1

JORAH WATCHED as Annika marked the height of the child with the flat of her hand and scored the limestone wall with her thumbnail. The child stood back and watched the addition of his newest notch.

The occasion was a solemn one, Jorah could tell, a mysterious bargain struck between the old woman and the little street scamp. After making the mark, Annika pursed her lips and, with a mistrustful look at the boy, bent to examine the distance between the last notch and the fresh one. The mistrust turned to surprise, and her fists went to her hips. She regarded the child with suspicious interest.

“Well, Jotham. What have you to account for nearly two finger-spans of growth? Are you wearing sandals?”

“No, Annika,” the child said, lifting a foot for examination. “I have been eating the loaves.”

One eyebrow came up. “Every day?”

“Every day.” He nodded, dark eyes large in his thin face.

She glared at him a moment more, then the eyebrow came down. “Good boy.”

His face broke into a sunny smile, and he turned to skip to the tall cupboard in the kitchen. He waited until Annika got there, and she reached to take down a wooden box. Jorah could not see what she gave Jotham, but the boy received it with a smile, then scurried through the kitchen and out the door.

Annika watched him go, smiling fondly. “Little rogue.”

Seated at the table, Jorah looked out the window to watch him dash away. “Little ungrateful wretch. I didn’t hear a thank-you.”

Annika replaced the box. “One thing at a time.” She turned to the shelves and took down the cups to set them on the table. She waved a few fruit flies from the pitcher of watered wine and set it next to the cups, then she set out a loaf of spiced honeycake and fetched a few plates.

Gazing out the window, chin on her fist, Jorah murmured, “It’s hard to think of him as a boy, but he was, you know. A little boy like that.”

Annika hesitated only a second as she sliced the bread. “Which him would you be speaking of?”

“You know.”

“I do. Try and say his name now and again. Else it would be as if he never was.”

Pain surged. As if Nathanael never was? But he was. And never would be again.

Jorah made her lips small to keep them from quivering. Annika was busy with the serving, she would not notice when Jorah pretended to adjust her head covering to wipe away tears.

Three weeks since they had buried Nathanael at Bethany. Three weeks of endless tears, and they did not appear to be slowing. There was too much to grieve over. The loss of the man she would marry. The loss of her old life. The loss of . . . but she could not think about Jesus. She lost him long ago, the day he left their home.

Annika was speaking. “. . . family from Sepphoris still interested in your place?” She shook her head and gave a heavy sigh as she slid a slice of honeycake from the knife to a plate. “I never could have imagined such a thing: no tribe of Joseph left in Nazareth. My steps may stop at the well, but my heart will ever wander past it. Up that old hill to that old home.”

“They are interested. But Jude and James do not want to sell until they talk to Simon about it, and he’s off on some crazy lark to Decapolis. They want to talk with Joses and Mother too, but that’s not the reason they’re going to Jerusalem.” No, it was the same old story. People leaving her for God. Jorah never seemed to figure in.

“So,” Annika said as she slid onto the bench across from Jorah. “Caesarea Maritima for you.”

“Someone has to tell her.”

They fell silent. Jorah’s glance kept straying to the uncut portion of Annika’s honeycake. What was it about that loaf . . .

Annika was right. Soon all of the children of Joseph would be gone from the home forever. In just a few hours, Jorah and James and Judas were leaving, she for Caesarea Maritima, they for Jerusalem. The home would be an empty shell. As she was without Nathanael.

Why would a loaf of bread . . .

She remembered. This time she could not conceal the tears.

“Child,” Annika said softly, reaching to grasp Jorah’s hand.

“He brought them bread,” Jorah gasped, and bit her lip. Sorrow wrapped around her like an old black garment.

Nathanael had brought them bread, one of Annika’s loaves. He went back to ask the strangers to join their party on the road to Jerusalem, so they would feel safer traveling in a larger company. For bread, they gave him blood, his own. He died days later of the wounds.

Jorah sagged and rested her forehead on the table. Grief upon grief. Nathanael and Jesus, dead within days of each other, both murdered. One was said to have risen again. Well, Jorah never saw him. The other lay beneath a pile of stones in a common grave outside Bethany. No rumors of resurrection there.

Her face became humid with her breath on the table. “I would kill Joab if I could,” she breathed into the old oak. “I would kill him, Annika, God help me I would.”

“I would lend a hand.”

Jorah looked up, scowling. She drew her sleeve across her face. “You would lend a hand,” she sneered.

Annika smiled sadly, cheeks pushing skin into a multitude of soft wrinkles. “You and me both, Jorah. We’ll be the terrors from Nazareth. Instruments of God’s vengeance. What do you say?” She balled her fist and held up her arm to show she still had some muscle.

Jorah couldn’t even smile.

Did everyone change as much as Annika had in the past month? News of Jesus, and news of Nathanael . . . Annika had gained ten years with all the news from Jerusalem. That made her old indeed.

“You would not kill a fly if it bit you twice.” She hated the sound of her own voice. All the crying made her speak through her nose.

Annika snatched her fist from the air. “You would not either,” she retorted. “Judas tells me that boy was not responsible for Nathanael’s death. He said that Joab tried to save him —that he killed the one who attacked Nathanael. Stop making him responsible for your pain. That’s cowardice, Jorah. You are not a coward.”

