Two Women
of Galilee
Mary Rourke

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

EPILOGUE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I was helped tremendously in writing this book by Rafael Luévano, my friend and the first to read each draft. No one understands the craft of storytelling better than he does.

Laura Dail, my agent, gave her unwavering support, with extraordinary warmth and courtesy. Joan Marlow Golan more than lived up to her basic rule of editing, “First, do no harm.” Her suggestions made things better. Joanna Pulcini’s early encouragement set this book in motion. Paddy Calistro and Scott McAuley at Angel City Press opened doors for me all along the way and taught me how to turn a printout into a manuscript. Thank you all.

For Patti, Louis, Tom, Cliff and Jon

PROLOGUE

The twelve were with him as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities.

…Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza…and many others, who provided for them out of their own resources.

—Luke 8:1-3

The house in Nazareth is empty now. No one would presume to live there since Mary went away. They cannot risk inheriting her misfortune, a widow with a crucified son. Still, it is a sacred place. Someone has to oversee its safekeeping.

As an older woman Mary traveled to distant cities with John, the youngest of her son’s followers, watching over him like a mother. In those years it was easier to move about the empire. Claudius ruled from Rome, and for once the foreigner who controlled Judea felt kindly toward the Hebrews.

It is hard to believe, after twelve years of Nero, that such a time ever existed. Jerusalem has been under siege since Passover, and the Roman blockade makes it impossible for food to get beyond the city gates. For us, here in the north, news of the struggle comes with the caravans. The worst of it seems to reach us with the speed of an arrow. There was the man who swallowed his gold before he tried to escape the Holy City. When the soldiers caught him, they sliced him open and pulled the coins from his belly. He was still alive. He witnessed it.

Mary’s empty house was my consolation after she went away. I missed her so much that I spent hours there, alone. Imagining she was still with me, I saw things about her I had not noticed before. Her hair, once lavish and dark, had turned the silvery color of a moonstone. Her skin was still the warm shade of an almond shell, but the flash of pink that once tinted her cheeks had faded. The passing years wore her edges smooth as sea glass.

One afternoon in my daydreams she walked past me to the grain cistern, gathered dried kernels in her hands and poured them into storage sacks. She pinched the lice from the nearby bin of ripening grain. Without stopping to greet me, she lifted a clay jug from the shelf and went out toward the well, pausing long enough to look at me contentedly. I heard her whisper the prayers of blessing and I began to recite them with her. Before I met Mary, I did not know any prayers.

In her empty house I started to remember things. There was the scent of rosemary on the cooking pots and the shelf of baskets that waited to be filled with sweet cakes from her kitchen. All of what she owned was worn down with use.

Her small living quarters hardly seemed the sort of place to attract visitors at all hours, but so many came, hoping to gain her favor, that a good number had to be turned away at the gate. Looking back on those bewildering days, I still wonder—did any of us who asked for her help truly understand, or even suspect, what Mary was prepared to do for those she loved? When the time came, she would risk her life. Some might even say, her soul.

One afternoon a shower of dirt interrupted my reverie. It fell from the ceiling of Mary’s house, where the roof had worn thin. Above my head, palm fronds whistled like wind chimes in the breeze. I could see them through the holes in the ceiling. Straw poked through the plaster. I hadn’t noticed.

To restore such a ruin was my way of honoring Mary, but it was a strange ambition for a woman like me who did not know how to do housework. I, Joanna, wife of Chuza, Herod Antipas’s chief steward, was raised to be mistress of an estate. I had little experience with house cleaning or other manual labor. For Mary’s sake, I learned.

From the time I made my decision, I began to rise from my bed before the sun lit the upper rooms of my house. Pulling myself from beneath cool linen sheets, I prepared for a day of repair work on Mary’s crumbling house. Loading storage baskets with jugs of wine, flasks of oil, perfume bottles, old jewelry—all items I could exchange for craftsmen’s services—I left the marble gods and colonnades of my Roman-style city of Sepphoris for the barley fields of eastern Galilee. It was like traveling backward in time.

Phineas, my driver, covered the three miles in a race against the sunrise. He had made far more perilous journeys for my sake during his long years in my service. Never once had he disappointed me. I therefore rested quietly as he jostled us toward Nazareth, past brown-faced ewes that stood in the road and stared, unaccustomed to carriages hurtling past. Not used, either, to seeing a woman like me, with clean, oval fingernails and pale skin that rarely was subjected to long hours in the sun.

Closer to the town, field boys pelted my cab with rotten olives. Phineas growled like a wolf planning an attack, which kept them at their distance. His smooth eunuch’s cheeks and shining head were set proudly on thick shoulders and massive arms. He was powerfully made and commanded respect.

As we entered through the Nazareth town gate, the screech of iron hinges never failed to disturb Mary’s neighbors. They stumbled from their two-room houses or shallow caves to see who had entered. Their mistrusting expressions asked what a rich woman was doing in their part of the province. I had no easy answer. Besides, the smell of sheep on their rough tunics stiffened my nose. I avoided conversation.

It was on one such morning’s drive that I decided to write about Mary. At first I thought that my own stormy existence had no place in her story. My failing health, the intrigues at Herod Antipas’s court and the resulting troubles in my marriage did not seem to reveal anything about Mary’s ways.

I soon realized that she had guided me through the most intimate events in my life, down to my current situation. There is nothing but to tell our stories as one.

We were cousins. I only discovered it when I was a grown woman and went to see Mary for the first time. I needed her assistance. I was dying and she had a son, a healer who cured desperate cases. I wanted her to arrange a private meeting for me.

My illness had plagued me from childhood. Consumption was part of the Romans’ legacy to the East. Caesar’s armies carried it with them as they advanced, conquering everything in their path.

My family considered my ailment to be part of the price Judea paid for progress. Stone paved highways and international trade had made my relatives wealthy. Roman sympathizers from long before I was born, they did not consider the life of one daughter too exorbitant a tax on their fortune.

I, however, was not prepared to die for commerce. After many attempts at a complete cure, including one unbearable summer at a health resort near the Dead Sea, my soggy insides refused to dry out.

As my last hope, I turned to Mary. I was prepared to reward her handsomely. I have always been a woman of means.

CHAPTER ONE

And laying his hands on each one, he healed them.

—Luke 4:38

Consumption found me, unsuspecting, on my twelfth birthday. That morning my father granted my wish and took me boating on the open sea despite the winter cold and my mother’s protests. I was willful, even as a girl.

I rushed toward my fate in a dart across the water. My father’s dark reed boat cut through the chilled air as he pounded a mallet on a wooden block. The oarsmen strained to keep pace. I saw my father smiling and felt proud to be so much like him.

The wind in my hair and the flutter inside me made me lurch from my place and run to chase the waves. Leaning out of the boat for a whitecap, I lost my balance and fell overboard.

It was a sea of melted snow. Two oarsmen dove to save me, and after a few minutes of reaching for oars, clinging to ropes that were hoisting us up, we were rescued. But my shivering started right away and would not stop. After I spent weeks in a dark room beneath blankets heated by warm stones, the doctor told my parents what I am sure they already knew.

All of my father’s money could not buy back my health. I survived, and recovered for the most part, but in cold weather I rattled from the wet congestion that welled up inside me. If I grew agitated or afraid, it was almost impossible to breathe. For years afterward, my strength would come and go. The doctors prescribed sailing in the open air as a way to balance my humors and soothe me. This remedy helped to quiet my hacking on warm summer days, but the benefits never lasted long.

