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I A Rumor of Angels Appendix |
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I A Rumor of Angels Appendix |
The arrogant magpie, whimsical kin to the raven and the crow, sets herself above the dark concerns of her sisters and gathers the bright, superfluous things
of the world. Busying herself with the attainment of these inapparent treasures, she cannot be bothered with the demands of maternity. The magpie leaves this unappealing chore to those hapless, dowdy matrons of the lesser nests.By night she steals into the bowers of these mundane birds and leaves them her fragile-shelled crèche among the many eggs of the unwitting foster family.
But timing, like parental devotion, is not a virtue of the magpie, so the magpie's child is often born too late and bullied from the nest too soon.
If the magpie's child is born early, he will tower above his brothers, over-shadowing them with the amazement of his dark wide wings and they will cower before him or nestle beside him, as if he were a third parent of terrible wonder, astonishing might.
Inevitably, the foster birdlings recognize the magpie's child. They band together and in rapacious indignation they throw him from the nest to be impaled upon the inferior branches.
Does the magpie mourn her child? Does she look up from the sparkled facets of a treasured shard and spy the lifelike pinions fluttering in the indifferent breeze?
I. A RUMOR OF ANGEL
1But the Virgin of the Lord as she advanced in years, increased also in perfections, and according to the saying of the Psalmist, her father and mother forsook her, but the Lord took care of her. ~For she every day had the conversation of angels, and every day received visitors from God.
Matthew, The Gospel of the Birth of Mary, VThe sun splashed, liquid and shimmering, across the arid roiling land. Its merciless exuberance blanched the bright colors into serene and pious subtlety.
Climbing a hill south of Bread Home, Josh was an insignificant eddy in the blinding wash of light. His dark eyes squinted tightly, fanning out deep wrinkles over his cheeks. A dry winter breeze fluttered the new grey at his temples and billowed the hem of his robe.
Josh was not an old man, but he was no longer young. The mild climb and his back pointed out to him, in a most aggravating fashion, just how little of his youth was left. None at all. Josh paused at the top of the hill and leaned forward planting his broad, much-scraped hands on his thighs. He might have been waiting for his friend to catch up with him. He tried to make it seem so.
The quarry dust was beginning to kill him. That, or he was truly getting old. Josh tried to slow his breathing and decided he would rather blame the dust, which was somewhat under his control, than the other, which was not.
When he had enough breath to do so, Josh yelled down at the fair young man who was meandering bare-footed through the rocks and shards. "Do you need some 'elp, Gabe, or can you manage this fierce mountain on your own?"
Gabe's hair was as pale as the countryside. He smiled up at the rough mason from Bread Home. "And shall I look for that 'h' which you seem to have lost ever since you hired on all those northerners from Branch?"
Oh, Lord, Josh sucked his lower lip over his teeth and chewed at the top of his beard. He was beginning to sound like a stupid Galilean.
Josh had a recurring nightmare about turning into stone and being hammered away to dust. Some days he left the quarry pit north of the palace covered with so much white dust, his mouth so full of the same grit, that he seemed to have become the creature of his worrisome dream: outwardly solid as a cliff-side, inwardly flawed. He feared the inevitable blow would someday find his fault and fracture him into a useless pile of shale and slag.
While he dreamed of turning to stone, he had instead been transforming into something truly hideous: a cretinous Galilean.
The northerners were infamous for idiocy. They had only to open their mouths, it was said, and the wind would whistle through their brains. Actually, Josh found the Branchers far superior to the local crews.
Hard workers all. Too dumb to be lazy.
Josh sighed and rubbed his sore shoulders. He might not be stone yet, but he was stiffening. The Idumean had taken a fancy to celebrate the week of Sol Invictus by halting the work projects, the new quarry included. Josh appreciated the rest, but his shoulders and back were not accustomed to inactivity. Irritating cramps and twitches reminded him his was not a body built for leisure. Ah, to be Cleopas and dress in the finer weaves, to return home at day's end without dust in your mouth and your eyes and your lungs, to have pristine hands and clean nails. To have nails. Josh sighed and looked down at his stubby fingers, broad palms, broken knuckles, Even washed--and he had scrubbed them raw just this morning for the ceremony--they looked dirty.
