The Brother's Keeper

by Tracy Groot

  “Where will you go, Mother?” Joses asked.

  Mary drew a breath. “I plan on going to Bethany to stay with Devorah until I can find out where he is. Then I will join him.”

  She had gone to him before these past three years, especially when he stayed around Galilee. A few weeks at a time, once an entire month. But she always came back. This time, her announcement had finality.

  “Why don’t you wait until we all go for Passover?” Judas said. “It is only a month off. We could travel together, stay at Devorah’s again the way we did last year.”

  “Devorah’s first child will come soon. I want to be there for her.” Mother folded her arms, and her gaze drifted. “I need to go now. I must go now.”

  No, being forced into a dye pot like an armful of wool did not sizzle his stomach but talk of Passover did. James tried to smooth out the rumples in his tunic, glancing at the others. Passover was not a popular subject with any of them these days. What used to be a joyous occasion, something much anticipated, was now a source of worry, even fear.

  “What is it going to be like this year?” Judas muttered as he handed a cup to Jorah, who had begun to clean up.

  “Everyone thought he would declare last year,” Simon said, crossing his arms and leaning against the whitewashed wall. “And the year before. What will happen this year?”

  “Who knows what he will do,” Judas said darkly.

  James snorted. “We know what he will not do. I only wish those poor fool idiots realized it as well. Save them a whole lot of time and dreaming. They could pick out someone else to be their messiah.”

  “Like Raziel,” Joses said. He sat at the cistern with the dipper in hand. He drank and replaced the dipper, then folded his arms and asked wearily, “What happened?”

  “He came all the way from Kerioth to bring Mother a scarf,” James told him. “Gave us some nonsense about—what did he say?—knowing what it was like to be the village pariahs.”

  “It wasn’t nonsense, James,” Jorah protested.

  “You mean you believed him?” James gave a hard laugh. “Think, Jorah. Avi and his friend, both fanatical followers of Raziel, show up on our doorstep one week ago. Now Raziel. What does it say to you? You are the one who always wants to be included. You figure it out.”

  Simon frowned. “Two of his disciples, here last week?”

  “Nathanael chased them clear to the plain,” Jorah said with a small smile.

  “Yes, just who is this Nathanael?” Simon demanded.

  Joses waved him quiet. “We can talk about him later. I agree with James. He could not have come all the way from Kerioth just to bring Mother a scarf. That makes no sense.”

  “Where is Kerioth?” Jorah asked as she stacked cups together and placed them in a willow basket. She took the platter of dried fruit and slipped it into its hanging net near the bread cupboard.

  “South of Hebron, west of the Salt Sea,” Judas answered.

  “It is a great distance,” Jorah said slowly, fingers resting entwined in the hanging net. “Farther than Jerusalem.”

  “Kerioth,” Joses murmured.

  “I don’t like that Nathanael.” Simon brooded in a slouch against the wall. “He is disrespectful and rude. Father would never have tolerated—”

  “Father would never have tolerated your own rudeness,” Jorah snapped at him.

  “God have mercy on us. What can it mean?” Joses whispered, staring into the air. His hands gripped the prayer shawl still draped about his shoulders.

  “Joses . . . ?”

  Joses said, “One of his disciples is from Kerioth. And rumored to be a Zealot.”

  Simon straightened. “One of whose disciples? Jesus’?”

  Face white as his tallith, Joses nodded. “His name is Judas. Judas Ish-Kerioth.”

  Simon sat down heavily at the low couch. Judas began to pace. Jorah whispered, “What can it mean?”

  “It means we go see this Raziel now,” James said. “We find out what he is planning.”

  “He is using Jesus,” Joses said in a voice of quiet wonder.

  “Who is?” Simon asked, frustrated. “Raziel or Judas?”

  “Raziel,” James said at the same time that Joses answered, “Judas.”

  Joses went on, shaking his head, speaking as if to himself. “One of his closest friends . . . planning to use him.”

  “We do not know that, Joses,” Jorah said. Doubtfully, she added, “Maybe Raziel and this Judas do not even know each other.”

