The Testament of Mariam

by Ann Swinfen

  ‘No, please stay.’

  There was silence for a while, but I could tell by his breathing that he was not asleep.

  ‘Yeshûa?’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘Do you think Melkha will be happy?’

  He did not answer at once. I heard him turn over, then he propped himself up on his elbow.

  ‘I think she has what she wants at the moment. I think she has every chance of living a contented life.’

  I did not think this was quite a straightforward answer.

  ‘Yeshûa?’

  ‘Yes, Mariam?’

  ‘Will you ever marry?’

  He was much longer answering this time, so that I turned my head to see if he had fallen asleep, but he was still leaning on his elbow and looking, not at me, but up at the sky.

  ‘I do not think I shall marry, Mariam. I don’t know yet what my life holds, but I think it will be something else, something that will demand everything of me, so that it would not be right of me to marry. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, though I did not.

  I lay back, searching the heavens until I found my blue star, and fell asleep smiling.

  Although I knew that, being a mere girl, I would never leave the village, except perhaps to marry, I had even then something of my brother’s restlessness. I tried to imagine the places Yehûdâ knew, like Sepphoris and the wicked city of Tiberias. I pictured myself walking through their streets, which I thought of as being like our twisting village lanes, only wider, lined with bigger buildings, but I sensed that I did not really understand what a city would be like. Above all, I wondered about the Holy City, Jerusalem. It was spoken about so frequently in the scriptures, with such awe, that it hardly seemed like a real place, yet my parents had been there, and all my brothers except Shim’ôn, the youngest, had made their bâr mitzvâh oaths there.

  Once, I asked Yeshûa to tell me about it. It was after Yehûdâ had gone away and Yeshûa was down by the river, fishing by himself. I’m not sure how I had managed to escape from my tasks, but I was lying on my stomach, watching the water ripple over the stones, sometimes forming odd whorls and patterns before flowing onwards.

  ‘My journey to Jerusalem?’ said Yeshûa, lazily trailing the bait for the indifferent fish. ‘I’ll tell you some of it, anyway.’

  He looked down at me with a rueful smile.

  ‘It was a journey that changed me. Perhaps it would have been better if it hadn’t.’

  He paused, searching inside himself for the memories.

  ‘I could hardly contain myself, you know, watching out for the caravan we were to join, but it came at last, and we set off, leaving the other boys and Melkha in the care of neighbours. My parents shared a camel; I was put to ride with a stranger, a taciturn man who’d travelled from faraway Sidon. I rode before him on the double saddle. I was glad of that, for if I’d been seated behind him I would have had my face pressed against the back of his chalouk and wouldn’t have seen anything of the country we passed through.

  ‘I’d never ridden a camel before, and I can tell you, Mariam, that it wasn’t pleasant! A camel seems to roll from side to side, and sway back and forth, and all the while its head nods in front of your eyes, so that the whole world dips and gyrates around you. At the end of the first half hour, I vomited over the side of the camel the whole of my morning meal of bread and shechar (now I was to be a man, I’d been allowed beer). I think my fellow passenger had been expecting this, for he heaved me sideways and dangled me over the void by my belt, to spare his clothes. When I was back in the saddle again, he passed me a cool pottery jar of water and I drank thirstily, for the sun was growing hot on my unprotected head. I thanked him, wiped my mouth on my sleeve, and draped a cloth over my head.’

  ‘Poor Yeshûa!’ I said with a laugh.

  ‘You may laugh,’ he said, ‘but we’ll see if you laugh when you first ride a camel! By now our village had long vanished into a fold of the hills. Everything before me was new and strange, and riding so high on the camel’s back, I could see the land of the Galilee stretching away for miles in all directions. I’d never understood before that the world was so large. We were descending southeast into the Jizreel Valley before turning south and following the ridge road along the edge of the Jordan Valley. After our small village fields, the rolling riches of Jizreel were staggering. I understood now why men called it the garden of Judah. The hazzan had taught us that it was the fertility of this valley that made possible the growth of the great cities. In ancient times, each family farmed its own land and grew its own food—as we do still. But once the land could be made to produce abundant crops, men could live idly in cities, feeding off the food taxes they took from the farmers.’

