"Spring in Chicago—hah!" Kalliste Periakes gratefully held the cup of cocoa in her hands. "It was so cold in the stands I thought my fingers and toes were going to fall off." She was standing in the front room of the Northwestern University's Woman's Co-op still bundled up from the cold of Wrigley Field. She was a slight woman with long cascading dark hair and a thin face dominated by large eyes.

"I don't know why you went to that dumb game." Cheryl poured herself a cup of coca. Outside the old storefront people were walking around bound up in heavy coats and scarves. "Baseball is silly. All of those organized sports are silly, really, and anyway, don't the Cubs always lose?"

"Baseball is different," Kalliste replied. She could feel the heat seeping into her hands. "In many ways baseball is like opera."

"Opera?" Roxanne looked up from the space heater in the corner. "Now you've lost me."

"There are two kinds of people who go to the Opera," Kalliste said as she peeled off a layer. "There are those who go because it is 'cultural' and they feel it is expected of them, and there are those who 'get' Opera, as you Americans say, and go for the pleasure it gives them. These latter people love Opera at almost an instinctive level. The same might be said for baseball."

"You risked frostbite to watch grown men play a child's game," Roxanne said. "Your 'love' of this game must be intense."

"Today was Opening Day." Kalliste finished shedding her coat and muffler. That still left her in a College of Archaeology sweatshirt. "I would no more miss Opening Day than I would miss my birthday."

"Is she talking about baseball again?" Anna asked as she carried a box of yarn into the room. She set it by the loom and brushed her dark hair back over her shoulder. Her hard eyes measured Kalliste and the other girls. "You should know better. If you let her, she'll talk your ears off about baseball. If you want to hear Kalliste talk, get her to tell you another one of her stories."

Roxanne and the others looked at each other. "Why not?" Roxanne asked. "It's been weeks since the last one." She left the room, calling out that it was story time in the front room.

"Nobody seemed to care for my last story," Kalliste said as people filed into the common room and began finding places to sit.

"I should hope not," Cheryl replied. "I thought the story of Theseus and Ariadne would be a great romantic story. But it ended so sadly." She glanced out the front windows where the last of the crowd from Wrigley Field was braving the chilly gusts of the early evening. "I was accosted by a pair of Jesus Freaks when I was leaving campus today. They act as if they're the only religion in the world. You're from Greece, Kalliste. That makes you Greek Orthodox, doesn't it? What's the Greek Orthodox version of Easter?"

"The same as everyone else's," Kalliste said, smiling. "But I am not part of the Orthodox Church. I'm from Crete. Crete is like a whole separate continent and has more history than all of the rest of Greece put together. It is part of Greece, but in many ways it is separate, too." She looked at the faces around her. "It's nearly Easter, you know, the Christian Resurrection. I do know a story about that, if you care to hear it."

"Is this one of yours with the Old Gods and that woman you're named after?" Anna asked. Kalliste shrugged. "That could be interesting."

"Tell us that one," Cheryl said. "Since I took that Comparative Religions class I've been interested in other versions of the same basic stories."

Kalliste clearly hesitated. "Are you sure?" she asked. "It might not be what you think. It goes right to the heart of Christian belief."

"That would be even better," Cheryl replied. "I've heard the story of Easter so many times I'd love to hear a different version of it."

"Don't say I didn't warn you." Kalliste refilled her mug, cupping it in her hands for the warmth. "All right, ready?" She saw the nods from around the room. "Very well.

"A great deal had changed in the 30 years between my visits to Judaea. Tiberius..."

A great deal had changed in the 30 years between my visits to Judaea. Tiberius was Imperator and Princeps. Livia had retired me honorably rather than with the poison I half-expected, clapping me safely, she thought, inside the Temple of the Vestals. She put an old woman inside, I escaped by simply walking out of the Temple guised as a young one.

