Just a Girl

by Jackie French

  ‘So you really plan to be a scribe again?’ I asked.

  ‘One day. I want to earn my own living, make my own decisions. Although it scares me,’ he admitted. ‘All my life, other people have provided my food and told me where to sleep. Even here in the wadi. But one day I will find the courage to be truly free.’

  I tried to smile at him, but I was suddenly tired in every sinew and very, very cold. And we still had to get the meat and marrowbones back to the cave. I’d bake them over the coals and crack them so Baratha and Rabba could suck out the marrow. It was the most strengthening food I knew.

  Should I tell Rabba and Baratha about Jakob? I wondered. I realised that they needed to know. We all had to be wary of making too much noise or smoke during the next few days, in case Jakob’s group came to the village to look for him or food. And Rabba and Baratha needed to know I was no longer betrothed.

  I should be crying for Jakob, I thought. A girl should cry when her betrothed dies. But all I felt was weariness, cold and relief.

  I was hungry too, and the deer made a wonderful meal. Rabba had said nothing about my lost veil. She just looked at me sharply and told me to wash my grazes in wine. ‘I heard the flood. I’m glad you are safe,’ she added.

  I was too tired to mention Jakob yet, and there was too much work to do too. I put two of the deer legs into amphorae with salt and water, then chopped up the rest of the meat we couldn’t eat in the next few days and strung it up to dry, as Baratha cooked the liver and kidneys with wild herbs on a spit over the fire, and made piles of flatbreads and brushed them with honey as soon as they were cooked. She had become a good cook.

  Caius chopped up fat and other bits for his sausages, added some of the herbs and wild garlic Baratha had collected, then hung the long strings on sticks in the fire’s smoke. Their fat seeped out and made the flames snicker.

  Rabba looked suspiciously at the dangling sausages. I suspected she wouldn’t eat them when they were ready, and might even forbid us to taste them too. But she said nothing about them tonight.

  Finally Rabba said the blessing and tore the first piece of bread for us to share. I was so hungry I could have eaten a jackal, even its tail.

  I ate and ate, till my body felt like it was mine again. Rabba had a goblet of wine to stop her bones aching, and Baratha had set out raisins and dates for us to eat. Then at last I told them how Jakob had found me, how I’d led him down another wadi, and how the flood had washed him away. I left out my being caught by the flood too, and Caius saving me, and the feeling that Jakob would have left us to starve, or even cut our throats if it was easier.

  I expected Rabba to wail politely when she heard that my betrothed was dead. Instead she swallowed her mouthful of raisins and said, ‘Good.’

  ‘But, Rabba, he was my betrothed!’

  ‘You aren’t weeping,’ she pointed out.

  I looked down, not sure what to say.

  ‘That son of a barley field was never a match for you,’ said Rabba. ‘I told your father, but would he listen? “She is beautiful enough for any man,” I told him. “The stars do not shine as she does! I will add to her dowry myself with what I brought to this mud heap. Why waste a girl like this on a village farmer? Go to your cousins in Jerusalem to find her a husband,” I told him . . .’ Her voice died away at the mention of lost Jerusalem.

  Did Rabba really think I was beautiful? And had she truly offered to add to my dowry? But she seemed ready to weep again, and Baratha looked scared and solemn. I changed the subject quickly.

  ‘What about Nazareth, Sawtha Rabba? Could I have found a husband there instead?’

  ‘Ah, Nazareth . . . it isn’t bad,’ she admitted. ‘Far better than this village, and Jakob’s too. Nazareth is at least a town, even if none of the streets are paved. Too many Gentiles lived there, even when I was a girl, but the great rabbis gathered at Nazareth twice a year, before they journeyed to Jerusalem . . .’ Her voice faltered again before she continued. ‘Nazareth is on a main road, not like this place, and Sepphoris is only an hour’s walk away. Many of our neighbours worked there as builders. Fine houses were going up, as well as the new palace . . .’

  ‘What was your house like when you were a little girl in Nazareth, Rabba?’ asked Baratha.

  Rabba had told us many times, but she smiled, just as Baratha hoped. ‘It was made of dressed stone — one of the few in town. We had three courtyards! And no animals in any of them. Our horses and camels and donkeys were kept in a stable away from the house.’

