A.D. 30 Page 12

  The door then opened and a woman peered out cautiously, then stepped into the sunlight. She was dressed in a simple, dirtied tunic and a brown mantle, which she held closed with one hand.

  The woman was slight and fair, but it was her eyes that struck me, for they stared at me upon my camel, not at Judah. I saw a woman who bore the weight of the world on her shoulders, and yet those eyes understood all of that world. A woman of sorrow and grace at once.

  “You are Miriam?” Judah asked.

  Only after watching me for a long moment did she turn to Judah.

  “I am.”

  “Then you must know that I am of the Kokobanu tribe from the east, the great Bedu who read the stars. Our wisest elders came many years ago and offered gifts to you and your son, I am certain. Do you remember?”

  Miriam did not need to respond because her face had paled and I knew at once that Judah had found the mother of his king.

  He did not wait for her to speak, but immediately stepped back and went to one knee in a bow. “It is my honor to stand before you.”

  “No, you must not.” She glanced down the street, but no one was in sight.

  “Among the Kokobanu, you are blessed among all women, for you are the mother of the one who will…”

  Before he could finish, she stepped behind the wall of the courtyard, leaving him on his knee. He glanced back at me, then quickly stood and followed, vanishing from our sight for the moment.

  I turned to Saba, who wore a curious look. “He was right. What do you make of it?”

  He didn’t quickly respond. At the very least, this woman and her son were those Judah’s elders had found. But as far as I was aware, Miriam might be wary of Judah and his tribe of stargazers, for such men put their trust in what is not of the earth.

  Yet I knew that Judah was a sane man.

  “It isn’t good for him to be alone with a woman in this land,” Saba said, glancing down the street.

  But it was she who’d drawn him aside, I thought. And none had seen him enter the courtyard.

  The moment held the quality of a dream. I had come to avenge my son’s death by begging favor in Herod’s royal court, and yet here I was beside a house made of mud and dung as Judah paid homage to the mother of his king.

  Saba was right to ask how a king might come from such a home.

  I do not know what Judah spoke, nor Miriam, only that when he strode from the courtyard, his eyes were on me and aflame with hope.

  “She will speak to you,” he said, taking the lead rope and tugging my camel down to its knees.

  “Me?”

  “I’ve told her who you are. She would speak to you in the house.”

  “Why? I have no business with these people.”

  “Because you now know what I know about her son. It concerns her.”

  “I know only what is claimed.”

  Judah set his jaw. “What I’ve claimed is now made certain. Miriam’s son was the child. Herod’s father tried to kill him. No one must know Yeshua is this same child. She will speak to you.”

  I slid from the camel and saw that the door was still open.

  “Hurry, she wishes not to be seen with us.”

  So I walked to the door and glanced back at Judah, who motioned me forward. Then I stepped into the dimly lit house.

  Miriam stood by the oil lantern, watching me. Here in her own home, she appeared far more at ease.

  The moment I looked into her eyes, I felt like a servant. I could not understand, for she was not a man to command me, nor was I a slave in Egypt to be commanded by a woman. But I did not resist her influence.

  I dipped my head. “You have asked to speak to me?”

  “Judah tells me that your son was killed in Arabia,” she said.

  For weeks my loss had been my constant companion, silenced by the resolve that compelled me to avenge him. For all the Kalb, I had been obliged to remain strong, for they now depended on me as much as my son had, and I could not fail them as well.

  But with Miriam I was again a mother. The emotions that swallowed me came unbidden.

  I saw my baby cooing at me with a full belly, milk still on his tender lips. I saw his little arms grabbing awkwardly at the air, only just learning what it meant to be alive.

  I saw Kahil bin Saman casually walk over to my sleeping child, pluck him from the ground by his one leg, and throw him from the window.

  I saw my infant son lying facedown on the stone, head crushed.

  I saw it all and I could not speak. I could hardly breathe.

