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  “It was as a gift, not as a loan, that they offered me to the Lord ; which gave the High Priest the authority to bestow me in marriage. And so I was married.”

  “Married! To whom? When? Why was I not invited to the wedding ?”

  Mary was troubled. “The High Priest decided to betroth me to Joseph of Emmaus, who married your sister Abigail.” She added hurriedly : “I have been staying at Lysia’s house—your niece, I mean. Lysia has been very kind to me, kindness itself.”

  “Joseph of Emmaus! What an extraordinary choice! He must be nearly seventy and has six grown children. Joseph, indeed! He is not rich. Nor learned. Nor influential. I remember that we girls all grimaced when he was chosen for Abigail ; but of course Abigail had a club foot and was not presentable in other respects.”

  “He is a good man, so they say !”

  “Oh yes, too good in a sense. Generous and pious to the point of simple-mindedness. Does he treat you well ?”

  “I have never seen him.”

  “But you said that you were married to him.”

  “No, I did not say that.”

  “But if you and he are betrothed, why does he not take you to his house? Why have you come running here like a fugitive ?”

  Mary whispered : “Forgive me, Aunt, but I cannot tell you that.”

  “Does ‘cannot’ mean that you are forbidden to tell me, or that you do not know ?”

  Mary began to weep again. “Do not press me to answer, dear Aunt Elizabeth. Give me refuge and peace. Let nobody know that I am here. Nobody at all.”

  Elizabeth was greatly puzzled. “Who sent you here to me under escort of the Sons of Rahab ?”

  “It was Anna, daughter of Phanuel, our guardian mother.”

  “A shrewd old lady. Tell me, does old Joseph know that you have come ?”

  “I am not sure. And I do not think that he would greatly care if he did know.”

  “Not care what has become of his betrothed wife ?” Elizabeth’s tone was indignant.

  “I beg you not to question me,” cried Mary in alarm. “I will be your devoted servant, Aunt. I will lie on straw and eat husks, if need be, and serve you foot and hand, but I beg you not to question me. Already I have said too much.”

  Elizabeth laughed. “I will restrain my curiosity, my dear, though upon my word yours is a very extraordinary visit. But this I demand to know—are you in trouble? Are you running away from Jerusalem because you have committed some crime? At least you can tell me that.”

  “As the Lord lives, I am not guilty of any crime !”

  “Good. I asked only to know where I stand ; I should not have liked to compromise my poor Zacharias by harbouring a criminal without his knowledge, though of course a guest is a guest. And there are degrees of criminality. Every girl is liable to make a fool of herself, especially with men, and I should not have been harsh to you if you had done so. Well, that is all I needed to know. I am delighted to have you here as a companion during my confinement ; your presence, I hope, will keep me from losing my temper with the maids. Besides, I love your mother. She was my darling from the day that she was born until the day that marriage parted us. For her sake I will cosset you as tenderly as childless Roman matrons cosset their Indian marmosets.”

  Mary smiled faintly. “But what will you tell my Uncle Zacharias ?”

  “Nothing at all. What female companions I have with me in my inner apartments are no business of his. After all, I redeemed this estate from mortgage with my marriage gift. He would have lost all but for me. Do you play draughts? Are you skilled at embroidery? Do you play the lyre ?”

  Mary answered modestly : “Our Temple education was thorough.”

  “Good again! Tell me, daughter : what is the latest news from Jerusalem? What is happening at the Palace? Is Queen Doris still in favour? I know Doris well. Dora, which is her family seat, lies not far from here, and she was in residence there during her long exile from Court. Has Prince Antipater sailed for Rome yet ?”

  Mary began to say something, but stopped and sat silent again.

  “Why, come now, these are not close secrets too, are they ?”

  Mary answered, as off-handedly as she could : “I know nothing about Queen Doris. Her son sailed from Caesarea a month ago.” She added in a rush : “But he is King Antipater now, co-ruler of the Jews with his father, not merel a prince.”

  Elizabeth looked incredulous. “What? Are you sure ?”

  “Am I sure of what? That he has sailed ?”

