The Gospel According To Mary

Chapter 2

However much she cherished her estate in Capernaum, Mary had to admit to herself that she would never fully love it as she loved the family home above Magdala. Although Capernaum was, like Magdala, a lakeside town, her estate lay on its other side, set back some distance from shore, and she had no view of the Lake from there. She could not conceive of going through day after day of not looking on its waters; the sight seemed as indispensable to her as the air she breathed; and waking up to it, ultimate felicity. She could no more than mitigate that constant lack, and for as long as it existed, her repairing to the estate would always feel like an escape, a welcome respite, but never like coming home. Home was at Magdala; and invariably, after a few weeks at Capernaum, she would make her way back, however painful the prospect of having to put up with her brother again.

When she had come with her father on her first visits, the estate had been even less adequately provided for; then, there had been nowhere for them to lodge. The only dwellings at the time had been the handfuls of squat, one-storey, mud brick houses for the overseer and for the labourers. They clustered at the bottom of a hill over which the estate’s vines climbed, with a stream nearby that ran on south of the town and tumbled and gurgled all the way down to the Lake. The visits with her father had been short, rarely more than an overnight stay; it had been a simple enough matter of finding somewhere in town to dine and sleep, and making their way back to the estate the following day; and she had not questioned her father’s not bothering to endow the place with anything more in the way of creature comforts.

But after her father’s death, she had decided to have things changed, and have a dwelling-house built for herself. She had wanted to make it a proper home, in fact to recreate her Magdala home at Capernaum, albeit on a smaller scale; and of course she had wanted it built at the top of the hill. She had laboured and panted all the way up to make sure she would have the view she wanted, and truly, she had found the landscape around her breathtaking. Below her, past the vines, rolled her own orchards and fields of grain, and beyond the neighbouring farms the town houses, the blue of the Lake and the dusty mountains rising up on the other shore; behind and to one side stretched more and higher hills, all the way to the horizon. Straight due west of these hills, her father had once told her, lay the port of Ptolemais on the Middle Sea. From there ships would sail to Tyre, Cyprus, and the Greek cities in Asia Minor. She had taken a deep breath, and almost imagined she could smell the salty tang of the sea in the air, never mind the uncounted miles that lay in between.

Her delirious dreams of a hilltop home had only lasted until she had climbed down the hill for her first conversation on the topic with Jude the overseer. He had pointed out the many impracticalities of her plan: the hauling up of all the construction materials, the lack of ready access to water once up there even with the doubtful outcome of drilling a brand new well, the additional burden it would place on the women who would be cooking the food down in the common courtyard if they then had to take it up to her, or in the alternative would require completely separate cooking facilities in her house just for her benefit. She had put up as much of a protest as she thought was incumbent upon her, it being impolitic to hand her overseer too easy a victory this early on, but in the end she had had to concede the point.

So she had had her dwelling-house built at the bottom of the hill, just like the others, but set apart, at the opposite, far end of the common courtyard. And to compensate for her initial capitulation, she had been as capricious as she dared in the building of it, insisting on having it, like her Magdala home, made entirely of stone, and paved throughout. This had meant bringing in builders not only from Capernaum, but also from other towns on the Lake. She had wanted planed beams and an awning for her porch; and she had been as particular in the choice of the wood and of the canvas as she had been in the picking of the facing for the walls and of the paving. Jude the overseer had, of course, kept up his own very creditable griping all through it, complaining about so much expense and effort sunk into a dwelling-house, when it could all have been invested in making the estate bigger and more productive (which she took to actually mean, with a wider scope for him to cream off a bit more for himself). This spirited pretence of a fight on his part, whilst remaining within the confines of the deference owed her as the landowner, had rather amused her. It was so very different from dealing with her brother’s unrelenting animosity. She understood she would have to parry her overseer skilfully if she wanted to remain on top of affairs at the estate; but she also anticipated she might have as much fun as profit in the attempt.

She had made frequent but similarly cursory trips to the estate during the building of the dwelling-house to check on its progress, and every time she had come, she had felt her impatience growing for the day when she would be able to move into a place of her own, and not have to depend on the lodging and fare of Capernaum inns. And it was during one of those trips, when she had been diverted by the builders busying themselves at the far end of the common courtyard, that a novel idea had wriggled itself into her mind.

She had been going over her accounts with Jude the overseer, sheltered by the lazily moving shadows of the houses in the common courtyard, and after he had momentarily left, called to deal with something out on the fields, she had let her gaze wander over to the building site, where her own outside walls had already started rising. There had been stonemasons and carpenters at work, and she had noticed that some of them had stripped to the waist in their labour. This had her speculating that they must have come from much further along the Lake, from the Gaulanitis or from the Decapolis, even; she would have thought local men much too prude to be in any state of undress where they might be seen by the women who lived on the estate. But the latter were, if anything, just then conspicuous by their absence. The builders had not seemed overly conscious of Mary’s interest in them; and that, and a sly inkling of the women’s having perhaps chosen to be occupied somewhere out of sight, had all made her wonder whether these men’s lack of modesty might be habitual, or something yet more than habitual.