  Miriam, seeing my pain, stepped up to me and brushed a strand of hair from my face.

  “I’m so sorry, sweet Maviah.” Her eyes were misted. “I am so very sorry for your loss.”

  Her words, spoken as if from my own soul, washed over me and I felt rivers of grief rising. Then flowing. I didn’t want to cry there in Nazareth, but she had given me permission and I could not remain strong.

  My head fell and my body shook as I began to weep.

  I felt my mantle eased from my head. Miriam’s arms encircled me and I lowered my forehead onto her shoulder.

  “Weep, my child,” she whispered. “Weep for your son.”

  Judah had told me to hurry, but I was undone by anguish and I could not move. Nor did Miriam seem to want me to. For long minutes she soothed me and held me as if she were my own mother.

  Indeed, in my mind’s eye, she was my mother, and sobs racked my body. I placed my arms around Miriam and clung to her as only a daughter might, and I could not stop weeping.

  I wept for my son. I wept for my father. I wept for the fear that lurked in my breast like a tiger waiting its turn to tear out my throat.

  But I wept mostly because I was offered deep understanding and comfort from a mother who knew of suffering and fear.

  When I finally began to settle, she wiped my tears from my cheeks with her mantle.

  “You must weep for your son,” she said. “Even as I weep for mine.”

  I felt I should say something, but no words came.

  Miriam walked to the table, where she’d been kneading a lump of floured dough. She picked up a vessel and poured water into one of two chalk cups on the table.

  I glanced around the humble room. Light filtered in from small windows near the thatched reed ceiling. Two oil lamps on the mud walls produced flames that filled the room with the scent of olive oil. Mats covered the dirt floor. A passage to my left with only a sheet for a door led into what must be the sleeping room. Several large earthen vessels sat in the corner, presumably holding wheat to be ground by hand.

  It was by all accounting a poor home.

  Her eyes found mine as she handed the water to me. I drank.

  “Among my people, you are seen as unclean. It is forbidden to break bread with a foreigner. Even touching you has defiled me in my people’s eyes. My son never saw it that way. He was always beyond the simple ways of religion and tradition, seeking instead a far deeper knowing. And I know now that he was right. I suppose I knew so even from the time we were in Egypt.”

  “Egypt? I grew up there as a slave.”

  She hesitated. “Our people were once slaves in Egypt. Now we are slaves in our own land.”

  Miriam took the cup from me and placed it back on the table. When she faced me, urgency had claimed her expression.

  “Judah tells me that you travel to Herod.”

  “Yes.”

  “That you seek his favor.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you must know that Herod knows no more mercy than the one who took your son’s life.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I agreed. “No king understands mercy.”

  “You must say nothing of my son to Herod. Not even that you were here to see me. It is all that I ask from you or from Judah.”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  She held my eyes longer, then smiled faintly as if believing my intentions.

  Miriam looked at one of the oil lamps on the wall.
“They have rejected him, you know,” she said. “He not once spoke a word of disrespect to any in Nazareth, and yet they could not understand him. His brothers still believe him to be out of his mind. Just a quiet boy who liked to spend time alone in the hills and speak of another world in the tradition of the spiritual teachers. He was more interested in being with the birds than in learning his father’s craft. He often went to Sepphoris with the others to work with his father, but even there his fascination was with the synagogue. And with Herod’s grand theater.”

  It was clear to me that Miriam rarely spoke of her son and yet had found reason to confide in me.

  “Your husband was a craftsman?”

  “Joseph was a simple man who worked with wood and stone, trades needed in rebuilding Sepphoris. He traveled there an hour every morning to return upon the evening.”

  She faced me again. “His brothers thought Yeshua out of his mind, but they do not know him. One cannot truly know my son and remained unchanged. Perhaps the world will see that one day. But today I fear they will try to kill him.”

  “The Romans? Why?”

  “Because they fear the kingdom of which he speaks. Even the Jews may try to kill him—I have seen hatred here in Nazareth.”

