Two from Galilee (18 page)

Oh, my uncle, she thought as she dipped the sponge into the basin and cleansed the precious feet. Let me be like you, utterly trusting, even transported by what the Lord has decreed. Ask my Lord and my God to forgive me for being so troubled when he has surely brought me here to rest and put my soul in readiness. Ask that I be given the peace and the will to be worthy of the honor of bearing his son!

She was more at ease with her aunt, who had a joyous consoling reasonableness; without detracting from the mystery, Elizabeth could reduce Zachariah to human terms. He had served in the innermost sanctuary, she told Mary, where the altar of incense stood. "Only once in his lifetime does it fall the lot of a priest to burn the incense. And it was on this day, behind the curtain in that secret sanctum, that my husband had an experience so profound that it robbed him of speech. When he finally emerged before the multitude who were praying outside, he couldn't address them."

She went on working on the mosaics as they sat in the garden. She was teaching Mary the art as she taught the Temple virgins. "A priest works very hard. He draws his duties by lot, and often they're exhausting. They have to lift the heavy carcasses onto marble tables and flay and scrape them, and drain their blood and carve them for the offerings. This can be quite a strain on the older men." There was a look of tender wifely speculation on her slender, always faintly smiling face. "Maybe God saw that he needed the rest. That too may be a reason for striking him dumb. Maybe the Lord in his wisdom realized what a comfort it would be to me to have my husband with me while we await the coming of this long-delayed little one."

Her aunt's rich throaty tones—how was it that they came from a woman born in the selfsame house as Hannah? She was like a highborn lady. And she knew how to do everything. Embroider, play the lute, make beautiful arrangements of fruits and flowers. She was partial to poppies; she had coaxed them out of the arid soil so that their scarlet banners flowed down the long white flights of steps. Her food was exquisite, served on dishes as delicate, pale and old as Zachariah. There was meat almost every night, and from it Elizabeth would carve the choicest pieces for her niece.

The maidservant cleared away each course and brought them heated wine. The couches were covered with a silken stuff threaded with gold. The glow from a hanging alabaster lamp fell on their faces. Zachariah, helpless to pronounce the prayers, would sit lost in his private rapture, yet alert, while his vibrant wife spoke of their gratefulness to God. How close to God they all seemed, here in the very shadow of his Temple. How different all this from the noisy clash and confusion at home, the earthier manners.

Mary's head swam. Who was she really, and where did she belong? This graciousness, this rustling quiet with the gently burning lamps, making her feel cherished, surrounded by a love that was almost sublime. Yet making her feel her awkwardness as well, a bumbling country girl. She felt curiously shamed before the servant, and akin to her. As if she too should be in the kitchen or scurrying the dishes away.

Why then had God brought her here to merge with this rare and dazzling household? Was there another reason? Was it perhaps to rouse up such royal blood as flowed in her veins; to make her aware of what responsibilities she must be ready for? Her fingers tightened around the silver goblet. She must strive to be equal to them, to learn these aristocratic ways. She must remember that she carried a king!

Jerusalem itself was a part of the thrall. Jerusalem, City of David. City of God. For had he not fashioned it, had he not named it? Was it not toward Jerusalem that one turned to pray, however far away he lived? Was it not to Jerusalem that every good Jew made his pilgrimage? And always the pilgrims sang as they approached: "Within thy gates; Jerusalem, our feet stand at last. . . ." It was their favorite song of ascent. Mary had sung it with her parents as a little girl. And it rang in her blood now, gazing toward it from a balcony in the terraced garden one evening at sunset.

From this distance it looked rather like a tawny old lion lying among the golden limestone hills. The intense light fell upon its rosy flanks, working patterns of shadow. She could see its mighty gates, its historied walls, the rooftops and spires and towers, and soaring above all in the east the blazing glory of its Temple, where dwelt the very being of the Most High.

"It's so beautiful here," she said, moved and lost. "Everything is. No wonder you are so beautiful, Aunt Elizabeth."

