The Book of Longings(73)

I asked Yaltha to move her sleeping mat back to the storeroom and I laid Jesus’s mat beside my own. As the days passed, my eyes drifted to the gate. I jumped at slight sounds. Whenever I could slip away from my tasks, I climbed to the roof and scanned the horizon.

Then, with winter nearly past, on a cold day full of windy light, I stood in the courtyard boiling soapwort root and olive oil to make soap, and looking up, I saw a hooded figure at the gate. I dropped the spoon, and oil splashed across the hearthstone. I was wearing the red head scarf, which had faded in the sun. I heard it snap at my ears as I ran.

“Jesus,” I cried, though I could see how different the figure was from my husband. Shorter, thinner, darker.

He drew back his hood. Lavi.



* * *



? ? ?

MY DISAPPOINTMENT THAT Lavi was not who I’d thought left quickly after I recognized my loyal old friend. I led him to the storeroom, where Yaltha brought him a cup of cool water. He bowed his head, slow to accept it, for he was still a slave and unaccustomed to being waited upon. “Drink,” she ordered.

Though it was midday, she lit a lamp to break apart the shadows, and we sat, the three of us, on the packed dirt and stared at one another in wordless wonder. We’d not seen him since the day of my wedding when he’d led the horse-drawn wagon through the gate.

His face had ripened, his cheeks fleshier, his brow more jutting. He was clean-shaven in the Greek manner, his hair cut short. Hardship had tilled furrows at the corners of his eyes. He was no longer a boy.

He waited for me to speak. I said, “You’re a welcome sight, Lavi. Are you well?”

“Well enough. But I bring . . .” He stared into his empty cup.

“You bring news of my father?”

“He has been dead for almost two months.”

I felt the cold from the doorway. I could see my father standing in the luxurious reception hall of our house in Sepphoris in his fine red coat and matching hat. He was gone. Mother, too. For a moment I felt strangely abandoned. I looked at Yaltha, remembering that my father was also her brother. She stared back at me, that look that said, Let life be life and death be death.

I said to Lavi, my voice quivering a little, “When Judas came to report my mother was dead, he told me Father was ill, so I’m not surprised at this news, only that it’s you who delivers it. Did Judas send you?”

“No one sent me. I’ve not seen Judas since last fall when he brought your message for the tetrarch’s wife.”

I didn’t move or speak. Did Phasaelis receive my warning, then? Is she safe? Is she dead?

Lavi went on with his story. It poured, unstoppered. “I was with my master when he died. Antipas had been back from Rome for only a few weeks and he was angry the plot to make him King of the Jews had yielded nothing. As your father lay dying, he muttered his sorrow that he’d failed Antipas. It was the last thing I heard him say.”

Father. He’d groveled before Antipas until the end.

“When he was gone, I was sent to work in the kitchen, where I was beaten for spilling a vat of grape syrup,” Lavi said. “I determined then I would leave. I stole away from the palace six nights ago. I’ve come to be your servant.”

He meant to live with us in this impoverished compound? There was no room to spare, the food stores were stretched as it was, and it was doubtful I would even be here much longer. No one kept servants in Nazareth—the thought was preposterous.

I cut my eyes to Yaltha. What can we say to him?

She was plainspoken, but kind. “You cannot stay here, Lavi. It would be better for you to serve Judas.”

“Judas is never in one place. I would not know how to find him,” Lavi said. “When I last saw him, he spoke of joining the prophet who baptizes in the Jordan. He believed him to be a Messiah.”

I pushed to my feet. Father was dead. Lavi had run away and proclaimed himself my servant. And apparently, Judas had become a follower of John the Immerser. Standing in the doorway, I saw the weather had turned, the clouds boiling and blackening, the spring rains arriving early. For months, we’d gone with no tidings at all, and suddenly news fell on us in the manner of a hailstorm.

“You can remain here until you decide where to go,” I said. With Jesus away, perhaps James wouldn’t mind Lavi being here for a while; maybe he would welcome the help Lavi could provide. Lavi was a Gentile, though. James wouldn’t take well to that.

“You have always been kind to me,” Lavi said, which caused me to wince. Mostly I’d paid little attention to him.

I could be patient no longer. I returned to sit beside him. “You must tell me—did you give my message to Phasaelis?”

He looked down, as was his habit, but it gave me the sense there was news he dreaded to impart. “I befriended the kitchen steward who carried food to her room and asked him to place the ivory sheet on her tray. He was reluctant to do so; there are spies even within the palace. But Antipas was away in Rome then, and with the help of a small bribe, the steward slid the ivory beneath a silver flagon.”

“You’re sure she read it?”

“I’m certain of it. Three days later, she left Tiberias for Machaerus, saying she wished to spend time there taking the waters at Antipas’s palace. Once there, she snuck away with two servants and slipped across the border into Nabataea.”