The Testament of Mariam

by Ann Swinfen

  ‘I will not forget,’ I promised, ‘but I don’t expect to have much opportunity.’

  He patted my shoulder absently, and I knew that his mind was already on the journey ahead. I noticed that Yehûdâ was wearing the bracelet I had made him as a betrothal gift, plaited from a lock of his hair and mine, threaded with tiny gold beads I had bought two years before from one of the Bedouin traders. They had cost me ten of my goat’s cheeses, and my mother said I had been cheated, but I was pleased now to see them glinting there on his wrist. His hair was fairer than mine, with a touch of chestnut in it, so that it looked almost red against my black tresses. He saw that I had noticed the bracelet, there on his arm.

  ‘It shall not leave my wrist while I live,’ he said, and kissed it lightly.

  We came at last to the river bank, where we were to part. I found myself unable to speak, for fear that I should weep. They embraced me, first Yeshûa with a tender kiss to my forehead, and a murmured blessing. Then Yehûdâ took me in his arms and kissed me fiercely, so that I began to shake with a desire I had never known before. He released me reluctantly, as though he might abandon their journey.

  ‘You must go,’ I said, breathlessly, hardly trusting my voice.

  ‘Else we will never leave,’ said Yehûdâ.

  They turned away and began to follow the river downstream. Somewhere far away, I had heard, it flowed into the river Jordan. At a bend in the river which would take them out of sight, they stopped and looked back, and raised their hands in farewell. Then they were gone.

  Chapter Seven

  I would not see either of them again for nearly nine months. It was winter by then, a heavy sky promising sleet or snow hanging over the tops of the hills. I had wrapped a heavy cloak around myself, and a mantle over my head, before going outside to chivvy the animals into the shed. This was built against one of the outside walls of the house, which would provide them with a little warmth. If the winter proved as cold as it promised to be, we would bring them in to one of the ground-floor rooms of the house, next to the storerooms which lay along one side, separated from the main room by a row of squat pillars. For the moment, though, they would fare well enough here. I pulled down more straw for their bedding and filled the goats’ trough with a measure of mashed grain and hay mixed with water. We had begun keeping a few leggy mountain sheep as well, so that we now had wool of our own, instead of having to barter for it. I pushed and prodded the sheep into their own section of the shed, fenced off with hurdles, and filled their trough. If the sheep were left with the goats, then the goats, being bold and wily, would eat all the food.

  When I came out of the shed, sheltering the flame of my small oil lamp against the wind, it was beginning to snow. I saw a figure crossing the communal courtyard from the direction of the village square, bundled up as I was against the cold. I lifted my lamp higher and as he came into the circle of light I saw that it was Yehûdâ.

  ‘Mariam!’ he said, hugging me, lamp and all.

  ‘Careful!’ It was good to see him, but he was in danger of setting us both alight.

  ‘Are you alone?’ I looked beyond him, but there was no sign of Yeshûa.

  ‘Alone, yes, but no harm has befallen your brother. Can we go inside, out of this weather? Then I will tell you everything.’

  Inside the house, all the family was keeping as close to the fire as possible. A new sister-in-law had joined us. Yehûdes had married and brought his wife Hannah to live in our house, for with Yeshûa gone his labour was needed in the carpentry shop. Hannah was helping my mother to prepare the evening meal, stirring a big pot of stew hanging over the fire, while Yoses, Shim’ôn and Yehûdes sat round a board game and Daniel was absorbed in some private play with a set of little animals I had carved for him. He had not been well since the cold weather had begun, and we had kept him indoors.

  Yehûdâ greeted my parents and reassured them with his first breath of Yeshûa’s safety, for he had seen the look of fear on my mother’s face. An account of their travels had to wait, however, until all had eaten, the dishes were cleared away, and the prayer of thanksgiving recited.

  ‘I wanted Yeshûa to return with me,’ Yehûdâ said, as we sat roasting nuts over the fire after our meal, ‘but he was determined to go down into Judaea, to Qumrân. We have been travelling north and south along the Jordan valley for several months. For a while we stayed in Capernaum, where we made good friends, and even crossed the Lake of Gennesaret and visited some of the towns of the Decapolis.’

