Chapter 18

The winter days had dragged drearily. Peter, lodging at home in Bethsaida, would trudge through the mud every morning to Capernaum and return in the late afternoon, moody and taciturn. Andrew rarely came home; but last night he had accompanied his brother, for John and James had arranged to spend the night with Jesus.

This morning, Hannah’s household had assembled about the breakfast table. It was something of an event, for they were having fried perch, the first they had had for a long time.

‘I heard a meadow-lark a little while ago,’ remarked Hannah cheerily, ‘and there’s a patch of blue in the sky. We may be having some fair weather soon,’ she went on, ‘though I’m in no hurry to see it come, for it means you will all be leaving me again…I do wish you wouldn’t go this time, Esther. It’s too hard on you.’

‘Well—as for me,’ said Peter, splitting open another fish, ‘I’ll be glad when it’s time to go. I’ve been penned up too long. And I want to see the Master get out of that shop. They’ve been imposing on him—dreadfully!…Don’t you think so, Andy?’

Andy slowly agreed that that was ‘one way of looking at it’; and, turning to Hannah, irrelevantly remarked that he had seen a blue jay yesterday with a straw in its beak. Esther couldn’t help smiling. Andrew certainly had a gift for changing the subject. But Hannah wasn’t interested in Andy’s blue jay.

‘How do you mean, they impose on him?’ she inquired.

Peter was ready with the particulars. Apparently he had given the matter considerable thought…Well, first there was all that work on old Becky’s loom.

‘It happened just after we had come home,’ he went on. ‘The people were all stirred up over the Tetrarch’s crime and the hot-heads were keen on punishing somebody. Antipas had broken the law; and, seeing they couldn’t do anything to him, they decided to make everybody else obey the laws. This old Rebecca person lived alone in a mere hovel on the outskirts of Magdala, and was generally disliked. Many people thought she was a witch—and she looked the part, a very ugly old woman. The children threw stones at her whenever she appeared on the highway. And she put a curse on the neighbours’ cattle, so that their milk dried up.’

‘How ridiculous!’ exclaimed Esther. ‘You don’t believe that!’

‘Of course not,’ said Peter, ‘but what I believe isn’t important in this case. A lot of people did believe it—or said they did…One charge they had against Becky was that she never attended the Synagogue. One Sabbath morning they heard her rickety old loom clacking, and to show how righteous they were a dozen of them stormed into her hut and smashed the loom to kindling-wood… And the next day she came to see Jesus about it.’

‘Were you there?’ wondered Hannah.

‘Johnny and I. Becky opened the door and came in, as if she lived there. She had on a dirty old dress. Her tangled white hair hadn’t been combed and her bare feet were muddy. She came directly to where Jesus sat and dropped down in a chair beside him, without a word. Her wrinkled face was twitching and it was plain to see that she was badly upset. But if the Master saw anything peculiar about her conduct he gave no sign of it. He turned to her with a friendly smile and said, ‘Good morning, daughter. What may I do for you?’