by Ann Swinfen
I couldn’t see how, for he was raised up so high, but it was oppressively hot, despite the clouded sky, and I could see sweat running down Yeshûa’s face and mingling with the blood and the flies that had come to feed on it.
‘Sure enough. We can soak a sponge in wine and hoist it up on a stick,’ the centurion said. ‘We often do it. You buy some wine and I’ll see what I can do.’
I took some of the money Yeshûa had given me and bought a jug of the wine. It was dreadful sour stuff, vinegar more than wine, but it was all I could give him. The centurion told one of the servants to lift up the wine-soaked sponge to my brother’s mouth, and I saw him feebly suck on it. At that moment I remembered he had said the previous night that he would not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the coming of the new kingdom. Was this the coming of the kingdom? This horror? This pain? This humiliation? This bloodshed?
In my heart I cursed Yahweh.
The screams and groans of the three men had been growing fainter and more infrequent, for they were surely dying now. Then suddenly my brother writhed as though he would drag his hands and feet free of the enormous nails that pinned him to the cross.
‘‘Elohî, ‘Elohî,’ he cried out in agony, ‘lâmâ shebaqtanî?’
That is the question I have asked all the years of my life. Why had his God forsaken him?
After that, he said no more.
I sat in the dirt, numb, waiting for someone to tell me what to do.
It was drawing towards sunset and the soldiers set about breaking the legs of the two robbers, to hasten their deaths.
‘Wait,’ said the centurion as they approached Yeshûa. ‘I think this one is already gone.’
He reached up and drove his spear into my brother’s side. Blood ran out in a thin watery trickle, but he made no sound and did not move. The centurion stood very still, looking up at him, the hand that held the spear shaking, as though something had reached him from my brother’s body. He dropped the spear as if it had burned his hand, looking from his palm to my brother’s dead face, his eyes dazed.
‘Truly this man was the Son of God,’ he gasped, partly in wonder, partly in horror.
Why did he say that? Why now? What had he felt? Was this what Yeshûa had meant? That his death itself would make men believe in his message? Too late. He himself was gone forever. Something had been ripped, living, out of my very body.
I had noticed a man in rich clothes who had come to stand at the edge of the crowd. He had servants with him, and a litter, with a shroud of fine linen laid on it. I was astonished that either of the robbers should have such a friend. This man approached the centurion as I trailed back to my group of friends, who were sitting mute with exhaustion and shock.
‘You are Mariam, the sister of Yeshûa of Galilee?’
I turned around. It was the rich man, who had followed me. I nodded dully. My cheeks were stiff with the dried salt of my tears.
‘My name is Yosef,’ he said. ‘My town is Arimathea, but I live now in Jerusalem and I am a member of the Sanhedrin.’
He must have seen the look of revulsion on my face, for he went on hastily, ‘I believe in your brother’s message, and I argued hard last night against those set on condemning him or handing him over to Pilate, but I could not prevail. All I can offer him is decent burial. My own burial cave is a short way from here. If you give your permission, we can take him there at once.’
I thanked him, flooded with relief, for I had not known how my little group would be able to do what was necessary. Shim’ôn Kêphas had disappeared and we were left nothing but women. Yosef’s servants wrapped Yeshûa’s body gently in the pure white shroud and laid him on the litter. Then our small procession made its way down from Golgotha to the burial cave, which was set in a pleasant garden of flowering trees. A pomegranate tree stood near the entrance, which brought tears to my eyes.
Every pomegranate seed, a lucky day.
We laid him on the shelf in the cave, and the servants rolled a heavy boulder across the entrance.
‘It is the Sabbath in less than an hour,’ said Yosef. ‘We can do no more for him now.’
I nodded. ‘My friends and I will come the morning after Sabbath to wash and anoint him with spices. I am grateful to you, Yosef of Arimathea.’
Mariam has returned to her room, but she is restless. Where before she slept for long stretches of time, now her body will give her no peace. She writhes under the blanket and Sergius does not know what to do to ease her pain. Julia comes sometimes to sit beside her uncle and watches her grandmother with sad eyes. A child should not have to see such suffering, Sergius thinks, but Julia cannot bear to be barred from her grandmother’s room.
