He didn't have any more fever.
People didn't talk about it now.
I stayed close to him to learn what he had to say. And he would not stop speaking his mind about King Herod Archelaus, no matter what Joseph said to him, and Alphaeus gave up too. Archelaus had sailed to Rome. The word was out. But so had others of Herod's children, "those who had been lucky enough to survive," said Cleopas. For it seemed the King had murdered five of his own sons as well as countless other helpless men over the thirty and more years of his reign.
Joseph's brother Simon was quiet too, and so were his boys and girl, as they'd always been. They had no interest in these things. And neither had my mother.
When we parted from Zebedee and my mother's dearest cousin, Mary Alexandra, there was much crying because "the three Marys" wouldn't be together again until the next Festival in Jerusalem and with things as they were, who knew when it would be safe to go?
And Elizabeth, what about Elizabeth, they sobbed, alone in the world and Little John going to the Essenes, and though they had left her a long time ago back beyond Jericho, they cried about her all over again. They cried about people I didn't know, and then off they went on their beasts, Zebedee and his kindred, towards the Sea of Galilee, to Capernaum. I wanted to go to the Sea of Galilee too. I wanted to see it with all my heart.
I missed the sea. That is, if I had a single thought of not being afraid, I missed the sea. Alexandria was a narrow piece of land between the Great Sea and the lake. You could always smell the water in Alexandria. You could always feel the cooling breeze. But we were inland, and the land was rocky and the paths hard. And there were sudden rains.
These were the last of the lesser rains, said the men, who knew the seasons, and it was late for them, and in any ordinary time, they would have been good. But now there was no one thinking about the harvest or the crops, only of getting away from the rebellions and the troubles. And the rains made us huddle together under our cloaks, and they made us cold.
The rains put the women in a terrible fear for Cleopas, but Cleopas didn't take sick. He no longer coughed at all.
Those who passed us on the road brought stories of more riots in Jerusalem. It was said the Roman soldiers were on the march from Syria, there was no question of it. Our men threw up their hands.
As we went on, there were still many with us - pilgrims returning to towns in Galilee, and we began to climb into higher, green country and I liked this very much.
Everywhere I turned there were forests of trees, and the sheep grazing on the slopes, and here at last we did see the farmers at work, just as if there were no wars at all.
I would forget about bandits and trouble. Then out of nowhere, over the rise of the hill would come a pack of the riders, sending us all screaming. Sometimes the great number of homeless pilgrims was too much for them, and they rode off into the fields and around us and left us in peace. Other times they tormented the men who gave them nothing but humble answers as if the men were stupid when the men were not.
Night after night, new men were at our dinner circle, some of them Galileans headed north to other villages, some of them our kindred but distant whom we really didn't know, and some of them refugees from the raids and the fire. The men sat around the fire and passed the wineskin and they argued and disputed and shouted at one another, and Little Salome and I both loved to listen to what they had to say.
Rebel leaders had risen everywhere, said the men. There was Athronges, with his brothers, gathering forces, and on the rampage, and many going to him. And also in the north, Judas bar Ezekias, the Galilean.
And not only were the Romans on the march, but they had been joined by the men of Arabia Petrea, and the Arabians were burning villages because they hated Herod and there was no Herod here to fight back and make order. And the Romans were doing what they could.
All this encouraged us, and all who were around us, to move quickly towards Galilee even though we never knew where we might meet with these terrible forces.
The men disputed wildly.
"Yes, everybody talked about the evils of King Herod, what a tyrant and what a monster he was," said one of the men, "but look what happens to this nation in the blink of an eye! Must we have a tyrant to rule us?"
"We could do well and good with the Roman governor of Syria," said Cleopas. "We don't need a Jewish King who isn't a Jew."
"But who would be here, here in Judea and Samaria and Peraea and Galilee with the authority!" asked Alphaeus. "Would it be Roman officials?"
"Better than the Herods," said Cleopas. And many others said the same thing.
"And what if a Roman prefect comes marching into Judea with a statue of Caesar Augustus as the Son of God?"
"But they wouldn't do that, they would never do that," said Cleopas. "In every city of the Empire, we're respected. We keep the Sabbath, we're not required to join in the army. They respect our ancestral Laws. I say better them than this family of madmen who plot against each other and slaughter their own blood!"
The talk went on and on. I liked to fall asleep listening to it. It made me feel safe.
"I'll tell you this much because this much I've seen," said my uncle Alphaeus. "When the Romans put down a riot, they kill the innocent with the bad."
"But why do the innocent suffer?" James asked, James, my brother, who was now one of them, as if he had ever been anything else.
"How are soldiers to tell who is innocent or guilty when they come down on a mob in a city, or on a village?" said a stranger, a Jew from Galilee. "You can be swept up like that by them. I'm telling you when they come, you get out of the way. They don't have time to listen to you tell them you've done nothing. It's one swarm of locusts after another, the thieves first and the soldiers second."
"And these men, these great warriors of old," Cleopas said, "these new kings of Israel rising up out of slavery all around us, these sudden anointed leaders, where will they take this land except into more and more misery?"
My aunt Mary, the Egyptian, cried out.
I opened my eyes and sat up.
My aunt Mary rose up suddenly from among the women and came over to them, her hands shaking, her eyes streaming with tears. I could see her tears in the firelight.
"Stop it, don't say any more," she shouted. "We came out of Egypt to listen to this? We came from Alexandria to make our way through the Jordan Valley in fear and terror of these fools, and when it's quiet and we're almost home, you frighten the children with all your shouting, all, all your prophesies, you don't know the will of the Lord, you don't know anything! We could get home tomorrow and find Nazareth's been burnt to the ground."