Sarah and Tony One Morning A Play By U. U.

Hilliard
Education-affiliated and/or non-profit theater groups may perform this play as a stage play without needing permission from the author.

Cast: Sarah -- Female, late 50s. Antonius -- Male, mid 70s. Costumes: Female and male first century Roman Empire daily attire. Setting: Long ago destroyed house near the Sea of Galilee. Stage is strewn with large stones as if from a demolished building. Time: Morning in early autumn in the Common Era now called AD 90. Scene: Sarah sits on a strewn stone center stage. Antonius enters with the help of his walking stick.

SCENE Scene opens as Sarah turns her head, sees limping Antonius approaching with aid of a walking stick, and stands. SARAH. (uncertain) Oh, Hello. ANTONIUS. (old-age winded) Hello. May I have a seat? SARAH. Whatever you can find. ANTONIUS. Thank you. (sits on a stone) I may know you. You're Sarah. These stones were your grandparents' house. SARAH. (startled) How do you know that? Who are you? ANTONIUS. You can call me Tony. (points) I live in that villa. And you should be more careful. SARAH. How do you know my name? I have not been here for almost fifty years. I live far across the sea in Gallia Narbonensis. Because my children and I could be killed, I go by Potita, a Gaulish name. ANTONIUS. I know, Sarah. I know. You need to be careful. But I will never tell anyone. SARAH. Who are you, Tony? I really have to know. ANTONIUS. Let me explain something. My Roman family is rich and powerful. I was born into a military duty and rank. But I was born with a bad leg. SARAH. That explains your villa. I'm sorry about your leg. ANTONIUS. Because of it they trained me for military intelligence. Later I became a Senate investigator. I am still highly respected. SARAH. And it is your job to know about us. ANTONIUS. Was! They put me out to pasture. SARAH. But once you know things you can't un-know them. ANTONIUS. Sadly true. And in my long career I picked up a lot of useless information and spurious details. This now clutters my old forgetful mind.

SARAH. What do you intend to do with me? ANTONIUS. Nothing. You're not my business now. SARAH. And as far as this meeting goes, you never met me? And no one is going to follow me? ANTONIUS. No one will know. No one will follow you. SARAH. Are you sure? ANTONIUS. I'll make sure. How did you arrive here? SARAH. By car. ANTONIUS. I don't understand. SARAH. A Roman carpentum. A four-wheeled wagon. When I was a kid here, we called them cars. ANTONIUS. Oh. (pause) The carpentum drivers report movements of non-residents and to try to ascertain purposes of their visits. If they don't cooperate, they may be punished. SARAH. Like my father was punished? ANTONIUS. Nothing that drastic. And if it helps, I was in training in Rome when they did that to your father. SARAH. It helps. Is punishing drivers necessary? ANTONIUS. Sometimes. Better intelligence comes from coins with our Caesar's face. More reliable. SARAH. And your Caesar gets his face back in taxes. ANTONIUS. Even your outspoken father did not object. SARAH. My mother said that was to avoid entrapment. ANTONIUS. Probably. Did you tell the carpentum driver anything? SARAH. No. Nothing. I am careful. ANTONIUS. And you speak our Latin with a pleasant Gaulish accent. But if one were looking, one could make reasonable connections, you know.

SARAH. I know. And I know some are looking. ANTONIUS. What did you say when the driver asked you why you were here? SARAH. That my Gallic husband is speculating in lakeside real estate. ANTONIUS. Okay. I'll clean that up after you leave. (pause. sighs) Do you remember that I met you before, here? Along with your mother, Mary? SARAH. Here? (gestures) You mean way back when these stones were my grandparents' house? ANTONIUS. Yes. SARAH. I was a child. I don't remember. Was meeting her part of your job? ANTONIUS. Yes. (pause) You were about ten. It was our Roman year 793. But I like your new calendar. You would say it was the year 40. SARAH. It's not "our" calendar. It's ancient. Our years now run from the beginning of the Age of Pisces. ANTONIUS. I was not sure whether you'd be offended. Some of your people even moved your father's birth date to fit the Age of Pisces. SARAH. They were trying to show how modern and "with it" we were. How the past was dead. ANTONIUS. Let the dead bury the dead? SARAH. Yes. But let's get back to what we were talking about. After my father was gone, were you spying on my mother? ANTONIUS. Your father had been a calming influence. Five years later Galilee hotheads went to En-gedi and brought back a Zealot weapons cache. SARAH. You really didn't think my mother would have anything to do with that. ANTONIUS. We had to check everything. She had no part. SARAH. If you Romans had not been so demanding ANTONIUS. Give us a break. In Rome we built a Pantheon to all of the gods. SARAH. I would rather not argue religion or politics. You must have known that my mother was finishing her book then.
5

