Every day I waited for Baratha to ask me, ‘Will Rabba die?’ But Baratha knew now that people died. She didn’t ask me what we would do without Rabba either. I was glad, for I didn’t have an answer to give her.
The days slowly lengthened. Towards the end of winter, Caius and Baratha brought down a gazelle together — a big, fat one that had ventured down into the wadi for some reason. I heard them yell in triumph, and arrived to see them do a dance together around the carcass. There was so much meat we had to leave some for the vultures and jackals well away from the wadi at the far end of the village. I had learned my lesson. I hung the skin there too to dry, before we sliced off the fur and rubbed it with brains and scraped it for Caius to make supple enough to write on, cut into neat rectangles for scrolls.
Caius brought down an owl with his sling too, and pulled out its long, tough wing feathers to make quill pens. He hardened the quills in the hot dirt by the fire. He made ink from lamp black mixed with tallow. I even found a stoppered glass bottle, only slightly chipped, up in the village to keep the ink in.
One day I too will write with a pen and ink, I thought, not just a stick in the sand. But I didn’t know when that day might be.
At last the relentless rain became showers, then even the showers dwindled. The sun shone for days at a time. Rabba’s cough grew less, though her breath was still as thin as her body. On the warmest day since autumn, with no clouds hovering at the horizon, or wind to blow them onto us unexpectedly, I carried Rabba out into the open air again, placed her on a sheepskin and covered her with her cloak. We ate breakfast in the sunlight, the air thick with the green scents of herbs. Even the light seemed hazed with green. I felt like a lizard soaking up the warmth at last.
The goat departed down the wadi with an eager twitch of her tail and a squish of green grass droppings.
None of us wanted to return to the musty cave today, even to make bread. Baratha, Caius and I stuffed dates and olives and dried meat. I’d soaked dried fruit in water by the fire all night to soften it, and thickened it with barley flour so Rabba could suck it without having to chew.
When she had finished slurping it up, she beckoned me over. ‘What are you doing today, girl?’ She still never bothered using my name.
‘We’re going to hunt for mushrooms and see if there are any artichokes ready to pick.’
She coughed, her shoulders shaking, and I waited till she could speak again.
‘The others can get the mushrooms and the artichokes,’ she said at last. ‘I need to speak to you today. It is important.’
‘Of course, Rabba.’ I was curious now.
Caius ducked back into the cave to fetch the baskets. I watched him climb up the track, Baratha chattering beside him. He hardly needed his stick now. He had grown over winter with all the good food we had eaten. His tunic looked too short for him and too tight across the shoulders.
‘There are things you must know,’ said Rabba finally when the others had vanished up the wadi. ‘Things I must tell you now,’ she broke off to cough again, ‘because the day will come soon when I am no longer here.’
‘You will be better when summer comes, Rabba.’ And she would be, I told myself.
‘And jackals will learn to play the harp. Death is coming to visit me, girl. He may not be here yet, but he’s mounted his horse. And when he leaves, I will go with him.’
‘I . . . I don’t want you to die, Rabba.’
She cackled. ‘You think I want to? I’ve kept Death away for nearly eighty years. I’ve seen my friends die, my Gideon, my sons, and even my grandson and his son too.’ She shook her head. ‘It is easier to sleep on dagger points than to outlive your great-grandsons. But I have done it.’
I hoped she might say that she had me and Baratha; that she loved us and was glad we were with her.
But she just said again, ‘There are important things you must know.’
I stared at her. Was she going to tell me I was really the daughter of King Herod? Or that she’d hidden a fortune in gold denarii in her pallet?
She lowered her voice, even though there was no one except the goat, munching a saltbush, to hear. ‘One day you will be married, and you have no mother to tell you these things. So . . .’
Was this all? I almost laughed. I blushed instead. ‘Ma told me already about wedding-night things, Rabba.’
‘About what husbands expect?’
‘Yes, Rabba.’
‘And how to keep your sponges clean each month? And how you can dip them in honey mixed with citron juice —’
‘She told me all of that when Sarah was betrothed, Rabba,’ I said quickly, hoping she would stop now.