  “Both Zealots? Both from Kerioth?” Simon demanded.

  “He did not seem like a person planning an uprising,” Jorah said. She appealed to Mother. “Did he, Mother?”

  James groaned. “Jorah, if you are going to plan a rebellion, you are not going to seem like it.”

  “We have to stop it.” Joses rose from the cistern. “They cannot use him like that; it is not what Jesus is about. That we know.” He put both hands to his temples. “This cannot be happening. Jesus must be told. We have to warn him.”

  Jorah turned angrily on Joses. “How do you know there is a plot against Jesus? Stop talking like that! I liked Raziel. I do not think he would do anything to hurt Jesus!”

  Joses came close to Jorah. “Jorah, Passover is only a month away. Jerusalem will be flooded with Jews. The Zealots see that as an opportunity to launch a campaign. With the great number of Jews, they can make it look as though we are all united against Rome. These Zealots will do anything—anything, Jorah—to get as much support for an uprising as they can. Numbers are what they need. A few months before Passover is when they are at their busiest . . . they travel all over the country, agitating the people to—” he opened his arms, gesturing for the word—“passion, or at least hope for the return of our land. Then, at Passover, all they have to do is shout the loudest.” He took her shoulders and searched her eyes. “Don’t you see, Jorah? They will use Jesus. Not from spite—I do not really believe that. But because they believe so deeply in their mission.”

  “‘The cause is everything,’” Simon muttered. “It is their battle cry. We got an earful of it on the road. They even display it on signs, with other things like, ‘Jews for the Land. The Land for the Jews.’ When the Romans are not looking, of course.”

  “Only one of us must go to Raziel,” Judas said, frowning and pinching his lower lip. “If we all go, it will look too suspicious.”

  Suspicious? James wanted to laugh. If the Romans knew Raziel was in Nazareth . . . and that one of Jesus’ own disciples was from Kerioth . . .

  “I will go,” he said, his own voice hollow.

  “You?” Simon asked, one eyebrow arched. Simon knew of James’ reluctance to leave the workroom.

  “Yes, me,” James snapped, glaring at Simon, daring him to say something else. Simon shook his head and looked away.

  “You should leave now,” Judas said to James. “Sabbath is only a few hours off. Take the back ridge. Most people will be hurrying to finish work or busy with Sabbath preparations. It is not likely you will be noticed.”

  Simon snorted. “They noticed Joses and me. ‘There go two more sons of God,’ one of them yelled. Another said, ‘Come, Simon, perform a miracle for us. Surely it runs in the family.’ The louts.”

  “Devorah is the only one who had the sense to escape,” James muttered, siding with Simon in spite of himself.

  “Devorah does not have a soul,” Jorah declared.

  “Jorah!” Mother gasped.

  “She doesn’t! The only thing Devorah ever cared about is Devorah.”

  Jorah was right, and somehow it did not surprise him to hear her speak so plainly. It seemed everyone spoke plainly these days. Why hold anything back when your brother was Jesus of Nazareth?

  “I will wager a month of wool sales that she was never even in love with Matthias,” Jorah went on, arms folded. “He was her passage out of Nazareth.”

  “Jorah of Joseph, I did not raise my daughter to speak so,” Mother said, drawing herself u
p.

  “You raised your daughter to speak truth, Mother!” Jorah protested, coming to her side to plead with her hands. “All Devorah ever wanted was a perfect life. If things did not go perfectly, then she pretended that they did. She could never handle anything that threatened her idea of a—”

  “She loved Jesus,” Mother protested.

  “Of course she did, Mother. But if anything unpleasant ever crossed her world—”

  “She was the first to deny him.” It came from Simon, and it surprised them all, that and the fact that it was the truth.

  He sat at the couch, elbows on his knees, absently rubbing his hands together. “She denied him by ignoring him. My, but she had a talent for that. It was one of the reasons why I wanted to visit her when we were in Bethany. I wanted to see if she could ignore him now.” He looked up at the attention on him and cracked a bitter smile. “Lazarus, you know.”

  “You never told me that,” Joses said, quiet and surprised. “You never said that was your reason to see her.”