Just as well Josh was not his brother. Half-brother, he corrected himself. His younger, ten years younger, sibling--who used to think Alpheus a respectable name--was now a highly placed priest, His Lordship Cleopas, if you please. The scrawny, wild-haired Alf, had long ago transformed into a sedate, slender version of his mother, with the same graceful reserve which was all too indistinguishable from self-centered disdain.
And much to Cleopas' aggravation, Josh did not envy his brother's office. The temple functions bored him silly. He still recalled the night, so many nights ago, when Cleopas had sneaked him into the Debir, the Holy of Holies to show off the central mystery, the glorious and forbidden wonder of the faith.
And what was this wonder?
Josh sat down, shaking his head. Two winged lions, Yakin on the left and Boaz on the right, carved of olive wood stood side by side, as high as a man could reach. Their wings touched, over the silk tent, and within the tent, jay an ornate, but empty, box.
And the lions were not at all well-done. Rough work at best, which the gilding could not hide. Josh understood that the Ark had been lost, but he could not follow his brother's rambling account of revelation and symbology...something about the "spiritual ark" and the transcendence of the temporal plane...
At one point in the conversation, Cleopas had actually tried to convince Josh that the absence of the Ark was the singular condition whereby The Temple was consecrated to the cosmic.
Josh had worked the past twenty years on the various building projects of The Idumean--including this copy of Solomon's Temple. Cleopas' absurd and piteous rationalization, which would have been pathetic were it not so silly, tumbled Josh to the floor and made him laugh so wildly, they nearly got caught would have been caught except they scrambled up on the sphinx-lions and flattened behind the wings when the near-sighted Levite peered behind The Veil to see if the Demon of the Ark were prowling within.
And the next year, Cleopas, imbued with the righteous cruelty of a true Zadok's son and holy priest, had implied that Josh's precious Lydia died because of Josh's impertinent derision. Cleopas had declared aloud and loudly that Josh had lost his sweet little wife and the second twin because he laughed at God.
Whether he believed this or not, Josh had not laughed again, not in the seven years since he had become a widower.
Nor had he loved again until he met this same young man who climbed the hill beneath him now, dancing to the silence and the sun and the winter wind. Loving this blond, wild wonder was definitely bothersome to Josh. He knew--well, he had heard--about the Greeks and their strange ways. He knew his own people's strict sanctions against such practices. He did not love Gabe in that way. He prayed he did not...at the odd moments when his enormous powers of denial allowed him to think about his passions at all.
Five years he had known this delightful lad. He had been laying the stone in the garden of the Annex, over the north temple reservoir, where The Idumean had set up his version of a vestalry. Such a kittim thing this was, so helene, that The Sons of Zadok and The Resurrectionists, who were unaccustomed to agreeing on anything, found themselves bedfellows in their opposition to the Annex. The Idumean pulled the priests aside and reminded them who had built--or rather, rebuilt--their fair temple, and who had seen to the various matters of their vocations and wealth and continued prosperity in the New Order.
And the Zadok Sons had searched and searched The Five Books until they hit upon the omission of gender in the Nazarite codes. The new boarding school for wealthy young ladies was to be a convent of girl Nazarites, not a nunnery for vestals.
To silence the very loud opposition of the Congregationalists, the Resurrectionists, Master Hillel's descendent, also named Hillel, was appointed consulting School Master.
The Annex was constructed atop the flat roof of The Temple Reservoir, east of the Antonia Fortress, contiguous with the north wall of The Temple Court. Sometime later, it was decided the convent should have a garden south of the Bethesda Pool. Because the unseemly hoard of diseased men and of sacrificial sheep were constantly crowding this area north of The Temple, it was also decided such a garden would have a high wall.
That was Josh's reason for being within the Annex confines five years before: to set the bone-white, skull-white stone of the garden wall. Gabe had been there also, hiding behind a thick-branched old olive tree. Gabe had no reason whatsoever for his presence in the off-limits Annex. Josh would have been well within the law to hand him over to the authorities, the Palace or The Temple, but Gabe had spun some impossible tale that almost had Josh remembering how to laugh and after that they were the best of friends.
And so they had remained ever since, for no particular reason.
Josh had returned from The Temple just this morning to his brother's house.
He'd never seen the garden finished, nor was he allowed in the Annex today.
The entire ceremony had taken place In a cordoned area of the Upper Court. The priests had been talked into letting the girls come up before the gates of the Holies. Women before the gates, but no men inside the Annex. They had sent him packing after he finished the wall. His payment was his Anna's tuition. Anna was graduated and promised today.