Her aunt laughed. "Oh, but I'm not. And Jerusalem—you'll find much there that is anything but beautiful, Mary. But right now, with the miracle that has befallen you, everything you behold must seem incredibly beautiful."

Elizabeth eased her body down upon a marble bench. The child had crowded up against her lungs, she pressed her hands against it. "How strong is my little occupant, he is making up for his long sleep."

Lightly Mary's fingers brushed her own body. Nothing as yet, no further sign. She had a startled sense of vacancy and loss, followed by a shock of rejoicing. What if she had been dreaming? Or only deluded, as her mother said, overwrought? What if all she had needed was a change—to get away from Joseph. Joseph, her love! What if she could go back to him now, even now, as his wife and not the cradle of the hope of Israel?

She clung to the parapet, shaken by her own thoughts. Elizabeth was saying, "What passes for beauty isn't important, Mary. My sister's house will always be more rich than mine; its children are its treasures."

"God has favored you too at last, my aunt."

"Yes, oh yes, and all the more because like Sarah, mother of Isaac, or like Isaac's own wife Rebekah—like these great ancestors I too was forced to wait." She reached for a little box of tiles they had left from a mosaic table on which they were working. It was to be a wedding gift for one of the Temple maids. They made a musical clicking in her fingers as she mused. "Of course serving at the Temple helped ease my spirit and my shame. And to work with my little virgins—mothering them has been my compensation. They all need mothering so much, especially when they first come. Take Phora." She gestured toward the table. "Such a shy little thing when her parents brought her to us. I'll never forget how she cried when they left."

"How can they do it?" Mary gasped. "I mean—your own baby. How could you give up your own child even to God?"

"These people were very poor and there were many other children. But yes. . . ." Elizabeth made a little cradling gesture across her womb, "it seems inconceivable, doesn't it? Even that other Hannah, another one barren so long—it may sound wicked, but I sometimes wonder how she could bear to give back little Samuel to God, despite her vow?" The dusk was falling, but Elizabeth fitted a few more tiles into the small table. "With daughters it's usually not so much devotion as advantages," she said. "Girls who've been trained in the Temple make excellent marriages."

"I too am going to make a good marriage," Mary said. "I'm betrothed, Aunt Elizabeth. To a man named Joseph. A man I love and persuaded my parents to give me to. A—a carpenter," she rushed on, as her aunt regarded her with surprised and troubled eyes. "We're to be married when I return home." She said it for the joy of saying it; she said it to make it so.

Elizabeth put down the tiles. "Oh, Mary, are you sure of this?"

"Yes. Yes, he knows what's happened."

"And he accepts it? He understands?"

"He will. He loves me. Oh, I know he will!"

"I hope so. For your sake, Mary, I hope so." The older woman halted before the look in her niece's eyes. She said carefully, trying to hide her concern, "But if—it should turn out otherwise, you must stay here with us. Here you'll be safe, you and your little one. And who knows?" she said cheerfully, soothingly, "That too might be part of God's plan. To send you here to be near Jerusalem when the child is born. To have him grow up here with his cousin."

"Oh, no," Mary said quickly. "That's very kind of you, but I don't believe Joseph would have it. His love for me—it's so intense it frightens me at times. He would never give me up, not for any reason."

Saying it eased her heart about him, made it so. Surely these things she claimed were true. He would tell her so himself when he came up for the Feast of the First Fruits. As he would come, as he would surely come. She began to count the weeks until that day.

When Mary was sufficiently rested from her journey, they walked to Jerusalem. Flinging her veils about her, Elizabeth strode along head high. It was good for a woman with child to walk, she said. "I hid myself for five months lest the Lord see fit to dash my baby from me after all. But now that you're here, Mary, you who caused my child to leap within me, I have nothing to fear."

Nothing to fear . . . Mary hastened to keep step with this proud and joyous woman with the high cheekbones, the gay little wings of hair. She tried to draw courage from her aunt, to hold fast to her own conviction. But Elizabeth's coming child was flesh as well as spirit, flesh of her husband's flesh so that they two were united. While my son, Mary thought shakenly— my blessed son. Whom shall he call father if Joseph should put me away?

