by Joan Wolf
The porter said, “My lady, here is Mary, the wife of Aaron bar David.”
Julia smiled at me and began to roll up the scroll. “How lovely to see you. Come and sit down, my dear.”
I took the indicated bench and looked around at my lovely surroundings. The place was nothing like the simple garden I had at home. High marble columns enclosed it, and a part of it was covered for shade. In its center a marble fountain spouted sparkling clear water.
“Your house is very beautiful.”
She looked pleased. “Thank you, my dear. I had it built after my husband died and I had to move out of the governor’s palace.”
“It’s so bright! The houses I have lived in are much darker.”
She bowed her head a little, accepting my compliment. “We Romans like living outdoors, and we strive to replicate that feeling even inside our homes.”
With that topic of conversation exhausted, I suddenly felt very shy and inept. Julia Tiberia must have been in her forties, but she was still beautiful. Unlike most of the Romans I had met, her hair was light, and her eyes were blue. I had never known anyone with blue eyes before, and they fascinated me. She was a sophisticated woman of the world, and I wondered why on earth she had invited me.
Julia began our conversation deftly, asking me how old I was, where I had been born, and how I had come to live in Sepphoris. Her blue eyes were so intent, her expression so engaged, that I soon found myself pouring out my whole life’s story. When I finally stopped and realized how long I had been talking, I was embarrassed.
“I am so sorry, my lady,” I apologized feebly. “I didn’t mean to bore you by talking about myself like that. You must think me very rude.”
“Nonsense. I don’t think you rude at all. You would have been rude if you had refused to answer my questions. I wanted to know all about you, Mary. You interest me.”
“I interest you? But why?”
The blue eyes looked suddenly sad. “I once had a daughter who would be just your age if she had lived. I suppose you remind me of what I’ve lost.”
“Oh, my lady,” I said, “what a burden of grief you must carry.”
“She lived to be ten. My only child. Yes, it is a great grief.”
We sat in silence for a while. Then we spoke some more and had some refreshments, and she invited me to come back in the afternoon a few days hence, when she had no other appointments. I was happy to be asked and promised to come.
So began one of the most significant relationships of my life. Julia was unbelievably kind to me. She saw me as a substitute daughter, and I was certainly much in need of a mother. Through her I had access to a wide circle of highly cosmopolitan men and women whom I would ordinarily never have had a chance to meet.
Herod the Great’s capital, Sepphoris was situated near two of the great commerce routes from Egypt to Damascus. Because of its strategic location, it had always attracted ambitious Romans who desired to prove themselves and thus move on to even higher office in Rome itself. These people all came to Julia’s house, and, because I was her “adopted daughter,” they befriended me.
I went shopping with the women, and we also went to the baths. Julia and I went to see plays at the theatre, and on the days when there were chariot races, we attended those too. I dined out at least three times a week.
And I did all this without the company of my husband. Aaron encouraged me. My Roman connections were generous in passing business his way, and he didn’t want to do anything that might halt the flow of gold into his coffers.
This was heady stuff for a girl from a small Jewish market town. I was impressed by the fact that many of these Roman women were educated. They could read and write, and they passed papyrus scrolls of new poems among themselves with a careless ease that amazed and humbled me. From what I could gather, women even participated in some of the Romans’ religious rites, as priestesses. And if a woman didn’t like her husband, she could simply give him a writ of divorce, and he had no choice but to separate from her.
This was dramatically different from the status of women among my people, and I liked it. I was in awe of the accomplished women I met at Julia Tiberia’s house, but most of all, I was in awe of Julia. Every Thursday she held a late afternoon reception, after the men had finished work and returned from the baths. Invited guests would gather in her atrium, where wine and plates of sliced eggs, snails, oysters, olives, and apples reposed upon a collection of beautiful small round tables made of expensive wood. Slaves walked around with silver wine cups as groups of people throughout the room engaged in vibrant conversation.