  He drew his fishing line out of the water and laid the rod down beside him on the bank. He was quiet for a long time, looking thoughtfully down at his clasped hands.

  I thought he had forgotten about me, and rolled over, shading my eyes with my arm. The leaves of the olive trees gave off a pungent scent in the heat, tickling my nose, so I thought I might sneeze. It was very quiet there at the end of the olive grove, beside the river, for the birds were roosting silently in the heat of the day. Only the cicadas kept up their endless, monotonous rasping, which seemed to blend with the cool music of the river in a strange counterpoint.

  ‘That was the beginning of my unease,’ he went on at last. ‘I’d never before thought about the injustice to farmers, for the tithes and land taxes were my father’s concern and not mine. Now I saw donkeys and camels loaded with baskets and bundles of foodstuffs, crates of chickens and ducks, great jars of wine and beer and oil, all heading towards the cities of the south. Eventually we met the wide road—beaten clay laid in some parts with stones—which runs north and south the whole length of the country. Along this even ox carts could travel, piled high with food.

  ‘ “Is that tribute for the Temple at Jerusalem?” I asked my travelling companion hesitantly.

  ‘He grunted. “Tribute for the high priest, and for the Sanhedrin and all the other tribes of priests and Levites and scribes to live off.’ He snorted scornfully. ‘What you see going north is taxes for the Roman prefect and his troops at Caesarea.”

  ‘He leaned to one side and spat, as though the very words had polluted his mouth, then he lapsed into silence again.’

  My brother paused, and began to arrange the fallen olives into patterns on the ground.

  ‘You mean,’ I said, not sure if I had understood, ‘that the priests and the Romans hadn’t grown the food for themselves. They hadn’t earned it?’

  ‘Something like that, Mariam. And in the villages we passed through, although the land was fertile, there were poor people, people going hungry, and I thought, Shouldn’t the food be given to the starving children, not to the Roman occupiers and the wealthy in Jerusalem? It troubled me.’

  ‘Did you stay at inns on the way?’ I asked. The thought of an inn seemed very sophisticated to me at the time.

  ‘Oh no! That would have been far too costly! Each time we halted for the night, we set up a caravanserai, with the camels and their Bedouin drivers forming an outer ring and the pilgrims in the centre. The Bedouins kept to themselves, preparing their own food, speaking their own language, and only addressing us in broken Aramaic to give us instructions: You wake now; Make food; Rain coming. They didn’t use tents, but rolled themselves up in their blankets and lay down beside their camels. We had tents woven from coarse goat hair, which we draped each night over a rough framework of branches. We boys were sent to find stones to weigh down the edges of the tents and keep them in place. Yehûdâ and I always went together, for he was travelling to celebrate his bâr mitzvâh as well, though he’s nearly a year older than I. He rode one of his father’s own camels, but I didn’t envy him. Terrible beasts! Our two families put up their tents together and our mothers prepared a communal evening meal, with the help of the two servants that Shim’ôn of Keriyoth had brought with him.’

>   ‘It must have been a wonderful adventure.’ I sighed enviously. Oh, to be a boy, and have the chance to travel the world and see Jerusalem!

  ‘Yes, most of the time it was,’ he said. ‘We suffered one storm, at the north gate of Jericho, a heavy spring thunderstorm, that soaked through our tents and flooded the ground. The next day everyone was drenched and bad-tempered from loss of sleep. Jericho was the first city I had ever seen, and I can tell you, I stood in awe of the wide streets and great stone walls. There were colonnaded public buildings, and a vast open marketplace where the camel drivers advised us to buy supplies, as everything would be scarce and expensive in Jerusalem. The city, however, was eerily quiet, with very few people in the streets. Yehûdâ’s father, who often goes to Jerusalem for Pesah, explained this was because most of the population would already have travelled the short distance to Jerusalem for the purification rituals. We would only just reach there in time.’

  Jerusalem! I sat up and wrapped my arms around my knees, waiting for him to tell me the rest of the story.

