It seemed everyone was on the move now in the room, urging our guests to make ready, if they wanted, for bed in a clean, dry room which had been readied for them, or insisting that they take more wine, or that they have more food, or rest, or whatever it was in the world they should desire.
Hananel kept his eyes on me. He reached up for me. I came round and sat down beside him.
"My lord?" I asked.
"Thank you, Yeshua bar Joseph," he said, "that you came to my house."
Chapter Sixteen
AT LAST OUR GUESTS were securely bedded down in their rooms, on the best rugs we had laid over straw for beds, with the few fine pillows we could gather, and the inevitable brazier of coals, and water should they require it. Of course they claimed it was more than they had ever expected, and we knew it was not, and insisted that we wished we could provide them with silken bedding, and they urged us to go on to sleep, and I came back to the main room where I almost always slept and fell down beside the brazier.
Joseph sat silent as before, gazing at me with thoughtful eyes, and Uncle Cleopas sat staring at the fire and savoring the cup of his wine, sipping from it, murmuring to himself.
I knew a wrenching misery. I knew it as I lay still in the silence and in the shadows, ignoring the coming and settling of my brothers Joseph and Judas. I knew it as vaguely as I was aware that Silas and Levi were there too and Little Cleopas with his wife, Mary.
I knew that Avigail was saved; I knew that somehow her misery was at an end. I knew that Hananel and his grandson Reuben would be good to her all her days. I knew that.
But I also knew that I had given Avigail away to another man, I'd given Avigail away forever.
And a wealth of possibilities now descended on me, possibilities which I'd glimpsed perhaps in the heated moments in the grove when I'd clung to her, possibilities choked off by necessity and decision. Now they came like the whispered taunts given an airy shape passing before my dulled eyes - Avigail, my wife, Avigail and I together with a house of little ones, Avigail and I amid trivial tasks and arbors of trailing vines, in weariness and with soft tender skin, dare one think of that, the brush of lips, yes, and a body crooked snugly against me in the night-to-night dark - ah, the essence of all that would have followed, and could have followed, if I'd taken her as my wife, if I'd done what every man in the village expected of me, what my brothers had expected of me long before the other men, if I'd done what custom and tradition required of me. If I'd done what my heart seemed to want from me.
I didn't want sleep. I feared sleep. I wanted peace, I wanted the day to come so I could walk, I wanted the rain to keep falling so that it would blot out every sound in this room, every spoken word. And why at all at this hour and after so much were they speaking?
I looked up. James stood glowering at me. Beside him stood Cleopas. My mother stood there trying to pull her brother away, and finally James let it out:
"And how are we to provide this bride with proper robes and veils and a canopy and all the attendants of which you so vehemently spoke, to marry such a man as the grandson of Hananel of Cana!" He rose off the balls of his feet in rage. "Tell me, what is it that lies behind your boast, you, who caused this disaster, this very disaster. How could you claim for her a raiment and preparations such as no one in this house could ever give to your sister!" There was a flood of words yet to come.
But I rose to my feet.
My uncle Cleopas spoke gently. "Why couldn't you have married her yourself, my son?" he asked pleadingly. "Who is it that asks this of you, that you don't marry?"
"Oh, he's too good for that," declared James. "He would do Moses one better and not take a wife; he would do Elijah better and not take a wife. He would live as an Essene but not with the Essenes for he's too good for them. And had it been any other man in that grove with the girl, she'd be ruined. But all know you, no, you would never have touched her."
He drew in his breath for another rush of words, but I stopped him.
"Before you make yourself positively ill with rage," I said, "let me ask my mother - bring here, please now, the gifts that were given to me when I was born. Set them here before us."
"My son, are you certain?"
"I am certain," I said. I kept my eye on James.
He went to speak and I said:
"Wait."
She went out directly.
James stood regarding me with cold contempt, ready at any moment to erupt. My brothers were now grouped about, behind him. My nephews stood watching, and into the room had come Aunt Esther and Mara. Shabi and Isaac and Menachim stood against the wall.
I looked unwaveringly at James.
"I am weary of you, my brother," I said. "In my heart, I'm weary."
He narrowed his eyes. He was astonished.
My mother came back. She held a chest which was heavy for her to hold, and Mara and Esther assisted her as she brought it forward and set it down on the floor in front of us.
Decades, it had been hidden away, this chest, ever since our return here from Egypt. James had seen this chest. James knew what it was, but my other brothers had never set eyes on it, as they were the sons of my uncle Cleopas, and they'd been born after me. None of the younger men had ever seen it. Perhaps the boys in the room had never even heard tell of it. Perhaps Mara and Little Mary didn't even know that it existed.