"We will all make this journey," said James. "All of you, immediately as soon as it's light, we pack up and we go, and we take provisions as we would for the festival. We all go."
"Yes," said the Rabbi, "it's as if we were going to the Temple, going for a festival, and we will all go. Yes. I'll go with you. Now, come with me, Jason, I must talk to the elders."
"I can hear voices out there," said Menachim. "Listen. Everybody's talking about it."
He rushed out into the darkness, letting the door flap behind him.
My mother had bowed her head and placed her hand on her ear as though listening to a distant and dim voice. I drew close to her.
Jason had rushed out. The Rabbi was going. Old Bruria came up beside us.
My mother was remembering, reciting, " 'And he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother's womb. He will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. He will go before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of fathers toward children and the disobedient to the understanding of the righteous - to prepare a people fit for the Lord.' "
"But who said this?" asked Little Joseph. Shabi and Isaac clamored with the same question.
"Whose words are those?" Silas asked.
"They were spoken to another," said my mother, "but by one who also came to me." She looked up at me. Her eyes were sad.
All around us the others accosted each other with comments, questions, talk of making preparations.
"Don't be afraid," I said to my mother. I drew her near me and kissed her. I could scarcely contain my happiness.
She closed her eyes and leaned against my chest.
Suddenly amid all the haste and talk, amid the general consent that we would all go, that nothing could be done now really in the dark, that we must wait for first light, amid all this - holding tight to her, I understood the expression I'd seen in her eyes. I understood what I'd thought was fear or sadness.
And will I look back on these days, these long exhausting days, will I look back on them ever from someplace else, very far away from here, and think, Ah, these were blessed days? Will they be so tenderly remembered?
No one heard her except me as she spoke. "There was a man in the Temple when we took you there," she said, "right after you were born, before the Magi had come with their gifts."
I listened.
"And he said to me, 'And a sword shall cut through your own heart also.' "
"Ah, those words you've never told me before," I answered her, secretively, as if I were only kissing her.
"No, but I wonder if it isn't now," she said.
"This is a happy time now," I said. "This is a sweet and good time, and we are all one household as we go out. Isn't that so?"
"Yes," she whispered. "Now, let me go. I have many things to do."
"One minute longer," I said. I clung to her.
I only let her go when I had to do it. Someone was shouting that Reuben had ridden in from Cana, that he too had the news. And that Shemayah stood in the street opposite staring into our courtyard.
I knew I had to go to him, to take him by the hand, and to bring him in to see Avigail.
Chapter Nineteen
IT WAS A LONG JOURNEY EAST and south, step by step and song by song.
By evening of the first day, we were a great shapeless mass of pilgrims, as great as we'd ever been on the road to Jerusalem, and indeed as many came now out of the villages and towns for this as they would have for that.
Shemayah and all his field hands had come along with us. But Avigail rode in the cart with my mother and my elderly aunts, and Little Mary, all of whom seldom crowded into it at the very same time. Joseph and Uncle Cleopas rode with Uncle Alphaeus in the bigger cart, against the numerous bundles and baskets, the Rabbi rode his own white donkey, and Reuben and Jason their powerful restless horses, which often carried them prancing ahead to wait for us at the next town marketplace, or well, or simply to come slowly inevitably riding back.
Old Hananel of Cana and his slaves caught up with us on the third day, and thereafter remained with us, though we were committed to a fairly plodding pace. And at evening it was just like the pilgrimages with the spreading out of our blankets, our tents, our fires, our prayers and hymns.
Everywhere we stopped we encountered those who'd been to the river, those who'd been baptized by John and his disciples, those who'd heard "the prophet John" for themselves. An air of gaiety surrounded those returning home, a fresh sense of expectation, though it attached itself to no particular prophecy, and no particular complaint or unrest.
Of course the men never stopped demanding to know, What was this baptism? And what did it mean? Teachers and scholars joined us, young men on horseback passed us. We came upon groups of the King's soldiers who'd been to the river and had only good things to say of it, and even bands of Roman soldiers headed to the river from Caesarea stopped to share a drink of wine with us, or take a bit of pottage and bread.
The Romans were curious about this strange man drawing crowds to the riverbanks. They spoke to us a little wearily of it; yet they too wanted to see the man in camel skin who stood knee-deep in the Jordan offering a purification. After all, they said, they had their own shrines back home here and there, and their own rites, just as we did. We nodded to this. We were happy to have them sit for a while or take a morsel of food before they hurried on.
Scholars sat in circles in the evening, reciting the Scriptures as to this great matter of purifying oneself in the waters of the Jordan. They spoke of the prophet Elisha and how he had sent Naaman, the Leper, to bathe seven times in the Jordan. "But the prophet did not baptize him," one of the scholars said. "No, not himself, he did not, but told the man to bathe."
"And remember," the Rabbi said quickly one evening, "that the Leper was scornful of the prophet, was he not? Scoffing at him, yes, remember, and angry that the prophet didn't even come out to him but sent him to do this - and what, I ask you, what indeed came to pass?"
Often the subject came up: we were celebrating our recent victory in Caesarea? The Rabbis and Pharisees spoke of this, and so did the soldiers. The Rabbis pointed out, in strong terms, that the place to give thanks to the Lord was not on the riverbank but in the Temple, the Temple which had been so grossly defiled by the approach of Pilate's ensigns. No one disagreed with this.
And when the Roman soldiers inquired, Were we having a joyful time of it because the Governor had stepped back from his position, they weren't particularly quarrelsome or concerned, only wondering, Why are so many people going to see this man, people from north and south and east and west, people even from the Greek cities of the Decapolis?