‘There are skills to keep a man happy too. My Gideon liked the feel of warmed oil or honey —’
‘I . . . I know all I need to know about those things, Rabba,’ I said desperately, trying not to imagine the old woman in front of me doing them.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Very sure.’ I wasn’t, but I wasn’t going to tell her.
She scrutinised me as if I were a donkey she was planning to buy. ‘You’re not a fool,’ she said at last. ‘You will work out what you don’t know. But there is one thing a man loves more than any other.’
I wished I was up in the fields, looking for mushrooms.
‘A good man loves to know he makes you happy,’ she said. ‘Smile at him with your eyes and hands as well as your lips.’
‘With my hands?’ I asked cautiously, hoping she wasn’t going to talk about warmed honey again.
‘Yes. When you make him almond cake, or spice the meat exactly as he likes it, tell him it is your gift to him because he makes you happy.’
Any almond cake I made wouldn’t be much of a gift to a hungry husband. I could manage stews and teas now, but the only time I’d tried making bread this winter we’d fed it to the goat.
‘I’ll remember, Rabba.’
‘And you will tell Baratha what a mother should tell her daughter?’
‘Of course, Rabba,’ I said gently.
‘Good.’ She coughed, looking relieved. ‘Remember that almond cake will win you more than vinegar with a husband. Tell your husband he is wonderful and you can persuade him to do anything.’ She sighed. ‘That does not work with sons. If it did, I would never have had to come to this village.’
And you would have died seeing Jerusalem destroyed about you, I thought. And Baratha and I would be slaves. And Caius would still be a slave, or dead.
Rabba was silent for a while, before adding, ‘I do not like to think of you having no older women to guide you. Marriage and childbirth and caring for young children are hard roads to walk alone.’
‘But if I married, I’d have my husband.’
She snorted. ‘What do men know of having babies? I knew a girl once who had to bear her child with just her husband to help. The second-hardest part of a woman’s life and she faced it alone.’
‘What is the hardest part, Rabba?’
‘When your children die,’ she said softly. ‘She faced that too. And so eventually did I.’
‘Rabba,’ I said carefully, ‘was that girl Maryiam? The same Maryiam who was disgraced and married Joseph?’
‘Yes,’ was all Rabba said.
I thought of how much Caius longed to know about Maryiam and her son, Joshua. Perhaps Rabba would tell me more about her now he wasn’t here.
‘What was Maryiam like?’ I asked.
‘A girl,’ she said slowly. ‘A good girl, despite the scandal.’
‘What things did she do, in Nazareth?’
‘What any girl does, in a place as poor as Galilee. Ah, does anything good come from Galilee? She swept the house, fetched water. Her family wasn’t as rich as ours. Her father had been wealthy once, before she was born, but his wife had no child, so he left to pray in the wilderness. When he returned, his wife was old, and yet she had a daughter. A daughter who ground the grain, obeyed the laws, sewed, twirled wool on her spindle. She could weave well
too,’ she added. ‘She clothed Joseph and Joshua well. Even if they were just day carpenters in Sepphoris.’
An ordinary girl, a kind girl, doing ordinary things. And then the scandal. Suddenly I couldn’t bear to think of the girl Rabba had described being cast out from her home, the whispers following her every time she went to the bathhouse or the well.
‘Were they happy sometimes, she and Joseph?’ I asked impulsively.
I thought Rabba would say, No. Let that be a lesson to you. But she said, ‘I heard they were happy, very happy. Despite everything, I heard their house sang with joy. Happiness matters, girl. My Gideon was rich, but he made me happy too.’
So Rabba hadn’t forgotten Maryiam when she was in Jerusalem, I thought. She had asked about her.
‘It wasn’t Maryiam’s fault,’ she whispered, suddenly looking far away. ‘Things happen to women sometimes, no matter how carefully they behave. Rakeal, Sarah . . . no blame attaches to them for what they endure now.’
She looked back at me, suddenly sharp again. ‘I was glad when I looked down from the roof and saw you with your sling, so strong and so sensible. I knew the Romans would come one day when our men marched away. Why does no one listen to old women? We remember. We remember our own grandmothers’ stories too, and their grandmothers’.’
