by Ann Swinfen
There were more prayers as my father lifted the Pesah lamb on to a platter and carefully withdrew the crossed sticks, still without breaking any bones. Then he and Shim’ôn carved slices of the meat and piled them on to our plates, beside the unleavened bread.
I picked up a piece of the meat and put it in my mouth. It burned my tongue and the roof of my mouth, and I felt hot tears spring up in my eyes, but whether of pain or guilt, I could not tell.
That night it was hot and stuffy in the goat-hair tent, so I crawled outside with my bedroll and lay under the stars. The fifteenth day of Nissan, which had begun at sundown, is the day of holy convocation, the most sacred of the whole of Pesah. The noise, stench and blood of the Temple had been succeeded by an almost eerie calm and quiet. Occasionally a snort came from the camel lines. In the distance, at the other side of the caravanserai, someone was softly singing one of the psalms of David. Otherwise, there was utter silence. Even the great city of Jerusalem was silent, as though some magician had laid his hand upon it and banished all sound. Apart from the dying embers of the cookfires, there was no light on the ground, so that the stars in the vast heavens seemed unusually bright. I looked for the one I had decided was my own personal star, and found it almost straight above where I lay, a reddish gold star of infinite promise.
The village hazzan had encouraged my enthusiasm for my studies and I had once asked him whether it might be possible for me to become a priest or a Levite in the service of Yahweh. He shook his head.
‘No, Yeshûa, you cannot think of such an honour. They are all descended from the priestly castes. Their office is inherited. A simple village boy like you would never be accepted. But we can all serve Yahweh if we keep our hearts pure and obey the Law.’
I was disappointed at the time, but no longer. I wanted no part in that scene of butchery I had witnessed in the most holy part of the Temple. How could Yahweh, the One God who had created mankind and all the beauty of the earth, want His altar to be drowned in steaming blood, crawling with flies? My mind was whirling with doubts and questions, which I knew could be answered neither by my father nor by the hazzan, who was a man of carefully acquired learning but no profound wisdom. In this troubled state of mind, I finally fell asleep.
On waking, we began a day more quiet and contemplative than the most rigorous Sabbath. Many fasted until sundown, though my mother insisted that I eat a little of last night’s leftover unleavened bread and drink some water. We were forbidden to engage in any activity, and were not even allowed to walk very far, but I slipped a little way out of the encampment and found a place in the shade of a bent and ancient olive tree, where I sat for most of the day, brooding on my thoughts of the night before. At sunset I returned to our tent where, as the day of sixteenth Nissan began, the women prepared a good meal, our first since the evening before. Everyone was loud and cheerful after our day of enforced quiet and fasting. One of the other pilgrims produced a lute, the ‘ûgab, another a double pipe, the hâlîl, and a boy of my own age contrived a drum from an upturned pot beaten with the palms of his hands. They played quiet tunes at first, then as the beer and wine went round they started on the merry tunes played at village festivals, and we all joined in the singing, for matsôth, the sixteenth, is a day of rejoicing.
‘Why do we make the offering of the first fruits of the harvest at matsôth, Father?’ I asked. ‘At home we won’t be harvesting for at least a month.’
‘Long ago our people lived in the low-lying, sheltered lands round Jericho,’ he said. ‘The harvest is much earlier in those parts. So the sheaf of wheat for the offering is brought in specially from there.’
‘I see.’ I remembered now that, as we came through Jericho, I had seen the fields of wheat already golden, but I had not thought about its significance.
That was a good day.
Everyone streamed through the streets singing. The sheaf of wheat, the matsâh, was offered at the Temple, and then the crowd of boys of twelve and thirteen and fourteen, who were to be dedicated as Sons of the Law that year, were gathered together in one of the outer courts of the Temple. It was there that the moneychangers sat behind their tables with their piles of coins from every land on earth. Anyone could pay for goods in the town with Greek drachmae or Roman denarii, or Syrian coins or Egyptian. But taxes and offerings to the Temple must be paid solely in Tyrian zuzim, so the moneychangers did a brisk business.