ANTONIUS. I knew. I read some of it. SARAH. You read some of it! ANTONIUS. She let me. When I saw it was harmless biography it no longer professionally interested me. SARAH. You saw no codes? ANTONIUS. Something like that. No inflammatory text to incite insurrection. It was just my job. SARAH. Some job. Always looking for indications of trouble for your government. Didn't you ever wonder about life passing you by? ANTONIUS. Only lately. Maintaining order and keeping the peace rested on my shoulders then. But I have to say I noted talent and skill in your mother's writing, SARAH. Now that she's gone, they've taken it, rewritten it, changed it. She's reduced to a mention where they couldn't obliterate her. ANTONIUS. Who is this John? SARAH. Do you want to know for intelligence reasons? ANTONIUS. No. Just wondering. SARAH. I don't know. And I won't know. For my children's and my safety I separated from all the factions. ANTONIUS. But you know the reasons. SARAH. Reasons? I can't understand them. Even before my mother died, the church was becoming a male chauvinist club. She was the last significant woman. ANTONIUS. Her faction had been seeking official recognition from your religious elders in Rome for decades. SARAH. Yes. And can you imagine my mother was an impediment? ANTONIUS. They were minimizing females. They made a deal to have your mother's book rewritten like a man had authored it. Then that faction was sanctioned. SARAH. Yes. After my mother was gone.

ANTONIUS. But you have a copy of your mother's book. SARAH. No. Not after we went into hiding. Too dangerous to have it. ANTONIUS. There may be other copies. SARAH. Of course. But I don't know of any. ANTONIUS. When I saw you decades ago, you and your mother seemed very close. And you did not seem to play with other children. SARAH. You noticed that? No I could not play with other children. My mother was something special. So was I. After she finished her book and became a leader, it was even more so. ANTONIUS. But only a leader of your small community. SARAH. It was larger than it seemed. She had, after all, been married to him. Visitors came from far away lands. ANTONIUS. Seeking miracles. SARAH. Some. And they were disappointed. But most only wanted to meet her, to talk with her. ANTONIUS. You used to talk to the birds by the lake. SARAH. Yes. They were my only friends. I gave them names. ANTONIUS. And did they talk back? SARAH. In their own way. Birds are smarter than people think. ANTONIUS. So you had a lonely childhood? SARAH. Oh no. When we lived here there was a constant stream of visitors. They talked to me. ANTONIUS. Some of them bowed down to you. SARAH. I didn't like that. ANTONIUS. People bowing to you and your mother? SARAH. Yes. But I liked when they told me about their far away lands. I never thought then that I would live in a far away land for the rest of my life.

ANTONIUS. Nor did I think I'd live here when I was young. SARAH. I guess you could say the world became our home. ANTONIUS. Yes, that's a nice thought. Do you like Gallia? SARAH. You're assuming I live in Gaul. ANTONIUS. You did. SARAH. As you seem to know, I grew up there. ANTONIUS. And you married there. And you had children there. SARAH. How much do you know? ANTONIUS. Not much. But it's a government bureaucracy. There were other investigators and there are records. SARAH. You've seen them? ANTONIUS. Yes. SARAH. And they weren't burned in Nero Caesar's fire? ANTONIUS. Most important government documents were saved. SARAH. Important? Me? ANTONIUS. Yes, Sarah. You and your family have been at the center of state security concerns for decades. SARAH. My father and mother are gone now. I try to steer clear of that. ANTONIUS. I suppose that is why you slipped through the cracks. I was very surprised to meet you this morning. Flabbergasted would be a better word. SARAH. And now you can re-open my file. ANTONIUS. I could. But I won't. SARAH. I hope I can believe you. ANTONIUS. If word about you gets out now, we get civil unrest. We don't want it.

