by Ann Swinfen
‘We will leave tonight, after the evening meal. Only the shelîhîm and the most devoted of my disciples.’
‘And the women,’ I said firmly.
‘It will be a hard journey, over the mountains.’
‘I am able,’ I said.
‘But Yoanna or Salome?’
‘Perhaps not. Susanna and the Magdalene will come, I am sure. How long will it take?’
‘If all goes well, and everyone can keep up the pace, about two days, I think, or perhaps three. We must ask Yehûdâ the best way to go. He has been there before.’
‘Of course!’ I was relieved. I had forgotten Yehûdâ’s many journeys for his father. I would feel safer with his knowledge to guide us. No doubt if Yehûdâ had not been one of us, my brother would have set off into those mountains, trusting in the Lord to show him the way, but I was glad of a more earthly guide.
There were to be only twenty of us. After eating a substantial evening meal, we filled satchels with food and carried two water skins each, for Yehûdâ said that in some places the country was dry and barren, though elsewhere there were well-watered stretches where fruit grew abundantly. Susanna and I each carried a cookpot. The plan was that we should slip away from the town a few at a time, for we did not want to attract attention. Some townsmen who were hostile to Yeshûa—and there were such, even then—might put Antipas’s soldiers on our trail.
It was well past nightfall before the last of us prepared to leave—Yeshûa, Yehûdâ, the Magdalene and I. Yeshûa had insisted that the others must be safely away before he would escape. Yehûdâ would not leave him unprotected and I had demanded to stay with them. Somehow the Magdalene had attached herself to our group, and I squeezed her hand while we waited for Yehûdâ to give us the signal to leave. My heart was beating fast, but I was not truly afraid. Not then.
Yehûdâ, who was standing beside the window in the darkened room at the front of Zebedee’s house, overlooking the street, finally gave us a nod and we made our way softly to the back, so we could leave by the beach. Salome kissed us with tears in her eyes. Zebedee held open the door and whispered a blessing as we passed through. It was dark as lamp-black on the shore, its far edge marked only by the faint reflected glow of starlight on the waters of the lake, for the moon had not yet risen. We held each other’s hands so that we should not be parted and lost in the darkness.
The only way out of the town was through one of the gates, which were guarded at night. The rest of the group had left before the guard was mounted, but Yehûdâ had ensured that the guards on the Damascus gate were followers of Yeshûa, so that we would be allowed to pass through unchallenged. We made our way up from the beach at the northern end of the town, through the quiet streets and past sleeping houses, and had nearly reached our goal when we heard the approaching sound of marching feet. It was a sound rarely heard in the Galilee, but we knew it at once—the tramp of disciplined soldiers, Roman soldiers. The soldiers who transported the customs taxes were not in town this month. Roman soldiers could mean only one thing—the unit assigned to Antipas by the Roman governor to help maintain order, which normally remained as bodyguards around the tetrarch himself.
‘They have come already!’ I gasped in a hoarse whisper.
Yehûdâ pulled us into the shadows under the arcade of a butcher’s shop. We could see the Damascus gate, just a few cubits away, as we pressed back against the inner wall. But between the arcade and the gate was an open area, well lit by the flaming torches mounted in sconces on either side of the gate. If we crossed it, we would be seen at once.
The Romans had stopped at the mouth of an alleyway and were peering down it, their lanterns held aloft. Yehûdâ made a move as if to lead us out of hiding, then held up his hand to stop us. The soldiers were back in the street now, nearer than before, and seemed to be arguing. My mouth was so dry that my tongue clung to the roof of my mouth and I could not swallow. I found I was squeezing the Magdalene’s hand so tightly I must have been hurting her.
As we watched, one of the soldiers began beating on the door of the largest house with the butt of his spear.
‘Open this door,’ he shouted, in heavily accented Aramaic. ‘We are searching for the miscreant Yeshûa ben Yosef. Open, or we will break the door down.’