I spent the next few years living on a farm far from Rome and talking from time to time with Livia's grandson, Claudius the Stammerer. Claudius knew who I was and who I served and he had a million questions. I answered them as best I could. Some of what he learned went into his histories, but most of what I told him he wrote down and hid. He agreed with me: there are some songs that should never be sung.

Later I married, moving to Tarsus with my new husband, Marcus Claudius Flavius. Life in Tarsus was pleasant, but after a few years it began to drag on me. Boring has the disadvantage of being ... boring. So when Atane came to me one winter's day in the 17th year of Tiberius' Imperatorship, I was more than ready to take sail for the far ends of the world. Or Judaea, which, though it was only a few days sail down the coast, was close enough to my idea of the far end of the world.

"You need to be there a month before the Equinox," She told me as we looked down on the garden in the middle of my atrium. The slanting sunlight picked out the individual leaves on the olive tree at the end of the garden, and somehow made the open air of the atrium seem warmer than it was.

"His Enlightenment will happen shortly after that and you must be there for it. We don't know how long it will take, so you must be prepared for an extended stay."

"The Buddha's Enlightenment took four days, Lady." I smiled at the memory. "I thought he would never rise from beneath that tree."

"In many ways the Buddha was an exception, Kalliste, and so were his times. He arrived at his Enlightenment by himself while we were watching someone else." She shook Her head slightly in mild exasperation. "We were all very grateful you were there, Kalliste, even if you had traveled to that land for other reasons."

"I will travel to Jerusalem, Lady," I promised. "Will You be there? Or will there be another one of You there?"

"I will meet you in Jerusalem one month before the Equinox," Atane said. She rose, eyeing the statue of Her I had placed in the middle of the garden. "I am flattered."

"I wanted a statue of The Lady but the sculptor had never heard of Her."

"Mother prefers it that way. She has her reasons."

"I am Her servant and not the one to question Her, Lady, but I miss Her." I eyed Atane's perfect visage. She looked so much like Her mother it made my heart ache. "I miss the days when She was acknowledged and given the worship and honors due Her."

Atane smiled. "She knows, dear Kalliste, she knows."

My husband objected, of course, but soon capitulated. I know I caused much scandal in Tarsus when I left; a proper Roman wife just did not do things like a pilgrimage. I smiled through it all, claiming it was a religious obligation laid upon me when I was in the temple of Minerva. When the bow of the ship lifted to meet the first swell of the Middle Sea, I drew a deep breath of free air. A Roman wife's world was enclosed by family and obligation, but for a time I was free of them, and the air was three times sweeter than I remembered.

I landed at Antiochia, intending to travel overland to Jerusalem so I could take the pulse of the land for Her. What I saw appalled me. I had thought Judaea was bad when I had been there before. Beyond all doubt the people of this land had gone completely crazy.

Two days travel from Jerusalem I came across a small group of people gathered by a ford. A man in a camel hair coat—a camel hair coat in that heat—was taking the people in turn and submerging them completely for a few heartbeats. He shouted something as they emerged, before turning to the next one in line. In the very next village a beggar in rags stood on the back of an old cart and denounced the man at the stream for heresy. Two groups of men stood nearby flinging religious verses, rotten fruit and stones at each other, while a legate with a handful of legionnaires did his best to keep them apart.

The land of the Indus had seemed overrun by holy men, but none of the people there seemed as willing, nay, as eager to shed blood as the ones here. I said as much to my traveling companion.

"Aye, Lady," he said. Marcus Aesclius Patronius was one of the agents I had established in Antiochia when I had been the spymaster for Augustus. He was a fat old man now, with white hair combed imperfectly across his head to hide his climbing forehead. He and his son had agreed to take the 'granddaughter' of his friend from the old days to Jerusalem. I had given him good financial reason to do so; I had sold him a particularly fine batch of Falernian wine that he could sell at the King's palace, giving him a tidy profit and making the King think well of him. As we rode he grumbled about how things had changed in the last 35 years.

