The Gospel According To Mary

Chapter 1

Mary opened her eyes to the brightness of the morning sunshine streaming through her bedroom windows. She raised herself on one elbow and craned her neck to try to get a glimpse of the sky beyond. She wondered how high the sun was, and whether she could allow herself to spend another few moments in bed, revelling in the feel of her new, incredibly fine bed sheets over her bare skin. Sleeping naked was a new experience to her. In fact, it had only come about after she had finally managed to buy this long-coveted material. She had first seen the soft, rippling, lightweight cloth brought to market by traders travelling up from Egypt, and had lusted for it ever since. Her father had still been alive then, and he had explained to her that its source lay in very distant lands to the East. The cloth would had travelled over the width of the Erythraean Sea to the country once ruled by the Queen of the South, she who had come to Jerusalem to marvel at the wisdom of King Solomon, and from there along the shores of the Sea of Reeds to Egypt and beyond. Almost all of it was destined for the imperial capital, Rome, but a small supply also found its way along their trade routes, and onwards to Tyre and the other rich cities to the north.

She fell back on her cushions and sighed. She could not see the sun to make out the time. Anyway she was awake now, and she might as well get up. She suddenly wished her father had built even bigger windows in the house, or a hanging balcony, as the palaces in Babylon were said to have. She was sure there must be a breeze blowing outside and she wanted to step out and feel it, feel it on her long loose hair and on the fine down on her arms, feel it over the smooth curves of her stomach. She smiled at her own unreasonableness. Even were her family home thus endowed, she would never be free to expose herself in this way. Whatever the time, there were bound to be servants bustling about somewhere below. If she were to show herself in her nakedness, it would not be a case of the horrible things her brother would say to her, but of what he would feel entitled to do.

But now that she had tasted the voluptuousness of not wearing anything at all, it felt like a penance to have to be all covered up all the time, even if it were in the best clothes money could buy. She plumped down on her side on the thick mattress and kicked off her bed sheets. At least in her own bedroom she could do as she wanted. But this rebellious side to her, this insidious troublemaker who not only prompted her with such objectionable urges, but longed to shake off all the small-mindedness around her conclusively, she stopped short of indulging too much. There was no point getting worked up into open defiance. She had her monetary independence for the acquisitive impulses, and the pampering, she would not compromise on. Beyond these she should not be offering up any more provocation, any more excuses for unpleasant confrontations with her brother; yet it vexed her that these were becoming all too frequent lately. Especially as the unpleasantness seemed to rebound only on herself. Her brother would goad her until she would start screaming to shut him out. Then it would seem believable to anybody, even to herself, that what her brother said must be true, that she must indeed have seven demons in her; and if she looked fearfully possessed to those watching from the outside, she alone knew how much worse was happening inside her own mind.

She sighed again. She did not want to think about the confusing images threatening to swirl in front of her eyes, or about the voices in her head. She had resolved to fill her life with agreeable distractions, and soothing sensations, precisely to keep them at bay. She turned restlessly in bed. She would think of her father instead. Yes; her father was always a safe haven; she was grateful for him, grateful for the affection he had lavished on her when he was alive, and grateful that even after his death he had left them all, and especially Mary, his favourite, well provided for.

Her father had known all about the trade routes, and about those distant lands with their heady spices, scented oils, and choice cloths, because that was how his own father had earned his living, and his father’s father before him. She had never known her grandfather, but her father had told her he remembered the time, before Rome had taken over Egypt and her trade on the three seas, when such luxury items would only come in a trickle, in the caravans making the long overland trek through the land of the Magi; and the traders who came their way with wares from the East would be headed south rather than north, on a small spur of the route feeding the already growing appetites of the then Republic. Her grandfather and father had somehow anticipated the shifts in the trade, and profited from them; her father had ploughed the money they had made into buying land; and his land had prospered. They were not extravagantly rich; or at least, they could not compare with the wealthy merchants of Tyre, let alone with the noblemen who lived in the splendour of Rome. (The former had figured in all her father’s stories about his travels as a young man, and the latter, in all the tall tales told by the traders who came to his door; and she had always been an enraptured audience for both.) But they were well-to-do landowners now, and she had money of her own to afford herself all the small gratifications she relished.

