“Honey, come quick! Look what the cat drug in. Get Berta, Dido, and Judith.”
My heart unclenched, and I realized how much I had been dreading the loss of any of them. They were still here. They were all alive.
“What’s all the racket down there?” called a young woman, whose voice I didn’t recognize. “Don’t you know whores need their beauty sleep?”
“Forget sleep, you silly twats. It’s the foundress! It’s the fucking deep priestess of Temple Magdala. She’s back!”
“You mean Red?” voices called, excited. “Is she really here? Red?”
And suddenly the courtyard was filled with people. Berta, Dido, and Judith pushed past the others and rushed towards me, and then their arms were around me, and I didn’t have to hold myself up anymore. I could let go.
After they finished hugging me and weeping over me (no need to fetch the vial of whores tears; I was anointed in abundance), they were in a dither over whether to bathe me or feed me first, and so they did both, taking me to a hot spring deep in the caves, and feeding me by hand as if I were an old woman or a baby. When they thought I’d had enough to eat and drink, they washed my hair, and then dried and oiled my body. I was a little surprised they didn’t swaddle me after that, but was glad for the soft warm robes they brought me. Only then did they let me speak.
“Sarah,” I began, and their beautiful faces blurred as I wept again.
“We know, liebling, we know.”
“What do you mean you know?” I wiped my eyes, and stared at Berta.
“We don’t know,” cautioned Dido. “We suspect.”
Of all my friends; Dido had changed the least; still stern and regal in her bearing; her few gray streaks made an elegant contrast with her black skin, and her face, always wary and mask-like, had few lines. Whereas Berta, always blowsy, had grown rounder, and her chins had doubled. But in her kindness and tenderness, she was unchanged and still beautiful. Judith’s hair was still dark, but her face thinner and sharper. Though her face had been worn since she was young, wandering homeless with three children, the lines had deepened.
“Can’t you see she’s suffering? She’s a mother!” Judith snapped at Dido.
“Whatever it is, tell me!” I pleaded and commanded.
“Tell us first what happened,” Dido’s voice was gentle but insistent.
“She ran away.” I took a deep breath, and told them the whole story.
When at last I was done, my friends exchanged looks.
“He was her,” said Berta. “I don’t care what you say, Dido. I am sure of it.”
“What are you talking about?” I was so dazed and exhausted, I began to wonder if I was only dreaming that I was here.
“A week or so ago,” Dido took charge, “a beggar boy came to the gate.”
What’s that got to do with Sarah? I almost asked, stifling impatience when she hesitated. Beggars came to Temple Magdalen all the time.
“He was about your daughter’s age—”
“His eyes, liebling, his eyes!” Berta cut in. “They were golden as the sun on the water. They were Sarah’s eyes.”
“Tell me everything,” I said.
Reginus and Timothy joined us with more wine, and they all talked at once, interrupting each other and adding details.
“He said his name was Saul—”
“And didn’t I point out that it started with the same letter as Sarah?” Berta said.
I did not add that Saul had once been the apostle’s name, but I began to tremble again.
“He said he was traveling to visit family in Jerusalem and asked for a few days of work to tide him over.”
“Well, of course we all asked him about his family and how he came to be traveling alone,” interrupted Berta.
“No, we didn’t all ask him that,” said Judith. “Some of us knew better. Some of us knew he must be in some kind of trouble. Some of us knew not to ask questions—”
“He had cuts and bruises all over him.”
I must have cried out.
“Honey, listen to me,” said Reginus, putting his arm around me. “I know what you’re thinking. That somebody beat him, but listen to this—”
“I had him out in the fields with me,” Timothy took up the story. “He was a good worker, quick to learn, uncomplaining. I didn’t have to stand over him all the time. So when I wasn’t right there with him, some gang of kids from town must have started taunting him. By the time I knew what was happening, those kids had turned tail, and Saul was standing here, still holding a knife. I mean, that kid can fight—”
“Which was why some of us thought the eyes were just a coincidence,” put in Judith. “What young girl would be able to best a gang of boys—”
“You don’t know Sarah!” I said, suddenly proud, forgetting for a moment that she was still lost to me. “On the mountain, she practically was a boy—”
Until she got her blood and everyone decided it was time for her to be a woman, I added to myself.
