Page 18 of Unveiled Tamar’s Story (Mysteries & Wonders of the Bible #1)
S abbath days were always quieter than any other day of the week—the markets were empty, cook fires were unlit, businesses were closed.
But today seemed abnormally subdued, even for a Sabbath.
Especially for a Sabbath during Passover, when the weeklong celebration usually meant an air of rejoicing in the city that was bursting with pilgrims.
All voices were hushed as they made their way to the temple compound, and the quiet finally drew her attention to something she hadn’t considered as they’d walked through the garden of tombs.
She hadn’t heard a single bird singing all morning. No insects whirring. No rustle of small animals in the grasses. Maybe that, even more than the feeling of not belonging in her own home, was what had made Tamar’s shoulders go a little tauter with each step.
The world was out of balance today. Nature, it seemed, was holding its breath. Waiting.
A shiver coursed down her spine as the inevitable question followed: Waiting for what?
Mariana’s arm was still looped through hers, Bithnia and Gaius still following behind them. The Jews gathered in the temple compound were more diverse than usual, many of them having traveled there from lands far and wide for Passover.
They looked less odd, she and Mariana, than they usually would have. Here, this week, there were Gentile women aplenty—Gentile by blood but part of families who had converted to Judaism in decades or centuries past. All manners of dress were represented, all manners of hairstyles.
Even so, the visitors still moved out of the way when Mariana and Tamar approached. Their clothes shouted not only “Roman” but “ rich Roman”—the most dangerous kind. The only rich Romans in Judea were the ones with political power, after all.
Another wave of uneasiness swept over her. She was quite literally wearing the robes of the governor’s wife. Pretending to be something she was so far from being that it seemed the entire swarm of pilgrims ought to have been able to see it in a glance.
Yet no one did. No one looked past her stola and vittae and palla to see the Jewish woman beneath them. Just as Mariana had said.
She’d lifted the palla over her intricately braided and bound hair, but it hadn’t brought the comfort she’d hoped. The silk still felt strange against her skin—lovely, but in a way that was wrong. Unfamiliar.
Usually, she’d be able to leave the outer court reserved to Gentiles and at least enter the women’s court, but today Mariana led her instead to a place still in the outermost court, but right beside the walkway where people passed to enter the inner ones and then exited again toward the city.
Every voice was a hush, a whisper. Where was the excited babble of a holy day? Where were the children laughing and chasing each other? Where were the heated arguments between the sects, debating whichever passage of Scripture had been read?
Mariana managed to convey with only her eyes that this was the best place to just stand and listen. With Bithnia and Gaius standing invisibly behind them, Tamar settled in to do so.
She spotted a man with a scroll unfurled, but his voice didn’t reach them as he read the day’s passage. Nor could she make out the questions he posed after reading. Whatever answers—or more questions—people offered seemed to be eaten up by the heaviness that pervaded the place.
After another minute, she gave up straining to hear the morning’s teaching and instead focused on what she should have been paying attention to all along—listening to the passersby.
For the first twenty minutes, she heard nothing that could help her.
All the talk was of the crucifixion. Some debated whether Jesus had been deserving of death.
“He was a heretic!” said one and “He was guiltless! It was only jealousy that condemned Him,” said another.
Others mused on whether Pilate would face any chastisement from Rome for releasing Barabbas.
After all, the man had been involved in an uprising.
Surely Caesar wouldn’t appreciate an insurrectionist being set free.
Then, finally, she caught a phrase that had her straightening. “…in two, cleanly. As if a knife had sliced it.”
The veil. What else could it be?
“What can it mean?” a second voice asked. “Is God so angry with us that He has removed His presence entirely?”
“I do not know. But Caiaphas is in a fury over it—or so he says. If you ask me, he has simply been biding his time and has finally found an excuse.”
A chill swept up Tamar’s spine. She wanted to look back to Bithnia but didn’t dare. All she could do was glance over at Mariana, whose studied expression of indifference said that she was listening just as intently.
“An excuse for what?”
“To get rid of the head weaver so he can promote his niece.”
