by Tracy Groot
“I thought you might.”
“I’ll take care of him the rest of my life.”
Marina pitched a few more pistachios into the bowl. “He’s a fortunate man.”
Rivkah dug in the bowl, let the nuts sift through her fingers. “I’m the fortunate one. And I’m going to tell him about the scars, Marina. Mine and Nathanael’s. I’m going to tell him everything. I used to think he’d hate me if he knew, but . . .”
Her lips trembled, but she pressed them. She took two pistachios and tapped them together. “The night before the flogging I told him what Jesus of Nazareth said. About the stones and the prostitute.”
“It’s a good story.”
Rivkah nodded. “Yes, it is.” She put the nuts in the bowl and rested her chin on her fist, looking out the window.
Marina observed Rivkah without seeming to. The look on that face could make her fling up her arms and dance. Jesus of Nazareth, whether he lived or not, had her thanks. Look at that face! Marina tried for a year to get a look like that. One little story from one she didn’t even know, and it sets her to softness and thought. Ha—and Marina thought she was talented in heart matters. For the story of the stones alone Marina would find out more about that lad. She’d like to pick up a few tips in their common trade. If he lived, maybe they could sit and talk. Trade ideas.
“I miss Nathanael,” Rivkah murmured on her fist. “You know he forgave me, Marina. He asked Joab to come tell me those words. It’s like—” She wiped her nose as tears came. It was a moment before she could continue. “It’s like he was taking care of me with those words. You know what I mean?”
Marina reached to clasp Rivkah’s hands. She held tight and smiled through her own tears. “I do, child.”
“Such a boy I had . . .” She stopped in the middle of wiping her nose. “Did Jorah tell you about the tefillin she gave me? Nathanael’s tefillin?” She shook her head, snorting softly. “Makes you wonder what that family was like. I like that Jorah. She’s been over every day to look after Orion. She brings me flowers as though I were her own mother. Acts like I’m not even a prostitute. Imagine that.” She pushed Marina’s arm. “You never did either. You never acted like I was a prostitute.”
Marina patted Rivkah’s arm and got up to go to the alcove. She made her voice light, saying over her shoulder, “You want some wine?” Then she gripped the counter’s edge and kept her back to Rivkah, so she could not see the tears stream down her face.
“No stones, Marina,” she heard Rivkah murmur. “Imagine that . . .”
“Your wife told me I would find you here,” Theron heard behind him. He turned to see the big Roman soldier picking his way through sea grasses to where Theron sat on a boulder on a rocky outcrop overlooking the sea. He looked about for a place to sit, and finally settled down on the edge of the outcrop, legs dangling. He unbuckled his helmet and set it on the ground, ruffed up his hair, and sighed contentedly at the view.
Theron leaned his elbows on his knees. He rubbed his hands together and nodded at the sea. “Isn’t that a sight? I’ve lived here for years. Never took time to come and sit.”
“Orion is doing well,” Cornelius commented, squinting at the sun off the sea.
“So I hear.”
“We’ve got passage booked for him. He leaves in three days. The Jewish Council took up a collection for him to pay the passage, with some pocket change left over. It was good of them. Pilate confiscated his Ostia fund, you know.” He looked at Theron thoughtfully. “How come you haven’t gone to see him?”
Theron shrugged. “I already said good-bye.”
“Marina says you haven’t worked since the flogging.” Cornelius eyed him. “Looks like you’ve lost some weight too.” He pointed and said, “I swear that lip looks a little smaller.”
“You want to see what I got?” Theron reached beside himself and produced a scroll. “This belongs to Cousin Thomas. I thought maybe he’d fall backward if I asked to borrow it, but he acted like I was borrowing soap.”
“What is it?”
“You read Hebrew?”
Cornelius chuckled. “No.”
Theron laid it on his lap and ran his curved palm gently over it. “It’s a scroll of psalms. The psalms are a collection from our holy writings. It says some pretty good things in here.” Theron squinted at him. “What’s the new thing they call you?”
