The Book of Longings: A Novel (29 page)

“The soldiers who escorted Phasaelis to Machaerus have been imprisoned. Her servants were tortured, including the steward who delivered your message.”

A huge cresting wave began in my chest—a rush of sorrow over the fate of the steward and the soldiers, followed by a stab of remorse for my part in their suffering, but mostly fear, crushing fear. “Did the steward tell his tormentors about my message?” I asked. “My name was signed to it.”

“I cannot say what he confessed. I was unable to speak with him.”

“Does he read Greek?” Yaltha asked. She was sitting very rigid, her face as grave as I’d ever seen it. When Lavi didn’t answer immediately, she snapped, “Does he or doesn’t he?”

“He reads a little . . . perhaps more than a little. When I first asked him to deliver the message, he studied it, complaining it was too dangerous.”

The room receded before rushing back at me. He would have been able to tell Antipas everything, and with the aid of torture, perhaps he did. “The poor man was right, wasn’t he?” I said. “It was too dangerous. I’m sorry for him.”

“Some say it was Antipas’s new wife, Herodias, who demanded the punishments to the soldiers and servants,” Lavi said. “Now she constantly goads her husband to arrest John the Immerser.”

“She wants John put in prison?” I said.

“The Immerser continues to attack both Antipas and Herodias,” Lavi said. “He preaches that her marriage is incestuous because she’s Antipas’s niece and the wife of his brother. He goes about saying it’s not a marriage at all, because as a woman, she had no standing to divorce her husband, Philip.”

Rain pattered, then crashed on the roof. This ruinous disaster had
started with my father’s plot to make Herod Antipas king. He’d persuaded Antipas to divorce Phasaelis and marry Herodias, and in doing so, he’d set a perilous chain of events in motion: my warning message to Phasaelis, the prophet’s condemnations, and now Antipas and Herodias’s retribution. It was like a stone that strikes against another stone that causes the entire mountain to fall.

J
AMES GAVE PERMISSION
for Lavi to sleep on the roof. By then, the sky had dried, but the rains started again before dawn with torrents that dissolved the moon into thin, pale streaks. Awakened by the din, I hurried to the doorway and glimpsed Lavi’s blurred figure skittering down the ladder and taking shelter beneath the workshop roof. It brought back the memory of him holding the canopy of thatched palm over my head on the day I’d met Jesus at the cave.

When the downpour turned into a dribble, I warmed a cup of milk for Lavi on the oven fire. Approaching the workshop with it, I heard voices—Yaltha was there.

“When Judas was last here,” she said, “he brought news that upon Matthias’s death, my brother in Alexandria would send an envoy to Sepphoris to sell his house and its possessions. What do you know about this?”

I halted abruptly to listen and the milk spilled over the side of the cup. Why had she sought out Lavi privately to ask this? Worry welled in me, some old, augured feeling.

Lavi said, “Before I fled Tiberias, I learned that a man named Apion had been dispatched from Alexandria to conclude the sale of the house. It is likely he is in Sepphoris already.”

She is not being idly curious. She means to return to Alexandria with Haran’s envoy. She will go in search of Chaya.

So. It was not I who would leave her, as I’d thought, but she who would leave me.

When I stepped into view, she didn’t meet my gaze, but I’d read her face already. I handed Lavi the milk. The sky slunk low, grayness sticking to everything.

I said, “When were you going to tell me about your plans to return to Egypt?”

Her sigh floated through the wet cold. “I would’ve told you, but it was too soon to speak of it. It was not yet time.”

“And now? Is it time now?” Sensing tension, Lavi skulked against the door of the workshop, his face retreating into the dark oval of his hood.

“Time is passing, Ana. Chaya still calls to me in my dreams. She wants to be found—I feel it in my bones. If I don’t seize this chance to return, I won’t have another.”

“You meant to leave, and yet you kept it from me.”

“Why should I burden you with my desire to leave when I saw no way to act upon it? Early last fall, when you learned Haran would send an emissary, it came to me that I might travel back to Alexandria with him, but I didn’t know it might truly be possible until now.” Her eyes filled with anguish. “Child, aren’t you planning to leave Nazareth yourself? Each day you watch for Jesus, hoping he’ll come for you. I cannot remain here without you. I’ve lost one daughter; now it will be two.”

