Mary of Nazareth (16 page)

This time, Obadiah really smiled. He blinked again, and squeezed Miriam's fingers slightly. Then his eyes closed, and only a grimace remained on his lips.

“Obadiah?” Miriam said softly, but could obtain no reply.

“Is he still alive?”

It was Barabbas, standing in the doorway, who had asked the question. Miriam, huddled at the foot of the bed and pressing Obadiah's fingers to her lips, did not reply. By her side, Rachel leaned over and placed her palm on the boy's chest.

“Yes,” she said. “He's alive. His heart is beating like a hammer. May the Almighty have mercy on him.”

         

I
T
was noon, and Obadiah was still alive. But his body was burning with fever, and he had not regained consciousness for a moment. Miriam never left his bedside.

The midwife prepared more plasters and another potion, had some cloths boiled in an infusion of mint and cloves—in order to stop the bandage rotting the wound, she explained. But when Mariamne asked her if Obadiah was going to survive, she merely sighed. She pointed to Barabbas with a haughty air and said, “We have to take care of that one too.”

Barabbas objected scornfully, but the woman would not let herself be intimidated by him.

“You can hide it from the others, but I see it: You have a fever. You're badly wounded, and it's eating away at you. In a day or two, you'll be as bad as this poor boy.”

Stubbornly, Barabbas called her a madwoman. Rachel forced them both out of the room, saying, “I don't want all this noise near Obadiah.” But then she insisted that Barabbas agree to be treated by the midwife's care. “We're going to need your help in saving your companion. So I don't want to see you in the same state as he's in.”

Reluctantly, Barabbas lifted his tunic. There was a torn, bloody piece of cloth around his right leg. The midwife pulled it away and grimaced with disgust when she saw the wound. The tip of an arrow had gone through the fleshy part of his thigh. It was only a minor wound, but it had not been looked after, and was now oozing with yellow, foul-smelling pus.

The midwife sighed. “You're filthier than a louse, you are!”

With an abrupt movement that took him by surprise, she tore off Barabbas's tunic, revealing a torso covered in scars and scabs.

“Look at this! Gashes, wounds, bumps…When was the last time you washed yourself?”

Barabbas cursed her and pushed her away angrily. But the woman grabbed the back of his neck and forced him to listen to her, their faces so close that it looked as if they were about to kiss.

“Shut up, Barabbas. I know who you are; your name has come as far as here. I know what you do and why you fight; you don't have to prove you're a brave man. And you don't have to die pointlessly because you're so sad about your young companion being at death's door. Use your head. Let us look after you, rest for a few hours, and then you'll be able to help him.”

The tension in Barabbas's muscles relaxed all at once. He glanced toward the room where Miriam and Obadiah were. His shoulders sagged. Even though no tears came, his lips quivered. Rachel and the midwife both knew what that meant, and they discreetly looked away.

A little later, he slid into the bath the handmaids had prepared and fell asleep, weary to his very soul. The midwife smiled and whispered in Rachel's ear that his medicine could wait.

If Miriam had heard the argument, or Barabbas's protests, she did not show it any more than she inquired about his condition.

Beside her, Mariamne observed her face and did not recognize it. The serious but welcoming features had turned harsh and fierce, gaunt with anger as much as with sadness. Her fixed stare seemed not to see Obadiah's body. Beneath the folds of her tunic, the extreme tension of her back was evident. Her breathing was as faint as Obadiah's.

Disconcerted, Mariamne did not dare utter a word. Nevertheless, she was dying to know the identity of this young
am ha'aretz
who had so distressed her friend. Miriam had never spoken of him, whereas they had often joked together about Barabbas, whose courage, determination, and pride Miriam loved to describe.

Hesitantly, she touched her hand. “You need rest too. You hardly slept last night. I'll stay with him. You have nothing to fear. If he opens his eyes, I'll call you right away.”

Miriam did not react immediately, and Mariamne thought that perhaps she had not heard. She was about to repeat her words when Miriam raised her head and looked at her. Strangely enough, she smiled. A joyless but tender smile, which broke up the harshness of her features like a fragile piece of pottery cracking.