She looked at the dressing table, on which her jars and pots stood, ready for her to treat herself to. The anticipation of the enjoyable experience of grooming overcame the delights of lounging in bed. She crossed the room and sat on the stool by the table, casting a quick glance out of her windows on her way; telling herself, for the umpteenth time, that this was a view she would never tire of.

Her family home stood on the green hills above the Lake of Galilee, looking out over the prosperous town of Magdala by the lakeside. Galilee was lush and pleasant country, and she always wondered why people would want to live in the stark, dry uplands to the south; nay, how they actually managed to live there. Her father, because of his travelling, had never quite kept up the requisite three visits a year to Jerusalem, but he had once taken her and the rest of the family – her mother, her brother and her sister – to the Temple, to attend one of the holy festivals. They had stayed with relatives in Bethany, just outside the City. She had looked at the houses and palaces and fortified places, especially the new ones built by the Romans, with great curiosity, but by the end of the visit she sorely missed the trees and the waters of the Lake, and was glad to go home. She did not care much for the Temple; it was a beautiful building, but so were many others in the City; and although she had enjoyed the market bustle of the stalls of the money-changers and of the men selling animals for sacrifice in the Court of the Gentiles, it had rankled with her that the main altar was off-bounds to her as a woman; until the reward of stolen glimpses, the blood and smoke from the burnt offerings, proved a sight less appealing than the thrill of interdiction promised.

If truth be told, she had never been interested in much religious teaching, or religious observance. Female members of her family, and more widely of the community to which they belonged, were not supposed to receive any of the former, and not particularly encouraged to take part in any of the latter, except possibly for Sabbath prayers; and even those were not said above a half-dozen times a year in her home. The interdiction offended her, to be sure; it always offended her to be told there were things she could not do, simply because of her gender. But she had realised early on that she was going to have to fight against such ignorant bigotry all her life, and that therefore she had better learn to pick her fights. So she had never gone out of her way to stake any claim on religion as part of her existence. Instead, she had taken full advantage of her father’s doting on her, and of his pride at her interest in his work and his business, to receive from him the instruction that really mattered to her: how to trade, how to keep accounts, how to manage land and property.

That one holiday in Jerusalem had been the only time she had left the shores of the Lake. And shortly afterwards her father had made good on a longstanding promise to her, and had made over one of his estates, for her to hold in her own name. It was near Capernaum, north of Magdala along the Lake road. He had taken her with him on his inspections of the estate, and gradually shown her all she needed to know to manage it alone. Mary thought that, if pressed on the matter, he probably would not have really expected her to run it by herself; rather that she would relinquish the task to her brother or, better yet, to the suitable husband they would one day find for her. She had made such a show of delirious joy at the prospect of these inspections, and generally at every moment spent with her father, as to make sure that their joint visits were continued, that the hoped-for husband never materialised, and that no provision was made for her brother’s potential interference in her affairs. The joy had been genuine; she had truly loved her father, who had invariably indulged her with boundless kindness. And now the estate provided her not only with her income, but also with a place to escape to, whenever her brother made life in the family home intolerable for her.

She decided she did not want to think of her brother and turned her attention back to the collection of containers before her on the table. The large alabaster jar, filled with ointment of nard, stood out from the others with alluring promise. This was always the start of her morning pampering. She reached for it, poured a little of the ointment on her thigh, and spread it with her hands in wide, confident swipes. The smell of the ointment was exhilaration in itself, and she took it in, in long breathfuls. She switched to her other thigh, then moved up to her stomach, her breasts, shoulders and elbows.

She worked with deliberation, savouring every moment. This was the life of enjoyment she had built for herself; not a gluttonous life, she assured herself; not one of over-indulgence, nor of eating or drinking or doing anything to excess; but a life in which every morsel, every droplet, every fingerbreadth of physical awareness was intensely tasted and felt. She kept her mind busy with what she was doing, with what she was feeling, with dwelling on every movement and sensation; never letting her thoughts rest, as though she were keeping up a constant yet silent chatter with herself.