"Religious fanatics," he said, waving at the groups hurling curses at each other. "Every one of them is a fanatic. They're all convinced some miraculous holy man is coming to save them from Rome." He shook his head. "None of them can see that Rome is saving them from themselves and everyone else. This whole land would be drenched in blood if they had their way, Lady.

"My wife, Julia, you would like her, Lady, your grandmother was fond of her, she told me 'Marcus, ' your grandmother always called me Marcus, 'Julia will be good for you. She will give you strong sons and wise daughters. She is a jewel beyond measure, Marcus, one I am honored to call my friend.' A wise lady, your grandmother. You look like her, you know, and she—"

I doubted if I had said those words to Marcus, or at least said them in exactly that way, but I wasn't going to debate the issue with him. There were things about me he did not need to know.

I nodded my head from time to time while the donkey pulled the cart over the fine Roman road that ran from Antiochia to Jerusalem. And Marcus appeared to be right about the zealots that lived here. The man preaching in the market place was not alone. I saw more like him in each of the villages we passed. In one of them a shouting match over some obscure religious point ended in a fist fight. One of the riders who had joined us as an escort recounted a battle several days before that had resulted in half a dozen dead and more than 30 injured. He assured us that that was not an isolated case. Incidents like that happened every month.

A people reflect their God. Certainly the God of these Judaeans was combative and passionate. I made a mental note: this was something I should discuss with Atane the next time I saw Her. Watching them reminded me in no small measure of the cult of D'nysos on the island of N'xos. His people would eat the sacred bread, drink the sacred wine, and then involve themselves in rites that were best spoken about in hushed voices behind closed doors when the children were in bed. I wondered how much I was seeing around me would change over the next few hundred years. Would these people get worse? Or would they settle down? I would have to look in on them and see.

We passed the last few hills and saw the gates of Jerusalem opened before us. I was surprised to see they were guarded by only one bored looking guard leaning on his spear.

"Is it wise leaving the gates so open?" I asked Marcus.

Marcus laughed. "Lady, anybody who would conquer Jerusalem is welcome to the place. The first hostile cohort that marched up the road would find the gate flung open in their face, each and every man inside trying to sell something to the legionnaires, be it food, drink, or just his loyalty. The people of this land will sell anything for the money it brings, Lady. Truly their passion for their God is only matched by their passion for silver."

His son laughed, a particularly nasty laugh. "Lady, there are so many factions here, and they're all so eager to best each other, that any conqueror that marched in could have the place for a pittance; I think the sentry would personally sell his loyalty to each cohort that came along. Keeping the city, that would be another matter. We both know the trouble the Romans are having here. Every other conqueror has had the same trouble. No, Lady, the people here know they're better off under Rome than under anyone else."

That didn't make sense, but I didn't say so. We passed through the gate and were engulfed by people. Truly the Judaeans had adopted the ways of their Philistine cousins. We couldn't travel one spear length without having at least three people try to sell us something. Everyone was pleading, cajoling, threatening and bargaining with everyone in sight. The haggle is in my blood, but this, this was too much for me. These people were carrying their passion for money to a point somewhere beyond madness. Our progress was little more than a step at a time, but we broke free before long and wound our way through the narrow streets.

"In Tyre they don't permit carts during the day," I said, looking at the crowded streets around us. "We should be grateful the Governor here hasn't heard of that idea."

"A fool's idea if I ever heard one," Marcus said. "How do merchants get their goods?"

"In the early morning," I said. "At sunset Tyre is shut tight, and has a strong garrison that patrols constantly. Any footpad foolish enough to try anything can be found the next morning with his head on a pike."

Marcus sniffed, but I wasn't sure if it was at the deserved fate of a thief or at the intelligence it needed for a Governor to do such a thing. Personally, I approved of that sort of firmness towards criminals. Augustus had shown quite a bit of that in Rome during his time as Princeps, and Tiberius was following closely in his footsteps. The City was the better for it.

