Mary of Nazareth Read Online Free PDF

village. The body of the soldier he had killed was dumped next to him. Amid much yelling and cracking of whips, the carts sped away.
    The horses and soldiers vanished into the darkness of the forest, and silence fell over Nazareth.
    Miriam shivered. The thought of her father tied up and at the mercy of the Temple’s soldiers brought a lump to her throat. Although the whole village was crowding around her, she was gripped by a boundless fear. She wondered what she was going to tell her mother.

    â€œ I SHOULD have gone with him,” Lysanias said, swaying on his stool. “I stayed in the workshop like a frightened hen. It shouldn’t have been Joachim defending Houlda. It should have been me.”
    The neighbors who had crowded into the room listened in silence to Lysanias’s moans. They had told him over and over that it was not his fault and that there was nothing he could have done. But Lysanias could not get the idea out of his head. Like Miriam, he could not bear the thought that Joachim was not here with him now, and would not be with him tonight, or tomorrow.
    As for Hannah, she sat there stiffly, in silence, nervously creasing the tails of her tunic.
    Miriam, dry-eyed, her heart pounding, was watching her out of the corner of her eye. Her mother’s mute, solitary sadness intimidated her. She did not dare make a gesture of tenderness toward her. Nor had the women neighbors taken Hannah in their arms. Joachim’s wife was not an easy woman to get close to.
    There was no point in crying for vengeance now. All they could do was nurse their pain and meditate on their own powerlessness.
    Closing her eyes, Miriam relived the drama. She saw her father’s body huddled, tied and thrown like a sack into the cart.
    She kept asking herself, “What’s going to happen to him now? What will they do to him?”
    Lysanias was in no way responsible for what had happened. She was the one Joachim had been defending. It was because of her that he was now in the cruel hands of the Temple’s tax collectors.
    â€œWe’ll never see him again. He’s as good as dead.”
    Echoing in the silence, Hannah’s clear voice made them jump. No one protested. They were all thinking the same thing.
    Joachim had killed a soldier and wounded a tax collector. They knew what his punishment would be. The only reason the mercenaries had not killed or crucified him on the spot was because they were in a hurry to tend to the vulture from the Sanhedrin.
    They would want to make an example of him, which meant one thing: crucifixion. It was a foregone conclusion. He would hang on a cross until hunger, thirst, the cold, or the sun killed him. His death agony could last for days.
    Biting her lips to hold back the tears, Miriam said in a toneless voice, “At least we should find out where they’re taking him.”
    â€œSepphoris,” a neighbor said. “It’s sure to be Sepphoris.”
    â€œNo,” someone else said. “They don’t imprison people in Sepphoris anymore. They’re too afraid of Barabbas’s men. They’ve been chasing them all winter without catching them. It’s said Barabbas has already plundered the tax collectors’ carts twice. No, they’ll be taking Joachim to Tarichea. No one has ever escaped from there.”
    â€œThey might also take him to Jerusalem,” a third man said. “Crucify him in front of the Temple as one more demonstration to the Judeans that we Galileans are all barbarians!”
    â€œThe best way to find out is to follow them,” Lysanias said, rising from his stool. “I’ll go.”
    Objections were raised. He was too old and tired to run after mercenaries! Lysanias insisted, assuring them that they wouldn’t be suspicious of an old man, and that he was still nimble enough to get back quickly to Nazareth.
    â€œAnd what then?” Hannah asked, in a restrained voice. “When you discover where