After Anna's betrothal, they returned to the house at Date Home where Cleopas and his wife, Mary, had laid a sumptuous feast in celebration. Josh was not hungry. Cleopas' running jibes and innuendoes were finally picked up by the younger children. Josh had left the party before he was pressed to explain to James and Simeon and Jude, the twin, why everyone else was giggling at their old pa.
Josh was halfway down the dusty lane out of Date Home when he ran into Gabe. They had walked in silence to this spot, Josh driven by his anger and the shame he would not admit and Gabe dancing, always dancing.
He lowered himself down on a rock and sat waiting for Gabe. Gabe would not be hurried, not for anything upon the Earth, nor anything in the heavens. If this were the Final Day, Gabe would still be rambling over the terrain, inspecting some dull little bush or insignificant pebble, as if it held the secrets of the Ark. Not the Apocalypse, nor God Almighty, could make Gabe hurry.
"You seem distracted, Friend Josh," Gabe sat down beside Josh and folded one leg over the other to inspect his stone-bruised, thorn-stuck foot. Josh shook his head, "Why do you do it?"
"Do what?" Gabe pulled an impressive splinter from his sole.
Josh gazed at his white-robed, fair young friend, "Sandals, Gabe. If you 'ave none, surely I can get you a pair."
"Huuh," Gabe blew out the "h" with gusto. "And you can have that one for free, sandals or no."
"Oh leave off about my speech a moment," Josh snapped.
Gabe ducked his bright head down and unfolded his legs. "You are upset."
"Yes," Josh grumbled.
"But you do not want to talk about it?" Gabe's voice was not quite the high pitch of a child, but it rolled and lilted unlike any other man Josh knew. Gabe could not speak without singing, any more than he could move without dancing.
"Why do you insist on tormenting your feet so, Gabe?"
"Because the earth feels so wonderful," Gabe answered as if the thing were self-evident. "You understand."
"No."
"Poor Lydia--may she rest in God's Arms--you did not lie with her fully-dressed did you?"
"My dear Lydia was not covered with prickles and stones, Gabe." Josh felt a rush of the old sadness.
"The earth is beautiful to me, stones and all." The young man's mouth twisted slightly with a tender and wistful smile which made Josh miss gentle little Lydia all the more.
"Is it not said that God gave your namesake, the Archangel Gabriel, all the stones for the Earth, divided into seven bags? And as the Seraph flew over this place, did not one of the bags tear and drop its entire portion upon this dry land? Perhaps you do penance for being so clumsy."
Gabe began to laugh. He reached into the air and an ivory comb appeared in his long, slender fingers.
"Don't you ever get tired of that trick?" Josh groaned.
"1 do it very well," Gabe replied without a trace of conceit. "How could I possibly tire of it?"
"I cannot imagine."
"Well, come on, then," Gabe indicated Josh should turn away from him so he could comb his hair.
The first time Gabe had suggested this to Josh, josh had bristled and suggested something quite uncomplimentary to Gabe. But Gabe had no untoward intentions then, or now, and Josh very much liked the touch of his young friend, though it galled him to think this was so.
Josh turned and Gabe began combing his hair and chattering on agreeably.
"Is it true your people never cut their hair because of the Babylon Exile?"
"What?" Josh jerked around and Gabe popped him on the top of his head with the comb.
Josh turned back.
Gabe resumed sorting through Josh's silver-traced black tresses. "Is it not said your people were so distressed and discouraged that the priests made it unlawful for them to hold a naked blade within arm's length of their necks...and they had to stop shaving and cutting their hair...for fear they'd be too inclined to cut their own throats?"
Josh's shoulders started jolting up and down.
"Oh, Josh!" Gabe dropped the comb and threw his arms around his friend.
"'Eh!" Josh pulled away from the hug. Then he started laughing again, bending over double and wiping his eyes. He was so unused to laughing he wondered if he were having a seizure.
"Oh," Gabe retrieved the comb and blew the dust from it. "I thought you were sobbing about the exile."
Josh sat up finally and inhaled. "That is what I love about you Gabe...you are so incredibly gullible."
Gabe began combing Josh's long beard. He did not say anything more. Josh had been cruel, which was an altogether rare occurrence ...and Josh had admitted he loved him, which was more rare still. Such rarities were to be savored, their pain and pleasure extracted gently, carefully.
