by Tracy Groot
“Responsible? For Nathanael’s death? Didn’t we talk about this? Just before Prometheus did that?” She nodded at his nose. “Tell me you don’t feel responsible, Joab. You did what you could to prevent it.”
Joab did not answer. After looking on the water for a while, he said, “Here we are again, same place. Talking about things that are—” He broke off and said suddenly, “You know, someday all I want to do is talk about—”
“Mortar.”
“Yes. Or where I can get a decent pair of sandals.”
“How about Theron’s sniff? You ever notice that? I always want to blow my nose when I hear it.”
“I always want to tell him to blow his own.” After a time his smile faded. “At least your part is over. I still have to tell her Nathanael’s last words.”
“You want me to go with you?”
“No.” Then, “Did you ever hear that story?”
Jorah picked up a handful of the shore and sifted the wet shells and gravel in her hands. “You said something about an adulteress and stones.”
“That’s the one.”
“Bits of it. They always kept me from what he said or did.” Her hands stilled at their sifting. “Tell me.” She raised her eyes to his. The ache in her heart made it hard to keep the pleading from her voice. “Tell me everything you know that he said or did. I don’t care how outlandish it sounds.”
“Outlandish. Well, this was that—if you call putting the Torah on end and spinning it ‘outlandish.’”
“That isn’t funny.”
“Of course not.”
She gazed at her fistfuls of the shore. “Is this one of the stories of blasphemy? If it is, I don’t want to hear it. Tell me how he walked on water. I like that one. I like the one about the demon man from Gerasene.” She clenched her fists, making the shells and gravel squeak. “I like the healings. He did those things, Joab. My brother—” She stopped, because the pain came so sharply.
“Yes, he did those things,” Joab said, looking out across the sea. “He did things and he said things I am having a frightful time ignoring.”
She blinked rapidly. “Why don’t you do what I do? Shut out the bad and try to think only on the good.”
“It’s the bad that’s got my attention.”
She watched a seagull feather tumble past, scurrying with the wind. Presently, in a very small voice, she asked, “How bad was this?”
“He defied Torah. She was an adulteress, she had stones coming to her. It was justice. I looked it up to be sure, it’s in the book of Leviticus. See, some men had dragged her to him. And I don’t think they really cared about the woman, they were just using her. Using her to taunt him because they knew . . . somehow they knew he might give a different answer from Leviticus. They wanted it so they could use it against him. And sure enough . . . he gave a different answer. ‘He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.’”
Jorah considered the words. This was not what she expected, she’d heard worse behind the workroom curtain flap. She had heard he said, and this had to go down as the worst, “Before Abraham was born, I am.” She had been wincing in anticipation of Joab’s words, and now felt only relief. “What’s so bad about that? It sounds like mercy to me.”
“Exactly!” Joab snapped. “These words, of which I am courier, made every one of those men drop their stones. They shouldn’t have done it. I wonder if they regretted it.”
“Oh, really?” Jorah retorted. “You would have dropped your own stone if you were there. What makes you so different?” When Joab tried to speak she cut in with, “Why does this eat at you so? This was the last thing we talked about right here.”
“Yes,” Joab said bitterly, “and I’m no closer to figuring it out.”
“What is so hard? It was mercy.”
“Yes! It was mercy and it was defiance! Those men should have told him he defied Law. Instead, every one of them dropped his rock. That’s what I heard—every one. The oldest ones first, and they should have known better. The Law is for deterrence from wicked ways, Jorah. She had stones coming to her.” He sagged a little, as if some of the heat had gone out of him. “But he said no.”
Jorah lifted her chin and tossed her hair back. “I think those are the best words he ever said.”
“They were defiance.”
“I’ll treasure them,” she snapped.
Joab didn’t seem to hear. His gaze was on the water. And to Jorah’s complete surprise, his lips trembled very slightly. Some strange emotion played all over his face—anger mostly. But were those tears in his eyes? He was unaware of her gaze, unaware as he talked to the sea. He had forgotten her, in fact, just as he had before.
