The Missing Madonna - Part 1, Chapter 1

Part 1

Rachel’s Children

“In Ramah was there a voice heard, lamentation,and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.

(Jeremiah 31, verse 15; Matthew 2, verse 18)

Note;

The name ‘Jesus’ is a mistranslation of ‘Yahoshua’ (shortened version ‘Yeshua’) commonly rendered in English Bible versions as ‘Joshua’. I have therefore used this name throughout.
His full name was ‘Yeshua ben Yosef’, ie ‘Joshua, son of Joseph’.

‘Mari’ or ‘Mary’ is a shortened version of ‘Mariam’ or ‘Mariamne’.

BC 4, Ab Urbe Condita (from the foundation of Rome) year 750

Chapter 1

They’ve gone! She wasn’t at the well this morning. I called at her house when I’d got the water back home, and found the place shut up. There was no sign of her or her baby or her husband. I tried Rebecca who lived next door to Mariam and her family.

“No, Ruth, I haven’t the faintest idea. They were at home all yesterday and didn’t say anything about going away to me. I chatted with Mari for several minutes and she didn’t say a thing. I heard noises about midnight, but I just thought one of their animals had got loose.”

I hitched Ben onto my hip and the two of us went together to investigate again. Rebecca knocked loudly on the wooden door. Nothing. No sound. We pushed the door and it opened. Their donkey was not there and the chickens were gone as well. We entered the living quarters and it was bare. A few pots and implements stood in the corner, but we couldn’t see any sign of food ready for preparation. We pushed onto the backroom which Joseph used as his workshop. There were unfinished orders all over the place - a table, a couple of ploughs and a lot of timber stacked untidily as though Joseph had put things away quickly expecting to continue his labours in the morning.

“They can’t have gone far,” I said, “Joseph would never have let his customers down by leaving orders unfinished.”

“A mystery,” said Rebecca, “they’ll probably turn up tonight. Perhaps the boy was taken ill and they’ve gone to seek help in Jerusalem.”

“Mari would have told me, I’m sure. If Joshua had been ill, she’d have come to me and sought my help here in the village before tackling the trek into the city with a sick child.”

Ben began to fidget and I put him down for a moment and he toddled off on unsteady steps over the uneven earthen floor. He started to take too much interest in some of the planks of wood and I grabbed him before they could collapse on top of him. Then I noticed that Joseph’s tools were missing. Normally they were laid out on the workbench, in regimented rows, he was so proud of them. But there were none visible. I poked around but could not see any. This was strange. Unfinished carpentry and no tools to be seen.

We gave up and I returned home. I tried to get on with the household chores but I was worried, it was not like Mari to go off like that without saying anything to me. After all, we had been the best of friends ever since she’d settled in Bethlehem with her husband and brand new baby some eighteen months ago. Mari is my own age - well nearly so - I am just a year older at sixteen - but we both have toddlers the same age and Josh and my Benjamin are inseparable. Mari is so bubbly, she tells me all sorts of things, secrets that I’m sure she makes up sometimes with that fertile imagination of hers.

My husband, Nathan, whom I married three years ago six months after my majority, is doing some repairs to the walls in Jonah’s fields. It’ll be dusk before he returns home and I can ask him if he knows anything, perhaps Joseph confided in him. I try to forget Mari’s disappearance and get on with my own tasks. I must sweep out the house and I leave Ben playing with a stick he picked up on the way home - Mari and Joseph’s house is in the next street to ours, next door to Rebecca and her husband, Andrew. Rebecca is several years older than me and she has a ten year old girl whom she’s left in charge of her young children - a couple of boys and a six month old baby girl.

When I finish the essential cleaning and have washed Ben’s soiled clothes, I can relax for an hour or so before I need to start the meal before Nathan’s return. This is my special time with Benjamin. He enjoys my full attention and we play together. He loves hiding his face from me - he thinks he is totally hidden, he thinks if he can’t see me, I can’t see him. Then we have time for hugs and he sits on my knee while we practice the few words he can say. Mari’s Joshua is a very forward little boy, he can say twice as many words as my Ben can, but I think my Ben can do more steps unaided than Joshua before he falls over.

