I lie down and nestle back into his warmth.
“You’re going to need someone to protect you and our child. I may have had my own problems with translation and interpretation when I prophesied, but terrible times are coming to Judea. And what’s so bad about James? When you were a priestess, you received so many god-bearing strangers.”
A polite way of saying: when you were a whore, you took all comers.
“Jesus,” I say again. “If James were a god-bearing stranger at the gates of Temple Magdalen, of course I would receive him. But I don’t want to marry him—or anyone. I barely managed being married to you, for Isis’s sake.”
I can feel him smiling—a sense of being gently tickled all over from the inside.
“And for Christ’s sake,” he suggests. “People are going to start saying that now.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” I try it out. “What do you want me to do, cariad? Do you seriously want me to marry James?”
“Would you? If I told you to?”
I thought about it for a moment, tried to imagine being the wife of a righteous, humorless man living, as James put it, in modest retirement in Nazareth with my mother-in-law. Even more disturbing is the idea of my (late?) husband giving me orders and expecting to be obeyed. That would be a most unfortunate side effect of the gmd (god-making death).
“No.” I answer simply. Well, if he is a god, not much point in lying, is there?
Now he is laughing. My body rocks with it.
“What will you do, my dove?” he asks with such tenderness I almost weep.
“I don’t know, cariad,” I confess. “But I won’t let anyone take my child from me. Not again. Not this time. You must know that.”
“But if you had to choose between keeping the child and keeping the child safe?”
“Don’t you start with the bulrushes. Give me a chance, for Isis’s sake, for Christ’s sake, for my sake. Just give me a chance. Have some faith in me.”
“I do have faith in you, Maeve. Who, more than I, knows who you are.”
“You still talk too much,” I tell him. “Just hold me for awhile.”
“Always.”
In case you have forgotten, let me remind you now: Love is as strong as death. Stronger.
Word of my pregnancy, and of James’s offer of marriage or protection, spread to Jerusalem and beyond very quickly. By the bird’s wing, as the Aramaic expression goes. So I was not surprised when my old friend Joseph (yes, of Arimathea) came to visit me in Bethany a few days later. I would have expected him to come in any case. He had been trying to rescue me, or at least improve me, since we met more than a decade ago at the Vine and Fig Tree in Rome where I was a popular whore.
Lazarus had just finished the late summer shearing. I was sitting with Miriam and Susanna in a shady corner of the yard, carding raw wool while they spun, the latter skill being beyond me. I was as unschooled in the domestic arts as Mary B, though for different reasons. While she spent her childhood poring over the Torah, I was being overindulged by my eight mothers, who themselves were more concerned with the warrior arts. When they thought to impose a discipline on me, it was usually to practice spear throwing or to learn to grease the harnesses for the battle chariot. So in Bethany I was given tasks that would ordinarily be given to a young child. I wasn’t bored, exactly, just lulled into a stupor. It was hard to stir myself when I saw Joseph approaching. He seemed another part of a long dream that kept going on and on.
“Ladies,” he greeted all of us, but his eyes rested on me. “I hope I find you well.”
“It is always pleasant to see you, Joseph of Arimathea,” said Ma who did not usually bother with niceties. “You mean well,” she added obscurely. “Everyone knows that, even the Most High God in whom you do not believe.”
“Joseph,” Susanna intervened. “Sit down. I will let Martha and Lazarus know that you’re here. Miriam, come with me,” she said as commandingly as she dared.
“If you like,” said Ma airily. “You mean well, too, Susanna. But it won’t make any difference, you know. The angels told me so this morning.”
“Save me!” I muttered when Ma had drifted after Susanna out of earshot.
“I thought you’d never ask.”
I turned to Joseph with a smile, and saw that he was dead serious. I looked at him, really looked. He appeared haggard; it struck me that he had aged since I had last seen him a few months ago, only days after my beloved’s death and whatever you want to call what happened after. Joseph had thought my story was crazy, that I was crazed with grief and in what you would call denial.