  We looked at him in wonder at this, for the Decapolis—those sophisticated cities far to the east, beyond Gennesaret—seemed as exotic to our village minds as Egypt or Macedonia.

  ‘Just south of Gennesaret we encountered a group of the people known as Essenes. You have heard of them?’

  Ya’aqôb nodded. ‘An ascetic sect. They dwell without wives in the desert and study the scriptures. But they have some strange beliefs, and live outside the Law.’

  ‘Well, I know little of their philosophy, but they do not live entirely outside society. They are dedicated to helping the poor and the sick. They have great skill in healing. It’s said that they can restore sight to the blind.’

  ‘None but the Lord can do that,’ said Ya’aqôb.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said my father quietly, ‘good men working in the name of the Lord, may do His bidding here on earth.’

  Ya’aqôb opened his mouth to argue, but my mother gave him a look to say, Let our guest continue, and he closed it again.

  ‘Yeshûa took a great interest in what they did,’ Yehûdâ said, ‘and spent many hours in conversation with them. This was when we were on our way to the Decapolis, and by the time we had returned they were gone. It seems the largest part of their brotherhood lives near Qumrân, but there are small groups scattered here and there throughout Judah. And from the main group, healers travel out to help the sick, then return to their community. They work mostly in the villages, amongst the poor country people.’

  ‘It seems a very worthy life,’ said my father.

  ‘Yes,’ said Yehûdâ, but I thought he hesitated a little.

  ‘In Qumrân they live celibate lives,’ he said, ‘with much prayer and fasting. They support themselves, growing their own food, weaving their own cloth. But they are also devoted to learning. It seems they have a vast library of scrolls and spend much of their time in studying, in discussing and writing works of devotion, and in copying their sacred texts.’

  I could see at once where this was tending. Study, discussion of belief, a library, works of kindness amongst the poor. This was a world my brother had been yearning for all his life.

  ‘He has gone to join them,’ I whispered. Tears began to steal down my cheeks. My mother had gone white with horror.

  Yehûdâ reached across and took my hand.

  ‘He wanted me to go with him, but such a life—living on the edge of the desert, brooding over sacred texts—that is not for me. For those who wish to join the order, there is a year of probation, while they are instructed in the way of life and tested on their commitment, heart and soul. After that, two years as a novice. If, at the end of the three years, the master of the order is satisfied, they are admitted.’

  ‘We will never see him again,’ I said in despair.

  ‘No, do not give up hope, Mariam. I made him promise me that, at the end of the first year of probation, he would meet me on the banks of the Jordan, ten miles northeast of Qumrân. He will tell me then whether he has decided to stay in the community, and I can bring word back to you. It was a month ago that we parted, so I will meet him again in eleven months.’ He gave my hand a squeeze. ‘Not so long.’

  He looked round at all of us.

  ‘Like you, I hope that he will come home.’

  There was something else that he did not tell us that evening. I was not to learn of it for several years, and at a time and place far from that winter day sitting beside the fire in the only home I had then known. Their final exchange Yehûdâ kep
t from me.

  ‘I will make you this promise,’ said Yeshûa, ‘to do what I am loathe to do. I will meet you in twelve months’ time, because you are my dearest and oldest friend.’

  ‘I thank you for that,’ said Yehûdâ.

  ‘Perhaps you will not, someday, when I ask you to make me a promise in return, to do something you are loathe to do.’

  ‘You would never ask me to do something that is wrong.’

  ‘Our ideas of what is wrong and what is right may be shaped by time,’ said Yeshûa, then he embraced his friend, and they parted.

  Long before I was told of this exchange of promises, I would hear from my brother how he had spent that year of his life, so far away from us, between the barren desert and the salt Sea of Sodom.

  Desert nights were bitterly cold, colder even than winter in the high hills of the Galilee. Somehow, Yeshûa had not expected this. The word ‘desert’ had always conveyed to him barren heat, a dry land of lizards and thorn bushes, stones cracking under a merciless sun. All this was true, but only by day. At night it was as if the chill wind off some faraway, snow-covered mountain had laid a blight on the desert. At home in the Galilee, the kindly earth soaked up the warmth of the daytime sun, like a wool blanket wrapped round a bakestone. After a hot day, if you thrust your hand into the upturned earth of the vegetable plot, where your spade had lifted the soil, the held warmth could be felt. So cruel and hostile was the land of the desert, however, that it stored no comforting warmth. As soon as the sun dropped below the western hills, the desert gave back not warmth, but a chill breath, like the cold flesh of a dead man.

