"I did."
"On her mother's side, our side, we have cousins in Sepphoris. But more to the point, we have cousins in Cana, whom you know very well. Hananel of Cana is your old friend. He's the first who comes to mind, but there are others. However, Hananel is a well-spoken and persuasive man."
Everyone nodded to this. We all knew Hananel.
I went on to the Rabbi,
"We laid the marble floors of his house years ago," I said. "On many a pilgrimage, I've spoken with Hananel, all the way to the festival, as have you."
"Yes, yes, and the very last time," said the Rabbi, "as we all went together, Hananel called my nephew Jason a nuisance and a curse, am I not correct?"
"I don't speak in connection with Jason, Rabbi," I said. "I speak in connection with Avigail. The old man is surely at home. We would have heard if he had left Cana to go to Caesarea, and we have not. He knows all of the family of Avigail's mother, and he's closer in kinship to her than he is to us."
"That's true," said James, "but he's an old man living alone with no sons living and his grandson is roaming the world, only Heaven knows where. What can he do?"
"He can come and talk to Shemayah and reason this matter out with him," I said. "And he can write to the kindred we don't know far and wide and he can find a place for Avigail to lodge. She need not starve to death in this village. This is not to be borne. She can go to her people in Sepphoris or in Capernaum or in Jerusalem. Hananel will know them. Hananel is a scholar and a Scribe and a judge. Hananel can speak where we can't be heard."
"This is possible. . . ." murmured the Rabbi.
"I'll go to him," I said. "I'll explain what happened. I'll lay before him the whole story as I saw it, and my own clumsiness. And he will understand."
"Yeshua, you are as brave as Daniel, to put your head in the lion's mouth," said the Rabbi, "however . . ."
"I'll go to him. It won't take an hour for me to get to Cana. What can he do? Turn me down."
"He has a mean tongue, Yeshua. He makes Shemayah look like a flower of the field for cheerfulness and sweetness. He does nothing but bemoan his wandering grandson, and he blames Jason for it. Jason. He blames Jason that his grandson is under a porch in Athens disputing with the heathens."
"It's no matter to me, Rabbi," I said. "He can heap me with insults. He has a clever tongue and a relentless tongue, and no patience for men like Shemayah. And I think he will remember his cousin Avigail, above all."
Joseph lifted his hand.
"I know he will remember his cousin Avigail," Joseph said softly. "We old ones," he said. He paused as if he'd lost his thought and then went on with vague eyes. "We watch the young ones on the pilgrimage, as if they were flocks of birds we must keep to the road. I've seen him many a time smiling at Avigail. When the girls broke into singing, he listened to Avigail. I saw him. And one time, over a cup of wine in the Temple Court as we sat together on the last day of the festival, he told me he heard her voice in his sleep. That wasn't so long ago. Perhaps two years ago. Who knows?"
This was exactly what I'd seen as well.
"I'll go then," I said. "I'll ask him to find a household for Avigail, away from Nazareth, where she can be properly cared for, and where she can rest."
Joseph looked up at me.
"Be careful, my son," he said. "He will be kind to Avigail, but not to you."
"He will bait you," said the Rabbi, "try to rattle you with his arguments and draw you in with his questions. He has nothing else to do in his library. And he is sick over the loss of his grandson, though he himself drove the boy away."
"So give me some armor for this journey, my lord?" I suggested.
"You'll know what to say," said the Rabbi. "Explain it as you have here. And don't let him drive you out of the house. If I were to go with you, we'd be in a battle, he and I, at once."
"Ask that he write to the family which is best for her," said Joseph. "And when such arrangements are made, that there is a place for her, let him come. Let him come and the Rabbi and I will go with him to see Shemayah."
"Yes," said the Rabbi. "The man can't turn away Hananel."
"Hananel! He's the son of insults," said James under his breath. "He once told me while I was working on his very walls that he would move Cana stone by stone so that it was farther away from Nazareth if only he could do so."
The Rabbi laughed.
"Perhaps he'll be proud to rescue the beloved child from this miserable place," Bruria offered.
Joseph smiled and winked and pointed agreeably at Bruria. He looked at me and whispered,
"Such is the path, perhaps, to the man's heart."
I took my leave, letting them come behind me. For this I needed a pair of better sandals, and fresh clothes. It wasn't a long walk, but the wind was fierce.
After I was dressed and ready to go, my mother drew me aside, though my brothers, as they prepared for work, were all watching her.
"Listen, what you did by the creek," she said. "It was kind, don't you ever think that it wasn't."
I nodded.
"It's just, well, you see, Avigail had asked her father . . . as well as us. She'd asked Shemayah if he would look kindly on you. It was before she spoke to us and before we told her that such a thing wouldn't happen."
"I see," I said.
"Have I wounded you?"
"No. I understand. He's been doubly shamed."
"Yes, and not a wise man, and not a patient one."
And what of her, my Avigail? What of her at this very moment when the sun beat down on the noisy town. In what dark room was she locked away, staring into the shadows?
I took a walking stick for good company and headed out for Cana.
Chapter Eleven
THERE WERE SCRIBES and scribes in Israel. A village scribe might be the man who wrote up marriage contracts, bills of sale, and petitions for hearing to the King's court or to the Jewish Sanhedrin in Jerusalem. Such a man might write letters for anyone and everyone who paid him to do so, and he could read what came in, and see that the contents were understood by those who lacked a facility for language. Amongst our people far and wide, reading was common; but writing took experience and skills. And so we had those kinds of scribes. There were three or four of them in Nazareth.
Then there was the other kind of scribe, the great Scribe who had studied the Law, who had spent years in the libraries of the Temple, the Scribe who knew the traditions of the Pharisees, the Scribe who could dispute with the Essenes when they criticized the Temple or the priesthood, a Scribe who could instruct the boys who came to the Temple to learn all that was contained in the Law and the Prophets and in the Psalms and in the writings, hundreds and hundreds of books of writing apart from these.