‘Somebody’s daughter, Somebody’s sister, Somebody’s wife. Who am I in all of this?’
She is Deborah, adopted daughter of a Jewish carpenter; sister to a crucified holy man and widow of Judah of Kerith – later to be known as Judas Iscariot.
Those men are gone; their story has been told. But Deborah’s destiny is just beginning to unfold. Where the men work openly, women work in secret.
When it is made clear to her that there is no place for her in the new movement that heralds Christianity, Deborah leaves her native land for Alexandria with its great library and schools of mystical thought. Then, with her new husband and son, she enters the turbulent world of Rome – ruled by the increasingly unbalanced Caligula.
Deborah joins forces with Agrippa, the King of Judea, to try and stop the Emperor from destroying the Jews. But as the great story of Queen Esther of Persia is re-enacted in Rome, it is Deborah alone who must try to save her people from Caligula’s revenge.
‘Maybe thou art come into the Kingdom for such a time as this.’ The Book of Esther
Into the Kingdom
Chapter One.
Messiahs were ten-a-penny in those days. They came; they went. Nobody took much notice.
Holy men proclaimed themselves to be that generation’s Anointed of God, attracted followings, allegedly performed miracles and were either killed or just faded away.
Most of the stories were apocryphal and those which were not stood up to very little examination. They were wishful thinking on the part of people who felt oppressed by the Romans and who romanticised stories about robbers and brigands who had been ‘sent by God’ to release us from the heathen rule.
I remember as a child going to see a crucifixion of a robber-rebel who had been hailed as a Messiah. The other children wanted to see the show but I was frightened and sickened when I saw the man’s suffering. I did not know how he could stand the pain or how he could knowingly have put himself into a situation where the punishment was so severe.
Just because you happened to know about a ‘real’ Messiah did not mean you were going to be believed, which was why Rizpah, Magdalene, Joseph Barsabbas and I kept our mouths shut on that 13th day of the Omer while we travelled south from Jerusalem towards the shores of the Dead Sea.
The road was no more and no less crowded than usual and several times each day groups of people passed us by, stopping to talk about the weather, the heat, the dust and whatever news there might be from Jerusalem or Jericho.
We assumed that news of my brother’s execution and rumours of a miracle would have spread before us and we were right about that but what little gossip there was put it down as just another of the fakes.
‘Aren’t we denying him by holding our tongues?’ asked Magdalene anxiously as we passed on from another group who cheerfully discounted what they had heard on the road as just another story of an over-ambitious Zealot who did not have the sense to avoid walking into a Roman trap and whose followers made up a cock-and-bull story to make it look as if he were someone important.
‘We are not denying him,’ said Joseph stoutly. ‘If we are asked directly if we know anything we will speak, but for now it is best to be discreet. Our time will come. Remember, it’s just a waste of time to tell people things that they don’t want to know.’
‘But we’re doing what Cephas did!’ Magdalene said. ‘He denied that he even knew the Master after the soldiers came to the Garden of Gethsemane and took Yeshua away. And we are no better. Just now when that group of shepherds asked if we’d heard the story of the latest fake Messiah we didn’t say we knew him or that what they had heard was rubbish. We should be speaking out, shouting from the rooftops that this story is real!’
‘We spoke the truth,’ said Joseph. ‘We said that we had heard and that there would surely be more to be told when more was known - and that you can’t believe everything you hear on the road. It was enough. They wouldn’t have heard any more than that.
‘You have to balance revelation with caution. We’ll be shown a time when it is right to speak. It is not now.’
‘Humph!’ said Magdalene, trying not to sulk. Normally she would have fired up and argued until sundown but the last weeks had hit her harder than any of us. She had loved him more deeply than any of us. Despite listening to our friend Joseph’s wisdom, amassed from his youth in Aramethea and later Alexandria, and his years of disciplined Essene life, it was not, in the end, the older man’s advice which stopped her speaking out. It was her own good sense in realising that she could not bear to have her sacred belief tarnished and trampled underfoot by those who would, quite understandably, deride it. Her silence came from the grief of a woman who has lost the love of her life as well as her teacher and friend.
