of us split off, looking for food and plunder.’ He must have realised what she wanted to know. ‘Your village just happened to be nearby on our route north, and an area that hadn’t been searched before. There is nothing here for the army to come back for.’

  No, I thought. No people now. No crops. Nothing but this storage cave and . . . ‘There are other storage caves, aren’t there?’ I asked Rabba.

  She gave a pointed look at Caius, then shrugged. Which meant there were, but probably not as big as this one. Nor easy to find, unless you knew where to look. I wondered what was in the other caves. Winter was coming.

  ‘We need blankets,’ I hinted.

  Goatskins would do, but blankets would be better. Even rags that I could wash. We needed millstones too, or at least a quern so I could grind grain and make proper bread. Millstones were heavy, so maybe the Romans hadn’t taken them all.

  Rabba said nothing. If there was a storage cave filled with goatskins, she wasn’t going to tell me now.

  I hesitated, then forced myself to say, ‘After Shabbat, I need to go up to the village, to see if the Romans have left anything we can use.’

  I thought Rabba would say no, but she gave me a look as though she’d been thinking the same thing.

  ‘Not till near dusk,’ she said, ‘when you can slip between the shadows.’ She jerked her head at Caius. ‘He may not be the only one the army left behind. And there might be rebels about, bandits. Even our own men might be a danger to a girl. Things are different in war.’

  She poked Caius with her stick again. He winced.

  ‘I think it’s time for our Roman friend to tell us more about himself,’ she said.

  ‘What do you wish to know?’ he asked, edging himself out of reach of the stick.

  ‘How can I know until you tell me?’ snapped Rabba. ‘Talk until I tell you to stop.’

  ‘I am a slave,’ he said softly. He closed his eyes and gave a strange smile, half of wonder and half of terror. ‘No, I was a slave. The Emperor Claudius decreed that if an owner abandons his slave because he is ill, then the slave is free.’ He looked at his hands as if he’d never seen them before. ‘I am free,’ he repeated quietly.

  ‘What is a slave?’ asked Baratha, reaching for another fig.

  I moved them out of her reach. ‘Our people were once slaves in Egypt, till Moses led them here,’ I said. ‘Our people had to work for the Pharaoh and were whipped.’

  Though they had gold jewellery too, I remembered from the story, which they’d melted down; and cucumbers and onions to eat, and risen bread. So maybe their lives hadn’t been very bad. And yet they’d longed for freedom . . .

  ‘I had slaves when I lived in Jerusalem. A slave is a foreigner or someone in debt you buy to do the work,’ said Rabba. ‘And the trouble it was to get them to do the simplest jobs! They needed more training than a daughter-in-law, and I had enough of those too. After you have bought the slave, you don’t have to pay them, but you must treat them as your family, let them eat the same food as you, and give them freedom on the holy days. Then after seven years, they are free again.’

  Seven years, I thought with sudden hope. My sisters will be free in seven years.

  Caius shook his head. ‘In Rome you are a slave forever, and your children are slaves, and their children too, if they are allowed or forced to have any. In Rome, a master may do what he wishes with his slave. My master’s supervisor kept a short whip that he used if I lagged behind when we were marching.’

  Baratha looked at him critically. ‘You don’t look big enough to be a soldier.’

  He flushed. ‘I will grow as I get older. But I wasn’t a soldier.’ He lifted his chin with a touch of pride. ‘I was a scribe.’

  Rabba’s laugh cackled through the cave. ‘Ha! You, a scribe? A scribe is an important man! A learned man. I knew many scribes when I lived in Jerusalem.’ Her voice broke on that last word. ‘A boy like you couldn’t be a scribe,’ she muttered.

  ‘You were gathering wood when I first saw you,’ I pointed out.

  ‘I am a scribe,’ he insisted. ‘I have been writing letters and copying scrolls since I was ten years old.’

  Rabba cackled again. ‘A proud young rooster, aren’t you? Scribes don’t collect firewood. They protect their hands.’

&n
bsp; He gazed at her stubbornly. ‘I am a scribe,’ he repeated. ‘My father was a scribe and taught me.’ Then he admitted, ‘But I was a servant too.’ He hesitated, then went on when he saw we were still listening. ‘My father was born a slave, and my mother. She was a hand servant to our mistress. She knew how to dress hair, how to put on cosmetics —’

  ‘Oh, very important skills,’ snickered Rabba.