“Optio.”
“Well, you know what, Mister Optio?”
Cornelius grinned at the man. “What is that, Mister Mosaicist?”
Theron’s look fell upon the scroll. He sniffed and nodded, then looked to the sea. “I need him. You know—him.”
Cornelius’s grin faded. He looked to the sea too, and thought that he did, indeed, know what Theron meant.
The two men gazed long upon the vast hazy expanse, listening to the waves, enjoying the warmth of the sun tempered by sea breezes, enjoying the company of each other.
Theron scratched his ear. “You in any trouble with the palace for what you did for Orion?”
“I don’t know. They’ll be watching me, that’s certain.”
“You think maybe you want to come over for Sabbath meal sometime? Marina makes the best—” Theron broke off, and out came the mighty lip. He cleared his throat with a growl. “I’m gonna miss that funny man.”
“He’ll land well, Theron,” Cornelius assured. “Don’t you worry about him. He’s got somebody who loves him to take care of him. What more could you want?” After a time, eyes following a distant vessel, he went to speak but hesitated. Then he stated, “That scroll speaks of the god. The one god.”
“Yes.”
Silence. Then, “The one true god.”
“Yes.”
“The God of the Jews.”
“Yes.”
“What kind of things does it say?”
Theron’s gaze went back to the scroll. An affectionate smile came. “A whole lot of things. ‘The Lord is near to all who call on him.’ Things like that.”
Cornelius leaned back on his arms. After a while he said, “I’d be honored to attend your Sabbath meal sometime.”
The boards for the ribbon mosaic began to take up a great deal of space on the floor of Theron’s workroom. Jorah and Joab did not have Theron to consult to ask whether the tesserae had set well enough to prop the boards against the wall. They left them flat on the floor until he decided to show up. They did not feel comfortable going to the palace to install the boards without him—not with Prometheus in charge. Jorah shuddered at the memory of his eyes on her—so the boards accumulated, waiting for Theron as they did.
It worried Jorah. She’d grown immensely fond of the grouchy little man. It wasn’t like him not to be in his workroom. It had been a week now, since Orion’s flogging. Every day Marina had Joab run some food out to Theron at the place he’d taken possession of by the sea. Joab said Theron would only give a little wave to acknowledge him, then go back to his sea observance.
Jorah consulted Theron’s original pattern board and placed a tessera on the grooved mortar of her board accordingly.
“If Theron were in Jerusalem, this pattern would show up everywhere within a year,” she commented. “There’d be bad imitations from Masada to the Antonia Fortress.”
“I hope he comes out of it soon,” Joab muttered. He stood at a worktable, grading sand and gravel. He filled the small burlap bags Marina had made and marked them according to coarseness. “I want to get out of here.”
Jorah did too, but she didn’t want to agree with Joab when he was in such a contrary mood. Moodiness irritated her, and more so when she had to drag every tiny detail out of Joab to get him to tell her why.
“Why can’t you just tell me why you’re so crabby? I’m tired of tiptoeing around your mood.”
Joab’s hand with the scoop froze on the way to a bucket filled with pebbly sand. “I’m sorry,” he said, the tightness at his forehead smoothing.
If there was one thing she loved about him, it w
as his quickness to recognize his own folly—when she pointed it out. She shook her head. Clearly this man needed her for the rest of his life.
He lowered his hand with the scoop. “I want to go to Jerusalem. And I want to get away from . . .”
“Her?”
He sat back on the stool and thought it over.
If there was another thing she loved about him, it was the way he stopped to consider his words before he spoke them. She wasn’t like that. At all.
“I think so. I think it’s because—I feel disappointed in the way she took the words.”
Jorah sat back on her heels. “What do you mean?”