Remorseful, I held her face with my hands. The soft, drooping wrinkles. The candlewax skin. “I don’t blame you for seeking your daughter. I’m upset we’ll be separated, that’s all. If Chaya calls to you, of course you must go.”

Overhead, the sun was a tiny larva wriggling from the clouds. We watched it emerge, neither of us speaking. I turned to my aunt. “Lavi and I will go at once to Sepphoris and seek this emissary, Apion. I’ll announce myself as Haran’s niece and strike a bargain for your passage.”

“And if Jesus returns while you’re gone?”

“Tell him that he may wait. I have waited plenty for him.”

She cackled.

James and Simon, thinking it was their duty to impose husbandly restrictions on me in their brother’s absence, forbade me to leave Nazareth and travel to Sepphoris. How mistaken they were. I packed my travel pouch and tied on my red scarf.

While Lavi waited for me at the gate, I kissed Mary and Salome, trying to ignore their petrified looks. “I will be fine; Lavi will be with me.” Then, smiling at Salome, I added, “You yourself used to cross the valley with Jesus to sell your yarns in Sepphoris.”

“James will be unhappy,” she said, and I realized it was not my safety they were concerned about, but my disobedience.

I left without their blessing. But as I walked away, the wind lifted its arms and the olive tree sent a shimmer of leaves onto my head.

W
HEN
L
A
VI POUNDED
at the door of my old house in Sepphoris, no one answered. Moments later he shinnied over the back wall and unlatched the gate. Stepping into the courtyard, I came to a standstill. Weeds, hip high, grew between the stones. The ladder to the roof lay on the ground, the rungs like a row of broken teeth. I smelled a stew of fetidness coming from the stairs that led down to the mikvah and knew the conduit had clogged. Bird excrement and flaking mortar. The house had sat empty for little more than six months and already ruin had set in.

Lavi motioned me inside the vaulted storeroom, where we found the door to the servant passage unlocked. Parting the cobwebs, we climbed the steps into the reception hall. The room was the same—the pillowed couches where we’d eaten, the four tripod tables with spiral legs.

We wandered up the stairway onto the loggia, past the sleeping quarters. Peering into my room, I thought of the girl who’d studied and read and begged for tutors, who’d made inks and word altars and dreamed of
her face in a tiny sun. In my youth, I’d heard old Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai say that each soul possessed a garden with a serpent that whispered temptations. That girl I remembered would always be the serpent in my garden bidding me to eat forbidden things.

“Come,” Lavi said urgently from the doorway.

I followed him to Judas’s room, where he pointed to a half-full waterskin, mussed bedcovers, partially burned candles, and a fine linen coat tossed on a bench. On a table near the bed, two scrolls had been opened and marked in place with reading spools.

Haran’s emissary had arrived and made himself welcome in our house. No, not
our
house, I reminded myself. It and everything in it belonged to Haran now.

I walked to the table and glanced over the unfurled scrolls. One contained a list of names—officials and landowners—and next to them, recorded sums of money. On the other, a recording of the house’s contents, room by room.

“He could return at any moment. We should leave and return later when he’s here,” Lavi said. Careful, prudent Lavi.

He was right, yet as we swept past my parents’ room, I stopped. An idea suddenly sat in my head, sunning itself. The flick of a scaly tail. I said, “Wait on the balcony and alert me if you hear anyone.”

A protest formed on Lavi’s face, but he did as I asked.

I stepped into my parents’ room, where the sight of Mother’s bed halted me with a sharp intake of loss. Her oak chest was coated with a glaze of dust. I creaked it open and my mind swept back to my girlhood—Tabitha and I pillaging through the contents, preparing for our dance.

The wooden jewel box was midway down, beneath neatly folded tunics and coats. Its heft in my hands reassured me it was still full. I opened it. Four gold bracelets, two ivory, six silver. Eight necklaces—amber, amethyst, lapis, carnelian, emerald, and gold leaf. Seven pairs of pearl earrings. A dozen jeweled and silver headbands. Gold rings. So much. Too much.

I would have Lavi trade the jewelry in the market for coins.

Thou shalt not steal.
Guilt made me pause. Would I now become a thief? I strode across the room and back, shamed to think what Jesus would say. The Torah also said love your neighbor, I reasoned, and wasn’t I taking the jewelry out of love for Yaltha? I doubted I could get her to Alexandria without a substantial bribe. Besides, I’d stolen the ivory sheet from Antipas—I was already a thief.