  Here, where the Community had their settlement, there was a small area of fertile ground which was cultivated for modest crops, but the nearness of the desert brought the chill down at night, so that he lay awake shivering under the one thin blanket that was allowed. It made sunrise all the more welcome, so that Yeshûa did not find it surprising that all the Community rose before dawn and gathered on the sloping ground facing the hills of Moab. In the pre-dawn light the figures of his new companions moved softly on bare feet to their allotted places like some ghostly company, their white robes dulled to grey, the Master and the priests in front, then the Levites, followed by the full members, then the novices, and Yeshûa with the other neophytes. Behind them clustered the lay members, the Sons of Israel, who would never take full vows, and were permitted to marry, but who had chosen this segregated life on the edge of the desert in preference to their villages and towns.

  As the sun began to creep up the sky, still hidden from their sight by the hills on the eastern side of the Sea of Sodom, the grey robes, like the grey sky, flushed gradually to pink. They raised their arms to the heavens and, as the first curve of the sun slid golden above the mauve and purple hills of Moab, they began to sing.

  Thou hast spread the heavens for Thy glory

  and hast appointed all their hosts

  according to Thy will;

  The mighty winds according to their laws

  before they became angels of holiness

  and eternal spirits in their dominions;

  The heavenly lights to their mysteries,

  the stars to their paths,

  the clouds to their tasks,

  the thunderbolts and lightnings to their duty,

  And the perfect treasuries of snow and hail

  to their purposes

  and to their mysteries.

  Yeshûa had never before heard such singing as he had heard in the weeks since he had joined the Community. There was singing sometimes in the village kenîshtâ after the reading from the scriptures, led by a rather ragged choir under the direction of the hazzan, but anyone who felt moved might join in—a musical sense and a good ear were not required. And most people in the village sang at their work, songs he had heard all his life: songs for sowing and for reaping, lullabies for babies and laments over the dead, songs to help drive the plough through stony ground, to encourage the goats’ cheese to separate from the whey, to keep the hands working at the endless, repetitive tasks of weaving or hauling water or threshing corn. In the Temple at Jerusalem, all those years ago, the Levites had sung hymns as the priests cut the throats of the lambs and poured the blood over Yahweh’s altar, but they could scarcely be heard over the screams of the dying beasts and the noise from the crowd awaiting admittance.

  This music was quite different—both blissful and powerful—two hundred or more confident voices singing joyfully a hymn to the Lord God:

  Thou hast brought Thy servant deliverance

  in the midst of lions destined for the guilty,

  and of lionesses which crush the bones of the mighty

  and drink the blood of the brave.

  Thou hast caused me to dwell with the many fishers

  who spread a net upon the face of the waters,

  and with the hunters of the children of iniquity;

  Thou hast established me there for justice.

  Thou hast confirmed the counsel of truth in my heart

  and the waters of the Covenant for those who seek it.

  Thou hast closed up the mouth of the young lions

  whose teeth are like a sword,

  and whose great teeth are like a pointed spear,

  like the venom of dragons.

  After the dawn hymn, the company dispersed quietly to their morning tasks, which were allocated by the Master in accordance with their status in the Community. But no, he must remember that the Master preferred the title Mebaqqer, Guardian. Yeshûa had spoken only once to the Mebaqqer, on the day he arrived, when he was examined on his suitability to enter as a probationer. There would be other examinations later. The Community, he had learned, set great store by testing each member’s faith and worthiness. Every year, at the renewal of the Covenant, each would be examined on his current state of faith and the performance of his duties and sacred practices over the previous year, and as a result would move up or down the strict hierarchy, which governed everything, from official positions to admittance at the table for the ritual meal of purity.

