After his boyhood years ofstudy at the temple school, steadying the scrolls and holding down the parchments beneath the pointing finger of the priest, Jesus had learnt to match some of these Aramaic shapes to sounds — the little candelabra of the letter sha, the lightning strike of enn, the falling plough sign of the kaoh. He liked the places on these parchments where scribes were changed. The one who’d stitched his way across the page with wary, threadlike marks passed on his verses to the playful and untidy one who let his muddy sparrows leave their tracks in undulating lines. Then came the scribe whose writing always toppled backwards, as if the meanings of the words were riding faster than the shapes which soon would fall on to their spines.

This was a happy ignorance for Jesus, only knowing a dozen words amongst so many thousands. He would not want to read as easily as scholars, he told himself, for that would only help to split the meaning from the sound, to divorce the music from the shape. If he could read like his priest could, by simply dragging his forefinger underneath the script and speaking every word he touched as if these were not verses but an endless rote of errands to be run, then the scriptures might become little more than strings of tiny tasks, a list. There’d be no mystery. But in his ignorance, he could both listen to the words of the reader and marvel, too, at the unspoken narrative of shapes, or concentrate not only on the script but also on the spaces in between. God was in the spaces, he was sure. God went to the very edges of the page.

Now, at the entrance of his cave with all the light of day removed, only the voice of the priest was missing. There was still a scroil for him to sit beneath. Jesus could look into the stars and see such spaces and such shapes as he had followed in the temple, spread out across the boundless parchment of the night in silver verses; again, the little candelabra, the lightning strike, the falling plough, the wary, undulating, toppling constellations which were the work ofjust one scribe. The sky was like the scriptures, written down in Aramaic too.

So Jesus took great care in marking down his list ofwords. It was a sacred act, and one which brought the vastness of the scriptures and the sky into his cave. He cut the three square Aramaic letters which signified the name of god in the soft clay wals and scratched them on the harder entrance stone. He made a temple ofhis cave. He consecrated all the surfaces. He marked his own name, too, but lower in the clay and smaller than the name of god. He’d not scratch in the truncated titles of the caesar

— T I.CAES. D IVI — but he attempted to reproduce the Greek warning to all gentiles that they risked their lives by corning too close. He wrote it where it would be seen if anyone came too close, in the weathered earth at the entrance to the cave. He hoped that anyone could read. He faltered after seven of the twenty words. The shapes were blurred. He used to know them al by rote, but now his memory was failing him, like his bladder. It was an empty bag. He finished off his warning to the gentiles with the Aramaic enn and sha and kaoh. A word that made no sense, but Jesus found the letters comforting. The lightning lit the candles, struck the plough.

When he had finished writing out the word for god, laying claim to every stone and any flat face of clay which had room enough for lettering, he chose something simpler to occupy his mind. He took up his pointed writing rock and scratched a basket of three circles in the sun-dried floor, just inside his cave, and cut the circles into quarters with a cross. It was a rough grid on which to play the mill-game. This was how bad boys avoided temple lessons, hiding in the medlar trees, and playing on the mill-board for prizes of dried grapes, with sacrilegious forfeits for the ones that lost: put grass snakes in the priest’s side room; steal walnuts from the temple tree; rap on his door and run. . And this was how old men killed time until the time killed them, sitting with their backs arched in the shade, above a mill-game board, waiting for their girls to serve a meal or for the moon to send them home. Jesus searched for tiny stones to act as counters

— six blackish-brown, six white or grey — and spent the day as best he could in opposition to himself, testing al the blocked and ambushed routes around the grid. He’d never been much good at the mill-game when he was young. He had not practised. He’d prayed instead. He could not see the point of games.

Now he had all the practice that he wanted. He could enjoy the dodging conflict ofthe little stones, the way they tussled for the cross-roads of the board, and did their best to flee the outer ring and hold the centre ground. There was another sermon there, he thought. Outside the temple gates on market day, raised on a cart. The mill-game as a symbol of the world, with god its inner circle and the stones as pilgrims hunting for the centre of the cross. It was a holy game.

He could, therefore, persuade himself not to mind the guilty times when he abandoned prayers, when he lost heart in the repetition of the scriptures. Instead, he contested with himself in the mill-game and played both parts, the winner and the loser. Indeed, it seemed the game itself was a sort of prayer, with just one supplicant and no one to respond except himself The mili-game worshipper, alone in quarantine, could not presume the company ofgod. Nor could the man at prayer. Both ofthem had to play both roles, and be in opposition to themselves and make al moves, and lose and win in equal part. God would not show himself He would not sit cross-legged on the far side ofthe board, replying to each move ofJesus’s with his own stratagems, drawing in his breath when he seemed bettered, crying out when he had Jesus trapped, dispensing charity and hope and forfeits when he had placed the final stone inside the cross. He would not simply run up like a dog whenever Jesus prayed.

It was no comfort, knowing that the winner was the loser too. Jesus could not sleep, even though he had relented in his disciplines and allowed himself to lie naked and depleted on the ground, out of the draught, his shoulder as a pillow. His skin became as cold as clay. Where were the camel and the thorn? He rolied into a ball, his knees pulled up towards his chin, his thin arms clasped around his shins, his backbone bumpy like a rabbit’s gut. It was the fourth night ofhis quarantine, and he was weak.

17

Marta wanted female company. Aphas and Shim could look for wood and maintain the fire at night. The badu could make traps for birds — his only skiil, it seemed. But there were female tasks they would not do. They did not think it was their place to fetch their food from Musa, or cook it, for example. Marta could do that. Once her stomach had begun to settle, she was glad to have their errands as an excuse to flee the caves. Of course she had to pray, but her devotions did not take up much time. She was an indecisive worshipper of god. Her liturgies were brief and shy. Once she felt safe and strong enough to leave the perching valley of the caves, she took to hurrying each morning down the valley to the tent, where she could bargain with Musa for some bread or dates or curd. She hired a reed bed-mat from him, which she could soften with a cushion of sand. She’d get half her money back if she returned the mat at the end of quarantine unmarked, he said. Sometimes she bought a little stiffened goat’s milk in a pouch, as well, and some of Miri’s sweet cake. To eat in secret after dusk, not to share.

‘I feel responsible for you,’ Musa said, when she stood at his bed end one morning to offer her respects and money. ‘A landlord and his tenants are like cousins. Brothers, sisters, even. And now you worry me. Look at yourself. You’re losing weight,’ he said. ‘And that won’t do. We have to keep you plump and strong. Don’t be like her. My wife’s a stick.’ He turned his head towards the curtain and the rattle of the loom, and called out to his wife,