She dared not allow that unruly mind to empty itself, for fear of what would creep in unawares. She could no longer pinpoint exactly when the voices had first appeared, but as far back as she could think of herself as herself, as someone capable of having and holding her own memories and impressions, they had always intruded. Never when she was busy with this sort of sustained self-absorption; and she had eventually figured that was the trick to keeping them out.

The voices had always come when she had let herself drift off. It could be when she was looking at the sunlight filtering through the trees in the orchard, or at the moonlight dancing on the waters of the Lake, happy and contented at whatever the day had brought. Or when she had just finished a task set her by her mother, and was peacefully thinking about nothing at all. Then whispers would sound inside her head. Not gentle; no, definitely not gentle. Firm, and demanding; authoritative; unyielding.

‘Give yourself up to me.’

In her earliest experiences, when the voices came like this, she would be alarmed out of her thoughtless reverie, and practically jump up with a shriek, and look around. And of course there would be nobody else there; nobody but the familiar faces of the household, who would be alarmed themselves at her screams. Over time, she had learnt to control herself. Not enough, at first, to prevent the drifting off altogether, so it was never enough to ward off the voices entirely; but at least enough that when they snuck in, she would be able to shake them off with only a slight start, or a gasp.

‘I knock that I may enter.’

Once the bouts of senseless shouting had subsided, everybody else had gotten used to these oddities of hers. Her brother had mocked her for her daydreaming; what else could you expect from an empty-headed girl? And that had felt like success, of sorts. But then she had realised this little measure of control was only allowing her other senses to be assailed too. For, often, when startled, in the re-focusing of her wandering gaze, she could swear she caught a hint of something there, just out of the corner of her eye; a shadow, a blur, the fluttering of the hem of a garment; as though somebody had just moved out of sight.

‘Walk my ways.’

‘Go where I will take you.’

If she let this go on, what other delusions might take over? In desperation, she had had no choice but to grope for some way to stop the voices; some way to put up barriers against their coming in at all. And that was how she had embarked on her strategy of the ever-busy mind, of complete and utter immersion into every single instant of her sensorial existence. And it had seemed to work. It had worked. Until her brother had started wilfully rubbing her up the wrong way.

It was so unfair. It was all her brother’s fault. She would be perfectly all right if only she could keep out of any arguments with him. But he was relentless at baiting her; he almost seemed intent on pushing her out of her senses. Indeed, in her least charitable moments towards him (and she had many of these) she was ready to believe he was trying to drive her insane on purpose. In his mean, selfish, judgemental, I’m-the-head-of-this-household-now view of things, she could well imagine it was better to have a sister who was mad than one asserting her prerogative not to be under his authority; better to have a sister deemed to be possessed by seven demons, than one who might be getting tongues wagging by an autonomy of behaviour that would inevitably see her trailing a reputation after herself, and worse, jeopardising the family’s standing in the community.

Here she was obsessing about her brother again. Her mind always seemed to return to him, and to how miserable he was making her nowadays. This was not a pleasant thought, and she wanted to have nothing but pleasant thoughts. Well, all the more reason, then, for her to be steady in her resolve and not let herself be pulled into any more fights with him. Yes; today she would be resolute; today nothing he could say would bother her.

She was about finished with spreading the ointment on her arms. This was the point when she would normally expect to get dressed. Except that her maidservant, Joanna, had not yet brought in her freshened-up clothes. Where was the lazy wench? Mary could hardly believe that she had so badly misjudged the time of day as to have woken up before everybody else in the household. She bent low on her stool for a glance up at the sky through the open windows. Yes, there was the sun, exactly where she would have expected it to be.

‘Joanna! Joanna!’

Her call was loud enough to be heard below, either by Joanna herself, or by someone else who would relay it to her. She would now only have to wait a little while for the maid to come up. She put back the jar of ointment, and fished out her jewellery box from amongst the scattered pots on the table. She had not been long in thoughtfully fingering apart the favoured pieces for that day’s wear before she could hear steps on the staircase leading to the upper storey bedrooms. So here was Joanna already. She waited for the knock on her door.