I can’t help wondering where Mari is though, I think Ben is missing Joshua - he keeps saying something that sounds like ‘Shusha’ which I think is his word for his friend. I’m wondering if the visitors they had the other night have anything to do with their disappearance. It was weird. Several expensively dressed men, well, some of them looked apparently like foreigners in very exotic robes, called at Mari’s house late in the evening. I didn’t see them myself, but Rebecca told me about it. She said they stayed a long time, and that it was nearly midnight before they left. You’d think at that sort of time they’d have been guests for the night, but Rebecca said they left in a bit of a hurry and didn’t stay in the village at all. Just before dark, I take Ben with me and we go round to Mari’s house again to see if they’ve returned. It is still shut up and silent. Rebecca sees me and calls out,

“No. Not a movement all day. I can’t understand it. A couple of men came round earlier to ask Joseph to do some work for them, but I was unable to suggest where he might be. They said they’d come back tomorrow.”

We give up and go back home because I’ve got the evening meal to prepare before Nathan returns. He’ll be tired and ravenous because he’s been doing heavy work in the fields all day. At last Ben is beginning to grizzle and yawn, so I can lay him down for a nap while I get on with my work. I don’t know how Rebecca manages with four youngsters although I think her eldest, Miriam, gives her a lot of help with the little ones. I keep wondering when I might conceive our next child, Nathan is very amorous and his mother keeps hinting to me that another baby must be surely on the way soon.

Perhaps there’s something wrong with me. When we got married it was nearly eighteen months before Ben was born, and Nathan’s parents were asking him almost every day if I was pregnant yet. They made it very clear to me that it was my role to produce a son and heir as soon as possible. Even my mother seemed concerned and used to tell me what to eat and drink, which food promotes fertility and even advised me on what position to adopt during love-making to make conception a greater possibility. It was a great relief to them - and to Nathan and me because they were getting us anxious too - when a healthy boy was born. I’d have been just as happy with a girl - look how useful Miriam is to Rebecca - but all the others seemed to think it much more important that a boy comes first. Anyway, Benjamin came along and life without him would seem very strange and empty now.

The cooking pots are bubbling nicely when I hear Ben begin to stir and before he can cry, I’m picking him up and making soothing noises to him. His dark brown eyes open wide and he gives me a beautiful grin and I leave my chores for a few minutes to cuddle him and feel his soft skin against my cheek. Nathan’s mother says he looks like Nathan, but I’m not so sure. He has my big eyes and curly dark hair and my mother says he’s very like me when I was that age. I’ve heard the two grandmothers both arguing about this, not that I think it matters because I’m quite content if he grows up looking like my handsome husband. Anyway, it’s not his looks that matter, if he has Nathan’s good nature and honesty I’ll not complain. I never cease to thank my parents for finding someone as good as Nathan for me. Some of my friends have not been so lucky, when we meet each morning at the well, I hear some of them complaining and Martha last week had a black eye which she said had been caused by her husband who often got drunk and would beat her up if she hadn’t done everything just as he liked it.

I’ve been keeping an eye on the lane outside and spy my husband coming. I pick up Benjamin and together we rush out to meet and greet Nathan, who sweeps us both into his arms and gives us a joint hug before he kisses me. Some people think it’s indecent to show affection in public like this, but I don’t mind, I like it. It means Nathan really loves me or he would not risk criticism by behaving in such a manner. I don’t think my father really approves of such a display of affection, I’ve never seen him show any outward signs of his care for my mother although I’m sure he loves her really. It’s just that he’s rather formal and stiff and finds it hard to unbend like Nathan and some of the younger men nowadays.

Nathan takes Benjamin from my arms and they tussle together playfully while I pour water from the largest pot so that Nathan can wash and freshen himself before our meal. We chat about Nathan’s work during the meal and I tell him that I think Ben has a further tooth coming; I’ll not say anything about the disappearance of Mari and her husband until we’ve got the meal over and Ben to sleep for the night. I give Ben a little of our food cut up small, but after the meal I’ll breast feed him as he is not yet weaned.

I love this time. At first I was a little uncomfortable and sore, he was such a greedy baby, but now he sucks so peacefully and we share a lovely intimate time together. I know Nathan just likes looking at us, I don’t know whether he’s just admiring his family or feasting his eyes on my bare breasts, with eyes of lust, the naughty man! I know he likes looking at me when I’m so immodestly dressed, he tells me constantly how much he loves my beautiful body so that I would find it hard to reject his avid love-making even had I wanted to.