“He said no, and they did something quite monumental by dropping those stones: they agreed with him. How could they do such a thing? That is what—” his fists balled, and the color deepened on his cheeks—“angers me so. I don’t know why they did it. They were wiser than I am. Older than I am, more learned in the Torah. Do you know how long it took me to find the stones passage? They could probably quote it like the Ten Commandments.”
He did not speak for a while, deep in his brooding glower. He took up again as morosely as before. “So what am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to do with his words, and how they responded? It’s as if he said to them, ‘This is what the Torah says, but I’m telling you something different.’ And they agreed by dropping the stones.” He dug at his eyes with the heel of his hand and shook his head. “That’s terrifying, absolutely terrifying, because it was blasphemy or it wasn’t, and I wish to God I didn’t have to decide. Wish the words had been anything but those. I want to just tell her and run. Leave her to them. That’s all I’m supposed to do anyway, right?”
An unexpected thought came to her, then, as she watched him watch the sea, that perhaps Joab was the only one to carry those words. Maybe he was meant to. She liked that thought. Another thought came after, that this was just the sort of man she wouldn’t mind spending a lifetime with because he ignored her: clean forgot she was there for the pondering of things so deeply stirring that tears came from it. And that thought made her own tears come, because she hadn’t expected to feel this way again.
Nathanael did that. Ignored her for the pondering of God things. No one was supposed to make her happy again, happy over being completely ignored. Maybe that was her own personal fate, because it had been happening all her life. For the first time she realized she didn’t want it any other way.
“He said dizzying things,” Joab murmured in grim wonder. “I feel as though I am at a great height when I hear them.”
A tear tingled down the sunburn. “Oh, be quiet. I don’t like talking with you, Joab.”
Startled, he blinked and looked at her. “I’m sorry. I’ll go if you want.”
“Don’t you dare.” Jorah sniffed and wiped the grit off her hands with her tunic. She reached for her wadded head covering and shook it out to dab her face. “My nose is swelling, in case you’re interested. You may want to kiss me.”
His laughter was startling. She kept dabbing to hide her smile.
“I hear you raised a stink for my release,” Joab finally said. “A ‘mighty’ stink. That’s what Theron said.”
Jorah shrugged and said loftily, “I’d have twice as much work to do, putting in that walkway.”
“Why aren’t you wearing your head covering?”
“Are you going to stone me for it?” When he laughed again, she eased back on her arms and nodded toward the harbor. “Look at that one. That one won’t make it through.”
Joab followed her glance and cocked his head. “I don’t know. I’d bet a kiss on it.”
“Oh, really. A kiss if it makes it or if it doesn’t?”
“Either way.”
This time Jorah laughed, and Joab grinned that small self-satisfied grin she was getting used to. It didn’t last long, though. It was as if he would not allow himself to stray long from what was his burden
ed responsibility.
“‘My kingdom is not of this world,’” Jorah offered, despite herself. “That’s the one thing he said that stays with me. I heard it from my brother-in-law, Matthias. He said it to Pilate. ‘My kingdom is not of this world.’” She glanced at Joab. “I suppose you’ll be going to Jerusalem.”
Surprise arrested him, made him gaze at her. As he searched her eyes, it occurred to her that another’s eyes did not have to be golden to catch her attention. His were a deep brown, slightly turned down at the edges.
“How did you know—Jerusalem has been on my mind, but vaguely. Not even a solid thought.” His gaze became curious.
“That’s where they all go for answers about Jesus. I wonder if James and Jude found theirs. I wonder if any of them has.”
“I’m curious about his followers, if they dispersed or stayed together. If they are together, who is their leader? What is their agenda? Most important of all . . . what conclusions did they come to about Jesus and his relation to the Torah? Is there a new kind of—” He pressed his lips, as if he couldn’t quite say it.
