Daughter of Jerusalem (18 page)

The house was still asleep. The live-in servants would just be getting up, and it was too early for Elisabeth and Jeremiah to have arrived. I was alone.

I grabbed the silk sheet off the bed and stuffed it between my legs to stop the bleeding. It would stop, I told myself. This was just a minor thing; the baby was fine.

But the blood kept coming. I grabbed another sheet. At last my door opened, and Elisabeth peeped in. When she saw me, she cried out.

“It’s just a little bleeding, Elisabeth, but I need your help.”

Elisabeth came over to the bed and looked at the blood-soaked sheets. She said, her voice infinitely gentle, “You’re having a miscarriage, my lady.”

I wouldn’t believe her. “No, I’m not. It’s just a little bleeding. Stop it, Elisabeth. Make it stop!”

She grasped my hand in hers. “There is nothing to be done, my lady. I am sorry.”

My stomach cramped again, and more blood gushed out. I doubled over but not from physical pain. “Noooooo!” I wailed. “Not my baby. Noooooo!”

Elisabeth put her arms around my shoulders to support me. “You must be brave, my lady. There will be other children. This will be over soon. Be brave.”

The cramps and the flow of blood began to slow, and finally she took the bloody sheets away and put on new ones. She helped me back into bed and put another compress between my legs. “You will need to stay in bed for a few days, but then you’ll be fine,” she assured me. I nodded, and she left to get me something to eat and drink.

I knew I wouldn’t be fine. Something terrible had happened to me with the loss of my child. God was punishing me, as He had punished David by taking his son. And, like David, I deserved to be punished. Marcus might have ordered the murder of Aaron, but he would never have had the opportunity to do such a thing if I’d remained true to my marriage vows. I was as guilty as he was.

Two deaths now separated me from Marcus, an impenetrable barrier, and I could never marry him. Giving him up was part of my punishment, and I deserved it.

I saw Marcus one more time, three days after the miscarriage. He called at the house to see how I was doing.

I watched him come into the garden. He was dressed in his military uniform, and somehow that symbol of battlefields and death made it easier for me to say what I had to say.

He tried to change my mind, of course, but I was adamant.

He was angry and hurt. “You’ve tried and convicted me in your own mind. And now you dismiss me. I never thought you could be so unfair, Mary. Unless you’ve been lying to me all this time, unless you never loved me at all.”

“I love you, Marcus. I’m not saying I don’t love you. I’m just saying I can’t marry you. I know this isn’t all your fault. I had a hand in Aaron’s death as well. You would never have done it if it hadn’t been for me.”

“You are so sure I was responsible?”

I looked into his angry green eyes. “Tell me you didn’t ask one of your men to follow Aaron and cause an accident. Swear that to me, Marcus, on your honor as a Roman. Will you do that?”

We had been sitting side by side on the stone bench that gave the best view of the roses. I saw a muscle twitch in his jaw, and he stood up. “I wouldn’t have to swear anything if you truly loved me.”

He wouldn’t swear to a lie on his honor as a Roman.

“I’ll miss you,” I said, the tears beginning to seep down my cheeks.

“Mary!” He extended a hand to me.

I shook my head and looked down at my lap. Then I listened to the sound of his footfalls as he walked out of my life forever.

For the first time ever, I had no one to answer to but myself. I could make my own choices. I had the money to do whatever I wanted to do. I was free.

And I was inconsolable.

I don’t know what I would have done if Julia hadn’t stood beside me. She moved in to live with me while I tried to sort out all of Aaron’s business. Her advice was invaluable. Julia had been handling her own money for years; she knew what she was doing, while I most certainly did not.

In all those weeks I never left the house, going outdoors only to visit the garden. I didn’t want to risk meeting Marcus. And in all the time we were together, Julia never once tried to get me to change my mind about him. All she said was “The loss of a child is the worst thing that can happen to a woman. But you still have a life to live, Mary, and you’re going to have to make some decisions about where and how you want to live it.”

I couldn’t remain in Sepphoris. It wasn’t just my fear of meeting Marcus. It was the realization that Sepphoris was a place of sin for me. I needed to get away, and the only refuge I had was Bethany, with my brother and sister.

I wrote to Lazarus. Instead of writing back, he came to fetch me. I left the day following his arrival; I couldn’t ask my observant brother to remain in my unclean house. Elisabeth packed a few items for me, and Julia said I should write and let her know what I wanted to do
with the things I was leaving behind: my clothes, my jewelry, the furniture, the kitchenware, the decorations, the very house itself. I said I would do so, and I also told her to keep all the servants employed until they could find other positions.

