Their meeting was short. I stepped away from the rail as Father emerged. When the courier departed, his voice drifted up to me. “I know you’re there, Ana.”
I peered down. He looked defeated, his posture slumping toward the floor.
He said, “Last evening, I sent a message imploring Herod to set aside your refusal and take you for his concubine anyway, hoping the humiliation you’d caused him might have subsided. His response has just arrived. He ridiculed me for thinking he would condescend to have you in his palace after you were nearly stoned on the street. You might have told me of this and saved me from further disgrace.” He shook his head in disbelief. “A stoning? The city will be set against us even more. You have ruined us.”
Had I dared, I would’ve asked if he cared at all that I’d endured a harrowing escape from death. I would’ve told him it was Chuza he should blame for the stoning, not me. But I held my tongue.
He walked back toward his study, a man utterly vanquished, then stopped midway. Without turning, he spoke. “I do give thanks you were unharmed. I’m told it was a builder who prevented your death.”
“Yes, his name is Jesus.”
“And he spoke to the crowd of becoming your betrothed?”
“Yes.”
“Would you welcome that, Ana?”
“I would, Father. With all my heart.”
When Jesus arrived soon afterward, Father wrote and signed a contract of betrothal without consulting Mother. Jesus would pay the humble bride price of thirty shekels and would feed, clothe, and shelter my aunt, who would accompany me. There would be no betrothal ceremony. The wedding would be a simple transfer from my father’s house to my husband’s in thirty days, on the third of Nisan, the shortest time allowed.
NAZARETH
17–27 CE
i.
The day I entered Jesus’s house, his family stood in a silent clump in the courtyard, watching as Lavi led the cart containing me, my aunt, and our belongings through the gate. There were four of them—two men besides Jesus, and two women, one of whom rested her hand across her nearly imperceptible pregnant belly.
“Do they think we have the spaciousness of a palace?” I heard the pregnant one say.
To my mind, we’d brought a bare handful of possessions. I’d packed the plainest of my clothes, one ordinary silver headband, my copper mirror, an ornamental brass comb, two red woolen rugs, undyed bed coverings, my incantation bowl, and most precious of all, my cedar chest. Inside it were my scrolls, reed pens, a sharpening knife, two vials of ink, and the ivory sheet that had nearly gotten me stoned. The clean papyri my father had obtained for me were gone—I’d exhausted them during the brief writing frenzy that had commenced soon after retrieving my possessions from the cave. Yaltha had brought even less than I: three tunics, her bed mat, the sistrum, and the Egyptian scissors.
Still, we were a spectacle. Over my protests Father had sent us off in a cart drawn by a royally bedecked horse from Herod Antipas’s stable. I’m sure he wanted to impress the Nazarenes, to remind them that Jesus was wedding far above his standing. I offered my new family a smile, hoping to endear myself, but a cart lined with fine woolen rugs, pulled by an imperial horse led by a servant, did nothing to help my cause. Jesus had met us on the village outskirts and even he’d frowned before greeting us.
To worsen matters, Father had also forbidden the wedding under his roof. It was customary for the chuppah to be in the bride’s house, but he feared annoying Antipas by hosting a marriage the tetrarch was certain to resent. Nor did Father want village peasants in his house. His refusal to host Jesus and his family must have been a terrible insult to them. And who knew what tales might have reached them of my fornicating, thieving, and blasphemy?
I let my eyes drift about the little compound. Three small dwellings were cobbled together within the enclosure, built from stacked stones and held together with mud. I counted five or six rooms opening onto the courtyard. A ladder led