The inn I chose was shadowed by the buildings surrounding it, providing a welcome relief in the heat of the day. Marcus didn't want to leave me alone; he fretted over the fate of a young woman alone in a strange city, but Atane knocked on the door before he could start his peroration. She had assumed the guise of an older woman, modestly dressed according to the local fashion, and greeted me by name and with open arms. At this Marcus beat a quick retreat, leaving us in peace.

"How was your trip?" She asked politely as I settled my few belongings in the room.

"The same as always, Lady, long and dusty. How are things here?"

"The time is close. I think we have a few days."

"You can tell that close?"

"There are a number of things that are a part of it," She said with a twisted smile. "I don't think this is going to be an easy one, though. I hope it is not as difficult as that of Vardhamana Mahvira."

"I have heard of him," I said as I began changing clothes. "Wasn't he Enlightened about the same time as Buddha?"

"He was," She said. "We were anticipating his Enlightenment, which is why what happened with the Buddha was such a surprise."

"How far is this young man from here?" I asked. "I want to see what he looks like in daylight. He will have changed from the last time I saw him."

"That's right. I had forgotten. He was only a few days old when you saw him last. He is a carpenter and a day laborer in a small town called Nazareth. I am told it is not too far from here."

"That seems a humble enough occupation."

"It will do," She said smiling softly. "It will do very nicely." She glanced out at the street. "It's too late in the day to go see him now. I suggest we do it in the morning."

I eyed the cot and its anticipated colony of fleas. Thanks to P'dania I did not get sick like most people, but I did not fancy lice or fleas. It was my pride: it was unladylike to scratch in public. "So what should we do?"

She settled on a stool. "How are things in Rome? I get there so seldom lately."

"You're not all-knowing?" I teased. She only smiled. "Rome is ... Rome could be better, Lady. Tiberius has grown bored with being Princeps. Now he plays at treachery for his own amusement."

"I was afraid that might happen," She said. "Augustus and Livia set a standard no one could match. To be any good the Princeps has to like governing. He has to like all the minor details Augustus and Livia were so good at, and yet manage to keep the broad perspective in sight as well."

"It gets worse," I said. "People fear and respect Tiberius. He wants people to love him. If Gaius Caligula succeeds him, and I suspect he will, then people will love the memory of Tiberius, and right now that is good enough for him. I think that will be his final joke on the Rome he no longer loves."

She sighed. "People get the government they deserve. I think that is as cruel a fate as humankind has devised." She looked out the window at the lengthening shadows. "Details, dear Kalliste, give me the details. What do you see going on within the Empire?"

I had not touched my spy network in many years, but that didn't mean I hadn't developed other contacts. It wasn't like I was really out of touch. I had lived next to Claudius the Stammerer, and as a merchant my husband Marcus Flavius had a wide range of contacts all around the Middle Sea. And on this trip I had taken the time to make inquiries.

I covered everything for Atane, from rumors in the fish markets of Gades of lands to the west to the secret correspondence Tiberius maintained with the Han far to the east. I dredged up every memory and nuance I could find from all my contacts in the Empire. And when I finished with the Empire as a whole, I began with what I'd heard in Antiochia and other places on my trip down the coast.

Our talking lasted long into the evening and I was exhausted when She finally let me rest. People who casually talk about 'inhuman attention to detail' have no idea of what that really means, unless they have been questioned at length by one of Them.

The next morning I asked the innkeeper where Nazareth was. "Where?" he replied.

"Nazareth."

He shook his head. "I have never heard of such a town."

"It is a small village that is supposed to be near Jerusalem."

"I have never heard of a town by that name," he repeated and turned his back on me. I went back upstairs and asked Her.

She looked puzzled. "It is supposed to be near Jerusalem," She said. "If it isn't, then where is it?"

There was nothing else to do but to begin making inquiries. Asking a question in a foreign city, and doing it without sounding foolish, takes time. Two days after I started my inquiries a woman finally admitted she had heard of the place.

"It is a very small town," she said. "I think no more than a few dozen people live there. It is way up in Galilee near Gat-Hyefer. I think Jonah was from around there."

