The Testament of Mariam

by Ann Swinfen

  We plunge into plans for the farm. I feel curiously enlivened by this unexpected addition to our household, though I know that it may not be easy to absorb seven adults and eight children into the life of the estate.

  ‘But,’ Fulvia asks, when we have risen to retire to our own belated beds, ‘where are they to live?’

  ‘We will build,’ says Manilius buoyantly. I can see how excited he is at the thought of realising his dream at last. ‘There’s that ruin of an old cottage beyond the orchard. It can be rebuilt. That’s the first thing we’ll do, before the oxen come. One family can move in there. Afterwards, we’ll decide where we might build another.’

  ‘You will keep them permanently?’ I ask.

  ‘There’ll be a great deal of work with the new vines. Once they make a profit, I can pay for the Israelites’ labour. And perhaps I’ll sell the field slaves and work only with free men. That’s how things were done in the old days, Father used to say. Before Rome came.’

  It’s true. I wonder, as I pick up my lamp and make my way to bed, what Petradix would have thought of all this. Later, I might ask the Israelites for more news of the Land of Judah. But not yet. I am not ready yet.

  My brother Shim’ôn reached manhood when he was thirteen and a half, and I was ten, so he was obliged to go with our parents to the Temple in Jerusalem for Pesah and the ceremony of bâr mitzvâh, when he would become a Son of the Law and be recognised as an adult man, with all its privileges and responsibilities. Yeshûa’s bâr mitzvâh had taken place several months before I was born, when he was only twelve. I had still been too young to remember when Ya’aqôb and Yehûdes had gone to Jerusalem, but I had a faint memory of Yoses’s bâr mitzvâh, which would have happened when he was thirteen and I was five. In an unusual spirit of generosity, he had brought back candied plums for Melkha and me from the city. I remember that I treasured them and made them last for months.

  That year when I was ten, Daniel was two and fully weaned, so both my parents would take Shim’ôn to Jerusalem. Ya’aqôb was anxious to accompany them, insisting that it was his duty to attend Passover. Indeed, the Law stipulated that every adult male should attend all three of the great annual festivals every year in Jerusalem, but the Law was drawn up generations ago, when our nation was not so scattered. Even our village was nearly a hundred miles from the capital. The journey would take at least ten days, over winding tracks and burdened with inexperienced travellers. Then a week must be allowed for purification, a week for the festival, and a ten-day journey home. In all, they would be away for more than a month. It was impossible for my father and brothers to fulfil all the rigid requirements of the Law, even more impossible for men who lived or traded in Arabia or Egypt or Greece or Italy. They attended Pesah when they could, a few times in their lives, and took their sons when it was time for them to dedicate themselves. Even so, I had heard it said that the crowds in Jerusalem sometimes numbered many hundreds of thousands. I could not comprehend such numbers.

  It was difficult for Ya’aqôb as well as my father to be spared from the work of the carpentry shop for so long, especially as Yehûdes and Yoses had been invited by Adamas to visit his home in Sepphoris and attend the lesser Pesah festival that would be held there. Neither of my two eldest brothers was yet married, or showed any sign of wanting to marry, but Yehûdes, who was now nineteen, and Yoses, who was a year younger, had both raised with our father the matter of taking wives. They were still young, but he was not unwilling. There were too many sons at work in one trade in a village as small as ours. It might be better if they started their own workshops in the city, though I think we were all aware that our parents were unwilling to see them go. However, he agreed that they could make the trip to Sepphoris and meet the families that Adamas thought might be interested in a marriage alliance. Nothing would be decided until my parents returned.

  Shim’ôn, Ya’aqôb and my parents left for Jerusalem as part of a caravan of pilgrims travelling from further north in the Galilee and gathering more and more people as it journeyed southward. They had paid for the use of camels, provided by the camel drivers who arranged these caravans every year. Later, they would have to pay for their accommodation in the caravanserai outside the walls of Jerusalem, and would buy a lamb for the sacrifice. It all meant a great deal of expense, and my father, with so many sons, had to pay, over the years, a good deal of money into the hands of camel drivers and the sellers of sacrificial animals in the outer court of the Temple.