‘I know he is alive in the heavens,’ she said over and over again as we continued south towards Qumran, where we hoped for refuge with the Essenes. ‘I know all is well in the scheme of things. I know we are never given more to bear than we can handle. But I hate our being the only ones who know it. I hate the idea that everyone else will think we are crazy. I hate it because they can only see physical reality - and I’m just as bad as they are because I want to see him again with my physical eyes and to touch him with my hand. I miss him so much, so very much and all the knowledge in the world can’t take that away.’
Great tears would fall from her beautiful almond-shaped brown eyes and she would bury her head in her cloak. At those times, I too would weep for my beloved brother and husband and Rizpah would join in out of sympathy for both of us. Poor Joseph had his work cut out with three emotional women and at times he hardly knew where to turn. Years of ascetic, celibate life as the leader of the Essene group at Emmaus had been tempered by his travels with Yeshua and the other disciples but, even so, girls were still rather a mystery to him.
Also, I was far weaker than I had believed and only too grateful for the sturdy back of the little donkey which was almost my only possession. In the chaos and violence that followed Yeshua’s arrest, I too had been taken to Pilate’s jail and my mind was still scarred with images of rats and soil and degradation.
That night I found it hard to sleep and, when I saw that Magdalene too was wakeful, we curled up together under one cloak and talked as the stars wove their patterns above us. As the darkness of night deepened, my friend told me, stumbling over her words, of the hours of agony waiting to hear of Yeshua’s fate and the fear and grief as she watched him approach Golgotha with the wooden burden on his shoulders.
She had fainted as they raised him on the cross. Then my mother and she had stood together, apart even from Salome, Susannah, Joanna and the other wives and friends who huddled a little way away. Of the men, only John had been present, his eyes riveted on his holy teacher and his breath matching every one of his Master’s.
‘Throughout all of it, despite the tears, we knew it was part of a plan,’ she said. ‘It was like a kind of detachment from the pain and the degradation. Oh curse this language of ours! There are so many things I want to tell you but the words don’t exist. It is like knowing the truth through unbearable but totally bearable - even blissful - agony. Like giving birth and making love and dying all together but more - much more!
‘Yes, he was in pain; dreadful pain - and sometimes he felt it as you or I would do. But there was a greatness about it. I could see angels Deborah! Bright lights of strange colour all around him but they were - not people - oh - things! Images or ideas even - no shape or form or - oh I don’t know! I can’t explain! But even if I did not have the slightest idea what any of it was or what it meant - and I still don’t know - it wasn’t just another event that didn’t really matter.
‘And, thank the Lord, I was there with the right words at the one moment he did nearly fail. Whatever happens to me now I will never cease to be grateful that there was a moment when I said the right thing.
‘He looked down, you see, not up and I could see that suddenly he saw and felt what most people see every day, the dirt and humiliation and the pain and the misunderstanding without the knowledge of the Lord. He saw and felt our unbelief: the unbelief of every human being who has ever lived and who ever will live and their hopelessness and despair. Can you imagine that? Do you know what I mean?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘I told him to look up,’ said Magdalene. Then she took in a sharp breath and lifted her head to the sky. ‘I love you,’ she said, but not to me.
We were silent for a while.
‘Did Miriam see what you saw?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Did John?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘What about the others?’
‘They weren’t there. None of them was there.
‘Neither was I. I wasn’t there to see him die.’
‘I didn’t see your brother die,’ said Magdalene. ‘I saw the Anointed.’
We were planning to go to the Essenes in Qumran to live there and recoup while the rest of the disciples did the same in Galilee; staying in Jerusalem would not have been a good idea with the anger of the Sanhedrin hanging over us like a sword. But that next morning I awoke with a fever so we rested in a corner of some farm land with our donkey carefully tethered so she would not damage the crop. Both Rizpah and Magdalene scared birds for the farmer and weeded his pasture in return for our food and space to rest. Joseph read to me from a little bound volume of the Torah he had brought from his home in Alexandria many years before. He had a deep and beautiful voice and it was both restful and comforting to listen. The story, of the Exodus from Egypt, I knew almost by heart and my mind drifted back to the days when Joseph used to read to all of us, men and women alike, at the Essene community at Emmaus. He would read in both Greek and Hebrew and, even before my knowledge of either language was good enough to understand what he was saying, I still heard the melody within the stories. Even so, a book was a rarity, for nearly all we had at Emmaus had been written on sheets of papyrus or scrolls. The Sadducees and many of the Essenes would not touch books, their leaves being made from animal skins that might be impure. Many, from the sects that ate no meat would not touch any animal product at all. Luckily, the group at Emmaus had been slightly more liberal for, as Joseph said, it was most unlikely that any book that originated in such a cosmopolitan city as Alexandria could be considered ritually pure!