Finally, after I was married, my illness threatened to defeat me. The only way I managed to keep up with my husband’s pace was by resting for long months at our home in Sepphoris. His demanding life took us there several times each year, although Herod Antipas, the Tetrarch of Galilee and my husband’s superior, had moved the seat of his government from Sepphoris to Tiberias. Both cities were essential to the life of the province. Both had been rebuilt in the Roman-style, during Antipas’s early years in power.

He did it to please the Romans. He always imagined that if he ruled his small northern territory to their liking, one day they would place him in charge of far larger regions.

Fortunately, Antipas preferred the new capital and my husband preferred the old, in part because it kept him away from court for a good part of the year. Tiberias was exciting to Antipas. Aside from my husband’s sensible urge to avoid the tetrarch as much as possible, he and I both favored Sepphoris for sentimental reasons. It is the city where I was raised and where Chuza and I first met.

During one of our seasons at home, we planned an evening at the theater with Manaen, Chuza’s young colleague. I was glad to have my husband seen with the young captain of the guard. Manaen had grown up with the tetrarch, although he was nearly half his age, and was favored at court. Lately Antipas had asked my husband to teach Manaen about accounting and agriculture, essential for a young man’s promotion.

I wanted to make a good impression and so commissioned a pottery vase as a memento of our evening, to impress upon Manaen that my husband approved of him. On the morning of our engagement I went to the garden to see that the glaze had fully dried in the sun.

An unexpected coolness in the air sent a chill across my shoulders, and I began to cough. As my handkerchief became speckled with blood, I felt Chuza’s hands lifting me up. “Keep breathing,” he said. He behaved like a general at such times. “Lift your head off your chest.” The rosebushes tilted sideways as Strabo, my chief gardener, and two house servants lifted me and carried me indoors. “Don’t call the doctor,” I shouted at Chuza. “Please, just stay with me.”

He followed the servants to my rooms, and once I was settled on my couch, he sat near me. When I was able to breathe quietly, he lay down beside me. He always wanted to stay very close after one of my attacks. They were among the few things in life that could frighten him.

I looked at his face, so near to mine. His hair, thick as a bear’s coat, showed the first receding signs of age. His jaw had lost none of its square features. To feel his broad chest against me filled me with loneliness. We seldom touched anymore. He seemed afraid that I might shatter and break.

“Chuza,” I whispered.

For a time we lay quietly together.

“Tell me about when we first met.”

He answered in a low voice. “It’s been seventeen years this spring.” My husband always remembered anniversaries better than I did. “I was supposed to be on my way to Corinth, delivering a shipment of gold bound for Rome. But the winds had shifted and we could not sail. It was one of the first warm nights in March. I walked to the colonnade and discovered that everyone in Sepphoris had the same idea. That is when I first saw you.” He kissed my nose, as he used to do when we were young and first getting to know each other.

Chuza did call his doctors soon enough. They advised me to stay home, rest and spend time in the sun. Sun to brown my arms like a farmer’s wife, home to starve me of the latest gossip.

My husband sent to Antioch for his brother, Cyrus, one of the finest doctors in their native city. Within hours of his arrival I was lying in my bed, hugging a beaker of some gritty concoction of his, trying everything I knew to avoid the smoldering prod he held near me. Cyrus believed that cauterizing was the best treatment for my ailment.

He seemed to think he could roast my congestion to a powder. I let him try. It may have helped. I did seem to improve for a time, but I had learned not to trust my reprieves. There was no reason to expect a cure.

Several days later, after a few glasses of the herbal brew that was part of Cyrus’s treatment, I felt surprisingly healthy. Octavia, my maidservant, who sat with me in my rooms that morning, paused from her mending to make a suggestion. She could see that I was stronger than I had been in some time.

“There is a caravan from the East passing through town,” she said. Her eyebrows spread across her forehead, dark as a blackbird’s wings. Arched in that way, they warned me that Octavia had plans for us. It was pointless to argue, she was as confident about her opinions as anyone. She had not been born to be a servant—it was only her father’s gambling that had ruined her future. He sold her to pay off his debts.

We set out to hunt for peppercorns and perhaps a jewelry box covered with tiny mirrors like the one Antipas’s wife, Herodias, owned. By early afternoon we were walking along the alleys between the stalls in Sepphoris. Silvery cranes squawked at us from their cages, the bitter scent of leather wafted from the sandal maker’s shop, sacks of black tea opened to my touch and I rolled the crisp leaves between my fingers.

At first the rumbling behind me sounded like exotic drumming. Caravans are filled with foreign music. But the sound grew louder and moved closer until I realized it was the noise of the crowd. People were stampeding behind a man with spindle legs who tottered through the alley. He was old, but he moved like a baby taking his first steps. I had seen him before;it took me a moment to place him. The crippled beggar, we had passed him at the city gate. Somehow, he was walking toward me. A mob crushed around him. “Zorah is cured!” they shrieked. “The healer from Nazareth saved him.”

Octavia broke through the crowd and pulled me away from the stalls.

“Where are we going?” I asked, but I could not hear above the roar. Past the tiny yellow flowers that framed the main road, Octavia led and I followed. When we reached a grassy hillside, I looked down at the crowd shambling onto the slope below us like wounded animals. The stronger carried the maimed on their backs. It was as if half the world were coming there to die.

I recognized one woman. She had recently been healed, I’d been told. We all know one another’s business in the Galilee. For eight years this woman was possessed by demons. She often lapsed into fits and fell on the ground, her body rigid as a corpse.

She wore a fine woolen cloak colored by the most expensive shellfish dye. Our paths rarely crossed. She was a devout Jew. “Good woman,” she called to me. “Jesus can help you, he helped me.”

I looked into her eyes and saw no pain in them. She was cured of her illness. I could tell by the way she walked, upright and strong rather than bent in anticipation. She pointed my way down the hill toward the healer. We approached him, and he turned as if he heard someone calling his name. He looked directly at me.

From a distance all I could see was his dark hair and his long, narrow features. There was such compassion in his manner that I could not take my eyes from him.

I went a few steps closer for a better view. His hair curled as gently as a baby’s. His lips were longer than any I’d ever noticed. His eyes were as dark as the pool where Narcissus first discovered his own beauty. I knew that this man would listen to me and understand.

Something held me back. It was too sudden—I was not sure what might happen if I got close to him. What if he refused me in front of all those people? What if I was the unlucky one who got worse, not better, because of him?

Pulling away, I rushed toward the road, shouting for my manservant, Phineas. He found me quickly and led me to my litter. I hid there with the curtains drawn shut and ordered Octavia to walk very close by until we were well outside the city. He would have healed me that very day, I am certain. If only I had trusted him. The heart is a timid hunter when it does not yet know what it seeks.

I was so disturbed by my near encounter in Sepphoris that I looked forward to returning to Tiberias. Chuza and I left for the capital several days after my ordeal. One of our first nights, my husband and I attended a birthday party for Herod Antipas. It was an effort to get dressed, knowing what a show of false gaiety the evening would require. I tossed aside six pairs of earrings before settling on gold hoops. They looked as ostentatious as the others, but time demanded that I make a choice.