‘Come in.’

She said this out of habit, of course. So many weeks, now, and the silly creature still had not gotten over the shock of the sight of her mistress wearing no clothes at all as she sat at her dressing table. This, Mary had to confess, had been her own small bit of baiting. She knew full well that Joanna had always avoided being in the room with her whilst she changed – which, in Mary’s opinion, made her somewhat less useful than a less demure servant could have been – but now Joanna would not come in at all until she was sure Mary was properly dressed. She would stand on the other side of the door, wide but by a crack, studiously looking the other way (and carefully assuring herself, at the same time, that there was nobody else nearby to possibly ogle the scandalously naked state of affairs within), and hand over the clothes through the minute opening. And so it was this morning, as Mary turned around to see her attire hanging on a familiar plump arm.

She got up, grabbed the clothes (the plump arm retreating, and the door slamming shut, as soon as she had done) and laid them on the bed; and, in the same flow of motion, pulled up the bed sheets and folded them away; too jealous of this new treasure to consign it to any servant’s handling. She feasted her gaze on the accoutrements laid out for her. She had long before abandoned the local weaves, almost as soon as she had gone out of mourning for her father. She would have loved to have added the new material from the East to the assortment at her disposal, but it was much too sheer; as it was, her collection now included sea-silk from Phoenicia, as well as the finest Egyptian linen; her one concession to conservatism in dress, and a very relative concession at that, being the choice of the more subdued hues in the range of the cloths’ dyes.

She got dressed as slowly and deliberately as she had worked the ointment onto her skin, adjusting the fall and folds of her long-sleeved gown, and knotting her wide belt over the covering tunic. She sat at her dressing table once more and strapped on her sandals.

‘Come in, Joanna.’

The door opened a crack again. Joanna peered in, and, satisfied that decency was not being assaulted anymore, stepped forward and closed the door behind her. Mary pushed forward a small jar of clear olive oil on the edge of the dressing table. Joanna picked it up, dripped the oil on Mary’s hair, and ran her fingers through the long dark mass; collected comb and hairpins from the table, and started arranging it in well-ordered coils. Whilst Joanna worked, Mary kept herself busy until she could resume her own personal pampering. She picked up the selected trinkets from the jewellery box, and put them on: rings on her fingers, bangles for each arm, a necklace, a pair of earrings. She took out the jewelled pin that would hold her veil over her hair, and returned the box to its place. She moved her two Egyptian pots closer, on their stand with the matching stick and brush. She lifted her small polished bronze mirror and held it in her left hand, angling it to appraise Joanna’s handiwork. When the smudge that was the maidservant’s indistinct reflection disappeared towards the bed to fetch her veil, she turned the mirror to her own features.

This was the most delicate step in the whole operation; this was where she knew she coasted closest to peril, where she most courted her brother’s disapproval, in the face she presented to the world. She opened her pot of Egyptian black eye-paint, a batch she had prepared a few days before, the powder scraped, ground and mixed with her favourite sweet almond oil. Dipping the stick, she drew it thinly across her eyelids, accenting the line of dark lashes. The pot of carmine was next, applied to her lips with the brush, again careful that it should colour, but not cake. She was done. She put everything away with the same watchful precision she had used throughout.

Joanna placed the veil over Mary’s head, and Mary handed her the pin to secure it in place. This was the dreaded closing off of her private sphere; the prelude to emerging onto a public arena where her brother, his household, and the community in which he saw himself as an upstanding member, were all ready to adjudge her rights and wrongs on what appeared to her as so much short-sightedness. She closed her eyes, reminding herself of her determination not to let herself be drawn into pointless arguments; not today. When she opened them again, Joanna was gone. She got up and headed downstairs herself.

Sunshine was flooding the large central room where her brother, her mother and her sister were already sitting down for breakfast. Mary loved this house; loved that it had the solidity of stone, whilst reaching upwards in its many levels, and outwards in the full brightness it opened itself to. Here on the ground floor the windows were built plentiful, and there were skylights after the Roman fashion. It was a house of ease, a house that clearly spelt new money, and her father had made no bones about it. The abundance of light meant that the family lived mostly inside, taking their meals, receiving guests, dealing with servants, labourers and traders, and generally going about their housework in this spacious room, and only occasionally in the smaller ones to either side.

