In spite of unceasing work, we'd finished a series of walls early; nothing further could be done until the plaster dried, and so there came an hour of daylight in which I could go off, without a word to anyone, and seek the place I most loved, amid the ancient olive trees and veiled in a tangle of ivy that seemed to thrive in the drought as well as in the rain.
As I said before, the villagers were suspicious of the place and didn't go there. The oldest olives no longer bore fruit, and some were hollowed out, big hulking gray sentinels with wild young trees taking root in their emptied trunks. There were stones there, but I'd years ago satisfied myself that they'd never been a pagan altar or part of a burial ground; and the layer of leaves had long covered them so that the place was soft there for lying, just as an open field might be with silken grass, and in its own way just as sweet.
I had a roll of clean rags with me for a pillow. I crept in and lay down and allowed myself a long slow breath.
I thanked the Lord for this enclosure, for this escape.
I looked up at the play of light in the mesh of faintly moving branches. The winter days faded abruptly. The sky was already colorless. I didn't mind. I knew the way back home plainly enough. But I couldn't stay as long as I wanted. I'd be missed, and someone would come looking for me, and I would be trouble, and that was not what I wanted to be at all. What I wanted was to be alone.
I prayed; I tried to clear my mind. It was fragrant and wholesome here. It was precious. There was no such place in Nazareth as this, and no such place for me in Sepphoris, or Magdala, or Cana, or anyplace in which we worked or ever would work.
And every room in our house was filled.
Little Cleopas, the grandson of my uncle Alphaeus, had married last year to a cousin, Mary, from Capernaum, and they had taken the last of the rooms, and already Mary was carrying a child.
So I was alone. Just for a little while. Alone.
I tried to shake off the atmosphere of the village, the air of recrimination that had settled on people after the stoning; no one wanted to talk about it, but no one could think of anything else. Who had been there? Who had not? And had those children run off to throw in their lot with the brigands, and somebody ought to seek out those brigands and burn them out of their caves.
And of course the brigands had been raiding the villages. That often happened. And now with the drought the price of food was dear. Rumor had it, the brigands had swept down on the smaller hamlets to steal livestock, and to steal wine-sacks and sacks of water. No one ever knew when one of these cutthroat men on horseback would come stomping through our streets.
That was very much the talk in Sepphoris, of brigands in a bad winter. But there was also talk everywhere of Pilate and his soldiers moving sluggishly towards Jerusalem with ensigns bearing the name of Caesar, ensigns which should not pass through the city gates. It was blasphemy to bring such ensigns, bearing the name of an Emperor, into our city. We didn't hold with images; we didn't hold with the name or image of an Emperor who held himself to be a god.
Under the Emperor Augustus Caesar nothing like that had ever happened. No one was really certain that Augustus himself had ever believed he was a god. He went along with it, of course, and there were temples reared in his honor. Perhaps his heir Tiberius didn't believe it either.
But people didn't care about the private views of the Emperor. They cared that those ensigns were being carried by Roman soldiers through Judea, and they didn't like it, and the King's soldiers argued about it, too, outside the palace gates and in the taverns, and in the marketplace, or wherever they might happen to be.
The King himself, Herod Antipas, wasn't in Sepphoris. He was in Tiberias, his new city, a city named for the new Emperor, that Herod had built on the sea. We never went to work in that city. A cloud hung over it; graves had been moved to build it. And once the laborers who hadn't cared about such things had flooded east to work there, we had more work in Sepphoris than we could ever want to do.
We'd always done well in Sepphoris. And the King sometimes came to his palace, and whether he did or not, there was an eternal parade of the highborn through his various chambers, and for their splendid houses, the building never stopped.
Now these rich men and women were as worried about the actions of Pontius Pilate as was anyone else. When it came to Romans taking ensigns into the Holy City, Jews of all walks of life were very simply Jews.
Nobody seemed to know this Pontius Pilate; but everybody despised him.
And meantime, word of the stoning had spread throughout the countryside, and people glanced at us as if we were the miserable mob from Nazareth, or so my brothers and nephews thought as they hurled back their own glances, and people disputed over the cost of grout for the bricks I laid, or the thickness of the plaster stirred in the pot.
Of course people were right to be worried about Pontius Pilate. He was new and he didn't know our ways. Rumor had it the man was of the party of Sejanus, and no one had any great love for Sejanus, because Sejanus ran the world, it seemed, for the retired Emperor Tiberius, and who was Sejanus, men said, except a conniving and vicious soldier, a commander of the Emperor's personal guard?
I didn't want to think about these things. I didn't want to think of Silent Hannah's suffering as she came and went with Avigail, clinging to Avigail's arm. Nor did I want to think of the sadness in Avigail's eyes as she looked at me, a darkling understanding that muted her easy laughter and her once frequent little songs.
But I couldn't shut these thoughts out of my head. Why had I come to the grove? What had I thought I could find here?
For an instant, I fell asleep. Avigail. Don't you know this is Eden? It's not good for a man to be alone!
I woke with a start, in the darkness, bundled up my rags, and went out of the grove to go home.
Far below I saw the twinkling of torches in Nazareth. Winter days meant torches. Men had to work a little while more by lamp or lantern or torch. I found it a cheerful sight.
But where I stood the sky was cloudless, moonless - and beautifully black with the countless stars. "Who can fathom Your goodness, O Lord?" I whispered. "You have taken the fire and out of it fashioned the numberless lamps that decorate the night."
A stillness came over me. The common ache in my arms and shoulders died away. The breeze was chilling yet soothing. Something inside me let go. It had been a long while since I'd savored such a moment, since I'd let the tight prison of my skin dissolve. I felt as if I were moving upward and outward, as if the night were filled with myriad beings and the rhythm of their song drowned out the anxious beating of my heart. The shell of my body was gone. I was in the stars. But my human soul wouldn't let me loose. I reached for human language. "No, I will accomplish this," I said.
I stood on the dry grass beneath the vault of Heaven. I was small. I was isolated and weary. "Lord," I said aloud to the faint breeze. "How long?"
Chapter Seven
TWO LANTERNS WERE BURNING in the courtyard and that was cheerful. I was glad to see it, glad to see my nephew Little Cleopas and his father, Silas, at work on cutting a series of planks. I knew what this was, and it had to be done by tomorrow.