  “It is true then… that Yeshua is a great mystic who works wonders.”

  “You’ve heard this? Where?”

  “From a man in Arabia.”

  She studied me for a moment and spoke very quietly. “He works wonders. And far more.”

  The notion intrigued me, because I had known of holy men who traded in the world of wonders, but I had lost my belief in them.

  “Then eventually they must embrace him,” I said.

  “Perhaps. But Yeshua rises above even the Jewish way of mystery. And above all the ways of the world. I pray for his safety.”

  “Then he should leave Palestine,” I said. “You are his mother, he will listen to you.”

  “He is bound to the world of spirit, not to me. My son will do what he was born to do. Even as you, Maviah, must do what you were born to do for your people. And I will do what I was born to do.”

  “You know what I was born to do?”

  “Judah tells me that you will be a queen of the desert one day, uniting all that divides. That you will bring salvation to your people.”

  “I fear Judah is a man taken by impossible dreams.”

  Miriam hesitated. “I would not discount dreams so quickly, Maviah. Do what you must do. Only be careful of Herod.”

  In that moment her words compelled me even more than my father’s, urging me toward my purpose, because she understood my place in the world as a woman and as a mother.

  “I will.”

  A knock sounded at the door. Judah, surely wondering what had become of us.

  “Then go and take my blessing with you.”

  I thought that Yeshua was fortunate to have a mother such as Miriam. And in small way, I thought of her as a mother to me as well.

  “Thank you. You are very kind.”

  She smiled at me and turned toward the door.

  “Maviah…”

  I turned back. “Yes?”

  “You will find that Yeshua loves you.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  SOMETHING IN me shifted in my short time with Miriam there in that desolate town of Nazareth, but I did not know what. Perhaps it was only the fact that Miriam, mother to a boy who’d been rejected in his home, had embraced my mission.

  But in expressing concern for her son’s safety, she’d sown worry in me for my own. I found myself overwhelmed as we approached the city of Sepphoris, that city looming on the hill so close to Nazareth, yet I kept my thoughts to myself.

  When Judah asked me what Miriam had spoken to me, I told him that she’d consoled me for my loss and asked that we make no mention of her or Yeshua to Herod. And yet both Judah and Saba could tell I had been deeply affected by my encounter with her.

  “So now you know, Maviah,” Judah said as we left Nazareth. “The stars tell us only the truth.”

  I could not deny it. “Yes.”

  “And you, Saba. There can be no doubt.”

  “Your stars have spoken,” Saba said. “What they mean, no one can know.”

  “What more is there to know? For out of Bethlehem will come a ruler who will shepherd Israel, as it is written. Now we know that Yeshua is this ruler, even as my elders have seen. Rome will fall.”

  “And what is a ruler? In the east, a man seeks to rule his own heart, not a land or a people.”

  “In the east, perhaps, but you are in Israel. Here it is the land and God’s chosen people.” He turned to Saba. “At the least, you now know that the stars have conspired to give us a sign.”

  Saba finally nodded. “What I know even more is that Rami is in need of Rome, and I serve Rami. As do you. And we serve Maviah, who is now the voice of Rami.”

  “Yes,” Judah said, settling with his attention fixed forward once again. “Of this too there can be no doubt.”

  We made camp in a shallow, dry wadi just before the city, for it was too late to make any entrance to Herod’s palace that day.

  That night we spoke little, each enslaved by his own thoughts. But the voices in my head kept sleep from me, so I finally rose and walked around an outcropping of rock near the bedded camels.

  The night was silent and lit only by starlight, without a moon. No creature stirred and still my mind would not join the calm.

  When I reflected on Miriam’s kindness I fell further into the hopelessness of my predicament. Like Miriam, I too was only a woman. Like her and her son, I too was an outcast.

