The Sisterhood

by Helen Bryan

  People whispered the boy was an infant sorcerer or a demon, and parents ordered their children to give the prodigy a wide berth. So the boys didn’t ask Jesus to join in their play, and after a minute Jesus shrugged and walked alone down the stream looking for minnows.

  Salome kicked off her sandals, too, but the water was deep so she sat and dabbled her dusty toes up and down.

  “What are you making?” she asked the boy nearest her. He was slapping wet clay into a high mound.

  “Girls belong indoors. Go home!” he muttered.

  “A fort,” said another boy, scooping up more muddy clay and shaping it into a wall around the mound. “One that’s too strong for the Romans.” He looked over his shoulder as he said this. “Judas Maccabeus and his army are waiting inside for the enemies of Israel to come close, then they will burst out and kill them to the last man. Their blood will soak the ground.” As he said the word “blood” he slapped on handfuls of mud so violently that Salome was splattered. She wiped her face with her forearm but knew better than to complain.

  “Death to the Romans. May they bury their children,” said the boy building the fort loudly, and spat with contempt. Jesus stood up straight and frowned at the speaker. The boys stopped what they were doing and held their breaths until Jesus went back to his minnows.

  Two older boys came splashing over to tell their friends building the fort to be quiet. One slipped and fell, knocking down the fort’s walls and provoking angry shouts from the builders. The rest of the boys gathered around, shouting and arguing about who was at fault. Suddenly there was a tussle and the knot of shouting boys slipped and shoved and slid on the muddy bank of the stream, trampling the last vestiges of the fort and knocking Salome into the water. She tried to get out of the way but they knocked her down again and again. Her head went under the water. Choking and frightened, she struggled for a foothold in the streambed but it was too slippery and she couldn’t stand up. Then a boy’s foot went into her stomach and she felt the boys on top of her no matter how frantically she tried to push them off. Trapped, she tried to call her brother, but muddy water filled her mouth and nose and she couldn’t breathe…The boys’ shouting grew fainter. There was no sound but a gurgling bubble.

  When Salome opened her eyes she was lying on the bank, still unable to draw breath. Her chest hurt and Jesus was shaking her. Finally she turned her head and vomited dirty water. The boys stood at a distance terrified, only held back from running away by a greater fear of what might happen to them and their families if they didn’t pacify Jesus first.

  “Don’t cry,” said Jesus to Salome, ignoring them. He pulled her to sit upright and patted her back.

  “Is Salome alright?” asked one anxiously. “We didn’t see her.”

  “We’re sorry!” muttered another sullenly. “Say sorry,” he hissed at the others.

  “Sorry, sorry. It was an accident, Salome,” they mumbled, keeping wary eyes on Jesus. “Little girls should stay home with their mothers and sisters,” said the bravest one, though he didn’t say it very loud. “It’s where girls and women belong. Then they wouldn’t fall in the water…”

  “Stupid girl!” muttered another.

  Jesus ignored them. Salome rubbed her eyes with her fists. She coughed some more to get the mud out of her throat.

  “Watch.” Jesus took some wet clay from the bank and rolled it in his hands. “Look, a swallow!” he said. Salome was dubious. It looked like a ball of mud.

  Jesus set it on the ground. “Here, we’ll make some more.”

  He made a circle of lumps around Salome and gave her one to hold.

  “Now watch!” Jesus clapped his hands and Salome felt the cool clay in her hand grow warm and soft and feathery, then it began to chirp and move its wings. She shrieked with surprise and delight. “You made a bird!” she exclaimed.

  “No, I only shaped the clay; it is a bird by Jehovah’s will,” said Jesus, and the swallow flew out of Salome’s hands and into the air. Jesus clapped his hands again and the other lumps began to flutter and chirp as well, hopping about on the bank around Salome before flying into the air. “All things that happen, happen by Jehovah’s will, Salome.”

