Two Women Of Galilee

CHAPTER FOUR

His mother said…“do whatever he tells you.”

—John 2:5

Crumpled on my bed, alone and confused, I sank into a dreamy sleep. From a place near the window, a narrow figure of a man came toward me. He was carrying a physician’s box. One of Chuza’s doctors, I supposed. Rolling back the sleeve of his robe, he uncovered his long fingers and pressed them against my cheek. The warm impression lingered, like a blessing. He placed his hand upon me, a hand so large it formed a collar around my throat. His touch freed my labored breathing. I thought I knew him but could not recall where we met. Opening my eyes, I expected to see him beside me. He was gone.

“Chuza,” I called, drowsiness weighting my voice. I went from room to room searching for my husband, until I realized it was midday and he was not at home. Octavia prepared a bath with chamomile, where I steeped until I heard him coming along the hall. His thick leather sandals padded his heavy steps. Dressing quickly I met him as he entered my rooms.

“Manaen told me what happened this morning,” he said. He was stern and unapproachable.

“We got separated at the temple.”

“Separated? You ran away from him. Joanna, you knew it was dangerous.”

“Something happened to me, Chuza.”

“You could have caused a riot. You put my men in danger.”

Leaning against the window behind me, I moved my fingers along the sill like a blind woman feeling her way.

“I wanted to pray.”

“You promised to stay with Manaen.”

“I knew I was safe.”

“Joanna.”

Chuza’s disappointment melted my confidence.

“What will Pilate say?” he murmured. “And of course Antipas will hear all about it, if he hasn’t already.”

“Someone called my name. I heard a voice.”

“Manaen is one of our best men. He could have been slaughtered by that crowd.”

The sound of a heavy object dropping on a hard surface came from the next room. Chuza hurtled in that direction. There was Octavia, sitting at my writing table, cleaning ink bottles and pens.

“You can go,” I said. She hurried away without trying to explain herself.

“I forgot she was here,” I said. “I trust Octavia, she is very loyal.”

My husband looked out at the tile roof across the courtyard that sheltered the rooms where Antipas stayed when he was in Jerusalem. On the rise of the next hill was Pilate’s villa. Chuza’s reputation, his honor, depended on their certainty that he was a strong leader. I saw my actions through his eyes. They were inexcusable, yet I tried once more to explain.

“God called my name this morning,” I said.

“No one will believe that,” Chuza answered. “God is a social obligation, not someone who talks to people.”

“We don’t have to tell anyone.”

“After the spectacle you made of yourself this morning? Everyone in Jerusalem knows.” Chuza’s short thick hands flying in the air above his head told me he was as angry as I had ever seen him.

“Maybe no one will mention it,” I whimpered, hoping to win his forgiveness.

“That’s what spies are for.”

I was not helping matters, and Chuza was not really listening.

“I have to lie down,” I said. My husband left me.

Of all the plans that came to me when I was alone, only one brought comfort. I called Octavia and asked her to find Phineas, my driver. He entered my sitting room, bowing slightly.

“Go to Nazareth in the morning,” I instructed him. It was a long trip. He would be gone at least seven days, yet my good servant did not flinch.

“Tell no one here where you are going. When you reach Nazareth, find the healer’s mother and ask if I might visit her twelve days from now.” I took a small stone jar of rose water from my dressing table and gave it to him as a gift for her.

The next day Pilate and his wife invited us to the governor’s palace to celebrate the end of the Jewish festival. Chuza escorted me to the women’s quarters on his way to join the men. Of all the women at court, Pilate’s wife, Claudia Procula, was the only one I ever much liked. For some reason she took to me, as well. I suppose it was that we could talk for hours about our astrologers and the excitement of luck and chance.

I believed that wonder-workers were my best hope for an end to my illness. It was a matter of stumbling upon the right one. As for Procula, the pressures of her husband’s high rank gave her endless reasons to seek the advice of the soothsayers.

