The Missing Madonna, Chapter 15 "Disaster"

It was with palpable relief that we progressed steadily on the road away from Raphia until it was but a speck on the horizon behind us. Our spirits lifted, we felt free despite the uncertainties ahead of us. For the first few miles, the landscape was unchanging. Then the road veered westwards, the sun now on our backs and the landscape became even more barren. There was little respite from the sun in this treeless landscape and we soon felt the need to halt and rest.

It was at this point I decided to tell Joseph about my sickness earlier this morning and the conclusion I’d drawn from this. We were sitting at the verge of the road on a small raised bank and I was nursing Joshua, feeding him with grapes and getting him to spit out the pips.

“Joseph, I’ve got some news I need to share with you.”

He is already crouching next to me and puts his arm round my shoulder and looks me straight in the eyes.

“What is it, Mari?”

“Did you see that I felt unwell this morning? I was very sick – I think perhaps you were still asleep.”
He looks alarmed and I perceive that he thinks I’m going to tell him that I fear some serious illness. I realise that he was not present during the early stages of my pregnancy with Joshua and it dawns on me that he probably has no idea that morning sickness is a clear symptom of the early stages of child bearing.

“There’s nothing wrong, Joseph. It’s good news, at least I think it is. We’re going to have another child, and it’s yours, it really is this time.”

He looks shocked. It’s been a bit sudden and he obviously had no inkling or premonition of the news I’ve just imparted. He’s stunned. He says nothing for a while and then the arm around my shoulder tightens and he gives me a squeeze.

“Mari, that’s wonderful news. I had no idea, really. When did you first know?”

“Only this morning. When I was sick I thought that I’d developed the same fever as Joshua’d had, then I remembered my experience when I first knew he was on the way. I was sceptical at first, but there are other symptoms which I’d dismissed but when you put them all together…”

“So you’re sure then?”

“As sure as I can be.”

“When’s the child due?”

“I don’t know exactly. These signs usually start in the first six to eight weeks of pregnancy, so it’ll be at least another seven months, well into the winter.”

“I promise I’ll have us in a proper home by then, before the rainy season starts. They tell me that lasts for two to three months in Egypt when their great river called the Nile floods. Nearly all the merchants I’ve talked to coming out of Egypt mention the great river and the fertile land around it. Perhaps we shall find land there where we can settle and care for both our children.”

“It’s not very good timing, is it Joseph? It would have been better to have settled properly in the new country before being faced with a young baby.”

“Well, it’s probably better now than before we left Bethlehem. Just think of the journey we’ve already had. How would you have coped with a tiny baby as well as Joshua? At least we’ve time to get a home before you’re delivered. You must be careful though. We can take it easily, there’s no need to rush now we’re out of Herod’s reach. You must tell me when you need to rest.”

We watch Joshua eating. I wonder if he’ll understand anything if I tell him. I really don’t know what goes on in his little mind. He seems so forward for his age. He needs a playmate anyway, but it’ll be a long time before a young brother will be ready to be company for him. Perhaps he’ll help me look after the new child. I know how much I enjoyed mothering Salome and Rebecca and mother used to say that I helped her from a very early age. But I was a girl. Is it different for a boy? Can I teach him to care for a younger child or will he be impatient with such things? Will Joseph encourage me to let him help or will he insist on training him in more manly pursuits?

We sit for a long time. Joseph is trying to get used to what I’ve just told him. I catch a glimpse of a frown which flits across his face and I know, despite what he says, that he is worried about how we’ll cope here and now I’ve given him this extra burden to be anxious about. Our thoughts are eventually interrupted by Joshua who has finished the grapes and bread I gave him and is now threatening to run after a family with a couple of donkeys who’ve just passed us. He is making braying noises – he just loves animals so I chase after him and sit him astride our donkey as Joseph packs our food bag and straps it back on the beast.

