‘I watched somebody walking up. I hid. I thought it was your. . Don’t make me even say his name. You know. Then I saw him. I knew it had to be the Gally. The same dead face. Just skin and bones. He was as near to me as you are now. I could have touched him. But he touched me. He touched my cuts and bruises. And then he kissed my feet.’

Miri laughed. ‘That only happens in a woman’s dreams.’

‘He touched my stomach afterwards, like a priest. He said, This is a son for Thaniel. How could he know my husband’s name? He said he’d given me a child, with just his fingertips.’ ‘That’s something else that only happens in a woman’s dreams.’

Outside, there was no wailing at the funeral or any ululations to ala^ the women. The men did not tear their clothes, or chastise themselves, although chastisement was deserved. But each of them, including Shim, touched the Gaily’s bandaged foot, which still protruded from its curtain shroud. They prayed for further miracles. They had to treat his death not as a setback but as an opportunity, a chance to be restored by the blessing ofhis spirit passing through them on its voyage to his god. Musa prayed the hardest of them all. A touch, a touch, the merest touch, to save him from the world.

The grave had been ankle-deep in water, but the badu, always happy to amuse himself with stones, had lined the bottom so that the bed was hard but dry. They lifted Jesus — all four men as bearers, a limb apiece — and lowered him into the grave, face down. They could presume he was a bachelor, without offspring. He seemed as weightless as a child. What married man or father would leave his family to starve himself to death like this? They sacrificed the wheatear with Musa’s ornamented knife. Its blood pumped on the curtain shroud. Musa dropped its body at the healer’s feet. They filled the grave with earth and stone, hardly speaking to each other, and not looking in the grave until the body was entirely covered. Even Musa kicked a little earth into the grave and sighed as often as he could.

‘This death is hard for me,’ he said, not entirely without truth. ‘I was the only one who really knew the man.’

They marked his grave with forty stones. It seemed appropriate. Their mourning ought to last for three days at the least, they knew. No one should walk or make a fire or cook. They should not wash or shave. They should wear dirty clothes, if they were truly dutiful. But they were not his fa^mily and need not spare three days for mourning. His was a stranger’s death despite their vigils at the precipice and aH the hopes they’d spent on him. If they were at all despondent, it was because his death showed how much they’d failed themselves. This was only the thirty-first of their forty days, but it would be their last. How could they boast of that, down in the valleys, in the towns? The healer was a disappointment. He’d betrayed them all by dying. Their water cistern had been sacrificed. The tent was flattened. So were they. They’d leave at dawn and put an end to quarantine. There was no choice. The wind had blown all the spirit out of them. The scrub was telling these six trespassers to go.

29

The badu disappeared that night. So did the goats. When everybody came down from the caves at dawn to salvage what they could from the tent for their descent to the valley, the only sign of any animals was dung. Musa checked his store of treasures with which he planned to reassert himselfin the summer markets to the north. He opened up the saddle-pack with shaking hands. He halfexpected to find the badu had replaced his treasures with a rock, but everything was there, untouched. The twist ofBerber cloth containingjewellery, some coins and a little gold; the seven perfume bottles.

‘Some thief!’ said Musa.

But still the landlord and his tenants were surprised by the badu. He wasn’t quite as mad as they had thought. He hadn’t had to hand over his silver bracelets to Musa on the last day, as Musa had intended. He hadn’t paid a coin for his food or rent or water. He hadn’t even worked for them, by portering his landlord’s goods down to the road forJericho as he had promised. And now he had six goats to milk or eat or sell. A decent profit on his thirty days of idleness.

Musa cursed the hundred comers of the sky, and prayed that every demon of the scrub would lie in wait for the little thief with snares and thorns and traps, that he would fail into some pit and starve. But no one really thought the badu would come to any harm. They’d seen him clamber on the precipice. The deepest pit could not imprison him. They’d seen him come back to the caves with deer, and wheatear, and with honeycombs. He couldn’t starve. Besides, he had six goats as his companions. It was almost pleasing, to think of them, the hennaed badu and the swart-haired goats, their bleating conversation and their dainty steps, making their escape across the scrub. Aphas and Marta, Miri even, wished the badu well. He’d bettered Musa. They’d dreamed of doing something similar themselves.

But it was Shim who seemed most angry and betrayed. Had he perhaps become fond of the badu, or was it simply that he felt a little safer with him in their company? What could the old man or the women do to intervene, if Musa caught him by his ankle again and decided to pluck his toes off his foot like unripe berries? They were too weak and frightened of the man to do anything but watch. The badu, though, had seemed disturbed and kind enough to give some help, and now he’d disappeared. Shim called for him, just in case, but he didn’t answer or appear. Shim even went down to the promontory to see if the badu was sitting there, or climbing on the precipice, but there was no sign of any living thing. Even the Gaily’s cave seemed untouched. It seemed unreachable, in fact. No one with any sense would try to climb down to it without a ladder and some rope. ‘A stupid boy, a very stupid boy,’ he thought, to soften the defeat of not remaining on his own up at the caves until the end ofquarantine. He ought to stay behind, but the truth ofMusa’s challenge from two days before was ringing in his head: ‘Take your chances like a fox. Pray for water to appear. Let’s see how you live without a water-bag.’ The Gaily hadn’t lasted very long without a water-bag.

No, Shim would not waste another day on this mad enterprise. He’d take no risks. He’d stay as quiet as possible. He’d do as he was told for a change. And by the evening he would be released from his landlord and the scrub for ever. He was not happy when Musa asked to borrow his curling staff for the long walk across the plateau and the descent down to the valey road, but it was a sacrifice that Shim would make without a protest. A man of education and enlightenment should not attach himselftoo madly to a mere possession. Tranquillity and self-respect were more important than a length of wood. He’d not relinquish those to Musa. But let him have the wood.

Musa sent the two men ahead. They had been given heavy loads. Their progress would be slow. In addition to his own possessions — his rush bed-mat, his cloak, his water-bag — Shim had to carry two saddle-packs of Musa’s goods, strapped across his back, a rug and bedding on his shoulders and a half-full woven sack of grain in his hands. Aphas, in deference to his age and illness, only had two bags of utensils to transport. Bulky but not weighty. The women would have to carry what was left. Some clothes and wools, dried fruit and another woven bag of odds- and-ends for Marta. The heavy water-bags and two camel panniers for Miri, draped round her neck on ropes, with the still-unknotted birth-mat between the ropes and her skin to prevent chafing.

Musa would not carry anything himself, except the staff That was his golden rule for travelling, to have his hands free in readiness for trade and conversation. A merchant must not seem to be a camel. He had to come and go without encumbrance. He wanted, ifhe had the chance, to make his peace with Marta. That was really why he’d sent the men ahead, to give him time alone with her. Yesterday seemed such an age away. He’d buried what he’d done to her along with Jesus. The wake was over. They should begin anew. But Marta stuck closely to his wife, like some shy girl. Ifhe came close to her, then she moved away. She would not even look at him, he’d noticed, or answer him with anything beyond a whisper, passed through Miri.