"I am sorry, Gabe," Josh tipped his chin up. "But why do you go on so about something that happened more than five centuries ago?"
Gabe finished the ritual as he always did: he lifted the comb up high above his head and it vanished. "I suppose it proceeds from a feeling of guilt."
Josh knurled his brows in a semblance of seriousness. "Oh, yes. I see," he said. "I might have suspected you were at fault when they killed Zack's sons and blinded him and led the best of us east in chains."
Gabe's usually bright countenance suddenly shadowed over. For an instant, Josh felt his joke had been taken as the absolute truth. "Come now. Five hundred years is, after all, enough time to forgive anything," Josh spoke to his peculiar young friend who could not have seen five hundred months of life, let alone five hundred years. Josh himself had seen more than five hundred months...today they felt like years.
Gabe's lilt descended to a minor and forbidding air, a threnody of grim dimensions. "Before they could be taken to Babylon, some of your people ran away, back to Egypt. In his desperation, Jeremiah wrote: 'And Yahweh will send you back to Egypt. And you will offer yourselves to your enemies as slaves...and no one will buy.' No one will buy," Gabe’s voice floated away and died. "Some things can never be forgiven."
Josh wondered if his friend would weep and what he would do if that happened, but Gabe's quicksilver intensity suddenly focused on the field below them.
"Oh, look!" he pointed towards the eastern field and exclaimed what might have been the Anointed appearing on the horizon, but was only, "Shepherds!"
"As I live and breath!" Josh pumped his false enthusiasm with a parody of Gabe's lilt. He placed his open hand over his heart and gasped loudly. "Think of it: shepherds!"
"You are in a dismal humor, Friend Josh," Gabe chided him softly. "Oh, see that boy with the lamb?"
Josh squinted. A filthy son of a shepherd was walking behind the main flock carrying an equally dirty lamb in his arms.
"Do you think he loves that lamb, Josh?" Gabe asked with such childish tenderness that Josh was almost persuaded not to answer. Almost.
"Not until it gets a little bigger, I should think." Josh's expression was undisturbed by the sudden gust of cold wind.
"Joshua!" Gabe stared at him aghast. "Surely you do not believe that!"
"And this from the man who believes everything he is told? I only know what I know, and I know shepherds have some entirely disgusting habits. In any case, that boy will soon enough be toting the lamb up to The Temple, all cleaned up and its scrawny little neck readied for the blade."
"But the lamb will know it was loved and specially chosen, Josh."
"I do not think the lamb will much care when it is bawling on the altar."
"Perhaps not, but the boy will know. He will have done all that could be done and he will weep when it is over."
"Well, that makes all the difference," Josh snorted. He could not ken why Gabe was so absorbed in this nonsense.
"The lamb must think the boy is a god," Gabe said.
"Like the djinn which waits in the desert to eat the scapegoat?" Josh was now in the mood to tell Gabe what had happened this morning. He needed to talk to someone about this latest turn of ridiculous Fate. His impatience made him sarcastic and every new word out of his mouth was more bitter than the last because none of them were the words he needed to say.
"Yes, Josh!" Gabe was oblivious to Josh's tone.
"Or like the dragons of the high mountains, or like the Raja Naga to the north, or the..."
"Oh, yes, Josh!" Gabe was positively burbling. "Yes, yes. Like angels."
"What!"
Gabe suddenly jolted and put both his hands over his mouth.
Josh peered at him. "The holy messengers of god guard Man. They do not kill men. They protect us."
Gabe lowered his hands and stared at his palms. Josh had seen Just such a look on Jude's face. it was always accompanied by Cleopas' report on what terrible trouble the youngest of Josh's motherless brood had been into now.
"Watch that boy," Gabe said uncertainly. "If a fox or even a lion should threaten the herd, he would give his life to defend them. Is it his fault that some of the sheep must die? What can he do but ease their suffering and enrich what life is given them before the blade descends? What can he do, Josh?"
Gabe's lush lower lip was trembling. "Is it his fault that the sheep see him sometimes as an angel, sometimes as a dragon, simply because he is so much more powerful, so much more..."
"Sheep are only animals, Gabe." Josh could neither comprehend nor bear his friend's cryptic obsession with the shepherds. Something in Gabe's earnest tone was frightening and Josh was too sensitive to feelings of cowardice. His was a nation who called its capitol "Surrender." Let them call It "Founded in Peace," he knew very well the old girl had roiled belly skyward so often she had dents in her back. Let them try to believe Surrender and Peace were the same thing, Josh was not fooled.