“No,” she said, with some effort. “Obadiah needs me. He knows I'm here, and he needs me. He draws his strength from my heart.”

         

T
HE
sun was not yet high when Barabbas awoke. His first concern was to know if Obadiah had regained consciousness. The midwife shook her head, but she did not give him time to ask any other questions before tending to him. When she had finished putting a thick bandage around his thigh, stiffening his leg, he approached Miriam.

She did not even seem to notice his presence. With a gesture that was never mechanical, she would sponge Obadiah's forehead from time to time or place a few drops of potion on his lips. At other times, she would stroke his hands, cheek, or neck. Her lips would move as if she were uttering words that neither Rachel nor Mariamne, crouching on the other side of the bed, could understand.

Suddenly, Barabbas's harsh, abrupt voice broke the silence. Facing Miriam, as if addressing only her, he started to tell the story.

“Mathias, my friend who joined us in Nazareth, at Yossef's house, came one day to the place where we were hiding from the mercenaries, near Gabara. ‘How long do you plan to hide like a rat?' he asked me. ‘We need men to fight Herod and really hurt him. You have a thousand men ready to follow you. I have only half that, but I have a lot of weapons. I haven't changed my mind, you know. We have to fight. And if we have to die, at least let's die planting our swords in the bellies of those pigs!' He was right, and I was tired of hiding. And also of constantly remembering your reproaches, Miriam. You may be right; perhaps we do need a new king. But he won't come just because you wish it. So I shook Mathias's hand and said yes. That's how it all started.”

At first, their best weapon had been surprise. There were enough of them to organize attacks in several places simultaneously: on passing columns of soldiers, on camps or small forts built on the edges of villages…Herod's mercenaries, not expecting their attacks, made little attempt to defend themselves and fled, leaving many dead. Or if they resisted, being superior in numbers, Mathias and Barabbas would retreat so quickly the enemy was unable to pursue them. Most often, it was an easy task to plunder or burn the reserves.

Within a few months, anxiety had spread through Herod's troops. The mercenaries were afraid of moving around in small numbers. No camp in Galilee was safe enough for them anymore. The thefts and burning of the storehouses disrupted supplies to the legions. Even the Roman officers commanding the forts, usually so sure of themselves, started to get worried.

“But in Herod's house, madness reigned,” Barabbas went on. “The Romans feared him and didn't dare tell him the truth. In the palaces, no one could tell the difference anymore between truth and lies. Everything was happening exactly as I'd predicted. There was no better time for a rebellion.”

Every day, men came to them to join the fight. In the villages of Galilee and the north of Samaria, they were welcomed with open arms. The peasants were only too happy to give them food and, if necessary, hide them. In return, when their sorties against the tyrant and his supporters brought in sufficient booty, they were pleased to share it out among everyone, fighters and villagers alike.

Encouraged by their newfound strength, Barabbas and Mathias had decided to launch attacks farther afield, outside Galilee. Never big battles, but rapid, deadly fights. In Samaria at first, then in the port of Dora, in Phoenician territory, where they had captured a fine cargo of weapons forged on the other side of the sea. On that same occasion, they had freed a thousand slaves: barbarians from the North, some of whom had stayed with them. They had attacked Shechem and Acrabeta, at the gates of Judea, thumbing their noses at the surviving sons of Herod, who had taken refuge in the fortress of Alexandrion.

“We didn't need to fight them, since at the last moon, Herod murdered them himself!”

After each victory, enthusiasm grew in the villages.

“Even the rabbis stopped denouncing us in the synagogues,” Barabbas said in a toneless voice. “And when we entered towns not watched over by the mercenaries, the inhabitants would greet us with singing and dancing. That may have been what brought about our downfall.”

He was talking and talking, as if to clear his mind of all the intense, extraordinary things he had lived through in the course of the last few months. Meanwhile, Miriam had not taken her eyes off Obadiah. She showed no sign that she was listening, unlike Rachel and Mariamne, who were looking up at Barabbas, hanging on his every word.

