The Testament of Mariam

by Ann Swinfen

  And I am living the time after-me, a time when Julia and her brothers will inherit the world, children who carry my blood, and my parents’ blood. And, in a way, Yeshûa’s blood also. A time when Rome will spread out further and further, conquering and absorbing all peoples as she tramps across their lands, building her unnatural roads that slice across the country like a knife, so unlike the kindly roads of other nations, that follow the contours of the land, the curve of the hillside, the river valley, the high chalk ridgeway. She will hold sway over all the world, from the frozen wastelands of Ultima Thule, to the snake-infested jungles of Africa beyond the desert.

  All of this is in me, eternally present, part of me, blood and bone, running in my veins and living, thundering, in my head. I hear the voices of the past and catch the whispers of the future, and sometimes it is too much, I cannot contain it all, the voices, the pictures, the memories, so that I think that my brain will explode like a poppy head, scattering its seed to the wind, my body evaporate in an instant and float, a wisp of cloud, disperse and vanish.

  Chapter Five

  Festivals. All through my childhood and youth, our lives were shaped by them, from the simple weekly Sabbath to the three great annual festivals of Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles. Some marked the seasons of the agricultural year—the sowing of grain, the planting of vegetables, the shearing of sheep, the gathering in of the harvest. Others were a memorial to the history of our people. No one could celebrate Passover—Pesah— without remembering that the angel of death had passed over the homes of the captives of Israel in the land of Egypt and slain instead the firstborn of our captors.

  The Romans, too, have their festivals. I have never participated in those which involve worship and sacrifice to the pagan gods, but many of their festivals are the innocent agricultural ones we celebrated ourselves, with their roots so deep in time that it is almost as if we all shared a common thankfulness for the bounty of the land. In any case, the Romans pay no more than lip service to their many gods. I never knew there could be a people so freely lacking in a spiritual sense. It matters nothing to them how many gods and goddesses and semi-divines crowd their pantheon. As they have conquered more and more nations, they have simply swept up and embraced their gods, their cults, and made them Roman. The wonder is, that there should be any day in their calendar that is not sacred to some ass-headed Egyptian deity or some Assyrian goddess with ten arms and twelve breasts. Yet amongst all this plethora of so-called gods, none seem to be treated with any true religious devotion. The appropriate sacrifices are made, usually by priests who are no more than secular officials, the appropriate prayers are gabbled, and the citizens of Rome go about their business.

  Amongst my people, we would no more have defiled the Sabbath than lain down before a charging bull. We said a berâkâ for every action in our daily lives, not just before and after meals. We prayed when we rose in the morning and when we lay down at night; we prayed when we pulled on a tunic or unlaced our sandals; we prayed over cookpots, looms, lathes, bread ovens, potter’s wheels, cheese strainers, tanning vats, grindstones, wine presses, chisels, forges. When I stabbed myself with the chisel, I had probably forgotten to say the right prayer. A man said a berâkâ before he made love to his wife. And afterwards. We were forever looking over our shoulders, fearful that we might be caught out. This obsession of ours was to lead to trouble for Yeshûa.

  The Romans are not a haunted people, as we were. I have never known a Roman for whom prayer was a part of life, or who felt any awe at the public prayers. As I have said, I took no part in these, but most of their festivals, while pretending to some religious purpose, are cheerful secular occasions, and the best of these is the Saturnalia.

  The Saturnalia is said to recall and celebrate the ‘age of Saturn’, a golden age in some mythical past, when all men loved one another, the sun always shone, food was abundant, and peace reigned throughout the world. I am not sure when this age is supposed to have occurred, because it does not fit into my own people’s history. After that brief moment in the first Garden, and the eating of the apple, we seem to have lurched from one disaster to the next. Mythical age or not, the age of Saturn is the excuse for a huge party amongst the Romans, when neighbour makes peace with neighbour, enemies and rivals embrace, rich men bestow alms on the poor, and in every household, the slaves sit at table with their masters and are waited on by them, in a world turned upside down in blessed chaos.