She had still been immersed in the study of some well-turned calves showing below short tunics, of the muscled relief of strong arms in constant effort, and of the play of skin and sinew on naked torsos as they bent and flexed and straightened, when Jude the overseer returned.

‘Jude, I’ve been thinking about the dwelling-house.’

‘Mistress, I hopes you’s been thinking of giving it up. Although it’d be a shame, at this point, to have so much expense wasted on it already.’

‘The expense is bearable. It’s not that big a house after all.’

‘It’ll be when you’s done with it. I’s sure don’t know what you wants so many storeys and so many rooms for.’

‘That’s what I’ve been thinking about. I think you’re right. I don’t really need that much. At least not to start out with.’

By the time the momentary shock of having Mary readily agree with him on anything had registered on the overseer’s face, she had already pressed on.

‘I’ve decided I can work out a compromise. I want to get the ground floor finished and ready for me to use as soon as possible, and then I can take my time getting the upper storeys done.’ She had held out the fingers of one hand: ‘One front room, one bedroom and one washing room for me, one spare room that can be used for stores, and a back room where Joanna can sleep and work. That’s all I need for the moment. The rest can wait.’

Jude the overseer had not looked as though he was getting his speech back in a hurry, so she had decided to settle the issue then and there.

‘See to it that the builders get their new instructions. But make sure that they get the skylight done and that they leave easy access to the rooftop from the inner courtyard. I don’t want them to have to start knocking holes all over again when the upper storey goes up. Now, let’s get these accounts finished, shall we?’

Her dwelling-house, provisionally one-storey only, had been deemed fit for habitation not very long after that, and her first stay in it had felt like a real treat. She had soon established a routine for Capernaum; and in contrast to life at Magdala, her days on the estate were lived determinedly out of doors. She would have her morning and midday meals out in the common courtyard with the workers’ wives and sisters and daughters, and the suckling babies and boys not yet old enough for fieldwork, grabbing a floor-mat and reaching out for her share alongside them all. They had been shy at first, in awe of her finery, and intrigued by Joanna, sitting some distance in the back, looking mildly disapproving, and waiting for her mistress to finish before having her own food. But Mary’s habits of enjoyment made her consume her meals with a show of indulgence which proved highly entertaining to the women; so that now they chattered on, and laughed at ease in her company; and Mary, not needing to shut them out as she had her brother, sometimes listened on, and more rarely joined in. Between morning and midday she would either sit with Jude the overseer, discussing the estate’s affairs, or go out with him to inspect the vines, or the orchards, or the fields, or whatever else might then be in need of attention; keeping herself very ostensibly at a distance from the work by now only intermittently continuing on her dwelling-house. Sabbaths were at first a perplexity; she was sure that the thought of her joining in the prayers at any of the farm’s households must be a horror for them as much as it was for herself; in the end it was settled by her taking the supernumerary food which the women were always apt to produce in their fussiness before sundown, and retiring to nondescript meals with Joanna indoors.

She also took care that, however much there might be to do on the estate, it never occupied the whole of her days. After a brief midday rest, she would almost always go into town. With Joanna in tow, she had thoroughly explored the market at Capernaum (which had not taken long; it was risible, compared with what she knew in Magdala) and almost immediately ventured further to the Lake shore, and some distance southwards along it. She had eventually found a place which appealed to her particularly, and which she had later ascertained she could reach directly by following the stream from the estate. There was a tavern where she could sit in the shade and look out towards the Lake, and an easy walk to the beach where the fishermen would bring in their catch. She would go over to the fishing boats with the tavern-keeper and get him to choose the best fish for her, before the fishwives arrived for the messy business of preparing the afternoon’s haul either for taking to market, or for salting and drying. Mary’s prize, liberally coated in wild herbs and dark green olive oil, would be grilled on the tavern’s charcoal fire; and that, washed down with a goblet of mellow wine, would be her late afternoon meal. Then, when the sun was still some way above the western hills that pointed her home, she would set out on her way back to the estate, so as not to find herself on her own in the dark. For, after her first few forays into Capernaum, once the market had been examined and dismissed, she had neglected to bring Joanna with her on her lakeshore excursions. She felt the pleasure she derived from these afternoons by the Lake all the keener for having none but herself to consult on their unfolding; it was a sop to that rebellious side of hers, a taste of how her life ought to have been lived all along. To be sure, her sitting down to eat at the tavern, by herself, was only likely to add to her bad name, as her brother would see it; but that was no worse than the gossip she already accrued from living on her own at the estate; and the tavern-keeper was happy for her custom, in that poorer part of town.