After we’ve cleared away the remnants of our meal and I’ve fed Ben, I rock him gently in my arms and sing a lullaby to him. His eyes are heavy and I lay him down in his cradle that Nathan had Joseph make for us. I watch him lying there for a long time, his eyelids flickering, his breathing light and steady, he looks so small and vulnerable and I feel so responsible for him, it is a huge task. I have to nurture him until one day he is a strong and handsome man like my husband. Nathan joins me and puts his arms around my shoulders, then bends and kisses the sleeping child on the cheek. I copy his movement and bid the little boy good night and sweet dreams before we both return to the table and begin to chat in low voices so as not to disturb the child.

It is then that I tell Nathan about the disappearance of Joseph and his family. Nathan decides to call on some of his friends to see if any of them know what has happened. He pulls on his cloak, for the sun has dropped and the temperature is falling quite rapidly outside. While he is gone, I watch over Ben asleep in his cradle, humming softly to myself. I should be doing something useful, I know, but when we are alone like this I just want to sit and watch him, contemplating the miracle that Nathan and I could have created such a wonderful new human being. He looks so vulnerable there, sucking his thumb, so trusting that we will look after him. He stirs occasionally, the thumb slips out of his mouth, a little wriggle and a huge sigh escapes him, then he snuggles back, and the thumb engages with his mouth once more, a few vigorous noisy sucks, and then he is sleeping peacefully once more.

Nathan is back after an hour or so with no news. Then he spends a good half hour telling me that no-one knows what has happened, that there is some concern. It turns out that Joseph promised at least a couple of the men that their farm equipment would be ready tomorrow morning and they are relying on that promise and Joseph has never let anyone down before. Several apparently saw him at work yesterday and a couple chatted with him and he gave no intimation then that he was thinking of going away, even if only for a short period. A number of the men had glimpsed the strangers who called on Joseph after nightfall yesterday although in the darkness they could not give any description of them that would identify who they were or where they came from.

Someone had wondered if Joseph had been caught up in any way with the terrorist groups, or freedom fighters as they called themselves, who were rumoured to be creating problems in the Galilee area, harrying Herod’s soldiers and anyone who was deemed to be a collaborator with the Roman rulers. Everyone thought this most unlikely and not in Joseph’s character, but his wife’s family came from that area and he’d said very little about their life there before settling in Bethlehem. Perhaps the strangers were from one of those groups come to put pressure onto Joseph or to tell them about something that had happened affecting their relations in Galilee.

The general consensus was that those men had brought some bad news, perhaps from Mariam’s home village and that they had had to go there hurriedly, perhaps there had been a death in the family. There was surprise, though, that Joseph had not confided this to someone or made apologies to the customers awaiting their ordered carpentry items. Unless, of course, Joseph himself was somehow involved with the terrorist groups, something he would certainly not have confided to his acquaintances and friends in Bethlehem, for even a rumour of this sort would soon reach the ears of one of Herod’s spies leading to immediate arrest and possible execution.

This conversation made me more alert than usual and after we had gone to bed and Nathan had made love to me even more ardently than usual, I lay awake instead of falling asleep in his arms, and let all sorts of thoughts flit through my mind, so that eventually when I tried to stop them and go to sleep, I found I could not. I tossed and turned for a bit and then thought about Mari and her boy. I met Mari for the first time at the well when we both were carrying babies - hers was less than a month old. She seemed very young, I guessed she had been married as soon as the law permitted, although I found out soon enough that she was fourteen, just a year younger than me. She’d been quite ill at first after the birth, and had lost a lot of blood, picked up an infection and had become very weak.

Rebecca had told me there was a new girl who was sick - she’d been helping the husband look after her and had been fetching water for both of them. Anyway, when she had regained her strength, we met at the well and hit it off straight away. Despite the fact that she was still recovering from her fever, she seemed very cheerful and vivacious - in fact, she seemed a lot of fun and not at all like some of the women who just seem to want to criticise each other and revel in any scandal or gossip going. She was certainly not a shy girl and despite her lack of experience, she seemed very confident with the child. I found out later that she had been left in charge of her cousins and younger sisters and brother a lot when she was only a young girl and was quite used to caring for babies. Indeed, although older, I was the one who asked the questions and found myself more often seeking her advice about baby things than I did of my mother.