  The watching boys were rooted to the spot, terrified first by what they had done. Salome had been lying under the water with her mouth and eyes open when they had finally noticed her under their feet. Dragging her body onto the bank they knew she was dead, and the look on Jesus’s face when he came splashing from his minnows to push them away promised a terrible retribution. Now the drowned girl was alive and laughing and clay swallows were flying around her shoulders. With one accord, the boys scattered, running for home, wailing that the boy Jesus had a sister touched by sorcery, too.

  Menina read the story to Alejandro and Ernesto as they sat in the café waiting for the café owner to bring them supper. “There’s a painting of that, in the sala de las niñas.” said Menina.

  “Serafina Lennox is going to be very, very surprised,” muttered Ernesto as their food came.

  “And there’s more,” said Menina

  “Don’t keep us in suspense!” exclaimed Ernesto.

  “Wait till I’ve eaten!” Menina laughed.

  The second story of the Gospel of our Foundress Salome, this is dictated by our first Abbess, of blessed memory, who witnessed these things and later dictated them to our first scribe.

  The Coast of Hispania, 37 AD

  Two Roman centurions in a harbor tavern watched as the merchant’s ship pulled into the harbor among the fishing boats and dropped its anchor. It belonged to a Palestinian merchant named Joseph, from Arimathea, who came several times a year to take on provisions before sailing on to Britannia where he traded spices and wine for tin and lead from the Britannia mines.

  The centurions sometimes purchased a ribbon or a few cheap silver bangles from him to give Flavia, the youngest of the port’s whores. She loved trinkets. At fourteen, Flavia preferred the younger soldiers who would compete for her favors, but if older men gave her a pretty present she would favor them.

  Joseph’s boat pulled into shore and dropped anchor. A group of women and their belongings were bundled roughly off the boat and dragged through the shallows toward the shore. “New whores.” The centurions looked at each other and smiled. “Flavia will scratch out the eyes of any more beautiful than she is.”

  Sailors strode through the water, dragging women who were hampered by waterlogged skirts and cloaks. The younger ones shrieked and stumbled and the older ones pleaded. From the boat, bearded men watched from the stern with folded arms and pursed mouths. Only the last woman, carried roughly ashore between two sailors, did not beg or protest or cry. She spat and fought.

  She kicked the sailors who deposited her roughly on the shore. She had a handsome face, tanned from the Levantine sunshine, with dark eyes and heavy brows that met over a long nose. She threw back her head and her head covering fell off to reveal a tumble of black hair almost to her waist. She raised her fist and shook it at the men in the boat. In a clear voice she shouted, “For shame, Joseph! Shame on you all, to treat women so! We have traveled with you and endured the same hardships. We have softened the hearts of those who would have thrashed you for your arrogance and your squabbling. Now, to lure us here with lies…saying there was need of us in Britannia…Deceiver, miserable carrion! May your sails rot and your cargo spoil and the winds carry you out of sight of land until you repent.” She ignored a sailor who flung a small bag of coins at her feet and hurried out of kicking range.

  Joseph leaned over the gunnels and shouted back, “Look to yourselves now, women! We warned you, beware of Salome!” He shook his fist back at her. “She has led you astray from the law and a Jewish woman’s duty, to her home and family. Was Moses a woman? Were the prophets women? Can women study Torah? It is written that the synagogue and study house are the province of men. A woman’s voice in the Temple is like the braying of an ass. You think of a community of women and scholars, bah! Stay there unti
l you come to your senses!”

  A breeze spun the woman Salome’s long hair out around her head as she shouted something back. Her cloak billowed behind her and she shouted angrily and shook her fist as the sailors lifted the anchor, raised the sails, and began to tack back into the Mediterranean. Salome stamped her foot angrily. “A vixen!” muttered the first centurion. “No, a witch or a sorceress, the wind bears her curse after them…see that cloud on the horizon? Has she conjured a storm to sink them on the Bicaien Sea?”

  But the cloud was only birds, returning from Africa after the winter was over. Headed for Hispania, flying low. For a moment the boat was in shadow as they passed overhead.