I said, “This is your parting gift to me, Mother.”

On the balcony, I hurried past Lavi toward the stairs. “Let’s take our leave.”

As we reached the floor below, we heard someone at the door stomping mud from his sandals. We broke for the passageway, but we’d taken only a few strides when a man entered. He reached for the knife at his waist. “Who are you?”

Lavi stepped in front of me. It was as if I had a sparrow caged inside my ribs, flailing about. I edged around Lavi, hoping the man didn’t notice my apprehension. “I’m Ana, niece to Haran of Alexandria and the daughter of Matthias, who was head counselor to Herod Antipas before his death. And this is my servant, Lavi. This was my home before I married. May I ask, sir, who are you?”

He dropped his hand to his side. “Your uncle in Alexandria sent me to dispose of this property, which is now rightfully his. I am Apion, his treasurer.”

He was a young man of brutish strength and size, but he bore delicate, almost womanly features—lined eyes, full lips, well-shaped brows, and black, curling hair.

The travel pouch strapped across my chest bulged with odd contours. I nudged it toward my back, smiled, and bowed my head. “Then our Lord has blessed me, for you are the one I’ve come to see. Haran sent word to me through the palace that you were in Galilee, and I came immediately with my husband’s blessing to beg a favor of you.”

The lies rolled from my lips, water over river rocks.

Apion’s eyes darted uncertainly from me to Lavi. “How did you come to enter the house?”

“We found the passage from the courtyard unbolted. I didn’t think you would mind if I found shelter.” My hand went to my belly, which I protruded as far as I could. “I am with child and felt weary.” The audacious turn my lies were taking surprised even me.

He swept his hand toward one of the couches. “Please rest.”

I plopped onto the cushion, wrinkling my nose at the fusty air that came wafting up.

“Speak your favor,” he said.

I quickly gathered my thoughts. He’d accepted my lies easily enough, and he possessed a kind way—would I need the bribe? Should I forestall until I’d traded the jewelry? I studied the man. His curls were oiled with expensive spikenard. A gold scarab ring encircled his finger, the one he no doubt used to imprint Haran’s seal onto documents.

“May I return tomorrow?” I said. “I find myself too tired.”

What could he say? A woman with child was a mysterious creature.

He nodded. “Come at the sixth hour, and present yourself at the main door. You will find the passageway from the courtyard locked.”

The next day we returned at the designated hour. I felt confident. Lavi had traded my mother’s jewelry for six thousand drachmae, the equivalent of one talent. It was an unexpected measure of riches. Minted in silver, the coins were so voluminous, Lavi had purchased a sizable leather bag to hold them. He’d paid out more drachmae for a room at an inn, choosing himself to pass the night in the alley. I slept only a little, dreaming that Jesus returned to Nazareth on a spitting camel.

If Lavi was shocked I’d taken the jewelry, he’d hidden it well. Nor
had he appeared surprised when I explained I had no child in my womb, only a false tongue in my mouth. Indeed, he smiled a little. His spying and subterfuge in the palace for Judas seemed to have given him a certain appreciation for cunning.

“I would offer you food and wine, but I have neither,” Apion said, opening the door. “Nor do I have much time.”

I sat once again on the musty couch. “I will be quick. Haran’s sister, Yaltha, has lived with me for many years. She knew your father and remembers you as a boy. She helped you with your Greek alphabet.”

He gazed at me with a hint of wariness, and it occurred to me he probably knew a great deal about my aunt, none of it favorable. He would’ve heard the rumors in Alexandria that she’d murdered her husband. If so, he would know Haran had banished her first to the Therapeutae and then to Galilee. Some of that fine, bright confidence I’d felt earlier paled.

“She’s old, but in good health,” I continued. “And it’s her wish to return to the land of her birth. She wishes to go home to serve her brother, Haran. I’ve come to arrange for you to take her with you to Alexandria when you return.”

Still, nothing.

“Yaltha would be a pleasant and docile traveling companion,” I said. “She’s never trouble.” This was an unnecessary falsehood, but I uttered it anyway.

He looked impatiently at the door. “What you’re asking is impossible without Haran’s permission.”