Her hair was luxuriantly free. Gold on the edge of her tunic shimmered, both at her throat and along her hem. Gold embroidering, rich and thick, and from her hair and her garments came this irresistible perfume.
Avigail. Avigail in a wedding tunic. Avigail, with her hair undone and flowing down, resplendent in the light. Slowly the light defined the long smooth curve of her neck, and the naked flesh of her shoulders beneath the embroidered gold. Her tunic was unclasped. Her hands, glittering with rings and bracelets, hung at her sides.
All of her beauty blazed in the dimness as if she were a treasure discovered in secret, meant to be revealed only in secret.
And there came the awareness to me, as the last vestiges of sleep left me: she is here with me and we are alone.
All my long life I'd lived in crowded rooms, and worked in crowded rooms and crowded places, and come and gone amid crowds, and amid women who were sister, aunt, mother, cousin - daughters or wives of others, covered women, shrouded women, women wrapped to the neck with their heads covered, women swaddled in blankets or glimpsed at village weddings now and then in layers of finery, beyond cascading veils.
We were alone. The man in me knew that we were alone, and the man in me knew that I could have this woman. And all the many dreams, the tortured dreams and tortured nights of denial, might lead now into the undreamt softness of her arms.
Quickly, I climbed to my feet. I reached down for the mantle and woolen veil she'd dropped, and I picked them up.
"What are you doing?" I demanded. "What mad thought has come into your mind!" I put the mantle over her shoulders and I put the dark veil over her head. I clasped her shoulders. "You're beside yourself. You won't do this. Now, come and I'll take you home."
"No," she said. She pushed me away. "I go to the streets of the city of Tyre," she said. "I go to fling myself into those streets. No. Don't try to stop me. If you do not want for yourself here what many men will soon have for the asking, then I go now."
She turned, but I caught her wrist.
"Avigail, these are the ravings of a child," I whispered to her.
Her eyes were bitter and cold as she looked at me, but even hard as they were they began to quiver. "Yeshua, let me go," she said.
"You don't know what you're saying," I said. "The streets of Tyre! You've never even seen a city like Tyre. This is childish foolishness. You think the streets are a bosom on which you can lay your head? Avigail, you come home with me, come to my house, with my mother and my sisters. Avigail, do you think we've watched all these doings in silence, without doing anything?"
"I know what you've done," she said. "It's no use. I'm condemned and I will not starve to death under the roof of the man who's condemned me. I will not!"
"You're going to leave Nazareth," I said.
"That I will do," she declared.
"No, you don't understand. Your kinsman, Hananel of Cana, he's written letters, he . . ."
"He's come to the very door this day," she said in a dark voice. "Yes, Hananel and his grandson, Reuben, and they stood before my father and asked for my hand."
She pulled back from me. She was shaking violently.
"And do you know what my father said to those men, to Hananel of Cana and his grandson, Reuben! He refused them! 'Do you think this broken cup,' he said, 'do you think this broken cup is your pot of gold!' "
She trembled as she drew in her breath.
I was speechless.
" 'I do not put that broken cup on the auction block,' he said. My father said . . . 'I do not put my shame in the marketplace for you to buy!' "
"The man's out of his mind."
"Oh, out of his mind, yes, out of his mind that his daughter Avigail has been handled, that she's been shamed! And he would have her die in her shame! To Reuben of Cana, he said this! 'I have no daughter for you. You go.' "
She stopped. She couldn't continue. She was so badly shaken that she couldn't get out her words. I held her shoulders.
"You are free of your father, then."
"Yes, I am," she declared.
"Then, you come home with me. You live under my roof until we get you away from this place and to our kindred in Bethany."
"Oh, what, the house of Caiaphas will take the humiliated and shamed country girl, the girl denied by her own father, her father who drove off every man who came to ask for her for two years, and has now slammed the door on Jason again, and on Reuben of Cana, Reuben who put his pride away and begged on his very knees!"
She pulled away from me.
"Avigail, I won't let you go."
She broke into sobs. I held her.
"Yeshua bar Joseph, do it," she whispered to me. "I'm here with you. Take me. I beg you. I have no shame. Take me please, Yeshua, I'm yours."
I began to weep. I couldn't stop it and it was as bad as it had been before she ever came, and as bad perhaps as her own weeping.
"Avigail, you listen to me. I tell you with God nothing is impossible, and you will be safe with my mother and my aunts. I'll send you to my sister Salome in Capernaum. My aunts will take you there. Avigail, you must come with me home."
She collapsed against me, and her sobs grew softer and softer as I held her.
"Tell me," she said finally in the smallest voice. "Yeshua, if you were to marry, would I be your bride?"
"Yes, my beautiful girl," I said. "My sweet beautiful girl."
She looked up at me, biting her lip as it quivered. "Then take me as your harlot. Please. I don't care." She shut her eyes as they flowed with tears. "I don't care, I don't care."
"Hush, don't say another word," I said gently. I took the edge of my mantle and wiped her face. I lifted her off my chest and I made her stand on her feet. I wrapped her veil around her, and threw the end of it over her shoulder. I closed her mantle so that no one would see the gold-trimmed tunic underneath. "I'm taking you home as my sister, my dearest," I said. "You'll come with me as I said, and these words and these moments will remain locked in our hearts."
She was too weary suddenly to answer me.
"Avigail?" I said. "You look at me. You will do as I say."
She nodded.
"Look into my eyes," I said. "And you tell me who you really are. You are Avigail, the daughter of Shemayah, and you've been slandered, wickedly slandered. And we will make it right."
She nodded. The tears were gone, but the anger had left her empty and seemingly lost. It seemed for a moment, she'd fall.