  Simon half chuckled. “You never asked. You had your own plans. I wanted to see how Devorah could ignore him now, with Lazarus in her new hometown. What a joke. She could not escape Jesus after all.”

  James’ mouth was suddenly as dry as Mother’s newly cleaned wool. Was it as bizarre to anyone else, speaking so casually of a recent event that most people denied and the rest refused to speak of? Just like the day Jesus came back to visit Nazareth. Nobody spoke of that day. Not the villagers, not the family, nobody. “This Lazarus was on your list of people to look up?”

  “He was,” Joses said, then added a touch too quickly, “But we could not find him. Neither Lazarus nor his sisters.”

  “We did not look very hard, did we, Joses?” Simon said, turning his gaze onto Joses. “Something I could not quite figure out, as hard as you sought for the truth.”

  But Joses would not answer. James had his suspicions . . . a man once mad with demons scared Simon. Maybe a man risen from the dead was enough to scare Joses.

  James would ask later; he was wasting time. He took a cloth belt from the dirty laundry basket and wrapped it around his waist. He spared only a moment to send a swift glance at his family, then headed for the passageway.

  “Godspeed,” Simon murmured.

  “The back ridge,” Judas called after James as he trotted from the courtyard.

  The One True God’s response brought him to an abrupt halt.

  “That is why you chose Melkor?” Balthazar shook his head. Who could have known?

  He glanced over his shoulder toward his homeland, where the sun soon would disappear. Melkor was from Arachosia, much farther east than Susa. He had been a fellow keeper of the flame of Ahura Mazdah. Another man singled out, tempest-tossed into the maelstrom that had swept across a sun-baked land, plucking others along the way, gathering them into its vortex, depositing them in a hapless little town called Beth-L’hem.

  There would be others this time. Who would they be? Which unlikely ones had the One True God chosen now? Balthazar chuckled. Ever fond of choosing the unlikely ones, he was.

  He faced westward and started walking, glad for the coming of twilight, comfortable with the stars.

  It was nearly springtime in Galilee. The skies were clearer now every day, and the heavy winter rains left behind a countryside awash with the first suspicion of vibrant color. The land from the ridge fell away into valleys that rose again into other hills, and those hills were cloaked in lush green. New flowers would soon decorate the cloak, embroidering it with yellow and red, purple and white. The breezes were growing gentler, filled with fragrance and a hint of the warmth to come.

  From where James walked on the ridge, he could see down into the homes that grew in number the closer he got to the village. With the coming spring, most activity moved from the inside of the homes to the courtyards again. Summer shade awnings were beginning to replace winter rain awnings. Rooftops were ready to be smoothed from the season of rain in preparation for a season of baking in the sun.

  When had he last walked this ridge? To go to synagogue, maybe, sometime last summer. It was always nicer to take the ridge down into the village. Longer, yes, but the ridge rode some of the highest parts of Nazareth, and you could see far from here. Mount Carmel, in the distance near the Mediterranean, on a clear day. The mountains of Megiddo and beyond.

  James’ reason for the ridge was not only for anonymity. His eyes scanned the land that fell away to the left; he would be upon Keturah’s home soon.

  Keturah lived with her father, just the two of them. Her mother had died at Keturah’s birth, and her father, Therin, never remarried. He raised his only child with help from his sister until she left to marry and have her own children. Therin had been a close friend of his own father. Mother used to ask Therin and Keturah to come for a meal.

  He came upon the rocky outcrop that meant her home was a glance away. He paused, deliberately gazing to the right, south toward Jerusalem, as if enjoying the view. He avoided looking straight down; below the outcrop was a ledge, a ledge Jesus had had an appointment with nearly two years ago. He had escaped that appointment, and to this day nobody knew how he had done it. Only that, James was told later, one moment Jesus was on the edge of the cliff, and the next he had passed through the entire crowd. Passed through an angry mob, untouched. James did not see it happen; he was back at the synagogue.

