THE MARKETPLACE was only a gathering at the foot of the hill. People threw up canopies and laid their goods out on blankets, and women sold the vegetables from their gardens that they didn’t need. A peddler was there with some goods, including some silver plate. And another peddler had linen to sell, and lots of dyed yarn, as well as trinkets of all kinds, and some cups of limestone and even one or two small bound books.
I met more friends, but the mothers were keeping the children close. And James came to look for me quick enough.
The town grew busier and busier. Women passed on their way to market, and old men and women were out in the courtyards, and some men were coming and going from the fields.
But people were worried, and they spoke of the woes of Sepphoris in hushed voices, and no one was at ease except perhaps those of us who were little and could forget about it for a little while.
When I got back home, I saw new children in the courtyard come to play with Little Salome and the others, but most of the family was hard at work.
It was our job to take stock of the repairs that had to be done, and we climbed up first to see the roof of mud and branches, and where the holes had to be fixed, and then to pass through each room to be sure of its mud plaster, and how the floors on the upper stories were holding up. There was much white painting to be done where the plaster had gone gray or black. And on the walls of the lower rooms in the flood of light from the open doorways, I could see the traces of fine painted borders in different colors and designs that had once been very beautiful, no doubt.
Joseph and Cleopas talked about repainting all of this, and I’d seen them do this work in Alexandria with great speed. I wasn’t old enough to do it, to keep a long strip of green border perfectly straight.
But there was much I could do with them now.
The cribs in the stable needed repairing, and the frames of the lattices for the vines on the front of the courtyard had to be rebuilt as I’d seen when I first came.
But what most surprised me was to discover the huge cisterns which the house had, both of them holding much rainwater even though they needed to be patched.
And then the final discovery was the big mikvah that had been cut into the stone beneath the house many many years ago.
Now the mikvah was a pool for purification, which I hadn’t seen in Egypt, and it had steps leading down to its very bottom so that a man could walk all the way under the surface of the water and come back up again without ever bowing his head. It had only half as much water as it ought to have had, this pool, and there were many places where its walls were flaking or blackened and needed work. Joseph said we would bail out the water, and replaster the entire bath. The water from this pool was piped from one of the cisterns. And thanks to the heavy rains, the cisterns were full.
It was Old Sarah’s grandfather who had built this pool, we were told, when he settled in Nazareth. This had been his house for him and his seven sons, and Joseph knew their names, every one, but I couldn’t remember them, or all those who came down from them—only that my mother’s father was descended from them, and also Joseph’s mother’s father, and so on it went with these stories. I was eager for us to get to work.
Brooms were at work everywhere by late afternoon; the women were beating the dust from rugs; and Cleopas went with the women to market to buy fresh food for supper, and the oven in the courtyard was working all day.
Bruria sat in the courtyard crying for her son who’d gone off with the rebels to Sepphoris. She believed that he was probably dead. We all knew this meant perhaps that he’d been nailed to one of the crosses on the road, but we didn’t talk about this. No one was going to go down to Sepphoris, not yet. We worked in quiet.
By nightfall, the house had been divided up amongst the families: Alphaeus and his wife, and his two sons to one set of rooms, and Cleopas and Aunt Mary to their rooms with their little ones, and Joseph, my mother and James and I to others, though our rooms ran into Aunt Mary’s rooms, and we had Old Sarah and Old Justus as well. Uncle Simon and Aunt Esther and Baby Esther had their rooms near the stable in the middle of the house.
Bruria and her slave Riba had their own room.
Then there was an old serving woman, a thin silent woman, named Ide, whom I hadn’t seen the day before. She took care of Old Justus and Old Sarah, and she slept on the floor in their room. I didn’t know for sure whether this woman could talk.
Again, our supper was very rich with the stew from the night before, and the hot bread from the oven and more of the sweet figs and dates. Everyone was talking at once about what had to be done to the house and to the courtyard, and how eager they were to get out to the garden beyond the town, and see how it was there, and to see others, whom they had not yet seen.
We were lying back, taking our ease, not talking much, doing nothing, when a man came into the room from the courtyard. Joseph was on his feet at once. When he came back from the door, shutting it against the chill, he said:
“The Roman legions are gone out of Galilee. Only a small number of men are left with Herod’s men to keep the peace until Archelaus comes home.”
“Thanks be to the Lord on High,” Cleopas said, and then everyone was saying it in one way or another. “And those who were crucified? Have they all been taken down?”
Everyone knew it could take two days or more for a man to die on a cross.
“I don’t know,” said Joseph.
Old Sarah bowed her head from her stool and chanted in Hebrew.
“The last of the soldiers passed on the main road over an hour ago,” said Joseph.
“Pray they never have to come back,” my mother said.
“A crucified man should be taken down before sunset!” said Cleopas. “It is a shameful thing, and it’s been days since these men—.”
“Cleopas, leave it,” said Alphaeus. “We are here and we are alive!”
Cleopas was about to speak when my mother reached out and laid her hand on his knee.
“Please, brother,” she said. “There are Jews in Sepphoris who know their duty. Leave it alone.”
No one spoke after that. I didn’t want to be sleepy, but I was.
When we went to bed, it was very strange to me to be in a room alone without Symeon and Joses, and the babies as well.
I’d always been with the women and the little ones. But the little ones were with their mothers. And my mother was with Old Sarah, and Old Justus, and Bruria and her slave, even though they had a separate room. I missed Little Salome. I even missed Baby Esther who woke up to start crying and only stopped when she went to sleep.
I felt very grown-up to be with Joseph and James, but I still asked Joseph if I could snuggle against him, and he said yes, that I could.
“If I wake up crying,” I asked, “will you put me with my mother?”
“Is that what you want me to do,” he asked, “to put you with your mother? You are little to be in here with us, but you’re seven years old and you understand things. You will be eight years old soon. What do you want? You can be with your mother if you want.”
I didn’t answer. I turned over and closed my eyes.
I slept through the night.