“Are you ready?” Chuza called from the atrium. I could picture him, rapping his fingers against the wall. A quick glance in my mirror restored my confidence. I smiled at my rolling brown hair that was wrapped, just so, around a headband as slim as a new moon.

“Coming,” I answered in a pretended rush.

He smiled as I walked toward him with a swish of frothy drapery. My dress was copied after the statute of Venus in Antipas’s garden. Chuza’s attentions lifted the clouds that had settled above me.

We walked the stone pathway to Antipas’s palace. It was a lesson in the labors that support a royal life. Eight solid gold lanterns shaped like papyrus blossoms lit our way. Egyptian imports, I could tell by the blocky shapes. A team of craftsmen had taken at least six weeks to complete the set. Crossing the mosaic carpet of blue-tipped pheasants in the reception area, I guessed the number of workers needed to install the floor; one to engineer it, as many as nine to lay it in, for a period of not less than two months.

On the way through the house a servant who knew us well allowed us a side trip to the dining room. Antipas had flamboyant tastes and liked his guests to compliment him. I wanted to be prepared.

The room was transformed under a gauzy tent that fluttered from the ceiling. Trapeze bars hovered above the dining couches, hinting at the night’s entertainment. I felt my skin tingle in revolt. I could already guess what had been planned.

Chuza led me away, tripping over a dancing monkey as we left the room. The chattering creature screamed at us and chased us down the hall past murals of Bacchus and his tipsy friends, their faces buried in their goblets. My husband kept a protective arm around me, sensing, as I had, what the tent and decor implied. Rome’s most famous transvestite, Flavia, was to be the special guest of the evening. My husband did not approve of parties meant for the officers’ club. Not when women were present.

In the garden, Antipas stood beside his wife, Herodias, who leaned possessively against him. My eyes went directly to the imperial ring he wore, the one he used for sealing Roman documents. It seemed an intentional show of his authority. His thinning brown hair was crowned with a laurel wreath. I’d never seen him act a closer imitation of a Caesar. Ambition rose off him like an unattractive odor. He was fiftysix years old that night and noticeably eager to secure a higher position in Caesar’s inner circle.

“Joanna, you’re here at last,” he said, a bit too familiar. Chuza ignored it. He was accustomed to Antipas’s awkward attempts as a ladies’ man.

“My Lord Tetrarch.” I gave him an inflated title.

He embraced Chuza like a favorite brother. Antipas had so few real friends that he made more of trusted colleagues than was appropriate.

I listened quietly, until he chose to speak to me. “Tell me the news of my kingdom,” he said, leaning toward me. “I know everything about how to rule Galilee but never enough about the people I govern.” He moved slightly away from his wife to suggest that I was at liberty to be frank. “She’s not interested in such matters,” he said, casting a glance toward her.

Their marriage was a complicated arrangement. Her grandfather was Antipas’s father, Herod the Great. She abandoned her first husband for Antipas and he put aside a perfectly acceptable wife. It was a messy display, ripe for gossip. Herodias wanted a more powerful husband than the one she had. Antipas simply wanted everything that he did not already own. His incestuous marriage to Herodias infuriated the Hebrews in his court, although he was one of them in name at least. The fact is, his family converted. He would never be fully a Hebrew, as his mother was a Samaritan woman. He had ignored the marriage laws just as he did all the others that got in his way.

I took a small silver rabbit from my pocket, a lucky charm from my afternoon shopping, and showed it to Antipas. He and I had one thing in common. Magic excited us. It was a faithless woman’s answer to divine intervention.

“There is a new man in Galilee,” I said. “Everyone is talking about him.”

“His name, tell me his name.”

“Jesus, from Nazareth.”

“Who?” His voice cracked. Competition made him wild.

“He is the center of attention.”

“What does he do?” Antipas rubbed the lucky rabbit in the palm of his hand.

“He heals the sick.” I told the story of Zorah, the cripple.

“And what about you, Joanna?” Antipas turned on me with syrupy concern. “Did the healer from Nazareth cure you?” The words pricked. I forced myself to clear my throat. It was enough to send him away.

After dinner, the lamps were turned down. I could hear the acrobats enter. When they were in their places the torches were lit. Clowns as tall as camels hobbled around the room on wooden stilts. An Ethiopian in a red turban tossed streamers from the back of an elephant. I caught one and tied it around my wrist. From across the room, where the men were seated, I noticed Chuza watching me from the corners of his eyes. I could read his testy expression. He had not approved of my telling Antipas about my day with the wonder-worker, which could only upset the jealous tetrarch.

By the time Flavia rolled onto the trapeze bar, some of the men in the room had been drinking for three hours. They started howling as the performer’s golden hair swung over their tables, flitting across their faces. Flavia’s painted lips and the black kohl outlining his eyes made him a freakish version of a woman.

He was supple as kelp, twisting into knots, rolling into a ball. Not once did he miss a coin purse tossed his way. It became a game, and like children we got overly excited as we played. A fight broke out. Wine from a flying cup sprayed the side of my face. Chuza stood up abruptly, came and took my arm. “We’re leaving,” he said. My husband hardly spoke to Antipas on our way out. The tetrarch was pressed against his wife’s thick neck and waved us off.

At times the excesses of court life grated against Chuza’s soul. Antipas’s party was such a time. When we were safely home and settled, my husband came to my room as he sometimes did when he needed consolation. He held me in his arms until his tense body relaxed and grew heavy and his grip loosened. I felt him sleeping and soon, too, I began to drift off.

I found myself thinking about the day I first saw Jesus. The idea came to me then, effortless as the best plans do. “I must go to meet his mother,” I said out loud in the dark.

Chuza would not like it. “Joanna,” he would say, “don’t test the gods.” He didn’t believe in healers. Only women and fools listened to any of them.

CHAPTER TWO

Mary treasured all these things in her heart.

—Luke 2:51

In early autumn, my husband and I returned from Tiberias to Sepphoris for the harvesting of the figs and dates. I had plenty to do at home. We had been away all summer. My roses needed tending.

Our first morning at home I saw my husband off, waited until I was certain he was on his way and called Octavia. “We’re going to Nazareth,” I said. “We’ll need a sack of flour and a jar of olive oil. Add the rest of the salted fish if there is any.”

“Doesn’t the healer we saw in Sepphoris come from there?” Octavia asked. My maidservant was uncommonly skilled at guessing my intentions.

“I would like to meet his mother,” I said. “I don’t know her, of course. And perhaps she won’t be at home.”

“We can wait for her,” Octavia suggested. “Or, leave word that we will return another day.”

“You like this idea, don’t you?” I teased. At times Octavia seemed more like family than a servant.

She widened her dark eyes in approval of my plan. An hour later Phineas was driving us toward Nazareth. The weather was warm and dry. We rolled up the sides of the canopy so that Octavia and I could take in the view. There were several hours of daylight ahead of us and Chuza would not be home until late. Still, I urged Phineas to hurry. We arrived well before dusk and walked the final distance from the town gate so as not to disturb the residents of Nazareth with a horse drawn carriage.

I hid my hair beneath a sheer white stole, the closest I had to the brown flax of the local women. Fortunately, I had removed my ankle bracelets and left them at home. No one in Nazareth wore such things. Phineas walked close to me, my vigilant bodyguard. He watched the streets from beneath his hooded eyes.