  We started early the next day, he went on, but even so it was late, past sundown by the time we set up the caravanserai just outside the gate of Jerusalem, for it was a longer day’s journey than usual. All the way the road was crowded with travellers, everyone heading in the same direction, and sometimes we couldn’t move forward at all. As we approached the Holy City, the lights were coming on one by one, and it seemed to grow before our very eyes, spread out over its many hillsides. I was too excited to sleep, and only dozed off far into the night.

  The next day was the seventh of Nisan, and the whole company, with the exception of the Bedouin, was to enter the city to begin the ritual of purification. For a few hours, while our fathers and the other men made the arrangements, Yehûdâ and I were allowed to explore the city. The women had remained behind in the encampment, otherwise I don’t think we would have been indulged. Or trusted not to lose ourselves! We were to meet the men at the gate nearest the caravanserai, the Lion’s Gate, no later than midday.

  We were thrilled but a little awed by our freedom, Yehûdâ and I, and we stayed close together. The streets were so thick with people, even the main thoroughfares, that we were shoved this way and that, and could scarcely keep on our feet. Although it was springtime, the heat was intense. Yehûdâ plunged his head in a horse trough to cool it down, and flung back his hair so that I was spattered with the drops. The water was so welcome that I did the same, and we walked through the streets, with our hair streaming over our necks and shoulders, and our mouths agape, true country boys overwhelmed by all we saw. Eventually, after wandering with no particular goal in mind, we found our way into a square at the junction of several streets.

  ‘Look, Yeshûa!’ Yehûdâ cried, pointing.

  The whole square was packed with market stalls, so close that the crowds could barely squeeze between them. Directly in front of us was a fruit stall such as we had never seen before. There were pyramids of pomegranates, cascades of figs and apricots, bowls of walnuts and almonds, bunches of fresh dates hung up on hooks, heaps of citrons and some fruit that looked like a citron but was orange in colour. There were melons of every shape and size. As we lingered before the fruit stall, the vendor, a small, weasely man who looked like an Arab, seized a cleaver and, with a single blow, chopped a huge melon with smooth green skin in half. The flesh was a crystalline red, and he carved us a thin shaving each to try. This was how manna in the desert must have tasted!

  ‘I will take half a melon,’ said Yehûdâ grandly, pulling his purse out from the breast of his tunic. He gulped a little when the price was mentioned, but was too nervous to try to haggle the price down. The man cut it in half again for us, and we found a seat on some stone steps to eat it. It was crisp and cold and wonderful after our poor food on the journey. We made it last as long as we could, spitting the seeds into the street. And received a torrent of complaints whenever we hit a passer-by. When we’d finished, we did as everyone else did, and threw the melon skins into the gutter.

  Beyond the fruit stall stood another from which rose an intoxicating scent, complex, strange. It was laid out meticulously with rows of copper bowls, each holding a heap of a single precious commodity, spices from the east: cinnamon and pepper, frankincense and mace, galbanum, nutmegs and myrrh, onycha and the precious flakes of saffron, protected from the wind by a delicate cloth of transparent silk. The stallholders were a man and woman with dark skin and eyes black as raisins of the sun, who had come from the far east, beyond the deserts of Arabia. She was veiled so that nothing of her face could be seen but the eyes, and her clothes were of turquoise silk with gold threads running through it. Her arms were loaded from wrist to elbow with heavy gold bracelets. The man, too, wore silk, but no jewellery except a heavy chain around his neck, and his eyes darted from side to side in his unmoving face—like . . . like a lizard’s—as he kept a fierce watch over his precious commodities. When a customer approached and began to bargain for nutmegs, he drew out a set of delicate scales, with weights no larger than my thumbnail.

  At last we grew tired of the heat and the throngs and made our way back to the Lion’s Gate, after some wrong turnings and asking the way several times. It seemed that most of the people in the streets were strangers too, and as confused as we were. I was relieved to see the gate and our fathers, and to escape from the crush of the crowds. I found I couldn’t breathe easily in a great city.

  I leaned back against my brother’s shoulder. I caught that faint scent of him, honey and cinnamon, and tried to imagine the spice-seller’s stall with all the mysterious goods I had never seen.