This resting time also gave me the opportunity to hear the full story of Rizpah’s journey from Tiberius to join us.
Rizpah was the adopted daughter of a Rabbi in Tiberius – a town built on ancient graves and so avoided by the most orthodox of Jews. Her uncle-father, Jairus, summoned Yeshua to help when his daughter Chloe was sick unto death. By that time not even death had dominion over the powers Yeshua brought from God and, when he arrived, the spirit had returned into Chloe’s body and she lived again.
Judah and I had stayed in Tiberius to help the family get used to this miracle and its effects but, although they were grateful, none of them were interested in learning about the teaching we brought. No one that is but Rizpah. It was hard for this little changeling, for no one in her family understood her and it was soon made very clear that we were no longer welcome in that home for tempting her with our foreign ways. Chloe herself, wished to forget that anything had happened. She refused to speak of the experience and only wanted life to go on as it had before.
‘It was as though she turned her back on everything deliberately,’ said Rizpah. ‘I thought she was just shocked from what had happened and that she would want to learn later - after all, how often does something like that happen to anyone? I wanted to know if she had seen anything or felt anything before Yeshua came. Was it like sleep or did she go to the higher levels? What was it like? But she simply refused to think about it and when I questioned her she would get upset and I would be in disgrace.’
‘Chloe was not the only one who did not want to know more,’ I reassured her. ‘Many, if not most, of those Yeshua healed went on with their ordinary lives. Some of them became ill again later on, possibly because they were still living the same life which had made them ill before.
‘It would not have been the same for Chloe, for she was too young to have made so many mistakes. Her story would be a very different one. Is she still well?’
‘No ... not really.’ Rizpah hesitated. ‘She always was sickly. After that time she was very well for a year or so. She got married and had a baby and lost all her strength again. She doesn’t do very much at all now and Mother takes care of her son for her. She was always spoilt, you know. Always the favourite.’
‘And you?’ I prompted her.
‘Oh, I got married too,’ said Rizpah, staring at the ground and drawing patterns in the dust.
I tried not to react but it was a huge effort. After all, Rizpah must be all of fourteen by now, well over marriageable age. ‘Oh?’ I said, eventually.
Rizpah sighed. ‘He was a relative; the son of a cousin. He had been promised to Chloe from birth but she chose another and our parents allowed her to have her way. They said it was better she married a local man for she could stay with them. Instead, I offered myself ...’ she tailed off in embarrassment. I waited.
‘I was so in love with him, you see,’ she said in a rush of words, twisting her skirt in her hands and staring at the ground. ‘I had tried to study and to think but I never had any help and he was so wise and encouraging whenever he came to stay; he made me think he would help me. I don’t think he ever loved me but he thought I would press his case with Chloe. He was angry when she married Daniel - he never came to the wedding - and although he accepted me instead because our families wanted the link, when it came for the time for our betrothal he sent someone else to stand in as his proxy. I was so upset ... I thought of him night and day and I really believed he would help me learn. I had heard he was studying with a very important Pharisee called Gamaliel in Jerusalem and that he was a forward thinker. I really believed that he would let me learn.’
‘And did he?’ I asked. Rizpah shook her head. ‘He did not even come to see me once in the year of our betrothal and I asked that it should be broken for he obviously had no need for a wife. No one listened to me and when the wedding day came I felt so confused that I could hardly look at him.’
‘He did come for the wedding at least?’
‘Oh yes, and he stayed with us for a three months. But we did not suit.’
‘Rizpah, it’s hard to tell at first whether you will suit,’ I said as gently as I could.
Rizpah began to cry. ‘I loved him so,’ she said. ‘Just for a while. It didn’t last, but, you see he was so lovely when he was there. And he had such a gentle way with people that he made me feel that I was special.’