We found Mary sitting on a low wooden bench outside her house, surrounded by the girls from the village who were bubbling with expectation. The youngest of them nestled in their older sisters’ arms. Mary passed a bowl of mashed olives and bits of bread to share. She had tied her head scarf at the back of her neck, like a worker in the field. Under her belt she had tucked squares of old fabric that she used to wipe away the crumbs from the younger girls’ cheeks. They all went to her and pressed their tiny lips toward her. Anything to get her attention.

Some of the mothers helped to prepare the girls for a story. They dressed the children up as characters, rubbing ash on the faces of those who would play the penitents. Their job, mothers reminded them, was to pray for victory before the battle.

One of the older girls stepped forward and waited until everything was quiet. Then she glanced at Mary, who lifted her chin, just slightly, and nodded her approval. The girl announced the story, “Joshua at the battle of Jericho,” and began her narration.

Some of the girls, the defenders of justice, stole into the midnight valley as Mary stretched a line of painted wooden stars above their heads. They marched around the city walls to frighten their enemy, the Cananites. Mary handed a ram’s horn to a pudgy girl with one wandering eye. The sudden blast from the horn made the audience lurch into nervous laughter.

When the brave marched back home after their victory, the youngest girls, who had been crowding behind Mary, jumped up. Each one wore a straw wreath in her hair. Mary tapped a tambourine against her hand and led them in the victory dance. The girls imitated her, twirling and spinning as she did.

When they were finished with their story, the more forward girls smiled confidently at the audience, while the shy types clung to Mary’s skirt. She bent down and kissed their hair, or whispered words of encouragement.

I practiced my speech, waiting for her to come toward me. She finally did approach, but only after all the mothers and grandmothers had their fill of her attention.

“Peace be upon you,” she said to me. She was inviting, as if she thought she knew me.

I thanked her for her blessing, unsure of how to address her. I rarely spoke to people outside my own circle of acquaintances.

“How did you like our story?” she asked.

“I must have heard it when I was young.”

“The Lord is always with us. Joshua’s victory reminds us of that.”

Her confident voice soothed me. “Yes,” I said.

I was about to explain my visit when an unusual shyness came over me. I stood looking at her tapered fingers, so like her son’s.

“You are Joanna, Abijah’s daughter,” she said.

“How did you know?”

Her answer was far from what I expected.

“Don’t you remember me?” she asked. “I am your cousin.”

I can only imagine the expression on my face. Not certain whether to believe her, I tried to appear composed, but the sudden rumbling in my chest betrayed me. My face felt hot and moist. She recognized my illness but did not back away from me, as so many do. Instead, Mary took my arm and walked with me to the low wall that had been crowded with relatives and neighbors not long ago.

“I will bring you something,” she said. When I was alone and waiting for her to return, a tickling in my throat worried me. I never knew what a coughing fit might bring. She came back quickly and held out a drink of herbs and honey. It quieted me at last.

“I remember you as a little girl, in the square in Sepphoris,” she said. “I would see you there with your parents. Don’t you know me? I am the daughter of Joachim and Ann.”

My father’s brother was Joachim. I was surprised that I recognized the name. I remembered that he had married my mother’s sister, Ann. I was very young at the time. Our families broke apart after that. My aunt and uncle kept the Hebrew ways and opposed the Romans, but my father and mother did not. They welcomed Caesar and the wider world he represented. Prosperity became their god.

“You wore pretty woven sashes around your dresses,” I recalled. I hadn’t thought of my cousin’s colorful linen belts for years. “If we saw you in the market, my mother told me I was not to talk to you.”

“I envied the way your father carried you in his arms,” Mary said. “You were his little treasure.”

“And now you have grown children of your own,” I said, hoping to ease conversation toward the purpose of my visit.

I didn’t know about my cousin’s life, only that she was married and her husband died. She raised children with him and called them all her sons and daughters.

“I have seen your son, the healer,” I said.

Her gaze moved slowly across my waxy complexion and slid over the coat that hung on my shoulders. “What have you heard about him?”

“That he heals the sick by touching them.”

“And so you have come here,” she said. Her voice dropped, just slightly. I sensed her caution.

“Perhaps you could arrange for us to meet,” I suggested.

“In private, you mean,” Mary said.

It suddenly occurred to me that I was not the first to make this request of her.

“My husband is chief steward,” I said, to remind her of my station. “It would be awkward if I were to be seen in the crowd that follows your son.”

The truth is, I didn’t plan to listen to the speeches or learn the teachings of Jesus. I only wanted him to save my life. Mary’s silence told me that she understood all of this.

I looked up at the sky to avoid her questioning gaze. A full moon slid from behind the clouds and lit the town, turning whitewashed huts into blue pearls.

It seemed best to end our conversation and continue it another time. My cousin was protective of her son, or, perhaps she did not agree that I deserved special treatment. A moment’s shame came over me, an uncommon thing for the wife of Herod’s steward.

“May I come to see you again?” I asked. Mary pressed my cold hands between hers, which were strong and reassuring. She did not explain her earlier reticence and I did not dare to ask about it. For all her quiet grace, I sensed a formidable nature.

“I hope you will come to see me again,” she said. “You are welcome here.”

Octavia had been sitting a close distance from us. I motioned for her to call Phineas. Mary waited with me until he arrived. We were just about to leave when she made a promise. “I will tell my son about you.”

CHAPTER THREE

My soul yearns, even faints

For the courts of the Lord

—Psalms 84:1

Spring brought the rain that forced the crocus into bloom and the feast of Passover that set the Hebrews on pilgrimage. Each year they entered Jerusalem in such numbers that every rooftop was rented two or three times over. By night the hills outside the city flickered with campfires.

That year Antipas’s knees and ankles swelled to twice their normal bulk. He was in such pain from his gout that he could not walk. Chuza went to Jerusalem in the tetrarch’s place, to keep order during the festival. I arranged for us to transport my husband’s bed, his copy of Virgil and his most comfortable sandals, hoping to lift the gloom out of the guest rooms in the governor’s compound where we would stay. Pontius Pilate governed Jerusalem and Judea with disdain for those he ruled. It soured the very air around him, even in his own household.

From the day that we arrived in Jerusalem my husband made a point of being visible on the streets, especially in the Hebrew quarter. At home he turned quarrelsome and complained about things he could usually ignore.

“Give back those berries,” he snarled one night at dinner. Manaen, my husband’s trusted colleague, was our only guest. Chuza drank several extra glasses of wine, and then he craved something sweet. He reached for the small bowl of wild strawberries, a gift from Claudia Procula, the governor’s wife.

“You’ve had enough,” I said. “You know what will happen.” Berries raked through Chuza’s insides like shattered glass. I slid the bowl away from him.

“Tell me,” Manaen interrupted. “What have you seen around the city these last few days?” Manaen was at least ten years younger than my husband, closer to my age. He spoke with the respect he would show a teacher. Chuza warmed to it.

“Chaos,” my husband said, tossing back another swallow of wine. “You would think Tiamat and his demons had taken control.”

“The Syrian god,” I offered. “The one who rebelled against heaven.” My husband’s references to his native gods were always from the old regime. It was his way of mocking the whole idea of a heaven and an underworld. He didn’t believe in gods any more than I did. He therefore called on those who had been cast out after the Greeks conquered Syria.

Manaen nodded politely, not much interested in my help.

“I have seen it, of course,” he said about the frenzied crowds.

“Does it offend you, that the Jews are patrolled this way?” Chuza asked. “You are one of them, after all.”