  Onshore, Salome picked her veil up and threw it over her head. She retrieved the coins and turned to the other women. “Come, have courage! It must be God’s will. We will go and find our brother Titus and our sister Octavia. It is something to be on dry land again. It will be a comfort to enjoy the fellowship of others besides those stiff-necked fools. Come.” She began to pull the women to their feet.

  A young girl with painted eyes and ringlets emerged from the door of the tavern. She sauntered slowly down to the beach to stare at the women. She pointed, arm jangling with cheap bracelets, and cried shrilly that she needn’t bother scratching anyone’s eyes out after all.

  “Child,” said Salome.

  “Flavia,” said the girl. She pointed to the medal Salome was wearing. “Pretty,” she said, leaning close enough to flick it insolently with her fingernail. “Sell it to one of those fellows—they’ll give it to me.” She pointed at the centurions. Then she walked back to the tavern with a deliberate sway in her hips that was not lost on the two men.

  A year later the same centurions watched as Joseph and the men sailed back into the port. They were met on the shore by Titus, the husband of Octavia, the deaconess. “Welcome,” said Titus, rather sourly. A small crowd gathered to see what would happen next.

  “Greetings, Titus! Have our women learned their lesson? Keeping modestly indoors, are they? Ha ha!”

  Titus stared at Joseph. “You old fool! All the women here, Octavia my wife and my daughters among them, have taken themselves to the mountains. They…they have a community of women, with no men, the mountain…I hold you responsible for bringing that woman, sister or not…” Titus’s speech could not keep pace with his anger.

  “You mean Salome?” ventured one of the new arrivals.

  “Who else would cause so much trouble, idiot! The women hadn’t been here two days before she began preaching. What set her off was the prostitute Flavia. Salome found her weeping over her rough treatment at the hands of a centurion—nothing out of the ordinary for those girls, that’s what they’re for. But Salome was angry, and became angrier when Flavia told her she was with child. She began preaching against those who use women ill by selling them. Whores stopped working, and gathered to hear her instead. And when she was done, Salome insisted Flavia join the Sabbath meal at my house—imagine! Octavia defied me and welcomed her!”

  “Why didn’t you order Octavia to send the harlot away instead of allowing her to defile the Sabbath meal? Is she not your wife to command? Is it not your house?” asked a man.

  Titus shuffled his feet. “You have no idea what they’re like when they get something in their heads. One or two, you can beat into submission, so many…” He shrugged. “But that’s not all…someone asked Salome if she had her brother’s powers. She insisted her brother Jesus was a prophet who claimed no powers. He and she were ordinary Jews, servants of God seeking to do God’s will on earth. The women began shouting they were servants of God as well. Just imagine! Even the whores! And they would no longer serve men but God.”

  Within days the commander of the Roman camp was threatening to punish the entire Jewish community unless they silenced Salome. The whores were refusing to work and demanding to be baptized, and the whore master was busy flogging them.

  Joseph stared at him aghast. “Where are the women now?”

  “There.” He pointed toward the mountains. “Most of the women have gone—our wives, daughters, sisters, and the whores. The women claim they will live in the mountains like the Essenes—no husbands, no children—a religious community. Of women!”

  “The mountains? Essenes were in the desert!”

  “That’s not the point! Wherever they are, it’s against the law, against nature. Even Octavia has gone, saying they will need women who are educated as she has been. I blame her parents—why teach a girl to read and write? The camp commander sent soldiers to bring them back, with Salome in chains.”

  “Have they returned yet?”

  “No. Because something else happened.”