The fishermen whose arrival marked the high point of these afternoons were a fascinating lot in themselves. It might be odd to describe as “earthy” people who spent such a great part of their time on water, and who depended so much on the Lake for their livelihood; but that was how she saw them. Sometimes gruff, often diffident, always straightforward, solid through and through; and faithfully respectful of the traditions handed down from their forefathers. She had become especially familiar with the crew of two of the fishing boats, who were usually among the first to head for shore, making them more often than not the suppliers of her repasts. The smaller of these two boats was manned by two brothers, Simon and Andrew. Simon stood out for being incredibly stocky and, even amongst fellows with no pretention to cleverness, for being reckoned particularly dense; they had nicknamed him the Rock, the other fishermen had told her, once they had become used to her presence amongst them, on account of his thick skull. His brother Andrew she could not help noticing, because he was the only one who invariably looked at her with censure equal only to her brother’s. She could not account for this truculence, when none of the others seemed to share it, until she learnt that Andrew was a follower of John the Baptist, and would leave, from time to time, for long spells by the River Jordan; even she had heard of the customary fulminations of the holy man. The other boat, the biggest by far amongst the small fishing fleet at Capernaum, and the only one with hired hands on board, was owned by an old man called Zebedee; his two sons, James and John, worked with him.

It was to Zebedee’s youngest son that Mary’s eyes strayed most often. John was strikingly handsome and, to all effects, delightfully unaware of his own attractiveness. She still remembered his utter confusion the first time she had made it to their patch, when he had climbed off the boat in the skimpiest of undergarments to find her looking through the day’s catch, and listening to the tavern-keeper’s self-declared expert advice on the variety of fish on offer; at which he had quickly thrown on a rather threadbare, workaday tunic which showed off as much as it covered, a body not exactly muscular, but pleasantly lean and wiry. In that first instance, she had been feeling slightly awkward; the overdressing and bedecking in jewellery, which had not bothered her at her estate, had felt out of place here, such as these men had likely never encountered before; and she had been asking herself whether she would want to repeat the outing at all. The sight of John had dissipated every doubt. From then on, she was intoxicated with the thought of dazzling him out of his wits. She had never seen more bewitching features on a man’s face in her life. He had eyes of a clear greenish hazel, but which she rarely had glimpses of, too often kept hidden away behind a ragged curtain of thick black hair, as though he were a skittish colt constantly readying himself to bolt. It only made her hungrier for every bit of him she could get.

It was, alas, hunger of a sort she knew she could not hope to assuage with John. The fishermen were close-knit kinsfolk, and the very earthiness that had drawn her in at first ensured that none of them would ever stray. It was marriage or abstinence over here; Simon-the-Rock already had a young wife, and the others would surely follow as soon as they could afford. It was sweet torture to look at John in the certainty that he was out of her reach. Yet she had her consolations. And at the wane of each afternoon, as she walked back to her estate in the soft, fading light, stepping across the long shadows the setting sun laid out on her path, pent-up desire seeping like an actual tingling into the pores of her skin, she could at least look forward to an allaying of sorts; and muse complacently on the rewards which, so many months before, she had cleverly afforded herself, through the artifice of her by now eternally unfinished dwelling-house.

She was aware of differing from everybody else around her, in the way she thought and the way she behaved. But it did not make her uncomfortable. Quite the opposite; she was impatient for everybody else to wake up and shake off all the unnecessary complications they were imposing on themselves. She failed pointedly to empathise with other women who found it possible to conform; at her most generous, she pitied them for meekly accepting to be treated as no better than small children, eternally under the authority of their menfolk, or worse still, to be seen as their property, and relegated to the same heading as their cattle and their furniture. Her own sister was a case in point, crushed unprotestingly under their brother’s thumb.

So it was not surprising to her that she should have a different attitude to sex. What was surprising was that most others should be so bottled up about it. If they had only, like her, listened to what traders could tell of what went on in the wide world beyond Galilee, they would, like her, realise that for many people elsewhere the gratification of sex was an entirely normal thing, and that it was not unheard of for women as well as men to seek it for themselves. Such a relaxed view of the matter was, however, unlikely to prevail in her surroundings anytime soon, and in the meantime she did have her own needs to satisfy.