"Are you not an animal, Josh?"
"I speak! I think! It is not the same as being a sheep!"
Gabe smiled suddenly. "And what did you call your father when he still lived?"
Josh shook his long locks over his broad shoulders. "Abbaaa," he replied.
"All right, I begin to see what you are saying. If I saw an angel, I could just as easily believe it were some bright-winged Simurgh, so loving of its brood that it gives its own life to consecrate the birth of its young...or just as quickly imagine it were a dragon come to tear me limb from limb. And it might be the same glorious creature, so awesome and unimaginable, so different in its life and its desires that neither of us could begin to understand the other."
Gabe relaxed into the slow sway of his hypnotic dance.
"It is said that long ago, we ourselves sacrificed humans to God, that Abraham’s example was to stop that practice by substituting...other animals.
Supposedly, The Temple is built on the mount where God gave the ram to spare Isaac."
"The next hill over to the east," Gabe corrected him. "But tell me, what ails you this fine day, Josh?"
"It is a long story, Gabe." Josh knew very well his young friend was joking about 'the next hill to the east.' Josh owned that hill. He and his brother grew olives there. Surely Abraham had not sacrificed the ram on Olivet. Still, they did sacrifice the red heifer there, on the western slope, each year.
"Long story? Ah, then we should have begun it sooner. Forgive me. How long?"
"It started thirteen years ago, the year Anna was born, as near as I can figure."
Gabe settled his hands in his lap and beamed his entire attention on the rough mason. Josh shivered at the familiar pleasure of entering the center of Gabe's profound concern. He was silent a moment, adjusting to the abrupt displacement of his loneliness, then he launched into his tale.
It all started with Jake, a wealthy elder Zadok Son, with a reputation for ostentatious piety and prideful worship. Jake was insufferable, but The Temple priests granted him a practical forbearance because they were not wont to dissuade his charitable and bounteous ways which had up to that time lined the coffers and their own pockets quite nicely.
Josh described Jake as if the man's self-importance were somehow stamped on his visage, like the seemingly solid foundation which betrays its defect merely by being too perfect. Jake was tall and well-built, with comely features, jet-black beard and hair. His voice carried an internal rumble like a threatening storm and his black eyes hid always behind the thick lashes, conspiring with their owner to judge all others unworthy.
Jake had decided to enter an extended period of haverim to maintain himself in ritual purity of the highest order. To this purpose he abandoned his holdings in the north, and his wife, and entered The Temple to live there.
As the story went, three or four weeks of Jake were three or four weeks too many to stand. The priests called him before them and told him to go back to Branch and leave them alone. Jake demanded a reason why he should be so unjustly done, when he was the paragon of virtue and the most devout of Surrender's Sons.
They responded that Jake had not done his duty by his people and that his offerings were not holy thereby. They knew very well he had shamefully neglected and ignored his poor wife, Hannah.
But they accused him of impotence, or at least suggested this...something in one of The Five Books said that a castrated man could not be among the elect. The priests swore to a man that all the faithful had produced offspring up to that time, and Jake had not, so...
"You know that is very like what happened with the Prime Kittim," Gabe interrupted. "He convened the entire Senate and chewed their ears about killing off their race by not being fathers. He passed an edict that any man with three sons would win favor...and those with no wives and no sons would be relegated to the worst seats at The Games...
"Where they kill the animals, and the men, just for the sport of it," Josh interjected.
"Yes. That hurts my brother more than he can endure at times."
"I thought your brother lived in Persia somewhere, Gabe."
"That is another brother. Go on with your story, Josh. This is fascinating."
"First tell me how the Senators got around the edict."
"What makes you think they did not obey?"
"They are Kittim, Gabe. Tell me how they did it."
"Well," Gabe laughed. "First Augustus had to make another law that betrothals could not be longer than two years, and then another, that it was not legal to marry an infant. Then he had to make another law that girls under twelve could not be counted as legal wives."
"Then he had to exclude four-footed brides," Josh added.
"Yes," Gabe hissed disapprovingly. "Then he ordered the census to see how well] the laws were working."
Josh cleared his throat and spat upon the ground. "Don't mention the census.