“Maeve, he’s dead!” Joseph had wrung his hands when I told him that Jesus had asked me to take the disciples to meet him in Galilee. “You’ve got to accept it!”
“No, I don’t,” I ‘d said blithely. “What about you? When are you going to accept that the tomb is empty?”
“Maeve, listen to me, this is serious. If Peter and the rest moved the body in order to fulfill some bizarre piece of prophecy, they are playing a very dangerous game.”
“They didn’t, Joseph. Don’t you get it? They don’t believe me, either. But I’m telling you Joseph, I was there with him in the garden outside the tomb, and if seeing Jesus was just a vision or a dream, it makes no difference to me.”
“Fine then, you had a vision. Why can’t you leave it at that? Why involve his followers? Wherever there’s a crowd of them, there’s going to be trouble. You’ve done all you can for your beloved husband, may he please rest in peace and not cause any more problems,” he’d pleaded. “You need a change. You need a rest. It’s dangerous here. And it’ll be even more dangerous, if you go around insisting that he’s not really dead.”
“It’s no use trying to talk me out of it, Joseph. I’m going to Galilee with the others, if they’ll come,” I’d said. “I’m going home to Temple Magdalen.”
“Well, stay at Temple Magdalen then, and stay out of Jerusalem. At least you should be safe there,” he had finally conceded. “For the time being.”
So we had parted, Joseph with great reluctance, and me with no thought of anything but meeting my beloved in Galilee as he had promised. Jesus had kept his promise. And when he asked me to bring the disciples back to Judea, I did. So here I was again with more trouble brewing, just as Joseph had predicted—Peter and some of the others had already been imprisoned and released more than once.
And here was Joseph back from Alexandria. A place you could get to and from by boat. He was not wandering in the Otherworld or talking in the small hours of the night inside my head, or making appearances unto others that he couldn’t seem to control. How comforting to sit with an ordinary man. Though Joseph was almost completely bald now, his face, clean-shaven in the Roman style, lined and a bit pouchy, no aging could alter the intelligence and kindness of his eyes. I was glad to see him again.
“How are you, Joseph?” I said, touching his cheek. “You look tired.”
“I am tired,” he said, his voice low. “Tired of waiting for you, though I will go on waiting—”
“Joseph,” I tried to interrupt.
“No, Maeve, hear me. I must speak. I know I have failed you in the past. Acted selfishly.”
I must have looked puzzled, for Joseph paused, saddened rather than relieved to see that I had forgotten his transgressions. I understood and felt sad for him. He had been telling himself the story of Joseph and Maeve, and despite my great affection for him, I had never paid much attention to that story.
“Joseph, my friend, I will search my memory for your failings if you ask me to. But what I remember best is how you have always held out your hand to me with no thought of your own gain. Smuggling me out of Rome with my friends, helping me to found Temple Magdalen, presiding at my wedding feast, defending Jesus in the Sanhedrin. No one could ask for a truer friend.”
“Maeve, you know I love you.”
“I love you, too, Joseph.”
“No. Maeve. Listen. I love you. Selfishly. You may have forgotten
, but I haven’t: How I told no one in Bethany that you were still alive and enslaved in Rome, no one who might have told Jesus. And I knew very well that he thought you were dead. I confessed it to you long ago, that time I tracked you down at Paulina’s villa and tried to buy you away from her. Do you remember now?”
“Yes, Joseph, I remember.” I added no excuses for him, no protestations that I had forgiven him long ago, though I had.
“Do you remember what else I confessed?”
I didn’t respond. I guessed what was coming.
“I wanted you for myself.” He paused a beat. “I still do, Maeve.”
There were things I knew I could say, excuses I could make. It’s so soon. I’ve only been a widow (if that’s what I am) for four months. Things that would make Joseph wrong for pressing me, that would make him apologize or back away, head him off from where I sensed he was going. Then maybe I could keep my friend Joseph at my beck and call, as he had been all these years. But it would not be a kindness to this man who had been nothing but kind to me, and who was trusting me with his truth.
“I know, Joseph,” I said.