She had sketched tantalisingly easy ways of attending to them at home. Yet she had held back, much as she had over her painted face, so long as her father was alive; she had been too wary of making him weigh up his love against his displeasure. But her eyes had been unguarded; indeed, her recent quarrel with her brother confirmed they were at times unguarded still; and the more enterprising traders who had seen her grow up from a little girl at her father’s side to a young woman standing on her own had noticed how lustfully she looked at the bustling helpers in their caravans as they loaded and unloaded their masters’ cargoes at market. They had hinted that a discrete arrangement could be made. But the obvious danger of putting herself in their power, plus the ever-present potential for discovery by her too-watchful brother, had left an unpleasant after-taste to her early experiments. And it was in a most dissatisfied state that she had come, at first, to her estate in Capernaum, where, given the relative backwardness of the place, she had even less hope of a happy answer to her quandary. Until, that was, she had observed the Gaulanitis and Decapolis builders in their near-nakedness amidst the rising walls of her dwelling-house.

She felt no compunction about having been entirely disingenuous in her argument with her brother about the presence of men on the estate. As she saw it, he and everybody else who presumed to dictate the terms on which she should live her life, and to deny her any say in it, were playing dirty. She felt therefore amply justified in gaming the rules in her favour, too, whenever she could. As long as she could argue for a valid reason for the men to be there, and as long as nobody was ever seen to do anything that could lead to provable accusations of wrongdoing, she reckoned she ought to get away with it.

Once the ground floor of the dwelling-house was finished and she had moved in, she had given her overseer new instructions. Any further work was only to be carried out when she was in residence on the estate and could supervise it herself. She did not care much for either the skills or the style of local stonemasons and carpenters, so he was to make it known in town that if any foreigner came looking for stone-building or joinery work, he could be directed to the estate. (In such a small town as Capernaum, and standing as it did almost at the northernmost edge of the Lake, anybody from a dozen miles away might qualify as a foreigner; she was thus confident of being able to tap into the steady supply of footloose day-wagers from the settlements, both lakeshore and inland, either side of the Tetrarchy.) And she would only allow him to hire one such man at a time; the locals helping him could go home at the end of the day, but he would be expected to sleep where he worked, on her rooftop, for expediency. She had thought of ways in which it could be made clear, once a builder had been dismissed at the end of his time of employment, that he need not ever apply again; but soon concluded that this was ultimately unnecessary; her visits to Capernaum were too irregular for any of these foreigners to want to rely on, and their search for a livelihood would naturally drive them somewhere else anyway.

This was all in keeping with her earlier capriciousness, and the instructions to her overseer were couched in perfectly plausible terms of bringing down the costs for building work on the dwelling-house, which he had railed against often enough. She did not presume to believe for a moment that Jude would be fooled by any of this. But then, she made sure that neither would he presume that she believed in any of his protestations of always having the best interests of the estate at heart. They were crooks, both of them, settled into the tangled web of mutual deception, mindful to fall shy of any scandalous cheating which might unravel the whole plot, yet subtly testing the limits of each other’s dishonesty. In the end, it all came down to the same lesson she had already endured from her brother: truthfulness did not matter; it should be enough that pretences were kept.

Deep in the darkest night, silently making her way to the rooftop where a young man would be sleeping, or merely pretending to, she would sometimes feel breathless at the enormity of the gamble she had taken on. She had bet that the men she had chosen, outsiders, strangers, with no ties to the local community, and no stakes in it, would be susceptible to temptation. But she could not know for sure. And not all of those who presented themselves for work were pleasing to her; but she could not afford to employ only the comely ones, or that would lend too much substance to the kind of rumours she now knew, from her brother’s insinuations, to be already circulating. Consequently many of her nights on the estate were spent in innocent slumber; too many for her taste, in fact at times a whole stay’s worth; but not all of her nights. Still, when she thought there was a promising opportunity to hand, she took her time, applying to this as to any other activity in her life her well-practiced methods of slow deliberation, until she had satisfied herself as to the man’s willingness to engage; at any rate, she had never once been rebuffed so far, and not one of them had ever expressed much surprise at her night-time intrusions.

If it meant her dwelling-house turning into something of a Capernaum joke, so be it. It was not only the seemingly never-ending nature of the building work, on-again and off-again at the whim of her comings and goings; it was also the weirdly disjointed appearance it was taking, with so much of its upper storeys designed and made by so many different hands; no wall completed by the same man who had started it, no two beams of wood cut and joined with the same tools; and none of the new spaces serving any apparent purpose for a single woman who neither visited nor entertained. Jude the overseer would relay the talk from town and, she did not doubt, contribute to it himself with glee, since not that many people outside the estate had occasion to see the house first-hand. Supposedly people were calling it “The Magdalene’s Tower” , with the sobriquet itself rapidly becoming a local byword for a haphazard project that looked likely never to be finished. Well, it was never going to be the elegant residence, perched on the heights of her dominion, that she had dreamt of at first. And if she were to have notoriety anyway, she would rather that people throw mud in laughter, than stones in anger.

