The Missing Madonna, Chapter 8 "Why?"

We have buried the children. Twenty seven tiny boys, one only a few days old. My son, Benjamin, was one of the oldest. He was twenty months old, already a personality I had grown to know and love. Rebecca stood next to me when we buried Benjamin, she tried to comfort me, but she was lucky, her six month old was a baby girl and she had not been harmed. How could she feel what I was going through? But at least she was there as a friend. Where was my other friend, Mari? How come she had been so lucky to be away? Would she reappear any time now with her Josh, with some innocent explanation for her disappearance? Did she know anything about the raid, had someone given her the tip? If so, why did she not warn me?

My mother and father and Nathan’s parents were there of course also. My father said little, his face was set in stone. My mother tried to console me but she could hardly contain her own grief. Nathan’s mother was beside herself, her hopes dashed overnight, Nathan had to spend all his time trying to minister to her to prevent her total collapse. He could pay little attention to me.

Bethlehem is a sombre place today, there have been so many burials, so much wailing. The sounds of mourning are echoing round the village each hour of the day. No-one is looking at each other, all are isolated in their grief. Those who have not lost children feel guilty, why have they escaped, they think, as they clasp their girls and older boys around them, holding them extra tightly lest they escape.

The men do not know what to do, how to cope. They are frustrated because they cannot comfort their wives or manage their own grief. There is angry talk, talk of revenge, but it is powerless because they do not know whom to blame or why. They know soldiers carried out the deed, but soldiers work under orders. Was it the Romans? Or Herod? Or the religious authorities carrying out some cruel sacrifice to a cruel God? Youths are throwing stones and rocks. They cannot throw them at the soldiers because they are not there. They throw them instead aimlessly at sheep and dogs and get curses from the shepherds attempting to take the flocks to their normal grazing grounds. Some want to go to Jerusalem, but the men restrain them, saying that there will be danger there and the village should suffer no more loss.

“Why?” is on the lips of everyone. What have we done to deserve this? We know there are rebels, bandits even, who cause grief to the Romans and their puppet king, Herod. But no-one is aware of anyone in our village who has links with any of them. Joseph’s name is mentioned with suspicion because he and his family have escaped the massacre, but although his wife, Mari, is a stranger from Galilee, he is known here. He grew up here as a boy, all know him and they cannot believe him to be either a rebel or one of Herod’s spies. Perhaps Mari is the culprit. She comes from Galilee and the activities of rebels and bandits are much greater in the north. Perhaps her family is to blame. But why wreak revenge and exemplary punishment on a village a hundred miles away that has so little contact? And if she is the cause, why has she been the only one with a young boy to escape?

Perhaps she didn’t escape. Perhaps the reason for her disappearance and that of Joseph and Joshua is that Herod’s men or the Romans have arrested the whole family and taken them away by night for torture and death. Perhaps they are under suspicion for having committed a major crime against the authorities and the soldiers have been sent to teach them all in the village a lesson for sheltering the delinquent family. The wild rumours fly around without any evidence to stop the speculation.

I don’t know what to think. Mari was my friend, she never gave me the slightest hint that she had sympathies with the rebel Zealots or any of the other fanatics who oppose the Roman’s rule or that of the Gentile King Herod. But she was mysterious on occasions and would not tell me much about her life before she came to Bethlehem. Then there was that occasion when she said some stupid words about her being a virgin and Joshua being the Messiah. I thought she was joking or pulling my leg. I didn’t take her seriously. Had she been rash enough to make the same comment unguardedly to someone in authority? Perhaps a spy had overheard her joke to another woman in the market or at the well. Perhaps one of our women in the village is a spy for Herod or the Romans, that’s a horrifying thought. And if that was the case, why hadn’t the soldiers just arrested her and ignored the rest of us? I can’t make sense of it.

I mope around the house, these thought tangling my mind. I cannot put myself to anything. Nathan has to collect the water, he tells me he was not alone in this, about half a dozen men performed this wifely duty as their women were too weak or injured to undertake their normal role. Many younger girls were pitched into this duty, struggling with water pots overflowing as the weight was too much for their young muscles.

Nathan tells me that I should resume my household chores as these will help me forget at least for a little while, but I cannot do this. I stare at the cooking pots and feel numb. I go through the act of preparing a meal for Ben and then realise the futility of my actions and abandon the cooking fire until it expires and Nathan has to rekindle it. How long will I be like this? How long will Nathan put up with my behaviour before he begins to nag me? Will he stop loving me if I’m miserable all the time and do not provide him with food and clean clothes? Are the other bereaved women better able to recover than I am? How long will I be like this?

Days.

I lose count, but I suppose in the end the grief becomes a dull nagging ache while I do other things, my mind sometimes coming round to what I’m doing. I become more conscious of my other hurt, my shame. The loss of Benjamin is so acute that my own rape seems to fall to insignificance, but my neighbours do not think this. They know that several of us suffered this humiliation at the hands of the soldiers and while on the one hand they express such sympathy, I get the feel that they are treating us as unclean, as outcasts and they are more sorry for my husband than they are for me. I sense this. Sometimes they lower their voices when they are talking to Nathan and I can’t hear what they are saying. I ask Nathan and he shrugs his shoulders and says it was nothing important.

Today is very hot - stifling in this small house despite the shade. I have a headache and the shouts and screams of children playing outside make it worse. Apart from the noise aggravating the pain, the playing of children reminds me of what I have lost and it is unbearable. I’m inclined to go out and stop them or at least ask them to be quiet but I do nothing, fearing that they’ll mock me or perhaps say something that will reopen all my wounds.