  “That he has been made a colleague of his father’s.”

  “Yes indeed. I was present when it was publicly announced in the Court of the Gentiles. The Levites blew a great many trumpets and everyone shouted ‘God save the King!’ ”

  Elizabeth rose from the floor where they had been sitting cross-legged and began to walk about restlessly. “Now what in the world is the meaning of this new move on the board ?” she cried. “Are they anxious or alarmed about it at Jerusalem ?”

  “Alarmed? Why should they be alarmed ?”

  “You know King Herod’s reputation ?”

  “I have heard many things spoken about him, both good and bad.”

  “Fewer good than bad ?”

  “Fewer by far, I grant you.”

  “Does it not surprise everyone that Herod should have raised his son to this dignity? Is it thought consistent with his jealous and tyrannical disposition ?”

  “I have not heard surprise expressed. King Antipater has never offended against his father in the least degree. Even those who have good excuse for hating the House of Herod confess that Antipater has given proof of a pious and noble nature. Besides, King Herod is growing old. I know little about these matters, but is it not natural that after his disappointment in the matter of the princes Alexander and Aristobulus he should lean on Antipater as on a staff that will never break and pierce his hands ?”

  “You champion Antipater with pleasant warmth. It is lucky that your Uncle Zacharias is not with us to hear you. How he detests the Herodians !”

  “But why should the people of Jerusalem be alarmed when Antipater is awarded a diadem ?”

  “Because Herod in a generous mood is Herod in a dangerous mood. Your learned father Joachim made this remark to my husband and myself some years ago. Often since then we have verified its truth. By the by, have there been any more hauntings lately in the City ?”

  “People still tell ridiculous stories of what has been seen or heard or dreamed. I pay no attention to them.”

  “I take them seriously. Hauntings, whether real or imaginary, are usually the prelude to deeds of blood.”

  “May the Lord avert them by his mercy !”

  Elizabeth was puzzled. As she lay sleepless that night she went over the evening’s conversation in her mind. Mary had said that she was betrothed to Joseph, while admitting that Joseph possibly did not know and probably did not care where she might be. Surely Mary had not been lying? Her mother Hannah had never lied : evaded a question, yes, but never lied. And surely that absurdly upright old Joseph was not a man to treat Joachim’s daughter with scorn or disrespect? He was courteous to a fault : there was a story that he once sent a servant in pursuit of a guest who had robbed him of a silver flagon, to present him with the stopper, saying : “Sir, this also was part of my master’s gift to you.” Yet Joseph was a very odd choice for a husband. Old Joachim was exceedingly rich. Mary was his only child and would inherit everything.

  Elizabeth began to wonder : had Mary been seduced by someone who either could not or would not marry her? Had the High Priest tried to fob her off in a hurry on old Joseph? Had Joseph, after paying the bride-money, become aware of the deception and, not wishing to father another man’s child, returned her quietly to the Temple? Had Anna then, to avoid a scandal, sent her down here, with the High Priest’s connivance, under escort of the Rechabites? Mary, however, had sworn that she was innocent of any sin. Had she perhaps been violated?

  Suddenly Elizabeth remember
ed that Mary had said at first that she was married. Not merely betrothed, but married! And afterwards she had distinguished the marriage from the betrothal. But a woman once married could not be betrothed unless the marriage had first been dissolved. Was this what she had meant? It did not seem likely. And had she said in so many words that she had been betrothed to Joseph? No, only that the High Priest had decided on the betrothal.

  Elizabeth could not solve the problem but decided to let it cost her no more sleep. Perhaps Mary would give away the secret one day by a chance indiscretion.

  Two pleasant months went by, and then Shelom of Rehoboth, a former confidential maid of Elizabeth’s, came to Ain-Rimmon from Jerusalem with her husband. Elizabeth had sent for her because of her skill as a midwife. A woman who first conceives at the age of thirty-six must be prepared for a difficult confinement.