Before those within had time to respond, one of the Romans, a heavy-built man with shoulders like a plough-ox, threw himself against the door. There was the noise of cracking wood, but the door did not give way at once. A white, frightened face appeared at an upper window. We could not hear the words exchanged, but the soldiers paused and waited until the door was opened.
‘We can cross to the gate while they are inside,’ I whispered, somehow loosening my tongue enough to speak.
But only four of the men entered the house. The rest remained outside, keeping a sharp watch on the street. We could hear the sound of smashing pottery and furniture overturned, and a sudden scream from inside the house. At last the soldiers emerged, one of them carrying a leather wineskin and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. They milled about, and then turned towards a house on the far side of the street.
‘The three of you must slip through the gate now,’ Yehûdâ murmured, loosening the sword he had insisted on carrying. ‘I will hold them off until you are away.’
‘No!’ The Magdalene took him by the sword arm. Her voice was low but insistent. ‘The three of you must go. I know how to deal with soldiers.’
‘Wait!’ I said. ‘It’s too dangerous. You mustn’t.’
But before we could stop her, she was gone, throwing back the mantel from her head so that her long luxurious hair shimmered in the light from their lanterns. She no longer looked like the woman we knew. Her very walk was different. Although she did not now wear the flamboyant clothes of a prostitute, she sauntered boldly up to the soldiers as they approached along the street, her hips swaying. Her meaning was clear. She raised her arms, letting her sleeves fall back to expose the creamy loveliness of her skin, and ran her fingers through that exotic waterfall of her hair. She did not, however, come too close to them.
We watched her in fascinated horror. The men turned away from the house they were approaching, which meant they were once again facing in our direction, but their eyes were all on the Magdalene. I was biting the back of my hand till I drew blood. She would be taken! She was throwing her life away for us! Helplessly, I stretched out my arms towards her and took a step forward, but Yehûdâ caught hold of me and pulled me back. He pushed both of us ahead of him towards the gate.
‘We cannot stop her now. We must do as she said.’
The soldiers were still looking at the Magdalene. Confused, stumbling, Yeshûa and I allowed ourselves to be led through the gate on the nod of the guards. We were safely outside the wall when we stopped and looked at each other in consternation.
‘We cannot leave her,’ I said through my tears. ‘What will become of her?’
‘I will go back for her.’ Yehûdâ turned towards the gate again.
‘No,’ said Yeshûa. ‘We will wait here a little first, just under those trees. She is a resourceful woman. Brave but not foolish. Wait a little.’
We did as he said. Under the dusty trees we waited, as minutes seemed to stretch out into hours, and I bit my fingernails savagely, feeling sick and wondering if I could have done anything to prevent this.
And then at last we heard a soft murmur of voices at the gate, and a woman came through—modest in bearing, her head muffled in her mantel, but moving swiftly along the road out of the city. I leapt out from under the trees and wrapped my arms around her. She started in surprise, then she was clinging to me and we were both weeping.
‘The soldiers?’ said Yehûdâ.
‘I’ll tell you as we go,’ she said, ‘but we must hurry.’
As we turned aside from the road along a narrow farm path, she explained, somewhat breathlessly, what she had done.
‘Easy to lead by the nose, men like that,’ she said scornfully. �
��A woman need do nothing but show some naked flesh, loosened hair, suggest that she is available, and they will follow.’
Even in the dim starlight, I saw that my brother blushed, but Yehûdâ chuckled softly.
‘But you were not available,’ he said.
‘I led them down the alleyway to inn of Abel, the one-eyed man.’
‘One of ours,’ said Yeshûa.
‘Yes. Had them sitting round a table while they thought I was preparing a room upstairs. I whispered to Abel that they were searching for you, and he promised to ply them with so much strong drink that they wouldn’t be able to find their own right hands before morning. Then I slipped out the back door and ran for the gate.’
I hugged her. Her courage left me speechless.
‘Abel may not have time to get them drunk,’ my brother said. ‘They will soon suspect that they’ve been tricked and will come after us. When they find we are not in the town, they’ll comb the countryside round about. We must hurry.’
After that, we saved our breath for the climb.