In her airy apartment on the second floor of the palace, Procula bounced from guest to guest. For such a large woman she was unusually light on her feet, balancing wide, rolling curves of flesh above her small, dainty shoes. She fussed over us, passing bowls of plump raisins and braided bread flavored with almonds. I recognized it, a family recipe from home. Cordoba, was it? I’d never been to a party at the governor’s palace that did not include almond bread.

As I crossed the room I began to notice that the other women were watching. When I passed the dessert table three of them covered their faces to hide their laughter. I knew it was at my expense.

An older woman sat alone in the corner nodding to the sounds of a harp. I passed her by, and she opened her eyes doubly wide to make certain I noticed before she turned away. I folded myself into the nearest couch, a shining thing of red-and-gold stripes. Procula came bubbling in my direction.

“Joanna,” she said, “my dear friend.”

I smiled, straining to understand my hostess, who delivered every sentence with trills and coos. “I’ve been waiting for you.” She stretched out her hands but quickly drew them back in a strange half greeting. I had long since learned to accept such behavior without reacting. There are people who refuse to be in the same room with any who have suffered from consumption. Some doctors won’t treat us for fear they will fall ill.

“Tell me everything,” she urged me. “I’ve been waiting.”

My face burst into a moist heat. “There is nothing to tell you, really,” I began, dabbing my throat with a handkerchief. My illness sometimes filled me with flashes of inner fire that caused this embarrassing wet condition.

The whole room seemed to be watching us. Some of the devout women among us had probably been there at the women’s court and witnessed my humiliating departure. Procula was the only one bold enough to ask.

“I wish I had the pluck to do what you did this morning,” she said, delighted with me. “I’m always trying to find ways to attract handsome men. To have Manaen rescue me! What was it like?”

“I don’t know how to describe it,” I said. My hostess was a woman who fed on gossip and scandal. I was not about to offer myself as her next meal.

“Don’t be shy,” she coaxed. “My astrologer already told me.” Her eyes grew as wide as orbs. “His Magnificence, Lord Darius, predicted it. A woman from the north, someone I knew, would come to Jerusalem. And a god would abduct her.” In her excitement she spoke faster. “When I heard about your adventure at the Jewish temple, I knew you had to be the one.”

“No, it wasn’t like that,” I answered, trying to quiet her. “I may have heard a voice, that was all.”

“Of course you did,” she interrupted. “Dear Joanna. The God of the Jews is very powerful. What did he say? He must have told you something.”

Silent and smiling, I looked at her but did not reply. At last she seemed to understand that I was not going to say any more about it. Blinking her eyes, she reached for a plate of spice cakes and sank her sharp little teeth into one. I must have let out a sigh as I settled into the couch.

She leaned toward me again. “I know you’ve been in frail health, Joanna. I hope you don’t mind my saying so.”

Her honesty did surprise me. No one mentions another’s illness in public.

“I know a Greek in Jerusalem,” she said. “He uses fish oil to treat all sorts of problems. It must taste dreadful, but I’ve seen results. I could introduce you.”

“That is very kind.” I did not want to offend her by refusing her twice in one afternoon.

“Apollo. Have you heard of him?” She lowered her thick, round eyelashes to suggest a secret. “I used to suffer terrible sleeplessness,” she said. “He gave me this charm that I wear all the time.” Opening the waistline of her dress, she showed me a glass vile filled with specks of what looked like bone, tied on a cord stretched tight around her waist.

I thought of Mary and how she promised to speak to her son for me. “There is a man in Galilee,” I said. “He heals even incurable ailments. His mother is my cousin.”

“Maybe I should meet him.” Procula moved closer. For gossip’s sake she was willing to compromise her safe distance.

“I haven’t actually met him, myself,” I said. “Not yet.”

“What is his name?” She was sitting right beside me.

“Jesus.”