“I’d rather it be me keeping order in the streets than someone who has no understanding of them.” Our guest was a clever politician.

“The city swells to three times its normal size during Passover, as you know,” my husband said. “You can help by reassuring the Jews that the Romans only want to keep the peace.”

They were at ease with each other in a way I rarely saw in either of them when Antipas was present. They talked about how to relieve traffic near the temple and limit the fire hazards in the campsites outside the city. I stole glances at Manaen’s amber-colored hair, his green eyes.

“We had to stop repairs on the aqueducts as of this morning,” Chuza said, swizzling the last of his wine. “It’s the worst possible time for it. After all the rain, the plaster is peeling off the canals.” Every year at Passover, what Pilate resented most was the work stoppage. He had no choice.

“The Hebrews don’t work on their holy days,” Manaen said. “I am only here because it is my duty. Antipas has never asked me before.”

“It’s pointless to force them when so many refuse to cooperate,” Chuza said. “Nearly half the men working on the aqueducts now are Jews. Pilate gives in to them for one reason. He expects them to give him seven days of peace in return. No riots.”

“Bribery,” Manaen said. An outspoken man, he must get noticed at court, I thought as I guessed the width of his shoulders. Nearly double that of his waist. He ran his fingers absently over the leather cuff he wore on his wrist.

“There have been riots, you know,” I said, looking to my husband for approval. “That was before you were born, Manaen.”

“Some of the worst were more than thirty years ago,” Chuza said. “Oddly enough, they were in Sepphoris.” He sat forward on his couch, more interested now that the conversation turned to war stories. “Herod the Great sent soldiers to inspect the city, with Caesar’s insignia blazing on their shields. It’s against Jewish laws to make a human replica.”

“Idolatry,” Manaen answered.

“They stoned the soldiers and forced a retreat. The next day Herod sent five hundred men into Sepphoris. They torched the city. Hundreds were killed.” Excited by this talk of military strategy, Chuza reached across the table, scooped up a few more berries and tossed them into his mouth.

Manaen picked up the story. “There were no Hebrews in Sepphoris for some time after that. Not until Herod the Great died and Antipas was named Tetrarch of Galilee.”

“That’s right. Antipas brought them back.” Chuza was delighted by all this talk of blood and battles. “He needed workers to rebuild the city and they needed jobs. Why not bring them back? He is a Jew himself, though he doesn’t keep their ways. I give him credit. The city has improved its relations with the Romans, over time.”

Finishing the last of his wine, Chuza placed his cup on the table. In the same move he dropped a few more berries into his mouth, looked at me and smiled sweetly.

He knew what I was about to say and so answered me, “They will not.” I went to sit beside him on his couch. His drooping eyelids told me he was tired. I nudged him to his feet and aimed him toward the door.

“I’ll take the first shift in the morning,” Manaen said, rising in respect for my husband. He was taller than Chuza by a hand’s width.

“May I go with him?” I asked. Chuza stopped our swaying walk and puffed up his cheeks to hold back a laugh.

“I’ve always wondered,” I said, pushing away the berry bowl as we passed by the table, “what it is like in the temple precinct at the festival.” Perhaps I would see the healer from Nazareth. His mother might have told him about me, as she promised.

Chuza reached around me. His fingers danced mischievously along the rim of the berry bowl. Life with him was a game of negotiations. He did not reach for more but passed the table and went toward Manaen. “A woman from court is never welcome in the temple precinct,” he said. “It will make your work more difficult.”

“She’ll be all right with me,” Manaen said.

Chuza slapped his young friend on the shoulders and shook him. Then, he came back to me, reached behind me and scooped the last of the berries into his mouth.

“Good,” he said, content that he was getting his way. “Now we can all go to bed happy.”

The next morning at sunrise Manaen appeared rested but not relaxed. His eyes seemed screwed tighter in their sockets.

“We’ll pass by the outskirts of the campsite on our way to the temple,” he said over his shoulder. Eight armed guards followed us. I covered my hair with a scarf I had draped over my shoulders.

The vest Manaen had chosen for our tour worried me. Studded leather, it was the sort worn by hunters.

“Do you expect trouble?” I asked.

“Caution can prevent problems.”

As we came closer to the campsite, he led us along the outskirts, traveling at a respectful distance from the Hebrews. Some of the tents we passed were made of canvas and set up precisely, others were a balancing act of wooden planks and striped blankets. It was not unlike the villages near Sepphoris.

At a cooking fire three women built up the morning embers with pine needles and fallen branches that the children carried in from the thickets. Two cauldrons of porridge hung from iron stakes over the heat. One woman was making bread on a large stone.

New pilgrims came trailing into the camp from the hills to the north. Even before I could see them, I heard their chant.

Happy are those who live in your house,

Ever singing your praise.

Happy are those whose strength is in you,

In whose heart are the highways to Zion.

Out of the crowd, a woman ran toward us. I thought she was hurrying to tell the men who were tending the herd nearby that new people were arriving. But she swerved suddenly, rushed directly at me and spat at my cloak.

“Give that to your Governor Pilate,” she snarled as she raced back toward the camp.

“Bring that woman here,” Manaen ordered, his voice hard as iron.

“Can’t we just go on?” I said, wiping the spit off without looking.

Two guards reached the woman quickly and scooped her up as if she were a mole plucked by an owl. They dragged her to Manaen and dropped her in front of him. A crowd had gathered to watch what would happen. Manaen met their hostile stares.

“Take her away,” he said to the guards.

The woman dropped her forehead to the dirt and wailed as two men from our escort tied her hands with rope.

We moved on.

“It’s not the worst thing,” Manaen said, his eyes locked on the view ahead of us. “Plenty of troublemakers are put in jail and released after the festival.”

I found myself defending the woman. “She did what many of her people would like to do to those who betrayed them and followed the Romans,” I said. “My ancestors were treated like royalty for their support, while our relatives lost everything.”

“Why did your father, born a Hebrew, support the Romans?” Manaen asked, impatient as if he were talking to a dull child.

“He said Rome could bring our backward country into the modern world.”

“He was right.”

“Do you like seeing the Romans in control?”

“We can’t push progress out of our way. The Caesars bring progress.”

I watched his face for anything that might explain the anger mixed with a fatherly concern in his voice. It was only clear to me that he had conflicted emotions about the Romans.

“Onward,” he shouted. The soldiers closed in behind us and followed.

We rode to the temple precinct in silence. When we were almost there, I asked if we could give up our horses and walk.

“Too dangerous,” Manaen said. “I promised your husband that I would protect you, and the crowds are unpredictable.”

I tried flattery. “But you can handle them,” I said. He did not waver.

At the archway leading to the gentiles’ court we finally did dismount and stepped into an explosion of noisy activity. The merchant stands on the plaza were buried under a crush of customers haggling for votive candles and frescoed tablets painted with scenic views of the temple. Butchers selling sheep and goats from wooden carts could not move the squealing beasts fast enough.

The entire courtyard pulsed with life—pilgrims, caged doves, money changers’ booths. The stench of bloody hides mixed with the more pleasant scent of incense. Two herders passed us with a carcass tied to a pole that rested between their shoulders. The bulging eyes of the animal’s head grazed my nose. I gagged. The cough I had been stifling broke out. I had to turn away and try to hide my fit from my escort. Blood speckled my handkerchief, but I was skilled at making light of my attacks. I drank water from the skin I wore at my hip and breathed slowly until at last I regained my composure.