I was confused by this. Had this marriage gone wrong or not? All I could do was wait and listen. Once she had dried her eyes Rizpah went on.
‘He didn’t really care,’ she said. ‘He was like that with everyone. It was a kind of act to make you feel special. In reality he didn’t care at all. And he didn’t want a wife who asked questions or who wanted to learn. Before we were married it was all right but afterwards I had to obey him.
‘I did try, honestly I did. I did everything I could to please him but I asked him all the questions I wanted to have answered and he hated it. He still loved Chloe, I think. It was as much my fault as anyone’s.’
‘What was?’
‘I was too ardent for him. It embarrassed him. He told me I should be more chaste. I couldn’t do anything right - and I didn’t get pregnant. Perhaps if I’d got pregnant he would have stayed. But he went away after three months, back to Jerusalem and he didn’t write to me. I got a scribe to write to him - I can write a little as you know but not well enough for that. I thought it would be better from a scribe. But that angered him. He wrote back to my parents saying that I had to change to become a suitable wife to him, to be womanly and quiet and to accept my lot in life. That I was to stop writing because it was unseemly ... ’ she broke off again, in tears and then gave a great sigh. ‘I sent another letter,’ she said. ‘I said I deserved a husband who would be with me or, at least, have me near him. I reminded him of his duty as a husband to be with me each Sabbath Eve.’ She stopped again. I put my arm around her gently, to give her the choice whether she wanted to nestle into me or to stay alone. She reached out for my hand, gratefully, but stayed kneeling.
‘He wrote again,’ she said. ‘Telling my parents that he divorced me. That they had brought me up so badly that I was a totally unsuitable wife for any man of faith.’
‘When was this?’
‘A few weeks before Yeshua died. I was in disgrace. They wanted to turn me out. A woman who is divorced is a disgrace to a family. Instead they arranged for me to be sent to other relatives near Bethsaida, for a time at least. There was a caravan going that way and I could join it. I was so upset I didn’t resist. And then I had the dream. Except it wasn’t really a dream.’ She stopped and raised her head. Now her eyes were brighter and she set her shoulders back. ‘It was while I was awake not asleep. I had just gone to fetch water and, as I looked into the well, a man looked back from out of the water. I knew it was Yeshua, your brother. He said “Talitha Cumi,” just like he had to Chloe and then he told me to go to you. That was all. Then he vanished.
‘I left the next day, but I didn’t go all the way to Bethsaida. I went to Cana, to where you used to live. There were people in the caravan going very near there so I only had half a day’s walk on my own.
‘Judah’s family said you had been long gone but that you had not taken a little wooden chest that Yeshua had made for you. I suggested I brought it with me and they were glad to let me do so. They let me stay until I could find a group going to Jerusalem - although they didn’t approve of me at all! - and then I came south.’
I hugged her and we spoke more about her incredible story. I could not judge her for acting as she had done but I knew most others would condemn her - and her husband would have been seen as absolutely right in casting her off. Rizpah could see that too, but she had a strength and stubbornness beyond her age.
‘What would you have done if you hadn’t found me?’ I asked.
‘There was no possibility that I would not find you,’ she replied.
That evening the four of us discussed the situation. I had slept through the early evening, still needing time for my own recovery and in my half-waking state while the others prepared supper, Yeshua’s words about marriage came back to me – that divorce was only necessary because of the hardening of men’s hearts. Now, in any case, there was little we could do. We would not send her back.
Joseph, as I might have suspected, had thought long and hard about the situation. ‘We all know that the most important thing is to serve the Lord,’ he said. ‘We also know that Yeshua is His son. If Yeshua told Rizpah to come to us then it is for her highest good to be with us. She can serve the Lord best in this way.’
‘But the marriage,’ I said, feeling worried. ‘He was so firm about marriage.’
‘Yes,’ said Joseph. ‘But he also said “Those whom God has joined together let no man put asunder. It would appear that God had very little hand in Rizpah’s marriage; it was her family’s idea - and on her part a marriage of physical desire. That’s not a marriage made by God.’
