His words collected in my ears and lay there, puddles of nonsense. For a minute, I didn’t move or speak. I heard Yaltha talking to me, but I was far away, standing in the Jordan River with John’s hands lowering me beneath the water. Light on the river bottom. A floor of pebbles. The silent floating. John’s muffled voice calling, Rise to newness of life.
Beheaded. I looked at Lavi, a sick churning inside me. “The servant you spoke with—is he certain of this?”
“He said the whole country spoke of the prophet’s death.”
Some truths seemed insoluble, stones that couldn’t be swallowed.
“They say Antipas’s wife, Herodias, was behind it,” Lavi added. “Her daughter performed a dance that pleased Antipas so much he promised whatever she asked. At her mother’s urging, she asked for John’s head.”
I covered my mouth with my hand. The reward for a beautiful dance: a man’s severed head.
Lavi watched me, his expression grave. He said, “The servant also spoke about another prophet who was going about Galilee, preaching.”
I felt my heart scurry up into my throat.
“He heard the prophet preach to a great multitude on a hillside outside Capernaum. He spoke of it with awe. He said the prophet lashed out at hypocrites and proclaimed it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to come into the kingdom of God. He blessed the poor, the meek, the outcast, and the merciful. He preached love, saying if a soldier forces you to carry his pack one mile, carry it two, and if you’re struck on one cheek, turn the other one. This servant said the prophet’s following is even greater than the Immerser’s, that people spoke of him as a Messiah. As King of the Jews.” With that, Lavi fell quiet.
I fell quiet, too. The wooden door onto the courtyard was flung wide onto the Egyptian night. I listened to wind shake the palm fronds. The dark, tumbling world.
vii.
As Yaltha parted the veils that encircled my bed, I shut my eyes, feigning sleep. It was past the midnight hour.
“I know you’re awake, Ana. We will talk now.” She carried a beeswax candle, the light flickering under her chin and onto the bony ledge over her eyes. She rested the holder on the floor and the choking sweetness of the wax filled my nostrils. As she squeezed beside me onto the pillows, I turned on my side, away from her.
Since Lavi’s news seven days ago, I’d been unable to speak of John’s gruesome death or of my terror that his fate would become my husband’s. I couldn’t eat. I’d slept little, and when I did, I dreamed of dead messiahs and broken threads. Jesus on the hillside, sowing his revolution—that was a good thing, and I couldn’t help but feel pride in him. The purpose that had burned in him for so long was finally being realized, yet I was filled with a deep and immutable dread.
At first, Yaltha left me to my silence, believing I needed time alone, but now here she was, her head on my pillow.
“To avoid a fear emboldens it,” she said.
I said nothing.
“All shall be well, child.”
I reared up then. “Will it? You cannot know that! How can you know that?”
“Oh, Ana, Ana. When I tell you all shall be well, I don’t mean that life won’t bring you tragedy. Life will be life. I only mean you will be well in spite of it. All shall be well, no matter what.”
“If Antipas kills my husband as he did John, I cannot imagine I will be well.”
“If Antipas kills him, you’ll be devastated and grief-stricken, but there’s a place in you that is inviolate—it’s the surest part of you, a piece of Sophia herself. You’ll find your way there, when you need to. And you’ll know then what I speak of.”
I laid my head against her arm, sinewy and tough like herself. I couldn’t grasp what she was saying. I fell into a dreamless sleep, a black chute that had no bottom,