“No.” I answer simply. Well, if he is a god, not much point in lying, is there?
Now he is laughing. My body rocks with it.
“What will you do, my dove?” he asks with such tenderness I almost weep.
“I don’t know, cariad,” I confess. “But I won’t let anyone take my child from me. Not again. Not this time. You must know that.”
“But if you had to choose between keeping the child and keeping the child safe?”
“Don’t you start with the bulrushes. Give me a chance, for Isis’s sake, for Christ’s sake, for my sake. Just give me a chance. Have some faith in me.”
“I do have faith in you, Maeve. Who, more than I, knows who you are.”
“You still talk too much,” I tell him. “Just hold me for awhile.”
“Always.”
In case you have forgotten, let me remind you now: Love is as strong as death. Stronger.
Word of my pregnancy, and of James’s offer of marriage or protection, spread to Jerusalem and beyond very quickly. By the bird’s wing, as the Aramaic expression goes. So I was not surprised when my old friend Joseph (yes, of Arimathea) came to visit me in Bethany a few days later. I would have expected him to come in any case. He had been trying to rescue me, or at least improve me, since we met more than a decade ago at the Vine and Fig Tree in Rome where I was a popular whore.
Lazarus had just finished the late summer shearing. I was sitting with Miriam and Susanna in a shady corner of the yard, carding raw wool while they spun, the latter skill being beyond me. I was as unschooled in the domestic arts as Mary B, though for different reasons. While she spent her childhood poring over the Torah, I was being overindulged by my eight mothers, who themselves were more concerned with the warrior arts. When they thought to impose a discipline on me, it was usually to practice spear throwing or to learn to grease the harnesses for the battle chariot. So in Bethany I was given tasks that would ordinarily be given to a young child. I wasn’t bored, exactly, just lulled into a stupor. It was hard to stir myself when I saw Joseph approaching. He seemed another part of a long dream that kept going on and on.
“Ladies,” he greeted all of us, but his eyes rested on me. “I hope I find you well.”
“It is always pleasant to see you, Joseph of Arimathea,” said Ma who did not usually bother with niceties. “You mean well,” she added obscurely. “Everyone knows that, even the Most High God in whom you do not believe.”
“Joseph,” Susanna intervened. “Sit down. I will let Martha and Lazarus know that you’re here. Miriam, come with me,” she said as commandingly as she dared.
“If you like,” said Ma airily. “You mean well, too, Susanna. But it won’t make any difference, you know. The angels told me so this morning.”
“Save me!” I muttered when Ma had drifted after Susanna out of earshot.
“I thought you’d never ask.”
I turned to Joseph with a smile, and saw that he was dead serious. I looked at him, really looked. He appeared haggard; it struck me that he had aged since I had last seen him a few months ago, only days after my beloved’s death and whatever you want to call what happened after. Joseph had thought my story was crazy, that I was crazed with grief and in what you would call denial.
“Maeve, he’s dead!” Joseph had wrung his hands when I told him that Jesus had asked me to take the disciples to meet him in Galilee. “You’ve got to accept it!”
“No, I don’t,” I ‘d said blithely. “What about you? When are you going to accept that the tomb is empty?”
“Maeve, listen to me, this is serious. If Peter and the rest moved the body in order to fulfill some bizarre piece of prophecy, they are playing a very dangerous game.”
“They didn’t, Joseph. Don’t you get it? They don’t believe me, either. But I’m telling you Joseph, I was there with him in the garden outside the tomb, and if seeing Jesus was just a vision or a dream, it makes no difference to me.”
“Fine then, you had a vision. Why can’t you leave it at that? Why involve his followers? Wherever there’s a crowd of them, there’s going to be trouble. You’ve done all you can for your beloved husband, may he please rest in peace and not cause any more problems,” he’d pleaded. “You need a change. You need a rest. It’s dangerous here. And it’ll be even more dangerous, if you go around insisting that he’s not really dead.”
“It’s no use trying to talk me out of it, Joseph. I’m going to Galilee with the others, if they’ll come,” I’d said. “I’m going home to Temple Magdalen.”
“Well, stay at Temple Magdalen then, and stay out of Jerusalem. At least you should be safe there,” he had finally conceded. “For the time being.”
So we had parted, Joseph with great reluctance, and me with no thought of anything but meeting my beloved in Galilee as he had promised. Jesus had kept his promise. And when he asked me to bring the disciples back to Judea, I did. So here I was again with more trouble brewing, just as Joseph had predicted—Peter and some of the others had already been imprisoned and released more than once.
And here was Joseph back from Alexandria. A place you could get to and from by boat. He was not wandering in the Otherworld or talking in the small hours of the night inside my head, or making appearances unto others that he couldn’t seem to control. How comforting to sit with an ordinary man. Though Joseph was almost completely bald now, his face, clean-shaven in the Roman style, lined and a bit pouchy, no aging could alter the intelligence and kindness of his eyes. I was glad to see him again.
“How are you, Joseph?” I said, touching his cheek. “You look tired.”
“I am tired,” he said, his voice low. “Tired of waiting for you, though I will go on waiting—”
“Joseph,” I tried to interrupt.
“No, Maeve, hear me. I must speak. I know I have failed you in the past. Acted selfishly.”
I must have looked puzzled, for Joseph paused, saddened rather than relieved to see that I had forgotten his transgressions. I understood and felt sad for him. He had been telling himself the story of Joseph and Maeve, and despite my great affection for him, I had never paid much attention to that story.
“Joseph, my friend, I will search my memory for your failings if you ask me to. But what I remember best is how you have always held out your hand to me with no thought of your own gain. Smuggling me out of Rome with my friends, helping me to found Temple Magdalen, presiding at my wedding feast, defending Jesus in the Sanhedrin. No one could ask for a truer friend.”
“Maeve, you know I love you.”
“I love you, too, Joseph.”
“No. Maeve. Listen. I love you. Selfishly. You may have forgotten, but I haven’t: How I told no one in Bethany that you were still alive and enslaved in Rome, no one who might have told Jesus. And I knew very well that he thought you were dead. I confessed it to you long ago, that time I tracked you down at Paulina’s villa and tried to buy you away from her. Do you remember now?”
“Yes, Joseph, I remember.” I added no excuses for him, no protestations that I had forgiven him long ago, though I had.
“Do you remember what else I confessed?”
I didn’t respond. I guessed what was coming.
“I wanted you for myself.” He paused a beat. “I still do, Maeve.”
There were things I knew I could say, excuses I could make. It’s so soon. I’ve only been a widow (if that’s what I am) for four months. Things that would make Joseph wrong for pressing