Bright Dark Madonna. Elizabeth Cunningham

met my eye. She made a defiant gesture with a lift of her chin, as in, “Don’t let ‘em get you down. Us loose women have to stick together.” And I realized even she might doubt me. They all knew I had been caught committing adultery.

      Once a whore always a whore. Hadn’t I said it myself—and with pride?

      Who had knowledge of you? My beloved had demanded angrily when I told him I was pregnant so long ago now on the druid isle. Went in unto you. Because I know it wasn’t me.

      A god! I had ended up screaming at him.

      A god, Dwynwyn had told the druids.

      “A god,” I said aloud to the disciples. “The father of my child is a god, the risen Lord. He rose in me and I conceived a child by him. Believe me or not, it doesn’t matter. I know the truth.”

      The silence this time was vast and stormy, a sea with the men tossing helplessly and no savior to calm the waves, no Jesus walking towards them over the water, laughing at their fears, scolding them for lack of faith. All the while Miriam’s humming rose and fell like wind riding the swells.

      “Brothers, my brother and our Lord chose this woman,” James spoke at last, rising to his feet to address the assembly. I saw that whether or not the twelve liked it, James was assuming authority as spokesman for Jesus’s kin, and Peter and the rest would have to come to terms with him. “We must not dishonor him by doubting her word. If she says she is with child by him, we will believe her. And if a son is given to us…”

      Given to us?

      “…we will raise him as my brother would have wished, as befits an heir of the house of David. If my brother’s widow wishes, we may wait until the child’s birth.”

      “Wait for what?” I blurted out.

      “To know if the child is a son. And thus if there is a need to observe the law of levirate.”

      “You mean if it’s a girl….”

      James nodded at me gravely with a look of patience that fell short of warmth or kindness. He was just; he would do what was right. It did not occur to him that I would question the plan. I decided it was best not to enlighten him—or anyone. I lowered my eyes, bowed my head and remembered my beloved’s advice:

      Be wise as serpents, gentle as doves.

      Doves, of course, have wings.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      WHAT MEN ARE FOR

      “GET USED TO IT, MAEVE.”

      The voice is my beloved’s, just as I remember it, rich as spring earth warmed by strong light, but when I sit up, the moonlight is thin and the air is cold. I look around the rooftop where I prefer to sleep. The other sleepers, servants mostly, don’t stir.

      “Get used to what?” I say aloud.

      But there is only silence and loneliness. I lie back down and pull the covers around me, and maybe it is my imagination, but I feel warm, warm as if I were not sleeping alone.

      “There, that’s better.” His voice envelops me again. Maybe I am dreaming. What does it matter?

      “Why can’t I see you?” I ask him, silently now.

      I feel the warmth not just around me but all through me, as if the sun shone inside me, as if my bones were radiant.

      “We are too close, Maeve. Our flesh is one. Don’t you remember? Don’t you know?”

      “Our flesh has made flesh,” I tell him.

      Then I sit back up again, shivering. I want to sink back into that warmth, the place where I am not missing him, where he is not missing, but I remember I have a bone to pick with him. Well, we fought all our lives. I don’t know why I expected it to be any different after death—or after death, resurrection, and ascension (if you must call it that).

      “Now that I’ve got your attention, what the hell are you thinking, trying to marry me off to your brother?”

      “Lie down, cariad.” I cannot resist his voice, the pull of his warmth. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. You’re going to have to get used to people having visions of me, receiving messages from me. It seems to be a side effect of the god-making death, as you call it. The druids never warned me about it.”

      “Side effect? I think you’re trying to sidestep the issue. Did you or did you not appear unto your brother James and speak unto him that load of crap about his duty to your lineage?”

      “Not a load of crap, Maeve. Levirate. It’s in the Law. James might have thought of it himself, even if I hadn’t appeared to him. He’s always done the right thing.”

      “But did you tell him to marry me!” I was insistent.

      “That’s what I’m trying to explain, Maeve, I can’t help appearing unto people when they call on me, when they believe in me. I might even speak unto them, but remember what Anna the prophetess used to say about prophecy, how it always loses in the translation and gains in the interpretation? It’s like that, and I’m afraid I don’t have much control over translation or interpretation.”

      “What? Can’t you speak plain Aramaic anymore?”

      “It’s not that simple.”

      “So what did you say unto James.”

      “I apologized to him. He was feeling badly for resenting me all my life, so I wanted to tell him: it wasn’t your fault. I left you holding the bag. I was free, because you took care of all my responsibilities as well as your own. I told him: you’re the true son of David, not me. Enjoy your life; enjoy the fruits of your labors. Well, you know how it came through to him. Listen, Maeve, I’m warning you, this god-making death has unforeseen consequences. It’s only just beginning. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I only know it’s not over.”

      I say nothing for a moment, considering. What my beloved says makes a kind of sense. People hear what they want to hear. James, being duty-driven, hears that he has a new duty. As for the fruits of his labor—picking up his half-brother’s slack all his life—well, why shouldn’t he become a leader in this new cult centered on his brother? Why shouldn’t he be the one to foster the heir?

      “I see,” I answer; then I add in honesty. “Sort of.”

      I don’t want to talk about James anymore. I just want to melt into the feeling of him being melted into me.

      “But it’s not such a bad idea,” he says, a little hesitance in his voice.

      “What isn’t?”

      “Marrying, James.”

      “Jesus!” I sit up again, and lose my sense of him. “No, don’t go.”

      I lie down and nestle back into his warmth.

      “You’re going to need someone to protect you and our child. I may have had my own problems with translation and interpretation when I prophesied, but terrible times are coming to Judea. And what’s so bad about James? When you were a priestess, you received so many god-bearing strangers.”

      A polite way of saying: when you were a whore, you took all comers.

      “Jesus,” I say again. “If James were a god-bearing stranger at the gates of Temple Magdalen, of course I would receive him. But I don’t want to marry him—or anyone. I barely managed being married to you, for Isis’s sake.”

      I can feel him smiling—a sense of being gently tickled all over from the inside.

      “And for Christ’s sake,” he suggests. “People are going to start saying that now.”

      “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” I try it out. “What do you want me to do, cariad? Do you seriously want me to marry James?”

      “Would you? If I told you