Mary of Nazareth (2 page)

The officer was pleased to see her fear. “Why hide?” he asked.

She glanced over to where they were holding her father. “My parents make me. They're afraid of you.”

The soldiers laughed.

“Did you think we wouldn't find you behind those barrels?” the officer said mockingly.

Miriam shrugged.

“She's a child, officer,” Joachim cried, his voice firmer now. “She hasn't done anything.”

“If she hasn't done anything, why were you so afraid we'd find her?”

There was an embarrassed silence.

Then Miriam replied, “My father was afraid because he's heard that Herod's soldiers kill even women and children. He's also heard that you take them away to the king's palace and they're never seen again.”

The officer laughed, startling Miriam, and the mercenaries laughed in imitation. Then the officer grew serious again. He seized Miriam by the shoulder and stared at her intensely.

“You may be right, little girl. But we only touch those who disobey the will of the king. Are you quite sure you haven't done anything wrong?”

Miriam held his gaze, her features motionless, her eyebrows raised uncomprehendingly, as if the mercenary had said something absurd.

“How could I do anything to the king? I'm only a child. He doesn't even know I exist.”

Again, the soldiers laughed. The officer pushed Miriam so that she fell into her father's arms. Joachim hugged her so tightly she could hardly breathe.

“Your daughter is a crafty little devil, carpenter,” the officer said. “You should keep an eye on her. Hiding her on the terrace isn't such a good idea. The boys we're chasing are dangerous. They even kill your people when they're afraid.”

         

H
ANNAH,
guarded by some of the mercenaries, was waiting at the foot of the staircase as they came down. She hugged her daughter and stammered a prayer to the Almighty.

The officer issued a warning. A gang of young brigands had tried to seize the tax collector's villa, looking, once again, to rob the king. They would be caught and punished. Everyone knew how. And all those who helped them would suffer the same fate. No mercy would be shown.

When the soldiers had finally gone, Joachim hastened to bar the door. There was a loud crackling from the hearth. The mercenaries had not merely overturned the furniture, they had also thrown Joachim's work on the fire. The pieces of wood he had fashioned so carefully now burned brightly, adding to the dim light from the oil lamps.

Miriam ran to the fire, crouched, and tried to remove the pieces of wood with the help of an iron poker. It was too late.

Her father put his hand on her shoulder. “There's nothing there to save,” he said softly. “It doesn't matter. What I made once, I can make again.”

Miriam's face was blurred with tears.

“At least they didn't touch the workshop,” Joachim sighed. “I don't know what held them back.”

As Miriam was getting to her feet, her mother asked, “How did they manage to find you? God Almighty, did they discover the hiding place?”

“No,” Joachim said. “She wasn't there, she was behind the barrels.”

“Why?”

Miriam looked at them. Their faces were still gray with fear, their eyes overbright, their features drawn at the thought of what might have happened. She thought of the boy hiding upstairs, in her place. She could have told her father about him. But not her mother.

“I thought they were going to hurt you,” she murmured, “and I didn't want to stay up there all alone while they did that.”

It was only a half lie. Hannah drew her close, wetting her temples with her tears and kisses. “Oh, my poor girl! You're mad.”

Joachim set one of the stools on its legs and smiled slightly. “She stood up well to the officer. Our daughter is a brave girl, and that's a fact.”

Miriam moved away from her mother, her cheeks flushing pink from the compliment. Joachim's eyes were full of pride, and almost happy.

“Help us to tidy up,” he said, “and then go to bed. We shan't have any more trouble tonight.”

         

T
HE
yells of the mercenaries did in fact cease. They had not found what they were looking for. In fact, they very rarely did, and this frustration often drove them as crazy as wild animals. When that happened, they slaughtered and destroyed without discrimination or pity. That night, however, they simply left the village, exhausted and sleepy, and went back to the legion's camp two miles from Nazareth.