Hard as the journey was, and edged always with the fear of pursuit, I remember it with an odd kind of joy. About midnight we had all reached the meeting place, a sheep fold a couple of miles northwest of the town but already some distance above it. I think in most of us fear had given way to excitement and exhilaration, for we were setting out upon a new adventure. Apart from Yehûdâ, none of us had ever seen the Middle Sea, or Phoenicia, or climbed these mountains that now lay ahead of us. We were fortunate in that it was a clear night with a bright moon, which had risen soon after we left the town, for otherwise it would have been difficult to find the path. Yehûdâ was leading us not by the traders’ road from Capernaum to Tyre, nor by one of the regular tracks which ran from village to village, but by a barely discernible goat path through the mountains. For the first part of our journey, at least, we wanted to avoid the nearby villages, where we were known.
The darkness, the moonlight, the myriad stars overhead all added to the thrill as we set out, and I found my heart beating and a smile coming to my lips, despite the fact that we were fleeing into exile. As we climbed higher and the ground became rougher, with ruts in the track to be skirted and great boulders to be clambered over, Yehûdâ offered me his arm. I shook my head.
‘If I am fit to make this journey, I am able to manage alone,’ I said. ‘You have your responsibilities as guide. I shall do very well by myself.’
He smiled at me and pressed my arm, then resumed his place at the front. Shim’ôn brought up the rear, ensuring that there were no stragglers. He was not a man accustomed to climbing mountains, which he regarded with distrust, but he could be relied upon to guarantee that no one was left behind. Since his foolish attempt to walk on the water he had been a little subdued, but seemed relieved that Yeshûa still trusted him.
After many hours of stiff climbing, the sky gradually lightened behind us as the sun came up, and we looked back to see how far we had travelled. Capernaum had vanished into the valley of Gennesaret and all around were the towering mountains—to right and left and straight ahead, far higher than anything we had climbed so far. Discouraged, we sank down on to boulders and earth and contemplated what lay before us.
‘We can never climb that!’ said Yôhânân petulantly, indicating with a sweep of his hand the massive peak that confronted us. ‘Not with women amongst us.’
I glowered at him. I had climbed faster and complained less than he had, all night long, but he was the sort of man who will always make women the excuse for his own weakness.
My brother conferred briefly with Yehûdâ, whom he regarded as our leader while we were traversing the mountains, then they told us we could have a pause to rest a little and eat.
‘But do not eat too much,’ Yehûdâ warned. ‘Small meals, taken frequently, that is best while travelling over this terrain.’
An hour or two further on and we reached a lovely river, flowing south and east towards Gennesaret. It ran through groves of wild fig trees and pomegranates, a lush bower suddenly before us, hidden away in this barren wilderness. The air was filled with the sweet scent of the fig trees, a perfume which lifts the heart, a green and purple scent, wild but beautiful. We took off our boots and sandals and waded up the river, the cool water blissful on our feet. I plucked and ate newly ripened figs and added some to my satchel of food. Yeshûa reached up and picked a pomegranate.
‘Every pomegranate seed, a lucky day!’ he said, handing it to me.
My legs were aching, hip to ankle, but the place was so lovely, a small Eden concealed amongst the high hills, that I could have burst into song. Later, when we had left the river and climbed higher, I no longer had the breath for it.
At last Yehûdâ called a halt. No one was talking by now, except for the occasional groan. Most had blistered feet, and our hands and knees were scraped and torn from scrambling up slopes and over rocky screes. We had been travelling for a whole night and all the next day until sunset and there was not one of us who was not exhausted.
‘See there,’ said Yehûdâ, pointing to a nahal, a small river which had sprung up from nowhere and ran alongside what he claimed was a path. ‘Do you notice anything about it?’
Yeshûa walked over to stand beside him.
‘It is running from east to west,’ he said. ‘Not west to east.’
‘Exactly. We have crossed the watershed. From here the waters run down into the Middle Sea.’