“I told you!” said Berta again.
“Tell me the rest,” I said.
“There is not a whole lot to tell, Red,” said Dido. “He wouldn’t tell us where he came from, and when we asked him about his family in Jerusalem, he clammed up. We figured either he didn’t really have anyone there or he had decided he didn’t want anyone to know anything more about where he was going or how to find him.”
“I told everyone not to question him,” said Judith again.
“But he asked questions,” said Timothy. “Or anyway, he asked me questions.”
“Because you’re the quietest,” said Reginus. “And you’re from around here.”
“What questions?” I pleaded.
“About Peter, for one thing. He wanted to know if I knew him, if he still lives in Capernaum. He said Peter was a friend of his family’s.”
“Did she go to Peter’s house? Is Priscilla still there?”
Absurd hope sprang into being—Sarah only six miles away with another old friend.
“Priscilla is still there,” Judith answered. “Life in Jerusalem didn’t suit her. But she hasn’t seen the boy—or the girl. We’ve already checked.”
“She asked about her father, too. Well, he didn’t say he was her father,” Timothy went on, helplessly mixing gender. “He just said he had heard that Peter followed a famous teacher and healer, who was killed in Jerusalem. He wanted to know if I knew him.”
“What did you say?” I asked. Did she ask about me, I added silently.
“I told her many of us knew him, because he used to stay with us sometimes, and then, well, I wasn’t sure how much to say, Red, about you and Sarah, how you had to run away….”
“You see, we’d kept the secret so long,” Judith added. “In the beginning, let me tell you, we were interrogated by one group after another: Pharisees, Temple priests, Roman officials. Every possible faction wanted to track down Jesus’s heir. But of course we could all truthfully say that we knew nothing of your whereabouts.”
I felt heartsick. What had I brought on my friends?
“No, Red,” Dido once more answered my thoughts. “None of us were tortured or imprisoned. It stopped at harassment, and business suffered for a while, but in the end everyone gave up trying to get anything out of us. But you must understand, we are wary of questions.”
“I wanted to tell her,” said Berta. “I didn’t know how she came to be without her mother, but if she had lost you, too, I felt that she should know anything we could tell her about her mother and father. I was very upset; I was afraid something terrible might have happened to you.”
Something terrible had happened to me.
“But where is Sarah now?” I asked; realizing no one had told me. “If she’s not in Capernaum…”
“We must tell her the rest,” said Berta.
“We argued about her,” Dido said bluntly, “about whether or not Saul was your daughter, what to do if she was. Late one night on the tower, not the most discreet
location, I realize now. It started out with all of us just contributing our own bits of information and observation—”
“Of course, it didn’t help that Paulina was there that night,” Reginus took over. “You know how insensitive she can be. She kept asking if any of us had ever seen the boy use the latrines. And she wanted to go that instant, find where the poor kid was sleeping, lift his or her tunic and have a look herself. Of course we restrained her, but the argument got a little loud.”
“What are you saying?” I asked slowly.
“We think she overheard us, Red,” Dido said as gently as she could.
I pictured Sarah creeping up the stairs, silent as any wild creature, to the very roof where she was born, the roof where I had stood so often with her father, gazing out at the water, where he and I had slept and sometime fought but more often made love under the night sky.
“In the morning she was gone.”
Of course, I had known, known she was gone, but hearing it was a fresh blow.
“She took cheese, bread, wine, and dried fruit with her.” Judith reached out and touched my hand.
“And we had given him, I mean her, fresh clothes and a warm cloak.”
“But this is her home,” moaned Berta. “Her first home, and we failed her, we failed Red.”
Everyone was weeping again; everyone but me.
“I have to go,” I got to my feet. “I love you all, but I have to go.”
