Christ the Lord - Anne Rice [36]
I didn't want to go over it in my mind. I didn't want to go over the things he'd said or what I'd seen or felt. And most especially I didn't want to ponder what I'd said to him.
But as I reached the city with all its engulfing voices, its wondrous pounding and clattering and chatter, a thought came to me.
The thought was fresh and like the conversation I'd had.
I'd been looking all this while for signs that rain would come, hadn't I? I'd been looking at the sky, and at the distant trees, and feeling the wind, and the chill of the wind, and hoping to catch just a kiss of moisture on my face.
But maybe I was seeing signs of something else altogether different. Something was indeed coming. It had to be. Here, all around me, were the signals of its approach. It was a building, a pressure, a series of signals of something inevitable—something like the rain for which we'd all prayed, yet something vastly beyond the rain—and something that would take the decades of my life, yes, the years reckoned in feasts and new moons, and even the hours and the minutes—even every single second I'd ever lived—and make use of it.
12
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Old Bruria and Aunt Esther tried to get word to Avigail, but could get no answer.
By the time we came back from the city that evening, Silent Hannah had come in. She sat now broken and small and shivering beside Joseph who kept his hand on her bowed head. She looked like a tiny woman under her woolen veils.
“What's the matter with her?” James asked.
My mother said, “She says Avigail is dying.”
“Give me some water to wash my hands,” I said. “I need the ink and parchment.”
I sat down and put a board over my knees for a desk. And I grasped the pen, amazed at how difficult it was. It had been a long time since I'd written anything, and the calluses on my fingers were thick and my hand felt rough and even unsteady. Unsteady.
Ah, what a discovery that was.
I dipped the pen and scratched out the words, simply and fast, and in the smallest possible letters. “You eat and drink now because I say you must. You get up and you take all the water that you can now because I say you must. You eat what you can. I do all that I can do on your behalf, and you do this now for me and for those who love you. Letters have been sent from those who love you to those who love you. You will soon be away from here. Say nothing to your father. Do as I tell you.”
I went to Silent Hannah and gave her the parchment. I gestured as I spoke. “From me to Avigail. From me. You give it to her.”
She shook her head. She was terrified.
I made the ominous gesture for a scowling Shemayah. I gestured to my eyes. I said: “He can't read it. See? Look at how small are the letters! You give it to Avigail!”
She got up and ran out quickly.
Hours passed. Silent Hannah didn't come back.
But shouts from the street roused all of us from our semi-sleep. We rushed out to discover that the signal fires had just reported the news: peace in Caesarea.
And Pontius Pilate had sent word to Jerusalem to remove the offensive ensigns from the Holy City.
Soon the street was lighted up as it had been on the night the men rode out. People were drinking, dancing, and locking arms. But no one knew the particulars as yet, and no one expected to know. The fires gave the word that the men were returning to their homes all over the country.
There was no sign of life in the house of Shemayah, not even the glimmer of a lamp beneath the door or in the chink of a window.
My aunts used this festive occasion to hammer on the door.
It did no good.
“I pray Silent Hannah's asleep next to her,” said my mother.
The Rabbi called us all to the synagogue to give thanks for the peace.
But no one really rested easy until the next afternoon, by which time Jason and several of the men, hiring mounts for the whole way, had reached Nazareth.
We threw down our bundles, fed the animals, and made for the synagogue to pray and to hear the story of what had happened.
As before, the crowd was much too big for the building. People were lighting