  Rabba gave the goat a look. It stared back at her, munching its hay.

  ‘My father was a merchant in stoneware pots. He bought them from the villages around and sold them throughout Judea. Oh, a most learned and holy and rich man. We had servants to tend the gardens, and tenants to work our fields.’

  Her home had only two courtyards when I’d last heard the story. But I said nothing.

  ‘The women’s courtyard had fig trees and citrons and a fountain, the only one in Nazareth. My sisters and I sat in the shade and embroidered. Oh, you have never seen such embroidery.’ Rabba looked at her gnarled hands. ‘No one these days can do embroidery like that. Friends came to visit, and we had mint tea and platters of dried figs and dates stuffed with pistachios under the trees, and a special almond cake my mother made and soaked in honey.’

  ‘It sounds wonderful,’ whispered Baratha, crouching by her.

  ‘Oh, it was. It was! Neighbours brought their fine relatives to drink mint tea with us, to show them that Nazareth had at least one grand house. Even Elizabeth, the wife of Zavariak the Temple priest, visited Nazareth once. She came to the feast to celebrate the betrothal of her niece to Joseph, son of Heli. Elizabeth stayed in our guest room, for her relatives did not have one like ours. Ours had a tiled floor, in red and white, and every day Elizabeth was with us a servant sprinkled rosewater in each room, as if a garden of flowers grew indoors.’

  Rabba sighed, coughed, then took a long drink of wine. It was strong, from standing so long in the amphora, but I hadn’t added water to it, only honey to soothe her cough. ‘Poor Heli. A pious man, a good man. He did not deserve how Joseph shamed his household after that.’

  ‘What happened?’ asked Baratha eagerly.

  ‘Heli arranged a betrothal for Joseph. It was all as it should be, the dowry fixed. A lovely girl, so dutiful. A girl who seemed to walk with God, she was so good to all. But then she got with child before their marriage. The scandal! Her parents were shamed, and all of Heli’s family too.’

  Rabba looked at Baratha and me sternly. ‘Let it be a warning to both you girls. Never be alone with a young man!’ She gave Caius a meaningful glance.

  I tried not to look at him. Baratha and I were often alone with Caius. How could we not be with all the jobs that must be done? And I had been alone with him today, his arms around me.

  ‘Oh, it was such a scandal! You should have seen the people’s faces, their lips pursed like a pigeon’s dung hole,’ said Rabba gleefully, sipping her wine. ‘All of Nazareth talked of nothing else for months. No one ever forgot it either. Terrible!’

  ‘Terrible,’ I echoed, as she obviously expected me to.

  Rabba lost her glee. ‘But it was worse for the girl,’ she added solemnly. ‘Such a good girl. I could never believe it was her fault. These things happen . . .’

  ‘How?’ asked Baratha.

  ‘Never you mind,’ snapped Rabba. ‘Just make sure you are careful.

  ‘And there was worse to come for Heli too. Much, much worse. The girl’s family cast her out, of course, poor child. She went to stay with her Aunt Elizabeth. She should have stayed there till the child was born, then had the baby adopted or exposed, or even said she was a widow, and no one would have been any the wiser. But she would not do that, not lie, or give away her child. Joseph defied his father. He brought her home pregnant to Heli’s house. How could any son do that! His father’s walls could have crumbled at the shame.’

  ‘Did Heli let the
m stay?’ asked Baratha, wide-eyed.

  ‘What else could he do? But as the girl’s time came nearer, he sent them away, hoping that if no one saw the baby born, they would think it had come months later and was a true child of the marriage. But you cannot pretend a girl who is eight months pregnant is only four, no matter how loose her dress and cloak. Oh, the stories that went round about who the baby’s father was! Everyone had a different idea.’

  ‘Who do you think was the father, Rabba?’ asked Baratha excitedly.

  Rabba looked startled, as if she’d forgotten she was talking about such things in front of a child. She took another sip of wine and didn’t answer. The silence grew. I’d heard stories of women in the cities who painted their faces and parted their veils and went with men for money. Was that the great secret Rabba wasn’t telling us? But she had said the girl was good, that it could not have been her fault.