  Who would ever have supposed that the Romans, the Romans, could have invented a festival so kindly and so joyous? Perhaps it springs from a time when they were a simpler and gentler people, before vast power made them arrogant and cruel.

  The Saturnalia is a winter festival, but it celebrates the end of winter, even in the midst of snow and ice, for it falls at the time of the winter solstice, when the earth turns, and day and night pause on tiptoe, on the point of balance. The night, which has encroached on day, stealing its minutes and hours, begins to beat a retreat. The sun rises a few moments earlier, sets a few moments later, and all the peoples of the world heave a sigh of relief that, this year at least, the sun will not be swallowed up in endless night.

  This year the coming of the Saturnalia has roused me from my lethargy and beckoned me out from my hibernating cave. I feel, for the moment at least, reinvigorated, and plunge into preparing food for the feast with Fulvia. It is my role always to make the cakes and sweetmeats of my native land, rich in honey and spices and almonds and exotic fruits, which our Roman Gaulish neighbours find so curious, though I do not think such delicacies are unfamiliar to the Greek house slaves. That strange aberration, when my grasp of Latin deserted me, has passed, though sometimes I hesitate over a word and find myself searching for a substitute before my handicap is noticed. Julia, however, looks at me sometimes with a small frown of worry on her smooth young forehead. I can see that she is afraid I shall begin again to speak in tongues.

  The festival lasts a week, during which we exchange gifts, entertain neighbours here and feast at their houses, and eat until our sides ache. There is dancing in the village square, despite the cold. Young men drink too much. Young men are sick and fall down in alleyways. Young women are seen disappearing down other alleyways with other young men. The month the Romans call September always produces a few unexpected births in the village.

  The last day of the festival celebrates, in particular, Sol Invictus. I am told by one of our neighbours, an elderly man who is something of a scholar, that this is a modern accretion to the Saturnalia. The praise of the Unconquered Sun has crept in from some of the eastern and southernmost parts of the Empire, but being also associated with celebration of the turn of the year, has been cheerfully embraced by Rome.

  On the feast of Sol Invictus, then, we are happy, but a little weary from all this festivity. We sit down in our own home for the last feast of the holiday. The children have kept up the practice of cross-dressing, though I am glad to say that the adults of our household do not. The boys are cavorting about in long dresses, hitched up at the waist so that they will not trip, and Petronius has made himself a curly wig out of the ends of a fleece. Julia strides about in a short tunic, with a toy sword strapped at her waist. She has contrived a sort of helmet and breastplate for herself out of old parchment begged from her father’s office. They are all three in a silly, excitable mood and will probably be quarrelling before bed, not at all in the spirit of the Saturnalia.

  Sergius, who has come to spend the festival with us, captures Julia and sits her on his knee. She shows him her Saturnalia present, a sigillum, a wooden doll, and gradually we settle to the meal. Manilius and Fulvia, playing the part of house slaves for one last time, carry in the dishes of food from the kitchen. The three field hands cluster together at the foot of the table, made jittery even at the end of the festival by this reversal of roles. Maia and Antiphoulos, however, are quite at ease.

  Antiphoulos is seated next to me and we help each other to a dish of roasted lamb cooked on stick
s and dressed with (to be frank) a rather too rich sauce made with too much garum, the Roman fish condiment. Antiphoulos is wearing a freshly laundered tunic and his hair has been newly cut. Already he looks like a free man. If you did not know, you would take him for a citizen of modest but respectable family. This will be his last Saturnalia with us. Ever since I saw where he went on our visit to Massilia, I have been curious about him.

  ‘What will you do,’ I ask, ‘when you have bought your manumission?’

  He lays down his food, rinses his fingers in the finger bowl, and takes a sip of wine before he answers.

  ‘I have not entirely decided, domina. I may start a school in Massilia.’