This was a pre-dinner gathering, deliberately simple, but it was also the most important regular social event in Sepphoris. If you weren’t invited to one of Julia Tiberia’s receptions, you were nobody, and everyone knew it.
Julia was able to wield this kind of power in part because her husband had been governor, but mainly because her father was an important senator. In addition, she was still a beautiful woman and smarter than most of the men who surrounded her.
I was incredibly fortunate to have met and interested such a woman. She took me in hand and did everything she could to turn me into a younger version of herself. She hired a tutor to teach me to read and write Greek, and she herself took on the task of teaching me Latin. After six months of relentless instruction, the people who came to her house didn’t have to address me in Greek. I was almost as fluent in Latin as they were.
But it was learning to read that meant the most to me. All upper class Roman homes had libraries. Julia had inherited hers from her husband, and it was expansive. The library room, which opened off the atrium, was lined with cabinets holding the rolls upon which the books were written. Once I was literate, Julia allowed me access to all of them. It was she who opened my mind to the world beyond Galilee and Jerusalem.
It was also Julia who explained to me that when Aaron died, it was I who would inherit his money. Aaron had never said anything about this, so the revelation was a shock. Among my people, a woman never had her own money.
“Your position is well known throughout the city,” Julia told me. We were sitting by the pool in her peristylum, drinking wine. By now I was so accustomed to the naked gods and goddesses, nymphs and satyrs that comprised her statues and floor mosaic that I hardly noticed them. She said, “Aaron bar David has no male heirs—no sons, no brothers, no cousins, no one. Under the law, Jewish as well as Roman, if there is no male heir, the money goes to the wife. You will be very rich one day, my dear Mary. Very rich indeed.”
I stared at her. “Why hasn’t Aaron said anything to me about this?”
Julia rolled her eyes. “Men,” she said. “They never give up hope that their virility will magically return. He’s probably still hoping for a son.”
I shuddered at the thought. Aaron hadn’t come to my bed for many months. He had tried very hard to remain capable, but it was no longer possible. For which I thanked the Lord devoutly every night.
Julia must have read my mind because she reached across and laid a comforting hand on mine. “Don’t worry, darling. It won’t come back. You’re safe.”
My mind was in chaos. “What would I do with all that money?”
She laughed. “Don’t worry, my love. You’ll find plenty to do with it.” Her eyes glinted, blue as the sky. “Perhaps we might travel together. Would you like to see Alexandria?”
I nodded, speechless, as a vision of the outside world opened before my mind’s eye. “Could we do that? Just two women?”
Julia gave me an amused look. “We would hire men, of course, to protect us from bandits, but a woman doesn’t need a husband to do what she wants to do, Mary. That is, she doesn’t if she has money. I have money for the same reason you will; my husband left it to me.”
I asked a question I had often wondered about. “Did you never wish to remarry?”
Julia smiled serenely. “I have no need for a husband. If a woman has money, I think she is better off without one.” She
gave me an odd, glinting look that I didn’t understand. “One can always enjoy the company of men without marrying them.”
I thought she was talking about all of the men who frequented her receptions and lavished such attention on her, and I smiled back and agreed.
My intimacy with the powerful Romans was a topic of profound interest in the Jewish community. The synagogue Aaron and I attended catered to wealthy merchants, and they all wanted Roman patronage and hoped I could get it for them. Aaron was very generous with his donations, so we were in excellent standing with our money-loving rabbi.
If it were up to me, I wouldn’t have attended the synagogue at all. I felt like a hypocrite, sitting on the women’s side of the aisle, my elegant Roman hairdo covered by a veil, listening to the reading of scripture by men I couldn’t bear.
For most of my life the two pillars of my existence had been Daniel and the Lord. Both had deserted me, so I had resolved to put them out of my mind. I had no temptation to adopt the religion of my new friends—all those gods seemed too absurd to be taken seriously. I still believed in the God of Israel; I just wanted nothing to do with Him. Like my father and Lord Benjamin, He had thrown me away.