  ‘What is myrrh?’ I asked.

  ‘A rare and precious spice,’ he said, ‘used in sacrifice and for embalming the dead.’

  ‘Yeshûa! Mariam!’ It was Shim’ôn shouting to us from further up the hill. ‘You are to come home at once! Father needs you in the workshop, Yeshûa.’

  He came scrambling down through the edge of the olive grove, frowning when he saw us sitting at our ease beside the river.

  ‘So this is where you have run away to, while everyone else is working! Mariam, you’ll get a whipping if you don’t come back this minute and milk the goats. Mother has been searching for you everywhere.’

  We scrambled guiltily to our feet.

  ‘What about the rest of the story?’ I whispered. ‘You haven’t told me about your bâr mitzvâh.’

  ‘Later.’ Yeshûa winked at me. ‘When we can run away again.’

  But it would be two years before I heard the end of his story.

  I am not quite well enough to go again to the market in Massilia and I am making a misery of life for everyone on the farm. Manilius went down to deal with the captain of the ship from Judah and sold him a consignment of wine at a good profit, because the man was in too much of a hurry to argue over the price. I had intended to go with him, so that I might question the captain for more news, but the morning after my meeting with the two sailors I felt faint and dizzy, and had to let my son make the journey on his own. Ever since, I have noticed a slight shaking in my hands and if I stand up suddenly the world seems to tip crazily around me. It reminds me of how, when we were children, we would spin round and round, so that when we stopped it seemed as though the very ground leapt like a horse. I cannot imagine now why we enjoyed the sensation. I do not enjoy the sensation of being not quite in control of my body.

  I think perhaps I have a touch of the sun. Fulvia fusses around me like an old hen.

  ‘Do not make such a to-do, girl!’ I say to her in exasperation. ‘I am not a child, to be fidgeted over. You set my teeth on edge.’

  ‘You are not a child, Mother Mariam,’ she says soothingly, showing far more patience with a bad-tempered old woman than ever I would have done. ‘But you are no longer young and you always try to do too much. Please, go and lie down in your room and I will bring you a cool drink.’

  ‘I will be well enough in the vine arbour,’ I say stubbornly. I try to
stamp outside with my usual vigour, but my knees, like my hands, are a little shaky.

  I make my way to my favourite seat, steadying myself against pillars and the corners of walls when I hope she is not looking. I want to remove myself from the sound of their voices, hers and Manilius’s, wondering what to do with me, ever since my strange talk of bishops and murder and unknown uncles, and my general odd behaviour.

  A week has passed since I met the sailors, one of them a follower of the Christ cult, and their ship is long gone on its return journey. Manilius is pleased with his dealings and Sergius has come to visit us—partly for a celebration meal with us, partly (I suspect) because Manilius has told him of their worries about me, so he has decided to come and see for himself. He joins me now on the terrace, sitting on the low wall with his back to the sea and his hands loosely clasped between his knees. He is a good-looking young man, so that I am surprised that no clever Massilia girl has managed to entrap him yet.

  ‘What is this about an uncle in Palestine, Mother?’ he asks. ‘I thought you had no family.’

  ‘I never said that,’ I answer. ‘I simply never told you about them. Ya’aqôb was my second eldest brother. They are all dead now.’

  ‘And was he truly the bishop of Jerusalem? A leader of the Christ cult?’

  I can see that he does not believe this, but wishes to humour me.

  ‘Does that surprise you? It is true.’

  He is not convinced, I can see that, but neither is he as incredulous as Manilius and Fulvia.

  ‘But . . . the Christ cult! Mehercule! That could be dangerous.’

  ‘I did not say that I was a follower.’

  ‘No.’ He looks at me thoughtfully and a little too shrewdly.

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Every man’s conscience is his own affair,’ I say, closing my eyes, indicating that I wish to close the subject, but he pursues it.

  ‘Did you know that it is spreading?’ he says. ‘All through the Empire, and the Emperor does not like it. Even here in Gallia, it is said that they are building secret places of worship, temples to their Christ-god.’