  ‘They are in Rome. My mother was even allowed to bear a child to a man she loved, and keep me after I was born. Few slaves are allowed that. My father was a scribe in my master’s household. But when I was seven years old, my parents were sold — first my father, then my mother. I don’t know who bought them, or even if they are still alive. Even if I had been free, it would be almost impossible to find out. Few records are kept of slaves.’

  ‘Why were they sold?’ asked Baratha.

  Caius said nothing.

  Rabba snorted. ‘Ha! I heard that prayer you whispered last night, boy. I’ve heard that prayer before, when I lived . . .’ Her voice faltered, and she gathered it together again. ‘I heard that prayer years ago. That was why your father was sold, wasn’t it? He believed in that false messiah, the one who said that a slave was as important as his master. Who would keep a slave who believed that? Your father followed the teachings of that Joshua, didn’t he?’

  Caius lifted his chin. ‘We call him Jesus. Jesus was the Messiah, come to save us all, even slaves.’

  ‘Messiahs!’ Rabba spat to one side. ‘Fleas upon the skin of Judea, every one of them. Those messiahs are the cause of all this trouble, this rebellion. We have had enough messiahs. “Look, the blind can see!” they yell, then ask for their fee even if the poor man is still fumbling in the dark. There have been messiahs and miracle-workers all my life, and every one of them caused trouble.’

  ‘Jesus was the true Messiah,’ insisted Caius. ‘He was the Christ, the Chosen One. We call ourselves Christians —’

  Rabba snorted again. ‘Christians! Ha! They were just another sect down in Jerusalem, and every sect was sure it knew better than the others.’

  ‘No, truly, the Christians are different. They must be!’ Caius looked at her eagerly. ‘Wise Mother, please . . . I . . . I call myself a Christian, like my parents, but I know so little of what Jesus and men like Paul and Peter preached. I was so young when my parents were sold. You really knew the Christians in Jerusalem? Did you hear Jesus preach?’

  ‘Him? Why should I listen to a day labourer from Galilee when I could hear the learned priests and rabbis of the Temple? No, I never heard him preach. Nor did my family or my friends.’

  ‘Did you ever meet Stephen the Good of Jerusalem, or James the Just, or John?’

  She shrugged. ‘I saw them in the street maybe. They were not our sort.’

  ‘You never met any Christians at all?’

  Rabba looked up at the pale blue patch of sky shining through the hole in the cave wall. ‘I knew of them, of course, but I kept well away. They were not for women such as I. It was a scandal. All of it!’

  ‘You know nothing then?’ He sounded so despondent.

  Rabba was silent. At last she said, as if from a long, long way away, ‘I knew Joshua’s mother, for a while.’

  Caius stared at her, his face suddenly as radiant as if a slice of sun had slipped into our cave. ‘Truly? You knew Mary, the mother of Jesus? That is wonderful!’

  ‘Maryiam, mother of Joshua,’ corrected Rabba. ‘Her name was Maryiam. You could at least get her name right, boy. You know nothing. Your parents knew nothing up there in Rome. How could they? It wasn’t wonderful at all.’

  ‘But it must have been!’ His voice had lost the quietness of the slave. ‘Please, Wise Mother, how did you know her?’

  ‘We were born in the same village,’ said Rabba shortly. ‘In Nazareth. But she was years older than me.’

  Caius forced himself up till he was half-sitting, the pain in his leg ignored. ‘What was she like?’

  ‘Just a girl,’ said Rabba.

  ‘Please, Wise Mother, tell me more.’

  ‘There is no more,’ said Rabba abruptly. There was a note in her voice I had never heard before.

  Sawtha Rabba had always claimed it was the right of an old woman to tell the truth, tactless or not. She hasn’t always told the whole truth, I thought. She had her secrets, like this storage cave. But she didn’t lie.

  Yet she was lying now. Because if Sawtha Rabba knew nothing of this sect of Christians, how had she recognised Caius’s prayer? And why would she not speak of Maryiam?

  Chapter 13

  Rabba glanced at the gap in the cave wall again. I followed her look. The blue was dimmed to shadow. A faint star glimmered. Shabbat had begun. But would I ever hear the notes of the chazzan’s trumpet heralding it again?

  ‘Wise Mother,’ began Caius again.

  Rabba held up her hand. ‘Hush, boy,’ she declared.

  We must celebrate Shabbat now, the seventh day of rest and prayer. But we had no candles to light. I couldn’t even light a lamp in case its glow shone out of the cave.