The name Gat-Hyefer, wherever that was, at least gave me a second name I could ask about. But I knew it would take time to determine which particular group of mud brick huts in which tiny valley was the correct village I was after. I could not wait, so I reached into my store of money and bribed a palace official. Greed is more eloquent than persuasion, especially when treachery is clearly not an object, and soon I was able to tell Her roughly where Nazareth was.

"Much farther north of here than we thought," I said that night. "The clerk told me it would take at least three or four days to get there, maybe longer."

She nodded. "We do not have much time left, but we have that much. I will meet you there." She gave me a smile, and then seemed to turn and disappear.

I bought bread, cheese, some wine to drink, and made ready to leave the next morning. The journey itself was relatively straight forward. A woman had to be foolhardy to travel by herself, so I dipped into my funds, bought some cloth to trade and a donkey to carry it, and joined a caravan that was headed in that general direction.

The land looked vaguely familiar, but all of that land looked vaguely familiar. When you have tramped over as many roads as I have they all begin to look alike. And I had probably walked over these same hills when I was a slave to a caravan master in the time before the Assyrians. But four days after I left Jerusalem I stood on the edge of a valley, Jezreel by name, and looked at a tiny village: one street and a dozen houses made of mud brick and stone. The clerk had muttered something about Nazareth being nowhere in particular; as I gazed at the place I thought he had overstated the attractions of the town.

The town of Sepphoris was less than an hour's walk from Nazareth. It was a large town, but the insularity of these Judaeans kept them from even admitting its existence. I took a room at an inn there before setting out for Nazareth to ask about this carpenter. I had to be careful. One of the things I had learned from the caravan master was the belief that the King had spies everywhere. But I was guised as an old woman, and I spoke a dialect found mainly in the back country. The King was known to despise people with strange accents, especially people from the remoter parts of his kingdom. And everyone knows old women stick their noses into everything; when asked I made a point to pass on every scrap of gossip I had. People opened up freely to me.

By the evening of the day I arrived I had identified the young man She was interested in. When I returned to my room I was not surprised to find Her waiting for me.

Over the next two days we studied him from afar, much the same way She and I had examined Prince Alexandros before letting Helen set out for Troy. He was an intense looking young man with an intelligent face. But those were the only things to pick him out from anyone else. He looked like every other man in Judaea: thin, and swarthy, with dark hair and a short dark beard. His eyes told the world here was an intelligent man, but those were the only things to set him apart. I said as much as we walked past him.

"That is a mark in his favor," She said. "He should be like everyone else." We walked around a corner and She stopped, turning her head as if listening to something. "I will meet you back in that inn in two of your days," She said abruptly. "A blessing on you, daughter."

I raised my hand to my forehead in the obeisance. "I thank you, Bright Lady." She smiled, and was gone. I considered. I knew I had this day, and the next, and I was curious about this particular young man. What was it about him that appealed to Them? I decided to find out.

It did not take long for me to learn that he was not well-liked in this village; his younger brothers were much more popular. This young man had radical religious views that did not sit well with the traditional views of his neighbors. They acknowledged his piety and humility, but he had a dramatic temper and seemed highly intolerant of some of the ideas of those around him. He wasn't a likable young man, but other than that he was an ordinary man from a town that was no place in particular; you could not be more a man of the people than he. I began to see why that might be of interest to Them. People would mark more on his message than his origins.

The only way I could safely approach him was as an old woman. The one time I watched him around a young woman he was nervous and shy, staring at his feet, his hands behind his back. But he accepted an old woman with ease. I left him a request for a stool, a small piece of work that I knew he could do in a less time than it would take me to eat a bowl of soup. I paid him the going rate in advance, and listened to him make a possibly treasonous remark about Tiberius' head on the coin I offered.

Of such an exchange a great deal may be learned. The look in his eye, the casual way he responded to a remark of mine, the way his eyes grew dark when he saw the coin, even the lack of metal-on-metal sound as he put the coin in a pouch; here was a poor man, an observant man, a man who did a lot of thinking, not all of it the kind the King would like. And he had something in him, a tension, a power, something I could sense. There was a great deal going on behind those eyes.