And there seemed nothing more for me to say. So we sat in silence for a time, the afternoon light slanting and the mourning doves calling and calling.
“Maeve,” he said at length. “I know you have always loved him. I know you cannot love me, or anyone, as you loved him. I am not a fool—or maybe I am where you are concerned, but I am not deluded. I can offer you my love. I can marry you, if you will have me. I can make a home for you anywhere in the world—far from here, I hope. I can love and protect your child. And I can understand, as no other man could, that you love him still. Don’t forget that I witnessed that love almost from the beginning.”
It was true. Joseph, on business in the Pretannic Isles, had met Jesus just after he escaped from Mona. He had been with Jesus when the priestesses of Glastonbury informed him that the druids had exiled me alone in a small boat “beyond the ninth wave” as punishment for interfering with the mysteries (i.e. human sacrifice aka the god-making death). Joseph had agreed to attempt a search for me, but then the terrible storm came and with it their certainty of my death. By sheer chance (or not) Joseph had encountered me in a Roman brothel three years later and had pieced our stories together.
“Oh, Joseph” was all I managed to say, and I turned to him and pressed my face against his heart.
“Maeve,” he murmured, dropping kisses on my head, “Maeve, may I hope—”
I realized my mistake and gently drew myself apart. Joseph looked away abruptly, but not before I saw the pain. It’s done now, I thought, it’s over. But it wasn’t.
“You received me as your lover when you were a priestess,” he spoke tersely, not looking at me. “Was it…was it charity? Obligation? Obedience to the goddess?”
“And to the god.”
Isis, I prayed. You called me to be your priestess. Help me now to heal the wounds I never meant to inflict.
“The god in you. Look at me, Joseph,” I commanded in her voice, and he obeyed. “What do you see?”
I didn’t know the answer myself. I only knew he had to see it and say it for himself. He looked at me, and I looked back. I saw his face change, hurt and longing giving way to surprise, maybe even awe. Then at last there was sadness again and love.
“I see, Maeve,” he said.
What do you see? I wanted to ask again, not in her voice this time, but in my own human confused voice. Yet I held my peace.
“You won’t come away with me,” he stated. “You won’t let me make it easy for you. Or safe. You won’t let me save you. That’s not what you want. It never was; it never will be.”
I felt him let go, move away. In my mind I saw his boat, leaving this shore, leaving this story. And I could go, could have gone. Any moment it would be too late.
“Joseph.” I called out as if over the waves, over the wind.
“Shh! Maeve. I’m still here. Shh!”
He reached for me, and I clung to him, not like a lover but like a child. Joseph understood and held me close.
“I have to ask you one thing, Maeve,” he said after a moment. “Although my pride wishes I wouldn’t.”
“Ask anything,” I said, letting go of Joseph.
“I know that James the brother of Jesus is claiming the right of levirate. Are you—”
“Sweet Isis, no!”
“Well, I thought…I thought you might want to marry his brother…to stay close to him. To be with someone who reminded you of him.”
“Joseph, have you met James?”
“At the wedding. Oh, yes, I see what you mean. No family resemblance at all.”
“None.”
“I told you I was selfish,” said Joseph. “I won’t pretend I’m not glad. But I am also worried. Who is going to protect you, Maeve? You and the child?”
“Who” must mean what man? Apparently that was what men were for. Even my beloved had said it: you need someone to protect you, you and the child. Who else but a man? A husband? Yet life hadn’t taught me what seemed so obvious to others. I had grown up without a man in sight. I had lived with whores and priestesses most of my adult life. I had finally married a man who had no home, no wealth, and no idea of how to protect himself, let alone anyone else. Pardon me if I remained clueless.
“I don’t know, Joseph. I don’t know. Have...have faith in me?” I suggested
But the words didn’t sound as convincing as they had in my dream conversation, and Joseph looked dubious.
“Maeve,” he said at last. “Listen to me. I won’t ask you again to be my wife, but please hear me. I have to make a voyage to look after my interests in Pretannia. You could come with me. Just come. You could go home to your people.”