We sat and thought on this for some moments. ‘Aren’t those just excuses?’ I asked causing Magdalene to speak out with her accustomed frankness. ‘No!’ she said. ‘If so, I should have gone back to my own husband,’ she said. ‘He wouldn’t have me. That was not a choice which was open to me. My only choice when my family would not take me was to earn my own living and you know how few ways there are to do that for a woman. That’s the way it is, Deborah; that’s the way it is.’
‘Deborah, you are not well. You are not thinking clearly,’ said Joseph sternly. ‘The Lord makes things perfectly clear if you listen to him. Yeshua’s purpose was not to block your way to God; it was to open it. If Yeshua spoke to Rizpah, and told her to come to us, then that is enough. In any case, for all we know, Rizpah and her husband may be reunited one day. Gamaliel is a good man and if this student of his is worth his salt he may change his mind.’
‘I don’t want him back,’ said Rizpah stubbornly.
‘You will do what the Lord God wishes you to do!’ said Joseph. ‘And the reason for that is that it will be the path which will bring you self-realisation and peace. Are there any more questions?’
We sat silently, surprised at Joseph’s vehemence. He had always carried authority but rarely spoken so firmly as this. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘You are right, I was not thinking clearly.’
By the third day, I felt much recovered and we set off again slowly towards the south. The sun was gaining strength as it moved towards the summer but it was not blinding nor debilitating and I was able to ride in comfort as the others walked. At midday, we rested and, after picking and eating the vegetables and fruit left so readily for travellers in the time-honoured Jewish custom, we heard the sound of horses’ hooves coming from the road from the north.
Rizpah stood up, brushing corn husks from her lap and shading her eyes to see better. ‘It looks like Roman soldiers - one on horseback and another in one of their cart things - chariots,’ she said.
At once we scrambled off the road and led the donkey behind a clump of olive trees in the nearby field. There should have been no need to hide but it was always wiser to be out of the way when soldiers came by in case of trouble and most Jews preferred to melt into the background.
The horses and the chariot swept past, choking the air with clouds of yellow dust which hid them from view long before the sounds of the hooves faded away.
We made wry faces at each other and brushed what dirt we could from our faces and clothes.
The next village was only a short walk away and, to our surprise and unease, the soldiers were waiting there, the three horses tethered to the innkeeper’s drinking trough and the men looking bored and disdainful as only Roman soldiers could.
We hesitated, but they had seen us as soon as we saw them and making a detour around the cluster of houses would have made it seem as though we felt guilty about something. Magdalene and I exchanged glances. Joseph offered me his arm as a courtesy.
One of the soldiers, a tall, intelligent-looking man, dressed in the uniform of a Centurion, came forward and hailed us.
‘We are looking for a red-haired woman, Deborah Bat Miriam, sister of Yeshua of Nazareth,’ he said in halting Aramaic. ‘She has nothing to fear but the Prefect needs to speak with her.’
We froze. Loyally, none of the others was going to give me away, but there was nothing to do but to speak up for myself.
‘I am Deborah Bat Miriam,’ I said.
The man walked up to me and looked down. His face was strong; his eyes dark grey and what hair I could see, silvered. ‘We have orders to take you back to Jerusalem,’ he said. ‘You need not be afraid’ - he saw that I was beginning to shake - ‘You will come to no harm, and I will deliver you back to your friends afterwards.’
‘She cannot go alone,’ Joseph stepped forward and spoke in the colloquial Greek of the residents of Jerusalem. ‘It is not fitting.’
The man looked at him with a mixture of relief that he might speak in a comfortable language and a separate, weary kind of amusement. ‘Perhaps not’ he said, in Greek, with more kindness than he needed to show to one of a conquered race. ‘But there is room for only one passenger in the chariot so there is really no alternative unless there are extra horses here and you can all ride.’
Neither Rizpah nor Magdalene could fathom his quick speech but they could understand the implication.
‘I’m not leaving Deborah,’ said Rizpah with the fire we were beginning to recognise in her. ‘And neither am I!’ said the magnificent Magdalene with a toss of her head which immediately attracted the admiring eye of the charioteer.
Despite myself I laughed. This Roman was behaving as though we were his equals when all he had to do was pick me up and carry me off and there would be no redress.
‘I thank you for your courtesy, Sir,’ I said in Greek. ‘If you are not in too much of a hurry and if it is well with you, we will find transport and all come.’