‘And a profitable business,’ I heard Shim’ôn of Keriyoth say to my father. ‘All in the hands of the priestly families, and a fraudulent rate of exchange offered, which lines their pockets while fleecing the poor pilgrims.’
I wondered that such a practice should be allowed, here in the Temple, as we hurried over to the stalls selling sacrificial animals, round which the boys and their fathers crowded. We were not expected to sacrifice a lamb for the bâr mitzvâh ceremony; a bird was sufficient offering for a young boy. Yehûdâ chose a cock pheasant, a handsome bird with plumage that shone in the sunlight like burnished armour.
‘Well?’ said my father. ‘Which bird will you choose?’
I saw then that a small cage on the ground beside the stall held a white dove. It sat miserably hunched, for the cage was too small for it to stand upright. It fixed on me a look of resigned despair.
‘That one,’ I said, pointing.
Our fathers paid for the birds and we carried them to the sacrificial altar, where we said the requisite prayers and dedicated ourselves to uphold the Law of the Chosen People. All the time I held the dove cradled against my chest, where I could feel the rapid beating of its heart. It raised its head and looked about, sensing the open air and the movement of the wind which could be felt even in this inner court.
Yehûdâ handed over his pheasant to the priest, who cut its throat swiftly, as the lambs had been slaughtered two days before, but there was less blood and less ritual. I stayed where I was. My father gave me a small push to urge me forward, but I resisted him.
I thought of the lamb as I stroked the feathers of the dove. I had never held a dove before, never realised how soft it was, how light. I screwed up my eyes and tilted back my head. How wonderful it would be to fly up there in the pure air, so far above the earth. How could I rob this creature of such power and beauty? I raised the dove to my face, kissed the top of its head, then threw it upwards as hard as I could, reciting a berâkâ for its safety, for its long life, and for its acceptance by Yahweh.
There was a loud clap overhead. Could such a sound have been made by the wings of so small and light a bird? The white dove circled once, then stretched its wings and soared high into the sky above the courtyard, growing smaller and smaller until it vanished from sight.
There was silence in the courtyard. Everyone was staring at me, mouths agape.
On the altar, Yehûdâ’s beautiful pheasant bled and faded, its eyes as dull as the dusty pebbles beneath our feet.
‘Surely Yahweh loves a living bird, flying free, better than a bloody corpse?’ I said. But I said it silently, inside my head.
‘You have wasted your money, my friend,’ said Shim’ôn of Keriyoth to my father.
‘So that was what you did!’ Eskha crowed triumphantly. ‘You didn’t sacrifice the dove as you should have done, and our parents were angry with you.’
‘Do you think that was my crime, Mariam?’
Yeshûa looked at me quizzically. There was something in his eyes that I could not quite read.
‘No,’ I said slowly. ‘I think it was something else. And I think, even now, you’re not sorry you let the dove go free.’
He smiled.
‘You are right,’ he said it so softly I could barely hear. ‘I’m not sorry.’
He turned to Eskha.
‘Now,’ he said briskly, ‘do you want to hear what I really did?’
‘Yes, yes!’
The rest of the Pesah festival passed without further excitements, and at the end of the two weeks encamped outside the walls of Jerusalem, the caravan from
the Galilee packed up its tents and cooking pots, its refilled waterskins and its trinkets bought at outrageous prices from the street stalls of the Holy City. They were not the only pilgrims preparing to leave. All round the city, inside and out, people and animals milled about in a confusion of dust and shouting. At last they departed, making back towards Jericho. Having started early, they made camp a few miles before Jericho, about ten miles from Jerusalem.
While the women prepared the evening meal, my father went to the tent of Shim’ôn and said to Yehûdâ, ‘Where is Yeshûa?’
‘I haven’t seen him since dawn,’ said Yehûdâ. ‘I thought he was travelling with you.’
‘We thought he had gone with you,’ said my father, beginning for the first time to be worried.
