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from her to stare at the burnt shells of the houses, of bodies covered with insects on the street.
    After searching the entire city, we left.
    On the road there was a woman propped up against the foot of a cross.
    Several strands of her hair were stuck in the dirt of the toes of the man upon

    it. Mother went to her, bent down to look her in her face, which was so bruised and swollen that had it been my own mother I could not have recognized her. Twin milk spots stained the front of her tunic.
    "Where are the others?" Mother whispered. The woman gazed dully at her and Mother shook her until she whimpered. "Where are the others? There were thousands here the day the Romans came!"
    The woman's voice gurgled--no, it was her tongue. She opened her mouth and I saw that she had none, and that her teeth were broken and her tongue had been cut out. Mother's eyes were stark as the woman took one of her own wrists in her other hand as though it were a shackle--the same I had seen on the slaves sold at market in Jerusalem.
    Mother sank to her knees.
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    They were gone. The ones who stood grisly sentry over this pass and those sprawled in the streets were all older men and women. The rest--those younger and more able-bodied--had all been taken for slaves.
    I would never see my brother again.
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    Some of the peasants who came to stagger at the sight of the crosses, who had taken down the man still alive, helped us take Father down and carry him to the hillside cave where we had sheltered just days before.
    I carved his name into the rock above Joshua's and mine. We had no spices to anoint him, but piled whatever stones we could find before the mouth of the cave. We had no monument for his burial except our own survival. The words of our prayers seemed stolen by the air.
    That night one of the peasants took pity on us and brought us to his house where his wife fed us bread and olives and gave Mother a veil to cover her hair.
    The next day, we left.
    Those were not safe days. They were not safe for a mother traveling with a child. They were not safe for any man. Soldiers and bandits roamed the hills, the soldiers gathering up men to crucify or sell into slavery to satisfy their Roman masters, the bandits preying on anyone they found.
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    We came to Scythopolis, where we had stayed the mystical night of the eclipse. Now that we were back, I was frightened of the pagan temple, of the wide Roman street . . .
    . . . of the soldiers within the city.
    At the sight of their crimson my bowels loosened on the spot. I soiled myself, shamefully, before Mother could get me to the public toilet.
    Mother sat with her hand out near the city gate, but there were many beggars in worse condition than us. When, by the end of the day, she had acquired only a few small coins and those not even enough for bread, she took me to an inn.
    It was small and dirty, and the innkeeper looked Mother up and down in a way I had never seen a man look at a woman.
    "That boy stinks!" he said. "You can't bring him in here."
    Mother took me outside and went back in to speak to the innkeeper in tones I couldn't hear from the street. I didn't know what she was saying but I didn't trust him to talk to her honorably. I should take her away by the arm and shake my fist at the man. But I was in the throes, by then, of the summer fever, stupefied by grief and fatigue.
    A few minutes later she came for me and we went in and a skinny servant girl brought us some water to bathe and, wrinkling her nose, told Mother she would take and wash my tunic.
    Finally clean and having been fed a few spoonfuls of lentils, I fell asleep on some straw in a back room. That night, when the street outside was the quietest it had been since our arrival, Mother got up.
    "Go back to sleep," she said, covering me with her veil. And then she went out. She came back a little while later but just when I started to sit up, to say I was thirsty, I realized she was not alone.
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    I could hear the heavier step