(animals did not always go quietly to their deaths) and loud prayer and praise.
As Mary led me up the southern steps—hot and fully exposed to the sun—I felt dizzy and also disoriented not in place but in time. The last time I had come to the Temple, I’d been dragged here as an adulteress to be judged by my own beloved. The mood was not as tense today, but something had happened to excite the crowd.
“What’s going on?” Mary asked a man at the edge of the crowd.
“Ssh! I’m trying to listen to the preaching.”
“A healing,” someone else answered. “A cripple, just got up and walked.”
“One of the Galileans healed him in the name of the dead Nazarene. Jesus.”
“Not dead. They say he rose again, just like it says in scripture.”
“That rabble rouser. I wouldn’t put it past him to fake his own death. I bet he’s hiding out in the desert laughing up his dirty sleeve.”
Mary and I began to duck and weave our way to the front. It was all so familiar. It had been our way of life for years, healing, teaching, debating, dealing with the press of crowds. For a moment I let myself believe: he’s here. He’s come back; he never left. Any minute now, I’ll hear his voice telling a story or turning a question on its head.
“Now I know, brothers, that neither you nor your leaders had any idea of what you were really doing, but this is the way God carried out what he had foretold, when he said through all his prophets that his Anointed One would suffer.”
But it was unmistakably Peter speaking in plain Aramaic, his voice a little hoarse, for he did not have Jesus’s knack of projecting to a huge audience without shouting. I also noticed that the Pentecostal tongues of fire had left his Galilean twang intact. But I had to admit something about Peter was different. He used to remind me of a big not-very-well trained dog who would bound up to you and lick your face, and then be ashamed and a little bewildered when he found he had knocked you over. Now that doggy impulsiveness had given way to a dogged determination. His nickname the Rock (as in Rocks for Brains) now seemed to describe his immovability.
“Now you must repent and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out,” he continued pausing to wipe away the sweat that was stinging his eyes, “and so that the Lord may send the time of comfort. Then he will send you the Anointed One he has predestined, that is Jesus, whom heaven must keep till the universal restoration comes which God has proclaimed, speaking through his holy prophets.”
“What’s he talking about?” I whispered to Mary.
“The coming again of Jesus as the Messiah,” she answered impatiently, as if it should be obvious.
“He’s coming back?” I said, hopeful and doubtful in equal measure. “When did he say that?”
“It’s in the prophecies. Ssh. Listen.”
“Moses for example said ‘From among your brothers the Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me; you will listen to whatever he tells you. Anyone who refuses to listen to that prophet shall be cut off from the people.’ In fact, all the prophets that have ever spoken, from Samuel onwards, have predicted these days.”
“What days?” I disturbed Mary again.
“The last days, of course. He talked to us about them.”
“I don’t remember—”
“That’s because you weren’t there. Have you forgotten what you did? Now hush.”
I had not forgotten, and apparently Mary hadn’t either. I had gone my own way, back to my old ways, in the upper room, under the sign of the dove. Jesus should have repudiated me at the very least. My adultery, according to Jewish Law, was punishable by death—although it was never clear if I was a legitimate wife. But my beloved had not only protected me and forgiven me, he had begged me to forgive him.
“Here is my sin, Maeve. All the things I’ve been saying, the horror I’ve been prophesying, I may have spoken the truth, but it’s not the whole truth; it never was. I let myself forget this.” He touched my breast. “And this.” He kissed me softly. “I forgot the beauty of a desert night full of stars, the taste of wine and fresh bread, the smell of the earth after it rains, Peter’s face when he finally gets a joke. That’s why you were so angry with me, isn’t it? I forgot the Kingdom of Heaven. I betrayed it. How could I be calling people to the feast when I was blasting fig trees? It’s crazy. I’ve been crazy. Will you forgive me?”
“You are heirs through the prophets,” Peter was shouting now, waving his hands, “the heirs of the covenant God made with your ancestors when he told Abraham, ‘All the Nations of the earth will be blessed in your descendants.’ It was for you in the first place that God raised up his servant and sent him to bless you as every one of you turns from his wicked ways.”
All at once, in one of those moments of what seems like great clarity at the time and total insanity in retrospect, I decided that Mary was right. I needed to speak. I wanted to tell people about the Jesus who had wept in my arms that night, the Jesus who had the grace to doubt himself, who got angry with people and got over it, the one who fed people and touched people. The one who had wanted to go on living.
“I don’t want to die. Not without loving it all more. Maeve, what have I done? Was I made for this death or did I make it for myself? I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“What are you doing, Mary?” Mary B hissed as I began to move toward Peter.
“My duty,” I answered.
“Not here. Not now. You’ll only make trouble.”
“Peter,” I greeted him, remembering all the things I loved about this big, passionate man, how he had gotten drunk the night we fed that huge crowd and jumped out of the boat to prove his faith by walking on water. He’d jumped out of the boat again, stark naked, when Jesus appeared in Galilee. “Peter, I just wanted to—”
He turned red, flustered, lost his place and, worse, lost his face before the crowd.
“Who is that woman!” someone shouted.
“She’s a gentile. What’s she doing here?”
“She’s the fisherman’s doxy, I’ll lay odds on it. All that preaching about sin and look what the cat drug in.”
I had my put foot in it. I had to do something, and of course, I did exactly the wrong thing.
“No, I’m not,” I turned to the crowd. “I’m Jesus of Nazareth’s wi—”
“Whore!” the crowd roared as I hesitated between the words wife and widow.
“I recognize her,” someone shouted. “She was charged with adultery.”
Just then a flock of doves wheeled over my head, and I felt even dizzier as different moments of my life converged. I was seeing from a dove’s eye view, flying to light on my beloved’s head in the dream I’d had long ago on Tir na mBan. I was also standing and staring at my beloved’s beautiful feet as the crowd waited for him to pass judgment on me. And I was here now, a pregnant widow, tired, sun-dazed, and hungry.
“My