‘We are in a hurry,’ he said. ‘Your brother and sisters may follow but you must come now.’
I laughed even more (within a core of deep and icy fear) but the others were outraged.
‘It is disgraceful!’ said Joseph. ‘A woman could be outcast for riding with a Roman soldier.’
‘I already am,’ I said, feeling hysteria threatening and controlling it with all my strength. I must have grimaced for the soldier looked at me curiously. I turned to the others; any more resistance and we might find ourselves in trouble.
‘Please follow behind as fast as you can and wait for me outside the Prefect’s rooms,’ I said as though the matter were decided.
I hardly heard Joseph’s protests as the horses were untied and I climbed into the back of the strange wooden conveyance helped up by the young charioteer. There were no seats and I would have to hold on tightly if we were going to travel at any great pace.
Had I had room for any coherent thoughts other than fear and how to hide it, I would have asked them to go slowly to start with but instead, the Centurion drove his own horse to a gallop as soon as the village was behind us. The charioteer too whipped up his horses and followed at the same breakneck speed with me clinging on behind him for my life. What energy I had left was wholly taken up by the need to hold on; to survive. A fall at this speed would surely kill me. In moments my friends were left far behind us.
We could not keep up that pace for long however, and once the horses had slowed to a trot I had time to gather my thoughts together. I did not like what they said to me - what reason could Pilate have for wishing to see me? I threw up a fervent prayer for protection. At that moment, the chariot lurched dramatically and the charioteer cursed loudly.
He called out to the Centurion as we came to a lumbering halt. He too swore and turned his red-golden-coloured beast to look at what was wrong. Not knowing the technical words they used I could only assume that something had broken. I jumped down from the chariot and stood to one side, waiting until they should address me again.
To my inexperienced eyes, the wheel looked quite badly damaged. Both men were now kneeling on the ground, looking closely at it. I noticed, almost without thinking, that the Centurion had a limp. ‘Is this your work, Lord?’ I asked silently. ‘Is this to stop them taking me back to Jerusalem?’
The answer to that prayer too came swiftly, and it seemed that the reply, to the second question at least, was ‘No.’
The Centurion got up walked over to where I stood. His face was angry but he had his irritation under control and he was still treating me with unusual respect. However, what he had to say came as a complete surprise.
‘Can you ride a horse?’ he asked simply. I looked up at him in horror and, to my surprise, he smiled back at the fierce little face before him.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I can ride a donkey, but that is hardly the same thing.’
‘Have you ever sat astride?’
‘Oh yes, when I was a child.’
‘Then you can ride. You have a choice. You can either come up behind me and hold on to me or you can take my horse and I will ride one of the chariot horses. The charioteer must stay here with his charge.’
Memory from then on becomes a little blurred. I suppose I must have said I preferred to ride alone for, before I knew what was happening, I found myself being lifted up on to the saddle of what seemed a great, golden beast. I do recall that the feeling of the Roman soldier’s hands made me dizzy with nausea and I had to grip the horse’s mane to stop myself from falling before we even started off. Then there was nothing to think of but an even greater effort to hold tightly and to keep my balance as the two of us set off again for Jerusalem. The Centurion said, but I did not believe him, that it would be easiest for me if we went swiftly. ‘The slower paces are harder to sit,’ he said. I did not reply; I could not. I looked at him doubtfully and caught my breath as he spurred his horse on and mine followed with what seemed like a great leap. With a prayer I clamped my legs around its body as hard as I could and held on for dear life.
To my surprise, the Centurion was right.
At first the dust and the speed and the lurching and the un-reality of it all dazed me so much that I began to think that I was hallucinating. But, after a while, a strange feeling of exhilaration began to creep in together with wonder that it was actually quite easy to sit astride an animal going so fast and excitement at the speed itself. I had never had any idea how it would feel to travel so swiftly.
At one point, despite myself, I laughed out loud and the Centurion heard me. He turned his head and we shared a moment of understanding. He too loved this speed and excitement and for one tiny moment we were friends. Whatever was ahead of me, this, for all its terror, carried a crazy delight. Everything around was blurred, unbelievable, streaking past us, but I was secure in the centre of the storm. I felt as though I were riding on the back of an angel. During the slower paces, to rest the horses, I found it far more difficult and unpleasant and, then, I did have to hold on tightly. But the faster we went the safer I felt, like sitting closer to God.
