Bruria, our refugee, came with us, and so did the Greek slave girl Riba, with her newborn in a sling, tending to everyone.
Now I should say one reason that Joseph brought Bruria was in the hope that when we passed the site of her farm Bruria would want to reclaim it. Bruria had many of her papers, which had been recovered from the burnt place, and surely, said Joseph, there were people there who knew it was her property.
But Bruria had no desire to do this. She wanted nothing. She worked as a woman in sleep, helping but wanting nothing for herself. And Joseph told us apart from her that we must never judge her or be unkind to her. If she wanted to remain with us forever, she could. We had all been strangers once in the Land of Egypt.
No one minded at all, and my mother said so. Riba was a joy to the women, said my aunt Salome. She was modest as a Jewish woman, and clean and helpful, and did as we all did in everything.
We had come to love Riba and Bruria. And when Bruria passed the site of her old farm and did not care, we were sad for her. That was her land and she ought to have it.
Now with us too on the road came the Pharisees, all in a group with their beasts for the women and the old men to ride, and their household. And there were other households from Nazareth as well, and from many other villages who joined the procession.
Our kindred from Capernaum, the fishermen and their wives and sons met us too - these were Zebedee, the beloved cousin of my mother and his wife, Mary Alexandra who was my mother's cousin, too, and both distantly cousins of Joseph, and many others, some of whom I remembered, some not.
Soon there was no end of people on the road, talking and singing the Psalms as we'd done that first day in Jerusalem so long ago. We sang those sweetest Psalms called the Psalms of Praise.
When we started to climb up from the Jordan towards the Holy City, through the steep mountains, I felt the old fear. I wanted my mother and I didn't want anyone to know it. It had been a long time since I'd had the bad dreams, but they came back. I slept close to Old Sarah when I could, and if I woke up crying, her voice would make the dream go away. I knew that James woke up at these times, and I didn't want for him to know this. I wanted to be strong, and with the men now.
It was not a hard journey; it was good to see the villages being rebuilt which had suffered fire; the city of Jericho was being rebuilt and all around it the beautiful date palms and the great forests of balsam were doing well.
Now the balsam was a tree that grew nowhere else in the world but here, and its perfume sold for a great deal, and the Romans were a big market for it.
The sun was shining on all this when I saw it this time, and before Jericho had been a city of the night in flames and made me cry in terror. Of course we had to see the foundations of the new palace and how the carpenters were proceeding. My uncles inspected everything from the piles of masonry on the site to the framing and the clearing of the land for the new rooms that would be built for Archelaus.
Now right after Jericho we came to the village where we'd left our cousin Elizabeth and Little John.
My mother was troubled as we approached, and so were Zebedee and his wife. It had been a long time since anyone had received a letter from Elizabeth.
When we arrived, we found the little house where we'd stayed shuttered and vacant. I thought my mother was going to suffer a terrible blow, and it did come but not as bad as I had feared.
Distant kindred there soon came to tell us that Elizabeth, wife of Zechariah the priest, had suffered a fall only a month before, and she'd been taken up to Bethany near Jerusalem. She could no longer speak, they told us, or move very much, and Little John had gone on to live with the Essenes in the desert. Several of the Essenes had come to take him out with them to a place near the edge of the mountains just above the Dead Sea.
Finally we had come up through the long winding mountain passes, to the Mount of Olives, from which we could see, over the Kidron Valley, the Holy City lying before us. There rose the white walls of the Temple, with its great trimmings of gold, and all the little houses spilling up and down the hills around it.
Everyone cried for joy and gave thanks at the sight of it. But the fear got a grip on me, and I didn't tell anyone. Joseph lifted me up but I was too big now to be on his shoulders. Some of the children were trying to squeeze to the front of the crowd. I didn't want to go.
Fear rose in me like a sickness in my throat, from which I couldn't escape. It didn't matter that there was the sun in the sky. I didn't see it. I didn't see anything but darkness. I think Old Sarah knew because she drew me close to her. I loved the smell of her wool robe, and the soft touch of her hand.
After the prayers were offered, people began to point out where the colonnades had been burned, and where there was rebuilding. There was much pointing and trying to determine things.
"And you can be sure the carpenters and the stonemasons are happy," said my uncle Cleopas bitterly. "They burn it, we rebuild it." We laughed at the truth of that, but James gave Cleopas a sharp look as though he didn't want him to say this. My uncle Alphaeus spoke up, "Well, the carpenters and the stonemasons of Jerusalem are always happy. They've been working on the Temple since they were born, most of them!"
"They'll never finish," said Cleopas. "And why should they? We have kings with blood on their hands and in their guilt they build the great Temple as if this will make them righteous in the eyes of the Lord. Well, let them do it. Let them offer their sacrifices, the Prophets have spoken on their sacrifices - ."
"That's enough talk against them," said Alphaeus. "We're going down into the city."
"And the Prophets have said it," Joseph added quietly with a smile.
Cleopas said under his breath the words of the Prophet, " 'Yea, I am the Lord and I do not change.' "
And more and more they talked of how this was the biggest Temple in all the world. But these things I heard through the fear I felt, remembering the bodies everywhere, and more than that a great terrible misery, a misery that said, you will know nothing but misery. This will never go away.
Again, I was lifted, this time by my uncle Alphaeus.
I looked at the Temple, fighting the fear, looking at its great size, and how the city appeared to grow up around it and hold on to it. The city was part of it. The city was nothing without it. There were no other temples in Jerusalem but the Temple. And the great glory of the Temple did seem beautiful - white and shining and full of gold - unspoilt - at least at this distance.
There were other big buildings, yes. Uncle Cleopas pointed out to me the great palace of Herod, and the fortress, the Antonio, which was right beside the Temple, and always full of soldiers. But these were nothing. The Temple was Jerusalem. I saw it. And the sunlight was shining, and the fear, the memories, the darkness, went away.