“Are the juniors and seniors seen as equals?” I’d asked. If there were a hierarchy, I would most certainly be at the bottom of it.
“Everyone is seen as equal, but the labor is divided differently between them. The community has its patrons, including Haran, so I suppose they could hire servants, but they don’t believe in them. It’s the juniors who grow and prepare and serve the food, tend the animals, build the houses—whatever labor is required, the juniors do it, along with their spiritual work. I used to work in the garden in the mornings and return to my solitude in the afternoon.”
“The seniors have no work at all?”
“They’ve earned the privilege of devoting all of their time to spiritual work.”
We trudged past sleeping villages, vineyards, wine presses, villas, and farms, Lavi walking ahead of us holding the lamp and relying on Yaltha to call out directions. I marveled that we didn’t get lost.
She said, “Every forty-ninth day, there’s an all-night vigil filled with feasting, singing, and dancing. The members work themselves into a state of ecstasy. They call it a sober drunkenness.”
What manner of place was this?
Nearing the reedy shores of Lake Mareotis, we grew quiet. I wondered if Yaltha was remembering when she’d arrived here before, freshly torn from her daughter. It was no different this time. I watched the moon bob on the water, stars floating everywhere. I could smell the sea just over the limestone ridge. I felt the mix of fear and elation I used to get long ago waiting at the cave for Jesus to appear.
At the nadir of the night, we turned off the road onto an exceptionally steep hill. Up on the slope, I could make out clusters of flat-roofed houses.
“They’re small and simple,” Yaltha said, following my gaze. “Each one has a little courtyard, a room for sleeping, and what they call a holy room for spiritual work.”
It was the third time she’d used the odd phrase. “What is this spiritual work?” I asked. After ten years of daily toils in Nazareth, it was hard to envision sitting around in a holy room.
Just before we reached the tiny gatehouse, we stopped and Lavi handed us the travel pouches he’d carried. I dug inside mine for a handful of drachmae. “Take these,” I said. “When the letter from Judas arrives, have Pamphile hire a wagon and make her way to us as quickly as she can.”
“Don’t worry—I will see to it.”
He lingered a moment, then turned to leave. I caught his arm. “Lavi, thank you. I think of you as my brother.”
The night obscured his face, but I felt his smile and reached out to embrace him.
“Sister,” he said, then bid Yaltha goodbye and turned to make the long journey back.
One of the juniors was keeping watch in the gatehouse. He was a skinny man, who balked at first to let us in. His job, as he said, was to keep out thieves, charlatans, and wayfarers, but when Yaltha told him she’d once been a senior member of the Therapeutae, he’d leapt to do her bidding.
* * *
? ? ?
NOW, STANDING IN SKEPSIS’S HOUSE, listening to Yaltha elaborate on why I stole the papyri, I wondered if I would have the chance to experience any of the things my aunt had described. She’d already explained that we’d fled Galilee to avoid my arrest. I tried to read Skepsis’s expression. I supposed she was considering the persistent way trouble seemed to follow me around.
“My niece is an exceptional scribe and scholar, more so than any man I’ve known,” Yaltha said, finally offsetting my shortcomings with praise.
Skepsis patted the bench beside her. “Come and sit beside me, Yaltha.” She’d implored her to do so earlier, but Yaltha had refused, pacing as she’d recounted her reunion with Diodora and Haran’s threats.
Yaltha sighed heavily now and sank onto the bench. She looked haggard in the lamplight.
Skepsis said, “You’ve come to us out of desperation, but that alone is not a reason