After that, my parents and Yehûdâ’s family searched the camp from end to end, but could find no sign of me. My mother was weeping by then, and my father agreed that they must return to Jerusalem in the morning. Somehow, in the confusion of the departure, I had been left behind.
‘He is not yet twelve years old,’ my mother whispered to my father in the tent, where they tried to sleep, but could not.
‘He will come to no harm in the Holy City,’ said my father, but perhaps he did not altogether believe this.
Before dawn the next day they began the long walk back to Jerusalem, carrying what they could and entrusting their other belongings to Yehûdâ’s family.
The journey was a hard day’s walking in the heat and the dust, against the flow of the crowds still leaving the city. And it was hard above all for my mother, who was already carrying the child that would be you, Mariam. Over and over they enquired for their son, but no one had seen him. At last, exhausted, they reached the city just as the gates were being closed at nightfall and found a room in a cheap inn.
All the next day and into the hours of darkness they searched the city, trudging up and down streets still littered with the rubbish left behind by the pilgrims. They asked in the markets and the inns, explored back alleys with fear in their hearts, in case he had been attacked and left for dead. But why should anyone attack a young boy who, by his clothes, was poor and of no account? My mother wept without ceasing. My father was grim-faced but methodical, quartering the city from the Damascus Gate to the Dung Gate, from the Joppa Gate to the Lion Gate, searching the wide streets near the Temple and the Tower of Antonia, venturing into dark and noisome lanes amongst the huddled houses of the poor. The next morning they went to the Temple, planning to say a prayer to Yahweh for the safe return of their boy.
Every day, in an arcaded court of the Temple, away from the sacred areas and the sacrifices, scholars and teachers would gather in the shade and discuss matters of morals and the interpretation of the more obscure points of the Law. Young men came regularly to sit around them on the ground, to listen to the discussions and to put questions to them. These were the regular students. But anyone might attend the group, simply to listen or to join in.
There, amongst the young men, the despairing parents found their miscreant son, grubby of hands and face, eagerly questioning the scholars about the nature of Yahweh’s mercy and what He had taught His people about the taking of life.
‘Our mother was so angry, she boxed my ears, there in front of everyone!’ Yeshûa grinned ruefully at the memory, and rubbed the lobe of his left ear.
‘How could I be so thoughtless,’ she said, ‘to run off and cause them so much grief? They had searched the whole of Jerusalem, not knowing where to find me.’
‘I answered in all innocence, “But you should have known that you would find me in Our Father’s house.”
‘I did not realise the impertinence of it. I was thoughtless and rude, and they had suffered dreadful agony through my selfishness.’ He paused. ‘I do not think our parents will let Shim’ôn out of their sight.’
‘You were wicked!’ Eskha was awestruck. Her eldest brother to run away and stay behind in Jerusalem! ‘And what happened then?’
‘Then our father had to pay out more money for us to join the next caravan going north. He lost a whole week’s work as well, and our mother cried often into the night. She made me promise on oath not to run away again. Never to leave our village. I think she believed I wanted to join the servants of the Temple, but that was never my intention.’
‘What was your intention?’ I asked.
He put his arm around my shoulders and smiled down at me.
‘I wanted the answers to some questions.’
‘And did you find them?’
‘Not yet.’
On the farm in Gaul, the Saturnalia is long past, the spring is flushing the fields and trees with early green, and the new oxen have arrived. Antiphoulos handed over the fee for his manumission last week. Manilius affixed his seal to the papers, then handed him a purse of coin to help him on his way in his new life. The house already seems strange without his presence. We have only women working in the house now, and Manilius must be his own clerk or buy the services of another. Our Israelite families have worked hard to rebuild the old cottage and have all moved in there together, for they do not wish to strain Fulvia’s hospitality too far. Once the new vines are planted they will set about building another cottage. They must be very crowded, but we respect their intentions.
Under Manilius’s eager supervision, one field normally put down to arable has been ploughed and trenched, and the rows of vines planted. They are cut back to just a few inches above the ground so that all their early strength will be put into their roots. We cannot expect a harvest from them for two or three years. Like all farming, this is a venture based on patience and hope. I do not expect that I shall live to drink the vintage from these vines.
