Tomorrow. Nazareth. In this beautiful land?
Two of the other women caught hold of her and took her away from the men. Cleopas shrugged his shoulders. The other men went on talking but in quieter voices.
Cleopas shook his head, and drank his wine.
I got up and went close to James, who was looking into the fire as he often did.
"We're going to be in Nazareth that soon?" I asked.
"Perhaps," he said. "We're close."
"But what if it is all burned?" I asked.
"Don't be frightened," said Joseph in a low voice. "It won't be burnt up. I know it won't. You go back to sleep."
Alphaeus and Cleopas looked at him. Some of the men were whispering their night prayers, heading for their beds under the sky.
"How are we to know the will of the Lord?" Cleopas said in a mutter, looking away. "The Lord wanted us to leave beautiful Alexandria for this, the Lord wanted us - ." He stopped because Joseph had turned away.
"What's happened to us so far?" Alphaeus asked.
Cleopas was angry and spoke low. Joseph looked at him the whole time.
Cleopas couldn't find his words.
"What's happened?" Alphaeus asked. "Now, tell me, Cleopas. What's happened?"
They were all watching Cleopas.
"Nothing has happened to us," Cleopas whispered. "We have been through it."
Everyone was satisfied. That was the answer they had wanted.
When I lay down, Joseph brought the blanket up over me. The ground under me was cool, and I could smell the grass. I could smell the sweet smell of the trees not far off. We were all scattered over the slope of the hill, some under the trees, and some in the open as I was.
Little Judas and Symeon snuggled up next to me, without even waking up.
I looked up at the stars. I'd never seen the stars like this in Alexandria, so clear, so many like dust, like sand, like all the words I'd learned and sung.
All the men had left the fire. The fire had gone out. All the better could I see the stars, and I didn't really want to go to sleep. I never wanted to sleep.
Far off people shouted. I heard screams. It was down the hill. I could barely hear the voices crying out down there, and then turning, I saw flames way off from us down there, and I hated the way they shivered, the flames, but the men didn't get up. No one moved. We were in darkness. Nothing changed in our camp, and it was the same for all those camped near us. I heard horses down there in the little valley.
Cleopas lay down beside me.
"Nothing changes," he said.
"How can you say that?" I asked. "Everywhere we go it's changing."
I wanted badly for the screams to die away. And they almost did. More flames. I was afraid of the flames.
There was a song of screams coming closer and closer. It was one woman screaming. I thought it would stop, but it didn't stop. And with it I could hear feet running, faint and then loud, stomping feet.
A man's voice rose in the dark, crying out terrible words, words I knew were hateful and mean as he flung them out, over the woman's screams.
In Greek he called the woman a harlot, he said he would kill her when he caught her, and terrible oaths came from him, terrible words I'd never heard spoken before.
Our men rose up. I rose up.
All at once the woman's steps were right near us, pounding up the slope. She was breathing hard and couldn't scream anymore. The distant fire showed nothing yet.
Cleopas rushed forward, and so did Joseph, and the other men, and I saw through the dark that they reached out for the woman as soon as she appeared, arms waving, against the fiery sky. They brought her down to the ground, and pushed her behind them into the blankets. They stood still. I heard her breathing, and her coughing and sobbing, and the women hushing her as if she was a little child, and pulling her away.
I was on my feet, and James was right behind me.
Against the faraway flames, I saw the man rise up and stop. He was a big black shape like the rocks around us. He was drunk. I could smell the wine on him. I could see him wag his head.
In an evil voice, he called out to the woman, in vile names, names I knew only from now and then in the marketplace, and names I knew were never to be said.
Then he went quiet.
The whole night was quiet, except for his breathing, and the crunch under his feet as he tried to get his footing.
The woman let out a cry, more like a choke, as if she couldn't help it.
At that the man laughed and he headed right towards my father and my uncles, and they took hold of him. It was one big shape of darkness taking over another great lump of darkness. The night was full of soft, but loud sounds.
Off they went up the hill, all of them, and it did seem now that there were a lot of them, maybe Alphaeus' two sons, too, because it was so quick and there were so many of those sounds. I knew what the sounds were. They were beating him.
And he had stopped his cursing and raging. And from everyone else nothing except the women shushing the hurt one.
They were gone!
I don't know why I didn't move.
I started to run after them.
I heard my brother James say:
"No."
The woman sobbed softly:
"A widow alone, I tell you, alone with my servant girl, and my husband not dead two weeks, and they come down on me like locusts, I tell you. What am I to do? Where am I to go? They burnt my house. They took everything. They broke what little I had. This is the dregs, I tell you. And my son believes they fight for our freedom. I tell you, all the filth is rising, and Archelaus is in Rome, and slaves killing their masters and all the world in flames." She went on and on.
I couldn't see anything. I listened for the sounds of the men. I heard nothing. I felt my skin all over.
"What are they doing with him?" I asked James. I could barely see him. A little bit of light in his eye.
Down below, in the valley, the fire burned but its great flames were finished.
"Say nothing," he said. "Go back to your bed."
"My house," said the woman, her voice full of hurt, "my farm, my poor girl, Riba - if they caught her, she's dead. There were too many of them. She's dead, she's dead, she's dead."
The women comforted her the way they comforted us when we were sad. They made sounds, more than they spoke.
"Go back to your bed," said James again to me.
He was my older brother. I had to do what he said. And Little Salome was crying a little, half asleep.
I went to her and hushed her and kissed her. She curled her fingers around mine, and I knew she was sleeping again.
I lay awake until the men returned.
Cleopas lay beside me as before. Little Symeon and Judas were sleeping all this time as if nothing had happened. Little children like that, once they fall into deep sleep, nothing wakes them up. All was quiet. Even the women weren't making much noise.