Now as if nothing had happened, as if no one had died in the street we went on.
We made a big thick, crowded circle. The babies were quiet enough for Elizabeth to be heard. I sat before Joseph, my legs crossed, as were his, and Little Salome was right by me, leaning back against her mother. Cleopas was still in the other room.
"I'll make my words quick," Elizabeth said. When I'd awakened this morning, she'd been talking of grandfathers and grandmothers, and who had married who and gone to what village. I couldn't remember all those names. Both the women and the men had been repeating what she'd been telling, in order to remember it.
Now, she shook her head before she began and she lifted her hands. I saw her gray hairs under the edge of her veil, running through her darker hair.
"This is what I must tell you, what I never put in a letter to you. When I die, which will be soon - and no, don't say that it won't. I know that it will. I know the signs. When I die, John will go to live with our kindred among the Essenes."
All at once there was fussing and crying out. Even Cleopas appeared in the door, huddled over, with his hand around his chest.
"No, why in the world have you made such a decision!" he said. "To send that child to people who don't even worship in the Temple! And John, the son of a priest! And you married all your life to a priest, and Zechariah, the son of a priest, and before him?"
Cleopas limped, holding his stomach, until he reached the circle and then dropped to his knees, my mother right there to help him and pull his robe free, and straighten it around him. On he went. "And you would send John, whose mother is of the House of David, and whose father is of the House of Aaron, to live with the Essenes? The Essenes? These people who think they know better than all the rest of us what is good and what is bad, and who is righteous and what the Lord demands?"
"And who do you think the Essenes are!" said Elizabeth in a low voice. She was patient but wanted to be understood. "Are they not from the Children of Abraham? Are they not of the House of David and the House of Aaron, and from all the Tribes of Israel? Are they not pious? Are they not zealous for the Law? I'm telling you, they will take him out in the wilderness and there they'll educate him and care for him. And he, the child himself, wants this and he has reason."
My cousin John was looking at me. Why? Why not at his mother as everyone else was, when they were not looking at him? His face didn't show much. He stared at me and I could see only a calmness in him. He didn't look like a little boy. He looked like a little man. He sat opposite his mother, and he wore a plain white tunic of far better wool than mine, or any of ours, and over that a robe of the same fine weave. And these things I'd seen before but not thought of, and now as I took them in, I felt a great wondering about him, but Cleopas was talking and I had to follow his words.
"The Essenes," Cleopas said. "Will none of you speak up for this boy before he becomes the son of men who don't stand before the Lord at the appointed times? Am I the only man here with a voice? Elizabeth, on the heads of our grandparents, I swear this must not - ."
"Brother, calm yourself," said Elizabeth. "Save your passion for your own sons! This son is mine, entrusted to me by the Lord in my old age against all probability! You don't speak to a woman when you speak to me. You speak to Sarah of old, to Hannah of old. You speak to one chosen for a reason. Am I not to provide for this child what I think the Lord will have?"
"Joseph, don't let this pass," said Cleopas.
"You stand closest to the boy," said Joseph. "If you must speak against his mother, then speak."
"I don't speak against you," said Cleopas. Then the cough came up in his chest, and he was in pain. My aunt Mary was worried and so was my mother. Cleopas raised his hand, begging for patience. But he couldn't stop the cough. Finally he said, "You speak of Sarah, the wife of Abraham," he said, "and you speak of Hannah, the mother of Samuel, but did either of these men fail to do what the Lord commanded, and you talk of sending your boy to live with those who turn their backs on the Temple of the Lord?"
"Brother, you have a poor memory," said Elizabeth. "To whom did your sister, Mary, come when she learned that she was chosen to bear this child Yeshua? She came to me and why? Now, before some other calamity befalls this village, I beg you to listen to my decision, and I have asked you to listen to it, not to dispute with me. I don't put it before you for judgement, you understand. I tell you, the boy goes to the Essenes."
Never had I heard a woman speak with this kind of authority. True, there had been venerable women in the Street of the Carpenters in Alexandria, women who could bring the children to silence with the clap of their hands, and women who asked questions in the synagogue to make the Teacher go to his scrolls. But this was stronger, and more clear than anything I'd ever heard.
Cleopas fell silent.
Elizabeth lowered her voice and spoke on.
"We have brethren with them, grandsons of Mattathias and Naomi, who went out long ago to the desert to live with them, and I've spoken with them, and they will take him, even now. It's their way to take children and bring them up strictly, abiding by their rules of purity and fasting, and strict community, and all these are natural things to my son. And he will study with them. He will learn the prophets. He will learn the word of the Lord. The desert is where he wants to be, and when I'm gathered to my ancestors there he will go until such time as he is a man and decides for himself what he will do. I have already provided for John with the Essenes and they wait only for my word, or for him to come to those that live on the other side of the Jordan and they will take him far out away from here to where he's to be brought up removed from the affairs of men."
"Why can't you come with us to Nazareth?" asked Joseph. "You are welcome. Your brother surely will say so, as it's the house of his parents that we go to, all of us - ."
"No," said Elizabeth. "I will stay here. I'll be buried with my husband, Zechariah. And I will tell you the reason why this child is to go."
"Well, say the reason," said Cleopas. "And you know I want you to come to Nazareth. Surely it is right for John and Yeshua to be brought up together." Then he started coughing again, trying to hide it. But I knew if he hadn't been coughing he would have said a lot more.
"This is what I couldn't write to you in a letter," said Elizabeth. "Please listen because I only want to tell it one time."
The mothers said hush to the babies. Cleopas cleared his throat. "Come out with it," he said, "or I may die without hearing it."