Apart from checking that I was still behind him and still safe, the Centurion said nothing more to me for the entire journey. The horses were strong and carried us sturdily into evening and then into the darkness of the night. To the Jews, the gates of Jerusalem were closed at dusk; to a Centurion, they were opened in a matter of minutes.
We clattered up the stone streets to the Roman headquarters and at the gate to the barracks, I tumbled down from my golden steed, tired, hungry, dirty and aching all over. The Centurion looked down at me and inclined his head slightly as a parting gesture and I felt touched by disappointment that he gave me no word of praise or of farewell. Other men appeared instead and I was shown to a kind of guest room in the barracks behind the Prefect’s dwelling place. There I was given a plate of bread and cheese together with a mug of ale, the end of a candle already guttering, and a bowl of hot water for washing. Little was said; no clue to why Pilate wanted to see me was given. There was a bolt on the inside of my door and, as they left, I pushed it home gratefully.
I was left to rest with the injunction to be ready and waiting by the time the horns blew for the opening of the gates, when Pilate would see me. In the meantime, I had the darkness to wait through and the swirling pit of terror to face again.
Deep in the heart of that night I finally understood that no one is truly alone when they pray. It was not the same as in the desert; that sacred place where to be alone was impossible for God was in every rock and every breath of air. But even in the tiny Roman cell, some essence was there with me, calming and soothing and helping me through. After I had shivered and wept and looked my fears full in the face, a kind of peace descended on me and I was able to sleep, curled up on a lumpy, flea-ridden mattress, secure inside myself if nothing else.
I was washed and tidy with my hair plaited as neatly as it would allow when they came to fetch me. Two soldiers led me through first stone, and then marble corridors until we came to an open space which seemed, to me, filled with men.
Pilate, small, hook nosed and irritable, was pacing around his marble court room like a caged lion. My head swam with the knowledge that this was where Yeshua had been condemned and in front of me was the man who sentenced him.
This time however there was no sign of the Temple priests who had accused him and could accuse me. I was not on trial.
‘Ah,’ said Pilate as he saw me, his eyes sweeping me like a hawk’s. ‘Yes. Deborah Bat Miriam. Yes.’ He walked up to me and looked me directly in the eyes before swinging away with another of his bird-like, sudden movements.
‘These men,’ he said, gesticulating at a group of four soldiers looking acutely uncomfortable in the corner. ‘Do you recognise them?’
I looked, rather warily. I did not want to recognise anyone. The four men looked back at me and my heart pounded and then sank. I did not recognise them but I knew exactly who they were.
‘Well?’ said Pilate, still walking around the room.
‘Why do you ask?’ I said bravely. He swung around again and came closer until I could taste his stale breath as he stared me in the eye.
‘I ask,’ he said, ‘because my soldiers are under strict orders not to touch Jewish women - in that way. Strict instructions. On penalty of death, you understand.’ He swung away and began to pace again.
He knew what had happened to me in that jail as Yeshua was crucified. I had sworn to myself that no one would ever know; I had tried to block it from my own mind. But even if he knew – and how would he know - why would Pilate care?
I looked at the men again. This time they avoided my gaze and I could see fear in the face of every one of them. Suddenly, I knew that I did recognise one: the youngest. He had felt guilty afterwards and, as I left, had given me ale and a cloak when I left the prison. He had told me to find his father, a Centurion and given me his name – Vintillius - should I need any help. But he had been one of the ones who had lain with me too.
‘I’m waiting,’ said Pilate.
‘Who accuses them?’ I asked, to gain time. Who knew what would happen to a woman who accused Roman soldiers without proof.
The little man moved toward me again and this time I felt the force of his anger.
‘Don’t mess with me girl,’ he roared. ‘You should be grateful I have brought you here to mete out justice. It is your turn now Jewess. On your word four of my men will die....and rightly,’ he added, throwing a look of utter contempt at the men.
‘I will not have disobedience,’ he said to no one in particular, his attention seeming to be drawn by the ceiling. ‘That is the worst crime. Not the other. That is - understandable.’