As the herders passed the alms box, one of them dropped the pole and placed his coins in the slot. An older man tripped on the beast and fell. Some weasel-faced character rushed to help him and deftly slipped the old man’s change purse off his belt. Spinning on his toes, the pickpocket stood face-to-face with Manaen, who caught him by the neck.

“You’re going to jail,” he snarled, motioning for the guards to remove the oily thief. I took a step backward as the old man staggered to his feet, his forehead smeared with blood. He fell against Manaen, who steadied the frail body. I took another step back. I could hear the voices of the women praying in their separate court. They were closer than before.

An energetic father and his little boy cut across my path, dragging their goat toward the butcher’s stone inside the men’s court. Their lips moved in exact harmony as they recited the blessing. I took another step back to give them room.

“Wait there,” Manaen ordered me, maneuvering around the goat without taking his eyes off me.

A barefoot priest spattered with blood hurried across the plaza. In his rush toward the sanctuary he kicked a jar of oil that someone had left behind. It frightened a young boy, who dropped his lighted candle. The flame ignited the oil.

People scattered.

I ran to the end of the wide courtyard and all but threw myself into the women’s quarters. Men were forbidden from entering, and Manaen could not reach me there. Veiled heads turned toward me to see who was disrupting the prayers. I kept my face hidden and made my way to the back. I began to follow the other women’s movements. They were like dancers, bowing low, reaching toward the heavens.

Could prayer heal me? I wondered.

The scent of sandalwood filled my nose and made me light-headed. A tickle in my throat refused to be stilled. I breathed evenly, trying to calm myself. Slowly my insides settled. The voices of the women near me, chanting their prayer, lulled me as if I were an infant falling sleep.

More at peace than I had been in some time, I relaxed and listened. It was then that I heard a distinct voice. It was huge and loud enough to shake the temple walls, yet it felt very close. I wondered if it came from somewhere inside me. I heard my name. “Joanna.”

I searched the sky for thunderheads, but only white clouds drifted by.

The echoing voice filled me like the sound of a ringing bell. Some force, more enormous than Mount Horeb, called to me again.

“Joanna.”

“God of my ancestors,” I said. I can’t explain how I knew who it was.

“Help me!” I cried. “I don’t want to die.”

Two thick hands clamped onto my shoulders. The women had finished their prayers and emptied the courtyard without my noticing. Manaen was standing beside me, prodding me toward the main courtyard. Glaring, he pressed his fingers into my arm and directed me quickly out of the place forbidden to all men. His embarrassment made him even angrier.

“You put yourself and my men in danger.” He clenched his teeth so tightly they should have splintered.

“I had to see for myself. You wouldn’t have agreed to it.”

“This isn’t a contest of wills,” he shouted. “I can’t protect you unless you follow the rules.”

His shoulders slowly fell back to their usual position. “When your husband finds out, he will not like this.”

CHAPTER FOUR

His mother said…“do whatever he tells you.”

—John 2:5

Crumpled on my bed, alone and confused, I sank into a dreamy sleep. From a place near the window, a narrow figure of a man came toward me. He was carrying a physician’s box. One of Chuza’s doctors, I supposed. Rolling back the sleeve of his robe, he uncovered his long fingers and pressed them against my cheek. The warm impression lingered, like a blessing. He placed his hand upon me, a hand so large it formed a collar around my throat. His touch freed my labored breathing. I thought I knew him but could not recall where we met. Opening my eyes, I expected to see him beside me. He was gone.

“Chuza,” I called, drowsiness weighting my voice. I went from room to room searching for my husband, until I realized it was midday and he was not at home. Octavia prepared a bath with chamomile, where I steeped until I heard him coming along the hall. His thick leather sandals padded his heavy steps. Dressing quickly I met him as he entered my rooms.

“Manaen told me what happened this morning,” he said. He was stern and unapproachable.

“We got separated at the temple.”

“Separated? You ran away from him. Joanna, you knew it was dangerous.”

“Something happened to me, Chuza.”

“You could have caused a riot. You put my men in danger.”

Leaning against the window behind me, I moved my fingers along the sill like a blind woman feeling her way.

“I wanted to pray.”

“You promised to stay with Manaen.”

“I knew I was safe.”

“Joanna.”

Chuza’s disappointment melted my confidence.

“What will Pilate say?” he murmured. “And of course Antipas will hear all about it, if he hasn’t already.”

“Someone called my name. I heard a voice.”

“Manaen is one of our best men. He could have been slaughtered by that crowd.”

The sound of a heavy object dropping on a hard surface came from the next room. Chuza hurtled in that direction. There was Octavia, sitting at my writing table, cleaning ink bottles and pens.

“You can go,” I said. She hurried away without trying to explain herself.

“I forgot she was here,” I said. “I trust Octavia, she is very loyal.”

My husband looked out at the tile roof across the courtyard that sheltered the rooms where Antipas stayed when he was in Jerusalem. On the rise of the next hill was Pilate’s villa. Chuza’s reputation, his honor, depended on their certainty that he was a strong leader. I saw my actions through his eyes. They were inexcusable, yet I tried once more to explain.

“God called my name this morning,” I said.

“No one will believe that,” Chuza answered. “God is a social obligation, not someone who talks to people.”

“We don’t have to tell anyone.”

“After the spectacle you made of yourself this morning? Everyone in Jerusalem knows.” Chuza’s short thick hands flying in the air above his head told me he was as angry as I had ever seen him.

“Maybe no one will mention it,” I whimpered, hoping to win his forgiveness.

“That’s what spies are for.”

I was not helping matters, and Chuza was not really listening.

“I have to lie down,” I said. My husband left me.

Of all the plans that came to me when I was alone, only one brought comfort. I called Octavia and asked her to find Phineas, my driver. He entered my sitting room, bowing slightly.

“Go to Nazareth in the morning,” I instructed him. It was a long trip. He would be gone at least seven days, yet my good servant did not flinch.

“Tell no one here where you are going. When you reach Nazareth, find the healer’s mother and ask if I might visit her twelve days from now.” I took a small stone jar of rose water from my dressing table and gave it to him as a gift for her.

The next day Pilate and his wife invited us to the governor’s palace to celebrate the end of the Jewish festival. Chuza escorted me to the women’s quarters on his way to join the men. Of all the women at court, Pilate’s wife, Claudia Procula, was the only one I ever much liked. For some reason she took to me, as well. I suppose it was that we could talk for hours about our astrologers and the excitement of luck and chance.

I believed that wonder-workers were my best hope for an end to my illness. It was a matter of stumbling upon the right one. As for Procula, the pressures of her husband’s high rank gave her endless reasons to seek the advice of the soothsayers.

In her airy apartment on the second floor of the palace, Procula bounced from guest to guest. For such a large woman she was unusually light on her feet, balancing wide, rolling curves of flesh above her small, dainty shoes. She fussed over us, passing bowls of plump raisins and braided bread flavored with almonds. I recognized it, a family recipe from home. Cordoba, was it? I’d never been to a party at the governor’s palace that did not include almond bread.

As I crossed the room I began to notice that the other women were watching. When I passed the dessert table three of them covered their faces to hide their laughter. I knew it was at my expense.

