Chapter 7

Having given some last-minute instructions to young Samuel, who had been doing his turn as night watchman, Simon prepared to leave, though dawn was barely breaking.

‘I expect to be gone all day,’ he said. ‘You will tell Andrew, when he comes, to take over until I return. Tell him to see to it that the palace delivery is made this afternoon; half the usual order, now that the family is gone.’

As he climbed into a dory, he had called back to Samuel, ‘And tell Thad—or somebody—to go to my house and fetch another blanket for my bunk.’

He had the Cana highway almost to himself for a couple of hours. Nobody was awake in Bethsaida when he passed through. The long, winding hill beyond was deserted. At the broad summit he paused to survey the landscape gaily dressed in autumn colours. In the area of the great white rock, which dominated the high plateau, the frost-touched grass had been trampled flat by innumerable feet.

The descending road began to veer toward the west. It had been many years since Simon had traversed this neighbourhood of small farms and vineyards. He had never been lured by the soil. It was a common jest that men who followed the sea were always chattering about the ease and security of life in the country, declaring that they would some day rent a couple of acres and raise their own food. And often they seemed to be quite in earnest about it. This had always amused Simon, who couldn’t imagine a less interesting tool than a hoe. But today the serenity of the countryside made a bid for his turbulent spirit.

Harvest was past, but the farmers were busy with the less urgent affairs of autumn, snugging themselves in for the winter, carrying well-laden baskets of root vegetables from the kitchen-garden to the sod-roofed cellar, the old women gathering herbs and tying them into bunches to be hung up and dried.

On the other side of the highway, a little farther on, three half-grown youngsters were lazily roping wheat-sheaves to the backs of as many shaggy pack-asses. Simon waved a hand to them, but they only stared back. That’s the way it was in the country. Their ideas came slowly. Doubtless, if he stood there and waved at these boys for half an hour, reflected Simon, they might respond to his salute. It was a dull life; no mistake about that. He wondered how the country people took to the Carpenter’s belief that food was less important than flowers.

At the far corner of the next farm, a larger one, father and the boys were on their threshing-floor, beating a knee-deep carpet of barley-sheaves. The mother of the family wielded a much-mended winnowing-fan. The two girls were sweeping the cleaned grain on to a hempen mat.

Simon paused here, turned off the highway, and approached them with a friendly greeting. They were early to work, he said. The women rested, sitting on the ground, and the boys—one of them as tall as his father—leaned on the long handles of their flails.