But Jerusalem. Ah, Jerusalem! As her aunt had warned, it was not all beauty. It had its palaces yes, its rich houses whose tile roofs gleamed. The most fabulous palace of all was that of the hated Herod, built on the very site where David had sung his psalms. But it also had its hovels, its dirt and its stench. They passed through massive gates where Roman soldiers stood guard in watchtowers overhead. Men who looked mostly bored, hot and uncomfortable in their heavy metal helmets and vests. Some were mere boys. One of them caught Mary's eye one day and she was torn by the frank pleading girl-hunger and homesickness in his eyes. Shaken, she hurried on beside her aunt.

The streets and shops swarmed. All was vivid, exciting, reeking with the scent of hot grease and a frantic din of shouting and haggling. Bland, insolent camels were maneuvered through the crowds, and donkeys whose backs and sides bulged with so many crates and bundles people must press back against the walls to give them passage. Drivers cursed and yelled and brandished sticks. The narrow streets, tented against the fiercely burning sun, or tunneling through the dark rocks, were a series of steep cobbled steps. In the bazaars and marketplace all the treasures of the world seemed on display. Cashmeres and tapestries and silks, spices and ivory and jewels, perfumes, carpets, lamps, exotic toys. Their colors assaulted her senses, rousing up visions of the lands from which they had been brought in ships and caravans. She ached at their wonders, for she longed to buy gifts for those at home.

But the true gem of Jerusalem was the Temple. Eastward it soared in all its splendor, stirring in Mary emotions so profound they were like travail. She divined how it must have been for David when at last he beheld the sacred ark being brought up from the desert, ransomed from the Philistines, to be safely housed here forever. How in a passion of exaltation he had stripped his garments from him and sung and danced before his subjects in the palm-lined streets.

Gone now, that celestial vessel that had been carried by the sons of Levi through all the wanderings in the wilderness. Vanished, destroyed along with the magnificence of the Temple that had been built by Solomon. So that now the Holy of Holies was empty of all save the presence of the invisible God. Yet the rapture remained. And Jahveh's will prevailed. For twice more after violation and vanquishment the Temple had been restored. Ironically, this time by the despised oppressor Herod, who sought to appease the Jews. And though a thousand priests and ten thousand workmen had labored on it for more than forty years, its vast complex of walls and courts and gilded columns were not finished even yet. And to pass through the high wall surmounted with its twinkling spikes was to feel such anticipation that it was scarcely to be borne:

How amiable are thy tabernacles,

    O Lord of hosts!

My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth

    for the courts of the Lord. . . .

Through the Gate Beautiful into the Court of Women, which was as far as they could go. . . . The trumpet blasts were enough to rip the skin from flesh. Ranged on the marble stairs, in garments of purest white, stood the young Levites, harps in hand. Their music was like something straight from heaven as they played and sang. A bliss of adoration swept her ... at first.

At first.

Then gradually the suffering intruded. Wherever she went she heard it, smelled it, tasted it and could not cast it out—the piteous anguish of the sacrifice. How plaintively they cried, the beasts and fowls being brought up for the offering. Her soul shriveled at the sound of it, she could hear the music no more-only the deep and awful crying that seemed to come from somewhere in the pit of herself.

Why? Why? What did God want of all this? Why should the creator of life wish his creatures slain? The gentle, snub-nosed sheep, the awkward cattle pulling back, the soft white doves fluttering in their cages. Why?

Revulsion assailed her. This was not the joyous communion with that one who had seemed to speak to her from the stars. This was wild and strange. Her uncle, the pure white priest—she saw now what he was actually about when he served at the altar. The hot blood spurting, the sticky feathers, the tough hide scraped, the hacking and plucking and the carving of the raw red meat. Those hands, those holy hands. She realized now, appalled, why they were so large. They were the hands of a butcher!