  We waited for Rabba to answer. She just sipped her wine.

  ‘Did Joseph and his wife ever come back to Nazareth?’ asked Baratha at last.

  ‘After a while. They set up their own house with the child. Joseph worked as a day labourer in Sepphoris. But no one was fooled — though they didn’t say that to Heli, poor man. And poor Joseph too. He only acted from kindness to the girl. He was a hardworking man, a pious man. But as long as he lived, he must hear the whispers, hear his son insulted as Joshua, son of Maryiam, not son of Joseph . . .’

  Rabba’s voice trailed away as Caius made a small sound. She reached for a handful of raisins, carefully avoiding our eyes.

  ‘Wise Mother,’ said Caius softly, ‘was Maryiam’s son the Joshua who became the preacher?’

  She wouldn’t look at him. ‘I am old. I cannot remember.’

  ‘Please, Wise Mother, please tell me. Was that baby the Joshua who was crucified, who they say rose from the dead?’

  Rabba looked up at that and gazed at him fiercely. ‘Rose from the dead! How dare you, boy? This may be just a cave, but there’ll be no talk of pagan gods in any home of mine. A man cannot rise from the dead, not even the Emperor of Rome, no matter how many statues the Romans make of him.’

  She slammed down her goblet so hard it would have shattered if it wasn’t made of wood. ‘I will not have my girls’ minds polluted by pagan talk. You understand? Now go to your cave.’ She might have been talking to a little boy.

  She drained the last of her wine. ‘Put logs and ashes on the fire, and bed it down,’ she told me. ‘I want to sleep.’

  I waited till her first snore, then reached under my pallet for the scroll I had found in the village. I thrust it into my belt, then ran after Caius into the night.

  He had only gone halfway up the hill, leaning on his stick. We knew the wadi as well as our own hands by now, knew how many steps to take even in the darkness. It wasn’t black tonight though. A sickle moon shone over us as if the wadi drank its light, clothing the cliffs with gold, the shadows flickering as clouds webbed and folded across the sky.

  ‘Caius, stop. I’m sorry Rabba talked to you like that.’

  He turned towards me, a darker shadow in the moonlight, and shrugged his shoulders. It was one of the foreign gestures he sometimes made. ‘That is the way most people talk about the Christians. They make up new insults all the time. I’m used to it.’ But his voice sounded as if he wasn’t.

  ‘I . . . I think Rabba might have meant the mother of your Joshua when she talked about Maryiam and Joseph. I don’t think it was just a story either. She exaggerates sometimes, but she doesn’t lie. I’m sorry it was so horrible.’

  He gazed at me. ‘She ordered me not to talk to you about Christian things.’

  ‘You are not a slave, and she is not your mistress. You can say what you like.’

  He smiled at that. ‘She is mistress of the cave.’

  I considered. He was right. The cave would not be filled with amphorae of grain and oil, pomegranate honey and bees’ honey and so many good things, nor would we be living in it, if it wasn’t for Rabba.

  ‘Talk outside the cave then.’

  ‘All right.’ He lifted his chin. ‘I don’t care if Jesus’s mother was pregnant before her marriage. I don’t believe she would have done wrong either. But it’s what a person does that matters, not what their parents did.’

  And you will be what you make of yourself, I thought. Being born a slave will not matter. Maybe what Caius achieved would matter even more because he’d had to travel further. But he’d had a good mother, a skilled mother, who had taught him to pray, even if they were Christian prayers. My mother had taught me too, and defended her daughters with a kitchen knife. Listening to Rabba, I had felt that Joshua’s mother must have given him love too. But I supposed we’d never know.

  ‘I have a gift for you,’ I said. I held out the scroll.

  He took it wonderingly. ‘What a gift! Thank you. I haven’t read anything except lists and messages since I left my master’s house. His scroll room held a hundred worlds and five hundred voices to speak to me.’ He unrolled the scroll carefully, as if it were a treasure, and squinted at the words. His face lost its brightness. He looked back at me. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t read it.’

  ‘I could bring a lamp.’

  ‘I still couldn’t read it.’