We lumber on into the heat of the day. The road stretches straight before us shimmering in the heat. Figures in the distance flicker in the haze. We can’t be far from the sea, but there is no breeze until, after a hard day, towards evening a wind off the sea springs up and we are a little refreshed. Joshua has begun to be a bit fractious - I tried to get him to sleep as we kept on the move but he was too interested in everything, the animals and people we passed on the road and would not let his eyes shut. I’ve no idea how long it will take us to reach somewhere we can stay and Joseph can find work. Our money is getting low now and whilst we can find enough for simple lodgings for a couple more days, I was a bit alarmed to hear merchants tell Joseph that the nearest large city is more than a week away and I doubt if we can travel at the speed they maintain. In fact tonight we finish our day early. As I said, Joshua is very tired and when we came across a village beside the highway we decided to look for lodgings at once and settled early.

Next day we arise early and get on our way before the sun rises in order to cover as much ground as possible before the heat becomes overpowering. I suggested this to Joseph as we must rest long enough to let Joshua sleep today. We’re hardly on the road, however, before my nausea forces me to stop and we halt for half an hour until I’m able to continue, albeit very slowly. Joseph carries Joshua for a while and he makes me lie on the donkey, straddling our few possessions. I lean forward and cling to the beast’s neck and close my eyes trying not to let the jolting cause me to be sick again.

Eventually the nausea passes but the sun is now already high in the sky and we are in for another scorching day without respite from any shade. There is not one solitary tree in our vision. The road veers again to the right - the first turn for many miles - and now extends to the horizon in the straight line towards the west, the sun on our backs. To our left is nothing but barren land, sand dunes are beginning to appear and the landscape is pure desert. Joseph tells me that this must be the wilderness where our ancestors spent many years after fleeing from the Egyptian army. They spent forty years there, it is said. I hope it does not take us too long to get to a more fertile area. Otherwise I shall be asking God to provide us with manna and quails too!

There are a few villages on the right of the highway where occasionally we see signs of an effort to cultivate a few plots round the primitive shacks. If the villages are all as poor as the ones we are passing now, we’ll find it difficult to find somewhere to stay, for none of these villages has any building substantial enough to act as an inn. When hunger calls us to halt, we stop despite the lack of shelter, and eat some of the food we bought as we left this morning. I try to shade Joshua with my body and eventually he falls asleep, but I get very weary and am nearly overcome by the heat as I have nowhere to hide from the sun. Joseph is getting agitated I can see, for Joshua is having a very long sleep and my husband wants us to move on and make more progress.

Eventually we lay Joshua on the donkey but as soon as we move off he opens his eyes and forces himself to take an interest in everything around him. Joseph had hoped to continue our journey until nightfall but when we come across a bigger village which has an inn, we determine to take advantage of it. It can’t be more than mid afternoon as the sun has only just begun to drop but it is now full in our face making us squint against the glare and dust and this makes us even more tired. By stopping early we find we are fortunate in obtaining a bed as later that evening we hear several travellers being turned away as the accommodation is already overflowing. I heard Joseph talking to other lodgers referring to the village as Rhinocoruna - at least that’s what I think they said. I’ve never heard of it. Joseph wasn’t sure whether it was the name of the village or the area. However, one of the merchants told Joseph that we’d at least a further week’s journey before arriving at the next town of any consequence.

Joseph therefore said to me that evening that we ought to use some of our remaining cash to buy a small tent as we are unlikely to be able to pay for lodgings much longer and we need to keep money back for the purchase of food as our first priority. Whilst I rest and let Joshua suckle, Joseph talks to the innkeeper and is directed to a tentmaker in the village who sells him a very small tent - the largest we can afford. It’s just enough for the two of us to squeeze in and get some rest as long as Joshua is curled up with us. It’ll be hot but we’ll be so weary each evening that it probably doesn’t matter. At least now we’re not so dependent on finding accommodation although we must be careful to settle each night where it is safe and not in an isolated spot where we might be in danger of robbers.

As we left the village the following morning, the road descended into a dry wadi where clearly in the rainy season the water gushes out to the sea. At present, however, we have no difficulty crossing as only sand blows onto the road from high dunes. In places there are miniature cliffs of crumbling sand on either side of the dried-up watercourse.