She frowned. “I thought I knew everyone. I’ve never heard of him.”

“He lives in Capernaum and keeps to the northern towns,” I said. “He has been working miracles for some months. Crowds of people follow him, but he is not yet well known outside of Galilee. When the time comes I will tell you about him.” It was presumptuous of me. Mary never said she would introduce me to her son, only that she would talk to him about me.

“I have always liked you,” Procula said contentedly. “We are alike. You have, how shall I put it, an appreciation for the supernatural.”

I smiled without answering.

“Perhaps when you are next in Jerusalem you will come to see me again.” She did not press her offer, but courtesy required that I accept. Better a friend at court than an enemy.

Chuza came for me. He wanted to have another word with the governor on our way out. I waited with the servants, watching Pilate as he sat slumped in his sturdy chair. I could see even from a distance that his dark head was filled with as few engaging ideas as ever.

I supposed Chuza was telling him about the citrus harvest in Galilee. My husband and I were traveling back to Sepphoris the next morning, so that he could spend his days in the fields with the workers and his nights in his own bed.

I wrapped my cloak around my shoulders to hint that our visit might soon end, but Pilate was not ready to let us go. Like a wolf drooling over a snared bird, he motioned for Chuza to bring me to him. Poor Claudia Procula, I thought. How does she live with such an unappealing man?

Chuza gave me no warning as we approached the royal chair. Pilate hardly acknowledged me but spoke only to my husband, saying that he had met with Manaen that morning. Chuza nodded; not a ripple of concern crossed his face.

“He told me there had been a problem in the temple precinct, I’m sure you know,” Pilate said, twisting his enormous face toward me. I smiled, perhaps too eagerly. Chuza lowered his eyes in my direction, a familiar gesture that silenced me.

“Oh, my dear, I hear you lost your way,” Pilate said in pained sympathy. “Whatever were you doing at the temple? Your family gave all that up years ago.”

“I had never seen the festival.” In my fear of him, my voice faded to a whisper.

Pilate pressed a hairy ear in my direction.

“I only wanted to see,” I spoke up. “I’m sorry if I upset anyone.”

The governor rolled his thick head back toward Chuza. “Your wife shows unusual curiosity,” he said. “I am curious about the Jews, myself. We should know our enemies. But not at the expense of safety.”

“It won’t happen again, Governor,” Chuza said.

Pilate pressed my husband’s shoulder to his own as a sign of confidence, but he did not look again in my direction.

The long ride to Sepphoris was made even longer because Chuza refused to speak to me. He got lost in his strategies for organizing the workers and counting the crops. I sat across from him, watching him grind his teeth, as if he were chewing on his plans. His distant manner distressed me. I straightened the petals on a gold collar I wore that day. It never hung right, even after three trips back to the jeweler.

“Manaen betrayed us,” I blurted into the strained silence.

“He had to say something,” Chuza answered without even looking up. “If Pilate found out another way, we would both be in trouble.”

“I don’t like him.”

“Manaen is an honorable man.”

“He could at least have warned you.”

“He did, I saw him this afternoon.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You’re better at acting sorry when you haven’t rehearsed. I expected that Pilate would ask about the temple.”

We fell back into our separate places and did not speak again until we were in Sepphoris. The house smelled of lemon leaves, reaching upward from their stone vases. Chuza breathed the comforting scent, and the persistent tic above his eye stopped twitching.

I was preparing to leave him after dinner when he did his best to make peace.

“Let’s put it behind us,” he said.

“I’m very sorry.” It was a heartfelt apology and he knew it.

“It turned out all right.”

“I didn’t mean to cause you trouble.”

“I know that,” he assured me.

In the days that followed, I plunged into the care of the house, determined to please my husband. I had the servants scurrying until every bedcover and window drape was hoisted down and heaved onto the back terrace. Table linens, kitchen towels, camisoles, tunics, bed jackets, my husband’s robes—all were heaped like a termites’ nest of cotton, silk and linen.