  And Miriam, though mother of Judah’s mystical king, was afraid of Herod. As was I, and for the same reason as she. As she herself had made plain, Herod was ruthless and could not be trusted. I became certain that I would fail miserably in the task set before me.

  Who was I to walk into Sepphoris to request the Roman armies for my father’s sake? The notion now struck me as preposterous.

  Dread shadowed me.

  Who are you, Maviah, to sway a king?

  Who are you to seek vengeance against the vast Thamud?

  Who are you but a slave still, no more free than upon your first breath?

  My father and Judah and Saba had all made a terrible mistake in entrusting me with the dagger of Varus, for in my hand it was only a worthless relic, sure to draw little more than a chuckle from Herod.

  I was pacing on the sand with my arms crossed, mired in an unprecedented fear, when a voice spoke.

  “They are like you,” it said.

  I turned to find Judah staring up at the stars.

  “No thought can remove them from the sky.” He looked at me with a smile.

  “What are you doing?” I demanded, disturbed by his appearance.

  “I saw that you were unsettled,” he said, coming closer.

  “Of course I’m unsettled. This entire mission is absurd.”

  “And yet it’s the only way. You will rise like the sun.”

  “What do you expect from me?” I snapped at him. “I am only a woman!”

  His smile softened. “I expect nothing more from you,” he said.

  “Nothing more?” I could have told him that he might take this nothing and choke on it, because it was a lie. Instead I only grunted and turned away to avoid heaping my frustration on him.

  “Maviah… what Rami has asked of you… it’s far too much for any common woman. But you—”

  “Stop it!” I turned, face hot.

  “Stop it?”

  “Stop it! Do not ply me with your silver tongue.”

  He blinked and I knew immediately that I had hurt him. But I only crossed my arms again and turned away. Judah as much as my father had placed the weight of the world upon my shoulders.

  For a long while, he said nothing. Then I heard his feet on the sand. I felt his hand take mine.

  I turned and saw that Judah was on his knee, face lifted, tears brimming
in the dim light.

  “I beg your forgiveness,” he said, voice strained. “If I have harmed but one hair on your head, I stand condemned. I see you only as the brightest star in the heavens. I worship you as that queen. If my tongue hurts you with even a whisper, you must cut it out, so that I would be as silent as your father now.”

  The boldness of his approach took me off guard and I glanced into the night, expecting to be seen, but we were alone.

  “I beg you, Maviah. Do not cast me away.”

  How could a man speak in such subservience to me? I was unaccustomed to such extravagant praise. My first instinct was to pull away.

  But the sincerity in his eyes stilled me. Judah truly did see me as one who had great power, if not over the world, then over his world. It was then that I first realized the true nature of his heart. I had known we shared affection, but this… this was far more.

  Judah was not only drawn to me.

  He loved me.

  “How could I cast you away?” I said quietly.

  He pulled my hand closer and gently placed a kiss on my fingers.

  “Then I remain your humble servant. For you I would lay down my life.”

  For the second time in that same day, overwhelming emotion swallowed me and tears sprang to my eyes. I did not feel worthy of such words. I did not know what to make of them. Instead of gratitude, fear rose into my throat.

  And yet how could I refuse the love of such a man, who had never spoken a word of anger to me? How much had I hurt him by raising my voice?

  I dropped to my knees in that sand and I threw my arms around his neck, so that his beard pressed against my cheek.

  “No, Judah,” I wept. “It is I who serve you.” I kissed his cheek and his hair. “Please forgive me. Forgive me, I beg you.”

  “Maviah.” His arms were around me. In both Bedu and Jewish ways, we had crossed those lines called forbidden, but neither of us cared. “You are the—”

  Without forethought, I kissed his mouth, silencing what was sure to be yet another utterance of my majesty, not because I objected but because I was carried away with affection for him.

  For a long moment, we lost ourselves in that kiss, drinking like thirsty souls who’d stumbled upon a well in the most desolate sands. And then I withdrew, breathing hard.