SARAH. Like before? ANTONIUS. Like before. Your Jewish factions were at each other's throats, Sadducees, liberal Hillel Pharisees, conservative Shammai Pharisees, Essenes, Zealots, et cetera. SARAH. My mother told me that my father was with the Hillel Pharisees. ANTONIUS. Yes. SARAH. Do you think your governor was a weak man? ANTONIUS. Our governor Pilatus had 3000 soldiers. The real army was under control of our Legate of Syria, days or weeks away. Our governor had orders to keep the peace with all of those Jewish factions, with the Jewish monarch, with the remnants of a dying Greek empire, and with a population in turmoil in occupied Egypt. SARAH. He seemed to lack backbone. ANTONIUS. I can see why it might seem so. He certainly vacillated. SARAH. Couldn't you say that his lack of backbone led to my father's death? ANTONIUS. Yes, and to civil unrest. And civil unrest led to insurrection. And that war led to your mother's town of Magdala being destroyed and these scattered stones (motions around stage). SARAH. You say it so casually. These stones were my grandparents' house. No one in Magdala survived. We were living in Gaul then. My mother was heartbroken when she got the news. ANTONIUS. I am truly sorry, Sarah. I had no part in that. SARAH. I don't suppose you did. Especially with your leg. But it keeps happening. Will there ever be an end to war? ANTONIUS. I don't know. Can we change human nature? (long pause) ANTONIUS. Did your mother tell you how she and your father met? SARAH. No. She didn't talk about those things. ANTONIUS. My parents neither. SARAH. But you know how my parents met?

ANTONIUS. And where. It was my job to know. SARAH. How? Where? ANTONIUS. (points) There. SARAH. (points) There? Right there? ANTONIUS. Businessmen were holding a banquet and bought salted lake sardines in olive oil from your grandparents' fish processing plant. Your mother was carrying the fish in a covered wicker basket. (Antonius looks to see if Sarah is listening and sees she is intent) SARAH. And ANTONIUS. And some dogs smelled the fish. Not bad dogs, just dogs. As I recall, there were about seven. SARAH. And my mother reached into the basket and gave one of them some fish. ANTONIUS. You know the story? SARAH. I heard that story in translation. A preposition "on" became a preposition "in." ANTONIUS. Demons were supposed to be "in" her. SARAH. That's the new official line. The new leadership has written my mother into a disreputable character and narratively nullified her marriage. ANTONIUS. And you are now an inconvenient truth. SARAH. Yes. Very inconvenient. But thank you. I did not realize that was how mother and father had met. I didn't know it was right there. ANTONIUS. Her kindness of giving a dog a fish was a mistake. They kept jumping at your mother, throwing her off balance. A large dog knocked her down. But she held the precious basket and lid tightly. SARAH. Did you actually see it? ANTONIUS. No. I read the reports. Your father saw your mother go down, ran to her, and began casting off yelping dogs. He pulled her up. They both carried the basket to the banquet.

10

SARAH. Your government must have been watching them closely. ANTONIUS. Him mostly. He was no threat, but he was lecturing to larger and larger crowds. There was a potential. SARAH. And her? ANTONIUS. She is in our records even before they met. She was his secret financial backer, an awe-struck middle-class girl taken in by a bright charismatic rabbi. She followed him around the lake and went to his lectures. But she was too shy to introduce herself to him. SARAH. I think she was pretty bright herself. ANTONIUS. Oh, no doubt about that. But back then she was a shy teenage girl afraid of seeming too smart. SARAH. How many of your people were watching them? ANTONIUS. An agent or two. But these had their snitches. And the snitches had people reporting to them. We knew pretty much everything about everything. SARAH. Were you at their wedding in Cana? ANTONIUS. Not me personally. But we had sources. SARAH. So you probably knew about the tax gimmick. ANTONIUS. The bathtub gin? SARAH. Yes. You didn't report it. ANTONIUS. And blow the cover of a snitch? Moonshining was pretty widespread. We didn't care. I believe the local euphemism was turning water into wine. Wedding guests staggered home happy not caring what they had drunk. SARAH. My mother told me that she secretly paid for it. The groom was supposed to, but he could hardly afford it. She bought one cartload of really good wine. After they were drunk they ladled out the bathtub gin. ANTONIUS. A standard trick. Tax collectors kept themselves informed of weddings and parties. If they left with a few full bottles of good wine and a few jingling coins, they could claim that they didn't see anything illegal. SARAH. Matthew told me about that.