Chapter Eleven
I was twenty-one when Marcus Novius Claudius arrived in Sepphoris to take over command of the Roman troops based in Galilee. His coming caused great excitement among the Roman population. He was a legatus, a senatorial officer, and he was also a member of the Claudian family, to which the emperor himself belonged. He was one of the most well-connected men ever to grace Galilee. Aaron told me the word was he had been appointed because the emperor feared a Jewish insurrection. Apparently, our new commander had shown himself an effective leader in other delicate political situations.
The idea of an insurrection seemed ludicrous if you lived in Sepphoris. But I hadn’t forgotten the talk of a Messiah when I lived in Magdala, and I thought perhaps it was not impossible after all.
The women of Julia’s circle were excited about the newcomer because he was young, handsome, and not yet married. My friend Cornelia Flavia, who was married to one of the officers stationed in the city, told me that the Sepphoris girls were fools to hope for anything from the legatus. “A man like that may not be married, but he is surely promised to the daughter of some wealthy senator in Rome. The rich and powerful families always marry among themselves; they don’t like to share with outsiders.”
Julia, of course, intended to be the first one to entertain him, and as usual she got her way. Two days after the new commander rode into Sepphoris from Caesarea, he attended Julia’s afternoon reception. He came in late, standing alone in the wide doorway between the vestibule and the atrium, looking at the group in front of him with all the unconscious arrogance of one in whose veins ran the blood of Caesar.
Gradually, without his seeming to do anything to attract it, the attention of the room focused on him. I stared along with everyone else.
He was a splendid-looking man, tall and broad shouldered, with hair as black as mine. He wore the white knee-length linen tunic that was standard garb for Roman men, but his was distinguished by a wide purple stripe to signify his senatorial rank.
The woman standing next to me said out loud, “Now that is a man.”
Julia walked up to him, and he bent his head to receive her greeting. They spoke for a moment, and then she laid a light hand on his bare arm and began to take him around the room.
All of Julia’s receptions were important, but for this occasion she had gathered together the highest of the city’s Roman administrators. The bright silk colors of the women’s stolas contrasted harmoniously with the white worn by the men. Julia had laughingly told me that Roman men would rather die than be caught wearing colors or silk. They wore white linen, whether it was a tunic or a toga, and that was that.
Sometimes, when I looked at those immaculate white garments, I imagined how hard it must be for the servants to launder them. I was wise enough, however, never to mention such a thought to my new friends. They would’ve been dumbfounded that I should even think of such a plebeian thing.
Magdala was very far away these days. I glanced down at my own dress, a stola that was a blue as clear as the flax on the Galilean hillside in spring. I loved the feel of silk against my skin, so much kinder than the rougher linen and wool I had worn at home.
As the guest of honor made the rounds, I continued my conversation with Cornelia. Her cousin in Rome had sent her a new poem, and she was telling me about it and promising to lend it to me. We were talking comfortably, when suddenly I felt Flavia close her hand around my wrist and whisper, “He’s coming this way!”
I had no doubt whom she meant.
A moment later I heard Julia’s voice. “And here are the two lovely young women you wished to meet, Legatus.”
Flavia’s hand fell away from my wrist, and we both turned to look at him.
His eyes were light green. Lion’s eyes, I thought, as I looked up into them. Other than the eyes, it was a quintessentially Roman face, with a hawk nose, high hard cheekbones, and arrogant mouth.
As if from a distance, I heard Julia say, “Marcus Novius, I would like you to meet my dear young friend Mary.”
He didn’t look surprised by the Hebrew name, so I knew Julia must have told him about me. “Mary,” he said slowly, as if savoring the sound on his tongue. “A beautiful name for a beautiful woman.”
I stared at him. I couldn’t help myself. He positively radiated masculine strength and power.
Everyone was looking at me, and I realized I hadn’t spoken. I answered as coolly as I could in crisp Latin, “How do you do, Legatus?”