He turned on his stool toward her. “I watched her reaction when I told her the story. I didn’t leave anything out, and I told it to her very carefully and not at all fast. I even told her where it’s found in Leviticus. But—she didn’t respond the way I . . . thought she would. It was as though she didn’t hear me. Or didn’t care. Or didn’t understand exactly the—implications of what Jesus said.”
Jorah kept a smile from surfacing. He goes about silent for days, and now there is no stopping him. She leaned back on her arms to enjoy this conversation.
His troubled gaze fell to the scoop in his hands. “It doesn’t seem as if it meant much to her.”
“What did it mean to you when you first heard it?”
Joab looked up. He thought on it. “Well—not much,” he admitted. “Nathanael was dying. I only tried hard to memorize what he was saying.”
“So it all came later.”
“Well—yes.”
Jorah shrugged as if to say there you have it.
Joab smiled a little, but it faded. He toyed with the scoop. “It’s hard to leave her to it, without trying to explain. The words are so—”
“Huge. I know, I know—you’ve said it a hundred times. Let her be smart, will you? You figured it out.”
“But—”
“Well, what conclusions do you want her to come to?” Jorah asked. She innocently arched her brows and fluttered her eyelids. “Maybe that the words Jesus spoke were . . . oh . . . mercy?”
He looked at her for a long time. He didn’t answer, and she was not like that—she would have blurted any old thing. But he merely kept his thoughtful gaze on her until a little smile came. Then he turned back to his sandbags. “How long do you think it will take to put in the walkway?”
“Four, five months. And that’s only if Theron decides to show up.”
Jorah waited, but Joab did not respond. She grimaced, and reluctantly returned to her tesserae. It was the longest conversation they’d had in days. She picked up a tiny tile and rubbed it between her thumb and finger.
Presently Joab commented, “It won’t be decent for us to travel to Jerusalem by ourselves.”
“I was thinking that.”
“Maybe we should travel properly. If we were—betrothed, people wouldn’t wag their tongues.”
Jorah glanced at Joab. “I was thinking that.”
After a moment Joab paused at his sandbag. “I mean a real betrothal.”
Jorah’s heart jumped, and a flush of joy ran through her. She therefore acted as though it was the only conclusion any idiot could come to. “Of course.” She couldn’t stop the smile, though, and bent over the board to hide it.
“Your brothers will string me up when we get to Jerusalem, for not asking them first,” Joab grumbled.
“You could ask Cousin Thomas,” Jorah said quickly. Too quickly. She tried to add something flouncy and tart—but couldn’t think of a single thing.
The sounds in the room returned to the whisper rush of sand filling burlap bags and the scrape of a spatula on tesserae. After a moment the curtain flap, which had been parted an inch or two, eased back into place.
Discussion Questions
Which character in the book could you most easily identify with? Why?
In what ways is Theron “a bad Jew”? How do you think Jesus would have regarded Theron’s views?
When the story opens, Orion is in the habit of helping the Jews in “small ways,” but then the stakes begin to rise. In what ways does Orion’s true character begin to show under this pressure? Has there been a time in your life that you had to start making hard choices about right and wrong?
Marina says Rivkah is loved by God and made in his image, but “she does not believe this. Not yet.” When and how does Rivkah come to understand her value in God’s eyes? What part do Jorah and Joab play? Who or what first convinced you of your value to God—or is this something you are still unsure of?
How did you feel when you learned the identity of Nathanael’s father? Have you ever been betrayed by someone you should have been able to trust? Why is this even more devastating than being hurt by someone or something impersonal?
Janus Bifrons tells Orion that the God of the Jews is pleased “when kindness is shown, particularly to his own people,” and that perhaps Orion has God’s favor. Would you agree? What are some examples from Scripture?
What did you think of Janus Bifrons’s assessment of God’s relationship with his people? “Their god is about his people, and his people are about their god. It seemed like a love affair.”
