“This voice, this being, this angel wanted an answer from me and I said, ‘I’m the servant of the Lord. Let it be done.’

“Almost at once, I felt life inside me. Oh, not the weight of the baby that comes later, or the movement, no. But the change. I knew it was happening. I knew! I knew as the light completely disappeared.

“I ran out into the street. I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t know what I was doing. I cried out. I cried out that an angel had come to me, that an angel had appeared to me and spoken to me, that a child was coming.”

She stopped.

“And that has earned me the everlasting ridicule of some in Nazareth, hasn’t it?” she asked. “Though in time many forget.”

I waited.

“The hardest part was to tell Joseph bar Jacob,” she said. “But my parents, they waited. They believed me, yes, yet they waited. And when they saw that their virgin daughter had a child within her, when there was no denying it, then and only then did they talk to Joseph. And what they’d seen, others came to know as well.

“But an angel had come to Joseph in a dream. He didn’t cry out in the streets about this as I had. And it wasn’t the angel who came to me, who filled the room with light, no. But it was an angel and the angel had told him to take me as his wife. He didn’t care that the whole village was talking. He had to go to Bethlehem for the census and he spoke to Cleopas and it was decided we would all travel together to Bethany, where Cleopas and I could lodge with Elizabeth and there Joseph and I would be married, and it would be over and done with, in that way. It was a winter journey and a hard journey, but we went together, all of us, and Joseph’s brothers went with us, as you know now, and so did little James, our beloved James.”

She went, speaking slowly.

She told me now the story that James had told—of the crowded stable and the shepherds coming, of their faces so full of happiness, and of the angels they’d seen. She told of the magi coming, and of their gifts.

I listened to her as if I hadn’t heard these things.

“I knew we had to leave Bethlehem,” she said. “There was too much talk there. The shepherds and then the magi. People came to the door night and day. Then Joseph awoke one morning and said we had to go right away. We packed up everything, and left within the hour. He wouldn’t tell me why—only that an angel had come to him again in a dream. I didn’t know we were going south to Egypt until it was evening, and we pushed on late into the night.”

Her face became troubled. She looked away again.

“We wandered, all of us,” she said. “We lived in many a small town in Egypt. The men took work when they could, and we did well. Carpenters can always work. People were kind. You were my delight. I didn’t think of anything but you. You were the sweet child every woman wants. And all this while I didn’t know why we were running. Then finally we went back north up to Alexandria and settled in the Street of the Carpenters. I loved it there. Salome and Esther loved it. So did Cleopas.

“Only after a while I heard stories, stories of what had happened in Bethlehem. Tales of a Messiah born there had caused a jealous rage to come from King Herod. He’d sent soldiers down from his fortress only a few miles away. They’d killed every little child in the village! Some two hundred children murdered in the darkness before dawn.”

She watched me.

I struggled not to cry, not to fear, not to tremble—only to wait.

She bowed her head, and her face tightened.

When she looked up, her eyes were moist with tears.

“I said to Joseph, ‘Did you know that was going to happen? Did the angel who came to you tell you?’ He said, ‘No, I knew nothing about it.’ I said, ‘How could the Lord let such a thing happen as the murder of those innocent children!’ ” She bit her lower lip. “I couldn’t understand it. I felt, ‘We have blood on our hands!’ ”

I thought for a moment I would give way to tears, but I used all my strength not to do it.

“Joseph said to me, ‘No, the blood is not on our hands. Shepherds came to worship this child. Gentiles came to worship him. An evil King has sought to kill him because the darkness cannot abide the light, but the light can’t be quenched by the darkness. The darkness always tries to swallow the light. But the light will shine. Don’t you see? We must protect him and that we will do, and the Lord will show how.’ ”

Her eyes settled on mine.

She stared intently at me.

She reached out and took me by the shoulders.

“You weren’t born of a man,” she said.

I said nothing.

“You are the begotten of God!” she whispered. “Not the Son of God as Caesar calls himself the Son of God; not the Son of God as a good man calls himself the Son of God. Not the Son of God as an anointed King is called the Son of God! You are the begotten of God!”

She waited, staring at me, but she asked nothing of me. Her hands remained firm on my shoulders. Her eyes never changed.

When she spoke again, her voice was lower, softer.

“You are the son of the Lord God!” she said. “That’s why you can kill and bring back to life, that’s why you can heal a blind man as Joseph saw you do, that’s why you can pray for snow and there will be snow, that’s why you can dispute with your uncle Cleopas when he forgets you’re a boy, that’s why you make sparrows from clay and bring them to life. Keep your power inside you. Guard it until your Father in Heaven shows you the time to use it. If he’s made you a child, then he’s made you a child to grow in wisdom as well as in everything else.”

Slowly I nodded.

“And now you come home with us to Nazareth. Not back to the Temple. Oh, I know how much you want to stay at the Temple. I know. But no. The Lord in Heaven did not send you to the house of a Teacher in the Temple or a priest in the Temple or a scribe or a rich Pharisee. He sent you to Joseph bar Jacob, the carpenter, and his betrothed, Mary of the Tribe of David in Nazareth. And you come home to Nazareth with us.”

Chapter 26

From the mount of olives, we took the last look back on the city of Jerusalem.

Joseph told me what I knew, that three times a year we would come up to Jerusalem for the great Feasts, and that I would come to know the great city very well.

Our journey was a quick one back to Nazareth, as we didn’t have the whole family with us, but we were never hurried, and we fell into easy conversation about the beauty of the land around us, and the little things of our daily lives.

When we finally came over the ridge, and the village was clearly in sight, I told both my parents that I would never do again what I had done—that is, leave them as I’d left them. I didn’t try to explain what had happened. I simply told them that they need never worry that I would go off on my own away from the family again.

I could see that they were pleased but they didn’t want to talk about what had happened. They had already let it slip deep and away from the current of everyday thoughts. At once my mother talked simple things to do with the household and Joseph was nodding to what she said.

A stillness came over me.

I walked with them, but I was alone.

I thought about what my mother had said—her quotation of Joseph, that the darkness tries to swallow the light and the darkness never succeeds in swallowing it. These were beautiful words, but they were words.

In my mind, without feeling, without crying, without shivering, I saw the dead man in the Temple, I saw the Passover lamb bleeding into the basin, I saw the children I’d never seen killed in Bethlehem. I saw the fire in the night leaping up to the sky from Jericho. My mind went over and over these things.

When we entered the house, I sat down and rested.

Little Salome came up and stood before me. I didn’t say anything, because I thought she would set down a bowl or a cup and then go away as she always did, the busy little woman that she was.