As usually happened in cases like this, each household closed in on itself. The villagers bandaged their wounds, dried their tears, calmed their fears. It was only at dawn that they ventured out and spoke to each other about the terror they had been through.

Miriam had to wait for quite a while before she could slip out of bed. Hannah and Joachim, still shaking with fear, took a long time to fall sleep.

When she finally heard their regular breathing through the thin wooden partition separating her bedroom from theirs, she got up and, wrapped in a thick shawl, climbed the stairs to the terrace, taking care this time that no step creaked.

A crescent moon, veiled in mist, lacquered everything in a pale light. Miriam advanced confidently. She could have found her way in pitch darkness.

She easily found the plank that kept the hiding place closed. As she moved it, the trapdoor was pushed violently from the inside, and she just had time to step aside and avoid it hitting her. The boy was already on his feet.

“Don't be afraid,” she whispered. “It's only me.”

He was not afraid. Cursing, he shook himself like an animal to get the straw and wool from the bottom of the hiding place out of his hair.

“Not so loud,” Miriam whispered. “You're going to wake my parents—”

“Couldn't you have come earlier? A person could suffocate in there. And there was no way to open the damned box!”

Miriam chuckled.

“You locked me in, didn't you?” the boy growled. “You did it on purpose!”

“I was in a hurry.”

The young man merely snorted.

To placate him, Miriam showed him the mechanism that opened the trapdoor from the inside, a piece of wood that just had to be pushed hard. “It isn't complicated.”

“If you know how it works.”

“Don't complain. The soldiers didn't find you, did they? If you'd been hiding behind the barrels, you wouldn't have stood a chance.”

The boy was starting to calm down. In the gloom, Miriam could see his bright eyes. He might even have been smiling.

“What's your name?” he asked.

“Miriam. My father is Joachim, the carpenter.”

“For a girl your age, you're brave,” he admitted. “I heard you with the soldiers; you handled them well.” The boy rubbed his cheeks and neck energetically, to wipe off the wisps of straw that still clung to them. “I suppose I have to thank you. My name's Barabbas.”

Miriam could not help laughing. Because his name wasn't a real name; all it meant was “son of the father.” Because of his serious tone, too, and because she was pleased that he had complimented her.

Barabbas sat down on the logs. “I don't see what's so funny,” he said grouchily.

“It's your name.”

“You may be brave, but you're still as silly as a little girl.”

The barb displeased Miriam more than hurt her. She knew boys' minds. This one was trying to make himself seem interesting. There was no need. He was interesting without having to make an effort. He was a pleasant combination of strength and gentleness, violence and fairness, and did not seem overconscious of the fact. Alas, boys of his kind always thought that girls were children, whereas they, of course, were already men.

Intriguing as he was, though, he had brought the soldiers down on their house and the whole village.

“Why were the Romans looking for you?” she asked.

“They aren't Romans! They're barbarians. No one even knows where Herod buys them! In Gaul or Thracia. Perhaps from among the Goths. Herod isn't capable of maintaining real legions. He needs slaves and mercenaries.”

He spat in disgust over the low wall. Miriam said nothing, waiting for him to answer her question.

Barabbas peered into the dense shadows of the surrounding houses, as if to assure himself that no one could see or hear them. In the weak light of the moon, his mouth was handsome, his profile fine. His cheeks and chin were covered with a curly beard as thin as down. An adolescent's beard, which probably did not make him look all that much older in the full light of day.

Suddenly, he opened his hand. In his palm, a gold escutcheon glittered in the moonlight. It was instantly recognizable: an eagle with outspread wings, a tilted head, and a powerful, threatening beak. The Roman eagle. The gold eagle fixed to the tops of the ensigns carried by the legions.

“I took it from one of their storehouses,” Barabbas whispered, and laughed proudly. “We set fire to the rest before those stupid mercenaries even woke up. We also had time to pick up two or three bushels of grain. It's only fair.”

Miriam looked curiously at the escutcheon. She had never seen one so close. She had never even seen so much gold in her life.