An older woman sat alone in the corner nodding to the sounds of a harp. I passed her by, and she opened her eyes doubly wide to make certain I noticed before she turned away. I folded myself into the nearest couch, a shining thing of red-and-gold stripes. Procula came bubbling in my direction.

“Joanna,” she said, “my dear friend.”

I smiled, straining to understand my hostess, who delivered every sentence with trills and coos. “I’ve been waiting for you.” She stretched out her hands but quickly drew them back in a strange half greeting. I had long since learned to accept such behavior without reacting. There are people who refuse to be in the same room with any who have suffered from consumption. Some doctors won’t treat us for fear they will fall ill.

“Tell me everything,” she urged me. “I’ve been waiting.”

My face burst into a moist heat. “There is nothing to tell you, really,” I began, dabbing my throat with a handkerchief. My illness sometimes filled me with flashes of inner fire that caused this embarrassing wet condition.

The whole room seemed to be watching us. Some of the devout women among us had probably been there at the women’s court and witnessed my humiliating departure. Procula was the only one bold enough to ask.

“I wish I had the pluck to do what you did this morning,” she said, delighted with me. “I’m always trying to find ways to attract handsome men. To have Manaen rescue me! What was it like?”

“I don’t know how to describe it,” I said. My hostess was a woman who fed on gossip and scandal. I was not about to offer myself as her next meal.

“Don’t be shy,” she coaxed. “My astrologer already told me.” Her eyes grew as wide as orbs. “His Magnificence, Lord Darius, predicted it. A woman from the north, someone I knew, would come to Jerusalem. And a god would abduct her.” In her excitement she spoke faster. “When I heard about your adventure at the Jewish temple, I knew you had to be the one.”

“No, it wasn’t like that,” I answered, trying to quiet her. “I may have heard a voice, that was all.”

“Of course you did,” she interrupted. “Dear Joanna. The God of the Jews is very powerful. What did he say? He must have told you something.”

Silent and smiling, I looked at her but did not reply. At last she seemed to understand that I was not going to say any more about it. Blinking her eyes, she reached for a plate of spice cakes and sank her sharp little teeth into one. I must have let out a sigh as I settled into the couch.

She leaned toward me again. “I know you’ve been in frail health, Joanna. I hope you don’t mind my saying so.”

Her honesty did surprise me. No one mentions another’s illness in public.

“I know a Greek in Jerusalem,” she said. “He uses fish oil to treat all sorts of problems. It must taste dreadful, but I’ve seen results. I could introduce you.”

“That is very kind.” I did not want to offend her by refusing her twice in one afternoon.

“Apollo. Have you heard of him?” She lowered her thick, round eyelashes to suggest a secret. “I used to suffer terrible sleeplessness,” she said. “He gave me this charm that I wear all the time.” Opening the waistline of her dress, she showed me a glass vile filled with specks of what looked like bone, tied on a cord stretched tight around her waist.

I thought of Mary and how she promised to speak to her son for me. “There is a man in Galilee,” I said. “He heals even incurable ailments. His mother is my cousin.”

“Maybe I should meet him.” Procula moved closer. For gossip’s sake she was willing to compromise her safe distance.

“I haven’t actually met him, myself,” I said. “Not yet.”

“What is his name?” She was sitting right beside me.

“Jesus.”

She frowned. “I thought I knew everyone. I’ve never heard of him.”

“He lives in Capernaum and keeps to the northern towns,” I said. “He has been working miracles for some months. Crowds of people follow him, but he is not yet well known outside of Galilee. When the time comes I will tell you about him.” It was presumptuous of me. Mary never said she would introduce me to her son, only that she would talk to him about me.

“I have always liked you,” Procula said contentedly. “We are alike. You have, how shall I put it, an appreciation for the supernatural.”

I smiled without answering.

“Perhaps when you are next in Jerusalem you will come to see me again.” She did not press her offer, but courtesy required that I accept. Better a friend at court than an enemy.

Chuza came for me. He wanted to have another word with the governor on our way out. I waited with the servants, watching Pilate as he sat slumped in his sturdy chair. I could see even from a distance that his dark head was filled with as few engaging ideas as ever.

I supposed Chuza was telling him about the citrus harvest in Galilee. My husband and I were traveling back to Sepphoris the next morning, so that he could spend his days in the fields with the workers and his nights in his own bed.

I wrapped my cloak around my shoulders to hint that our visit might soon end, but Pilate was not ready to let us go. Like a wolf drooling over a snared bird, he motioned for Chuza to bring me to him. Poor Claudia Procula, I thought. How does she live with such an unappealing man?

Chuza gave me no warning as we approached the royal chair. Pilate hardly acknowledged me but spoke only to my husband, saying that he had met with Manaen that morning. Chuza nodded; not a ripple of concern crossed his face.

“He told me there had been a problem in the temple precinct, I’m sure you know,” Pilate said, twisting his enormous face toward me. I smiled, perhaps too eagerly. Chuza lowered his eyes in my direction, a familiar gesture that silenced me.

“Oh, my dear, I hear you lost your way,” Pilate said in pained sympathy. “Whatever were you doing at the temple? Your family gave all that up years ago.”

“I had never seen the festival.” In my fear of him, my voice faded to a whisper.

Pilate pressed a hairy ear in my direction.

“I only wanted to see,” I spoke up. “I’m sorry if I upset anyone.”

The governor rolled his thick head back toward Chuza. “Your wife shows unusual curiosity,” he said. “I am curious about the Jews, myself. We should know our enemies. But not at the expense of safety.”

“It won’t happen again, Governor,” Chuza said.

Pilate pressed my husband’s shoulder to his own as a sign of confidence, but he did not look again in my direction.

The long ride to Sepphoris was made even longer because Chuza refused to speak to me. He got lost in his strategies for organizing the workers and counting the crops. I sat across from him, watching him grind his teeth, as if he were chewing on his plans. His distant manner distressed me. I straightened the petals on a gold collar I wore that day. It never hung right, even after three trips back to the jeweler.

“Manaen betrayed us,” I blurted into the strained silence.

“He had to say something,” Chuza answered without even looking up. “If Pilate found out another way, we would both be in trouble.”

“I don’t like him.”

“Manaen is an honorable man.”

“He could at least have warned you.”

“He did, I saw him this afternoon.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You’re better at acting sorry when you haven’t rehearsed. I expected that Pilate would ask about the temple.”

We fell back into our separate places and did not speak again until we were in Sepphoris. The house smelled of lemon leaves, reaching upward from their stone vases. Chuza breathed the comforting scent, and the persistent tic above his eye stopped twitching.

I was preparing to leave him after dinner when he did his best to make peace.

“Let’s put it behind us,” he said.

“I’m very sorry.” It was a heartfelt apology and he knew it.

“It turned out all right.”

“I didn’t mean to cause you trouble.”

“I know that,” he assured me.

In the days that followed, I plunged into the care of the house, determined to please my husband. I had the servants scurrying until every bedcover and window drape was hoisted down and heaved onto the back terrace. Table linens, kitchen towels, camisoles, tunics, bed jackets, my husband’s robes—all were heaped like a termites’ nest of cotton, silk and linen.

It took several days to soak so much laundry in the two vast wooden barrels of hot water we prepared. Scrubbed and rinsed clean twice over, every washable item in the house got attention. The back courtyard resembled a fuller’s workroom. Linens hung drying in the sun. I went barefoot the whole time, grateful for plain stone floors to walk upon after the excesses of palace living.