One day, a stranger arrives at the villa, and Sergius is called out to speak to him. He is a prosperous-looking man, somewhat past his middle years, a Greek merchant called Georgios, from Sidon in Phoenicia. He speaks perfect Latin, and Sergius invites him to take a glass of wine on the terrace. When they are seated with their wine and dishes of olives, Sergius turns to the man.
‘You say that you have been searching for Mariam, sister of Yeshûa, a woman from the Galilee.’
‘I have been searching for her throughout the whole of Gallia Narbonensis for the last month,’ Georgios says. ‘It is an act of kindness for a very old friend who knew that, long ago, she travelled here by ship, arranged by a friend of his. He died three months ago, but before he died he asked me to seek for Mariam. At last a man in Massilia, a Greek schoolmaster, told me I might find her here.’
‘Antiphoulos,’ says Sergius.
‘That’s the name.’
‘And why do you want to find this Mariam?’
‘I have this for her.’ Georgios reaches into a satchel of fine tooled leather that he has laid at his feet, and takes out a very small packet, which he places on the table between them. It is wrapped in supple goatskin and tied with a narrow gold cord.
‘Mariam is my mother,’ says Sergius. ‘I thank you for so much trouble and care in bringing this to her.’
Georgios bows politely. ‘May I meet her?’
‘She is very ill. Dying. Perhaps you could look in from the doorway of her room.’
They come together to the door of my room, which stands open to encourage the breeze from the window. The stranger stands silent for a long time, looking at me.
‘She must have been a remarkable woman, to inspire such devotion in my friend,’ he says.
Sergius offers a meal and a room for the night, but the stranger refuses politely, saying that he must return to his ship and take up again the strands of his business. When he has gone, Sergius brings a package into my room. I am still awake, gazing at the ceiling.
‘Who was that, the man you brought to stare at me?’
‘I’m sorry. I thought you were asleep.’
‘You know I hardly ever sleep these days.’
‘He has been searching for you, to deliver this package.’
‘A package? For me? Who has sent it?’
‘He did not say. He was a Greek, from Sidon.’
I try to untie the knots, but they are too tight and I fumble with them helplessly.
‘Shall I?’ he says, and I hand it to him without a word.
He unties the cord and unwraps the leather. Inside is a rolled up piece of beautiful silk, of a deep blue. Sergius holds it up for me to see.
‘Exactly the colour of your eyes, Mother.’
I struggle to sit up, suddenly agitated.
‘What is in it?’ There is a pain in my chest and I am breathless
‘A . . . bracelet, I think it is. Rather old and worn. It seems to be made from plaited hair and small gold beads. And there is a scrap of parchment.’
He peers at it.
‘I can’t read it. It’s in Hebrew.’ He hands it to me.
I know the writing at once, the exact shape of the letters, though a trembling hand has written them; I knows the way the line slopes upwards at the end.
‘Not Hebrew,’ I whisper. ‘Aramaic.’
It shall not leave my wrist while I live. And did not.
And somewhere in the room I can hear a voice sob, not with an old woman’s thin weeping, but the desolation of a young girl.
When we returned to the tomb, at dawn on the morning following the Sabbath, to wash and anoint my brother’s body, we found the great stone rolled away from the entrance and the cave empty. The blood-stained shroud lay neatly folded on the shelf. In consternation we stared at each other. Who would have defiled Yeshûa’s place of burial? Even the body of an executed man was treated with respect. That was why the Romans had ensured that all the men had died before sundown. They knew our customs, even if they did not observe them themselves. If the men had lingered on and died on the Sabbath, they could not have been buried until after sundown on the following day, an act of disrespect to the dead.
‘Who has taken him?’ Yoanna whispered.