‘We will remember your stories, Rabba,’ I promised her.
‘But which ones should I tell you, eh? I have eighty years of stories. What do I need to tell you, and what is best left unknown? I want you to carve a place in the world, girl, not be lost in a women’s courtyard, making bread and spinning wool and hearing nothing but the same gossip every day. Priests dined with my Gideon, and rabbis too. They praised my honey cake, my quails baked in the juice of green grapes, my almond balls with pomegranate honey. I listened as I tended to them. A wise girl listens. Pharisees came to our house often, and even the Roman governor once. Oh, he was so handsome. The servants were all whispering . . .’
She was deliberately changing the subject. I didn’t want to hear about the governor. I wanted to hear more about Maryiam.
‘What was Maryiam’s son like?’ And how could a boy from Nazareth become known as a messiah, talked about still so many years after his death?
‘I never met him,’ said Rabba, so flatly I knew she was telling the truth. ‘I had left Nazareth by the time Joseph returned with Maryiam and the baby. Oh, I heard stories, but I never went back. Why would I? My family came to visit in Jerusalem instead. A tax collector’s wife must be careful! I stayed well away when Joshua came to Jerusalem, with people calling him the messiah. And a good thing I did, or my Gideon and I might have been caught up in the scandal. A slave’s death on a cross! Scandal at his birth and at his death.’ She shook her head.
But you liked Maryiam, I thought.
Rabba reached out a trembling hand and took mine. ‘Don’t encourage the boy with this messiah nonsense, girl. He dreams, that’s all. He has talent, a respected future even, if he is a scribe. Men never know what matters. Think of your father and brother marching off to fight for a lost cause.’
Or Jakob, I thought, his mind twisted with hatred for the Romans.
I could hear Caius’s voice and Baratha’s, coming back. The talk was over.
Caius and Baratha had baskets full of mushrooms and the first spring artichokes, as well as two fat pigeons, already plucked and gutted.
‘I got them,’ said Baratha proudly. ‘And I only needed three stones.’
The afternoon wind rose, breathing far-off snow. I carried Rabba back into the cave. Our talk must have sparked her memory, for she told Baratha how to make an old Nazareth dish of mushrooms and artichokes stewed with wheat.
‘Your mother would never make it,’ she complained.
We ate it with slices of smoked venison. Rabba tasted the stew to make sure it was seasoned properly, but said no to the smoked meat. Instead she watched us eat, her eyes brooding.
‘You are a good boy,’ she said suddenly to Caius.
He looked surprised. ‘Thank you, Wise Mother.’
‘Give up this Christian nonsense. A scribe can have a respected life if he stays away from politics.’
‘I can’t give it up, Wise Mother,’ he said simply, then added, ‘But I have been a slave most of my life. A slave knows when to be silent.’ He glanced at me. ‘Sometimes you need to be bold and speak out, but I can tread carefully in the world outside.’
‘That is something, I suppose,’ murmured Rabba thoughtfully. She shut her eyes. All the talking had made her weary. I arranged the cushions more comfortably for her. She seemed almost asleep when her eyes opened. She looked as if she’d come to a decision. She beckoned Caius over. ‘I have something to tell you,’ she muttered.
Not about wedding nights, I thought frantically. I could not bear to listen if Rabba decided to inform Caius about things a man should do on his wedding night.
‘Something I must tell you all,’ she said hoarsely, and coughed. She fell silent, gathering strength. ‘Just give me a little time and I will tell you . . .’
She shut her eyes, her breathing harsh and shallow. We waited, but all we heard was a snore.
Rabba’s mind wandered that night. She woke me with a cry.
‘Rabba, what is it?’ I whispered.
She stared at me, unseeing. ‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered. ‘I never had your courage. I should have spoken up for you. Should have been with you . . .’
‘Rabba, Rabba . . . it’s all right. You always spoke up for me.’
And she had, I thought, even if Ma hadn’t always listened. But it still hurt like a wolf bite to think of Ma, of Rakeal and Sarah.