“Judaism.” Yes, saying it made her stomach dip. “I think, now, that I would like to know those things too.”
Joab scooped up sand and let it drain through his fist. “What will Theron do without us . . . ?”
“We must finish the ribbon mosaic first.”
“Yes.”
“We can’t leave him to that.”
“No.” He looked up from the sand. She could feel his eyes on her face, but didn’t want to look yet, not with what she had just admitted. She was going to Jerusalem? For her, it was as close to proclaiming belief in her brother as she could get. But not yet. Not yet.
“How long do you think it will take us to—what’s the matter?” Joab asked.
“I’m not sure,” Jorah whispered. Her skin prickled all over, not from the breeze. “I have to think.”
Nathanael’s words. “Joab, what exactly were Nathanael’s last words?”
He shrugged. “What I told you. About the stones and the accusers—”
“No, no, no. Exactly what he said.”
His face softened in remembrance. “He said, ‘Tell her, no stones. Go for me. Tell her what Jesus said.’”
“Tell her. Go for me . . .” Jorah whispered. It couldn’t mean . . .
It did mean.
She seized his arm. “Oh, Joab. He forgave her.”
“Well . . . of course he did. I think that was the whole point.”
“No—you don’t understand. He forgave her. Not for the—But for the—” It was too much. She scrambled to her feet, hardly knowing where she walked.
No, no . . . how could he forgive her for that? How could . . . ? Yet his mother was his last thought on earth. His last wish was for her to know he forgave.
“Why are you crying?” Joab was at her side, following her weaving walk.
She lifted her arms and let them fall. “There he goes again, leaving me for God things. No, I wasn’t his last thought on earth. It was for her. For the one who gave him scars. You’ll be the same way, with my luck. Your last thought as you’re drifting out of this earth will be all God and mercy.”
With any luck at all, with all the fortune and blessing she could hope to find, that’s exactly how it would go.
He caught her and held her, and it was pure relief to let go and rest against him.
She let herself be held, until she was holding too. “Don’t stop where you’re going, Joab. Don’t you stop.”
Maybe he didn’t know exactly what she was talking about, but he whispered into her hair, “I won’t.”
He was late for his appointment with the marketplace Jew, but Janus Bifrons made his way slowly up the Cardo Maximus. He didn’t feel like talking of gods today. What he had witnessed today was enough to make Janus wish his mother had never dedicated him at all. Such an awful thing, seeing that child torn from his mother.
The shrew Rhodinia—and the gods stew him in the Styx if he ever gave an offering for her again—had rushed past him in the corridor, dragging the Jewish laundress to Prometheus. The child trotted trustfully behind, grasping his mother’s tunic. Janus had paused to peek in at the triclinium, where Prometheus lounged at breakfast and considered the child before him.
The little boy gazed about the room in interest, oblivious to the shrieking woman. He blinked at the black-and-white mosaic on which he stood, cocked his head to look at it differently. He covered up one mosaic square with a toe, then moved his toe to peek at it again. He did this several times while the shrew carried on. Janus had watched the child, foreboding welling within, because Prometheus was not Orion.
Prometheus reclined on a couch, poking at a bowl filled with Dothan figs. He glanced at the child only once, when Rhodinia yanked him forward by the neck of his tunic. The child twisted, trying to see his mosaic piece. When he could see it no more, his soft gaze floated about until it rested on something Janus could not see. Something on the table at which Prometheus reclined. While words rose and fell about him, the child’s gaze stayed on the certain object. He cocked his head, looking at it.
When Rhodinia marched in triumph from the room, with the child shoved in front of her and the Jewish mother wailing behind her, Janus observed the expression on the child’s face. Vacant, yet unhappy. He knew something was wrong. He didn’t know what. The mother screamed all the way down the corridor, and Prometheus Longinus popped a fig into his mouth and consulted his beeswax tablet.