It took several days to soak so much laundry in the two vast wooden barrels of hot water we prepared. Scrubbed and rinsed clean twice over, every washable item in the house got attention. The back courtyard resembled a fuller’s workroom. Linens hung drying in the sun. I went barefoot the whole time, grateful for plain stone floors to walk upon after the excesses of palace living.

Our third evening in Sepphoris, my husband said he would spend the next night in the fields with the workers. He often did so during the harvest, to show the men that he was not above hard labor.

“I’d like to go to Nazareth,” I said. “I met a woman from there. She is my cousin.”

“You didn’t mention her.”

“It was before our trip to Jerusalem. Her name is Mary.”

I described our family relations, hardly an unusual story. Judea, ruled for centuries by foreign invaders, had few unbroken households. Brothers had turned against one another. Sons had abandoned their fathers.

“You will be home by dusk,” Chuza said. “We don’t need any more excitement.”

The next morning my carriage rattled over city streets, past the bridge where peddlers pushed their trinkets at me. Another time I would have been tempted by their bronze amulets that promised a cure for foot sores, toothache and sneezing fits. That morning I wanted only to see Mary.

Octavia fussed over my pillows and asked if I was warm enough until I eased her hands away and she settled in to her needlework, reinforcing the silver on one of my husband’s evening cloaks.

The winding road to Nazareth was clear until we came upon workers repairing the aqueduct. They were finally getting around to it, after the Passover delays. Five men on a scaffold hoisted large rocks to replace those washed away by the rain.

Phineas slowed us to a crawl. He was always fascinated by the efficiency of so many ropes and pulleys, buckets and planks in motion. The workers’ heavy bundles swayed and lurched.

Octavia let out a clucking sound of disapproval and looked at Phineas in the driver’s seat just ahead of us, as if to suggest that I should signal him to hurry. I took up my writing tablet and made a note. Butcher—cut of beef for ten.

A muffled thud warned me. Turning toward the sound, I watched a huge rock break away from the crumbling arch and crash to the ground. Two men at the top of the scaffolding lost their balance and fell. I watched with open mouth as one landed on the iron gears that moved the pulley. He was spiked on the sharp gears. I leaned over the side of the carriage and threw up.

“Now we’ll never get through,” Octavia groaned. She had not seen the men fall, or my sudden illness.

“We’ve got to help them,” I said, not certain what to do.

Octavia’s expression told me she wondered whether she’d heard me correctly. I called to Phineas. He stopped the horses, climbed down from his place and soon stood beside me.

“Go and ask if we can do anything.”

He looked at me twice to be certain that he understood. Unlike Octavia, he would never think of questioning a command. He returned to us, asking for bandages. Octavia handed him a box from under the seat.

I opened the latch and prepared to step down. “Are you sure?” she pleaded. My husband’s warning came back to me. No more trouble. I closed the door and waited. Phineas returned once again. “One is dead,” he reported. “The others should be all right.”

The foreman rode toward us, waving us on. The purple stripe at the hem of his tunic explained his polite attentions. A higher-ranking man, with at least two stripes on his tunic, had sent him. Our escort led us past the accident, and we continued on our way. Octavia rolled her sewing project between her fingers, preparing some sort of speech.

“If I may say,” she began.

I kept still, inviting more.

“It is dangerous for a woman to stop and help strangers.” She was not correcting me so much as curious about my actions, it seemed.

“What if one of my servants had an accident on the road?” I asked. “Wouldn’t you want someone to stop for him?”

“Did something happen to you at the temple in Jerusalem?” Octavia asked.

“No,” I said.

Mary, my cousin, was the only one I would tell about my morning at the temple. Without her to explain it to me, I had no words for the mysterious encounter. Even though I did not yet know the meaning, I was certain of what I heard in the women’s court. Bursting with excitement and gratitude, I wanted to do good for someone else. That is why I stopped for the laborers. But all of this was more than I could express to my maidservant. I looked out the window until she went back to her needlework.