  I know he can read and write, for he sometimes serves as Manilius’s secretary.

  ‘You are learned, then?’

  His eyes crinkle up in a smile.

  ‘I would not say learned, no. But my father saw that I received a good education.’

  ‘You are from Greece, are you not?’ I find myself dropping into Greek, educated Greek, which does not appear to have deserted me.

  He looks surprised and pleased, and answers me in the same language.

  ‘I am Greek, yes. But not from the mainland. My family had large estates on the east coast of the Middle Sea. I was sent to finish my education at the university in Athens.’

  ‘Then how do you come to be serving my son as a household slave?’

  His jaw hardens and I think he will not answer, but he is a courteous man. At last he says, ‘There was a dispute about land ownership with a corrupt Roman procurator. Many of us, young men, rash, not stopping to calculate the odds, rose up and attacked a small Roman garrison. It was pointless and foolhardy. Many were killed. The rest sold into slavery. It was my education that saved me from the galleys, so I have much to thank it for.’

  It is a familiar story, so familiar it does not shock me.

  ‘If you are going to become a teacher, perhaps Manilius would employ you as a tutor for the boys. They are growing too old to be taught by their mother any longer.’

  ‘I think not.’ He smiles ruefully. ‘Once a slave in this house, always a slave. It will be better to make a fresh start.’

  ‘You are probably right.’ I pass him a dish of roasted goat’s cheeses wrapped in sweet peppers. ‘There is warfare in my own country of Judah, a rising against the Roman occupiers.’

  ‘Yes, I have heard. Like us, I fear they are doomed to failure. The Roman army rolls on like some great boulder, crushing everything in its path.’

  I do not know what prompts me to do what I do next. I dip my finger in my goblet of red wine and trace on the table between us the outline of the fish. His reaction is remarkable. He stiffens and goes white, then red. He opens his mouth as if to speak, but at that moment Manilius comes towards us bearing a vast platter on which repose three ducks, crisp and steaming. Quick as a lizard, Antiphoulos lays his palm over my drawing. When he lifts his hand, it is gone.

  A few days after the Saturnalia, Manilius made a trip into Massilia with two donkeys loaded up with as many wineskins as their patient backs could bear. There were unlikely to be any foreign merchant ships in harbour at this time of the year, but he deals regularly with a wine merchant in the city who sells to the richer inhabitants and to the owners of the large villas strung along the coast. I knew also that my son was going to enquire about the oxen he hoped to purchase. He would wait until we had fresh pasture in the spring before concluding the deal, but I could see that he was becoming anxious about beginning his new venture. I have not yet given my permission. It may seem strange, but Petradix left the farm in my name. Women have status and can own land amongst the Gauls, and my husband wanted to provide for my old age. Manilius needs my agreement before he can make major changes to the farm. I think I will probably give it to him.

  Towards evening, when he was already overdue, there was a sudden commotion outside the house, and then I heard my son calling for me. I threw a palla around my shoulders and went outside into driving sleet. The open yard between the house and the farm buildings was full of people—men, women and children.

  ‘Ah, Mother,’ Manilius said, ‘I need you to interpret. Apart from one man with a little Latin, these people speak only Aramaic.’

  They were refugees, it emerged in tangled explanations: two families who had fled from the bloodshed and horrors in Judah. Everyone else from their village had been slaughtered by the Roman soldiers, because one young man had belonged to a group of Zealots which had attacked Scythopolis. The village had been razed to the ground and all the people massacred as a reprisal. These two families had only escaped because they had been away, attending a wedding in another village. They had nothing, having parted with their few items of value—the women’s jewellery, worn for the wedding, one man’s purse of coin—to buy themselves passage on a dirty merchant ship travelling west. It had been, it seemed, a smuggler’s vessel rather than a merchant’s, dodging in and out of small ports without customs posts, but finally putting in to Massilia because the whole vessel was falling apart at the seams and needed the services of a shipyard. They had barely escaped being sold into slavery by the ship’s captain, who was little more than a pirate.