And so each day seems very like the last. We get up early. I’m ill for a while - it seems to vary. Some mornings it’s not so bad. One day I was so sick that we couldn’t begin our journey until the middle of the morning when the heat was already excessive. The scenery doesn’t change. The road remains straight as a die. The land to our left bakes in the midday sun. To our right the land is flat and we can imagine the sea on our horizon although we can’t see it. Sometimes in the evening as the wind gets up, we sense we can smell the freshness and the salt in the air. Each day seems a re-enactment of the last. ‘How long?’ I ask Joseph. He doesn’t know. Merchants and other travellers overtake us because we are moving slowly now. We take long rests. Occasionally someone speaks to us but it is rarely in a language I can understand. Joseph I think knows more than he is telling me about the distance we still have to travel.

Then, after what seems like an age - perhaps ten days or more, I have lost count - we begin to see cultivated land. Joseph looks hard at the earth and it is less sandy and there are irrigated ditches presumably dug by the Egyptian farmers as they are straight and clearly man made. As we progress further into Egypt, the countryside is becoming greener by the minute. A number of date palms cluster beside the road and are dotted around fields of grain and flax, the latter making beautiful blankets of pale blue, shimmering in the sun, the five petalled flowers open and indicating that the harvest will soon begin. Our spirits lift stimulated by the sight and the news that we have shared, for my sickness miraculously seems to have waned. The coming of another child now seems a good omen and not the cause of more anxiety which first I feared.

Through conversations with passing travellers I’ve gathered that the first Egyptian city that we shall reach is called Pelusium which is situated by the banks of one of the branches of a mighty river called the Nile, a river revered by our ancestors when they were first guests of the patriarch, Joseph, then slaves of the Pharaohs until Moses led our nation to freedom. The Nile, I mused, that river upon which our nation’s saviour was cast as a baby, and from which he was rescued by the Pharaoh’s daughter. The thought occurred to me that little Joshua, sitting there so innocently on our donkey, had been promised to me as our country’s new saviour, the Messiah, and I couldn’t help but see how fitting it was that he too should be rescued from a king’s threat of death by growing up in freedom in Egypt.

As we journeyed these thoughts filled my mind and made the distance short or so it seemed and my legs less weary. In no time it seemed we reached a village straggling along the highway, populated by farming folk whose prosperous fields we had been traversing. We found an inn for a change and Joseph managed to make himself understood remembering sufficient of the Greek language he’d learned as a boy in Bethlehem and Jerusalem. We slept well that night. We are in a new nation. I think I shall be happy here.

The new day dawned and we were up early and fed well before packing and securing our belongings on the donkey. By giving ourselves a good start, Joseph said, we should reach Pelusium before nightfall.

“Where are we going?” I say to my husband. “Are we going to settle in Pelusium or do we need to travel further?”

“I don’t know yet,” he replies. “It depends whether I can find work there. Also whether we can find a Jewish settlement in which we will feel at home. I’m told the largest Egyptian cities have a Jewish area where many from our nation have settled, some for many generations.”

He did not tell me then that the innkeeper had warned him to try to stay as far as possible with other groups as there were known to be thieves waylaying lone travellers on the way to the city and that the city was notorious for the number of criminals operating there. It apparently had improved since the Romans arrived although they had not yet eradicated the problem entirely.

All went well at first. We made good speed across the flat well watered landscape and passed plenty of other travellers on the road. We rested from the hottest part of the day under some date palms with a couple of other families although they were going in the opposite direction. Just before we left the security of that location we were joined by two young men who spoke to Joseph in Greek. They looked respectable and we trusted them, foolishly as it turned out. They apparently told Joseph that the road split just before the city and that there were several crossings of the river. The Romans charged a tax, they told us, to use the bridge on the main highway, but there were other routes using a local ferryman, which were cheaper and led straight to the Jewish part of the city. Joseph apparently queried the ability of a ferry to take our animal but they assured us that it would not be a problem. We were ignorant of the circumstances in which that assurance was literally true, if nothing else they told us.

So, for better or for worse, we take the left hand fork onto a sandy track while the city is just visible on the skyline. Almost immediately the track itself splits further and we bear left, to the south, again and come across a muddy stream, barely more than a trickle in places, which one of the young men tells us is just a branch of the Ostia Pelusiacum, the main river being another few leagues hence. We continue south along its bank beside tall reeds, papyrus one of the young men tells me, until sandbanks block the river’s passage and it is constricted to a few feet through which we can easily wade. I climb onto the beast and hold Joshua tight against my lap and Joseph removes his sandals and hitches up his tunic and our guides splash along beside us in great humour. Their laughter is infectious and calms any nerves we may have felt in accompanying them off the main highway.