We shook our heads, standing there helpless, with our jars of water and aromatic oils, our spices and unguents. I walked forward into the tomb, while the others lingered fearfully outside. The air inside was clean and fresh; there was no smell of corruption as there should have been, if a mangled body had lain here for two nights and a day. But there was a faint scent of something. I closed my eyes, to smell it better.
Cinnamon and honey.
A shock ran through my body, so that my eyes flew open and I looked round, expecting to see him. There was only one person whose skin always carried that scent. But my brother was not there. Surely his bloody and mutilated corpse could not have left such a scent here? It belonged to warm living flesh, not the cold corrupt flesh of the dead.
I stumbled out of the cave into the sunlight, which caught me between the eyes like a sword thrust, so that for a moment I was dazzled. Then I saw that my companions were all on their knees.
‘We have seen him, Mariam!’ the Magdalene cried. ‘Yeshûa has risen from the dead! The new kingdom is come, and we will all join him in bliss!’
‘But where is he?’ I asked, confused. ‘There is no one here.’
‘He stood there,’ said Salome, and Susanna nodded, pointing to the east. ‘He stood there, blazing in glory.’
I thought: They have been blinded by the rising sun and by grief and by hope beyond hope.
I followed their eager steps slowly back into the city. He was dead. I had seen him. Dead. Shrouded. Laid in the tomb. How could he have returned? He was my brother, I told myself, desperately. A man, like any other man. Dead. A man. Dead. Like Daniel. How could he have risen? My own heart was dead to hope. And if he had returned, why had he not shown himself to me, his sister? Surely it must have been an illusion. But why had I smelled the scent of his skin?
Matters moved rapidly after that. The other women found Shim’ôn Kêphas and two more of the shelîhîm, Mattaniah and Tôma, in the city and told them what they had seen. Shim’ôn, that stolid, quiet, sensible man, believed them at once. Without evidence, without even the vision they said they had experienced. How could he give any credit to their story? It was beyond belief. I think perhaps Shim’ôn clutched at the idea, to assuage his own guilt, though Tôma shook his head doubtfully. But I did not argue with Shim’ôn and the others. I was too weary, too weary even to speak of these things. I knew that I must not delay any longer in obeying my brother’s command to leave the country, though when I found that the others planned to return to the Galilee, I decided to travel north with them, for it was on my way. No one knew what had become of the rest of the shelîhîm who had run away, but if the group was ever to gather together again, we all believed it would be in Capernaum.
We made the journey on foot, carrying some food with us, provided by Martha in Bethany. Where there were friendly houses, we slept under a roof. The rest of the time we bedded down on the open ground. I plodded along in silence. I could not even think about the future, stripped of my brother and my lover. I knew simply that I must go to Caesarea Maritima and take ship. Beyond that, I did not care.
At last we saw the beloved sight of the waters of Gennesaret sparkling in the distance, and I broke the news that I would not be going any further with them. The Magdalene put her arms around me and pressed her cheek to mine. They all pleaded with me to stay, but I told them I must do as Yeshûa had bidden, and that they accepted. I turned my back on them determinedly, and started on my way up a path which would join the one down which Yehûdâ and I had come so long before. Once, I turned to look back, and watched their resolute figures trudging along the road to Capernaum, out of my life and into a different future.
It was the next day when I reached the olive orchard below our village. There were the great trees under which I had studied with my brother and the stretch of the river where he and Yehûdâ had swum as boys. On the outskirts of the village a group of small children was playing. They stopped and stared at me, and I must have seemed a strange sight, a tall sun-burned woman with matted hair, her clothes soiled and dusty with travel.
In the courtyard of my parents’ house, I stopped and looked about me. The dogs, at least, recognised me, for they ran forward with barks of welcome, not hostility. Then my father came out of the workshop, followed by Ya’aqôb. My father’s hair was quite white and his back was stooped. I knelt before him in the dust.
‘Shalôm. Give me your blessing, Father,’ I said humbly.
He laid his hand on my head at once and murmured a berâkâ.
Ya’aqôb could barely contain himself till it was finished.
‘You dare to come back here!’ he shouted. ‘You outcast, you . . . you whore! Yahweh condemns your kind to stoning.’