The vines that are to be planted in the second field have arrived and are stored in one of the outhouses, wrapped in damp sacking, for they will have to wait a day before planting. Our labourers too are given a day of rest, though I suspect they may use the time to lay out the foundations of the new cottage. All our family is off to a wedding at the next farm, where the daughter is to marry a cousin and so enlarge the estate.
While the rest of the company attend the sacrifices to Juno and Hymen, I sit quietly dozing in the atrium of the neighbours’ house. (My eccentricities are tolerated, if not understood. They do not fork their fingers at me here, though I think they find my scruples baffling.) When the ceremony is over, the bride, blushing and pretty, leads the party out into the terraced garden. She looks happy, even if the marriage was arranged for the convenience of the parents, and the groom, only a little older than she, is clearly pleased to have secured such a lovely wife. Soon we are seated around a table as loaded with food as Melkha’s bridal table, though some of the foods would have seemed strange to her. I am thankful that the family has decided to eat, Gaulish fashion, seated at a table, and not reclining on a couch, propped up with an elbow, as the Romans do. I have never been able to adapt to this ridiculous habit, which induces cramp in the legs, numbness in the arms and shoulders, and violent indigestion. If the Romans had set out to devise the most uncomfortable posture in which to eat, they could not have bettered what they invented.
The feast is rich and delightful, the company pleasant, and the terrace—like ours, with views of the sea—charming, on the first really warm spring day this year. We are, perhaps, a little staid. There is no dancing, as there would be amongst the peasants. We are a little too conscious of our dignity here. There was invariably music and dancing at weddings in the villages of the Galilee. And at betrothals, too.
My mother always said that it would be difficult to find a husband for me. She stood me before her and looked me up and down with a critical expression. I was just fourteen years old and had reached marriageable status some time earlier. Facing my mother, with that look on her face, I was conscious of my clumsy hands and feet. I had grown suddenly in the last year and could not control my body. I was forever bumping into people and knocking things over, just as I had done when I was a small ch
ild.
‘Your eyes are too far apart,’ she said, ‘and your mouth is too big. You never comb your hair, it’s a disgrace. We might be able to do something with that, I suppose. Why have you not lengthened that tunic? Half your lower leg can be seen. I have no time to do it, with so many unmarried men to care for.’
I thought this a little unfair, for I sewed and mended my father’s and brothers’ clothes as often as she did, but I had learned by now to hold my tongue—most of the time. My brothers were all still unmarried, though Yehûdes and Yoses were now betrothed to girls younger than I, Yehûdes to the daughter of one of the families Adamas had recommended, Yoses to Judith’s younger sister. Judith herself had married a month ago.
Awaiting the rest of my mother’s criticism, which I knew would continue for some time, I stood on one leg, winding the other around it. At her look, I stood up straight again.
‘Your father is in despair over you,’ she said. ‘He cannot think of anyone who will take you on. Your looks might not matter, but you are too outspoken, too fond of your own opinion. A man does not like that in a woman.’
I had heard all these arguments since I was ten years old.
‘Yeshûa likes me,’ I muttered rebelliously.
‘Yeshûa is a brother, not a prospective husband,’ she said crisply.
Melkha had come on a visit to us, bringing her son and three daughters, together with a retinue of servants. I suppose that had prompted this latest lecture from my mother. My elder sister wore fine silks, her maid braided her hair every morning with ribbons and strings of small freshwater pearls, and she moved and spoke like the fashionable ladies of Sepphoris. Yet I felt that she was somehow uneasy. She had given Adamas four children in six years, but only one son. He was a man with no use for daughters and I thought Melkha was worried because she had not yet fallen pregnant again. Until she bore him more sons, Adamas might dress her in fine clothes, but would treat her with little respect. I suddenly realised what I had never thought of before. I had wondered why he had chosen the daughter of a village family, but of course—we were a family of many sons!