The kitchen steward and the ivory sheet. Antipas has learned of my complicity. Fear came then, blood rushing up to fill my ears, the wild galloping in my body. This cannot be.
Jesus slid closer so I could feel the solidness of him, his shoulder against mine. “Why would Antipas arrest her?” he said calmly.
“He accuses her of treachery in the escape of Phasaelis,” Judas said. “The palace steward who smuggled Ana’s warning to Phasaelis confessed its contents.”
“You are certain of this news?” Yaltha asked Judas. “Is your source reliable?”
Judas scowled at her. “I wouldn’t have alarmed you if I didn’t think it was true. Tiberias is still rife with gossip about Phasaelis. They say the soldiers who took her to Machaerus were put to death along with two of her servants, all of them accused of conspiring. And there is much talk of a warning message carried to Phasaelis on a food tray. I knew this to be Ana’s ivory tablet.”
“But that’s gossip. Do you assume her arrest based on gossip?” Yaltha demanded, and I could see the news had stunned her, too, for she refused to believe it.
“There is more, I’m afraid,” Judas said, a glint of exasperation in his voice. “I heard of an old woman named Joanna, who was Phasaelis’s attendant.”
“I know her,” I said. “She was married to Antipas’s head steward, Chuza.” I remembered her hovering about the first time I met Phasaelis. How young I’d been. Fourteen. Betrothed to Nathaniel. You are no lamb, and I, too, am no lamb. I glanced at Jesus. Was he remembering Chuza and the day he’d incited the crowd to stone me? I’d often wondered if we would be married if not for that terrible man.
“Chuza is long dead,” Judas went on. “But Joanna lives among the servants at the palace, partially blind and too old to be of much use, but she’s counted among those who now serve Herodias. She saved herself by condemning Phasaelis and swearing an oath of loyalty to Herodias. When I found her sitting outside the palace walls, she recanted both, saying she knew of Phasaelis’s plot and would have fled with her if she had been younger and had her sight.” He turned to Yaltha. “It was Joanna who told me about the kitchen steward’s confession and of Antipas’s intention to arrest Ana. She heard it from Herodias’s own lips.”
Around us the ordinary world went on: the children at play, James and Simon hewing wood in the workshop, Mary and my sisters-in-law kneading dough near the oven. The day in its courses. My breath hovered painfully over a flame at the back of my throat. “Joanna is certain Antipas will act?”
“He will act, Ana; there’s little doubt of it. King Aretas is mobilizing for war to avenge his daughter. Her escape has set off a cataclysm and Antipas lays blame on everyone who abetted his first wife, including you. To make matters worse, Herodias learned that her new husband was once fascinated by you . . . that he commissioned the mosaic of your face. Joanna told me this as well, and I suspect it was she herself who divulged the information to Herodias as a way of gaining her favor. Herodias is pressing Antipas to arrest you as he did John. I tell you, she will see it done.”
Jesus had been unaccountably silent. He covered my hand with his and squeezed. He and Judas had been displeased when I’d sent the warning to Phasaelis. I tried now to imagine myself not sending it. I couldn’t. With that realization, the fear began to leave my body. There was an incongruous peace in my helplessness, in the knowledge that what was done was done and could not be undone, and even if I could change it, I wouldn’t.
“I’m sorry,” Judas said to me. “I should never have agreed to deliver your message.”
“I don’t wish to question the past,” I said.
“You’re right, little sister. We must think of the future and do so quickly. Joanna believed Antipas’s soldiers would be coming for you in a matter of days. I walked here quickly, but Antipas’s soldiers will come on horseback. They may have been