The Young Messiah by Anne Rice

Author:Anne Rice
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2016-01-26T05:00:00+00:00

16

THE ROAD TO SEPPHORIS was crowded all the way from Nazareth, and other smaller villages lay along that way. And we bowed our heads when we passed the crosses, though all the bodies were gone from them. Blood had been shed in the land and we were sorrowful. We passed houses that were burnt, and even burnt stands of trees, and there were people begging, telling how they’d lost everything to the bandits, or to the soldiers who had “pillaged” their houses.

Over and over, we stopped and Joseph gave them money from the family purse. And my mother told them what words of comfort she had to give.

My teeth were chattering and my mother thought I was cold, but I wasn’t. It was the sight of the burnt-out buildings of Sepphoris that I saw—even though most of the city was not burnt, and people were buying and selling in the market.

At once, my aunts sold the gold embroidered linen they’d brought from Egypt just for the purpose of selling, and pocketed more than they expected for it, and the same with all the bracelets and fine cups they’d brought to sell. The purse was bulging.

We went to the mourners who sat in the middle of the burnt wooden beams and ashes, crying for those who were gone, or to those who were begging: “Did you see this one, or that one?” We gave to the widows from our purse. And for a while we were all crying—that is, I was and so was Little Salome and so were the women. The men had gone off and left us.

It was the very center of the city that had been burnt, people told us—the palace of Herod, the arsenal, and also the houses nearest it where the rebels had stayed with their men.

There were men already clearing the way for rebuilding at the top of the hill. There were soldiers of King Herod everywhere, looking people up and down, but the weepers and the mourners took no notice of them.

It was a sight, the weeping and the working, the howling and mourning, and the buying and selling. My teeth weren’t chattering anymore. The sky was bright blue and the air was chilly but it felt clean.

I saw in one house nearby a few Roman soldiers who looked very ready to leave this place if they could, leaning against the door frames and staring off at nothing. The sun was shining on their helmets.

“Oh, yes,” said a woman who saw me look at them. Her eyes were red, and her clothes covered with ashes and dust. “And days ago they massacred us, I tell you, and sold off anyone in sight to the filthy slave merchants who descended on us to put our loved ones in chains. They took my son, my only son, he’s gone! And what had he done, but gone out to try to find his sister, and she too for what? That she was trying to go from my house to the house of her mother-in-law?”

Bruria began to sob for her lost son.

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