Whenever Mary came back to Capernaum, she somehow expected everything to have remained stock still and unchanged whilst she was away, and was always amazed to have to acknowledge the passage of time here as well: the growth of green, the blanching of wood, the etching of lines and silvering of hair in elders, the stretching of limbs and filling out of parts in youngsters. But there seemed to be more than the usual change in the air this time round.

As she approached the Lake shore in the early afternoon, she noticed a couple of boats pulled up fairly high on the beach. One of them she was sure must be Zebedee’s, and the other, from the paintwork on the bow and stern, she would hazard as Simon-the-Rock’s; but no-one was to be seen either in or around them. It would sometimes happen that the fishermen turned in early, if their going had not been good in the deep waters; but she could see many boats still out on the Lake, and she would have expected the beach-bound fishermen to be either trying their luck with a cast close to shore, or ministering to the needs of their gear; generally keeping busy and making the most of their daylight hours. Looking more closely at the boats, she wondered whether they had been put to water any time recently.

She made her way to her usual sitting place under the porch of the tavern, below the trellis made of more-or-less-straight sticks of wood twined in long rows, over which a lonely, knotty vine was growing. Sunlight flecked the hard-beaten earth underfoot as the wind from the Lake rustled the leaves overhead. Joseph the tavern-keeper came to greet her.

‘Peace be with you, your ladyship. Back in Capernaum, then.’

‘And with you, Joseph. Tell me, are those boats on the beach Zebedee’s and the Rock’s?’

‘Ay.’

‘Ah, I thought so.’

She wanted to know more; where the fishermen were, and why their boats were in, and when they had last been out. But she wondered whether it would be inappropriate to ask. She hoped that Joseph would be his usual tavern-keeper self, assuming any patron to be in search of natter as much as fare; and he did not disappoint her.

‘They’s all left, you know.’

‘They’ve left?’

‘Ay. With the new preacher.’

‘Which new preacher? Not John the Baptist?’

‘Nay, the new preacher from Nazareth.’

‘Which new preacher from Nazareth?’

This was maddening. She was getting nowhere fast with Joseph; she had overlooked what she ought to have known better, that his tavern-keeper self, albeit providentially chatty, was prone to produce much speech for little intelligence. She remembered a scary story an Egyptian trader had told her when she was a little girl, of sorcerers who pulled out dead people’s brains with a big poker up their noses. She would like to do that to Joseph right now.

‘The carpenter chap.’

‘I’ve never heard of him.’

‘ ’Tis so? Oh, he’s becoming famous in these parts. Folks’s been coming from all over to listen to his preaching.’

‘And where is he now?’

‘Bah. Who knows? He’s always on the move, that one. Folks saw his crossing the Lake, then the next thing you know he’s back on this side, and then he’s gone again. Somewhere north, they say.’

‘Will he come back to Capernaum, do you think?’

‘ ’Tis likely. Folks’s been coming into town, expecting his coming here.’

That was rather more reassuring news. She did not care that much for Simon-the-Rock or old Zebedee, and she would be very glad not to have to look at Andrew’s gloomy face ever again, but she had felt sadly bereaved at the thought of John, handsome, bewitching, skittish John disappearing from her afternoons forever. She was at a loss at how to reverse this appalling prospect. Yet she tried to convince herself that she need only keep coming here, as she always did, not change her Capernaum routine at all, and sometime soon John would be back in the preacher’s wake. Yes, but would he be the same John? She had always ascribed Andrew’s disconcerting behaviour towards herself to the baleful influence of the preacher, John the Baptist. Something would die inside her if John were to keep himself away from her in some awful way.

‘So what happened?’

‘What d’you means?’

‘What did the preacher tell them that made them up sticks and leave with him? I mean, I can understand Andrew going, but the Rock never struck me as particularly fond of sermons.’

‘Nay, and you’s to admire the preacher as manages to get through that thick skull of his! Don’t know. The chap’s just come ’round, taking a stroll along the Lake it looked like, and stopped to chat to them. Much like your ladyship did, first time you’s come. They was all minding their business, mending their nets and the like. And then they’s all off with him, just so! And they hasn’t been back to their boats ever since, except to take the preacher ’cross the Lake.’

‘When was this?’

‘Some weeks ago now.’

‘And they all went? Even old Zebedee?’

‘Nay, not Zebedee. He’s still ’round. But he’s been knocked hard, the poor man. Because, see, the mother of the sons of Zebedee left, too.’

Poor Zebedee, indeed! It seemed like a lot of bad luck piled all at once on an old man’s head. Her interest was alive, and she did not need ponder the possible indelicacy of pressing Joseph for more details; having got to the juicy bits of this tale, he was spilling them out with no holding back.

‘She went looking for the sons as had set up with the preacher, thinking I reckon of giving them a good talking-to for leaving their old man to fend for hisself, but instead of coming back with the two tied to hesskirts, as you’d fancy, she sent back word as she was staying with them and following the preacher hesself.’