She was also a very religious girl, she often brought God into her conversations quite naturally in a way I was unused to. He seemed very real to her, whereas Jehovah and his activities seemed just words to me I had heard many times in the local synagogue, things that happened long ago about which the rabbi would drone on about in a most boring way while my mind occupied itself elsewhere. She didn’t try to lecture me on this in any way, she just spoke about God as though it was a very personal and meaningful thing for her. I must say that I envied her in this. I used to press her to tell me about her life before she came to Bethlehem. I knew she came from Galilee, I could tell that by her slight accent, she said she was from a tiny village called Nazareth. I must admit I’d never heard of it, but she said it was near the city of Sepphoris and I had heard the men mention that place although it really meant nothing to me. She was at first reluctant to tell me any more about her life there except that she had two younger sisters and a brother and that her mother was a widow.

Gradually as we got to know one another better, she opened up a little. She told me about her uncle, Eli, who was a Pharisee, who took responsibility for them and gave them a home, but I got the impression she didn’t get on too well with him. Then one day, after I’d told her all sorts of intimate things about Nathan and our courtship and life together, she told me something that was quite shocking. She said that she and Joseph were not properly married, only betrothed to one another. They’d had to come to Bethlehem for the census because of Joseph’s family registration and had intended to go back to Nazareth and get married then, but for a number of reasons she wouldn’t tell me, had stayed in a house Joseph had rented here and set up his carpentry business in which he’d been trained by his long dead father. She wouldn’t say, but I feel that she didn’t want to go back because of some rift or problem with this Eli she talked about. I then realised of course that she must have conceived Joshua out of wedlock, possibly before she was even betrothed and that was obviously the reason she could not return. There must have been some terrible scandal, she would have been ostracised and possibly even threatened, so had escaped with Joseph before they could harm her and the baby.

Although this scenario had seemed the most likely, I found behaving in that sort of loose and immoral way something I could not associate with the Mari I knew. And I didn’t think from what I knew of him, and what Mari said, that Joseph was the sort who would have seduced a young girl or pressed himself on her without her connivance. Then one night, after we’d been at a celebration together, Mari asked me if I could keep a secret. I think perhaps the wine had made her lose any inhibitions she might have had. She astonished me by saying that she had been a virgin; that Joshua was a miracle and she’d been visited by a messenger from God who told her she’d have a baby and that he would be the promised Messiah. She said Josh’s real name was Yahoshua as she’d been instructed by the messenger but they normally called him Joshua to bring less attention to him as knowledge of who he really was could bring danger to the family. I didn’t believe her, of course, she’d gone right over the top. I could understand her not wanting to admit that she and Joseph had made love before they were married, but this seemed too far-fetched an excuse to be credible.

I didn’t know quite what to make of her after that. She sensed my disbelief, although I found it too difficult and embarrassing to tell her outright that I didn’t believe her. Somehow the openness and intimacy between us disappeared after that, there was a thin wall of wariness that inhibited the freedom with which we’d previously conversed. We still met up regularly and chatted about the growth of our babies and all the things that mothers do about their children, but I never asked her anything more about her former life and she never volunteered anything more about Joshua being the Messiah or about being a virgin. I was sure she wasn’t still a virgin anyway, even if she was not properly married. We’d both talked about when we might expect another baby on the way and there was nothing Mari said that made me think that the next child she had would be miraculous!

As I lay awake and pondered all these things, my imagination began to weave all sorts of scenarios about Mari and her child. Suppose what she’d said was true! What if Joshua was the future Messiah - after all the rabbis and scribes were always going on about the coming Messiah who would drive the hated foreigners out of Israel. If what they said was right, someone had to be mother of the Messiah. Why not Mari? Well, my rational mind replied, she’s hardly from the sort of background to give birth to a prince or warrior, is she? I know Joseph comes from the family line of King David, but then so do several men here in Bethlehem as this is the village that is sacred to him and his descendents. Perhaps that’s why they came to Bethlehem. If that was the case, then who were the strangers who visited them yesterday? Had someone in authority got wind of who they were and come to warn or threaten them? Was that why they’d disappeared in such a hurry?

I began to imagine more and more exotic scenarios around in my tired and confused brain, while another part of me tried to calm me down, to question why I was getting myself so het up about it when she was just a friend. What had it really got to do with me, did it really have anything to do with my life and that of my slumbering family beside me? I got up and had a look at Benjamin sleeping peacefully in his cradle, my husband breathing more heavily in a deep sleep, drank a quick draught of water and got back onto my bed and fell asleep at last.