Yehûdâ had chosen a spot where a few tenacious pine trees had rooted amongst the rocky outcrops, and a cave offered some shelter. Shim’ôn and Andreas gathered fallen wood and soon had a fire going, while Susanna, the Magdalene and I prepared a rough stew from any ingredients we could gather together from our fellow travellers. It was not the most elegant of meals, but it was hot, and, scooped up with pieces of flatbread from the common pot, it put some heart into us.
After we had eaten, I lay down with the other women in the cave, while the men bedded down under the trees. For a long time I tried to find a comfortable position. My body was exhausted, but my mind would not rest and skittered to and fro like a trapped rat. At last I could endure it no longer. I crawled quietly out of the cave, to avoid waking the other two, and walked over to the fire. Yehûdâ was sitting cross-legged, feeding it with dry branches. The sap in the pinewood hissed and snapped in the flames.
‘Could you not sleep?’ he said, making room beside him.
I shook my head and dropped down near the fire. ‘You should be resting. We are all depending on you to bring us safely to Tyre.’
‘The way isn’t difficult to find from here, though we have some rough climbing still ahead of us. What kept you awake? Aching bones?’
‘No. My mind is buzzing like a hive of angry bees.’
‘Mine too.’
He reached out and took my hand. I felt that shock run through me which I sensed whenever he touched me, a touch rare now, when we had to be so circumspect. But it was dark and everyone else was asleep. I pressed his hand, but dared not look at him, for fear of what he might see of the longing in my eyes.
‘I am worried about my brother,’ I said, trying to keep us away from that other, dangerous, ground.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘This exile in Tyre is not what he wants. He has no desire to pursue his mission amongst the Phoenicians.’
‘But it isn’t that alone. I think he’s lost his way. All this wandering about in the last weeks: Capernaum, Bethsaida. Then he says he will stay in Bethsaida while we go back to Capernaum, but suddenly there he is, walking back to Capernaum. He no longer seems to know what he wants to do. The threat from Antipas, the soldiers, the flight to Tyre . . .’
I hesitated. It felt like treachery to criticise Yeshûa, yet I whispered it. ‘It is almost as if this exile has provided an excuse, saved him from making a decision.’
I looked him in the face at last. His expression, in the glow of the fire, was sombre.
‘So you feel it too.’
He threw another branch on the fire, which shot a flame upwards, then fell apart in the middle and had to be raked together again. When he had done, he took both my hands in his and drew me round to face him.
‘Do you think there is anything we can do? You are his sister, you know him best.’
‘You are his friend,’ I said. ‘Sometimes I fear he still thinks of me as a child.’
‘You are not that.’ He cupped my face gently between his hands, and my blood began to race through my limbs.
‘I mean,’ I said, trying to keep my voice steady, ‘that he may listen to you. But I think he must find his own way out of his confusion. All we can do is to love him and protect him, and be ready to follow him wherever he decides he must go.’
‘Yes. I agree. But, Mariam . . .’ he was looking deep into my soul now, his face only inches from mine, ‘shall we be married in Tyre?’
My heart leapt up in sudden hope, then fell back again.
‘How can we be?’ I said. ‘He has decreed that his followers must remain celibate. We, of all his company, must keep to the bargain.’
Once again, I had to choose between my lover and my brother. It seemed to me then that Yehûdâ was strong. Between us, we would find the strength to wait. But Yeshûa was tender, vulnerable. We had to protect him. Was I wrong?
There were tears on my eyelashes, and he bent and kissed them away.
Some faint noise from the other side of the fire caught my ear. I turned. Two eyes gleamed in the firelight. Someone was watching us. I saw that it was Yôhânân.
‘I must go back to the cave,’ I said, pulling myself free and scrambling to my feet.
The next morning we woke early, not merely from the sun but from our aching joints that screamed outrage at us. We filled our waterskins from the nahal, ate a few of yesterday’s figs, and set off again. There was little talking today, but almost at once I became aware that, like the stream that crossed our path from time to time, we were climbing down the slopes most of the time, despite having to clamber uphill to negotiate some difficult places. Here the scree became somewhat dangerous, and once or twice someone slipped, until Yehûdâ warned us to go carefully. We wanted no injuries to cause us further problems.