  Shelom was married to the son of a former steward of the estate. She brought a budget of news about troubles in Herod’s palace. “Yes, my lady, the whole City is disturbed, I am sorry to say. Nobody seems to know how it all began or how it is likely to end. My sister-in-law was saying, the day that we came away : ‘It is indecent. We might be living among the barbarous Parthians, not in God-fearing Jerusalem.’ She is an excitable woman, is my sister-in-law, but there are many like her in our quarter. It is the yells and screams from the Palace at night that disturb her. The eunuchs are worse than the women, the way they scream under torture : they have no pride of sex, I suppose.”

  “It must be most unsettling, my dear Shelom. But you have yet to tell me what has happened ?”

  I know nothing for certain and fear to earn Solomon’s reproof of babblers and tale-bearers. However, I will tell you what is said. The story begins with Jochebed, the wife of the King’s brother Pheroras. She comes from Bethany, you know ; her father was a travelling tree-grafter. I cannot speak from any personal knowledge, but my husband’s family call her the cunningest schemer in all Israel. ‘How Prince Pheroras ever came to marry a woman of such low birth,’ my husband says, ‘I do not know ; he must have been bewitched.’ However that may be, she formed a close league with the Pharisee nationalists. You remember how heavily King Herod fined them when they refused to take the oath of allegiance to the Emperor, and how obligingly Jochebed paid the fine? Well, some of them began prophesying, to please her, that the sceptre of Herod would pass to Pheroras and herself. Herod’s spies soon reported this prophecy to him and he ordered Pheroras to divorce her, but Pheroras refused to do so, saying that he would rather die. What made things worse was that Queen Doris is Jochebed’s closest friend, and King Antipater himself is intimate with Prince Pheroras, who was a generous uncle to him while he was a private citizen. Then Salome, King Herod’s sister, took a hand in the game. Herod had been living on good terms with her since he married her off to his friend Alexas, the rich Philistine, who is reputedly one of the Lady Livia’s agents. She managed to prove to his satisfaction that the prophecy was bound up with some wild talk of a Messiah, and that behind the prophecy lay a plot against his life in which the royal Chamberlain Bagoas was implicated. So he arrested everyone whom she named.”

  “Was Pheroras perhaps to be the Messiah ?”

  “Oh no, my lady, not Prince Pheroras but a son who was to be born to him and his wife ; and Bagoas’s son was to be this Messiah’s principal minister. So of course the King—who, if I may put it that way, will tolerate no Messiahs but himself—immediately disproved the prophecy….”

  Elizabeth interrupted the story with a burst of loud laughter. How very comical, my dear Shelom! Either you have misheard the name or else it is another Bagoas. Bagoas the Chamberlain has been a eunuch from childhood !”

  “Comical or sad, my lady, it is nevertheless the truth. According to the prophecy, the infant Messiah would miraculously restore Bagoas to virility and enable him to beget children. So, as I was telling your ladyship, King Herod immediately disproved the prophecy by having Bagoas strangled. He also made an example of nine of the leading nationalists. Being Pharisees, of course, they believed in bodily resurrection, but he cheated them of their hopes by burning them alive. Twenty-three other men were executed and four women strangled. Oh, and he also impaled his pretty little catamite Gratus, the one who always used to tuck him up in bed and kiss him good-night. But he did not choose to do anything to Pheroras or Jochebed at the time—I suppose because there was no evidence to connect them with the plot—and Pheroras was indignant to be suspected of high treason and vowed that he would return at once to his principality across Jordan and not visit Jerusalem again until the King were dead.”

  “Boldly spoken. I suppose that Herod has done away with the poor fellow by now ?”

  “Yes, my lady, he died very soon afterwards, and the King brought his body back to Jerusalem just to prove him a liar, and gave him one of those costly funerals which he reserves for members of his family whom he has helped out of this world, and wept tears by the jarful.”

  “What has happened to Jochebed? If I know the Herodian way, she was at once accused of poisoning Pheroras.”