11

ANTONIUS. He was our tax collector. He would have known. SARAH. He kept himself on the good side of the law. ANTONIUS. That he did, and with some skill. Did your mother tell you about the circumcision and the pigs? SARAH. A little bit. She was queasy about the surgery and wasn't there herself. ANTONIUS. A Roman legionnaire wanted to marry a Jewish girl. Her family insisted that he be circumcised. Conservative rabbis were against bringing in non-Jews. They finally found a liberal rabbi in another jurisdiction. SARAH. My father. ANTONIUS. As it turned out. SARAH. My mother remembered the lunch that she packed. Lake sardines. Pita bread. And strong sour retsina wine. ANTONIUS. The wine was for the patient -- to dull the pain. SARAH. And for the wound -- to prevent festering. I heard that my father and three large strong local fishermen left by sailboat in the early dawn light. ANTONIUS. The men were needed to hold the legionnaire down during the actual surgery. SARAH. My mother said that it was mid-morning by the time the boat arrived. (points) It was just past where the Jordan River leaves the lake. ANTONIUS. And thus not in the jurisdiction of Galilee. SARAH. When I was a child and heard it for the first time, that did not make any difference. It was just one big lake to me. ANTONIUS. I have gone over there to look at it. The beach is small and the hillside is steep. There is a path with steps cut into it. SARAH. Yes. I remember it now. A year before we were forced to flee my mother took me there. Once you get to the top the land flattens out and there are oak trees. The ground is scattered with acorns. ANTONIUS. Which the pigs ate.

12

SARAH. Yes. And I heard that the legionnaire and his fiance were waiting there. They spread a blanket on the ground. And then my father took out his kit and performed the surgery while the three big strong fishermen held the legionnaire's arms and legs. ANTONIUS. And then all Hades broke loose. SARAH. Yes. Your legionnaires are strong men selected for battle. When they poured the sour retsina wine on the wound it stung. He broke loose and ran around yelling and screaming, "Owe, that hurts." ANTONIUS. And scared the pigs. SARAH. The pigs panicked. They ran in the direction of the lake. My mother said the herdsmen running after them panicked them more. ANTONIUS. And it's almost a cliff there. SARAH. Very steep hillside. The panicked pigs raced over the edge and tumbled and rolled down the steep embankment into the lake. Those pigs that may have been still alive drowned. ANTONIUS. And your father was in trouble. SARAH. The herdsmen ran to get the pig farmer. By the time they found him, my father, the legionnaire and his fiance, and the others were already at the boat. ANTONIUS. I saw the police report. A local policeman came with them. Accusations were flying. But exactly who could be held responsible could not immediately be determined. SARAH. That's what my mother said. ANTONIUS. Legally speaking, no one had actually touched the pigs. The herdsmen should have kept control of their animals. But the screaming legionnaire had set the whole costly event in motion. Since the surgery was voluntary, it was decided that your father could not be held liable. SARAH. But the issue of liability remained unresolved. ANTONIUS. And you might be interested to know: remains unresolved to this day. There are lots of stories and gossip. But no one ever paid the farmer for his pigs. SARAH. That's interesting. But the poor man could just as well have lost his pigs to disease or a storm. Farmers take chances.

