paid much attention to that story.
“Joseph, my friend, I will search my memory for your failings if you ask me to. But what I remember best is how you have always held out your hand to me with no thought of your own gain. Smuggling me out of Rome with my friends, helping me to found Temple Magdalen, presiding at my wedding feast, defending Jesus in the Sanhedrin. No one could ask for a truer friend.”
“Maeve, you know I love you.”
“I love you, too, Joseph.”
“No. Maeve. Listen. I love you. Selfishly. You may have forgotten, but I haven’t: How I told no one in Bethany that you were still alive and enslaved in Rome, no one who might have told Jesus. And I knew very well that he thought you were dead. I confessed it to you long ago, that time I tracked you down at Paulina’s villa and tried to buy you away from her. Do you remember now?”
“Yes, Joseph, I remember.” I added no excuses for him, no protestations that I had forgiven him long ago, though I had.
“Do you remember what else I confessed?”
I didn’t respond. I guessed what was coming.
“I wanted you for myself.” He paused a beat. “I still do, Maeve.”
There were things I knew I could say, excuses I could make. It’s so soon. I’ve only been a widow (if that’s what I am) for four months. Things that would make Joseph wrong for pressing me, that would make him apologize or back away, head him off from where I sensed he was going. Then maybe I could keep my friend Joseph at my beck and call, as he had been all these years. But it would not be a kindness to this man who had been nothing but kind to me, and who was trusting me with his truth.
“I know, Joseph,” I said.
And there seemed nothing more for me to say. So we sat in silence for a time, the afternoon light slanting and the mourning doves calling and calling.
“Maeve,” he said at length. “I know you have always loved him. I know you cannot love me, or anyone, as you loved him. I am not a fool—or maybe I am where you are concerned, but I am not deluded. I can offer you my love. I can marry you, if you will have me. I can make a home for you anywhere in the world—far from here, I hope. I can love and protect your child. And I can understand, as no other man could, that you love him still. Don’t forget that I witnessed that love almost from the beginning.”
It was true. Joseph, on business in the Pretannic Isles, had met Jesus just after he escaped from Mona. He had been with Jesus when the priestesses of Glastonbury informed him that the druids had exiled me alone in a small boat “beyond the ninth wave” as punishment for interfering with the mysteries (i.e. human sacrifice aka the god-making death). Joseph had agreed to attempt a search for me, but then the terrible storm came and with it their certainty of my death. By sheer chance (or not) Joseph had encountered me in a Roman brothel three years later and had pieced our stories together.
“Oh, Joseph” was all I managed to say, and I turned to him and pressed my face against his heart.
“Maeve,” he murmured, dropping kisses on my head, “Maeve, may I hope—”
I realized my mistake and gently drew myself apart. Joseph looked away abruptly, but not before I saw the pain. It’s done now, I thought, it’s over. But it wasn’t.
“You received me as your lover when you were a priestess,” he spoke tersely, not looking at me. “Was it…was it charity? Obligation? Obedience to the goddess?”
“And to the god.”
Isis, I prayed. You called me to be your priestess. Help me now to heal the wounds I never meant to inflict.
“The god in you. Look at me, Joseph,” I commanded in her voice, and he obeyed. “What do you see?”
I didn’t know the answer myself. I only knew he had to see it and say it for himself. He looked at me, and I looked back. I saw his face change, hurt and longing giving way to surprise, maybe even awe. Then at last there was sadness again and love.
“I see, Maeve,” he said.
What do you see? I wanted to ask again, not in her voice this time, but in my own human confused voice. Yet I held my peace.
“You won’t come away with me,” he stated. “You won’t let me make it easy for you. Or safe. You won’t let me save you. That’s not what you want. It never was; it never will be.”
I felt him let go, move away. In my mind I saw his boat, leaving this shore, leaving this story. And I could go, could have gone. Any moment it would be too late.
“Joseph.” I called out as if over the waves, over the wind.
“Shh! Maeve. I’m still here. Shh!”
He reached for me, and I clung to him, not like a lover but like a child. Joseph understood and held me close.
“I have to ask you one thing, Maeve,” he said after a moment. “Although my pride wishes I wouldn’t.”
“Ask anything,” I said, letting go of Joseph.
“I know that James the brother of Jesus is claiming the right of levirate. Are you—”
“Sweet Isis, no!”
“Well, I thought…I thought you might want to marry his brother…to stay close to him. To be with someone who reminded you of him.”
“Joseph, have you met James?”
“At the wedding. Oh, yes, I see what you mean. No family resemblance at all.”
“None.”
“I told you I was selfish,” said Joseph. “I won’t pretend I’m not glad. But I am also worried. Who is going to protect you, Maeve? You and the child?”
“Who” must mean what man? Apparently that was what men were for. Even my beloved had said it: you need someone to protect you, you and the child. Who else but a man? A husband? Yet life hadn’t taught me what seemed so obvious to others. I had grown up without a man in sight. I had lived with whores and priestesses most of my adult life. I had finally married a man who had no home, no wealth, and no idea of how to protect himself, let alone anyone else. Pardon me if I remained clueless.
“I don’t know, Joseph. I don’t know. Have...have faith in me?” I suggested
But the words didn’t sound as convincing as they had in my dream conversation, and Joseph looked dubious.
“Maeve,” he said at last. “Listen to me. I won’t ask you again to be my wife, but please hear me. I have to make a voyage to look after my interests in Pretannia. You could come with me. Just come. You could go home to your people.”
I closed my eyes, the sense of homesickness was so sharp, so unexpected. I could hear the sound of the sea, smell it, see the spray of waves breaking on rock, catching the light, hear the sound of gulls. And inland the darkness, the greenness, the huge oaks.
“Joseph,” I spoke with effort, as if in a dream. “I am an excommunicate, an exile.”
“That
