Daughter of Jerusalem (20 page)

The courtyard where we sat lay between the side of my house and the fence that separated my property from my neighbor’s. The day was fine, and the breeze off the lake delightful. Elisabeth had provided us with wine and a tray of fruit and bread. We ate and drank as we talked comfortably.

“So,” I said, “what do the people in town think I’ve done, to make them treat me like some kind of pariah?”

She sighed. “The word is that you led a wicked life in Sepphoris.”

“That’s all?” I asked cautiously. If they knew about Marcus, I would never be accepted.

“That’s enough, don’t you think?”

“But Ruth, if these people don’t know anything about me, why should they think I’m a sinner?”

She waved her hand. “For one thing . . . well, just look at yourself, Mary. You might be one of those pagan goddesses. You certainly don’t look like any of the wives in this town!”

I looked down at my perfectly correct clothing. “What do you mean? I was very careful to buy clothes that would be appropriate for a Jewish woman of my age.” I gave her an injured stare. “My clothes aren’t any different from yours, Ruth.”

Ruth tilted her head. “It’s the way you hold yourself. That authoritative air you have.”

I had been as mild as a lamb in all my dealings with the people here. I said, “It’s because I lived in Sepphoris, isn’t it?”

“That too, of course,” she replied.

I looked at my hands. “I didn’t ask to live in Sepphoris, Ruth. I went against my will.”

Ruth covered my hands with hers. “I know, dearest. I saw your face when they married you to that old man. I was so sorry for you, Mary. So very sorry.”

My throat closed down. I nodded, unable to speak.

Ruth changed the subject. “Did you know that Lord Benjamin is dead?”

I nodded. “Yes. I heard from my brother.”

“And Samuel has eight daughters. Can you imagine?”

I stared in amazement. “Eight girls? And no son?”

“Not a one.”

“Poor Naomi,” I said. The woman was always held accountable for the sex of her child.

“How about you?” Ruth asked gently. “No children from that old man?”

I froze. After a long minute, I managed to shake my head.

“Three wives and no children. It’s clear whose fault that was.”

I picked up my cup and took a long swallow of wine.

Ruth said, “Have you heard about what Daniel did?”

I hadn’t heard his name spoken out loud for years. I took a slow breath and let it out. “I heard he went to the Essenes.”

“Yes. It was a great shock to us all. I think it’s what finally killed his father.”

“Has . . . has anyone heard from him?”

“So far as I know, no one has heard anything from him since he left.”

Jeremiah approached quietly and asked if he could get us anything else. Ruth shook her head, saying she had to leave. I said to Jeremiah, “You must make certain that in the future we get all our olives and oil from Ruth’s husband, Nathaniel bar Simon.”

“I will remember, my lady,” Jeremiah said. He picked up the plate of fruit and went inside.

Ruth said, “I think I should warn you, Mary, you have already made a dangerous enemy.”

My eyes widened in surprise. “How can that be? I don’t know anyone.”

“One of the Pharisees, Ezra bar Matthias, has taken against you. Apparently he saw you once when you came to check on your house. When he learned you’d lived in Sepphoris and had your own money, he decided you must be a walking embodiment of all seven of the deadly sins. He denigrates you every chance he gets.”

“Pharisees think all women are unclean. He probably hates me because I have money and can do as I like.”

Ruth looked thoughtful. “Your position is certainly unusual among Jews,” she said.

I changed the subject. “I would love to see your children.”

“We will all come and visit you. Nathaniel too. And you must come to us.”

“Nothing would make me happier,” I said.

She smiled. “Don’t worry about that Pharisee. I have plenty of friends in Capernaum who will be happy to make your acquaintance. You can meet them at the synagogue.”

The synagogue. I knew it would come up sooner or later.

Ruth saw the look on my face. “I know you haven’t been going to synagogue, Mary, and that is another mark against you with the people of the town. If you truly want to be one of us, you
must
go to synagogue.”

I rubbed my eyes and wondered how to explain. “I haven’t been in years, Ruth. The kind of people who went in Sepphoris . . . I just couldn’t bear them. They were only interested in money, and the rabbi was the same. Just sitting under the same roof with them made me feel unclean.”

“Did your husband go?”

“Yes. He was one of the ones I couldn’t bear. Aaron was not a good man, Ruth.” I thought of how he had pushed me into Marcus’ arms. “Not a good man at all.”

“Listen to me, Mary.” Ruth took my hand and spoke slowly and clearly, “If you wish to be accepted in Capernaum, you must go to synagogue. It’s different here from what you describe in Sepphoris. Our rabbi is a good man, a kind man. The people who attend are mostly
fishermen and merchants from the city. Nathaniel and I always come into Capernaum because we like it better than the synagogue in our own small village.”

I bit my lip. “I don’t know if I can.”

Her hand on mine tightened. “If you don’t come, you will be isolated from the entire Jewish population of Capernaum. Do you want that?”

“No!”

“Then you must put Sepphoris and everything that happened there behind you. I’ll have Nathaniel take you to see the rabbi first, and he will welcome you and invite you to join us. You’ll see.”

Perhaps he will
, I thought cynically.
I’m sure he knows all about my money.
But I had to take Ruth’s words seriously. I hadn’t come to Capernaum to live in isolation. I missed Julia terribly, and I wanted to make friends with the local women.

