LITMIR.BIZ

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to quiet her. “I may have heard a voice, that was all.”

      “Of course you did,” she interrupted. “Dear Joanna. The God of the Jews is very powerful. What did he say? He must have told you something.”

      Silent and smiling, I looked at her but did not reply. At last she seemed to understand that I was not going to say any more about it. Blinking her eyes, she reached for a plate of spice cakes and sank her sharp little teeth into one. I must have let out a sigh as I settled into the couch.

      She leaned toward me again. “I know you’ve been in frail health, Joanna. I hope you don’t mind my saying so.”

      Her honesty did surprise me. No one mentions another’s illness in public.

      “I know a Greek in Jerusalem,” she said. “He uses fish oil to treat all sorts of problems. It must taste dreadful, but I’ve seen results. I could introduce you.”

      “That is very kind.” I did not want to offend her by refusing her twice in one afternoon.

      “Apollo. Have you heard of him?” She lowered her thick, round eyelashes to suggest a secret. “I used to suffer terrible sleeplessness,” she said. “He gave me this charm that I wear all the time.” Opening the waistline of her dress, she showed me a glass vile filled with specks of what looked like bone, tied on a cord stretched tight around her waist.

      I thought of Mary and how she promised to speak to her son for me. “There is a man in Galilee,” I said. “He heals even incurable ailments. His mother is my cousin.”

      “Maybe I should meet him.” Procula moved closer. For gossip’s sake she was willing to compromise her safe distance.

      “I haven’t actually met him, myself,” I said. “Not yet.”

      “What is his name?” She was sitting right beside me.

      “Jesus.”

      She frowned. “I thought I knew everyone. I’ve never heard of him.”

      “He lives in Capernaum and keeps to the northern towns,” I said. “He has been working miracles for some months. Crowds of people follow him, but he is not yet well known outside of Galilee. When the time comes I will tell you about him.” It was presumptuous of me. Mary never said she would introduce me to her son, only that she would talk to him about me.

      “I have always liked you,” Procula said contentedly. “We are alike. You have, how shall I put it, an appreciation for the supernatural.”

      I smiled without answering.

      “Perhaps when you are next in Jerusalem you will come to see me again.” She did not press her offer, but courtesy required that I accept. Better a friend at court than an enemy.

      Chuza came for me. He wanted to have another word with the governor on our way out. I waited with the servants, watching Pilate as he sat slumped in his sturdy chair. I could see even from a distance that his dark head was filled with as few engaging ideas as ever.

      I supposed Chuza was telling him about the citrus harvest in Galilee. My husband and I were traveling back to Sepphoris the next morning, so that he could spend his days in the fields with the workers and his nights in his own bed.

      I wrapped my cloak around my shoulders to hint that our visit might soon end, but Pilate was not ready to let us go. Like a wolf drooling over a snared bird, he motioned for Chuza to bring me to him. Poor Claudia Procula, I thought. How does she live with such an unappealing man?

      Chuza gave me no warning as we approached the royal chair. Pilate hardly acknowledged me but spoke only to my husband, saying that he had met with Manaen that morning. Chuza nodded; not a ripple of concern crossed his face.

      “He told me there had been a problem in the temple precinct, I’m sure you know,” Pilate said, twisting his enormous face toward me. I smiled, perhaps too eagerly. Chuza lowered his eyes in my direction, a familiar gesture that silenced me.

      “Oh, my dear, I hear you lost your way,” Pilate said in pained sympathy. “Whatever were you doing at the temple? Your family gave all that up years ago.”

      “I had never seen the festival.” In my fear of him, my voice faded to a whisper.

      Pilate pressed a hairy ear in my direction.

      “I only wanted to see,” I spoke up. “I’m sorry if I upset anyone.”

      The governor rolled his thick head back toward Chuza. “Your wife shows unusual curiosity,” he said. “I am curious about the Jews, myself. We should know our enemies. But not at the expense of safety.”

      “It won’t happen again, Governor,” Chuza said.

      Pilate pressed my husband’s shoulder to his own as a sign of confidence, but he did not look again in my direction.

      The long ride to Sepphoris was made even longer because Chuza refused to speak to me. He got lost in his strategies for organizing the workers and counting the crops. I sat across from him, watching him grind his teeth, as if he were chewing on his plans. His distant manner distressed me. I straightened the petals on a gold collar I wore that day. It never hung right, even after three trips back to the jeweler.

      “Manaen betrayed us,” I blurted into the strained silence.

      “He had to say something,” Chuza answered without even looking up. “If Pilate found out another way, we would both be in trouble.”

      “I don’t like him.”

      “Manaen is an honorable man.”

      “He could at least have warned you.”

      “He did, I saw him this afternoon.”

      “Why didn’t you tell me?”

      “You’re better at acting sorry when you haven’t rehearsed. I expected that Pilate would ask about the temple.”

      We fell back into our separate places and did not speak again until we were in Sepphoris. The house smelled of lemon leaves, reaching upward from their stone vases. Chuza breathed the comforting scent, and the persistent tic above his eye stopped twitching.

      I was preparing to leave him after dinner when he did his best to make peace.

      “Let’s put it behind us,” he said.

      “I’m very sorry.” It was a heartfelt apology and he knew it.

      “It turned out all right.”

      “I didn’t mean to cause you trouble.”

      “I know that,” he assured me.

      In the days that followed, I plunged into the care of the house, determined to please my husband. I had the servants scurrying until every bedcover and window drape was hoisted down and heaved onto the back terrace. Table linens, kitchen towels, camisoles, tunics, bed jackets, my husband’s robes—all were heaped like a termites’ nest of cotton, silk and linen.

      It took several days to soak so much laundry in the two vast wooden barrels of hot water we prepared. Scrubbed and rinsed clean twice over, every washable item in the house got attention. The back courtyard resembled a fuller’s workroom. Linens hung drying in the sun. I went barefoot the whole time, grateful for plain stone floors to walk upon after the excesses of palace living.

      Our third evening in Sepphoris, my husband said he would spend the next night in the fields with the workers. He often did so during the harvest, to show the men that he was not above hard labor.

      “I’d like to go to Nazareth,” I said. “I met a woman from there. She is my cousin.”

      “You didn’t mention her.”

      “It was before our trip to Jerusalem. Her name is Mary.”

      I described our family relations, hardly an unusual story. Judea, ruled for centuries by foreign

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