  The sun fell in the west, and in an hour or two the shofar would sound. He knew he had to hurry. Of course, the Law did not prevent travel within one’s own hometown, but the implication was there. Sundown meant Sabbath, and Sabbath meant home and family. He would soon have no business arguing with a Zealot in a home not his own. James studied the cloud streaks in the pale sky and kept his back to Therin’s home. He thought about not looking.

  He did not see her at first, but then there she was. Seated on a step at the back passage of the home. She had something in her lap; he could not tell from here what. Maybe she was mending something. Maybe carving.

  He should be watching from the safety of one of the ridge trees, but even if Keturah saw him she could not recognize him from this distance. At least he didn’t think so. He was on the verge of leaving, feeling increasingly uncomfortable staring at her in this secretive way, when suddenly Keturah looked up and directly at him.

  He froze, and the foolishness he felt warmed his cheeks. If he dashed away, as instinct told him, he would look guilty . . . spying on her from on high, like David with Bathsheba. He made himself give a wave, then started on down the path. But Keturah called out, “Wait!”

  James clenched his fists and cursed, first in Aramaic, then in Greek. Nathanael had taught him a few interesting expletives, which he had learned from some Roman soldiers in Caesarea. Somehow cursing in a different language didn’t seem wrong at all. He practiced the words as he watched Keturah hastily set aside whatever was in her lap and hurry to the slope.

  She first took the path that wound up through their strip of terraced farmland. Then, holding her skirts with one hand and using the other for balance, she made straight up the hill for James.

  “Stupid idiot,” he growled at himself. Now what was he going to do? He had to get to Annika’s! He had no time for foolishness with a . . . beautiful young woman.

  Keturah’s face was flushed from exertion by the time she reached the top of the ridge. She stood breathing hard, looking at James, and pulled up her apron to whisk sweat from her face. Her hair was not covered, as it should have been. Had Keturah a mother, she would have worn a covering all the time. Then again, maybe not. James kept his lips from a smile. After all, this was Keturah, master carver. No one told her how to be.

  “What are you smiling at?” she said, smiling herself.

  “I thought I wasn’t,” he answered. “And I am smiling at you. You are not wearing your head covering.”

  She pulled some wayward hair behind her ear and hastily smoothed down the rest. “I am at home. Why should I wear one a
round the house?”

  “You never wear one.”

  A delicate eyebrow came up, making James flush. He had as much as admitted he noticed.

  “I have to be going,” he mumbled. “Good Sabbath, Keturah. Good Sabbath to your father.” He started away.

  “Going where?”

  He stopped, looking out to the hills. Over his shoulder he said, “I am—taking a walk.”

  “May I join you?”

  “No! I mean—I have to go talk with someone before sunset.”

  “Oh.”

  But he did not leave. He stood with his back to her, looking out on the spring-filled hills. How would things be different, this day, if his brother had never been born? James blinked. Could he take his thinking so far? A thought for Jesus to never have been born? Is that what he wanted? He was close enough to the edge to be able to see several feet down to the ledge; he made himself look at it now. What if Jesus had died that day, as the crowd and the leaders had intended?

  “Were you here that day, Keturah?” he asked softly. “The day they brought him here?”

  Keturah came beside him and gazed at the ledge. It was a ledge that had caught many lawbreakers thrown down from the top. The distance—“not less than the height of one man, not more than the height of two”—was far enough for bone-breaking damage upon the fall, but not always far enough to kill. The ledge bore the lawbreaker while stones finished the job. Four or five others had been dragged to this precipice in James’ lifetime; twice his father had been among the crowd for the righteous judgments. One had been a murderer, one an adulteress.

  “I was weeding the garden,” Keturah murmured. “It was a quiet morning, and I was angry that I could not be at the synagogue. I wanted to hear what Jesus had to say. I knew Father would tell me later, but—well, I heard something in the distance. I remember standing up, looking around, trying to figure out what the sound was. It was coming closer. And then I realized it was coming from the ridge.”

  Keturah moved to the edge of the cliff, directly above the ledge. She looked down at it, arms about herself. A gentle breeze from the valley caught her long wavy hair, lifting it in a swirl for a moment. She sat down and looked up at James, and patted the ground next to her.