  The Mebaqqer was a man of great height, gaunt from years of ascetic living and much fasting, his skin the colour of caramel from long sojourn in the desert. He had looked down his fine aquiline nose at Yeshûa standing humbly, and increasingly hopelessly, in front of him.

  ‘Not Maskil,’ he said. ‘No one’s Master. We are all brethren here. I am the Mebaqqer, the Guardian of the Community. Any man of the Community may become the Mebaqqer, given time, faith, and ability. You may become the Mebaqqer yourself.’

  Regarding this Galilean peasant from the height of his aristocratic lineage, he did not sound as though he believed it.

  ‘In the meantime, you will join the other new probationers in carrying dung from the latrines to spread on the fields.’

  That, Yeshûa thought with some amusement, puts me very firmly in my place. Not a student of doctrine. Not even a scribe and copyist. A spreader of dung. Well, all labour is good, if it is done in the true spirit of dedication to the Lord.

  Outdoor work was exhausting under the relentless sun, heat far worse than anything he had known in the Galilee. There were no trees to provide shade, except for half a dozen aged palms, dying from the ground upwards. Whenever a faint breath of wind awoke—generally only at sunset, and that rarely—the brown sword leaves rattled together like a dead man’s fingers. In the past there had been more palms, but they had been cut down a hundred years ago and more to provide pillars for the buildings.

  The surrounding barren countryside was inhabited by scorpions and serpents, a few gaunt hyenas, hawks circling, lizards. Above and behind the settlement, the towering cliffs shut in the deep valley, so that (if you were not careful) it could begin to feel like being buried alive in a rocky grave. Apart from the small painful fields cultivated by the Community, the only vegetation that Yeshûa could see, when he raised his eyes from his labours, was an insidious red crawling plant that marked some rocks like bloodst
ains and the dry white flowers of an everlasting ghost plant, whose petals, transparent and fragile as dead leaves, reminded him of the abandoned carapaces of beetles.

  The buildings themselves were plain but sturdily built of stone, some dressed, some unshaped, with floors of rammed pebbles and plastered walls within. Half a century before, an earthquake had caused a great deal of damage. Cracks could still be seen in some walls and a few of the buildings were no longer considered safe to use. The tower at the northwest corner of the main building had been roughly reinforced with a pile of boulders. Fallen masonry from the damaged buildings had been heaped up outside and left when repairs were carried out. Seen from some angles, the settlement gave an impressive appearance, but if you walked round the corner of a building or approached from a different direction, you could see the makeshift repairs.

  It soon became clear that not only was Yeshûa unlikely ever to become the Mebaqqer. He was unlikely even to become a priest or Levite of the order, for they were all descended from the ancient priestly families, just as their counterparts in Jerusalem were.

  He spent two months spreading dung, digging, hoeing, labouring in the fields, work he had been accustomed to since boyhood. Then—someone having discovered that he wrote a fair hand—he was moved to the copy-room of the library, painstakingly copying the sacred documents of the Community on to fresh parchment. The calendars were somewhat tedious (and curiously different from the calendars of the Temple), but he rejoiced in the hymns of thanksgiving, some as lovely as the Psalms of King David. When he was allocated the commentaries on sacred texts, he was reprimanding for spending too long reading them and gazing into the air, when he should have been applying his quill to the parchment. He was required to confess before the whole Community to the sin of inattention and slackness in his task, and as a penance, was put on half rations for ten days. This was a more serious punishment than it sounded, for meals were always meagre.

  A very small spark of rebellion kindled in his heart, for he did not feel he had been inattentive. He had been pondering the searching commentary on Habbakuk before copying it. Again and again the commentary on the prophet spoke of the enemy called the Kittim. Habbakuk had lived long ago, so it seemed these people, the Kittim, belonged to the past. Yet in every way the Kittim resembled the Romans—their disciplined armies, their mockery of the kings and priests of the peoples they attacked, their thirst for empire, their grinding conquests, their cruel taxation. ‘They put many to the sword,’ said the anonymous commentator, ‘young men, adults, old men, women and children, and have no pity for the fruit of the womb.’ Was Habbakuk (or his commentator) speaking of the prophet’s own times, or of the present day? When he lay awake at night, his belly groaning with hunger, he could not drive these thoughts from his mind.