It was morning in the fields; the air was already wet and suffocating. The grape harvest was disappointing this year, but Esther’s family still needed all the hands they could get to bring it in, including tenant farmers and slaves. Her uncle said they couldn’t do anything about the gangs roaming the countryside, the Romans sucking them dry, or the vine bugs and drought killing their crops, but at least they could make good wine.
Esther’s robe stuck to her skin, but nothing could dampen her enthusiasm. She had waited for this day, when she would finally work in the fields with the grown-ups instead of carrying water to the field hands or clearing away rocks. Miriam held out the knife, and Esther took it. She was surprised by the heft of the sickle.
“It’s time you did real work,” Miriam said. “I’ve been working the fields since I was ten.”
Esther wasn’t sure Miriam was telling the truth. Sometimes Miriam seemed to remember things that had happened, and things that hadn’t, with equal certainty.
Esther worked all morning, gathering the warm, ripe fruit. Soon, though, her back ached from stooping over the grapes, dropping the clusters into the birch basket, and dragging it behind her. The basket was overflowing and so heavy that she could move it only with great effort. She counted the remaining stakes. The work wasn’t nearly as much fun as she’d expected.
She put the knife into the sack around her neck and picked a few grapes, careful to choose the plump ones that grew toward the sun. She closed her eyes and chewed, savoring their sweetness.
“Be careful what you eat; you may end up drunk.”
Startled, she spun around.
“Once,” the man continued in a deep, sonorous voice, “a robin ate so many fermented grapes from the vine that it began to dance. Then it fell from its perch.”
“I don’t believe you,” she said.
“In this case, my story is true. I’m Joseph, by the way. And you are?”
She studied him curiously: his arch grin, thick black locks that curled around broad shoulders, and an azure robe. She had never seen a dye so vibrantly blue, not even on the robes of pilgrims from Phoenicia. He was a Jew; there were tzitzit—threaded tassels sewn onto the corners of his mantle.
“I’m Esther Bat Hanan,” she said. “Where are you from?”
“Here.”
Esther regarded him skeptically. “I don’t recognize you.”
“I’ve been away.” He studied her with equal interest. “I remember you….You used to follow your brothers around like a stray mutt.”
He knew who she was, but she didn’t know him. Joseph, Joseph…Suddenly she knew! He must have been the Mouth’s son.
Alexa, whom Esther and Miriam had named “the Mouth,” was forever bragging about her son, Joseph, the “brilliant scholar.” Esther had pictured a slight, balding man who talked in a high nasal tone, like the Mouth herself. Not a man like this.
“Your mother is Alexa? Your family lives in the courtyard behind the dovecote?” she asked.
He nodded.
Esther’s own mother couldn’t stand the Mouth either. She would say, I don’t know who makes more noise: Alexa with her incessant yapping or the rooster she lets run around in our courtyard. Maybe, Esther thought, Joseph had really left to escape his mother, rather than what everyone said, which was that the Sanhedrin, the council of Jewish elders, had sent him on a mission to Rome.
He tilted his head and let his gaze roam slowly over her body. “A lot can change in two years.”
She felt the heat rise to her cheeks. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other and moved the sack, readjusting the strap around her neck. He watched her carefully. She wanted to prolong the conversation, but her thoughts were hurtling too fast for her tongue to catch them. He smiled and went back to his work.
Esther continued to fill her sack, but time felt stuck, as though hovering in the thick air. It was hard to keep up with Miriam’s pace.
“Quit daydreaming,” Miriam said, nudging Esther in the ribs. “Why are you looking at him like that?”
“I’m not.” But she had been staring, ever since Joseph had taken off his robe and displayed the sculpted muscles in his back as he’d hoisted a full basket onto a donkey.
Miriam narrowed her eyes. “What you think you know isn’t always so. Joseph Ben Matityahu is a man of the world. He’s interested in women, not girls.”
“He was interested enough to speak with me,” Esther said. Except for her brothers, no man had ever teased her before. Miriam could be so annoying. Joseph had looked at her in that way, with such intensity, as if he could see under her skin.
“I want to go to the treading tonight,” Esther said. She’d never been to the end-of-harvest celebration—grown-up things went on there, and she knew she didn’t belong. But now, she decided, she’d be there. She wanted to see him again.
Miriam gave Esther a sharp look. “What’s wrong with you? You know your parents would never allow it.”
“They don’t have to know.”
“You shouldn’t see all those drunken men and wanton women,” said Miriam.
“You said yourself that I’ll soon be betrothed, so why does it matter?”
“It matters if you get caught.”
“I won’t.”
Miriam frowned.
“Remember how I helped you track Shimon down in the pubs?” Esther asked. “And I helped you bring him home, even when he was so drunk, he couldn’t stand? I know plenty about what wine does to a person.”
Throwing her hands into the air, Miriam relented—as Esther had known she would.