Barabbas closed his hand again and slipped the escutcheon into the inside pocket of his tunic. “It's worth a lot of money,” he muttered.

“What are you going to do with it?”

“I know someone who can melt it down and turn it into gold we can use,” he said, mysteriously.

Miriam took a step away from him, torn between conflicting feelings. She liked this boy. She sensed in him a simplicity, a frankness, and an anger that appealed to her. Courage, too, because you needed courage to confront Herod's mercenaries. But she did not know if she was right. She did not know enough about the world, about what was just and what unjust, to be certain.

Her emotions drew her naturally to Barabbas's enthusiasm, his anger at the horrors and humiliations that even young children suffered daily in Herod's kingdom. But she could also hear her father's wise, patient voice, and his unswerving condemnation of violence.

Somewhat provocatively, she said, “You're a thief, then?”

Offended, Barabbas stood up. “Certainly not! It's Herod's people who call us thieves. But everything we take from the Romans, the mercenaries and those who wallow in the king's sheets, we redistribute to the poorest among us. To the people!” Underlining his words with a gesture, he went on, his voice full of barely contained anger. “We aren't thieves, we're rebels. And I'm not alone, believe me. I'm one rebel among many. The soldiers weren't only after me tonight. When we attacked those storehouses, there were at least thirty or forty of us.”

She had suspected as much even before he admitted it.

Rebels! Yes, that was what people called them—usually not approvingly. Her father and his fellow carpenters in Nazareth often complained about them. They were reckless, dangerous young men their parents should have kept locked up at home. What did they gain by provoking Herod's mercenaries? One day, because of them, every village in the region would be wiped out. A rebellion! A rebellion of the weak and the powerless, which the king and the Romans could put down whenever they chose!

Not that there weren't plenty of reasons to rebel. The kingdom of Israel was drowning in blood, tears, and shame. Herod was the cruelest, most unjust of kings. Now that he was old and nearing death, his cruelty was compounded by his madness. Even the Romans, soulless pagans that they were, were not as bad as Herod at his worst.

As for the Pharisees and Sadducees, the custodians of the Temple in Jerusalem and its wealth, they were not much better. They shamelessly submitted to the king's every whim. The laws they made were not there to promote justice, merely to help them hold on to the trappings of power and increase their wealth.

Galilee, far to the north of Jerusalem, had been ruined by the taxes that enriched Herod and his sons and all those who shared in their shameless ways.

Yes, Yahweh, as he had done more than once since he had made his covenant with Abraham, had turned his back on his people and his kingdom. But was that a reason to answer violence with violence? Was it wise, when you were weak, to provoke the strong and risk unleashing widespread carnage?

“My father says you rebels are stupid,” Miriam said, trying to make her voice sound as reproving as possible. “You're going to get us all killed.”

Barabbas laughed. “I know. A lot of people say that. They complain about us as if we were the cause of their misfortunes. They're scared, that's all. They prefer to sit on their backsides and wait. And what are they waiting for? Who knows? The Messiah, perhaps?”

Barabbas dismissed the word with a gesture of his hand, as if to scatter the syllables into the night.

“The kingdom is full of messiahs, fools, and weaklings, men, every one of them. You don't need to have studied with the rabbis to know that we can't expect anything good from Herod and the Romans. Your father is deceiving you. Herod was slaughtering, raping, and stealing long before we came on the scene. That's what keeps him and his children going. They're only rich and powerful thanks to our poverty! Well, I'm not the kind of person who waits. They won't find me cowering in my hole.”

He fell silent, choked with anger. Miriam did not say a word.

“If we don't rebel, who will?” he went on, his voice even harder. “Your father and all the old men like him are wrong. They'll die whatever happens. And they'll die as slaves. But I'll die as a Jew, a son of the great people of Israel. My death will be better than theirs.”

“My father is neither a slave nor a coward. He's as brave as you are….”

“What good did his bravery do him just now? He had to beg when the mercenaries found you hiding on the terrace!”