In the end, I can stand it no longer and go to the door of my house, if only to breathe some fresh air. It’s late afternoon and the older boys are scrapping in their usually boisterous way. I know them of course, everyone knows everyone here. Most of them are about ten years of age and letting loose their pent-up energy after being cooped up with the rabbi in the synagogue for most of the day. There are one or two older boys, including Joshua bar Abbas, the rather wild son of Matthaeus, another scribe, who is getting a reputation for bullying some of the smaller boys. He is bossing them about now, and if any of them are slow to do what he commands he cuffs them about the ears. He has, or rather, had, two younger brothers, one of whom was a toddler like my Ben, and who was murdered along with the rest. I’m not sure that he was ever the sort to spend much time with the child, but the massacre has given a vent for the suppressed anger that seems to be bubbling just under the surface so much of the time and he is muttering a few oaths that really should not reach the ears of the younger children.

He is slinging tiny stones now at the younger boys, I’m not sure if it’s still a game or whether he’s taking out his anger in this violence, for it won’t be long before one of the stones catches a younger child somewhere painful and a howl will pierce the air. Suddenly there is a sharp retort, one of the stones has missed its target and slammed into the wall of my home, not a couple of feet away from my head. The game, if it is that, stops and some of the children slink away, but Josh bar Abbas is no coward and he walks right up to me. I thought for a moment that he was even going to apologise, but he just smirks at me and says:

“I nearly got you then, didn’t I. If I were you, I’d go inside, it’s safer there. Best place to be, anyway, for a woman defiled by the Romans. I know, my father told me you’d been raped and I saw you coming back, your bloody breasts on view to everyone.”

“Joshua, it’s not right to speak like that. I had no choice. Your family was hurt too, don’t you feel sorrow for what happened to your baby brother?”

“It’s one less mouth to feed. Oh, I know I shouldn’t say that. But he moaned and cried a lot and often kept me awake at night. But it showed us what the Romans are really like. They pretend to give us protection from criminals and then they show their true colours by doing this. I’ll get even with them one day. I won’t forget. I’ll have my revenge in my own good time.”

“What can you do, Joshua?”

“I’ll join one of the Zealot bands and kill as many of the scum as I can and those Jewish collaborators who let them do these things. They don’t deserve to live.”

“Joshua bar Abbas, you’ll come to grief yourself if you speak like this. You’ll bring nothing but further sorrow on your own family.”

“I don’t care. My father feels the same. You can’t just lie down and let them walk all over you without standing up for yourself. I’m ashamed that we Jews just seem content to let the Romans do whatever they want without any protest or rebellion. Your husband should be seeking to avenge you, not just talking strong words with the other men and doing nothing.”

“I want Nathan here with me. I don’t want him charging off into Jerusalem on some hopeless cause and getting himself arrested or killed.”

Joshua shrugged and lost interest in both me and the conversation and slouched off. All the other boys had disappeared.

As I am about to move back inside the house, I see Nathan coming with a couple of the other men. They are talking animatedly to each other, their arms gesticulating as they speak. Perhaps they have some news. I retreat to my pots which are simmering gently with the evening meal. Nathan will expect me to be there and he’ll tell me soon enough if something of interest or concern has happened.

He sweeps into the room and before he’s even slung off his cloak, he mutters brusquely,

“It was your friend Mari’s fault. Some of the men have been in Jerusalem and got one of the soldiers to talk. Apparently there was a rumour going round that a miraculous child had been born who would take Herod’s throne, and Herod had persuaded the Romans that the prediction was about the expected Messiah who would throw the Romans out. And somehow, the rumour got linked to Mari and Joseph and their son, so apparently Herod gave orders to kill the boy.”

“But why them? Why on earth did anyone think Joshua was going to be the Messiah? It’s ridiculous!”

I have never said anything to Nathan about the secret that Mari blurted out to me a few weeks ago. She must have said something unguardedly in the hearing of someone sympathetic to Herod.

“I’ve no idea, Ruth. I think it’s ridiculous too. Joshua was an ordinary toddler. Okay, he seemed very bright for his age, but so what? Other children are bright too.”

“And for that reason they came and killed all our children here? Did the soldiers kill every young boy in Judea?”

“Apparently the prophets predict our village as the likely birthplace of the Messiah and there were rumours about Mari before she came to live here. Herod’s advisors must have put two and two together.”

“What rumours about Mari?”

“I don’t really know. The soldier was reluctant to say much. Only that Mari’s son wasn’t really Joseph’s. I never got that impression, Joseph always seemed proud of his wife and son. That wasn’t the behaviour of someone who suspects his wife of being unfaithful.”

“Did the soldier say what had happened to Mari’s family? Have they been arrested? Is that why they disappeared?”

“No, I don’t think the men who spoke to the soldier got that out of him. It seems unlikely to me that soldiers would have been sent to our village if they’d already got Joshua and Mari in their clutches. They must have thought they’d still be in Bethlehem and by killing all the boys, ensure they’d got him.”

“In that case, Joseph must have known what was going to happen. That’s why they disappeared in such a rush. They’d taken their donkey and some of the things they’d want on a journey. I know because I looked inside their house when they were first missing.” Then I have an afterthought.

“Nathan, remember those exotic looking strangers who visited Joseph’s house the night before he and Mari disappeared? They must have said something to cause them to leave their home so quickly. Perhaps they’d heard something in the city and came to warn them.”

“In that case, if they had been tipped off that they were in danger, why didn’t they warn all of us?”

That thought is what is gnawing at me. I can’t believe that Mari would not have said something to me if she thought I was in danger too. To just go off like that without warning all of us, that seems so cruel, so unlike the Mari I thought I knew.