And if I hadn’t collapsed as soon as I got to my feet, I would have just walked out into the night. My friends understood the urgency. By next morning, they had gotten me fresh clothes and supplies. I refused to allow any of them to go with me or to send word to Paulina, who would have insisted on more lavish travel arrangements.
The only thing that remained was to decide which route to take to Jerusalem, through the hills of Samaria or along the Jordan River Valley. Jesus and I had traveled both more than once, as Sarah would have known. When I appealed to my friends for advice, they were uncharacteristically reticent.
“Aren’t you still a priestess?” Dido finally said. “Have you forgotten how to divine what you need to know?”
All at once I felt bewildered, disoriented. Yes, I had forgotten everything I knew, all that I used to be. I was only a mother who had lost her child. Would any god or goddess answer me? Silently, I went back to the spring inside the Temple courtyard. Everyone knew to leave me alone. This spring had called me to this place. With water from this spring, I had washed my beloved’s wounds. Gazing into this spring, I had watched him set forth to seek the vision that had come to him in the desert. By this spring I had sat and watched him standing on the tower while the sun rose and the morning star disappeared.
I looked into the spring, seeing only the shifting patterns of light, sky, and the dark opening into the earth.
Beloved. I closed my eyes, and spoke inside my mind, and I realized how far away from him I had felt; in my grief, in my shame, I had shut him out. I have lost our daughter. Show me how to find her.
No images came, but for the first time since she had run away, I felt not hope exactly but something akin to it. And then I heard words, words I remembered from long ago: Being lost is the way, how else can you be found. How else can you find what you have lost: sheep, coins, love?
And I rose to go.
“Give my love to Priscilla. And to Paulina and Lucius….”
I found I could not speak as I embraced my friends one by one and then all together. We all knew that we might not meet again.
Guide my feet, I prayed, as I walked out of the gates of Temple Magdalen. Guide my feet into the way of peace.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
A LAUNDRESS FOR CHRIST
MY FEET TOOK ME THROUGH SAMARIA where I did not overtake Sarah or find anyone who had seen her. In spite of my grief—or maybe because of it—I could not be completely indifferent to spring wildflowers and fragrant herbs that covered hills in such profusion and set birds singing with joy. Memories of happiness stirred. I let them be, not trying to separate comfort from wounding. Much of my journey was solitary, for I was about a week behind the pilgrims heading to Jerusalem for Passover, which I was relieved to miss. I only hoped that if Sarah was there, amidst all those overwhelming, unstable crowds, she would be all right.
I had not been in Jerusalem since I had fled, pregnant with Sarah, almost fourteen years ago. In appearance, it was largely unchanged, still a city on a hill dominated by the huge Temple complex, a holy city still occupied by an unholy empire. Soldiers still stood guard on the ramparts of the Antonin fortress overlooking the Temple courtyard where my beloved had taught and preached and started at least one riot. Without even deciding to, I went to the Temple first, letting myself be pulled along with the throngs mounting the southern steps to the Courtyard of Gentiles. As I walked along the porticoes where people still gathered to hear preaching and scholarly debate, I realized that I was harboring a hope that I would find Sarah there, dressed as a boy, joining the debates and astonishing the elders just as her father once had. But in fact I saw no one at all that I recognized.
The noon heat and light had soaked into the stones, and I felt faint and dizzy. I hadn’t eaten yet that day, I realized. I decided to rest in the gardens where Anna used to sit, and then I would try to find my way to the communal house where I had lived briefly with Mary B. I hoped I would find her there. It dawned on me as I sat in the relative cool of a date palm that I didn’t have much of a plan. In my long journey I’d had only one thought: find Sarah. If and when I met people I knew, like Peter and James, what would I say? Sarah and I were supposed to be gone from the story, their story of Jesus. If they saw me here alone, they would want to know what had become of the child—the unacknowledged child of their Lord. Here was a truth I didn’t want to tell: She ran away from me, and she may be here in your midst.
“Anna,” I spoke out loud. “Tell me what to do.”
I heard only the water flowing from pool to pool.
“You’re gone, too,” I whispered, and I might have wept, but I was too tired.