He pointed to Obadiah with a painful, almost caressing gesture.

“He liked it too. He's always liked fighting. In close combat, when we're there with our swords in our hands, everyone cutting and slashing and yelling, he's in his element. He takes advantage of his size. Of the fact that he looks like a child. But he's not to be trusted. He's cleverer than a monkey and braver than all of us. Yes, he really likes to fight. It's his revenge….”

Barabbas broke off for a moment and watched as Miriam stroked Obadiah's arm and dabbed his temples. He shook his head.

“It was his idea to come back to Galilee and attack the fortress of Tarichea. He wanted to pull off a major feat. Not out of pride, but as a final demonstration to everyone that both the Roman legionnaires and Herod's mercenaries were at our mercy. Even where they thought they were at their strongest.

“We had to find a place with the reputation of being impregnable. We thought of the fortresses of Jerusalem and Caesarea. But Obadiah said, ‘It's Tarichea we have to take. We nearly did it once already.' ”

It was true. The attack during which they had freed Joachim had exposed the weaknesses of the fortress. The Romans were too stupid and too sure of themselves to have remedied them. Stupidly, they had rebuilt the market stalls and the wooden buildings surrounding the stone walls. Just as they had done the first time, all they had to do was set fire to them.

But this time, instead of taking advantage of the confusion caused by the fire to escape, they would storm the gates. They were sure they had enough men to overrun the place.

In addition, Barabbas and Mathias were convinced that once battle was joined and it was clear that the mercenaries and legionnaires were weakening, the people of Tarichea would take up sledgehammers, scythes, and axes and join in the fight.

“The hard part of it,” Barabbas went on, “was trying not to arouse suspicion. Herod's spies were everywhere. More than a thousand people couldn't just turn up in the town overnight.”

So the two bands had divided into small groups of three or four. Disguised as merchants, peasants, artisans, and even beggars, they had found refuge in the hill hamlets and fishermen's villages between Tarichea and Magdala. That took time: almost an entire month.

“Of course, some guessed,” Barabbas sighed. “But we thought…”

He made a weary gesture.

Who had allowed himself to be bribed? Was the traitor from Mathias's band or from his? A fisherman? A scared peasant or just someone who wanted to make a few denarii at the cost of other people's lives?

“We'll never know, but I think it was one of us. Otherwise, how would they have known where Mathias and I were staying? Obadiah was with us. That's what the traitor must have told them: that Mathias and I were in that village. That all they'd have to do would be to take us and the others wouldn't dare to fight.”

Two nights before the attack, in the first light of dawn, while the village was still asleep, a deluge of fire had descended on the thatched cottages. During the night, a large fighting boat had taken up position on the lake, close to the little harbor. The catapults on board had hurled dozens of burning javelins onto the roofs. As the families fled in panic, a cohort of Roman horsemen had entered the village from the north and the south. Children, women, old men, fighters—the horsemen had cut them down indiscriminately.

“It was an easy job for them,” Barabbas went on. “There was so much panic. The women and children were screaming and running in all directions, and the horses' hoofs just knocked them down. The Romans were jubilant. We were barely able to fight. There were only five of us: Mathias, two of his men, Obadiah, and me. Mathias died immediately. Obadiah helped me to escape….”

Barabbas could not say anything more. He rubbed his face, in a vain attempt to wipe out what he could still see.

The silence that followed was so intense, so terrible, that Obadiah's harsh breathing could clearly be heard.

Without realizing it, Mariamne had been clutching her mother's hand. Now, weeping noiselessly, she slid down the wall into a crouching position.

Miriam had still not moved. It was as if she had turned to stone. Rachel knew that Barabbas was waiting for her to say something, anything, to him. But nothing came. All she said, in a curt voice, was, “If Obadiah stays here, he won't live.”

Rachel shuddered. “What can we do? The midwife says she's done all she can. And she's the best healer there is, here in Magdala.”

“There's only one person who can bring him back to life, and that's Joseph. In Beth Zabdai, near Damascus. He knows how to treat the sick.”