His niece? Who was his niece? Heat suffused her, burning away the chill from earlier. It must be someone already in the workshop, if she would be promoted. But she didn’t recall any of the women ever claiming an association with the high priest, and it was something that should have come up.
She felt Bithnia ease closer to her back. “Who?”
Tamar shook her head.
The men continued. “Does he really think he can get away with blaming this on a weaver? No fault in the veil could have resulted in a clean slice like that.”
“He just got away with executing a teacher who preached nothing but love and forgiveness, did he not?”
The second man hissed out a breath. “That cannot bode well. Tamar is beloved by the weavers. If he dismisses or punishes her, the women will stand with her.”
“If so, then I daresay any who object will face the same fate. You know Caiaphas. He will lobby to replace anyone who sides with Tamar, just as he is even now lobbying to have all of Jesus’s disciples rounded up and punished for following Him.”
The fire that had flashed through her veins settled in her stomach. Whoever these men were, they must know someone in her workshop well, to talk so knowledgeably and call her by name. She shifted, angling for a better view, and managed to get a look at the two men’s faces.
One was unfamiliar, but the other… She had seen him before, on a visit to the home of one of her girls. She couldn’t place him at first, but then his expression shifted, and recognition settled. Illana’s brother. They had the same mouth, and worry settled over their brows in the same way.
That certainly explained his familiarity with the shop and with her.
The fire burned, making her stomach churn.
It warmed her in a far different way to hear that her girls held her in such high esteem.
It ought to give her a feeling of accomplishment, of peace.
She ought to be able to smile at hearing that the care she took, the firm but loving hand she’d tried so hard to keep with them, accomplished what she’d always hoped.
Instead, their loyalty to her would be cause for punishment. If she was blamed, if she was punished, if she couldn’t get out of this, then they’d all pay the price.
She had to convince them otherwise—not to stand beside her. She had to make certain each girl, each woman, knew that if they respected her, they would accept her replacement, whoever it was.
Turning to Mariana, she whispered, “I need to visit some of my weavers. Not all of them, but I know the ones who are likely to bear this punishment with me. I know my strongest supporters. I must speak with them and warn them not to stand with me.”
Even as she said the names, even as Mariana nodded, Tamar’s heart sank. They lived in different sectors of the city. Traveling through the crowded streets, even on the Sabbath when people wouldn’t go far, would take hours. Visiting each of them would take all day.
But it must be done. What kind of leader would she be if she let her friends suffer because of their association with her? She knew well that the walk throughout Jerusalem, combined with coming from the tomb and returning to it, would make her guilty of breaking the Sabbath laws.
But perhaps Bithnia was right. Perhaps, when it was to save lives, it was not a sin.
“Shall we start now?” Mariana asked. “Or perhaps see if we hear more first while we are here?”
A new feeling surged, a new kind of guilt. “I cannot ask you to come with me, Mariana. You ought to go home to your husband and children. This will take all day.”
There was no reason for this stranger to argue, but the argument sprang up immediately in her eyes.
It firmed her mouth. It straightened her spine and made her shoulders roll back.
“The children’s nurse went straight home when we left the governor’s palace.
She will be there to help with Felix and Livia.
Valerius will be sleeping. Gaius and I will stay with you. ”
“As will I,” Bithnia promised, despite having heard the same words Tamar did.
Tamar shook her head. “Go home, Bithnia, please. Or—Illana is your friend, isn’t she? Go to her, warn her against standing with me. I imagine her brother has cautioned her as well, but tell her it is my wish that she accept my replacement peaceably.”
If Bithnia were truly the slave she was pretending to be, that spark in her eyes likely would have earned her a slap. “You cannot make us abandon you, Tamar. Did King Solomon not say, ‘Two are better than one’?”
Tamar’s lips twitched. It had only been a day ago that she said those same words to Bithnia after she’d found the frayed thread, but it seemed a lifetime had passed since then.
To think that then, her biggest worry had been one damaged thread and the weeks of work it had lost them.
Then, she’d never have believed that the veil in the temple could be cut so neatly in two.