Daughter of Jerusalem (9 page)

His words struck me like physical blows.

“Do you want to do this to Daniel, Mary? Daniel whom you say you love?”

I struggled to find words. “But you told us we could marry!”

He shrugged. “This is the way things have always been. Why should you be different from any other girl?”

I felt my stomach heave.

“Go to see Esther. She has been making the arrangements for your wedding. And let us have no more of this rebellious talk.”

I stared at Lord Benjamin and knew I was beaten. I couldn’t rob Daniel of his future. I would have died for him. I wished I could die for him but it seemed all I could do was to marry someone else.

I ran all the way from Lord Benjamin’s room to the tiny cell I shared with Aunt Leah. I was shaking all over as if I had a fever, and in truth I did feel sick. My stomach heaved, and I thought for a moment that I might vomit all over the floor. I collapsed on my sleeping mat and buried my face in my trembling hands.

I began to weep, deep wrenching sobs that wracked my body.

The door opened, and Aunt Leah came in. “Mary? Miriam told me to come to you. Are you ill?”

I looked up, and she cried out when she saw my face. She dropped to her knees and took me in her arms. “What has happened?” she asked.

Through my sobs I managed to tell her about my interview with Lord Benjamin.

“My poor lamb.” Aunt Leah pressed my head to her breast and cradled me with her arms. “It was wicked of him to let you think you could marry Daniel when he had this in mind. I thought better of him.”

So had I. So had Daniel.

I couldn’t stop crying. “Lord Benjamin is an evil man, and I hate him! He lied to us! He lied to his own son!”

“Shh, shh,” Aunt Leah crooned. She held me tighter, rocking me
back and forth as if I were a baby. And like a baby, I burrowed into her, seeking the comfort no one could give.

“When is this marriage supposed to take place?” she asked after my sobs began to slow.

I said thickly, “Aaron is coming here in two days’ time. We’re to be married the following day.”

I felt Leah’s breath catch. “How clever. While we were in Bethany, Benjamin arranged a whole wedding for you.”

“What am I going to do, Aunt Leah?” I wailed, pulling my face away from her tear-soaked shoulder.

She didn’t answer.

“Tell me what I should do!” I stared up at her, desperate for her to save me from this hideous fate.

She looked desolate. “My darling girl, there is nothing you can do. Men make the decisions in this world, and we have no choice but to obey.”

“But that’s not fair! I have a soul too! Surely the Lord thinks I’m just as important as a man!”

“I don’t think that He does,” Aunt Leah replied regretfully. “Remember how the Lord asked Abraham to sacrifice his son, and Abraham was ready to obey? The Lord never asked Sarah how she might feel about that, did He?”

“N-no,” I replied. “He didn’t.”

Leah sighed. “That’s how things have always been and always will be.”

They were almost the exact words Lord Benjamin had spoken.

“I’d rather be dead than married to Aaron bar David. He’s old and ugly and disgusting.” I shuddered at the thought of him touching me.

“Don’t say that you’d rather be dead!” she rebuked sharply.

I’d never heard her sound so angry.

“Only a coward would say something like that, and you’re not a coward, Mary. That I know for certain. You’re not a coward.”

She thought more highly of me than I did of myself. I said, “I can’t live without Daniel, Aunt Leah. I can’t. And I can’t marry this awful man. I’ll run away! I will!”

“Don’t speak like a fool,” she snapped. “You have no place to run. You will marry this man and go to Sepphoris with him, and you will make the best of it. That’s what we women do: we make the best of it.”

I sat there on my straw mat, with my robe and tunic pooled around me and Leah’s hands hard on my shoulders, thinking frantically. I’d already tried to go home to my father, and he had rejected me. I could run away, but, if I couldn’t run to Daniel . . . Aunt Leah was right. I had nowhere else to run. I couldn’t destroy Daniel’s future. I wouldn’t.

I shut my eyes tightly.
Daniel
, I thought.
My dearest love
.

Slowly I opened my eyes. I wiped away my tears with my veil. My voice was so hard it didn’t sound like my own when I said, “All right, then. I will marry Aaron bar David.”

I have little memory of my wedding and the subsequent journey to my husband’s home in Sepphoris. I protected myself from the horror of the experience by locking away the thinking, feeling part of me. My body was present, but my true self was shut away deep inside where no one could find it.

This was how I survived in my new life. I lived in a huge house, with Greek columns, beautiful mosaic floors, rich furniture, and I hated it. I hated every minute I spent there. I hated my old husband, who kept trying to make a child with me. I hated the gossamer silk tunics I wore in imitation of the Roman ladies. I hated the synagogue and the ladies who each tried to outdo the others with her jewels and her husband’s social status.

I had enough sense not to tell my husband how I felt. I’d learned a hard lesson about men: never give them any more power over you than they already possessed. Aaron liked to dress me up and show me off to all his friends, and I went along with it like a child’s doll that does the will of its owner. I raised unseen walls around me and let nothing or no one come in.