Her brother looked up at her as she stepped off the staircase and she saw the look of surprise and annoyance that rose instantly to his face. It was his usual reaction to her appearance. But, really, it was pathetic. He might have been justified in being this discomfited the first time he had stumbled upon her in her finery, but surely not after seeing her come down like this day after day. Was he living in hope that she would change her wanton ways overnight and suddenly become a dutiful and obedient sister? If that were the case, then indeed she was sorry for him; he was destined to be disappointed every time.

‘I don’t know why you keep the pretence of a veil. Don’t you realise that anyone seeing your painted face would see you for a harlot readily enough?’

On the attack from the start, this morning, thought Mary. She kept her mouth well shut, and concentrated on helping herself to breakfast. Joanna brought her a bowl of barley gruel, a small dish of thick curd and a jar of date syrup whilst Mary loaded a plate with bread, hard cheese and figs. She barely glanced at her mother and sister, who were keeping their eyes scrupulously downcast. What non-entities they were. She knew they would remain silent no matter what. This would be, as always, strictly between her brother and herself. She started slicing the figs into quarters.

‘These things you put on your face are unclean.’

‘Yet Father traded in them. He was the one who first showed them to me. Are you saying Father was unclean?’

‘He sold them to the Gentiles! For the Gentiles to use!’

‘He sold them to Jews too.’

‘Not here in Magdala.’

‘Perhaps not, but in other places he travelled to, he certainly did. You know the ladies in the Tetrarch’s palaces all paint their faces. And wealthy ladies elsewhere, too, more even than I do. It’s not forbidden.’

‘It’s shameful! Even if it’s not forbidden. It’s shameful for them, and it’s shameful for you.’

‘Says who?’

‘Says everybody!’

‘Not Father. He never said that.’

‘That’s because you never did it when he could see it.’

She fell silent at this, for here she was on shakier ground. She could not know for sure what her father would have thought or said of how she looked now; back then she had simply not felt the need for this much adornment. He might have easily ignored it, but for her suspicion of her brother’s being just as likely to have insistently pressured him into proscribing it; and she guessed her father would have eventually relented into prohibition, if only to escape the constant pestering. She would have had to obey her father; would have obeyed him anyway out of respect and devotion. Thankfully she felt under no such obligation towards her brother, and he had no means of forcing her.

Why did she do it, though, if she sort of knew she might be in the wrong? Mary was not sure what the truthful answer to that question was. It could be that she was giving in to that rebellious side after all. It could be that she was providing her brother with a visible sign of resistance, in order to protect the less visible aspects of her independence; this was her palisade, her respite from having her inner bastions breached. But thinking now of her father, Mary also realised that she missed him; missed, especially, the reassurance of his unwavering love. And in that instant she finally owned up to herself to be aiming, however imperfectly, for the covetousness, if not the admiration, of other men, to provide her with self-worth, where the doting of a father no longer obtained. It made sense to her then, as the only substitute within her reach: to be seen as a desirable woman was at least to be seen. And so what if she was desired, and if she herself desired in turn? It was her free exercising of the choices awarded her by fortune; it was not materially detrimental to anyone involved; and it was none of her brother’s business.

Her attention had switched off from her brother as she worked through these contemplations, and when she had done, she was distressed to find him still looking at her with belligerence written all over his face, ready to pounce. She decided to focus on breakfast instead. Full enjoyment of pleasure, she repeated to herself; that was still her best strategy.

She reached for the jar of date syrup and drizzled it into her bowl of gruel, over the dish of curd, the cheese, the cut figs. She took up the bowl, scooping up the gruel with her practiced deliberation, the spoon tarrying on her lips after each mouthful as she savoured its contents, concentrating on picking out the nuttiness of the barley from the stringent sweetness of the syrup. Whenever her eyes strayed to him, she could see her brother’s fuming increase, but continued to ignore it. She tore large crumbs off the cheese, and picked up some of the fig quarters. They dripped syrup onto her fingers as she ate them, and she leisurely proceeded to lick them clean. She let her senses dwell, this time, on the physical experience rather than the taste; and when it evoked echoes of some other sensation, of enjoyment of pleasure of a rather different kind, she allowed herself to be engulfed in it; and that was when her brother exploded.

