Christ the Lord - Anne Rice [79]
“Matthew,” I said. I smiled. “Did you write down in your fine hand the things that my father, Joseph, told you?”
“Rabbi!” he whispered. He stood up. He couldn't find any words in his own mind for the transformation in me, for the whole range of small differences he now perceived. The finely woven robes were the smallest part of it. Fine robes to him were a usual thing.
He didn't notice the others who shrank from him. He didn't notice John and James bar Zebedee glowering at him as if they wanted to stone him, or Nathanael eyeing him coldly. He stared only at me.
“Rabbi,” he said again. “Had I your leave, I would write them down, yes, all the stories your father told me and more too, more of what I myself saw when you went into the river.”
“Come follow me,” I said. “I've been in the desert for many many days. I would dine with you tonight, I and these my friends. Come, make a feast for us. Let us come into your house.”
He walked away from the toll post without so much as looking back and took me by the arm and led me into the thick of the little seaside city.
The others wouldn't hurl insults at him, not in his presence. But surely he heard the casual judgments issuing from those behind us, and those who spread out and followed loosely in a small herd.
Without letting go of me, he sent a boy ahead to tell his servants to prepare for us.
“But the wedding, Rabbi,” asked Nathanael, plainly distressed. “We must go or we won't be there in time.”
“We have the time for this one night,” I said. “Don't you worry. Nothing could keep me from the wedding. And I have much to tell you tonight of what happened to me when I was out in the wilderness. You know full well, all of you, or soon will, what happened when I went to be baptized in the Jordan by my cousin John. But the story of my days in the desert is mine to tell you.”
25
THE VIOLET EVENING was shining over the hills as we slipped unnoticed into Nazareth.
I had taken us round to where we wouldn't be seen, because the torches were already going up and one could hear the eager voices. The bridegroom was expected within less than an hour. The children were playing in the streets. Women in their finest white robes were waiting already with lamps. Others were still gathering flowers and making garlands. People were coming in from the groves round and about, their arms filled with branches of myrtle and palm.
We found the house in a welter of excited preparation.
My mother cried out when she set eyes on me, and flew into my arms.
“And you thought he wouldn't be here,” said my uncle Cleopas, who bound us both in his embrace.
“Look, here, whom I've brought for you,” I said, and gestured to Little Salome who at once went into a flood of tears in her father's arms. Little Tobiah. The nephews and cousins came to cluster about us, the little ones to pick at my new garments and all to welcome those whose names I hastily spoke.
My brothers greeted me, each eyeing me a little uneasily—especially James.
All knew Matthew as the man who'd mourned with them for Joseph. No one questioned his presence, least of all Uncle Alphaeus and Cleopas, or my aunts. And his habitual fine clothes created no stares.
But there was no time for talk.
The bridegroom was coming.
Dust had to be fiercely brushed from our clothes, sandals wiped, hands and faces washed, hair combed and anointed, wedding garments taken out of their wrappings, Little Tobiah to be scrubbed like a vegetable and garbed immediately, and so we lost ourselves in the preparations.
Little Shabi ran in to announce that he had never seen so many torches in Nazareth. Everyone in the entire village had turned out. The clapping had begun. The singing.
And through the walls we could hear the thump of the timbrels, and the high-pitched melodies of the horns.
Not a glimpse of my beloved Avigail.
At last we went out into the courtyard, all we men to be ranged around it. Out of the baskets, the little ones took