“You weren’t the only one who mocked her.”
Hadassah limped along the upper corridor from Phoebe’s chambers. As she neared Julia’s open door, she heard Marcus speaking indistinctly. She entered quietly, her heart leaping as she saw Julia’s open eyes. She was listening intently to Marcus, who was telling her about the desolation of Jerusalem and an old man who stood crying beside the last remaining remnant of the temple wall.
Marcus glanced up as Azar came into the room. Then he went on, telling his sister of being attacked by robbers on the road to Jericho. He told how Ezra Barjachin and his daughter Taphatha had saved his life. “I told him what Hadassah had told me about the Lord and saw him change, Julia.”
Hadassah heard the deepening emotion in his voice as he told his sister of following the road to the village of Nain. Her hand whitened on her walking stick.
“I found the house where Hadassah lived, and I moved in. I’d wander over the hillsides, then buy wine and drink myself into oblivion. The people must have thought I was mad. They left me alone. No one dared question a Roman. All except one old woman who pestered me constantly.” He gave a hoarse laugh. “Deborah.”
Hadassah sat down heavily on the other side of Julia’s bed. Without looking away from Marcus, Julia’s hand searched for and found hers. Hadassah looked at Marcus through her veil . . . and her tears.
Marcus went on, telling how Deborah had taken him out on the hillside and sent him down to the Sea of Galilee, where he met Paracletos, and then, in Capernaum, Cornelius.
“I have never known a feeling like I had that day, Julia,” he said. “Freedom. Joy beyond all understanding. It was as though I’d been dead my whole life and was suddenly alive.” He put his hand lightly on her forehead. “You can feel that way, too.”
“You didn’t do what I did,” Julia said sadly. “You never sinned the way I sinned.”
Hadassah pressed her hand gently. “We all sin, Julia, and no sin is greater than any other. God sees all sin the same. That’s why he sent Jesus to atone for us. For each of us.”
Julia blinked back tears and looked up at the ceiling. “Neither of you can understand. You’re good. I’m bad.”
“Julia,” Hadassah said. O God, open her ears so that she can hear with her heart! “Do you remember the Samaritan woman at the well? Do you remember Mary of Magdala? The Samaritan woman was the first to know Jesus was the Messiah, Mary the first to know he had risen from the grave.”
“Azar doesn’t understand,” Julia said to her brother. “She doesn’t know. Oh, Marcus, I know you never wanted me to speak of her again, but I can’t help it. I can’t stop thinking of it. I can’t. . . .”
“Then say what you must.”
She looked up at the ceiling again, feeling wretched and lost. “She was my best friend,” she whispered, mouth trembling as she confessed the sin that weighed heaviest on her heart. “She loved me and I sent her to the arena to die because I was jealous. I might as well have killed love itself when I killed Hadassah.”
Azar drew back as though stunned. Marcus glanced at her, sensing her turmoil.
Julia blinked back tears as she looked at her brother. “Marcus, you loved her. I heard you ask her to marry you. I told you at the arena I had her killed because she refused you, but it was more than that. I killed Hadassah because she was everything I wasn’t. She was faithful. She was kind. She was pure. No matter how I treated her, or how Calabah and Primus treated her, she never changed.”
Julia fumbled for Marcus’ hand and clutched it tightly. “It cost her to say no to you, Marcus. I know you didn’t think so. You were so angry you didn’t even see me when you left. But it did. I looked in my room, and she was on her knees crying. I didn’t want to tell you.”
Marcus bent his head.
Julia cried, too, remembering. “May her God forgive me. I sat cheering when she died, and when it was over and she was dead and you were gone, I just screamed and screamed. I kept hearing the roar of those lions and I could see her lying dead on the sand. I knew what I’d done. I knew. Oh, God, I know. And Calabah and Primus mocked me for it.”
She shook with weeping. “I can’t be forgiven! How do you ask forgiveness of someone you murdered? Hadassah’s dead. Oh, she’s gone and it’s my fault. My fault.”
Anguished, Marcus looked at Azar. “Give her a drink of mandragora,” he said, not knowing any other way to comfort his sister or be spared more pain himself.
Hadassah was trembling violently. “Leave me alone with her, my lord.”