I had not expected much of a welcome, but nothing as bad as this.
‘You do me an injustice!’ I shouted back. ‘I have lived celibate all these years, with good people and under the protection of my brother Yeshûa.’
‘Oh?’ said Ya’aqôb, sneering. ‘And where is Yeshûa now, woman?’
‘Dead!’ I said, and I began to sob.
‘You speak with a viper’s tongue!’ he yelled. ‘Your mouth is full of falsehoods!’
‘He is dead!’ I screamed. ‘Crucified before my eyes!’
My father sank down on the step and put his head in his hands. I knelt beside him and laid my head in his lap. I was so tired.
‘Where is my mother?’ I mumbled into his tunic. Suddenly, I wanted my mother.
‘She has gone to Capernaum,’ he said, ‘to join Yeshûa’s following. And Ya’aqôb plans to go as well.’
‘Too late,’ I said. ‘Too late.’
I lifted my tear-stained face and said resentfully to Ya’aqôb. ‘You need not fear contamination from me for long, brother. I came only to say good-bye. Yeshûa told me to leave the Land of Judah. He feared for my safety.’
I left early the next morning, before anyone was awake, and paid only one more visit. I went out of the village to the cemetery and knelt outside our family cave.
‘Good-bye, Daniel, my little lamb,’ I whispered. ‘Sleep well in the land of Galilee.’
I made the journey to Caesarea Maritima without incident, for I was a seasoned traveller by now, and I found Amos, the friend of Yehûdâ’s father, without difficulty. Somehow Yehûdâ had got word to him that I would be coming, and within a few days he had arranged a passage for me aboard a ship bound for Gallia Narbonensis. I was indifferent to our destination, for I was leaving behind all that I knew and loved, obeying mechanically my brother’s final instructions, but caring nothing where I went or what became of me. The passage used almost all the money I had, leaving me with no more than a handful of denarii.
The other passengers were also Israelite refugees, fleeing for some reason or another from persecution at home. I spoke little to them, spending most of my time on deck, listlessly watching as we sailed around the shore of the Middle Sea, crossing at last to the eastern coast of Italy, then down to its southern tip and up the west coast to Gallia. The ship did not come into Massil
ia, but another port a little further west. The captain advised me that, if I wanted work, Massilia should be my goal, and pointed out the road.
It was strange, marshy country, where wild horses ran free, splashing amongst treacherous tussocks, and unfamiliar birds would rise suddenly, almost from beneath my feet, setting my heart beating fast. Once, I had to run for my life, for a band of rough men, robbers I supposed, tried to lay hold of me. Although I was growing a little weak from lack of food, I was still fleet of foot, for the long years wandering with my brother had hardened me. I took refuge in the marsh, hip deep in the water, my feet sinking in the mud, and I blessed the sea mist which rolled in, hiding me amongst the reeds and small white horses and wading birds.
And at length I came to Massilia.
Sergius sits holding his mother’s hand. For a long time her rasping breath has distressed him, but she seems easier now. She opens her eyes and smiles at him.
‘Would you do something for me, which you will think very foolish?’
He smiles back. ‘Yours to command.’
‘I want to sleep on the roof tonight, as I used to do when I was a child.’
He raises his eyebrows at her. A strange request from a dying woman, but in his own boyhood they sometimes used to sleep up there, pretending they were Israelites.
‘It will cause you a great deal of trouble,’ she says meekly.
‘No trouble,’ he says, and squeezes her hand. The night is quite warm, he will sit with her and see that she is safe.
When at last everything is arranged to my satisfaction, I will not allow him to stay. I have refused a bed, and insisted on nothing but a bedroll, a blanket, and my inlaid box.
‘I want to be alone,’ I say, ‘to commune with the stars. Please, my dear.’
So, reluctantly, he leaves me.
‘Will she be safe?’ I hear Julia ask anxiously as he descends the narrow stair.
He gives her a quick kiss. ‘Of course she will be safe. Mariam is an intrepid woman.’