  Rabba began to speak, her voice suddenly clear and strong. They were the words I had heard Ma speak every Shabbat of my life: ‘Blessed are you, oh Lord, our God, King of the Universe, who has commanded us with His words to light the Shabbat lamp.’

  Baratha and I repeated them softly, under our breath. Caius watched us closely. His lips moved too, but I couldn’t tell what he was saying. Before, he had been an enemy, a problem, a question. He was still those things. But now he was a guest at Shabbat.

  I hesitated, then lit the two lamps with a coal from the fire. Surely it was safe to light them now. Any stragglers from the army would be by their fires tonight, not peering down the wadi. I passed around the heavy barley cakes I’d made earlier, and then the cold porridge. I half-filled a jug with water, added a little wine, and passed that around too.

  When a guest has eaten your bread and drunk your water, you owe him guest friendship. I wondered if Caius knew that too.

  We ate and drank in silence, remembering our last Shabbat, all the wonderful Shabbats of our lives. Even Baratha seemed to see the past, sitting silently, nibbling her cake.

  At last Caius broke the silence. ‘Wise Mother, did you know Mary, I mean Maryiam, when Jesus was born?’

  Rabba looked at him sharply. ‘What do you know of the birth of Joshua?’

  ‘Very little, Wise Mother. And my parents knew little of His childhood, or that of Mary.’

  ‘Well, I can’t tell you either. He was like any other baby, I suppose,’ said Rabba shortly. ‘I had no time to notice him. I was the richest girl in Nazareth, and the most beautiful. When I was twelve years old, my uncle’s sister-in-law came from Jerusalem to discuss my betrothal to my Gideon, may his name be a blessing. And when the marriage terms were agreed, she took me to Jerusalem to train me to be a good city wife, not a village girl. I never went back to Nazareth after that. Why should I? You should have seen our wedding feast . . .’

  I met Baratha’s eyes. We had both heard about Rabba’s wedding feast many times.

  ‘But in Jerusalem,’ urged Caius. ‘Did you ever meet Mary when she went there with her Son?’

  Rabba glared at him, her little date eyes sunk into her wrinkles. ‘You dare speak of Jerusalem, Roman? You who destroyed the city of God? I will not talk of Jerusalem to a pagan. I will not answer questions from the likes of you.’

  ‘I am not a pagan. I believe in the one true God, the same as you.’ He met her eyes. ‘But I also believe that in Jesus was the true Messiah —’

  ‘The true messiah?’ Rabba snorted. ‘Do you know how many messiahs there have been in my long life? More than there are figs on a tree. Throw the messiahs in the river and they’d make a bridge to cross to the other side and your feet would stay dry. None of them was worth a loaf of bread. “The messiah is to come to save Judea!” Do we look as if we have been saved? Whoever your Joshua was, he was no messiah.’

  ‘
He came to save the world, not just Judea,’ said Caius stubbornly.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘If Joshua, or Jesus, lived in Judea, how could you follow him in Rome? He must have preached a long time ago.’

  Caius glanced at Rabba to see if she was going to object to him talking about his messiah to me. But she was eating raisins now and spitting out the pips, carefully ignoring him.

  ‘Jesus was born of Mary, more than seventy years ago,’ Caius said. ‘But He was also the Son of God.’

  Rabba snorted again.

  ‘How can God have a son?’ asked Baratha.

  ‘Mind your own business,’ said Rabba. ‘That sort of thing is not for little girls to know.’ She gave Caius a look. ‘Some old stories are best forgotten. And so is the tale of Maryiam and the father of her child.’

  ‘So you know the story?’ Caius asked eagerly.

  ‘Did I say that?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t some stories be told?’ asked Baratha.

  ‘Because they are a bad example to the young,’ snapped Rabba. ‘And that is all I will say. And on Shabbat too! We should be praying, not talking about old scandals.’

  Baratha and I exchanged a glance. A scandal sounded interesting. Much better than stories of long-ago wedding feasts. But we knew Rabba too well to try to get her to talk of it now.

  More silence, except for the rattle of goat pellets hitting the cave floor and the sound of Rabba spitting out more raisin pips.

  ‘Jesus preached of loving your enemies,’ said Caius at last. ‘How all men are equal in the sight of God.’

  ‘And then they crucified him,’ said Rabba matter-of-factly. ‘For speaking blasphemy. Did you know that, boy? That they crucified your so-called messiah like a slave or a thief?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Caius simply.

  I looked from one to the other. I didn’t understand. ‘Then how can you still think he was a messiah? If they killed him so long ago, how can you be his follower now?’