But I rose to my feet.
My uncle Cleopas spoke gently. "Why couldn't you have married her yourself, my son?" he asked pleadingly. "Who is it that asks this of you, that you don't marry?"
"Oh, he's too good for that," declared James. "He would do Moses one better and not take a wife; he would do Elijah better and not take a wife. He would live as an Essene but not with the Essenes for he's too good for them. And had it been any other man in that grove with the girl, she'd be ruined. But all know you, no, you would never have touched her."
He drew in his breath for another rush of words, but I stopped him.
"Before you make yourself positively ill with rage," I said, "let me ask my mother - bring here, please now, the gifts that were given to me when I was born. Set them here before us."
"My son, are you certain?"
"I am certain," I said. I kept my eye on James.
He went to speak and I said:
"Wait."
She went out directly.
James stood regarding me with cold contempt, ready at any moment to erupt. My brothers were now grouped about, behind him. My nephews stood watching, and into the room had come Aunt Esther and Mara. Shabi and Isaac and Menachim stood against the wall.
I looked unwaveringly at James.
"I am weary of you, my brother," I said. "In my heart, I'm weary."
He narrowed his eyes. He was astonished.
My mother came back. She held a chest which was heavy for her to hold, and Mara and Esther assisted her as she brought it forward and set it down on the floor in front of us.
Decades, it had been hidden away, this chest, ever since our return here from Egypt. James had seen this chest. James knew what it was, but my other brothers had never set eyes on it, as they were the sons of my uncle Cleopas, and they'd been born after me. None of the younger men had ever seen it. Perhaps the boys in the room had never even heard tell of it. Perhaps Mara and Little Mary didn't even know that it existed.
It was a Persian chest, plated in gold and exquisitely decorated with curling vines and pomegranates. Even the handles of the chest were gold. It shone in the light, brilliantly as the gold of Avigail's necklace had shone on her neck.
"It's never enough for you, is it, James!" I said. My voice was low. I struggled against my anger. "Not the angels filling up the night skies over Bethlehem, not the shepherds who came through the stable door to tell my mother and father of the angels' song, no, not enough for you. And not the Magi themselves, the richly clad men from Persia who descended on the narrow streets of Bethlehem with their caravan, brought there by a star that lighted the very Heavens. Not enough for you! Not enough for you that you yourself saw these men put this chest at the foot of my cradle. No, not enough, never enough, no sign ever. Not the words of our blessed cousin Elizabeth, mother of John bar Zechariah, before she died - when she told us all of the words spoken by her husband as he named his son, John, when she told us of the angel who'd come to him. No, not enough. Not even the words of the prophets."
I stopped. He was frightened. He backed away and my brothers shifted uneasily away from me.
I stepped forward and James stepped back again.
"Well, you are my older brother," I said, "and you are the head of this family, and I owe you obedience, and I owe you patience. And obedience I have tendered and patience I have tried, and will try again, and, with it all, respect for you, whom I love and have always loved, knowing who you are and what you are, and what you've endured and what we all must endure."
He was speechless and shaken.
"But now," I said. "Now hear this." I reached down and opened the chest. I threw the lid back. I stared at the contents, the glistening alabaster jars, and the great collection of gold coins that it held, nestled in their tapestried box. I lifted the box. I emptied the coins onto the floor. I saw them glittering as they scattered.
"Now hear this," I said. "This is mine, and was given me at my birth, and I give it now for Avigail's bridal raiment, and for her rings, and for her bracelets and for all the wealth that's been taken from her; I give it for her canopy. I give it for her! And my brother, I tell you now I will not marry. And this - this is my ransom from it!" I pointed to the coins. "My ransom!"
Helplessly, he looked at me. He looked at the scattered coins. Persian coins. Pure gold. The purest gold of which a man can form a coin.
I didn't look down at them again. I'd seen them once long ago. I knew what they looked like; I knew how they felt, what they weighed. I didn't look now. But I saw them shining in the darkness.
My vision was blurred as I looked at James.
"I love you, my brother," I said. "Let me in peace now!"
His hands hovered, fingers opening uncertainly. He reached out for me.
We stood reaching for each other.
But a knock sounded on the door, an insistent knock, and after it another and another.
From without came the loud voice of Jason. "Yeshua, open to us. Yeshua, open now."
I hung my head and folded my arms. I looked at my mother and gave her the most weary smile and she clasped my neck with her hand.
Cleopas opened the door.
In, from the crashing downpour, came the Rabbi, under a tent of wool wrappings, and with him Jason, covered in the same way. The door banged in the wind, and the wind gusted through the room, like a beast let loose among us. Cleopas shut the door.
"Yeshua," said the Rabbi without a word to anyone else standing. "In the name of Heaven, stop it."
"Stop it?" asked James. "Stop what!"
"The rain, Yeshua!" said the Rabbi earnestly, imploring me, from beneath his shadow hood of wool. "Yeshua, it's an inundation!"
"Yeshua," said Jason, "the village is going to be washed away. Every cistern, mikvah, jug is full. We're in a lake! Will you look outside? Will you listen to it? Can't you hear it?"
"You want me to pray for it to stop?" I asked.
"Yes," said the Rabbi. "You prayed for it to start, didn't you?"
"I prayed for weeks as did everyone else," I said. That was true. Then my thoughts returned to the terrible moment on the open slope. Father, stop this . . . send the rain. "Rabbi," I said. "Whatever I prayed, it was the Lord Himself who sent the rain to us."
"Well, that is so, most certainly, my son," said the Rabbi soothingly, his hands out to clasp mine. "But will you please pray now for the Lord to make the rain stop! I beg you."
My aunt Esther began to laugh. Slowly Cleopas began to laugh too, but this was low whispering laughter, this, until my aunt Salome joined in, and then Little Mary.