  Soon afterwards, Yehûdes and Yoses set out in the early morning on foot for Sepphoris, where they would stay with Melkha and Adamas for two weeks before walking back again. They were in a state of high excitement, never having made such a journey on their own before. Left behind, waving them off as they went without a backward glance, we made a pathetic little party. The house, which usually seemed like to burst with all of us, was empty and echoing now that Yeshûa, Eskha, Daniel and I were the only inhabitants.

  By evening, as we sat down to our meal and darkness began to draw in, we were feeling somewhat forlorn. I was tired from doing all the work of the house; Eskha had taken advantage of the absence of our mother to run off to play with her friends in the village, instead of helping me; and Daniel had clung to the skirt of my tunic all day, worried by all this disruption to his normal life. When Yeshûa came in from his lonely day in the workshop, Eskha was sulking because I had scolded her and Daniel was whimpering because we had been quarrelling.

  ‘What is this?’ said Yeshûa, after we had washed and said the berâkâ and taken our seats on the benches at the table. ‘So many long faces! When Mariam has cooked us a fine meal of fresh bread and broth, with a bean and onion stew to follow. Eskha, why is your mouth looking like a dish turned upside down?’

  Eskha giggled a little at this, though she tried not to.

  ‘I don’t like it when everyone goes away,’ she said. ‘Will you tell us a story, Yeshûa?’

  I looked at him hopefully. He was a great teller of tales, my brother. Not only could he tell the ancient stories; he invented his own.

  ‘Eat your dinner,’ he said, ‘and when you have helped Mariam tidy afterwards, perhaps I’ll tell you a story. What sort of story would you like?’

  ‘Tell us about when you went to Jerusalem to be made bâr mitzvâh,’ said Eskha.

  ‘Would you like that, Mariam?’ He caught my eye over Eskha’s head.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You told me a long time ago about your journey to Jerusalem, but you never finished the story. Ya’aqôb told me once that you got into trouble.’

  He threw back his head and laughed.

  ‘Yes, indeed I did. And our mother was quite right to scold me, for I gave them many hours of worry.’

  After the meal was cleared away, we all sat on the floor on a pile of cushions, with just one lamp giving a dim glow, for a story is always better in a soft light. Yeshûa took Daniel on his lap and put an arm each around Eskha and me, and he began.

  I told Mariam how we travelled to Jerusalem, he said, and how Yehûdâ and I spent the first morning exploring the city. Our fathers had made the necessary arrangements for the purification, and after our midday meal we returned to the city together with the women. It is not permitted to participate in Pesah if one has corpse impurity. Perhaps you don’t know this, Eskha, but you can acquire it not just by touching the dead body of a loved one, but also by walking, even accidentally, over a grave, or comforting a bereaved family, or attending a funeral. There must have been hardly a person coming to the festival who had not incurred corpse impurity at some time in the course of the year.

  The whole ritual, which lasts a week, involves attending prayers at the Temple, and on the third and seventh day of the purification we were sprinkled with a mixture of water and the ashes of a red heifer. This is what our parents and brothers will be doing soon. After this sprinkling, on the seventh day, we all took ritual baths to wash away the last of the impurity, and washed all our clothes. It was a strange experien
ce, which left me feeling clean, but empty, like a glass vessel held up to the sun, ready to be filled with light.

  On the fourteenth day of Nissan that year, my father and Shim’ôn of Keriyoth went early into the city to purchase a perfect, unblemished male lamb for the Pesah sacrifice. It was essential to go early, for with so many people in the city it might be difficult to find a suitable animal later on. One lamb would be sufficient for our two families. Others in our caravan made arrangements to share with friends or with new acquaintances met on the journey. When they returned leading the lamb, Yehûdâ and I joined them, to go to the Temple for the sacrifice. I was given the lamb to lead by a leather thong, and it came with me happily, trotting by my side as if I were taking it to its mother. I felt suddenly like a traitor.

  ‘Isn’t it cruel, Father,’ I said, ‘to slaughter this young thing? It seems a shame to take its life when it’s so young.’