  Menina, Alejandro and Ernesto had reached coffee and dessert by this stage. The café owner had brought plates of the small sweet pastries left over from Easter and the table was littered with crumbs that Menina was gathering up with the tips of her fingers as she spoke. “I can’t wait for you to see the paintings themselves. One of them is a painting of the women on the beach—the curious thing about it is a cloud in the corner that looks like an accident or mildew. You hardly notice it at first, then it starts to draw your eye until it’s the most important thing in the painting. There’s also a portrait of Flavia—well obviously as Tristan Mendoza imagined her,” said Menina. “My guess is, he got a last chance to paint a sexy woman and he went for it. And now that I’ve read this I think one of the pictures is of the Sabbath meal Flavia was invited to. Now here’s the last part…”

  Here is the third story of the Gospel of our Foundress Salome dictated to our scribe Octavia by our first Abbess, of blessed memory, who witnessed these events with her own eyes.

  I, Flavia, left the town in search of the other women as soon as I could escape. I had been locked up by the commandant to prevent my joining the other whores and was used so mercilessly by the soldiers, because the other whores had gone, that I thought I would die. Still when God opened the way for me to go I found strength to flee for my child’s sake. And by mercy I was able to join the others. All of us were anxious, fearing husbands and fathers and soldiers and the whoremaster.

  Every night Salome gathered us and repeated her brother’s teachings about a good life, through serving God and sharing and kindness among ourselves. Is there hope of finding something beyond the cruelty of men in this life? Her words are like warmth and sunlight. But to think of women going all alone into the mountains to live! Away from men! My heart lifts even though our lives will be hard, if we survive at all. Following the swallows we found an old road marked with white stones. Local people pointed to a mountain where they say there are caves inhabited by an old settlement of Carthaginian women, and we used Salome’s fund of Roman coins to purchase bread and porridge, woven baskets for catching fish, and even goats until we were driving a small herd. A few women who grew tired were persuaded to stay behind by men needing wives in the little settlements we passed through, but most of us kept on.

  After weeks of walking, living on wild fruit and catching fish in the mountain streams, tired and footsore, we reached the place where the caves are. We saw no sign of any living person, but found terraces of untended olive trees full of fruit, with a broken press and more terraces where grapevines and fields of wild beans flourished. There was a stone enclosure with the remains of huts where goats must have lived, fruit trees, and many mountain springs with fresh water. We found old combs, a few chipped pots and water jars, small sharp bone tools, some rotting blankets, and a small stone altar with a goddess and an inscription even Octavia cannot decipher. We drove the goats into the enclosure and barricaded it against wolves, then set about making our homes in the caves. We all worked hard, knowing that winter was coming; getting firewood, drying fruit and fish and wild beans, which we ground into a kind of paste to make bread, repairing the press as well as we could and taking turns yoking ourselves to a kind of harness to press oil. We made cheese from the goats’ milk, gathered wild herbs to dry in the s
un, and one of our women found hives of bees and managed to remove the honeycombs. We all long for salt, but there is none. Still, our rough encampment is habitable. If others have survived here, we may survive, too. Salome leads us in prayers each morning and night.

  Then one day at the end of summer, as the evenings were turning cold, and we were hastening to collect as much firewood as possible before winter, a boy arrived from one of the villages below with terrifying news—a party of centurions was coming. Many wept and I swore that I would not go, but would throw myself from the cliff first. Salome said we must have faith in God and above all not be distracted from our tasks.

  Though we expected the centurions every minute, still they did not come and we were relieved to think they had turned back and ceased to worry about them. One day Salome stayed below while the rest of us ventured a longer way up the mountain than usual to collect fallen branches after a storm. We heard angry shouts below, and leaving our piles of wood we began hurrying back to camp. To our horror, from above we could see Roman soldiers rushing into our camp, and the first ones were advancing on Salome. One clutched her gown and ripped it from her shoulders. Another tore her shift from her body. She turned this way and that trying to run, naked save for the medal round her neck, and they blocked her way and taunted her to prolong her fear and the moment of retribution. There were cries of “Teach the witch a lesson first, then teach the others” as they closed in for her. We stumbled down toward her crying, “No!” and saw Salome look up beyond us. Then the swallows came, their shrill cries, louder and louder, and a dark mass of birds descended on the soldiers, pecking at their eyes and helmets. The soldiers slashed with their swords, wounding each other and cutting many birds into pieces.