"When he asked for Avigail, Mother, was he intolerable to her? Our Jason? Do you know?"
She thought for a long moment. "My son, I don't even think Avigail ever knew that Jason asked for her," she said. "Everyone else knew. But I think Avigail was here that day playing with the children. I'm not sure Avigail ever said a word about it. Now Shemayah came in that night, and sat here and said the most dreadful scornful things about Jason. But Avigail wasn't here then. Avigail was home, asleep. I don't know whether Avigail found Jason intolerable. No. I don't think she ever knew."
The pain had crested sometime while she was speaking. It was sharp and deep. My thoughts drifted. What a great thing it would have been to be able to cry - to be alone, and to cry, unwatched and unheard.
Flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone. I kept my face placid and my hands still. Male and female He created them. I had to hide this from my mother and I had to hide it from myself.
"Mother," I said, "you might mention to her - that Jason asked for her. Perhaps you can, somehow, let her know."
The pain was suddenly so bad I did not want to speak another word. I couldn't trust myself to say another word.
I felt her lips against my cheek. Her hand was on my shoulder.
After a long time, she asked, "Are you sure that's what you want me to do?"
I nodded.
"Yeshua, are you certain that it's God's will?"
I waited until the pain had backed away, and my voice would be my own again. Then I looked at her. At once her calm expression created a new calm in me.
"Mother," I said. "There are things I know, and things I don't know. Sometimes knowledge comes to me unexpectedly - in moments of surprise. Sometimes it comes when I'm pressed, and in my sudden answers to those who press me. Sometimes, this knowledge comes in pain. Always, there's the certainty that the knowledge is more than I will let myself know. It's just beyond where I choose to reach, just beyond what I choose to ask. I know it will come when I have need of it. I know it may come, as I said, on its own. But some things I know certainly and have always known. There's no surprise. There's no doubt."
She was quiet again for a while, and then she said, "This has made you miserable. I've seen this before, but never as bad as it is now."
"Is it so bad?" I whispered. I looked away, as men do when they only want to see their thoughts. "I don't know that it's been bad for me, Mother. What is bad for me? To love as I love Avigail - it has a luster, a great and beautiful luster."
She waited.
"There come these moments," I said. "These heartbreaking moments - the moments when we first feel joy and sadness intertwined. Such a discovery that is, when grief becomes sweet. I remember feeling this perhaps for the very first time when we came to this place, all of us together, and I walked up the hill above Nazareth and saw the green grass alive with flowers, the tiniest flowers - so many flowers, and all of it, grass and flowers and trees, moving as if in a great dance. It hurt."
She said nothing.
Finally I looked at her. I touched my chest with my fist lightly. "It hurt," I said. "But it was to be cherished . . . forever."
Reluctantly, she nodded.
We were both quiet.
At last I broke the silence.
"Now, tell Avigail," I said. "Let her know that Jason asked for her. Jason is devoted to her, and I must confess, life with Jason would never be dull."
She smiled. Again she kissed me, and she leaned on my shoulder as she rose to go.
James had come in. He made his pillow from his folded mantle and lay down to sleep near the wall.
I stared at the reddened coals.
"How long, O Lord?" I whispered. How long?
Chapter Eight
THE FACT WAS, all the maidens of Nazareth sighed for Jason, in their modest ways. And nowhere was it more obvious than the following evening, when the town went mad, packing into the synagogue, men and women and children alike, overflowing the benches, huddling in the doorway, and crowded together on the floor right up to the feet of the Rabbi and the elders.
At the first darkening, the signal fires had flashed the news into Galilee, which had already spread throughout Judea. Pontius Pilate's men had indeed installed their ensigns within the Holy City, and refused over the protests of the angry populace to remove them.
Blast after blast came from the ram's horn.