‘I thought that preachers didn’t allow women to join them.’

‘This must be one as does, as the mother of the sons of Zebedee sure’s gone. So old Zebedee, he’d no heart to carry on with the big boat, and his hired hands was dismissed, and they’s gone look for work elsewhere. Good news for the other fishermen, seeing as there’s fewer of them casting for the fish, less good news for meself and the townsfolk, as they’s not yet landing as much as afore. But I’ll still give you a good meal this afternoon, your ladyship, as soon as the boats come in.’

‘And what’s become of Zebedee?’

‘The Rock’s mother-in-law took him in, and she and her daughter’s looking after him now. What they’s living on, I wonders, with not a single breadwinner amongst them.’

She had been listening to Joseph’s tale, feeling genuinely sorry for Zebedee, but more concerned with her own infatuation with John; but suddenly there was no room for any such self-centredness anymore; the tale had turned tragic. Here were three people facing destitution, and all because those they had depended on had gone off to listen to the entrapping words of a preacher. And Simon-the-Rock’s wife! She had completely forgotten about her. For Andrew and James and John to have left their homes, their aged parent even, was one thing; for Simon-the-Rock to have deserted his wife was quite another. It seemed to her the most hideous form of betrayal. So much for women owing deference and obedience to the men who provided for them, when this showed how easily these same women could be left in the lurch. She felt vindicated in all her struggles against her brother; almost wishing he were there now, to be blasted with her righteous indignation, and thrice damned to hell.

She was fairly working herself up to a fury again all on her own, when the recollection of their only too recent spat cooled her down. Red-hot intemperance here might only invite the voices and the visions in, as it did at home. She reminded herself of all the happy circumstances she had secured in her present life, in spite of what her brother might think or say or do, and how useless it would be to jeopardise them in any way. That took her thoughts instantly back to those three unfortunates, peremptorily abandoned to the direst of straits, and she was just as instantly preoccupied with how she could be of use.

‘Joseph, I’d like to help them. Is there any way ... ?’

She was unsure how to approach this. Although she assumed that Simon-the-Rock’s wife and mother-in-law would be grateful for some relief from poverty, she did not want to be seen as interfering, nor to succeed only by making them resentful of her prying into their woe.

‘I’d just like to be sure that old Zebedee ...’ she trailed off again. Oh, this was infuriating. Why was she not able to find the words? She looked at the deep waters of the Lake, where she could now see the first boats turning in towards the beach in front. Joseph followed her gaze, and seemed to understand her meaning.

‘Don’t you worry, your ladyship. As soon as the boats come ashore, I’ll get one of them lads to take you to the Rock’s house. I’s sure Zebedee’ll be glad to see you, and know he’s not forgot. He can do with well-wishers.’

The small fisherman’s hut, as she approached it from the beach, was not dissimilar to those of her own labourers on the estate, apart from the series of triangular wooden frames besides it, where she guessed, in better times, fish would have hung to dry. They stood empty now. The young fisherman who had brought her here had not lingered, running back to rejoin his crew and the work still to do about the boats as soon as he had pointed it out to her, and she had been left alone to climb the slight slope that led from the water’s edge. There were other huts nearby, and women were milling near them, calling up to each other, stepping out and darting back, the fishwives already on their own way down for their share of labour, the housebound ones just as eager to display some fulsome bustle; all girding themselves for this time of help-meeting, and for the fair few hours before their husbands, brothers and sons would be home for their evening meal. Further along the beach, small children were running around and playing in equally joyous cacophony.

The hut she was approaching, in contrast, looked very quiet from the outside, the shutters on the windows pulled half-way to; they would be letting only a narrow rectangle of light in. As she got closer, she could see a young woman sitting just outside the open door, across which a thick cloth was draped, working on some stitching. She guessed that must be Simon-the-Rock’s wife.

Mary had by now been noticed by the other women. She was concentrating on picking her way on the pebbly path but, at the edge of her view, she could just about discern the elbows shooting out and the heads turning. Even some of the children were pulling up short in their play. She was obviously as conspicuous here as she had been amongst the fishermen and their catch. She managed a desultory smile and a few nods of her head, and received similar acknowledgements from those nearest her amongst Simon-the-Rock’s neighbours. When she next looked up, she saw that the young woman had risen at her approach.

‘Peace be with you.’

‘And with you, your ladyship.’

‘Are you the wife of Simon, the fisherman?’

‘Ay.’

‘I’m Mary, daughter of Hillel of Magdala. I have an estate here, on the other side of town.’

‘Ay, I’s heard of you.’