13

ANTONIUS. Here is how the farmer put it: how many farmers have ever lost or will ever lose their animals due to a wild yelling Roman legionnaire running around holding his bleeding crotch? He thought that he had a good case. SARAH. The policeman did not arrest anyone. My father and his assistants came back here in the boat. ANTONIUS. The police reports said that the legionnaire and his fiance wanted to get away from the whole unpleasant fracas and come with them, but there was not enough room in the boat. SARAH. My mother and Matthew both said that, too. Matthew even wrote down that he did not join my father's followers until after that after that incident -- that he was not one of those assistants. ANTONIUS. Your father's followers were all smarter than was good for them. SARAH. Oh, I would not generalize to that degree. I met Simon when I was a girl. He was hardheaded and not too bright. ANTONIUS. Your mother and he did not like each other. SARAH. No, they didn't. ANTONIUS. Matthew, on the other hand, was a genuine intellectual. SARAH. When I was little he would spend hours telling me stories that he just made up as he went along. ANTONIUS. He could read and write classical Hebrew. He was also fluent in Egyptian, Greek, and our Latin. But Hebrew set him apart. Only your scholars used that. SARAH. My mother said that my father also knew Hebrew, Egyptian, Greek, and Latin, too. ANTONIUS. And both were educated in Egypt. SARAH. My grandmother told me about the escape to Egypt, about living in Egypt. ANTONIUS. Did she tell you why? SARAH. Not much. She was quiet about those things -- as if being protective by not telling me dangerous things. You may know more than I do.

14

ANTONIUS. Maybe. Maybe not. I have a functional literacy in Egyptian. But I was more interested in Sumerian cuneiform. I was able to read ancient diplomatic correspondences because it was everyone's diplomatic language. SARAH. Like your Latin seems to be becoming. ANTONIUS. Oh, heaven forbid that ever happens. SARAH. We speak and read it all over Gaul now. They speak it here now. In far off places they understand it and use it. It may already have become the new language of the world. ANTONIUS. I've noticed that, too. SARAH. I taught your Latin to schoolchildren most of my life. ANTONIUS. In Gaul? SARAH. Yes. But I learned it here. Right here in this spot. By this pretty lake. My mother was fluent and taught me. ANTONIUS. I know. I read records that said she spoke directly to our spineless military governor in our own language. SARAH. I would rather forget about that. ANTONIUS. I understand. Anyway, Neo-Assyrian cuneiform continues to be used by literary aficionados and cultic sects even in our modern times. I just read an astronomical text was written in cuneiform fifteen years ago, perhaps the last one, perhaps not. It lasted as the scholarly language for two thousand years. SARAH. (lightly) What if your crude warrior Latin lasts two thousand years as a scholarly language? ANTONIUS. Hah! That would be something, wouldn't it? SARAH. (continued lightness) And after that? What do you imagine might come next? ANTONIUS. Oh, I can't even imagine two thousand years from now. SARAH. Oh, come on. Make a guess. ANTONIUS. (breath, sigh, frown) Something still growing. Perhaps something growing out of those wild Germanic tribes that give us so much trouble. They have the spunk that we are losing.

15

SARAH. My mother's uncle traded with them. He saw that spunk, too. ANTONIUS. Somehow I thought it was your father's uncle Joseph. Tin magnate. Lived his last days in Glastonbury in those cold, damp islands. Owned the ship that let your mother and you escape. SARAH. Yes that would be him. But my father's father and my father's uncle would not have had the same names. Wouldn't that be a little confusing? ANTONIUS. Of course. Uncle he was not. Cousin, I recall. Age tends to make the mind silly. SARAH. Yes, I know. ANTONIUS. I met Arimathea several times. SARAH. Professionally? ANTONIUS. Yes. Your father had stirred up some come considerable commotion here. My unit had to track down everyone associated with him and find out about them. Interesting to hear that we felt the same about those Germanic tribesmen. I didn't know that. SARAH. Are you still doing that? It doesn't matter to me. Governments do these things. ANTONIUS. No. Too old. Young whippersnappers like I used to be do that work now. And to calm your concerns, I won't tell them anything about you or what we say here. SARAH. Thanks. ANTONIUS. Not so long ago I knew everyone, though. SARAH. How well did you know my father? ANTONIUS. Not well. The paradox of surveillance. I had to keep tabs on him and know all about him. But that forbade me from getting too close to him, alarming him, and possibly causing him to take counter measures. SARAH. And blowing your cover. ANTONIUS. Oh, definitely that. And the covers of my whole coven. SARAH. So you really didn't know him. ANTONIUS. No.