He smiled. It changed his whole face, making him look boyish and eager and delighted. It was a devastatingly attractive look. I had never met a man like this. Among my people there weren’t any men like this. Because of the short haircut and shaved jaw, I could see how powerful his neck was; because of the short sleeves of his tunic I could see how muscular his arms were, how hard his forearms. Just looking at him as he stood there smiling at me made me lose my breath.
And that is how I met Marcus Novius Claudius.
During the following weeks, he pursued me shamelessly. Wherever I was, there he was too. I knew people were talking about us. I knew I should warn him off.
Whenever I thought this way, however, I would roll my eyes. How did one warn off Marcus Novius Claudius? I doubted that an earthquake could do that, let alone a Jewish woman trying to make her way in an alien society.
There was also the fact that I enjoyed his company enormously. He was intelligent and witty and he knew so much about the world. He appealed to my brain and he made me laugh. Why shouldn’t I spend time with him? I asked myself. I wasn’t doing anything wrong.
But of course, there was a subterranean text to our meetings that I could not ignore, much as I tried to. Marcus’ very presence stirred me in a way I had only felt once before, with Daniel. But with Daniel I had felt safe. I didn’t feel safe with this man. I didn’t feel safe at all.
I knew what Marcus wanted from me. I hadn’t spent all these years in Julia’s circle without learning something about the morals of the people who surrounded her. I knew that Julia had taken lovers from among the men posted to Sepphoris on either military or administrative duty. I knew that marital fidelity wasn’t always honored among these aristocratic Romans. In this they were like their gods, fickle and faithless.
Despite my Roman veneer, I was still Jewish enough to know that adultery was a grave sin. I could truthfully say that, since Daniel left, I had never been tempted to betray my husband. I had had offers, but over the years I had perfected a way to refuse them, while at the same time managing not to offend the man I was rejecting.
But Marcus tempted me in a way I had never experienced before. When he put his hand on my arm, I shivered. When he bent his head to say something quietly into my ear, my heart pounded. I knew I was in grave danger, and I resisted. I had to give myself that amoun
t of credit; I tried very hard to resist. But I was wavering, and I knew I needed help if I was to remain a faithful wife.
Julia Tiberia, the adviser for every other aspect of my life, was not the person to consult about this matter. In many ways she was a wise and ethical person, but she wouldn’t understand my reluctance to give in to Marcus. In this, I knew she would be on Marcus’ side, not mine.
My thoughts turned to my only living relatives, my brother, Lazarus, and my sister, Martha. We had corresponded regularly over the years I lived in Sepphoris, although I had refused to visit them while my father lived. Since they were observant Jews, I couldn’t invite them to visit me. After my father died the previous year, I had spent a month with them in Bethany. It had been a wonderful if disturbing time—wonderful because it was so good to connect with the people who were truly my family, and disturbing because they made me realize how far I had traveled from the world of my childhood.
So it was then, when I realized the only sure way I could remain a faithful wife was to remove myself from the source of temptation, I decided I would pay another visit to my brother and sister. My hope was that by the time I returned to Sepphoris, either Marcus would have gone back to Rome, or he would have turned his attentions to someone else.
I came to this decision on a beautiful night in early March, when a group of us had been to the theatre and returned to Julia’s for refreshments. Marcus hadn’t attended the performance, but he joined us later as we sat around Julia’s peristylum, chatting and enjoying the pleasant cool of the evening.
I was sitting on a couch by the pool, holding wine in one of Julia’s beautiful cups and listening to the young man beside me talk earnestly about himself and his future hopes, when there was a little stir at the door, and Marcus came striding in. He had been at a military function and was still dressed in his uniform.
Marcus in uniform was, quite simply, stunning. I wasn’t the only woman in the room who had trouble keeping her eyes off him. He ignored everyone—even Julia, who had gone to greet him—and walked through the gathering, straight to where I sat by the pool.