I thought about this, and then slowly I nodded.
"I'll write the letter this afternoon," he said. "I have a student here to take the dictation for me. The letter will reach my cousins in Sepphoris this evening. They are widows. They're kind. They'll welcome her."
I bowed and placed my fingers together to show my thanks and my respect. I started to go.
"Come back in three days," he said. "I'll have an answer from them or from someone else. I'll have it in hand. And I'll go with you to see Shemayah on this matter. And if you see the girl herself, you will tell her that all her family - we are all asking after her."
"Thank you, my lord," I said.
I walked fast on the road to Sepphoris.
I wanted to be with my brothers, I wanted to be at work. I wanted to be laying stones one after another, and pouring the grout and smoothing the boards and hammering the nails. I wanted anything but to be with a man with a clever tongue.
But what had he said that my own brothers hadn't said in their own way, or that Jason hadn't said? Oh, he'd been full of privilege and riches and the arrogant power that he held to help Avigail.
But they were asking me the same questions. They were all saying the same things.
I didn't want to go over it in my mind. I didn't want to go over the things he'd said or what I'd seen or felt. And most especially I didn't want to ponder what I'd said to him.
But as I reached the city with all its engulfing voices, its wondrous pounding and clattering and chatter, a thought came to me.
The thought was fresh and like the conversation I'd had.
I'd been looking all this while for signs that rain would come, hadn't I? I'd been looking at the sky, and at the distant trees, and feeling the wind, and the chill of the wind, and hoping to catch just a kiss of moisture on my face.
But maybe I was seeing signs of something else altogether different. Something was indeed coming. It had to be. Here, all around me, were the signals of its approach. It was a building, a pressure, a series of signals of something inevitable - something like the rain for which we'd all prayed, yet something vastly beyond the rain - and something that would take the decades of my life, yes, the years reckoned in feasts and new moons, and even the hours and the minutes - even every single second I'd ever lived - and make use of it.
Chapter Twelve
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Old Bruria and Aunt Esther tried to get word to Avigail, but could get no answer.
By the time we came back from the city that evening, Silent Hannah had come in. She sat now broken and small and shivering beside Joseph who kept his hand on her bowed head. She looked like a tiny woman under her woolen veils.
"What's the matter with her?" James asked.
My mother said, "She says Avigail is dying."
"Give me some water to wash my hands," I said. "I need the ink and parchment."
I sat down and put a board over my knees for a desk. And I grasped the pen, amazed at how difficult it was. It had been a long time since I'd written anything, and the calluses on my fingers were thick and my hand felt rough and even unsteady. Unsteady.
Ah, what a discovery that was.
I dipped the pen and scratched out the words, simply and fast, and in the smallest possible letters. "You eat and drink now because I say you must. You get up and you take all the water that you can now because I say you must. You eat what you can. I do all that I can do on your behalf, and you do this now for me and for those who love you. Letters have been sent from those who love you to those who love you. You will soon be away from here. Say nothing to your father. Do as I tell you."
I went to Silent Hannah and gave her the parchment. I gestured as I spoke. "From me to Avigail. From me. You give it to her."
She shook her head. She was terrified.
I made the ominous gesture for a scowling Shemayah. I gestured to my eyes. I said: "He can't read it. See? Look at how small are the letters! You give it to Avigail!"
She got up and ran out quickly.
Hours passed. Silent Hannah didn't come back.
But shouts from the street roused all of us from our semi-sleep. We rushed out to discover that the signal fires had just reported the news: peace in Caesarea.
And Pontius Pilate had sent word to Jerusalem to remove the offensive ensigns from the Holy City.