16

SARAH. There is a part of me that is really angry with him. I had to grow up without a father because he was so uncompromising about his glorious teachings to the great everyone out there. He couldn't just back off and let things be. ANTONIUS. I don't know what to say. He wasn't a fanatic. The country here was full of them, but he wasn't one. However I get the distinct impression that he could have saved himself if he had wanted to. SARAH. You see, that is exactly what I think sometimes. That he was obstinate and a little selfish. ANTONIUS. My feelings, too. If he had backed off and come back here to Galilee and let things cool down, maybe this whole fracas would not have evolved into the grief of cities destroyed and thousands killed. (motions around) As you see here where your town of Magdala used to be. SARAH. You're not saying he was the cause of all this. ANTONIUS. Not at all. This happened thirty-seven years after. Nationalism. Religion. Power politics. Empires collapsing. New empires taking their places. End of one age and beginning of a new one. He may or may not have been just one more spark. SARAH. Whatever it was, I never had a father. My mother had to raise me as a single parent. He went and got himself killed. ANTONIUS. None of us choose our parents. But consider yourself lucky. Your mother was a wonderful woman. SARAH. Yes she was. ANTONIUS. And she loved your father and worked to keep his memory alive. SARAH. I know. ANTONIUS. Back to those Germanic tribes. Our propaganda characterizes them as warlike savages. But they are quite civilized and thoughtful, especially the Angles and Saxons. That's why I see them in some distant future. SARAH. They're all business. ANTONIUS. Yes. But their laws are as good for people as they are for business. Their Germanic common law is all about fairness. SARAH. That helps to win them friends.

17

ANTONIUS. Works better than swords and armies. SARAH. Strange to hear a Roman say that. ANTONIUS. We are not all soldiers. We have our poets, our philosophers, our artists, our musicians. SARAH. Like your Nero who played a musical instrument while Rome burned? ANTONIUS. Greatly exaggerated. SARAH. Whatever. But no national leader will ever again be so dim-witted as to play a musical instrument while one of his cities burns down or floods. ANTONIUS. Never underestimate the crass disregard of national leaders for the suffering of their people. Surely there will be another. SARAH. I don't disregard. ANTONIUS. I always felt sad for your mother after what happened to your father. SARAH. Me, too. She was so all alone. ANTONIUS. They were deeply in love and inseparable. She risked censure and harm and kissed him in public. SARAH. So I have heard. ANTONIUS. She was a strong young woman. But she was devastated by it. SARAH. I suspected that she was. I tried to imagine her feelings sometimes. ANTONIUS. Your being born helped her enormously. SARAH. I can see from my own children how that would have helped. ANTONIUS. Even more, though. You seem to have represented a part of him. She seems to have clung to the idea. SARAH. And of course I am a part of him. And that has been my greatest problem all my life. ANTONIUS. I know. I know. Oh, I know oh so well. SARAH. They wanted to kill me for it. They still do. I have had to change my name, my identity. Cover all my tracks.

18

ANTONIUS. Your existence has embarrassed their story. SARAH. I know. Their pure unsullied deity story. ANTONIUS. Yes. SARAH. (laughs) (looks, shakes head at Antonius) (laughs some more) It's crazy isn't it? I mean, I'm the real thing. I'm his daughter. And they want to kill me and obliterate me from history for the sake of their story. ANTONIUS. Some live for stories alone. Some said your father was pure light and lots believed it. Multitudes now believe that kind of story material is true beyond true and have lived their whole lives for it and it alone. SARAH. And where do real human beings fit into this? ANTONIUS. As far as I can see, they don't. SARAH. People like stories better than reality. ANTONIUS. Yes. And even nonfiction is story. I found this out when I was writing intelligence reports. If it was a good story it got attention. SARAH. I have wondered over and over where all of this is coming to. ANTONIUS. You mean of stories being more important than people? SARAH. No, this whole new religion thing. My father becoming a god. People killing people over it. ANTONIUS. (Sighs) I don't know. These things often run their course. It may all die out in a few years. SARAH. Or, it could go on for a millennium or two. Don't you wonder what that would be like? ANTONIUS. There is something about this new religion that you may not realize. It owns no territory, but it has become as powerful as a nation. With no geographical claim, it has grown to have the influence of an empire. SARAH. Like your Roman Empire? ANTONIUS. Yes. Exactly. I can only think of one other example of this. Do you know about the Buddhists?

