Christ the Lord - Anne Rice [31]
The sunshine twinkled in the lattice. The palm fronds outside scratched against it.
The old man was now completely bald, and his eyes very pale, almost gray. He was very cold, though the brazier was heaped high, and the air was as warm as it was fragrant with the scent of cedar.
“Come closer,” he said.
I did as he asked. I bowed.
“Yeshua bar Joseph,” I said, “from Nazareth, to see you, my lord. I'm grateful that you've received me.”
“What do you want!” he said. His voice had leapt out of him sharply with these words. “Well, say it!” he declared. “Tell me.”
“On a matter concerning our kinsman, my lord,” I said, “Shemayah bar Hyrcanus and his daughter, Avigail.”
He sat back or, I should say, collapsed in his heap of wrappings. He looked away from me, then pulled the blankets up tighter around him.
“What news do you have from Caesarea!” he asked.
“None, my lord, that hasn't reached Cana. The Jews are assembled there. It's been many days now. Pilate does not come out to speak to the crowd. The crowd won't go away. That's the last I heard this morning before I left Nazareth.”
“Nazareth,” he whispered crossly, “where they stone children on the say-so of other children.”
I bowed my head.
“Yeshua, sit down on that stool. Don't stand in front of me like a servant. You didn't come here to repair these floors, did you? You came on a matter of our families.”
I moved to the stool, and slowly sat as he'd told me to do. I was looking up at him. Perhaps six feet lay between us. He was higher because of all the cushions he required, and I could see that his hand was withered and thin, that the bones of his face all but poked through the flesh.
The air here, near the brazier, was intoxicatingly warm. So was the sun falling on my face, and on the back of his head.
“My lord, I come on a distressing errand,” I said.
“That fool Jason,” he said, “the nephew of Jacimus, is he in Caesarea?”
“Yes, my lord,” I said.
“And has he written from Caesarea?”
“Only the news I've told you, my lord. I spoke with the Rabbi this morning.”
Silence. I waited. Finally, I said,
“My lord, what is it you want to know?”
“Simply this,” he said. “Whether or not Jason has heard from my grandson, Reuben. Whether or not Jason speaks of my grandson, Reuben. I will not humble myself to ask that wretch such a question, but you I ask in confidence under my roof, here in my house. Does that miserable Greek wanderer speak of my grandson, Reuben?”
“No, my lord. I know they were friends. That's all I know.”
“And my grandson could be married this day in Rome or in Antioch or wherever he is, married to a foreign woman, and this to spite me.” He bowed his head. His demeanor changed. He seemed to have forgotten I was there, or not to care who I was, had he ever cared. “I brought this on myself,” he said. “I did this to myself, put the sea between him and me, put the world between me and the woman he marries and the fruit of her womb, I did this.”
I waited.
He turned and looked at me as if waking from a dream.
“And you are going to speak to me of this poor girl, this child, Avigail, whom the bandits pulled off her feet, whom the bandits so brutally frightened.”
“Yes, my lord,” I said.
“Why? Why come here to me with this, and why you, what do you want me to do about it?” he asked. “Do you think I'm not heartsick for the girl? Pity the man who has a daughter that beautiful, with such a ringing laugh, with such a lovely gift for song and words. I watched her grow up on the road between here and the Temple. Well, what is it, what do you want from me!”
“I'm sorry, my lord, to cause you grief—.”
“Stop it, go on. Why are you here, Yeshua, the Sinless!”
“My lord, the girl is dying in her house. She takes no food and nothing to drink. And the girl is unharmed, except for the insult to her and to her father.”
“The fool,” he said disgustedly. “Sent for the midwife for his own daughter! Refusing the word of his own daughter!”
I waited.
“Do you know why my son left for Rome, Yeshua bar Joseph? Did that madman Jason