  “You know the King’s way well, my lady, but his scheme was a somewhat more complex one than you perhaps have in mind. He gave out that she had administered what she thought to be a love-philtre but which proved to be a poison ; and that the drug had been provided by Queen Doris, for whom it was procured some months ago by Sylleus the Arabian. He put the ladies and maid-servants of Pheroras’s Court to the torture, and by asking them leading questions tried to persuade them to incriminate the Queen. They did not at first understand what they were being asked to confess, but at last one of them was shrewd enough to cry out from the rack “May the God who governs this earth and the heavens above punish Queen Doris, the sole cause of my anguish !” The screws were immediately slackened and she swore to the required story, and then other women who had been wating their turn for the rack corroborated it with the necessary detail. So now Queen Doris has been stripped of all her costly robes and jewels and sent packing.”

  “My poor friend Doris! But what a queer story! Was any charge against King Antipater included in these confessions ?”

  “King Antipater’s name is not mentioned in the official account of the trial.”

  “No, that was not to be expected. But he is in great danger, none the less.”

  “Do you think so, indeed? The plot, if it was a real plot, implied the removal of Herod and the usurpation of the throne by Prince Pheroras, so that Antipater cannot be reasonably accused of complicity. People are saying that the King used the occasion as an excuse for removing Doris, who had vexed him by treating his junior wives a little severely—she was a great stickler for Court etiquette, I suppose from having been so long exiled from Court—but that when Antipater returns from Rome she will be restored to favour. They say that the news will grieve Antipater, but cannot alarm him for his own safety, and that if there is one element in this obscure affair of which they can be sure, it is that King Antiater is the most wilfull loyal son a wicked father ever had.”

  “They are right in saying that King Antipater will not be alarmed : his wilful loyalty will blind him to the danger. But that the danger is real and deadly I am certain.”

  “Why do you think, my lady, that the King should desire Antipater’s death ?”

  “I have not the least idea. I only know this, that Herod would never have made him a king had he not intended to destroy him soon afterwards. Now that Doris has left the Palace for good, Antipater has no better chance of life than a little child playing with a horned viper.”

  Mary had been sitting apart with her needlework. She suddenly gave a cry and turned pale.

  “Why, daughter, what is amiss? You look like a phantom.”

  “I have pricked my finger ; look, it bleeds !”

  “So good a needle-woman as yourself should be accustomed to pricks by now. Are you terrified at the sight of a little blood ?”

  “It was a. sharp prick. It seemed to stab me to the ve
ry heart.”

  “Quick, Shelom,” said Elizabeth. “Fetch a cordial. The kerm is best. You know the shelf. Why, upon my living soul, the child has fainted! Is that not strange ?”

  “I was watching her. She pricked herself because she felt faint ; she did not faint because she pricked herself. But oh, my lady, you cannot hide the truth from me. When I first came to your father’s house your sister Hannah was the same age, or a little younger, and this girl is my lady Hannah all over again. The Lord shower blessings on her pretty face! Here is the kerm. Give me leave to put it to her lips. Remember, my lady, that you sent me as midwife to your sister Hannah when she was to be delivered of a child ; this is the very child that I brought into the world.”

  “Shelom, not another word! You are as impudent as ever !”

  “Yes, my lady, and you will forgive me once more, out of old habit.”

  Mary revived and continued quietly with her needlework as if nothing had happened to disturb her tranquillity, but soon afterwards excused herself and went to bed.

  A few days later Shelom was sitting in the walled garden with Elizabeth. Between them on the flagstones lay a sackful of the lopped heads of roses, and they were plucking off the petals to make perfume. Shelom said ; “My lady, a certain young woman who is your companion, about whom I am forbidden to know anything—have you observed her colour ?”

  “No, what do you mean ?”

  “I mean that in a few months’ time, when you have been safely delivered of your child, I shall have another confinement on hand. I judge from the unevenness of colour in her cheeks.”

  “Oh, Shelom, you are not teasing? You are so fond of teasing. Is it really true ?”

  “It is true. Why do you stare at me, my lady? I have heard about the child’s marriage, though why she has been sent here who can tell ?” “How much do you know, Shelom ?”

  “My husband’s brother happens to be the Temple scribe who drafted the marriage contract between this child and your brother-in-law Joseph of Emmaus, of the House of David. He mentioned it to my husband because he remembered that I had been in the service of the child’s mother.”