I would be given a hundred strokes by cane, mutilated, and exiled to Nubia.”
This I’d never heard. Where was Nubia? Mutilated how? I slid closer to her on the bench.
When she’d finished the entire story, Diodora said, “If what you say is true and I am your daughter, where then was I?” Her voiced sounded small, but her face was like an ember.
Yaltha reached for Diodora’s hand, which she quickly drew back.
“Oh, child, you were little more than two years old when I was sent away. Haran swore to keep you well and safe in his household. I wrote letters to him, inquiring of you, but they went unanswered.”
Diodora frowned, rolling her eyes to the top of a column crowned with a woman’s head. After a moment she said, “If you were sent to the Therapeutae when I was two and remained there eight years . . . I would’ve been ten when you left them. Why didn’t you come for me then?” Her fingers moved in her lap as if counting. “Where have you been the last sixteen years?”
As Yaltha struggled for words, I spoke. “She has been in Galilee. She’s been with me. But it’s not as you think. She didn’t regain her freedom when you were ten, but she was banished once again, this time to her brother in Sepphoris. She had hoped to reclaim you and bring you with her, but—”
“Haran told me he’d given you out for adoption and he would not reveal your whereabouts,” Yaltha said. “I left then—I felt I had no choice. I thought you were cared for, that you had a family. I had no knowledge Haran had sold you to the priest until I returned to Egypt over a year ago to search for you.”
Diodora shook her head almost violently. “I was told my father was a man named Choiak from a village somewhere in the south, that he sold me out of destitution.”
Yaltha placed her hand on Diodora’s and once again Diodora yanked it away. “It was Haran who sold you. Ana has seen the document of sale, in which he disguised himself as a poor camel keeper named Choiak. I didn’t forget you, Diodora. I longed for you every day. I returned to find you, though even now my brother threatens to revive the old charges of murder if I should seek you out. I ask your forgiveness for leaving. I ask your forgiveness for not coming sooner.”
Diodora dropped her head onto her knees and wept, and we could do nothing but let her. Yaltha stood and hovered over her. I didn’t know whether Diodora was grieved or comforted. I didn’t know whether she was lost or found.
When she ceased weeping, Yaltha asked her, “Was he kind to you, your master?”
“He was kind. I do not know if he loved me, but he never raised his hand or his voice to me. When he died, I grieved for him.”
Yaltha closed her eyes and blew out a little breath.
I had no intention of saying anything, yet I thought of my parents and Susanna, whom I’d lost, and of Jesus, my family in Nazareth, Judas, and Tabitha, who were all so far away, and I felt no assurance that any of them would be restored to me. I said, “Let us be more than cousins. Let us be sisters. The three of us will be a family.”
Light was falling in bright bands across the colonnade, and she squinted up at me and said nothing. I felt I’d said a foolish thing, that I’d trespassed somehow. At that moment, someone called her name from a distance, singing it. “Diodooora . . . Diodooora.”
She leapt up. “I’ve neglected my duties.” She wiped her face with the sleeve of her tunic, then pulled on her tight, stoic mask.
“I don’t know when I can come again,” Yaltha said. “Haran returns from his travels tomorrow and as I said, he forbids us to leave his house. We will find a way somehow.”
“I do not think you should return,” she said. She walked away, leaving us there on the portico of the birth house.