"But now, if I might," asked Reuben. "If I might for just a moment see the girl, speak to her, present to her this gift."
"What is this gift?" demanded James.
I motioned for him to back off. Everybody knew the betrothal wouldn't be final until Avigail had received Reuben's gift.
James stared at Reuben sullenly.
Reuben produced the gift dutifully, opening the silken wrapping. It was a gold necklace, very delicate and very beautifully made. It shone with gems. I'd seldom seen such a thing. It might have come from Babylon or from Rome.
"Let me see if the girl is well and able to speak to you," said my mother. "My lord, drink your wine, and give me leave to talk to her. I'll be back as soon as I can."
There were muffled noises from the room next to us. Several of the women came in. Reuben rose and so did James. I was already standing.
Hananel looked up expectantly, the light very bright on his slightly scornful and bored face.
Avigail was brought in the door.
She was dressed in a simple bleached woolen tunic and robe, and her hair was beautifully combed.
The women urged her gently forward. Reuben stood before her.
He whispered her name. He held out the silk-wrapped gift with both hands as though it was something fragile that might shatter. "For you, my bride," he said. "If you will accept."
Avigail looked up at me. I nodded.
"Go on, you may accept it," said James.
Avigail received the present and opened the silk. She stared at the necklace. She was silent. She was dazed.
Her eyes locked on those of Reuben of Cana.
I looked down at the grandfather's face. He was transformed. The cold hard look of scorn was broken and dissolved. He stared up at Avigail and his grandson. He said nothing.
It was Reuben who spoke in a halting voice.
"My precious Avigail," he said. "I've traveled many a mile since I last saw you. I've seen many a wonder and studied in many a school, and wandered to many a place. But through it all, I carried in my heart one most cherished memory with me, and that was of you, Avigail, of you as you sang with the maidens on the road to Jerusalem. And in my dreams, I heard your voice."
They stared at one another. Avigail's face was smooth, and her eyes soft and large. Then Reuben flushed red and hastily reached for the necklace, slipping it out of the silk in her hands which fluttered to the ground. He opened the clasp and he gestured: Might he put it around her neck?
"Yes," said my mother.
And my mother took the necklace from him and she closed the clasp at the back of Avigail's neck.
I stepped up and put my hands on the shoulders of Reuben and Avigail.
"Speak to the young man, Avigail," I said softly. "Let him know what's in your heart."
Avigail's face softened and heated and her voice came low and full of emotion.
"I am happy, Reuben." Then her eyes melted. "I've suffered misfortune," she whispered.
"I know this. . . ."
"I haven't been wise!"
"Avigail," I whispered. "You are to be a bride now."
"My young one," Reuben said. "Who of us is wise in such adversity? What is youth and what is innocence, but treasures that we're soon to lose in the world's trials? That the Good Lord has preserved you for me through my years of foolish roaming, I can give only thanks."
The women surrounded them, hugging them and patting them, and then they drew Reuben back, and they took Avigail away, to the far end of the house and up the steps.
I looked at Hananel. He was staring at me fixedly. His eyes were cunning, but his look was chastened and faintly sad.
It seemed everyone was on the move now in the room, urging our guests to make ready, if they wanted, for bed in a clean, dry room which had been readied for them, or insisting that they take more wine, or that they have more food, or rest, or whatever it was in the world they should desire.
Hananel kept his eyes on me. He reached up for me. I came round and sat down beside him.
"My lord?" I asked.
"Thank you, Yeshua bar Joseph," he said, "that you came to my house."
Chapter Sixteen
AT LAST OUR GUESTS were securely bedded down in their rooms, on the best rugs we had laid over straw for beds, with the few fine pillows we could gather, and the inevitable brazier of coals, and water should they require it. Of course they claimed it was more than they had ever expected, and we knew it was not, and insisted that we wished we could provide them with silken bedding, and they urged us to go on to sleep, and I came back to the main room where I almost always slept and fell down beside the brazier.
Joseph sat silent as before, gazing at me with thoughtful eyes, and Uncle Cleopas sat staring at the fire and savoring the cup of his wine, sipping from it, murmuring to himself.
I knew a wrenching misery. I knew it as I lay still in the silence and in the shadows, ignoring the coming and settling of my brothers Joseph and Judas. I knew it as vaguely as I was aware that Silas and Levi were there too and Little Cleopas with his wife, Mary.
I knew that Avigail was saved; I knew that somehow her misery was at an end. I knew that Hananel and his grandson Reuben would be good to her all her days. I knew that.
But I also knew that I had given Avigail away to another man, I'd given Avigail away forever.
And a wealth of possibilities now descended on me, possibilities which I'd glimpsed perhaps in the heated moments in the grove when I'd clung to her, possibilities choked off by necessity and decision. Now they came like the whispered taunts given an airy shape passing before my dulled eyes - Avigail, my wife, Avigail and I together with a house of little ones, Avigail and I amid trivial tasks and arbors of trailing vines, in weariness and with soft tender skin, dare one think of that, the brush of lips, yes, and a body crooked snugly against me in the night-to-night dark - ah, the essence of all that would have followed, and could have followed, if I'd taken her as my wife, if I'd done what every man in the village expected of me, what my brothers had expected of me long before the other men, if I'd done what custom and tradition required of me. If I'd done what my heart seemed to want from me.
I didn't want sleep. I feared sleep. I wanted peace, I wanted the day to come so I could walk, I wanted the rain to keep falling so that it would blot out every sound in this room, every spoken word. And why at all at this hour and after so much were they speaking?
I looked up. James stood glowering at me. Beside him stood Cleopas. My mother stood there trying to pull her brother away, and finally James let it out:
"And how are we to provide this bride with proper robes and veils and a canopy and all the attendants of which you so vehemently spoke, to marry such a man as the grandson of Hananel of Cana!" He rose off the balls of his feet in rage. "Tell me, what is it that lies behind your boast, you, who caused this disaster, this very disaster. How could you claim for her a raiment and preparations such as no one in this house could ever give to your sister!" There was a flood of words yet to come.