“Joseph of Arimathea!” she cried, and flung herself into his arms in an enthusiastic embrace. “We’ve all missed you, but I have longed for you most of all.” She drew back to look at him gravely with those large grey eyes beneath a thick canopy of lashes. “The Master and I have discussed it often. When you’re here, there’s never any bickering or whining or complaining. You sweep it all away and make everything seem so simple.”
“I wish I understood what it is that’s changed since my departure, for something surely has,” Joseph told her. “There was never any bickering in the past.”
“No doubt he has told you that nothing has changed?” Miriam asked Joseph, glancing at the Master in mock irritation. “Everything’s going along nicely, thank you—was that what he said? Not so; he’s been in hiding for months, even from his own followers. And all so that he can make a triumphant entry into the city at Pesach next Sunday, surrounded by—”
“You’ll not go into Jerusalem now, as things stand?” Joseph asked the Master, alarmed. “I don’t think it’s wise. The Sanhedrin will surely refuse to anoint you next autumn if you stir things up more now at the Passover.”
The Master put one arm around Joseph and the other around Miriam, and drew them close to him as if they were his children.
“I cannot wait until autumn. My time has come,” the Master said simply. Then, pressing Joseph lightly, he whispered in his ear, “Stay with me, Joseph.”
As the sun was setting, the mobs of followers went over the hill peaceably, leaving behind in the gardens and orchards a snowy carpet of strewn flower petals.
As darkness descended, Martha lit fires in the clay oil lamps on the terrace and the servants set out a light supper before retiring for the night. The twelve were there, and young Lazarus, who looked pale and wan and had hardly spoken all day, and a few older women, and the sisters themselves. The Master’s mother had sent her regrets, saying she could only come down from Galilee at the end of the Pesach.
When this small group was seated in the flickering light, the Master had given thanks, and all were breaking bread over generous helpings of hot soup, Miriam stood and picked up a beautifully carved stone box that rested beside her at the table. She went to where Joseph sat near the Master and asked him to hold the box for her. Then without a word she opened the lid and dug both her hands deep inside as the others at the table stopped speaking and looked up at her form where she hovered there, like an angel of doom or prophecy, in the firelight.
As she withdrew her full hands, at once the terrace and vineyard and gardens were saturated with a cloud of the overwhelmingly voluptuous aroma of spikenard. The ointment, as Joseph knew, was extravagantly dear. Hefting fistfuls of rubies and gold would have been less prodigal.
One by one the diners understood what was about to happen. Simon pushed away his meal and struggled to rise from his place; James and Johan Zebedee reached out to try to stop her; Judas leapt to his feet—but they were all too late.
Joseph held the alabaster box and watched in amazement as Miriam, her face almost beatifically beautiful in this light, let the liquid ointment pour from her cupped hands over the Master’s head, where it trickled down his face and neck into his robes: the traditional, sacred rite of anointing a king. Then she knelt before the Master. She gestured to Joseph for the box and, pulling free the Master’s sandals, she took another double handful, again worth a king’s bejeweled crown, and poured the liquid over his naked feet. In a gesture of complete submission and adoration, she tossed forward her magnificent silken tresses and, using them as a cloth, she wiped the Master’s feet.
Joseph and the others sat frozen in shock at this strange and horrid travesty—an almost sexual inversion of the time-honored ritual of anointment, but here conducted without the authority of priest or state, and on profane ground. And by a woman!
Judas, the first to speak, expressed a mild version of what was felt by all: that above and beyond the rest, there was the horror of throwing away, with such abandon, a complete fortune in rare ointment. “We might have sold that ointment to aid the poor!” he cried, his face black with anger.
Joseph turned to the Master, trying to understand.
In the firelight, the Master’s eyes glittered dark green. He was looking at Miriam, who knelt on the ground just beside Joseph’s knee. He was looking at her as if he would never have the chance to regard her again, as if he were committing her features to memory.
“Why are you so concerned about the poor, Judas?” the Master said, never taking his eyes from Miriam. “The poor, you will always have with you. But me—you have not always.”
Again Joseph felt that awful chill. He felt helpless sitting beside the Master, ineffectually holding the ointment box. But as if he’d read Joseph’s thoughts, the Master turned to him.
“Miriam will explain later what you need to know,” he told Joseph in a low voice, his lips hardly moving. “But for now, I want you to procure an animal for me to ride into Jerusalem next Sunday.”
“I beg of you, do not go forward with this ill-advised scheme,” Joseph whispered urgently. “It is dangerous—and not only that, it’s downright unholy. You profane the prophecies. Though I love Miriam, I must point out that no king of Judea has ever been anointed on profane ground, nor by the hand of a woman!”
“I am not come here to be king of Judea, my beloved Joseph. I have another kingdom—and, as you’ve seen, I’ve another method of anointment as well. But I have also another request of you, my friend. By the time of the Pesach supper, many