  ‘The Lord demands a sacrifice, Yeshûa. It is the Law. Besides, it shows our gratitude to the Lord for his protection of our people.’

  I had to accept his words, but as we came nearer to the Temple, my heart began to beat faster. Everywhere people were crowding forward. The noise and the heat were worse even than the day before. And the air was full of the terrified bleating of the lambs, lost and afraid without their mothers, already sensing the approach of death. As we were early, we were amongst the first to be admitted into the court of sacrifice. There were two rows of priests standing ready in their white robes as we crowded in. Two of the assistant priests, Levites clad in saffron robes, were counting us as we filed through the gateway. Then a harsh blast rang out as a priest blew upon a trumpet made of a ram’s horn, and the Temple guards swung the gates shut.

  ‘What are they doing?’ I asked. I was suddenly afraid. It felt as if we were being shut into a prison. A choir of Levites began to chant a psalm. Two of the priests advanced towards us, long knives catching the sunlight.

  ‘There are enough now for the first sacrifice,’ Shim’ôn of Keriyoth said. ‘The rest must wait till we have finished.’

  The priest nearest to us seized the first lamb by the wool on its back, gripped the struggling animal between his knees, and with a quick, practised stroke slit its throat. As the blood spurted out, he caught it in a cup until it overflowed, then returned the lamb to the owner and handed the cup to the priest next in line. Hand to hand, the cup passed along the row of priests until it reached the end. The last priest raised the cup above his head. His lips were moving in some sort of prayer, but the noise was so great I could not hear a word. Then he poured the blood over the altar, still steaming with the life of the lamb.

  I threw myself down on my knees beside our lamb and buried my face in its wool. I put my arms around it and could not stop myself sobbing. The poor thing nuzzled me, as loving as a pet dog. The air was filled with the stench of burning flesh as the entrails were thrown on the fire, and I thought I would never be able to breathe again.

  My father’s hand fell on my shoulder.

  ‘Do not shame me, son.’

  I stood up, rubbing the back of my hand against my face and the lamb leaned against my legs. I could not look at it.

  As the slaughter—the sacrifice—went on, the remaining lambs smelt the death and began to cry piteously. The priests were dyed to the elbows in blood, their clothes soaking, the ground around our feet flooded with it. Yahweh’s altar, of shining stone, scrubbed and gleaming when we arrived, was sticky, reeking, an object of horror. Where splashes of blood had begun to dry in the sun they darkened almost to black. There was a stench of murder everywhere and all the flies in Jerusalem had found their way to the sacrifice. They waded amongst the blood, their feet clinging to it. When one landed on my face, leaving its foul footprints on my skin, I gave a cry and beat it off.

  I could not watch as our lamb was killed, and I trailed after the men to the side of the court, with my eyes on my reluctant feet. They hung the lamb, which had been alive and breathing moments before, on one of the hooks fixed into the wall, while they skinned it and eviscerated it. They handed the entrails and the tail to a Levite to be burned at the altar, then wrapped the carcass in the skin and led the way out of the court.

  I was glad to turn my back on the butchery and looked up at the clear sky above, wondering where the lamb’s life had gone. Did a lamb possess more than a physical body? Could a lamb, who had yearned for his mother, and trusted me, and been terrified by death, be nothing more than a structure of sinew and flesh and bone and blood—so much blood? Was there not some sort of ru’ah in a lamb, even as in a man?

  High overhead, vultures were wheeling, drawn by the sight and smell of sacrifice.

  Chapter Six

  Of course, that was not the story he told us that day. He left out the horrors of the sacrifice and neither Eskha nor little Daniel noticed, but I realised that he was keeping something back. It would be years before I heard the true story. The image of my brother kneeling beside the lamb condemned to die will be forever associated in my mind with a lovely shaded lane, running along the western shore of the Lake of Gennesaret. It was spring time then, too. The lane was bordered with banks of wild flowers and there were young lambs in the fields, capering in their silly games, then rushing back to their mothers. It was not many weeks before Pesah, and I wondered how many of them would be rounded up and carted down to Jerusalem, to that courtyard stinking of blood and sacrifice to a jealous Yahweh. I knew from the way that Yeshûa caught my eye that he was thinking the same, and it was this that had prompted him to tell me more of that boyhood visit, his only one, to Jerusalem.