The track turns westwards then and brings us eventually to the banks of a broad river, which has wide muddy shores on both sides, with masses of papyrus growing as tall as I am. I’m surprised that the ramparts of the city are now almost invisible to the north – I’d expected that our route would have taken us to at least the outskirts of the city.

There is another surprise then when we turn and follow the pathway leading southwards along the bank away from Pelusium and I begin to get uneasy. Joseph has said something to the men, obviously querying our route, but they have apparently assured him that we are on the right route. We ride for a further half an hour or so. It is beginning to get dark and there is no sign of habitation on the far bank, just fields of grain and the occasional palm tree. The buildings of Pelusium have disappeared over the horizon.

“Soon,” one of the young men says in my language, seeing my apprehension. “Soon we’ll be at the crossing point. See!” He points to a small boat I can just see in the distance moored on our bank, and surrounded by a group of silhouettes against the setting sun. As we get closer, I notice that the boat is really small and I can’t imagine how it will take a donkey as well as us and our guides. Although the river looks shallow in places, with sandbanks in the middle of the river, it is wide and there are obvious channels where it would clearly be too deep to go on foot.

Joseph is getting anxious, I can see that. He keeps asking the men questions and getting assurances that he is clearly beginning to disbelieve. He doesn’t say anything to alarm me, but that’s unnecessary. I’m extremely nervous and have a bad feeling about the group of men ahead. I sit tight and hold Joshua tightly against me. I wish we’d stayed on the main highway and paid the tax, but it is too late to do that now. We are committed and have to trust the young men we are with. I’m reassured when our guides recognise the group and call out a greeting. We draw up to the side of the river by the boat – it’s certainly too small to carry a donkey. Perhaps we will use the ferry and they know a route across the river where it is safe for the animal to tread.

The men begin to unpack our bags and I assume that this is what is going to happen, then everything becomes a nightmare. We are surrounded by the group and looking at them in the dimming light, I see malevolence in their eyes. A couple of them have brought out knives from their robes and are cutting the ropes holding our packs instead of untying them and are slashing at our meagre belongings. They tip out our pots and clothes and precious tent and throw them in a heap on the mudbank and then find Joseph’s tools and handle them carefully and grin. Then, while my mind is still reeling, one man has his knife at Joseph’s throat and is threatening him. Joseph is pleading with them – he later told me that he was protesting at the robbery and saying how little cash we had with us.

Then a couple of the men pull me off the donkey’s back and wrest Joshua from my arms. I scream and feel a man’s rough hands clasped over my mouth. I watch in horror as the knife is held against the shrieking boy’s neck and Joseph is forced to strip and hand over the remnants of our cash we had brought with us. They leave him in his undergarments, then strip my precious shawl from me that my mother made for my wedding. I would normally have been distraught at the loss of that precious garment, but my immediate fears were for the life of my son and my own honour for I feared that they were going to rape me.

Then as suddenly as they set about us, they pile with our belongings into the boat and begin to row to the other shore. The two guides, obviously in cahoots with them, having steered us into their clutches, make off with our donkey back along the way we’d come, leaving us dazed and helpless, sitting on the muddy bank of the inhospitable murky river. Joshua is still screaming, petrified and I fling my arms around him mingling his tears with mine. Joseph is looking helpless, his head buried in his hands, sprawled on the ground. The heat of the day is disappearing rapidly as the sun drops over the horizon and we are cold and frightened, with no food, no money, nowhere to sleep and lost several miles from the safety of the city.

Joseph keeps murmuring that he is so sorry, it’s all his fault, he should have believed the warnings of the innkeeper. This is the first time I’ve heard of this and I really don’t know what he is talking about. He is crying. I can’t handle this. I rely on my husband’s support and strength. I sit up and think. I’ve still my darling Joshua, unhurt, although badly frightened. I’ve not been violated. I’m thankful for that at least. The child in my womb is still secure. But how do we face the future? What do we do now?