‘Is that how you advertise yourself to men? Can’t you keep off it for even an instant?!?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Look at yourself! Where do you think you are?’

‘At home, having breakfast. What’s your problem?’

‘Wherever your thoughts are, they’re not on eating breakfast! I wish you could see yourself. I wish you could see the look on your face. You’re like a whore of Babylon, parading herself to tempt men into her temple of sin. And you do this in front of your brother! Of your mother! In front of your sister! Are you trying to teach her your harlotry as well?’

Mary was confounded. She could not deny that, precisely then, she had indeed been wilfully entertaining enticing recollections of a peculiarly sensual nature. It was the second time already that her brother had shown her up in the space of this single meal. She was stung and, so much for her earlier resolve not to be drawn into an argument, rushed into producing pricks of her own.

‘You’d have to have looked at a whore of Babylon yourself to be able to compare me to one, wouldn’t you?’

‘I don’t need to. Your painted face is enough.’

‘Do you have anything else to accuse me of? Because I think we’ve gone through that particular point already.’

‘Yes, and you know it is shameful.’

‘I know no such thing. As far as I’m concerned, it’s still a matter of opinion, yours against mine. So if you don’t have anything else to add, I’d like to finish my breakfast before you give me indigestion.’

But as she looked at the remains on her plate and at her still untouched dish of curd, she could not imagine having the taste of any of it now; neither did she relish forcing it down her throat, at least not whilst her brother sat there, scheming, no doubt, at what yet more wounding words he could fling at her. She could do with a cooling drink of well-water from the kitchen. And as long as she was getting up to fetch it, she might as well take her food with her, and have it, undisturbed, somewhere else. She swept up her plate and dish and started walking away.

‘You’re a whore, and a harlot! Do you think I don’t get to hear about what you’re up to in Capernaum? Do you think I don’t know of the bad name you’ve made for yourself there?’

She turned around slowly to face him, plate and dish still balanced in her hands. Had she been careless in any way? Or was this the testing of her walls, the nerving it out that she had always known she must prepare for?

‘Would you care to say what you mean, exactly?’

‘You know very well what I mean.’

‘No, I don’t, actually. You give me very freely the names of whore and harlot. Either tell me what I’ve done to earn them, or stop using them. And leave the painted face out, already.’

‘You know what whores and harlots do.’

‘Yes, I do. They sell themselves to any man who’s willing to pay to have them. Is that what you’re saying I do? That I sell myself for money? Do you really think I’d need to?’

He did not answer, and in the quick look he cast at their mother and sister, she permitted herself a touch of smugness. He would have meant his insults, obviously, in a much looser sense; any woman who acted out her free choice, in her relationships let alone in sex, would have been abused in the same way; the Romans had sufficiently badmouthed the late Queen of Egypt for anyone to know that. So it was novel to see her brother put on the spot. By deflecting him onto specifics, she had apparently managed to corner him into a need for explicit accusations she guessed him unwilling, or unable, to substantiate. It made her believe that, whatever he had heard, it would have been no more than the usual growling and grumbling that inevitably arose around a female of independent means, travelling and living on her own without a husband, brother or father over her. That she could cope with; indeed, could even press to her advantage.

‘What is it you reproach me doing at Capernaum? Having a property of my own, and running it on my own? These are things I did already when Father was alive. If he thought it was fit for me to do them, I can’t see how you can say otherwise.’

‘You have men on the estate.’

‘Yes, I do. Jude the overseer. And the labourers who till, and sow, and harvest, and build, and mend, just like those you employ here. They and their families were all there when Father made the estate over to me. So, again, I don’t see where your problem is with this.’

‘You have men for yourself.’

‘Is that so? Me and the Princess Jezebel alike, are we? And they’re there for all to see, these men? Or do I, too, have a palace with a secret chamber to keep them hidden in ?’