Jesus’ words, which Joab is charged to tell Rivkah, are “He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” (The biblical account of this incident is found in the Gospel of John, chapter 8.) Joab thinks these are “the biggest words he had ever heard. Words to explode, expose, destroy. Words to make utterly new. Full of terrible hope.” How do these words affect Joab? Jorah? Rivkah? You?
What bothers Orion most is the certainty that he has let his father down. If you were Orion’s father, how would you feel about his choices?
Were you surprised when Cornelius stepped forward to help Joab and then Orion? Have you ever been helped by an unexpected ally? (For more on Cornelius, see Acts 10 in the Bible.)
When Orion learns of Nathanael’s death, he is glad that he will not have to face Rivkah’s grief. Yet he feels ashamed that “escape was all he ever wanted when horrible things came.” When have you wanted to escape from a painful situation or truth? Why is this a universal human experience? What might give a person the courage to stay and face it?
Janus says of Orion, “He broke law . . . but it was for mercy. He disobeyed a command because he knew it was wrong.” What parallels do you see between Orion’s behavior and the ministry of Jesus?
Orion is surprised to find he has so many friends. In prison, he has a succession of visitors come to express their appreciation for his acts of kindness. Why do we often wait until it is too late to thank those who have made a difference in our lives? Who can you reach out to this week to express appreciation, perhaps overdue?
What is the significance of Orion’s memory of his father’s words about river barges? “You see the three-master? Not so powerful now. Consider the nava codicaria, my boy.” How does remembering this help Orion know what to do when he stands before Pilate?
Why does Rivkah insist that the woman in the story of Jesus and the stones is a prostitute, not an adulteress? Does it matter? Why or why not?
About the Author
TRACY GROOT is the author of three Christy Award–winning novels—Madman, Flame of Resistance, and The Sentinels of Andersonville—along with The Brother’s Keeper, The Stones of My Accusers, and most recently The Maggie Bright.
She loves books, movies, knitting, travel, exceptional coffee, dark-chocolate sea foam, and licorice allsorts. She lives with her husband, Jack, in a Michigan home where stacks of books must be navigated to get anywhere, and if she yet lives at the reading of these words, she is likely at work on her next historical novel.
For more information about Tracy and her books, visit www.tracygroot.com.
1
HE DID NOT KNOW what to call them. They were not Essenes, nor were they Zealots. Some were not even Jewish. He watched the latest two retreat down the slope that led to his home. The tall o
ne, the ruder of the two, looked over his shoulder to stare boldly at James. The fact that these pilgrims never got what they came for pleased him greatly. To be sure, the shorter one carried away a pocketful of sawdust, scooped from the floor when he thought James was not looking; no matter. The fool had more sawdust in his head than in his pocket.
They were heading for the village. And how would these visitors find Nazareth? Would they be disappointed to see that it was no different than their own hometown? They would see the same filthy beggars and the same people who did not notice them. The same smelly streets, the same noisy marketplace. They would hear women arguing prices with the merchants. They would see the usual mix of people in typical Galilean villages: Jews, Gentiles, a few strutting Romans, traveling foreigners. They would see people who lived the hard facts of life, people who sweated and smelled like them.
Would they be as disappointed with Nazareth as they always were with James and his family?
James leaned against the workroom doorway and watched until the two disappeared down the hill. When the first of these strangers had come to visit, James and his brothers had treated them politely. Answered questions, showed them around. Pointed out the corner workbench; they always liked to see that. In the beginning the attention was entertaining. It amused them; truth to tell, it even flattered. Nearly three years later, James was no longer amused.
Many carried away tokens of their visit: a curled shaving from the workroom floor, a pebble from the path, a handful of stone chips from a roof roller James was chiseling. Once he caught Jorah giving tours of the home for two copper prutas per person. Though Mother put an end to that, James thought it time for recompense. At least someone had the sense to make these strangers pay for their intrusions.
What did they expect the home to be like? James saw it all the time, the looks that said their Teacher’s home fell short of their expectations.