19

SARAH. My mother mentioned them. My father was impressed by them. My mother said that he used some of their ideas. ANTONIUS. Their influence is to the farthest east so we only watch them. But they have overthrown dozens of old national gods and replaced them with the mere teachings of their founder. SARAH. I see your point. ANTONIUS. Good. Then you can see how Christians are beginning to do the same thing in this half of the world. SARAH. Don't include me. I am not a Christian. I may be his daughter, but I am not one of those squabbling self-righteous true believers. ANTONIUS. I understand. But couldn't you say that your mother was one? She devoted her life to trying to preserve the best of what he said and did. SARAH. Yes, she did. And she lost. In the end they stole her most precious writing, his biography and her autobiography. ANTONIUS. I know. They changed its pronouns and recast it as having been written by a fictitious male named John because females cannot write such things. SARAH. She was a brilliant woman, well educated, philosophical, and devoted to improving the world. And look what Peter and his gang did. They made her out to be a stupid whore. ANTONIUS. Peter was a poor Jewish fisherman. That's all he knew. He was illiterate and certainly not smart. He was perhaps the least likely person to head a new and profoundly challenging religious movement. History sometimes chooses the least likely. SARAH. He used meanness to counter his stupidity and hold onto his job. My mother hated him. ANTONIUS. And I am aware that he hated your mother. SARAH. Yes, seething hatred between them. So much for my father's teachings. ANTONIUS. Your mother may have been the last significant female leader for a while. SARAH. It occurred to me. ANTONIUS. It was a brief era. Cleopatra ran the greatest nation on earth. She committed suicide after the military defeat thirty years before your mother was born. Her

20

daughter Cleopatra Selene was queen of our Kingdom of Mauritania and a female leader in her own right. SARAH. I know about them. Cleopatra Selene died about the time my mother was born. ANTONIUS. Yes. And now your mother is gone. It may be centuries, maybe millennia, before powerful female leadership returns. SARAH. Maybe more than you I have been aware of everything slipping backward into our primitive beastly past. ANTONIUS. Oh, Sarah. It never goes completely back. Every brief enlightened time contributes to progress. SARAH. Something to hope for. ANTONIUS. You may not know this, but a thousand years before Cleopatra there was a woman ruler of Egypt named Hatshepsut. She paved the way for Cleopatra to rule like a true queen. SARAH. You know, it may come as a surprise to you, but I too knew of Hatshepsut. My father studied Egyptian medicine, but my mother studied Egyptian art and history. ANTONIUS. Oh, yes! I did know that. It had completely slipped my mind. Old age. I am getting like that. But now I recall that your mother knew medicine, too. SARAH. In Gaul she worked as a midwife and a healer. ANTONIUS. And did quite well for herself. SARAH. Yes. And we did not live in a cave like they are starting to say now. ANTONIUS. I know. But she went to the cave often for its healing water. SARAH. Yes. We lived in a small house near it. It was not that she believed that the water had any special powers. She needed a source of clean water. When people are ill it can be fatal to give them dirty water. Water from the cave was clean for them to drink and my mother mixed her medicines with it. ANTONIUS. As you know, our Roman governments have gone to great lengths to provide people with clean water. SARAH. Yes, I have seen your aqueducts. But in rural Gaul one must use what nature provides.