Then I felt angry. Rage welled up inside me. How dare he say that! I felt a great urge to accuse; to blame; to have revenge. For once I had great power and right was on my side. They had abused me and I was to be given the chance to condemn.
My eyes must have flashed with the anger I felt. The youngest soldier began to weep.
In one swift movement, Pilate crossed the floor and slapped him on the face. The boy’s shock and fear woke me from my anger.
‘Help me!’ I prayed.
I was named for Deborah the Judge of Israel, who foretold the death of Sisera by the hand of a woman and they named me well.
I had my first vision when I was twelve, on the Sabbath Eve after my father Joseph died. By the time I was 20, with the Essenes, I was known as a prophetess. Without warning, the veil between my everyday world would lift and light pour through. I didn’t like it; I even feared it but, when it happened, I knew to obey the voice that I heard.
For everyone else in that room it would only have been a second or two before I spoke but, for me, time had expanded and both God and Yeshua spoke to me inside my head.
I heard and saw both justice and mercy and the balance of life and death. I understood that to act for revenge was to deny everything I had ever learnt from Yeshua. I realised that to condemn the men - three of whom I could not even recognise and the fourth who was young and thoughtless and who had tried to say he was sorry - would be to attack Pilate for his ignorant words. I would be hitting out at him to ease my pain; I would not be acting with discernment or reason; I would be destroying lives in order to demonstrate my power instead of allowing the Lord to show them the consequences of their actions dispassionately and fairly in His own time.
But I wanted to hurt them. I wanted revenge. I did not want them to get away with it. How could I not speak? What human woman could forgive such things?
The veil quivered. ‘Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord,’ said Yeshua in my head. ‘It is not yours.’
‘Well?’ said Pilate. ‘Are you dumb?’
‘I don’t accuse them,’ I said. ‘I stand here whole and unhurt.’
It was the best I could do.
Time stopped. I saw the range of emotions on each man’s face; from incomprehension though amazement to relief. Then in three of them I saw the beginnings of disdain as they despised me for an act of mercy they would never understand. I was so tempted then to withdraw my words and to point the finger that would send them to their death. Their sneering was like a knife in a wound and I wanted to hurt them so much that it was a taste of bitterness in my mouth. Then the youngest looked me straight in the eyes and it was not he, but Yeshua who was standing there, waiting for his sentence of death.
When I looked again at Pilate’s face, it made me want to laugh. Several different moods were battling for supremacy. Disbelief and fascination were the strongest with outrage close behind. He was, for once, intrigued enough to drop his mask of boredom and anger for a few vital seconds. This was new. This was different. This was almost interesting.
He walked around me three times looking at me from head to toe while he rubbed his nose with a claw-like hand and furrowed his brow in thought. I often wonder what he would have said to me, but at that moment, one of the accused men belched as he relaxed his stance, showing both relief and arrogance. At once, Pilate recovered his mask and roared at him. The man jumped to attention, his face snapping shut. Then Pilate roared at me too and with a sinking heart I realised that he had decided that my action had humiliated him and put his authority in jeopardy.
He brought in a guard from the jail who swore he had seen the men enter my cell and heard them boast afterwards. He threatened to jail me and even to give me the lash. I almost broke, the fear of imprisonment and what might happen to me there was so great. For whole minutes I stood with my head bowed and my eyes closed fighting with my fear. When I looked up again, the young soldier was still looking at me. Yeshua looked though his eyes, supporting me and giving me strength. I knew Pilate was bluffing. I repeated my earlier words and said nothing else.
In the end, he dismissed me. I was escorted to the front entrance by two tall and unbending soldiers and as I stepped into the street, the door slammed shut behind me, the vibration making me jump and bringing tears smarting into my eyes.
My friends were not there and I did not know whether I was in the wrong place or if they had not arrived, been moved on, or worse. A part of me wanted to panic and to run through the streets of the city to search for them but I knew the most sensible thing to do would be to wait until I was calmer and then try to find someone to help me or advise me on where they might be.
As I stood there, a phalanx of soldiers came around the corner and headed towards me. To my shattered vision it seemed as though the men from the court room, multiplied and armed with spears, were coming for me again. There in the street I would be helpless before them. It was just too much and I fled down the cobbled road towards the crowded market streets of Jerusalem.