The Idumean's got it into 'is 'ead to run a census...good enough for Kittim...good enough for the protectorate or some such. It's not sitting well with the Northerners. The last time they had a census was under Solomon and then 'e taxed them...probably for the last temple. Anyway, it is not going to win The Idumean any friends, except maybe the Prime Kittim."
"You keep calling him Idumean, Josh. Is that to avoid calling him Arid?"
Josh punched Gabe in the shoulder. "All right now, do you want to hear this story or not?"
"Yes, of course, Josh. But do you want to hear the joke Prime Kittum is bruiting around about The Idumean?" As Josh did not answer, Gabe assumed he did. "Herod sent a third request to Caesar for permission to kill another son of his many wives."
"His own son?"
"Oh, yes, he's quite paranoid about his crown, being it is so new and loose. As I was saying, Caesar received the request and complained, 'I would rather be Herod's sow than his son.' Is that not funny?"
Josh pursed his lips. "It might be, if The Idumean followed Mosaic Law, which he does not, and if it did not involve murdering one of his own sons, which it does."
"You love your sons very much don't you, Josh?"
Josh blinked his eyes clear and nodded, embarrassed. "And my daughters more than my sons sometimes."
"You work so hard for them, Josh, but you never see them. They stay with Cleopas and you hardly visit unless Mary begs you. And now that you've bought Joshua the house at Branch, you never see him, or his wife. Why?"
“There's a question about my birth. It does them no good to be too closely linked with me."
"But you are Cleopas' brother and he is an honored priest."
"Half-brother," Josh grumbled. "Abba came back from a building project in Arimathea with me swaddled up in his arms, not a half year old. He swore he was a widower and he had papers. My mother died when I was born and he still had a deed to some property where he and my mother had lived until I was born. He returned home to get help raising me." Josh shrugged. "Seems to run in the family. Ten years later, he married Cleopas' mother and we moved to Date Home and bought the oil press and the olive grove and his father-in-law saw to my brother's education... but I was not a cherished grandson and Abba set me up in his former trade.
"Cleopas always called me bar Abbas, to make it clear to his friends that I was his father's son, and not a true brother."
"So what happened with Jake?" Gabe tactfully turned the subject back to the story and away from the old scars.
"Old Jake made them get out The Temple records and prove that no one else had been childless. They were weeks and weeks at it, what with The Idumean burning all the records of Davidic descent that he could get his hands on. Duplicates had been made, of course, but some of them had been obtained by money and not by bloodline. It was a mess. Cleopas was not a priest at the time, just a student, but he was drawn into the tedious business with half The Temple work force. I was in Branch at the time. You will love the irony: I was doing some building for Jake and listening to Hannah's poor lonely tales.
"In the end, Jake proved the priests wrong. There were several dozen good men who had not, for whatever reason, sired any children. Jake had a victory, of sorts. His manhood was still very much in question. So he sent for his wife. I brought her down with me on my way back to Surrender.
"He set her up in fine quarters south of the palace. Within the year, he'd gotten her pregnant. And if he was terrible before, he became impossible. Jake swore he would have a son of David's line to change the entire world. Jake was not so proud of his Davidic heritage as he was of his Zadocsaic forebears, except in times like these, when it served him to claim King David's blood. He hinted the baby would be the Anointed promised by God. He swore the problem had been not with himself, but with his wife's barrenness, which had been miraculously cured as a sign from God.
"Hannah did not complain. She was happy to be pregnant. She was happier still when she delivered a daughter. Jake was in a state. He had promised a child to serve in The Temple and produced a girl!
"The priests probably thought that would be the end of their problems, but they were soon proved wrong. The Idumean was as fond of Jake's wealth as the priests used to be, and together they came up with the Annex. I could not complain. As long as there was work, my family would eat..."
"If that is the beginning of the story, I cannot wait to hear the end." Gabe stretched his shoulders and drew a skin of wine from his robe. At least, that was where he must have had it before it appeared in his hand. He offered it to Josh.
Josh moistened his dry throat and then pulled in earnest. Gabe always carried the best wine, neither sweet nor dry, and no matter how much you drank, never a headache in the morning to remind you to be sensible. His tongue well-lubricated, Josh finished his tale.
The ceremony had begun pleasantly enough, though Josh had an odd catch beneath his heart whenever he glanced over at his daughter and spied the way she looked at the young man whom she would marry this day. He knew very well it would be at least a year before Anna left Cleopas' house and went to be a true wife, but that did nothing to stop his feeling of loss. Josh had not seen Anna for five years, but he still felt the young carpenter and rabbi from Bread Home, Eli, was an evil and intimate trespasser into a family that did not in reality exist, except in Josh's imagination.