  I stared at him. I trusted Caius with my life now, and with Baratha’s life and Rabba’s. I couldn’t believe that he’d lied to us. But how could any scribe not be able to read the laws?

  ‘It’s a holy book!’ I said. ‘The Romans left it behind. Try again.’

  ‘Judith.’ He said my name gently. ‘It’s written in Hebrew. I can’t read Hebrew.’

  ‘But . . . but reading is reading . . .’

  ‘No, it isn’t.’ He sat on a rock and opened the scroll out further, letting the moonlight shine on the funny tiny lines that meant words. ‘The words look so beautiful . . . I wish I could read them. But the Hebrew alphabet is different from the one people use to write Latin and Koine. It’s different from the language you speak too. If this was written in your language, in the Latin alphabet, I could sound the letters out, and you could tell me what they mean. But I can’t even begin to read these letters. I’ll show you Roman letters in the morning so you understand.’

  ‘I . . . I can remember some of the words Micah used to say, though girls were not supposed to listen,’ I offered. ‘If I recite what I remember, then you translate the words, could you work out what is written?’

  ‘Maybe.’ He grinned. ‘It will be interesting to try. But the only alphabet I can teach you is the Roman one.’ He hesitated, then added, ‘It is the one that will be of most use to you. There is little written in Hebrew, even though it is fairly widely spoken. I think it will be spoken and written even less now.’

  Now that Jerusalem has fallen, I thought as sadness washed through me, bitter as salt water. How could I grieve so much for a city I had never seen?

  I sat on the rock next to him. ‘I wish Rabba wasn’t so angry about you being a pagan.’

  ‘I’m not a pagan,’ he said stubbornly. ‘You and I and Rabba believe in the one God, the only God. Jesus was Jewish too.’

  ‘Then why call yourself a Christian when it makes so much trouble? And don’t just say, “Many are the ways of God,”’ I told him. That was what men always said when you asked questions.

  He smiled wryly in the moonlight. ‘I don’t think it is very safe to follow Judaism either just now. Would you worship the Emperor as a god?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Why not? That’s what Roman law demands.’

  I thought about it. ‘Because it would be wrong. But I can’t explain why.’

  ‘It’s the same for me. I would follow Jesus’s teaching even if He wasn’t the Messiah, even without the miracles. I follow the words He preached. I . . . I don’t know many of them — I need to know more, much more. But these I do know.’ He looked down into the gold and shadow of the wadi below us.

  ‘Do not worry about what you shall ea
t or wear.’ It sounded as if he was reciting from memory; perhaps the words that Simon Peter had said in far-off Rome, or lessons his parents had taught him before they were sold. ‘Do not fret about tomorrow, but live today.’

  I have learned that during these months in the wadi, I thought. To enjoy the fire, the friendship, each day we were given.

  ‘You have heard it said, love your neighbour,’ recited Caius, ‘and hate your enemy. But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.’

  ‘If anyone tries to hurt Baratha, I will kill them,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t think it means you don’t fight to save those you love. I think it means don’t hate. When Jesus was asked which was the most important of all His teachings, He said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and strength, and love your neighbour as yourself.”’

  They were good words and good ideas. And yet . . . ‘Maybe he was a prophet,’ I said, ‘but not the messiah that was promised. The messiah is supposed to lead us to a great kingdom.’

  ‘Some Christian groups believe that Jesus was a prophet,’ he admitted. ‘He even prophesied that horror times would come to Judea, just as they have.’

  ‘But you think he was the messiah?’

  ‘I think the kingdom He brought was of the spirit of our souls and hands. It is what I felt back in Rome, listening to Simon Peter. Suddenly I knew that my body might be a slave’s, but my soul was free. But I know too little. One day, perhaps, I will learn more.’ He stroked the scroll. ‘One day, perhaps, I will be able to read this.’

  One day we might . . . No, that man Joshua was right, I thought. There were too many possible tomorrows, and too many of them were frightening. Better to think of now — the rocks gleaming in the moonlight, the far-off call of a wild goat and her kid answering, the warmth of Caius so close I could reach out and touch his hand . . .

  I stood up quickly. ‘I must get back,’ I said.

  ‘Good night, Judith.’

  ‘Good night, Caius,’ I replied.