21

ANTONIUS. Your mother learned much of her healing arts from your father. SARAH. Yes. She said he taught her. And she helped him when he was alive and learned from that. But after that she kept on learning wherever she was. ANTONIUS. She was good. She had a good reputation. SARAH. People were grateful. They brought food, clothes, even gold. We were never hungry and always had reasonable clothes. ANTONIUS. You never revealed your identity I take it. SARAH. No. At first in Gaul we thought that there might come a time. But it kept getting worse. So I was always the Egyptian slave. ANTONIUS. And your dark complexion helped. SARAH. Yes. ANTONIUS. Your mother also was dark. But not so obvious. SARAH. Yes. ANTONIUS. She claimed to be of the Tribe of Benjamin. SARAH. I don't know if she ever did. People assumed. ANTONIUS. From military intelligence reports I understand that only the tribes Ephraim, Manassah, and Benjamin came out of Egypt with your Moses. The other tribes were Canaanites who had converted. SARAH. I don't know. You studied these things. ANTONIUS. I don't know. But it might explain your Egyptian complexion. SARAH. Or it might not. ANTONIUS. Of course. I've always been curious about that supernatural thing. SARAH. You mean my father returning from the dead? ANTONIUS. Yes. SARAH. I don't know. I only asked my mother once. She didn't want to talk about it. ANTONIUS. And she never said anything about it?

22

SARAH. Never. ANTONIUS. Well, what do you think? SARAH. What do I think? ANTONIUS. Yes. SARAH. I decided it didn't happen. When I was a little girl I sometimes wished that he could come back and talk to me. Later I realized the implications. ANTONIUS. Which were? SARAH. That if my father might have been some kind of unnatural being that could come back from the dead, that might make me some kind of freak. ANTONIUS. That's interesting. SARAH. My life was strange enough without that. Pretending to be my mother's servant. Knowing people might kill me simply because of who I was. ANTONIUS. But the deception worked. SARAH. Yes, I managed to live so long. ANTONIUS. Did your husband know? SARAH. He knew. But my children don't. ANTONIUS. And all those who came to Gaul and knew are now gone. SARAH. There weren't many. Mary, my grandmother... ANTONIUS. Mary your grandmother? Your father's mother? SARAH. Yes. ANTONIUS. Did she come with you on the boat? SARAH. They couldn't leave her behind. They were all of her family. ANTONIUS. That's what I though. But there was confusion. SARAH. The confusion of several Marys hid her identity. She went north when I was still a child, and I never saw her again. I heard that she died in civitas Carnotum.

23

ANTONIUS. And the others? SARAH. Arimathea's ship was large. Besides my mother Mary there were Mary wife of Clopas, Martha of Bethany, Maximin, and Lazarus. And of course there was Arimathea and some of the crew. We all got off of his boat at the trading settlement of Oppidum-R. Two or three others from Galilee who were in Gaul and came later knew of my mother and me. ANTONIUS. And they never told. SARAH. I'm sure. ANTONIUS. And the ethnic diversity of southern Gaul was ideal for hiding. Jewish towns. Egyptian towns. Greek towns. Celtic towns. Our new Roman colonies. SARAH. Yes. Hiding in plain sight. We blended into the diversity. ANTONIUS. And what are you going to do now? SARAH. Now that I have fulfilled my pledge to my mother? ANTONIUS. Yes. SARAH. I have a limited healing practice. People need me. ANTONIUS. (points) Oh, there's your "car." SARAH. Are you mocking my terminology, Tony? ANTONIUS. Oh, I would never do that, Sarah. SARAH. You would. But what if everyone called a carpentum a car? Then it would not sound strange or funny to you. ANTONIUS. No it wouldn't, and "cars" would be everywhere. SARAH. And they would be pulled by moonbeams. Didn't you tell me a story like that when I was very young? ANTONIUS. Yes. I remember. I had just come from Alexandria. My friend Hero had shown me his metal engine self-powered by steam. SARAH. And you said it could some day pull a carpentum. ANTONIUS. A "car."

24

SARAH. Have it your way. Anyway mine is waiting. I must go. ANTONIUS. Good bye, uh, Potita. You've given me a morning like no other. SARAH. Every morning is a morning like no other. Good bye, Tony. (Sarah begins to exit stage, turns, waves) Stay healthy and happy. END Uri Ulysses Hilliard Rocky River, Ohio August 2011

25