Janus shook down his bracelets and stepped around a pile of donkey dung. Doing so, he banged into a man pushing a two-wheel cart and earned himself what was surely an Aramaic curse. Janus instantly jabbed the air with two fingers like snake fangs and muttered a cant to ward it off. The man pulled back, looking Janus up and down, then shook his head and wheeled the cart off.
Before he knew it he was in the marketplace and sitting on the overturned buckets with the Jew.
“I brought what you wanted,” said the Jew, and produced a curled portion of papyrus cut from a scroll. The freshly printed Greek words could only be the Deuteronomy words that had recently intrigued Janus. He read and saw it was so. For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as is the Lord our God whenever we call on him?
Janus nodded. “Yes. Fascinating.”
“You said we would speak of Stoicism today,” said the Jew.
“So I did. Yes. Stoicism. Official Roman policy. Seneca its current staunch proponent.” Did the little boy know by now? Did he understand it was forever? “Stoics say you do not have a choice in what you’ve been given, only in how it is played out. You do your best with what you have.”
The Jew considered it carefully. “To do one’s best is always the wisest course. I think on some of Solomon’s writings, how he said, ‘Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.’ This is similar, although it is . . .” and off he went in a round of words that Janus did not hear.
Stoicism was the most sensible belief system Rome had. The gods hand you your fate. You do your best with what you’ve been given. What if what you have been given is unholy unfair?
What if you’re a little boy? What then? The little Jewish boy, torn from his mother. That unsure, unhappy look. The anguish of the mother. They didn’t have a choice; Prometheus was the stoic god who had dealt them their fate.
Janus had never once considered any fault line in Stoicism. Not until he saw the child, and saw the god mete out a fate that was never destined to be.
He grew aware of the Jew’s face, leaning pointedly into his own. When he had his attention, the Jew drew back. “What troubles you, Gentile?”
“This and that and sundry others,” Janus answered with a sigh. He watched a merchant open her stall. She layered lengths of fabric on a plank. “Tell me, my friend: when an ill wind rises, more foul than the last, most foul you’ve known, and it blows throughout the palace visiting every crevice and cranny, what is an aging priest to do? I am of the ord
er of the Fetiales. Mine is a sacred trust. It is a religious and a diplomatic mission. What happens when I am suddenly indifferent?”
The eyebrows of the Jew came up. “Indifferent? Our conversations have gone that well?”
“Yes. I’m your first proselyte.”
The Jew would know it for a jest, and so he did. He sat back in amusement and parried with his own jest. “We get a half-shekel for every proselyte we bring in. You just paid my temple tax.”
“A half-shekel? I am a pagan priest, surely I am worth more.” The Jew began that chuckle of his, and it encouraged Janus. “What of the queen across the Tiber? How much did her conversion fetch? Which lucky fellow brought her in?”
Whenever the marketplace Jew laughed, he took his time to do it. Janus enjoyed the sound; it was sorely needed in this wretched day. When at last the laughter subsided, the Jew considered him thoughtfully.
“I suspect we will not talk of our gods.”
Janus thought of the stonemason, and of the tree of the prostitute. He thought of the palace leftovers, a program that would surely come to an end. And the little boy never did leave his thoughts.
“A good man has fallen. For deeds of compassion, he flees for his life. And I wonder, Jew, where in all of this is the morality of Rome? He broke law . . . but it was for mercy. He disobeyed a command because he knew it was wrong. Do you know what kind of rotten cistern we pry open with that kind of thinking? They don’t want us to think like that. They want to keep the cistern closed.” He frowned. “I should stick to my votives and auguries. A perfectly performed ritual is all that matters.”
He waited for the Jew to respond, but that wasn’t his style. He knew Janus had more to say, and would not comment until all was out.
Janus gave him a rueful look, then sighed. “Well, it isn’t right. Is that what you want me to say? You of the solitary god? It isn’t right. He broke law for mercy. What good it does for me to come to this conclusion I cannot imagine. It changes nothing. I only know the palace is the poorer for the absence of a good man.”
“Things are not so different on my side.”