  ‘Though I must go again to celebrate Pesah there,’ he said. ‘Not this year, I think. Probably next spring. That will be best.’

  And although my brother and I were so close that we could often read each other’s thoughts, a curtain seemed to fall between us then, between our innermost minds, though we continued to walk companionably on from Magdala to Capernaum, where we knew there would be a good, nourishing meal awaiting us at the home of Zebedee, father of two of his followers, Ya’kob and Yôhânân.

  That evening when I was ten and he told his story, with the four of us sitting together on the floor, it had grown late by the time he described leaving the Temple after the sacrifice. He said the rest of the story must wait until the next night, for it was long past the time when Eskha and Daniel should be asleep.

  ‘Will you truly tell us the rest tomorrow?’ Eskha demanded, as I herded the two of them upstairs to the room the three of us shared. ‘Because I don’t see what you did that was so naughty.’

  Yeshûa laughed.

  ‘Ah, we have not reached that part of the story yet.’

  The following evening, we settled ourselves again after our meal, and Eskha began trying to guess what he had done.

  ‘You will soon find out, Eskha,’ he said. ‘Now hush, or I shall not be able to tell you what happened next.’

  As we walked back to the encampment, he said, our father gave me two branches to carry, I think because he wanted to distract my mind from the scene of the sacrifice. They were dried pomegranate sticks, strong yet quite flexible, but I had no idea of their purpose. Beside our two tents, the women had a fire lit, and various platters of food laid ready, but we did not touch them for our midday meal. They were to be part of the Pesah meal, which would take place at sundown. Instead, we ate a little bread and cheese and olives, and drank only water. It was a long time until the festal meal, and I was very tired, so I crawled into our tent and fell asleep.

  When I woke, the sun was dropping down towards the horizon and my father was calling me to come and help.

  ‘Now, son,’ he said, ‘you must see how we prepare the Pesah lamb for the feast.’

  I turned my face away from the flayed carcass which he had laid on the ground near the fire, but he placed his hand on my arm and squeezed it gently.

  ‘In two days you will make your bâr mitzvâh dedication, and then you will be a man. A man
must sometimes do things that seem distasteful. This is how we prepare the lamb.’

  He picked up the two pomegranate sticks. One of them he had cut shorter than the other, and he had whittled their ends to sharp points.

  ‘We must not break a single bone of the lamb’s body,’ he said, ‘so we run this longer stick up through the length of the body very carefully. You see?’

  I nodded without speaking. Yehûdâ and Shim’ôn sat opposite us, cross-legged on the other side of the fire.

  ‘Now I want you to take the shorter stick and push it, crossways with the first one, through the lamb’s shoulders.’

  I did as I was told, though my gorge rose. The flayed animal was slippery with blood, but I could still imagine under my hands his soft young wool. My mouth tasted sour with bile. When I was done, the dead lamb looked almost human, like a man nailed to a Roman cross. I passed the whole thing to my father, numb with horror, and rubbed the palms of my hands again and again in the dust, trying to scrape away the blood. There were two forked sticks driven into the ground on either side of the fire and he balanced the carcass across them. It would roast there, turned from time to time, until it was crisp and brown.

  Why was I so squeamish on this occasion? All my life I had seen animals slaughtered and eaten, and although I had never taken any pleasure in it, I had seen it as a necessary and acceptable part of life. Man must eat. The animals provide food. Yet somehow there had seemed to be a bond between that young lamb and me. I wished that I did not feel that I had betrayed him. I wished that he did not look so like a tormented soul, pierced on his cross, turning over the fire.

  As the sun sank below the horizon, we chanted prayers for the ending of the day and the beginning of the next, the fifteenth Nissan. The women sprinkled the roasting meat with a special mixture of Pesah spices which they had brought with them in a small cedar box, and Shim’ôn of Keriyoth’s maidservant cooked discs of unleavened bread on the hot stones beside the fire.