Our third evening in Sepphoris, my husband said he would spend the next night in the fields with the workers. He often did so during the harvest, to show the men that he was not above hard labor.

“I’d like to go to Nazareth,” I said. “I met a woman from there. She is my cousin.”

“You didn’t mention her.”

“It was before our trip to Jerusalem. Her name is Mary.”

I described our family relations, hardly an unusual story. Judea, ruled for centuries by foreign invaders, had few unbroken households. Brothers had turned against one another. Sons had abandoned their fathers.

“You will be home by dusk,” Chuza said. “We don’t need any more excitement.”

The next morning my carriage rattled over city streets, past the bridge where peddlers pushed their trinkets at me. Another time I would have been tempted by their bronze amulets that promised a cure for foot sores, toothache and sneezing fits. That morning I wanted only to see Mary.

Octavia fussed over my pillows and asked if I was warm enough until I eased her hands away and she settled in to her needlework, reinforcing the silver on one of my husband’s evening cloaks.

The winding road to Nazareth was clear until we came upon workers repairing the aqueduct. They were finally getting around to it, after the Passover delays. Five men on a scaffold hoisted large rocks to replace those washed away by the rain.

Phineas slowed us to a crawl. He was always fascinated by the efficiency of so many ropes and pulleys, buckets and planks in motion. The workers’ heavy bundles swayed and lurched.

Octavia let out a clucking sound of disapproval and looked at Phineas in the driver’s seat just ahead of us, as if to suggest that I should signal him to hurry. I took up my writing tablet and made a note. Butcher—cut of beef for ten.

A muffled thud warned me. Turning toward the sound, I watched a huge rock break away from the crumbling arch and crash to the ground. Two men at the top of the scaffolding lost their balance and fell. I watched with open mouth as one landed on the iron gears that moved the pulley. He was spiked on the sharp gears. I leaned over the side of the carriage and threw up.

“Now we’ll never get through,” Octavia groaned. She had not seen the men fall, or my sudden illness.

“We’ve got to help them,” I said, not certain what to do.

Octavia’s expression told me she wondered whether she’d heard me correctly. I called to Phineas. He stopped the horses, climbed down from his place and soon stood beside me.

“Go and ask if we can do anything.”

He looked at me twice to be certain that he understood. Unlike Octavia, he would never think of questioning a command. He returned to us, asking for bandages. Octavia handed him a box from under the seat.

I opened the latch and prepared to step down. “Are you sure?” she pleaded. My husband’s warning came back to me. No more trouble. I closed the door and waited. Phineas returned once again. “One is dead,” he reported. “The others should be all right.”

The foreman rode toward us, waving us on. The purple stripe at the hem of his tunic explained his polite attentions. A higher-ranking man, with at least two stripes on his tunic, had sent him. Our escort led us past the accident, and we continued on our way. Octavia rolled her sewing project between her fingers, preparing some sort of speech.

“If I may say,” she began.

I kept still, inviting more.

“It is dangerous for a woman to stop and help strangers.” She was not correcting me so much as curious about my actions, it seemed.

“What if one of my servants had an accident on the road?” I asked. “Wouldn’t you want someone to stop for him?”

“Did something happen to you at the temple in Jerusalem?” Octavia asked.

“No,” I said.

Mary, my cousin, was the only one I would tell about my morning at the temple. Without her to explain it to me, I had no words for the mysterious encounter. Even though I did not yet know the meaning, I was certain of what I heard in the women’s court. Bursting with excitement and gratitude, I wanted to do good for someone else. That is why I stopped for the laborers. But all of this was more than I could express to my maidservant. I looked out the window until she went back to her needlework.

From below the town, Nazareth’s hillside of caves resembled a bee’s comb. Some of the caves had shacks in front of them for extra living space. We moved slowly along the rugged switchback that had been pounded smooth by the goatherds.

The carriage was too wide to squeeze through the town’s narrow lanes. Before we left it at the livery, I packed Phineas with sacks and jugs until he smelled of the barley, dried cod and palm oil he carried. Octavia placed a basket of apples over her shoulder. The villagers watched us with suspicion. We were strangers, not to be trusted.

I recognized Mary’s compound by the sign above the gate. A carpenter’s level announced the family business. We entered the courtyard. Phineas went to my cousin’s door and knocked. She opened it so briskly that the air stirred around us. In quick steps she came outside and dusted flour from her dress, vigorous as a young woman. Her large scarf could not contain the thick dark strands that rolled across the edge of her forehead. I smelled spice cake.

“Joanna, come in,” she said, opening her arms to me.

I followed her like a curious child.

She greeted my servants as if they, too, were guests. I took my place on the small couch built into the wall where she had motioned me to sit. They stood near the door. She offered me a cup of warm water flavored with citrus and honey, then she offered the same to my servants. I nodded at them to accept it, although I was as confused as they were by the offer. They drank quickly, not moving from their places. When they were finished, I sent them to the inn at the north edge of town to wait for me as we had planned.

Mary went to her worktable, a clutter made from clay bowls, a jug of oil, a sack of flour and small linen pouches filled with expensive spices. I wondered if they had been a gift to her. They were an extravagance in such a modest home.

She brought me a taste of one of her cakes and began to wrap the other in fig leaves. “My brother-in-law likes these,” she said, as if I knew her family. I only knew that her husband was a carpenter and builder who had died not many years ago. And of course I knew of her extraordinary son.

I moved to a small wooden stool near her table. My warm drink soothed my rough throat. “My servants are not accustomed to being received like guests,” I said, allowing a hint of confusion.

She went on sweeping the table with a small fir branch. “Once, we were slaves in Egypt,” she said. “Now it is our turn to be good to strangers.”

The scent of almond oil wafted from my hair, threatening to overpower us. When I lifted my hand to remove my costly gold earrings, my charm bracelet clanked like cowbells.

Mary paid no attention. She admired the full sack of barley and the clay jug. “You are very generous,” she said.

“We have more than enough at home.” Tears suddenly sprang to my eyes. “Plenty does not always bring peace,” I burbled. The powerless feeling that illness brings came back to me.

Mary went on clearing the table in silence. When she spoke, it seemed at first that she had changed the subject. “My father owned orchards and wheat fields,” she said. “He offered twenty sheep at the temple when I was born. But he only wanted sons, not a daughter. I know that the rich can also suffer.”

I encouraged her, and listened as she told me about our younger years. I imagined the life we might have shared as cousins, if it had been allowed.

“My mother admired you,” I said. “She told me how good you were to your parents when they were old. I wish I had known you then.”

“When I was still young everything changed for my family,” Mary said. “My father lost his land to Herod. We left Sepphoris for Nazareth and he seemed to age overnight.”

“My father cut our family off from yours,” I said. It troubled me, now that I understood it. “We followed the Roman powers and made enemies of our own relatives.” A sense of loss had been building in me as I listened to Mary. I might have been raised as she was, according to the holy customs.

Mary’s stories about her childhood filled me with fantasies about how I might have fit in. She was twelve years old when her family fled Sepphoris, and at the time I was three. Her father refused to live quietly under Roman domination. My father made friends with our conquerors and said that only rebellious Jews fought the Caesars’ ways. He called them Jews, as the Romans did, not Hebrews as they call themselves. He avoided my eyes when he told me these things. I knew he felt shame.

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