She smirked to see her brother positively squirm. She felt elated, almost triumphant. She could end this argument, once and for all.

‘Brother, what you’re telling me is all gossip. I’m not bothered with hearsay, and neither should you be. You object to my painted face, and I beg to differ. So, unless you can produce evidence of wrongdoing on my part, I suggest that in future you leave me alone.’

‘If I had evidence of your wrongdoing, do you think I’d be sitting here discussing it with you?’

The unexpectedly bare menace in his voice lanced her like a sharp, cold blade. It was as though he had read into her own musings, whilst lazing in bed, on the inadvisable temerity of exposing herself, and was now proposing to fill her in, rather comprehensively, on his notion of the appropriate retribution, which she had hereto avoided imagining . Vengeful rage was spreading his features with murderous crimson, and the trembling of fear coursed through her.

‘If ... no ... when I catch you out, you won’t even see it coming. I’ll drag you to the stoning grounds myself. I’ll drag you by your hair, you slut, all the way there, kick and scream all you want. And you can be sure the first stone that breaks your skin ... this skin you smother with so much foreign filth ... the first stone will come from my hand. And that’ll be just the first.’

That invited fury to rush up to her own defence. Before she knew it, she had thrown the plate and dish in her hands to the floor. The violence of it, the crashing and clattering, the mess of spilled food, all heightened the sense, building in her body, of being under attack, and loaded her mind with an animal ferocity that swiped everything else clean away. Her brother was on his feet now, and closing in on her.

‘How dare you?’

‘It’s no more than you deserve, trollop, and one day, as sure as the Holy Name’s over us, you’re going to get it.’

‘Then leave it to the Holy Name,’ she hissed through clenched teeth, like a snake. ‘Who do you think you are to judge me? Who are you to think you have power of life and death over me?’

‘Everybody knows what you are. You’re a disgrace to your family.’

‘You mean I’m a disgrace to you. It’s you they’re laughing at behind your back. The fool who can’t even keep his own sister in line.’

She should have seen the slap coming. In the rising excitement of their quarrel she had stupidly left herself within easy striking distance. It sent her reeling to the floor on her hands and knees, and filled her eyes with tears, and with hate.

‘You foul ... You bastard ... You c- ...’

She could hear her profanities turning to harsh screeches as she struggled back to her feet. But as she did, the walls of the room rose with her, and became a towering black mountain, filling space on all sides. When the streams of sulphurs started to unfurl and tint from craven yellow to scorching red, deadly purple and poisonous green, and when the voices started screaming in her head, her own wailing intensified, until she could see and hear no more.

She woke up on the cot in the pantry, where all the dried herbs and spices were kept, and where it was dark and cool. Joanna had been sitting in the corner, and the moment she saw Mary awake, she got up and went out, leaving the door slightly ajar for a little daylight to peek in. Joanna would report to the rest of the family on her coming round. Mary was convinced they would not have been particularly worried about her; Joanna’s news would be taken in as just another item in the orderly running of the household, of as much import to them as another servant’s having brought the fowl in from the yard, or finished kneading a batch of dough. Mary lay on her back on the cot, breathing in the surrounding scents, and looking up into the dark spaces in the rafters, above the topmost wooden shelves, where no clarity ever seemed to reach.

They were so used to her passing out like this they did not go to the trouble of taking her upstairs to her own room anymore. And anyway they knew as well as she did what the inevitable consequence of it would be. The cot in the pantry was, all in all, the best option. Mary could slip out to the courtyard without any need for meeting anybody else on her way. And whilst secluded and unseen she could take her time to collect herself, and fight off the feelings of weakness, confusion, failure and hopelessness that crowded on her as she emerged out of her own inner darkness.

It was a relief not to have to tell Joanna what to do, either. The two donkeys were already waiting for her in the courtyard, with everything she would need for the duration of her stay neatly packed, and her maidservant standing close by holding the reins on their bridles. She climbed onto the back of the one prepared as her ride, letting Joanna follow with the pack animal. She egged her mount on, away from the family home, down the road towards Capernaum.

Chapter 2 >