He was right. I was past thirty and not married.
"How many times have we talked about this, James?" I asked.
It was a beautiful thing to watch the growing light, to see the color coming to the palms clustered around the synagogue. I thought I heard shouting in the distance. But perhaps it was just the usual noises of a town tearing off its blankets.
"Tell me what's really eating at you this morning?" I asked. I picked up the wet robe from the stream and spread it out on the grass where it would dry. "Every year you come to look more like your father," I said, "but you never have your father's face really. You never have his peace of mind."
"I was born worried," he confessed with a shrug. He was looking anxiously towards the village. "Do you hear that?"
"I hear something," I said.
"This is the worst dry spell we've ever had," he said, glancing up at the sky. "And cold as it is, it's not cold enough. You know the cisterns are almost empty. The mikvah's almost empty. And you, you are a constant worry to me, Yeshua, a constant worry. You come out here in the dark to the creek. You go off to that grove where no one dares to go. . . ."
"They're wrong about that grove," I said. "Those old stones mean nothing." That was a village superstition, that something pagan and dreadful had once taken place in that grove. But it was the mere ruins of an old olive press in there, stones that went way back to the years before Nazareth had been Nazareth. "I tell you this once a year, don't I? But I don't want to worry you, James."
Chapter Two
I EXPECTED JAMES TO CONTINUE.
But he'd gone quiet, staring in the direction of the village.
People were shouting, a lot of people.
I ran my fingers through my hair to smooth it, and turned and looked.
As the full light of day came down, I saw a great cluster of them at the top of the hill, men and boys tumbling and pushing at one another, the whole throng moving slowly downhill towards us.
Out of the melee, the Rabbi emerged, old Jacimus, and, with him, his young nephew Jason. I could see the Rabbi was trying to stop the crowd, but he was swept towards the foot of the hill, towards the synagogue, as the crowd came on, like a frantic herd, until they stopped in the clearing before the palm trees.
As we stood on the slope across the stream we could see them clearly.
Out of their midst, they forced two young boys - Yitra bar Nahom, and beside him the brother of Silent Hannah, the one we all called simply the Orphan.
The Rabbi ran up the stone steps to the roof of the synagogue.
I moved forward, but James held me back harshly.
"Stay out of this," he said.
Rabbi Jacimus' words rang out over the noise of the stream and the grumbling of the crowd.
"We will have a trial here, I tell you!" he demanded. "And I want the witnesses, where are the witnesses? The witnesses will step forward and declare what they saw."
Yitra and the Orphan stood apart as if an impassable gulf separated them from the angry villagers, some of whom were shaking their fists while others cursed under their breath, the oaths that don't require words to convey their meaning.
Again, I moved forward, but James pulled me back. "Stay out of it," he said. "I knew this would happen."
"What? What are you saying?" I demanded.
The crowd broke into shouts and roars. Fingers were pointed. Someone cried out: "Abomination."
Yitra, the older of the two accused, stood still glowering at those before him. He was a righteous boy whom everyone loved, one of the best in the school, and when he'd been taken to the Temple last year, he'd made the Rabbi proud in his answers to the teachers.
The Orphan, smaller than Yitra, was pale with fear, his black eyes huge, and his mouth trembling.
Jason, the Rabbi's nephew, Jason the Scribe, stepped forward on the roof and repeated his uncle's declarations.
"Stop this madness now!" he declared. "There will be a trial according to the law, and you witnesses, where are you? Are you afraid, those of you who started this?"