Jeremiah packed my limited belongings on one of the donkeys Lazarus had brought. I was to ride on the other one; Lazarus would walk.

Julia and I exchanged an embrace in the middle of my courtyard before I left. “Will I see you again?” I whispered into her ear as we clung together.

“You’re not coming back to Sepphoris, are you?”

We released each other. “No. I don’t believe I can.”

She smiled at me. “Then I will come to visit you. Take time to heal, Mary. Don’t make any rushed decisions. And write to me.”

I kissed her cheek. “Thank you for everything, my mother.”

Her blue eyes glistened with tears. “Go.”

I nodded and went out to join Lazarus in the street.

The journey wasn’t difficult. We took the road through the fertile and beautiful Jezreel Valley to the Jordan River, turned south to Jericho, and were soon at Bethany. The weather was beginning to heat up, and the grain harvest was still under way. I had made this journey many times during my years with Aaron, when we went to Jerusalem for Passover, but I had always traveled in a litter. I found it far more enjoyable to be on foot.

Bethany looked tiny to eyes that were accustomed to Sepphoris, but I was glad to be there. When I saw my little sister running to meet me, I felt a surge of happiness for the first time since I’d lost my baby.
She flung herself into my arms, like a child herself, and I hugged her hard. She was much smaller than I; the top of her head only came to my nose. I had always thought she was adorable.

She hugged me back. Then she pulled away and gave me a stern look that sat strangely on her round, innocent face. “You’re too thin. It’s a good thing you came to us, Mary. You need some good Jewish cooking to fatten you up.”

Martha was a wonderful cook. I grinned at her. “I invite you to try.”

She laughed and said, “Come into the house for some refreshment. You must both be hungry and thirsty after your journey.”

Meekly, both Lazarus and I followed her inside.

No better people exist in the world than my brother and sister, Lazarus and Martha. I burrowed into their lives like a fox burrows into its den, seeking safety from the pain of the world outside.

There was another reason to keep to the house. In the eyes of the townspeople I was a sinner from Sepphoris, and they knew they should shun me. Although everyone in Bethany loved my brother and sister, still they suffered, dutifully ignoring me and thus offending Lazarus and Martha. The easiest way out of this difficulty was for me to avoid the town, which was no hardship. I was busy trying to figure out what to do with my life.

My mind and heart were such a chaos of warring thoughts and emotions that it was hard for me to think. Being back in an observant Jewish household, with its regular round of prayers and careful attention to ritual cleanliness, struck a chord I thought I’d put behind me. It had been a long time since I had prayed. I didn’t know if I could anymore. I didn’t know if I even wanted to.

But every day I saw Lazarus reciting the
shema
. Every day Martha prayed over the food she was preparing. In almost everything they did, they sought the blessing of God. They were good people.

I was not a good person.

It was true that I had been forced into a loveless marriage. But, much as I wanted to, I couldn’t blame Aaron for pushing me into Marcus’ arms. I chose to become Marcus’ lover. And I
had
loved him. I had loved him, and I had made him do a terrible thing.

And God had punished me by taking my baby.

I could tell all this to only one person, and so I spoke to my brother. He was deeply compassionate, because that was his nature. Lazarus would never judge me, but he urged me to reconcile myself to God.

Part of me wanted to do this. Part of me wanted to become the old Mary, with her unquestioning faith in the goodness of the Lord. But too much bitter hurt lay between that girl and me. I couldn’t go back to synagogue, as my brother wished. I just didn’t know what I believed anymore.

It might seem odd that I would speak to my brother and not my sister, but I didn’t want to upset her with my troubles. She had enough to worry about with Lazarus’ illness. I didn’t want to add to her burden.

Until I returned to Bethany, I didn’t know that my brother had a sickness in his brain. The headaches had begun around the time of his Bar Mitzvah and had tormented him ever since. They were so agonizing that he couldn’t do anything but lie in bed and wait for them to go away. Sometimes two came in a week; sometimes he would go for months without one. He had told me once that his greatest fear was that one day the headache would not go away and he would go mad from the pain.

This was why he had never married. He didn’t want people to know of his illness because he was afraid they’d say he was possessed by a devil; nor did he wish to burden a woman with a husband who might become permanently incapacitated.

Of course, no one in the village could understand why my handsome, financially comfortable brother was still unwed. An unmarried man of twenty-two was almost unheard of among Jews—except for the Essenes, of course, and everyone knew they were strange.