Christ the Lord - Anne Rice [16]
“Yeshua,” James said in a low voice, “the time has come and you can avoid it no longer. You will marry,” he said. “There is no reason any longer for you to put it off.”
I looked up at him.
“I don't follow you, James.”
“Don't you? Besides, where, where in all the prophecies does it say that you won't marry?” His voice was harsh. He spoke with uncommon slowness. “Whoever declared that you should not take a wife?”
I looked down again, careful to do this slowly, to move slowly so that he felt in no way more challenged than he already was.
I finished the last line. I looked over the planks. Then slowly I stood up. The pain in my knees was intense, and I bent to rub the left and then the right.
He stood with his arms folded, in a cold anger, far removed from Jason's hot currents. But in his own way, he was even angrier, and I looked past it as best I could.
“James, I will never marry,” I said. “It's time we stopped this dance. It's time we put an end to it altogether. It troubles you . . . and you alone.”
He put out his hand as he so often did and held my arm just tight enough for it to be painful and he didn't move.
“It does not trouble me alone,” he said. “You try my patience to the limit, you do.”
“I don't mean to do that,” I said. “I'm tired.”
“You're tired? You?” His cheeks flushed. The light of the lantern made shadows in his eyes. “The men and the women of this house have come together on it,” he said. “They all say that it is time you married, and I say that you will.”
“Not your father,” I said. “You won't tell me that your father says so. And not my mother, because I know she would not. And if the others have come together, it's because you brought them together. And yes, I'm tired, James, and I want to go in now. I'm very tired.”
I pulled loose from him as slowly as I could, and I picked up the lantern and moved towards the stable. All was done there, the beasts were fed, the place was swept and clean. Every harness was on its hook. The air was warm from the beasts. I liked it. For a moment I let it warm me.
I came back out into the yard. He had snuffed the other lantern and he stood fidgeting in the darkness and then he followed me into the house.
The family had gone to bed. Only Joseph remained by the brazier and he was asleep. His face was smooth and youthful in sleep. I loved the faces of old men; I loved their waxen purity, the way the flesh melted over their bones. I loved the distinct shapes of their eyes beneath their lids.
As I sank down by the coals and began to warm my hands, my mother came in and she stood beside James.
“Not you, too, Mother,” I said.
James paced as Jason had paced. “Stubborn, proud,” he said under his breath.
“No, my son,” my mother said to me. “But you must know something now.”
“Then tell me, Mother,” I said. The warmth felt delicious to my stiffened fingers. I loved the glitter of the fire right beneath the thick gray ash of the coals.
“James, will you leave us, please?” asked my mother.
He hesitated, then he nodded respectfully, almost bowing in his respect, and he went out. Only with my mother was he that way, unfailingly gentle. He drove his wife often enough to the brink.
My mother sat down.
“This is a strange thing,” she said. “You know our Avigail, and, well, you know this town is what it is, and kinsmen come asking for her from Sepphoris, even from Jerusalem.”
I didn't say anything. I felt a sudden exhausting ache. I tried to locate this ache. It was in my chest, in my belly, behind my eyes. It was in my heart.
“Yeshua,” my mother whispered. “The girl herself has asked for you.”
Pain.
“She's far too modest to come to me with it,” my mother whispered. “She's spoken to Old Bruria, and to Esther and to Salome. She's spoken to Little Salome. Yeshua, I think her father would say yes.”
This pain seemed more than I could bear. I stared at the coals. I wouldn't look