Chapter Text
I saw Yeshua die.
Yosif, the councillor, had him put in his own grave — Yosif's own grave, that is, that he'd contracted people to hew out of the rock for himself — and his friend, the spice merchant Nikodimos, provided all the embalming stuff. The spices as a gift from his own stores but the linen at cost, goodness, merchants must merch. (But, thinking about it now, maybe he didn't mean for the tax collectors to figure out that he was a disciple.) So we'd agreed to go after the Sabbath to do the work. Me, and Shoshana, and the other Maryam who is Yakov and Yohanan's mother, and Shimon's wife Tamar. But I wanted a moment alone with him, so I was the first at the grave.
And he wasn't there.
I ran and got Shimon and Yohanan, and they could only see the same empty grave. I fled to the garden to have a cry out of sight, and when the men had gone home — there was nothing to do anyway! — I went to take another look and there were these two shining guys, after all the experience with demons I hesitate to call them angels, who asked me why I was crying. Come on! Of course I'm crying. I wanted to say goodbye properly and there's nobody there to say goodbye to! And in a moment Shoshana and the others will be here with all the spices and linen and there will be no body to embalm! Of course I'm crying! I turned away from them and ran into the gardener, at least I thought it was, though it was very early for gardeners to be about. Just getting light, in fact.
"Where did you put him!" I shouted at him. "Nobody is telling me anything!"
"Maryam," he said, with that voice I knew so well.
"Rabbuni," I stuttered. Only his mother ever calls him by his name. All the rest of us say "rabbi" or if we're really close, "rabbuni". Even those who are much older than him, like Shimon and his brother Andrawas. Even Yohanan who is closer than a brother to him. In the light of day the demons fear him but in his dreams he fears the demons, and then it's Yohanan who he clings to. I don't know if he's ever lain with him as I wish he'd lie with me — I'll probably never want a man again after all of this. I wanted to grab his feet, kiss them as I'd done once before, to make sure he was real, but he said "Don't touch me". As if he wasn't sure he was real himself, I thought for a moment, but no, nobody could be realer than Yeshua.