‘I knew it wasn’t your fault,’ she said.
Did she mean pulling up my skirts to herd sheep? I thought. Or using the slingshot? Or hitting Caius?
‘I should have come as soon as I knew you were in Jerusalem.’
I sat back, realising that she wasn’t thinking of me. I glanced at the others. They were awake now too, listening.
‘I was worried the scandal might hurt my Gideon,’ she said, her eyes still vacant, her voice anguished. ‘He would never have understood. I’d heard the gossip from Nazareth. People said you gave your son ideas above his station. Sending him to school, and to study in Sepphoris, and to listen to the rabbis when they met to come down to Jerusalem.’ Rabba grasped my hand, her yellow fingernails pressing into my skin. ‘But what mother doesn’t dream of giving her son wisdom and the law? Especially such a girl as you?’
‘Go to sleep, Sawtha Rabba,’ I said softly.
‘I’m sorry. I have always been so sorry. I try to be brave now, as you were brave.’
‘Sleep,’ I said, and stroked her forehead, just as she had stroked mine when I was small.
‘Yes, Maryiam,’ she whispered. She spoke no more that night.
Chapter 24
If Rabba remembered her dream the next morning, she didn’t show it. I woke to see her trying to sit up. I crawled over to help her.
‘When did I grow so weak?’ she slurred. Her face looked a little lopsided, as if she were winking at us. ‘There are things to do. So many things to do.’
‘You have us to do them, Wise Mother,’ said Caius.
She stared at him from her sheepskin pillows, then barked a laugh. ‘If there is no one else, then you will have to do. I expect you will do well enough.’
I smiled. It was the best compliment I’d ever heard her give.
I made gruel for her breakfast, but she wouldn’t eat it, though she drank some wine and water. She was asleep again before we’d finished our bread and olives, turning restlessly on her sheepskins, mumbling.
I’d wanted to gather more mushrooms — their season was short, but they dried well — but I couldn’t leave her like this.
‘You and Baratha go,’ I said to Caius. ‘If any onions or leeks are starting to flower, put twigs around them to stop the deer and goats eating them. We need their seeds to plant.’
‘The onions can wait,’ he said quietly. ‘I think today we need to stay with you.’
I wrapped my arms about myself. He thinks Rabba might die today, I thought. Even winter hadn’t been as cold as this.
I couldn’t bear it. Ma and Rakeal and Sarah gone, the whole village gone, and now Rabba would leave me too. How could I look after Baratha, with no older women for guidance? Who would guide me?
But I had to bear it, for Baratha’s sake. I had survived so much. I could survive this too. And I had fourteen years of Ma’s words, and Rabba’s. I would remember them all. Suddenly I wondered if there was any wisdom for women in scrolls? Or were they only written for men?
We pottered around the cave, or just outside. Baratha gathered sticks and branches that had washed down from above, and Caius broke them into fire-sized lengths. I checked the stores to make sure the sacks of grain weren’t damp and that there was no mould on the dried fruit. But the women of my village had stored their food well.
Rabba slept and muttered, too indistinct for me to make out words. She didn’t even wake when we ate at midday: cold bread from breakfast, with honey and almonds. But she woke as Caius carried in the firewood. She blinked at us, as if trying to remember who we were.
‘You,’ she murmured, beckoning me with a withered finger.
I scrambled over to her. The floor was nearly dry now. The rains had stopped. We could put down the goatskins soon.
‘What is it, Rabba?’
I thought she might ramble again, or drift back to sleep. But her eyes were calm and sure as they watched me, though one still drooped like an eagle eye.
‘You must do something. The three of you.’
Was this what she had wanted to tell us last night? Somehow I didn’t think so.
‘Of course, Wise Mother,’ said Caius.
‘There is another cave . . .’ Rabba stopped to find more breath. ‘There is a red rock by the dwarf fig tree around the ridge. Push the rock away and go in.’ She coughed for so long I had to hold her in my arms; she could no longer support herself. ‘All three of you,’ she repeated.
‘To move the rock?’ I asked.
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