I closed my eyes, the sense of homesickness was so sharp, so unexpected. I could hear the sound of the sea, smell it, see the spray of waves breaking on rock, catching the light, hear the sound of gulls. And inland the darkness, the greenness, the huge oaks.
“Joseph,” I spoke with effort, as if in a dream. “I am an excommunicate, an exile.”
“That was long ago now, Maeve. No one will remember.”
“Joseph, surely you’ve met druids. Remember is all they do.”
I opened my eyes, and here I was again, in Martha’s courtyard, the heat of the afternoon just beginning to turn, the dusty olive leaves making their dry sound in the breeze. Then I heard the humming sound, bees in apple blossoms on the Shining Isle of Tir na mBan, or the wild roses of Temple Magdalen.
It was only Ma carrying a tray of food, a little haphazardly, scattering figs and olives as she listed across the courtyard.
“I sail in three days, Maeve,” said Joseph softly. “Send me word, if you change your mind.”
And though Joseph stayed to eat with us all, as the rules of hospitality demanded, I knew in my heart—in his heart—he was already gone.
CHAPTER FIVE
TWO OR THREE TOGETHER
SOMETIMES I STILL WONDER if I was temporarily insane. Here is Joseph of Arimathea about to set off for Glastonbury, and I refuse to go with him? And what is so wrong with a second marriage to a doting older man who asks nothing more than to love and protect my child and me? A doting older man named Joseph, no less. Just like Miriam’s husband. If it was good enough for the mother of god, for god’s sake, why didn’t I jump at the chance? Who do I think I am? (I’m not going to answer that).
The day after Joseph sailed, the khamsin kicked up, a hot desert wind that parches the earth, the skin, the soul, and covers the sky with the kind of clouds that never rain, just block the light and dull the senses. Martha and the rest of us worked inside, out of the wind, pressing figs into cakes that could be preserved and stored. A simple enough task, pleasant and repetitive, but today I could not settle into a mindless rhythm.
I’ve got to get out of here; the thought was clear and urgent as an alarm bell. And I looked at my life, suddenly aghast that I had not only refused Jo
seph’s help but made no plan at all for the coming birth of my child. I’d been docile as a cow, sitting here all summer, content to chew my cud. Now the lethargy of early pregnancy was gone; the child was quickening. Time was racing. What was I going to do? Hang around and let James determine my fate? And if I didn’t, who would help me escape? Escape might seem a strong word to use, considering that I was among friends, or anyway friends of Jesus, who would take care of me for his sake. Lazarus had made that very clear.
Lazarus. The thought of him was like a drink of cool water. I needed to go to Lazarus. Simple. I was under his roof, under his protection. He would shelter me for as long I needed, but he would not be offended if I asked him to help me arrange safe passage home to Temple Magdalen. At least I didn’t think he would. There was certainly no one else I could approach about hightailing it with the unborn scion of David back to a heathen whorehouse. Because that’s where I knew I wanted to go. That was my place now, not Glastonbury, not Mona, not even Tir na mBan. Temple Magdalen, where my beloved had finally returned to me—or more precisely was returned to me, more dead than alive, by a good and desperate Samaritan.
I slipped away from the kitchen to the vineyards where I suspected I might find Lazarus clucking over the vines, trying to protect them from the hot dry wind, for the harvest would begin soon. Mature vines offer shade and, as many lovers have discovered, camouflage. As I searched the vineyard, there was a lull in the wind, and I could hear Lazarus speaking to someone—unusual enough in itself, as he was a man who avoided conversation, if possible. I drew nearer and recognized Mary B, speaking in a low intense tone, accompanied by terse gestures. She must have come from Jerusalem that morning and gone straight to find her brother, for she had not stopped by the house. They were so intent on each other, they did not notice my approach. All right, I’ll admit it, as soon as I could hear their words, I did step behind a fig tree and listen.
“Do not ask it of me,” said Lazarus in a tone more anguished than angry.
“It is not I who ask it. It is he.”
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