Daughter of Jerusalem (10 page)

When I felt his grip loosen, I forced myself to let him go. I looked up, waiting for him to tell me he didn’t care about the opinion of the world, that he’d take me away from Aaron and we would be together again.

He said hoarsely, “I’ve come to see you because I wanted you to know that I’m leaving Jerusalem and my studies. I’m going to join the Essenes.”

I stared at him, not taking in what he had said.

“I’m going to Qumran. The Essenes have a great library there, and they’re anxious to get me. I don’t think I’ll ever come back.”

I heard the sharp intake of my breath. “The
Essenes?
You’re leaving me to live like a beggar in the desert?”

His voice was patient, the way it had always sounded when he was explaining a passage of scripture to me. “The Essenes are not beggars. They’re a group of holy men who pledge themselves to celibacy and a disciplined life of prayer. They choose to live in the desert because it’s far from Jerusalem. They can live and pray in the desert unmolested by the corruption of the Temple and all it stands for.”

I stared at him, speechless.

He began to pace up and down in front of the painted lilies. “Our people are in desperate need, Mary. A godless Empire occupies our country, and our own religious leaders have been corrupted by money. Animal sacrifice, and the money it brings in, is the business of the Temple these days, not prayer. I found that out during the year I spent in Jerusalem. We need to be saved from ourselves as well as from the Romans. We need the Messiah to come
now
, Mary, and that is what the Essenes pray for. They pray for the coming of the Messiah. That’s why I wish to join them. The Messiah is our only hope of salvation.”

If he joined the Essenes he would truly be lost to me forever. Even if my husband should die, Daniel would have sworn himself to celibacy.

“Don’t do this,” I pleaded. “Don’t leave me, Daniel. Please don’t leave me.”

His red-brown eyes were somber. “I’ve prayed over this, Mary. I’m going to the Essenes to purify myself, so that I can pray for you as well as for the Messiah. God will surely listen to a prayer when it comes from a heart made pure by sacrifice.”

I cared nothing for his purity of heart, but I knew, just by looking at him, that his mind was made up and that nothing I could say would change it.

A blessed numbness descended on my brain. I managed to choke out, “Then God bless you, Daniel.”

He lifted his hand and touched my cheek. “God bless you, my most dearly beloved. I will pray for you as long as I live.”

I stood perfectly still in the middle of the room, listening to the sound his sandals made on the floor as he left.

When I felt able to move, I told the servants I was ill and slipped away to my room. One of the blessings of living in such a large house was that I had a bedroom to myself, and I crawled into the big, soft Roman bedstead and lay like a wounded animal seeking solitude to heal or to die.

I stayed in bed for a week. I vomited a few times, and I knew that Aaron hoped my sickness was because I was with child. I also knew that wasn’t the case. I would never have a child with Aaron. My flesh and soul cringed away from him whenever he came near me. How could a child of his find a home within my body?

During that solitary week I thought long and hard about my life. Daniel wasn’t going to save me after all. The hope I’d clung to during the last year had been smashed.

The more I thought, the more I realized what an unrealistic hope it had been. The dream of going out into the world hand in hand with Daniel was a child’s dream. Daniel had known that. And he was paying for his father’s evil too, hiding himself in the Judean wilderness with a sect of strange, celibate men.

Meanwhile I was left here in Sepphoris, married to an old man. But Aaron was very proud of me, and for most of the time I was perfectly free to do whatever I wished. I had no more bread to bake or laundry to wash or goats to feed. No more children to watch.

I tried not to think about how much I missed the children.

It was time for me to look ahead, not behind, time for me to make a meaningful life for myself in this foreign place. It was the only way I could show that Lord Benjamin hadn’t defeated me.

On the seventh day I came out of my room and prepared to begin again.

Marcus Novius Claudius

My new life began one afternoon six months later, when I met Julia Tiberia. I was wandering among the array of stalls in the Upper Market, trying to pass some time until I’d have to go home, when I stopped at the sandalmaker’s stall. Another woman stopped as well, and as if at a signal we both pointed to the same pair of jeweled sandals. We looked at each other and burst out laughing. I insisted that she should have them, and she insisted that I should, and we fell into talk. As it turned out, neither of us bought the sandals; instead we continued to talk as we made our way down the hill from the Upper Market. Before we parted, Julia invited me to visit her.

The invitation shocked me. Jews didn’t move in the rarefied atmosphere of Julia Tiberia’s circle. I knew of her from the gossip spouted by my husband’s friends’ wives. She was the wealthy widow of Sepphoris’ last Roman governor and had chosen to remain in the city after her husband’s death. The gossipers said she wielded enormous social power among the Roman elite, a situation that very much annoyed the wife of the present governor.