The next day yielded little new information, so I spent some time in the local markets checking on prices, listening to gossip and generally trying to get a feel for these people. It was clear they were restive under the thumb of Rome, but I didn't sense those undercurrents that presaged an open revolt, at least not yet. There was a tension that could explode into open revolt if they were goaded, but there wasn't that feeling of an immediate crisis.

The people remembered when they were an independent kingdom, and they wanted to be free of Rome, but there was a lot of disagreement about who should run things after they regained their independence. There were many factions in Judaea; every village and valley seemed to be convinced they had all the correct answers. And they trusted no one else to rule them if Rome were to leave. I think a few of them dimly realized that they would never be free of someone ruling them from the outside. They were small fish in a large pond, and they happened to occupy an important trade route between Egypt and the old Persian domains. If Rome didn't dominate them, their neighbors would.

The people here were clearly waiting for something. They acted as if their lives were on hold, and some special event was going to occur that would make everything clear. Their God was sending someone, who it was nobody knew, and this special someone would set things right and rule the world. Peace would prevail, or if not peace, then the Judaeans would rule everyone else, which is what most people believe is peace.

I shook my head when I heard that. Tiberius or King Artabanus of the Parthians might have something very important to say about who ruled this land, and I was very doubtful if the people in Judaea could ever live in peace with themselves. I had been in this land 12 days, now, and even in a spot as isolated as Nazareth there was discord and strife.

It wasn't that these people didn't have enough royalty from which to pick their rulers. Half the people in the town of Sepphoris seemed to be descended from someone who had been a king some time in their distant past. I had heard the same thing in Greece the last time I'd been there; everyone who was anyone claimed to be descended from a hero mentioned in Homer.

Atane nodded when I shared what I had found. "This is why it is important for this one's Enlightenment, Kalliste. But you are right, he won't unify this land. I am afraid nothing short of armed force will do that."

"Then why pick this one?" I asked. "With all this unrest, who would hear his message?"

"He will unify other lands. And the very unrest that fills this land will help spread the message. I would explain it further to you, but we have to go. His Enlightenment will happen today and we must be there for it."

We walked back to Nazareth. "We need to look older," She said before we reached the village. We both altered our guises to that of old women. From somewhere She produced two bowls and a large sack of beans, and thus armed we settled in across the street from where the carpenter was working.

The sun crawled across the sky and the heat in the street rose. We edged back into the shade, and continued to shuck beans. Atane kept at Her task, seemingly paying no attention to the carpenter. I tried to follow suit, but I stopped from time to time to watch the people walking up and down the street.

It was mid-afternoon when She stirred. An older man came down the street dressed no different than anyone else. He stopped in front of the carpenter and they fell into a discussion. Gradually the stranger began to talk more and more until finally the carpenter stood mute in front of him. Then the stranger reached out his hand and laid it on the forehead of the carpenter in a way that reminded me of what P'dania had done to me in long ago Amnisos. The carpenter slowly sank to his knees. The stranger took his arm and lifted him up, then stepped back and resumed talking. After a bit he stopped, looked the carpenter in the eye, then nodded and walked off.

Beside me Atane let out a whoosh of breath. "It is done," She whispered.

"Is he all right?" I asked. The carpenter looked dazed, staring about him as if seeing things for the first time. I looked around for the stranger, but he had vanished.

"He should be all right," She said. "What is important is what he does in the next few days."

The carpenter closed up his modest shop and wandered towards the edge of the village. As he passed us I saw his face. He wore a stunned look, as if he was seeing something that was too incredible to comprehend. I started to follow, but She held my hand. "Wait," She whispered. "Let him get well on his way before we follow."

He was walking as if with no particular destination in mind. We followed at a distance. "Does one of You always do the Enlightenment?" I asked in a low voice.