Mary felt a quick stab of curiosity. She wondered what Simon-the-Rock and Andrew would have told of her at home; she would rather not credit Simon-the-Rock’s wife’s having heard of her from any other source. She hesitated briefly, but her sense of mission reasserted itself. None of that mattered; it was not to the purpose of her being here; yet in that very briefness, the young woman’s welcome retrenched a tad further, and Mary fumbled with her next hurriedly rehearsed line.

‘Joseph ... the tavern-keeper ... told me you had taken in old Zebedee.’

‘Ay.’

‘That was very kind of you.’

‘Nay, ’twas nothing.’

The young woman averted her eyes and hung her head low; so very low that, what with her being much shorter than Mary, only the veiled crown of her head and the tip of her nose, beyond the frayed edge of the veil, were presented to the taller woman’s scrutiny. Mary wondered how she would ever manage to get any kind of conversation going with this spectacle of a limp rag. She felt some of her goodwill towards Simon-the-Rock’s wife ebbing away, and was almost ready to congratulate the fisherman on running off, where she was earlier eager to castigate. She hesitated again, then decided her best course of action was to keep it simple and to the point.

‘I was very sorry to hear of Zebedee’s giving up his boat, and I wanted to help ... in any way I can. I really think you were very kind to take him in, especially when ... I think ... you have to make do for yourself and for your own mother, too. I’d like to see him provided for. I’d like to see you all provided for.’

At this, the limp rag came somewhat back to life; the young woman slowly lifted her head. Mary had tried to infuse her words with all the well-meaning she could rally, and felt reassured that she might have finally gotten through. She waited until Simon-the-Rock’s wife turned her eyes back up to her, and when she did, their dark brown orbs were dancing with liquid specks of what seemed like some inner radiance. Perhaps the fisherman did need castigating after all.

‘You’d like to come in and see the old man, your ladyship? He mostly sleeps now, but I’s sure he’d be glad to see you.’

It took a heartbeat for Mary to snap back into the conversation. ‘The old man ... Oh, you mean Zebedee?’

‘Ay.’

‘I don’t want to disturb him.’

‘You’s not to disturb at all. Please come in.’

She followed the young woman into the hut. There was a mat spread out on the floor, near the wall just inside the door, and Mary sat herself on it, whilst Simon-the-Rock’s wife opened the shutters on the windows. Mary could now see a thin mattress against the far wall, and Zebedee, who had been sleeping on it, stirring himself awake.

‘It’d be time for his being up anyway. Ma’s due back from town soon.’

Simon-the-Rock’s wife went to Zebedee, by then sitting up gingerly on the mattress. She pulled out another mat from a folded pile on the floor and sat down next to him.

‘Little father, a visitor’s come for you.’

Zebedee followed the young woman’s gaze to where Mary was sitting.

‘Peace be with you, Zebedee.’

‘And with you, your ladyship. So you’s come to see this old man. ’Tis good to know you’s not forgot us.’

Zebedee’s words echoed so exactly Joseph the tavern-keeper’s, earlier, that she had to marvel at how well attuned these people seemed to be to one another. What uncomplicated creatures, she told herself. It brought a tightness to her throat, a hitherto unknown depth of otherness, a sense of estrangement from the unsuspected wholeness of these simple souls ... She pushed the thought down; this was no time or place to question her life choices; and she goaded herself to carry on civilly enough, come what may.

‘You always got me the best catch.’

‘Nay, the Rock beat me to’t half the time ... But he’s gone too, now, isn’t he?’

He turned to Simon-the-Rock’s wife, and his fingertips fluttered with the lightest of touches on her forearm. She caught hold of his gnarled hand, a veritable fisherman’s hook, in both of hers.

‘He promised them they’d be fishers of people.’

‘Was that the preacher? Is that what he said?’

‘Ay.’

And then Zebedee did something that took Mary completely by surprise. He looked at Simon-the-Rock’s wife and smiled happily and fondly. She returned his smile, and even in the relative gloom of the hut, Mary could see that liquid radiance dancing again in her dark brown eyes. This was incomprehensible to her. These two wretches should be bemoaning their abandonment by their feckless, heartless relations; instead they seemed positively delighted to have been forsaken.

Her befuddlement was momentarily dispelled by the sounds of footsteps coming up to the hut, followed by loud huffing and puffing and by the call of a woman’s voice.

‘What’s all this sitting inside? The old man awake already?’

A stout woman burst through the cloth draped across the doorway, her broad features only slightly less weatherworn than those of Zebedee, a heavy-looking bundle slung over her shoulder. She stopped as she caught sight of Mary.

‘Ma, this’s Mary ... Mary of Magdala. She’s come to see the little father. And she’s offering to help us.’

‘Ay, ’s she, now?’

‘ ’Tis so, your ladyship? Praised be the Holy Name!’

