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“Priscilla!” I called out to a small, dark woman with a face lined from long squinting out at the changeable lake weather. Peter’s wife—yes, Peter, the rock, the erstwhile Galilean fishermen. You never hear about her in the Gospels, but she existed.
“Don’t get up!” she laughed. “You look like a beetle on its back.”
She came and knelt beside me, giving me a kiss and patting my naked belly herself before the girls could bring me my tunic.
You might think that the wife of the Rock on which the Church was founded would be more reticent with a gentile woman of questionable reputation, even if I had somehow managed to marry a nice Jewish man. But our relationship, while based on discretion, had little to do with reticence.
I have mentioned that many people came to Temple Magdalen for healing. Women, especially, sought us out, including desperate, otherwise respectable wives. We had a reputation for being able to cure infertility, which could be a source not only of sorrow but of ruin in a woman’s life. In Priscilla’s case, my healer’s hands quickly told me that she was healthy, fertile and in need of no herbal tonics. One day I put it to her straight, and told her exactly how we might help her. And so in the name of Yahweh—Isis, I am happy to say, is not a jealous goddess—Priscilla put on the veils of a whore-priestess and received the man the Most High picked out for her. And, lo, a son was born.
And when light dawned—or lightning struck—and Peter figured out that there had been some intervention, divine or otherwise, to his everlasting credit he did not put aside his wife or repudiate the child. If Peter found it helpful to hate me, I didn’t hold it against him.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come to see you before,” Priscilla said.
“You knew I’d come back?” I asked. For if she knew, then Peter had to.
“Of course. Everyone on the lake knew within a week,” she said. “Word travels faster on the water than anywhere else.”
“True,” I sighed. “I suppose that’s why Jesus spent so much of his time in a boat. At least at first.”
“Not a boat,” she said a little sharply. “Peter’s boat.”
I looked at her, and noticed that she was not just weathered by wind and sun; she was tired, strained.
“It must be hard, having Peter gone so much.” I patted the ground beside me, inviting her to sit.
“I’m managing,” she said shortly. “Peter sold his share in the boat to one of my brothers. Did you know? He’s made provision for me, but….” She stopped herself.
“But he’s not here,” I finished the sentence. “He hasn’t been for a long time. Not really. It’s Jesus’s fault.”
I stopped wavering between statement and question, wondering if I should apologize for my husband or if it would be absurd and presumptuous. In either case, I knew whatever I said would be inadequate.
“Don’t get me wrong, I loved Jesus, too,” she said quickly. “You know I did. I would have done anything for him. I did, too. In the early days I would put them all up on a moment’s notice, cook for them, deal with the crowds pressing into the yard, pissing everywhere, trampling my kitchen garden. I did it gladly, I tell you.”
“You put up with a lot,” I said. “Remember when I tore apart your roof, so we could lower the paralyzed man?”
“And Peter finally had to fix the leaky roof after that,” Priscilla said wryly. “But I mean it, Mary, I didn’t mind about any of that. What I minded is the leaving. He—I know this is going to sound terrible—he didn’t ask me if he could have my husband. Not that any man ever asks a woman anything, but when I was with him, well, it felt like I wasn’t just a woman, I wasn’t just Peter’s wife. I felt as though I mattered as much as anyone. Do you know what I mean?”
I nodded.
“So I think… I think I’m angry with him.”
I didn’t ask her if she meant Jesus or Peter. I knew.
“All those stories he told about not being fit for the kingdom if you turned and looked back over your shoulder, if you so much as went to say goodbye to your family, well, did he ever think what it was like for the people who were left? Or were they just not worthy of the kingdom, because they didn’t drop everything, too? Was I supposed to drop Peter’s mother, leave her to fend for herself, abandon the baby, the animals, the vineyard, the trees, all the things I tend to. What did he say about that?”
I wracked my brain. Jesus had always done the leaving. What did he know about being left? He had repudiated his own family, claiming as kin those who did the will of his father in heaven. In one of his rants he had gone on about bringing not peace but a sword that would set brother against brother, mother against daughter. Really, if you delve into the gospels, there is no mention of “family values.” None. They don’t call Christian theology apologetics for nothing.
“Oh, Mary,” she said before I could answer. “I’m so sorry. Listen to me going on and on. And here you are about to have a baby—and he’s, he’s…”
“Not here,” I finished. “Not so as you’d notice.”
“He left us all,” Priscilla said, sadly. “It’s so confusing. Peter came home after Jesus was, well, killed. He was a broken man, broken to pieces. But he went back out on the boat, and I told myself, he’ll heal. He has me, Gabriel, the boat. Then came that strange time that was like a dream. Was it a dream, Mary? When Jesus was with us again, and we all ate and laughed and danced for days and days. Did it really happen?”
She leaned against me now, and I held her, comforting her.
“It did happen, Priscilla.”
“And then you all traipsed back to Jerusalem. I was so angry, Mary, angry with you, too, going off with them, free as a man. Well, never mind. I don’t pretend to understand anything.” She drew herself apart again. “I don’t know what to think. Now Peter claims that Jesus is coming again, and we must prepare the way. After all this time, of following Jesus wherever he went and leaving me on my own, Peter wants me to come to Jerusalem, bring Gabriel with me, join the ecclesia.”
“And will you?” I asked.
She was silent for a time.
“Mary, do you think that is what he wants? Is he calling me? Peter says he is. If I don’t go, am I denying him, failing him?”
“Oh, Priscilla.” I took her hand and squeezed it. “I’m afraid I’m not a very good person to ask. Haven’t you heard? I mean did Peter send word to you….”
“That you ran away without telling anyone where you were going? Yes, of course he did. That’s the reason I didn’t come see you sooner.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“I didn’t want to have to tell him that I definitely knew you were here. Don’t you see? I figured you must have had your reasons for disappearing.”
I just nodded, not wanting to tell her I had bolted because her husband was striking people dead.
“Yet you’re here now,” I said after a moment of increasingly awkward silence. I was touched yet puzzled by Priscilla’s attempt to protect me. Surely the apostles knew by now where I’d gone, whatever Priscilla said or didn’t say.
“Yes, I’m here now,” she said slowly. “Peter asked me to come. No, he told me to. Peter and Jesus’s brother James and some of the others arrived in Capernaum last night. I’m sorry. I should have said so at once, but I, I just wanted to talk to you first, for myself.”
“So.” I placed a hand on my full-term belly. “They can count. Who knew?”
“Mary, this is serious.” She frowned at my joke, which