“Joab could have prevented it!” Jorah spat.

“Jorah, Jorah,” Annika said, voice low. “Sorrow is enough to bear.”

“He was going to marry me, Annika.”

The old woman nodded heavily. “I know, child. I know he loved you.”

Did Nathanael talk about her? Jorah scrubbed her eyes, then poked at the honeycake on her plate. “You knew he loved me?”

“He was addled over you.”

“I didn’t —know if he loved me as —” She swallowed the words and scowled at her plate. She didn’t want to cry; she was tired of sounding ugly.

Honeycake. The way her mind worked these days, sluggish as an overfed ox. Annika told her a soul hobbled in grief moved slowly for a time, like a wounded animal. She felt doubly dosed with pokeweed.

She touched the cake on her plate. Touched the wine cup and watched a fruit fly imbibe on the rim. These days she would do crazy things, like see a flower sprig in the midst of a crying spell. She’d take and hold it close to her face and see satin sparkles, pattern, and color. She’d take an orange peel and squeeze oily spray on her hand, and marvel at the fragrance. She’d examine a pinch of sand. So many colors. How could someone say, “It is the color of sand,” when sand was a rainbow up close? Marveling at orange peel and sand did more than speaking with a rabbi.

She picked up a slice of honeycake. “I used to make them exactly as you told me, and mine would always turn out dry,” Jorah murmured. “You probably told me wrong on purpose, else lose your reputation for the best.”

But Annika was in her own thoughts. “Even Judas leaves me,” she grumbled unhappily, “and he is my least favorite. What is Nazareth without a single member of the Joseph clan?” She hesitated. “Jorah. I know what James believes of Jesus. How does Jude feel about . . . the rumors?”

Moist and delicious. Or it would be, if its flavor hadn’t fled at the mention of her oldest brother. Jesus! Oh, God . . . But no —no. Jorah had piled that way with boulders. She set the bread down and brought her palm close to inspect a few crumbs. “Why don’t you ask Jude?”

“Fair enough. One thing at a time.” Whatever she meant by it, Annika left it. “How long will you stay in Caesarea?”

“As long as it takes me to find her.”

“You are sure your father’s cousin still lives there?”

“Yes. Simon and Joses visited Thomas on the trip to sell the benches. He lives across the commonyard from a famous mosaicist. I should like to visit his workroom. I have a talent for mosaics, you know.” She brushed the crumbs from her palm to her plate.

“Child?”

Jorah looked up.

Annika looked at her long. “You do a good thing. A hard thing. To tell a mother her son is dead . . . I am proud of you, Jorah ben Joseph.”

Jorah hoped her smile did not look fake. Annika would not be proud if she knew the real reason she was going to see the woman.

“Oh. I nearly forgot.” Annika got up and went to her bedroom in the back of the house. When she returned she was folding a long cloth, a narrow linen tablecloth. “I made this for Rivkah. Please take it to her for me.”

Rivkah? But of course. Nathanael’s mother. It was hard to think of her with a name. She who gave him birth . . . she who gave him scars.

“Annika.” Jorah hesitated. “Did you know of Nathanael’s scars?”

Surprise, then wariness came into Annika’s face. “What scars?” she said sharply.

“When Abi and I wrapped Nathanael’s body for burial, we found —” She squeezed her eyes shut. Orange peel fragrance. Flower petals. “There were —scars on his thigh. Old ones. From childhood.” She clenched her teeth. Grains of sand. A mosaic. “Nathanael told James his mother did it. To let the evil out.”

When Jorah looked at Annika, she found she had aged again. She was looking out the window, chin in her hand, tears brimming. “Six different shades of ugly, all of us,” she murmured, and a tear dropped away. “He wanted to tell me. He tried to tell me, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. It would have shamed her more than him.” She sniffed. “Poor thing.”

Through her own tears, Jorah suddenly smiled. “He would have never let anyone call him a poor thing.”

“I wasn’t talking about Nathanael.” Annika wearily pressed her fingers against her eyes.

The smile dropped. “Why is she a poor thing?”

“She hated herself, not Nathanael.” Annika wiped her nose with a fold of her tunic. “Oh, Jorah, what we are capable of. God have mercy on us.”

Jorah could only stare, then look away. Annika could say what she wanted, but she had seen the scars with her own eyes. God would not have mercy on that. Never that.

He’s dead now, Jorah would tell Nathanael’s mother. She knew exactly what tone she would use. She had rehearsed it several times, whispering to a fingerprint of sand. I know what you did. I’ve seen the scars. And now your son is dead. You never deserved him, and now he’s dead.

It was the only thing to give true comfort. The only thing to help her breathe. At the times when the grief would consume her, when she would suffocate and go mad, she would think on these words and allow them to calm her.

She owed it to Nathanael if only to raise a voice against an old, horrific deed. If only to not allow it to go unnoticed. It was God’s justice, after all. God knew what Rivkah had done, and he would expose it through Jorah. It was Jorah’s mitzvah, her responsibility to Nathanael’s memory.

Calmness came, like wine warming her blood, and she actually smiled at Annika.

Annika smiled back, if uncertainly.

Yes, Jorah would go and tell a woman that her son was dead. Let those words score that heart as she had scored Nathanael’s leg. Let her take those words to her grave, as Nathanael took the scars to his.