Mary felt rather self-conscious, as she had at the tavern. But this was, undeniably, what she had come for, and she forced herself to speak, figuring that so far, straightforwardness had obtained the best results.

‘Yes, I want you to have some money from me. I’ll leave you some today,’ she said, as she opened the purse tied to her belt, and started taking out all the silver coins she found inside, ‘and I’ll bring you some more before I leave for Magdala. And if you’re ever in need of anything whilst I’m in town, just send word through Joseph the tavern-keeper, and I’ll do what I can to help.’

The old woman dropped her bundle on the floor, and crossed the room to sit next to her daughter. Simon-the-Rock’s wife freed one of her hands from Zebedee’s, in order to clasp one of her mother’s.

‘ ’Tis just as the Master said, nay, Ma?’

‘Ay. He said not to worry, the Father in Heaven’d provide.’

‘Ask, and you receive, he said.’

‘Search, and you find. Knock, and ’tis opened.’

‘And look, so ’tis proved. In every way.’

Mary, still holding the handful of coins, was taken aback some more. Of course these were humble people, profuse in their mode of address (to witness, her being systematically treated to their “your ladyships”); but this carpenter must be somebody very special indeed, to be earning himself the title of “Master”. There must be no doubt in their minds of his being a holy man, the equal of John the Baptist at least. And from the exchange between mother and daughter, it would seem that both of them had actually heard his words; but what strange words they were, for a preacher. “The Father in Heaven?” The little she knew of preachers came from accounts of John the Baptist, so her enduring impression was that they were more apt to call for fire and brimstone to come down on sinners’ heads, than to tell the destitute not to worry. She was still determined to help them, but it was disconcerting that this preacher seemed not only to be taking their menfolk traipsing around the countryside when they should be properly earning their living, but was also encouraging them to expect someone like her to come forward to help them out of the misery he had created in the first place. She had to fairly recompose herself to cross the room and deposit the silver coins in the hands of Simon-the-Rock’s wife, and was already halfway back to her mat whilst the young woman was addressing her.

‘We’s very grateful for your help, your ladyship. May the Father in Heaven repay you a thousand times.’

‘Please. It’s a blessing for me. May I ask ... The preacher you were talking about ... Have you met him, yourselves?’

‘He healed me, your ladyship,’ the old woman unexpectedly piped up; and those were, if possible, even more surprising words than any Mary had heard so far.

‘He healed you? How so?’

‘ ’Twas like this, see. I’s in a high fever, and I’s inside, in bed, feeling something dreadful. Not moving at all for the pain, every part of me body aching. Then the Master comes in. Here, your ladyship, right beside me. And he takes me hand, and I looks at him, right into his eyes, and ’tis like ... Oh, what’s I to say? Like there’s a voice in me head, telling me I’s not to be troubled. And then this coolness’s spreading, from the hand he’s holding all the way up, ... And then what d’you knows, he helps me up, and I feels fine, and I goes to my cooking and I gets the meal out for them all, like ’twas never a thing wrong with me.’

‘We’s been truly blessed, Ma, hasn’t we.’

The things Mary was hearing about this preacher were becoming ever more astounding. Joseph had mentioned the fame of his preaching, but here she was being told he had healing powers as well. This was something she had not heard said even of John the Baptist. She understood now the reverence in the women’s voices when they called him “Master” . And it accounted, if they were persuaded of having witnessed such powers, for their revelling in their misfortune rather than bewailing it. Nay, they probably did not even think of it as misfortune at all.

She felt baffled and unsettled. And, acutely, that she had no more business there. But she could not leave without asking a last question, the one that was really burning in her mind.

‘Have you had news of your menfolk?’

‘Nay, not since they’s gone up north. But we’s sure to hear of them if they come back through town.’

‘And will you go and see them?’

‘We’ll serve the Master, and listen to his words, if we’s able.’

None of this was quite what she had wanted to hear. She had only one hope left, and she risked voicing it, even though she was, by this point, less and less sanguine of it being shared by these patently deranged people sitting before her.

‘Perhaps next time they come the preacher will release them, and they’ll come back to you, and stay for good.’

‘We’s not to think of that, your ladyship. They’s doing as they must. They’s been called by the Master.’

‘To be fishers of people.’

‘Ay.’

It was as she feared. Forget about feeling baffled and unsettled. This kind of talk was simply getting her exasperated again.

‘So that they can do what? Bring more people to the preacher?’

‘ ’Tis a good thing if they do, nay, your ladyship?’

‘Not if he empties the whole neighbourhood! Who is he going to leave to do the work that needs doing?’

The last words were Zebedee’s.

‘They’s doing the work of the Lord, your ladyship. That’s work as needs doing too. And when a man’s called in the Holy Name, how’s he to refuse?’

Chapter 3 >