It took me awhile to find the house I remembered in the warren of narrow streets. Finally I came to one that looked familiar, but I did not recognize the woman who answered the door. An older woman, I thought at first. About my age, I reminded myself, her face lined and a bit harried.
“Have you come about the fish?” the woman greeted me warily.
It took me a moment to realize that she had not mistaken me for a fishmonger, but was asking a question in code.
“Yes,” I hazarded a guess, but I had waited a moment too long.
“Tell me what the letters mean,” she demanded.
I did not know to answer, as you might, that in Greek, fish is an acronym for Jesus Christ Son of God.
“I am looking for Mary,” I skirted the question.
“Which Mary. There are a lot of Marys.”
You’re telling me, I did not say.
“Mary from Bethany,” I clarified. “She’s one of the elders of the ecclesia. She has a brother named Lazarus and a sister named Martha.”
“And how do you come to know Mary?” The woman was still suspicious. “Who are you?”
If you are thinking that the woman was not showing much Christian charity, remember followers of the Way were considered by Temple and Roman authorities to be an extremist sect, possibly dangerous and seditious. The leaders were often harassed and arrested, and in the early days Stephen had been stoned—by none other than Saul, in his pre-conversion days.
“I am a widow,” I began, “My name is Mary, too. I’ve just arrived in Jerusalem and…and I’m terribly hungry,” I concluded abruptly.
It was true enough, but it was also a way in. For no good Jew and certainly no follower of my beloved could refuse to feed a widow. Yahweh in his more benign moments (that is, when he wasn’t issuing orders to kill all men, women, children and livestock in whatever city he wanted conquered) had insisted on kindness to widows a
nd orphans. I won’t say the woman softened—she doubtless had to deal with beggars every day; charity as a doctrine is one thing, and it’s quite another if you are the one who has to do the meal planning, shopping, and cooking—but she did sigh and look resigned.
“I am Abigail, the head housekeeper,” she introduced herself. “Come to the kitchen then. I’ll see what I can find for you.”
“You don’t look Jewish,” observed Abigail as she set before me some unleavened bread (perhaps left over from Passover) and extremely well-watered wine, “Are you a God Fearer? Have you received the baptism of Christ?”
“I have been baptized,” I answered with ambiguity and truth.
“Who baptized you?” The interrogation went on.
I decided my brawl with John the Dipper in the Jordan River was not relevant. Better stick to the most recent episode, the one done in Jesus’s name.
“The apostle Paul,” I risked identifying him. “From Tarsus.”
“That one!” the woman sniffed. “We don’t all hold with his opinions here. He was sent off on missions quite a while ago. Where did you say you were from?”
I shook my head and made a business of chewing the dry bread to avoid answering.
“I’ve been away for some time,” I said vaguely. “Before I was widowed, I often stayed with Mary and her family. She and I are old friends,” I added, hoping she would not ask who my husband had been, though Yeshua was also a very common name.
“Well, I don’t like to say this, seeing as she is your friend,” began Abigail who clearly did want to say it. “She is a very devout woman, and they say the Lord favored her. They were close, if you know what I mean, no one knows how close. But if you ask me, she gets above herself. She is always arguing with the brethren.”
“That would be Mary,” I agreed. “Does she still live in this house? I would like to see her or send word to her, if she’s in Bethany.”
Abigail made a great deal of unnecessary bustle, wiping away the crumbs of the matzo bread, an imaginary drop of wine.
“No one knows where she is.” She finally decided to part with some information. “She left abruptly several days ago. That’s all I can tell you. Now I must get back to my work. Peter himself is back in Jerusalem, and all the elders are having a very important meeting in a few days, delegates coming all the way from Antioch. I’ve got a lot to do to get ready. I suppose you can stay awhile, since you say you’ve been baptized, but we all earn our keep here. Have a little rest, and then you can help in the laundry. The Lord’s brother is holy Nazirite—they only wear linen, in case you didn’t know—and he’s very particular about it. That’ll keep you busy until the elders have a chance to decide what is to be done about you.”
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