Aunt Leah had offered to come to Sepphoris with me, but I had
refused. I knew she’d be miserable in a place that didn’t follow the strict rules of Jewish law, and from what I had heard, Sepphoris was more Roman than Jewish. So I was alone. I spent all my free time in the garden, which really was quite lovely. And I thought about Daniel.

I was waiting for him to rescue me. On the horrible nights when Aaron came to my bed, I tried hard to see Daniel’s face and not the old and ugly face of my husband. How I wished they were Daniel’s arms around me and Daniel’s lips touching my skin. I don’t think I could have borne it if it hadn’t been for this fantasy.

I had convinced myself that Daniel would never allow me to be married to someone else—that he would come to Sepphoris and take me away. I didn’t worry about where he would take me. Daniel could read and write. We’d find somewhere in this great Empire where he could be a scribe. He didn’t have to study at the Temple to write letters or keep books for other people. He could do that already.

It was a full year before Daniel arrived. He came on Shavuot, the day we were supposed to have become betrothed. I was in the garden, speaking with our Greek gardener about planting rose bushes, when one of the housemaids came to find me.

“A man is here to see you, my lady. I told him that you were busy, but he was very insistent.”

I replied impatiently, “If it’s the goldsmith, tell him to go away. I don’t want that bracelet he’s been trying to sell me.”

“It’s not the goldsmith. He says he’s your foster brother, my lady. He gave his name as Daniel.”

I stopped breathing. She folded her hands and waited for my reply. “Where is he?” I managed to get out.

“In the foyer, my lady.”

“Bring him to the small reception room. Offer him . . .” I stopped. Daniel couldn’t eat anything that came from Aaron’s unclean kitchen. “Offer him a cup of water, and tell him I’ll be with him shortly.”

The girl flew off to do my bidding, and I ran indoors to change into something more modest. In my bedchamber I pulled a simple cloak out of one of the large clothes chests and flung it over my thin dress. I pulled off my long gold earrings and covered my elaborately dressed hair with a silk scarf. At the last minute I stripped off my rings and bracelets too.

I was shaking as if I had the fever.

I paused at the doorway to compose myself before stepping into the passageway. I walked down the hall and through the main reception room and courtyard with deliberate slowness, my trembling hands clasped tightly in front of me, my breathing coming fast and short. After what seemed like an age, I arrived at the door of the small reception room.

He was standing in the middle of the marble floor, intently regarding the painted lilies on the plaster walls. I advanced a few steps and then stopped, drinking in the sight of him.

Although my sandals made no noise, his dark head swung around almost immediately. It was dim in the room, and I couldn’t see his expression clearly. My heart was thundering.

He said, “I told your maid that I was your foster brother. It seemed easier that way.”

I shivered at the familiar, beloved sound of his voice. I began to walk toward him, my knees so weak I wondered that I could stand up.
“You needn’t have worried about the proprieties. Women in Sepphoris have more freedom than they’re allowed in Magdala.”

He made no move to meet me but stood still, his hands quiet at his sides. As he watched me approach, I checked a little, surprised at his stillness.

He was thinner than I remembered. Too thin, I thought.

I searched for something to say. “What did your father tell you about my marriage?”

He lips tightened. “When he came to see me in Jerusalem, you had already left for Sepphoris. He assured me that you’d been happy to win such a wealthy man for your husband. He told me to forget you, that I could marry much higher than a farmer’s daughter from Bethany.”

My mouth was so dry that it was difficult to form words. I longed for his embrace. “Did you believe him, Daniel? Did you think I was willing to marry Aaron?”

“Of course not. I thought he’d probably threatened you the way I’d threatened him.” He narrowed his eyes, and his nostrils flared, and I knew the very thought of what his father had done was making him angry.

This reassured me.

“What did he threaten you with, Mary?”

At the sound of my name on his lips my heart leaped into my throat. I whispered, “He said that if you married me, he would disown you, that you’d become an outcast from all your people, that you’d never be able to become a scribe.”

We stared at each other over the green and white marble that separated us. I said, “I couldn’t do that to you, Daniel. I loved you too much to do that to you.”

He nodded. His long lean body was taut as a strung bow. “I thought it might be something like that.”

I cried, “Why didn’t you come to see me? I’ve been looking for you and looking for you. I was beginning to fear that you believed him!”

He frowned. “How could you have expected me to come? You were married. There was nothing I could gain by seeing you other than tearing my heart apart even more.” He shook his head, as if in despair. “Did you think I could bear seeing you as the wife of another man?”

Tears began to slide down my cheeks.

His voice sounded choked. “Don’t, Mary. You never cry. Remember?”

“I cry all the time now. I cry every time I think of you.”

He took a step toward me, and suddenly we were in each other’s arms. I clung to him, breathing in his scent, pressing my cheek into his shoulder so hard the wool was leaving creases on my skin.

He held me so tightly that it hurt, and I reveled in it.
Daniel
, I thought.
Daniel, my dearest love
.