Mary paled and rubbed her hands together so savagely that I was afraid she would peel skin if she continued. She finally clasped them tenderly, as if in prayer, and said, “I had been saving an alabaster flask filled with precious spikenard for my wedding. But since Jesus had come into my life I had no desire to be with and serve any man except the Lord. I waited on his every need, through supper, and then went to my room and returned with the flask. I broke the glass in my hand and poured the perfume first over his head and then over his feet and I knelt and wiped off his feet with my hair to show him how much I loved him. The spikenard was mine, to do with as I chose, but one of the apostles, Judas, came forward and shamed me before everyone by asking why the ointment had not been sold and the money given to the poor. I began to weep until I felt the master’s hand on my head and heard him say, ‘Why do you trouble her? Let her alone. She has wrought a good work upon me. You have the poor with you always and whenever you can you should do them good; but me you will not have always. She has done what she could, for in casting this ointment on my body she prepared me for my burying.’ ”

Mary leaned against her sister, hiding her face in the curve of Martha’s neck as a child seeking comfort would do. Liking myself less and less each minute, I turned to Martha again. “Did anyone ask Jesus what he meant when he spoke of his own burial?”

“No one. We were all afraid, even the likes of Peter and James. Only later did we understand.”

I swept my hand around the spacious room. “Each night, during that Passover week, Jesus and the twelve slept here?”

“Yes. Until the night he was arrested.”

“Was it usual for all the apostles to make their home with you when they came to the city with Jesus?”

“Oh, no. Usually they split up into pairs and stayed with different families of our village. But during the Passover holidays every house is always filled with visiting relatives from other parts, so the twelve all slept here, in this room, some on cots and some on the floor with blankets to protect them from the cold. Lazarus occupied one bedroom, Mary and I shared another, and the Lord slept in the third—that one there.” She pointed.

“On that night when Jesus was arrested in the garden, had you been expecting him and the others to return here after they had taken the Paschal supper in the city?”

“Yes, although Jesus had warned us they would be late, and so we did not become concerned until—until perhaps the sixth hour after sundown.”

That would be midnight. “And where was your brother, Lazarus?”