Daughter of Jerusalem (2 page)

After two days of walking we arrived at the southernmost tip of the Sea of Galilee. The sun was setting as we came into the village, and the lake waters reflected back the streaky gold colors of the sky. The hills on the western side of the sea rose like shadow guardians out of the sunset. It was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen.

One of the men in our party saw my face and chuckled. “It’s nice, isn’t it?”

“I never saw so much water!”

The man laughed. “One day perhaps you will visit the Great Sea, where you can sail for days and never see land. Then you will understand just how tiny this so-called Sea of Galilee is.”

One of the men traveling with us was from Capernaum, another city on the lake, and he was quick to defend his native province. “You have nothing nearly as beautiful in Judea. The Dead Sea is ugly, and nothing can live in it.
Our
lake teems with fish. You can’t get fish like ours anywhere in Judea.”

The Judean exploded into a defense of his province, but I stopped listening to the squabble. Instead I stood quietly, looking at the beauty that lay stretched out before me, praying in my heart that God would let me find happiness in this new place.

It was too late to go on to Magdala, so my father and I spent the night at one of the inns that served travelers and merchants along the well-traveled route. We set forth early the next morning, taking the road that ran along the west side of the lake. The first town we came to was Tiberias, a new city that was still being built by Herod Antipas, the ruler of Galilee.

I was hungry, but we didn’t stop. My father told me Tiberias was a Roman city and that no good Jew would sully the soles of his sandals by stopping near it.

“It’s almost as bad as Sepphoris,” my father said with disgust, as he marched me along, determined to put the polluted city behind us as quickly as possible.

“What’s Sepphoris?” I asked, skipping along beside him.

My father spat, something he rarely did. Then he told me that Sepphoris, the capital of Galilee, was a den of sin. It had been built by Herod the Great using Greek architects and was the seat of the Roman occupation in Galilee. Herod Antipas, my father said, his voice dripping with scorn, was as in love with the Greeks and Romans as his father had been.

It was early afternoon when we arrived in Magdala. As the first houses started to appear, I noticed that most of them were built of a light-colored stone, not the mud bricks we used in Bethany. It was very pretty.

“There is the house,” my father said, and I stared in amazement. Built of stone, it was situated directly on the lakeshore. And it was huge! It had two stories, supported by a series of stone arches. Gardens stretched out on either side, and the roof was tile, not the packed clay I was used to.

The people who live here must be very rich
, I thought. My father was considered a well-to-do man in Bethany, but our house was tiny compared to this.

I felt my chest growing tight with anxiety as my father opened the gate that gave onto a path to the front door. Close up, the house looked even more enormous, sprawling over a huge plot of land, with outbuildings and an orchard of date palms and fig trees.

“Papa,” I whispered, as I trailed behind him, “are you certain this is the right place? This house is so big!”

He didn’t appear overwhelmed. “Benjamin has obviously done well with his business.”

He kept going, and I followed reluctantly, forcing one foot to move after the other. I was frightened and had a dreadful feeling I might cry. I never cried, and I was proud of that distinction. No matter what Judith said, no matter how many times my father locked me up in my room, I never cried. I
would not
start now.

But the outlines of the huge house had become suspiciously blurry. I ground my teeth together to gain control.

The gate banged behind us, and someone called out my father’s name. We stopped and waited while a well-dressed boy came down the path toward us. He addressed my father politely: “You must be Jacob bar Solomon. Welcome to our house, sir. I am Daniel, Benjamin’s youngest son.”

My father smiled and reached out to embrace the boy. “I thank you, Daniel bar Benjamin,” he replied, turning the full strength of his charm on the boy. My father was a very handsome man, with thick black hair only beginning to turn gray, dark brown eyes, and imperious black eyebrows. People often joked that there was no way he could
deny my paternity, I looked so much like him. I was never quite sure I liked the comparison. Certainly I had his hair and eyebrows, but my nose did not jut out like his, and my cheekbones were high and thin, not broad and solid.

Lately I had taken to stealing peeks at myself in Judith’s polished bronze hand mirror, and I had been pleased with what I saw. Judith caught me once and called me ugly names, and I lost my temper and told her she looked like a cow. That was when my father made the decision to send me to live with Aunt Leah.

My father introduced me to Daniel, and we stood, silent in the sunlight, looking at each other. He was the handsomest boy I had ever seen, with clean, dark brown hair and reddish brown eyes. We knew immediately that we would like each other.

“Welcome to our house, Mary,” he said and smiled. Daniel had a wonderful smile; it lit up his thin, boyish face and made me feel that I truly was welcome here.

“Come into the house with me,” he said, glancing back at my father and then again at me. “I’ll find Leah and my mother to greet you.”

My aunt was waiting just inside the front door. and I ran into her outstretched arms. They closed around me tightly. “Mary,” she said, her lips pressed against the top of my head, “I’m so glad you have come to me.”