  My son had come upon them in the harbour as he was setting out for home, where they were disputing with the captain and the slave dealer.

  ‘I could not leave them there,’ he explained to me, a little shame-faced at his spontaneous generosity. ‘The women barely have clothes to cover their modesty and the children are starving.’

  They heard him without understanding, but their faces turned to me full of a fragile hope.

  I approached the eldest of the men, bowed, and addressed him courteously in Aramaic.

  ‘Sir, we will gladly offer you food and hospitality. You must be weary and cold after your long journey. My son Manilius, dominus of this villa, will show you where the men and older boys can be lodged. Let the women and children follow me.’

  I turned to Manilius.

  ‘The large storeroom at the back of the house, next to the kitchen—it’s warm, and by moving some of the barrels and jars back against the walls, we can surely make room for the men. The women can share the guest room.’

  ‘The storeroom is hardly fitting—’

  ‘After what they have endured, it will seem like a palace.’

  ‘And the women and children . . . we don’t own enough beds.’ He grinned ruefully. ‘Fulvia will be angry with me.’

  ‘Not when I have spoken to her. And I am proud of you.’

  At that he blushed and looked at the ground, as any Gaulish man will do if you praise him.

  ‘Some of them have bedrolls,’ I said, indicating the thin bundles of mats and blankets a few of the refugees wore strapped to their backs. ‘They will not have been accustomed to sleeping on beds, even in their own homes. We should have enough rugs and blankets, even sacks for the men. The most important thing is hot food.’

  With that I led the women into the house and went to inform Fulvia that she had just acquired fifteen guests. The duty of hospitality dictated that she must feed and shelter them, and to her credit, after the first shock, Fulvia responded gallantly. The guest room held a bed large enough to accommodate one elderly woman and a pregnant wife. I was surprised that the old woman had survived the rigours of their terrible journey, but we are an enduring race. For the rest, we laid out blankets and cushions on the floor, while Maia carried up buckets of water so that they might wash. I brought salves for several wounds and lacerations. Some looked like the result of beatings. While I attended to this, Fulvia and Maia hurried off to contrive some kind of a meal from bread and broth and dried fruits. It had grown too late to think of killing a sheep to feed them, though I could see that Manilius thought it was his duty to do so.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ I say, when Manilius, Fulvia and I have gathered at last in the cenatiuncula, and our unexpected guests have gone to their rest. ‘Tomorrow you can roast a sheep for them and provid
e all the trappings of a guest-meal, but tonight I do not think they could have eaten more than broth. They were too weary.’

  ‘They are a pitiful sight,’ Fulvia agrees, ‘but what is to become of them, Manilius? We cannot feed so many for long.’

  Manilius looks from one to the other of us, and shifts uneasily on his cushioned bench.

  ‘As we walked up from Massilia, I managed to speak a little to the man who knows some Latin. Zakkai, his name is. They want to find agricultural work, for it’s all they know. One of the older boys has a little skill in leather work. I thought we might employ the more able-bodied to work on the farm.’

  ‘Alongside the slaves?’ says Fulvia. ‘And how are they to be fed?’

  ‘I think they would be glad of any work,’ I say. ‘Even alongside slaves, so long as they are not enslaved themselves. And with Antiphoulos leaving soon, one or two of the women could help with the household tasks. Surely we have stores enough to feed them for a few months, until spring comes. But is there work enough on the farm? And could you pay them wages?’

  ‘Zakkai said they would gladly work without wages, in return for shelter and food.’ Manilius looks at me cautiously. ‘If we began the work of ploughing up the two wheat fields, and planting vines . . . ‘

  I have known this was coming and know, too, when to concede graciously.

  ‘Very well. Let’s enlarge the vineyard. With so many hands at work, the planting will be done swiftly. But what of your new oxen?’