From below the town, Nazareth’s hillside of caves resembled a bee’s comb. Some of the caves had shacks in front of them for extra living space. We moved slowly along the rugged switchback that had been pounded smooth by the goatherds.

The carriage was too wide to squeeze through the town’s narrow lanes. Before we left it at the livery, I packed Phineas with sacks and jugs until he smelled of the barley, dried cod and palm oil he carried. Octavia placed a basket of apples over her shoulder. The villagers watched us with suspicion. We were strangers, not to be trusted.

I recognized Mary’s compound by the sign above the gate. A carpenter’s level announced the family business. We entered the courtyard. Phineas went to my cousin’s door and knocked. She opened it so briskly that the air stirred around us. In quick steps she came outside and dusted flour from her dress, vigorous as a young woman. Her large scarf could not contain the thick dark strands that rolled across the edge of her forehead. I smelled spice cake.

“Joanna, come in,” she said, opening her arms to me.

I followed her like a curious child.

She greeted my servants as if they, too, were guests. I took my place on the small couch built into the wall where she had motioned me to sit. They stood near the door. She offered me a cup of warm water flavored with citrus and honey, then she offered the same to my servants. I nodded at them to accept it, although I was as confused as they were by the offer. They drank quickly, not moving from their places. When they were finished, I sent them to the inn at the north edge of town to wait for me as we had planned.

Mary went to her worktable, a clutter made from clay bowls, a jug of oil, a sack of flour and small linen pouches filled with expensive spices. I wondered if they had been a gift to her. They were an extravagance in such a modest home.

She brought me a taste of one of her cakes and began to wrap the other in fig leaves. “My brother-in-law likes these,” she said, as if I knew her family. I only knew that her husband was a carpenter and builder who had died not many years ago. And of course I knew of her extraordinary son.

I moved to a small wooden stool near her table. My warm drink soothed my rough throat. “My servants are not accustomed to being received like guests,” I said, allowing a hint of confusion.

She went on sweeping the table with a small fir branch. “Once, we were slaves in Egypt,” she said. “Now it is our turn to be good to strangers.”

The scent of almond oil wafted from my hair, threatening to overpower us. When I lifted my hand to remove my costly gold earrings, my charm bracelet clanked like cowbells.

Mary paid no attention. She admired the full sack of barley and the clay jug. “You are very generous,” she said.

“We have more than enough at home.” Tears suddenly sprang to my eyes. “Plenty does not always bring peace,” I burbled. The powerless feeling that illness brings came back to me.

Mary went on clearing the table in silence. When she spoke, it seemed at first that she had changed the subject. “My father owned orchards and wheat fields,” she said. “He offered twenty sheep at the temple when I was born. But he only wanted sons, not a daughter. I know that the rich can also suffer.”

I encouraged her, and listened as she told me about our younger years. I imagined the life we might have shared as cousins, if it had been allowed.

“My mother admired you,” I said. “She told me how good you were to your parents when they were old. I wish I had known you then.”

“When I was still young everything changed for my family,” Mary said. “My father lost his land to Herod. We left Sepphoris for Nazareth and he seemed to age overnight.”

“My father cut our family off from yours,” I said. It troubled me, now that I understood it. “We followed the Roman powers and made enemies of our own relatives.” A sense of loss had been building in me as I listened to Mary. I might have been raised as she was, according to the holy customs.

Mary’s stories about her childhood filled me with fantasies about how I might have fit in. She was twelve years old when her family fled Sepphoris, and at the time I was three. Her father refused to live quietly under Roman domination. My father made friends with our conquerors and said that only rebellious Jews fought the Caesars’ ways. He called them Jews, as the Romans did, not Hebrews as they call themselves. He avoided my eyes when he told me these things. I knew he felt shame.

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