“Do you think Nathaniel would do that?” I asked.

“Of course he will,” Ruth replied.

The synagogue wasn’t the Temple, I told myself. The synagogue was for teaching, not for sacrifice. I suspected I would disagree with much of what I heard, but I didn’t have to listen, I just had to be present. I inhaled deeply and took a giant step.

“All right. I’ll go to synagogue.”

Ruth’s smile was radiant. “It will all be fine, Mary. I’m sure there won’t be trouble. The rabbi doesn’t like Ezra bar Matthias either.”

I walked Ruth to the courtyard door, trying to resign myself to what I knew I had to do.

“Make sure Nathaniel lets the rabbi know I have a lot of money,” I said as she walked through the gate.

Our eyes met, and then Ruth nodded. She might be a good Jewish woman, but she wasn’t ignorant of the ways of the world.

Ruth was as good as her word and produced her husband a few days after our conversation. Nathaniel bar Simon was a man of average height with steady, thoughtful brown eyes, a slightly crooked nose, and a quick smile. He looked around the atrium and said simply, “Very nice.”

I liked him at once. “Thank you for doing this for me. I haven’t been to synagogue in a long time.”

“So Ruth has told me. She has also told me what dear friends you once were and how pleased she is to have found you again.”

Ruth said, “I hope you don’t mind, Mary, but I also told him all about Daniel and how dreadfully Lord Benjamin treated you both.”

I inhaled sharply. “It was a long time ago.”

“Yes, it was,” Nathaniel, said. “Now it’s time to concentrate on the future. I have asked the rabbi for an appointment, and he’s waiting for us. Shall we go?”

I was ridiculously nervous as we walked along the narrow streets that led to the synagogue. I was afraid that this rabbi would be just like the one in Sepphoris.

The synagogue itself looked like the synagogue in Magdala, not
the grandiose one in Sepphoris. The rabbi was a small, gray-haired man with a wrinkled face and humorous eyes.

He said, “Nathaniel has told me about you, Mary of Magdala, and I am happy to welcome you to our synagogue in Capernaum.”

My smile was a mixture of pleasure and relief. I was Mary of Magdala again, and I liked that very much.

I attended a Sabbath synagogue service three days later with Ruth and her family. Once inside, we separated, women and girls to one side of the central aisle, men and boys to the other. I felt the eyes of the congregation upon me as I followed Ruth, but I looked forward, my back as straight as a plank of wood.

The interior of all synagogues followed a similar plan. The places of honor were in the front, facing the congregation. Local Pharisees, scribes, visiting dignitaries, officers of the synagogue, and the rabbi usually occupied these benches. On a high platform behind them was the table where the scrolls of the Torah reposed.

The first part of the service consisted of prayer, which we began with the
shema
, the prayer that all Jewish men were required to recite twice a day:

My lips moved, following the words I had known by heart since I was a child. When we had finished, I shivered a little. It felt so strange
to be back in familiar surroundings with familiar sounds and smells. Ruth’s youngest daughter looked up at me and I smiled at her reassuringly. She smiled back.

The second part of the service consisted of readings from the Torah. The words were first read in Hebrew and then translated by one of the synagogue officers into Aramaic so the congregation could understand.

During the third part of the service the rabbi would invite a distinguished person to speak, and today he called upon a visiting scribe who talked about the time when our people were slaves in Egypt and the Canaanites occupied our land. He spoke of how Joshua had been led by the Lord to reclaim the Promised Land for His people. He spoke of David, our great warrior king. And he spoke about the present time, about how the Roman occupation was like those that had gone before. He said we must be prepared to do as Joshua and David had done—go to battle for our country. A great commander-king was coming to lead us, he said, and we must pray for the Messiah to arrive soon. Once he showed himself, the Romans would be defeated just as surely as all the other pagan armies had been defeated all those years ago.

I was stunned by the fiery words. I had become accustomed to a city where Romans and Jews lived together peacefully.

The path to our marriage is clear because of the old Jew’s death
.

Marcus’ words leaped into my mind in all their callous indifference. Aaron’s murder had not caused a ripple of guilt to disturb his conscience. In Sepphoris, Jews and Romans might live without animosity, but the Romans believed themselves vastly superior. The Roman Empire ruled with an iron fist, and even if the iron was disguised, as it was in Sepphoris, it was still there.

After the service was over, the men gathered in the synagogue courtyard, talking excitedly about what the visiting scribe had said. Most of the women were interested in meeting the exotic stranger in their midst—me. I smiled and talked about my girlhood in Magdala and how happy I was to be back on the lake among good Jewish people once again.

A number of the older women held back, shooting baleful looks my way, but on the whole I was pleased with my reception. I gave the women around me a severely edited version of my life in Sepphoris, and they listened eagerly. I had been right to return to the lake, they told me, where the people followed the Law of God and of the elders who had gone before us.

The women said nothing about the scribe’s speech, but it was in my mind the whole time I walked home.
The Messiah
, I thought. It is the hope of a messiah that sent Daniel to the desert. I saw his face in my mind as I turned down my street—not the Daniel who had come to me in Sepphoris but the Daniel I had known in Magdala. Happy. Young. Loving me.