LITMIR.BIZ

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      Contents

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      PROLOGUE

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER TEN

      CHAPTER ELEVEN

      CHAPTER TWELVE

      CHAPTER THIRTEEN

      CHAPTER FOURTEEN

      CHAPTER FIFTEEN

      CHAPTER SIXTEEN

      EPILOGUE

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      I was helped tremendously in writing this book by Rafael Luévano, my friend and the first to read each draft. No one understands the craft of storytelling better than he does.

      Laura Dail, my agent, gave her unwavering support, with extraordinary warmth and courtesy. Joan Marlow Golan more than lived up to her basic rule of editing, “First, do no harm.” Her suggestions made things better. Joanna Pulcini’s early encouragement set this book in motion. Paddy Calistro and Scott McAuley at Angel City Press opened doors for me all along the way and taught me how to turn a printout into a manuscript. Thank you all.

      For Patti, Louis, Tom, Cliff and Jon

      PROLOGUE

      The twelve were with him as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities.

      …Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza…and many others, who provided for them out of their own resources.

      —Luke 8:1-3

      The house in Nazareth is empty now. No one would presume to live there since Mary went away. They cannot risk inheriting her misfortune, a widow with a crucified son. Still, it is a sacred place. Someone has to oversee its safekeeping.

      As an older woman Mary traveled to distant cities with John, the youngest of her son’s followers, watching over him like a mother. In those years it was easier to move about the empire. Claudius ruled from Rome, and for once the foreigner who controlled Judea felt kindly toward the Hebrews.

      It is hard to believe, after twelve years of Nero, that such a time ever existed. Jerusalem has been under siege since Passover, and the Roman blockade makes it impossible for food to get beyond the city gates. For us, here in the north, news of the struggle comes with the caravans. The worst of it seems to reach us with the speed of an arrow. There was the man who swallowed his gold before he tried to escape the Holy City. When the soldiers caught him, they sliced him open and pulled the coins from his belly. He was still alive. He witnessed it.

      Mary’s empty house was my consolation after she went away. I missed her so much that I spent hours there, alone. Imagining she was still with me, I saw things about her I had not noticed before. Her hair, once lavish and dark, had turned the silvery color of a moonstone. Her skin was still the warm shade of an almond shell, but the flash of pink that once tinted her cheeks had faded. The passing years wore her edges smooth as sea glass.

      One afternoon in my daydreams she walked past me to the grain cistern, gathered dried kernels in her hands and poured them into storage sacks. She pinched the lice from the nearby bin of ripening grain. Without stopping to greet me, she lifted a clay jug from the shelf and went out toward the well, pausing long enough to look at me contentedly. I heard her whisper the prayers of blessing and I began to recite them with her. Before I met Mary, I did not know any prayers.

      In her empty house I started to remember things. There was the scent of rosemary on the cooking pots and the shelf of baskets that waited to be filled with sweet cakes from her kitchen. All of what she owned was worn down with use.

      Her small living quarters hardly seemed the sort of place to attract visitors at all hours, but so many came, hoping to gain her favor, that a good number had to be turned away at the gate. Looking back on those bewildering days, I still wonder—did any of us who asked for her help truly understand, or even suspect, what Mary was prepared to do for those she loved? When the time came, she would risk her life. Some might even say, her soul.

      One afternoon a shower of dirt interrupted my reverie. It fell from the ceiling of Mary’s house, where the roof had worn thin. Above my head, palm fronds whistled like wind chimes in the breeze. I could see them through the holes in the ceiling. Straw poked through the plaster. I hadn’t noticed.

      To restore such a ruin was my way of honoring Mary, but it was a strange ambition for a woman like me who did not know how to do housework. I, Joanna, wife of Chuza, Herod Antipas’s chief steward, was raised to be mistress of an estate. I had little experience with house cleaning or other manual labor. For Mary’s sake, I learned.

      From the time I made my decision, I began to rise from my bed before the sun lit the upper rooms of my house. Pulling myself from beneath cool linen sheets, I prepared for a day of repair work on Mary’s crumbling house. Loading storage baskets with jugs of wine, flasks of oil, perfume bottles, old jewelry—all items I could exchange for craftsmen’s services—I left the marble gods and colonnades of my Roman-style city of Sepphoris for the barley fields of eastern Galilee. It was like traveling backward in time.

      Phineas, my driver, covered the three miles in a race against the sunrise. He had made far more perilous journeys for my sake during his long years in my service. Never once had he disappointed me. I therefore rested quietly as he jostled us toward Nazareth, past brown-faced ewes that stood in the road and stared, unaccustomed to carriages hurtling past. Not used, either, to seeing a woman like me, with clean, oval fingernails and pale skin that rarely was subjected to long hours in the sun.

      Closer to the town, field boys pelted my cab with rotten olives. Phineas growled like a wolf planning an attack, which kept them at their distance. His smooth eunuch’s cheeks and shining head were set proudly on thick shoulders and massive arms. He was powerfully made and commanded respect.

      As we entered through the Nazareth town gate, the screech of iron hinges never failed to disturb Mary’s neighbors. They stumbled from their two-room houses or shallow caves to see who had entered. Their mistrusting expressions asked what a rich woman was doing in their part of the province. I had no easy answer. Besides, the smell of sheep on their rough tunics stiffened my nose. I avoided conversation.

      It was on one such morning’s drive that I decided to write about Mary. At first I thought that my own stormy existence had no place in her story. My failing health, the intrigues at Herod Antipas’s court and the resulting troubles in my marriage did not seem to reveal anything about Mary’s ways.

      I soon realized that she had guided me through the most intimate events in my life, down to my current situation. There is nothing but to tell our stories as one.

      We were cousins. I only discovered it when I was a grown woman and went to see Mary for the first time. I needed her assistance. I was dying and she had a son, a healer who cured desperate cases. I wanted her to arrange a private meeting for me.

      My illness had plagued me from childhood. Consumption was part of the Romans’ legacy to the East. Caesar’s armies carried it with them as they advanced, conquering everything in their path.

      My family considered

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