I was glad too. Daniel’s smile and Leah’s welcome had washed away the tears that had threatened on the path, and my old confidence came rushing back. My father said, “You have contributed greatly to the peace of my household, Leah, by having Mary live with you. I thank you with all my heart.”

“We are happy to have her,” another voice said, and I lifted my face from my aunt’s shoulder to greet Daniel’s mother, Esther, the matriarch of the family.

Her eyes were the same color as Daniel’s, and she looked at me for a long moment before she said, “I hope you are used to working, Mary. In this family, everyone has responsibilities.”

I bowed my head respectfully and assured her I would happily do whatever she might ask. I felt Aunt Leah take my hand and squeeze it, and I squeezed hers back.

Suddenly I was glad to be here in Magdala, in this house set on the beautiful Sea of Galilee, where Daniel lived.

It didn’t take long for me to learn that fitting into a large, new family wasn’t going to be so easy. The head of the household and the family business was Benjamin, Daniel’s father; next in authority after Benjamin was his younger brother, Joses. Counting from Benjamin down to the youngest baby, the household numbered thirty-two people in all. For a girl from a small family of five, it was overwhelming.

Aunt Leah had been married to Benjamin’s other brother, Isaac. When Isaac died, Leah, having no other place to go, remained with her relatives by marriage. That’s why she had been so happy when my father asked her to let me come live with her. I was someone of her own blood.

She was so sweet and gentle that I often thought my mother must have been like her. I had no memories of my mother, but that didn’t stop me from missing her. If she had lived, she would have taken care of me and loved me. If she had lived, I would never have had to deal with Judith.

Esther, Lord Benjamin’s wife (we were all supposed to call him
Lord
to show our respect for his position), put me to work right away. Even though some girls came from the village to help, there was still
a lot to be done each day. Just getting enough water for the daily household needs was a huge task, as were milking the goats and making cheese and curds from the gathered milk. The daily bread had to be baked and the food for supper gathered and cooked. Squeezed in between these chores were the ongoing tasks of spinning cloth, making the cloth into garments, and caring for the large vegetable garden.

I tried hard to do everything the way Esther wanted, but I had learned little about housekeeping or cooking from Judith. Nothing I did had pleased her, and she banished me from her kitchen.

Aunt Leah gently tried to show me what to do, but I was miserably homesick for Lazarus and Martha. I would often slip away into the courtyard to play with the young children. It was much more satisfying than trying to carry out tasks that everyone scorned me for doing poorly.

Eventually Esther settled on the jobs most suited to me. I would rise early and prepare the day’s bread, do the weeding in the vegetable garden, and help look after the children. I didn’t mind doing any of these things and tried to go about my work as quietly and competently as I could.

My biggest misery of the first few months in Magdala came from the girls my age, the daughters of Benjamin and Joses. They all slept together in one of the big upstairs rooms, and none of them was nice to me. Fortunately, I got to sleep in a small room with my Aunt Leah so I didn’t have to put up with their snide comments at night, but they kept it up in the daytime. Or they just turned their backs and ignored me. I knew I shouldn’t respond, but it was hard to keep a quiet tongue.

I explained this to Daniel one day, when he came home from the synagogue. He saw me in the vegetable garden viciously pulling weeds
and came to speak to me. He was the only male in the family who did not work in the family business of salting, packing, and shipping fish. Instead he went into town every day to study with the rabbi. Lord Benjamin’s plan for his brilliant youngest son was to send him to Jerusalem when he was sixteen to complete his studies at the Temple and become a scribe.

On this particular afternoon I watched him making his way along the narrow garden paths, and I smiled. He was twelve, two years older than I, tall and slim and elegant looking in his immaculate white linen tunic and cloak of fine blue wool. Its ritual blue tassels swung rhythmically as he strode along.

It was not the first time we had talked together in the garden, and he grinned as he came up to me. “You are certainly attacking those weeds, Mary.” He looked around. “Where is Rachel? I thought she was supposed to help you today.”

“She said she had a headache and went to lie down.” I ripped out another weed and tossed it into my basket.

Rachel was Joses’ daughter and my chief tormenter. I thought the rest of the girls might be friendly if not for Rachel’s influence. They seemed to be afraid of her.

“Come and sit down,” Daniel said, gesturing toward the wooden bench that was nestled in the shade of the house.

I sat next to him, licking the perspiration from my upper lip. I poured a cup of water from the jug I had brought with me and offered it to him. He took a sip and then gave it back to me. I drank thirstily.

“Is Rachel still making life difficult for you?”

I put the cup down on the seat next to me with a loud click. “She hates me. I have tried to be nice to her, Daniel, but she goes out of
her way to be mean. And she makes all the other girls act mean too. I don’t know what’s wrong with her.”