Aaron was ecstatic when I told him about the invitation. He kept repeating her name as if he were reciting some holy text. He made me
so nervous that by the time I left our house two afternoons later, I was wishing she’d never invited me.

I took a litter to Julia Tiberia’s house in the Roman part of town. In Magdala we walked everywhere, but here women of the upper classes rode in litters. It was a rule I often flouted, but on this particular day I thought it was probably wise to do the correct thing.

The Romans, like King Herod, had copied Greek architecture, but the houses in this part of town were set farther back from the street than in ours. When I descended from the litter, I had to walk up a stone pathway, which was set in a courtyard filled with shrubs, flowers, and statues. The large bronze front door swung open just before I reached it, so I knew the house porter had been waiting for me. He greeted me in Latin.

I smiled apologetically and replied in Greek, “I’m sorry, I don’t know your language. I’m Mary, the wife of Aaron bar David. Julia Tiberia is expecting me.”

“Lady Julia is in the garden,” he answered, switching easily to Greek. “I will take you to her.”

The house was no larger than Aaron’s, but it was much brighter. I realized, as we walked from the vestibule into the first room, that sunlight was pouring through an opening in the roof. A marble pool lay under the opening, which I later discovered was used to collect rainwater. Marble pillars supported the roof, the floors were made of marble tiles with contrasting colors, and the ceiling was covered with ivory and gold. As in Jewish homes, doors were placed along the side of the room, with latticework allowing the light from the court to enter.

The porter must have seen me gawking, for he said pleasantly, “This is the atrium, the room Lady Julia uses for entertainment. The next room, the peristylum, is for the family.”

We passed through a narrow corridor and entered a room that looked like an indoor garden. The opening in the roof was much larger than in the atrium, and all sorts of beautiful plants and flowers bloomed among the palm and fig trees that grew in large pots around a central reflecting pool.

I glanced at the colorful mosaic floor and quickly looked away. The depiction of naked men chasing after beautiful young women would have been shocking even if they had been fully clothed. It is forbidden for Jews to have any representation of the human body.

“The garden is just beyond,” the porter said, and we crossed the room and went outdoors.

Julia Tiberia was sitting at a white stone table with a papyrus scroll in her hands. She glanced up as we came in.

The porter said, “My lady, here is Mary, the wife of Aaron bar David.”

Julia smiled at me and began to roll up the scroll. “How lovely to see you. Come and sit down, my dear.”

I took the indicated bench and looked around at my lovely surroundings. The place was nothing like the simple garden I had at home. High marble columns enclosed it, and a part of it was covered for shade. In its center a marble fountain spouted sparkling clear water.

“Your house is very beautiful.”

She looked pleased. “Thank you, my dear. I had it built after my husband died and I had to move out of the governor’s palace.”

“It’s so bright! The houses I have lived in are much darker.”

She bowed her head a little, accepting my compliment. “We Romans like living outdoors, and we strive to replicate that feeling even inside our homes.”

With that topic of conversation exhausted, I suddenly felt very shy
and inept. Julia Tiberia must have been in her forties, but she was still beautiful. Unlike most of the Romans I had met, her hair was light, and her eyes were blue. I had never known anyone with blue eyes before, and they fascinated me. She was a sophisticated woman of the world, and I wondered why on earth she had invited me.

Julia began our conversation deftly, asking me how old I was, where I had been born, and how I had come to live in Sepphoris. Her blue eyes were so intent, her expression so engaged, that I soon found myself pouring out my whole life’s story. When I finally stopped and realized how long I had been talking, I was embarrassed.

“I am so sorry, my lady,” I apologized feebly. “I didn’t mean to bore you by talking about myself like that. You must think me very rude.”

“Nonsense. I don’t think you rude at all. You would have been rude if you had refused to answer my questions. I wanted to know all about you, Mary. You interest me.”

“
I
interest you? But why?”

The blue eyes looked suddenly sad. “I once had a daughter who would be just your age if she had lived. I suppose you remind me of what I’ve lost.”

“Oh, my lady,” I said, “what a burden of grief you must carry.”

“She lived to be ten. My only child. Yes, it is a great grief.”

We sat in silence for a while. Then we spoke some more and had some refreshments, and she invited me to come back in the afternoon a few days hence, when she had no other appointments. I was happy to be asked and promised to come.

So began one of the most significant relationships of my life. Julia was unbelievably kind to me. She saw me as a substitute daughter, and I was certainly much in need of a mother. Through her I had access to
a wide circle of highly cosmopolitan men and women whom I would ordinarily never have had a chance to meet.

Herod the Great’s capital, Sepphoris was situated near two of the great commerce routes from Egypt to Damascus. Because of its strategic location, it had always attracted ambitious Romans who desired to prove themselves and thus move on to even higher office in Rome itself. These people all came to Julia’s house, and, because I was her “adopted daughter,” they befriended me.