Christ the Lord - Anne Rice [56]
My mother had bowed her head and placed her hand on her ear as though listening to a distant and dim voice. I drew close to her.
Jason had rushed out. The Rabbi was going. Old Bruria came up beside us.
My mother was remembering, reciting, “ ‘And he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother's womb. He will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. He will go before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of fathers toward children and the disobedient to the understanding of the righteous—to prepare a people fit for the Lord.’ ”
“But who said this?” asked Little Joseph. Shabi and Isaac clamored with the same question.
“Whose words are those?” Silas asked.
“They were spoken to another,” said my mother, “but by one who also came to me.” She looked up at me. Her eyes were sad.
All around us the others accosted each other with comments, questions, talk of making preparations.
“Don't be afraid,” I said to my mother. I drew her near me and kissed her. I could scarcely contain my happiness.
She closed her eyes and leaned against my chest.
Suddenly amid all the haste and talk, amid the general consent that we would all go, that nothing could be done now really in the dark, that we must wait for first light, amid all this—holding tight to her, I understood the expression I'd seen in her eyes. I understood what I'd thought was fear or sadness.
And will I look back on these days, these long exhausting days, will I look back on them ever from someplace else, very far away from here, and think, Ah, these were blessed days? Will they be so tenderly remembered?
No one heard her except me as she spoke. “There was a man in the Temple when we took you there,” she said, “right after you were born, before the Magi had come with their gifts.”
I listened.
“And he said to me, ‘And a sword shall cut through your own heart also.’ ”
“Ah, those words you've never told me before,” I answered her, secretively, as if I were only kissing her.
“No, but I wonder if it isn't now,” she said.
“This is a happy time now,” I said. “This is a sweet and good time, and we are all one household as we go out. Isn't that so?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Now, let me go. I have many things to do.”
“One minute longer,” I said. I clung to her.
I only let her go when I had to do it. Someone was shouting that Reuben had ridden in from Cana, that he too had the news. And that Shemayah stood in the street opposite staring into our courtyard.
I knew I had to go to him, to take him by the hand, and to bring him in to see Avigail.
19
IT WAS A LONG JOURNEY EAST and south, step by step and song by song.
By evening of the first day, we were a great shapeless mass of pilgrims, as great as we'd ever been on the road to Jerusalem, and indeed as many came now out of the villages and towns for this as they would have for that.
Shemayah and all his field hands had come along with us. But Avigail rode in the cart with my mother and my elderly aunts, and Little Mary, all of whom seldom crowded into it at the very same time. Joseph and Uncle Cleopas rode with Uncle Alphaeus in the bigger cart, against the numerous bundles and baskets, the Rabbi rode his own white donkey, and Reuben and Jason their powerful restless horses, which often carried them prancing ahead to wait for us at the next town marketplace, or well, or simply to come slowly inevitably riding back.
Old Hananel of Cana and his slaves caught up with us on the third day, and thereafter remained with us, though we were committed to a fairly plodding pace. And at evening it was just like the pilgrimages with the spreading out of our blankets, our tents, our fires, our prayers and hymns.
Everywhere we stopped we encountered those who'd been to the river, those who'd been baptized by John and his disciples, those who'd heard “the prophet John” for themselves. An air of gaiety surrounded those returning home, a fresh sense of expectation, though it attached itself to no particular prophecy, and no particular complaint or unrest.