Chapter 12

At last we’d reached the top of the hill.

Only a great valley spread out in front of us, and what a sight of olive trees and blowing fields it was. It seemed a glad land.

But the great devil, the fire, was burning again, big and far away, and the smoke went up to Heaven, to the white clouds. My teeth chattered. The fear came up in me, and I pushed it back down.

“It’s Sepphoris,” my mother cried, and so did the other women. The men cried out the same. And our prayers went up, as we looked but didn’t move.

“But where is Nazareth?” Little Salome cried. “Is it burning too?”

“No,” said my mother. My mother bent down and she pointed.

“There is Nazareth,” she said, and I followed her pointing to see a village laid out on a hill. White houses, some on top of others, and the trees very thick and to the right and the left other soft slopes and gentle valleys, and far beyond other villages scarcely visible under the brightness of the sky. Beyond was the great fire.

“Well, what do we do?” asked Cleopas. “We hide in the hills because Sepphoris is gone up, or we go home? I say we go home!”

“Don’t be so hasty,” said Joseph. “Perhaps we should remain here. I don’t know.”

“What, from you?” asked his brother Alphaeus. “I thought you knew the Lord would take care of us, and now we’re less than an hour from home. If those thieves come riding this way, I’d rather be hiding under the house in Nazareth than up in these hills.”

“We have tunnels?” I asked quickly, not meaning to interrupt the men.

“Yes, we have tunnels. Everyone in Nazareth has tunnels. We all have them. They’re old and need to be repaired but they are there. And these murdering bandits are everywhere we go.”

“It’s Judas bar Ezekias,” said Uncle Alphaeus. “He’s probably finished with Sepphoris and on the move.”

Bruria began to cry for her son, and Riba with her. And my mother to say hopeful things.

Joseph thought this over and then he said:

“Yes, the Lord will take care of us, you’re right. And we’ll go. I don’t see anything bad happening in Nazareth, and nothing between here and there.”

We followed the road down into the soft valley, soon passing between groves of fruit trees and even bigger stands of olive trees, and past the best fields I’d ever seen. We walked slowly as ever and we children were not allowed to run ahead.

I was so eager to see Nazareth and so filled with happiness at the land around us that I wanted to sing, but no one was singing. I sang in my heart. “Praise the Lord, who covered the Heavens with clouds, who prepared the rain for the Earth, who made the grass to grow upon the mountains.”

The road was rocky and uneven, but the wind was gentle. I saw trees full of flowers, and little towers way back away on the small rises, but there was no one in the fields.

There was no one anywhere.

And there were no sheep grazing, and no cattle.

Joseph said for us to walk faster, and we did our best to hurry, but it wasn’t easy with my aunt Mary, who was now sick, as though the woes had passed from Cleopas to her. We pulled at the donkeys, and took turns carrying Little Symeon, who fussed and cried for his mother, no matter what we did.

Finally we were climbing the slope to Nazareth! I begged to run ahead, and so did James in the same voice, but Joseph said no.

In Nazareth, we found an empty town.

One great lane leading uphill with little lanes that went off one side and the other, and white houses, some with two and three stories, and many with open courtyards, and all lying quiet and empty as if no one lived there at all.

“Let’s hurry,” said Joseph, and his face was dark.

“But what’s happening up there to make everyone hide like this!” Cleopas said in a low voice.

“Don’t talk. Come,” said Alphaeus.

“Where are they hiding?” Little Salome asked.

“In the tunnels, they have to be in the tunnels,” said my cousin Silas. His father told him to be quiet.

“Let me go up on the highest roof,” said James. “Let me look.”

“Go on,” said Joseph, “but keep low, don’t let anyone see you, and come right back to us.”

“May I go with him?” I begged. But the answer was no.

Silas and Levi were sticking out their lips that they couldn’t go with James.

Joseph led us faster and faster up the hill.

He brought us to a stop in the main lane maybe halfway up the rise. And I knew we were home.

It was a big house, far bigger than I had ever dreamed it could be, and very old and tired. It needed plaster everywhere, and even sweeping, and the wood I could see that held the vines was rotting away. But it was a house for many families, as we’d been told, with an open stable in its great courtyard, and three stories. And its rooms came out on either side of the big courtyard with a large roof hanging over all around for shade, and with many dusty old wooden doors. In the courtyard was the biggest fig tree I’d ever seen.

It was a bent fig tree, a fig tree with twisted branches, and its branches reached all over the worn old stones of the courtyard to make a living roof of new spring leaves, very green.

There were benches under the tree. And the vines grew on the rotted wood frames above the low wall at the street making a gateway.

And it was the most beautiful house I had ever beheld.

After the crowded Street of the Carpenters, after the rooms in which women and men slept on either side bundled up with babies crying, it was a palace to me, this house.

Yes, it had a mud roof, and I could see the old branches that had been laid over it, and I could see the water stains on the walls, and holes in which the pigeons were nesting and cooing—the only living things in this town—and the stones of the courtyard were worn. Inside, we would probably find mud floors. We had had mud floors in Alexandria. I didn’t even think about it.

I thought about the whole family in this house. I thought about the fig tree, and the glory of the vines with their peeping white flowers. I sang a secret song of thanksgiving to the Lord.

Where was the room in which the angel came to my mother? Where? I had to know.

Now all these happy thoughts were crowded in an instant in me.

Then a sound came, a sound so frightening to me that it wiped out everything else. Horses. Horses coming up the lanes of the village. Rattling and scratching and the sound of men calling in Greek words I couldn’t make out.

Joseph stared one way and then the other.

Cleopas whispered a prayer, and told Mary to get everyone inside.

But before she could move, the voice came again, and now we could all hear it, and it was saying in Greek for everyone to come out of their houses now. My aunt stood still as if she’d turned to stone. Even the little ones were quiet.

From up the hill and down came the riders. We went into the courtyard. We had to go, to get out of their way. But that’s as far as we went.

They were Roman soldiers in full armor, the riders, their brows covered by their helmets, and they carried spears.

Now, I’d seen Roman soldiers in Alexandria everywhere all my life, coming in and going out, and in processions, and with their wives in the Jewish quarter. Why, even my aunt Mary, the Egyptian, wife of Cleopas, who was standing here with us, was the daughter of a Jewish Roman soldier, and her uncles were Roman soldiers.

But these men were not like any I’d ever seen. These men were in a sweat and covered in dust, and looking from their right and to their left with hard eyes.

There were four of them, two waiting for the other two who were coming down the slope and all four met before our courtyard, and one of them shouted for us to stand where we were.

They pulled up their horses, but the horses were dancing and wet and foaming, and they wouldn’t stop going back and forth, and kicking up the dust. They were too big for the street.