The mohar, the bride price, had been paid, the ritual completed, and lovely Anna, who had only yesterday been a little girl, stood with the other Annex school girls, blushing sweetly at Eli's clumsy affections. Ml was as it should be, even to the gnawing sadness of the twenty fathers.
Then nothing was as it should be.
Damnable Old Jake and his miraculous offspring threw the entire proceeding into chaos.
Mira, they called her, princess A dozen years old, the same age as Anna, with her father's iron will and the quick wit of a sage. Hillel's prized student, she was the center of the most outrageous tales (they said she spoke daily with angels) and the target of the other girls' most venomous jealousy. She would not eat with the others or take classes with them or weave with them. Mira was seldom seen outside her rooms in the Annex, but she was never far from their thoughts, or their gossip.
They had come to see Mira, as much as their own daughters. Mira, who stood in the crowd like a prophet on the mountain top, star-eyed and erect as a plumb line, fearless and fearsome, and utterly forbidding. Josh had never beheld such a mysterious child. He was immediately reminded that the blood of Kings ran in them and here was the reflection of that awesome heritage.
When she stepped forward to speak, Josh felt his heart rise to his throat. Here was the one among them to make a lie of Surrender.
Mira refused the dowry before Jake could accept it. She cast it to the floor and proclaimed no man would wed her because she was promised to God. Her voice was older than her years, clear and steady. Josh admitted sheepishly to Gabe that he had thought Mira's compelling tones quite the most sensuous sound he had ever heard, a sublime admixture of daunting spirit and artless innocence.
Not to be outdone by his own, Jake cried out and collapsed. Mira stood aside as the priests rushed to Jake and brought him around. When he roused he kept repeating that he had heard a voice from within the Holies, from the Holy of Holies. And the voice had said, "Out of the rod of Jesse shall come the flower." Josh was not sure he remembered it exactly.
Then the priests collected up the staffs of the men gathered there who were unmarried Davidic relatives of the Nazarites. The staffs were taken in to the 'ark.'
"Then they brought them back out and laid them on an altar in the court," Josh shook his head. Had he only dreamed this wretched day?
"The man Jake had picked out to marry Mira took his staff and began fiddling with it, but nothing happened. Nothing happened with any of the staffs. We all stood around for a very long time. I got bored with listening to the priest explain how God had spoken to Jake and promised a sign for Mira's chosen betrothed. I was talking to Cleopas about the arrangements for the party at his house when one of the priests pulls me forward and starts accusing me of going against the law.
"He says I've ruined the ritual because I kept back my staff. I just stared at him open-mouthed. He took my staff and placed it on the altar and made everyone put theirs back on the table. I came to my senses and tried to explain that I had a family, and three of my children were older than Mira, two of them--Lydia and Joshua--already married. And another, betrothed this very day.
"And I said I was too old. I nearly choked to say it. I never thought of myself as old before. I never said it aloud, anyway. Hell, I knew it was just a stalling tactic for Jake's young man to get his staff to work, whatever it was supposed to do. I gave up arguing and stepped back as they gathered up the staffs to bless them in the inner temple again.
"And they brought them out, same as before. I took mine last. Again, nothing happened. But just as I was thinking we would be at this game well into the afternoon, something did happen.
"One of The Temple sacrifices, a dove, who had escaped the inept thrust of an apprentice priest and haunted the upper court until it became a pet, flew out of the Holies and landed on my shoulder and proceeded to do what birds do best.
"The priest proclaimed it was the sign, that a holy dove had flown out of my staff to mark me as Mira's betrothed. That was not what the damned bird did, but I suppose it was an apt sign, symbolic of my predicament in any case.”
“What could I do? I extended my hand to Jake and promised to bring him the price later. I introduced myself to Mira and whispered to her not to worry, that things would somehow be arranged to her pleasing.”
“Then I left with my brother and my daughter for Date Home.”
“But not before I chanced to see Jake standing with Mira's prospective young man behind an archway. They were having a terrible row about something. Jake snatched the rod from Mira's intended and proceeded to beat the young man with it, whereupon the staff broke apart and a beautiful bouquet burst forth.”
"So, I got married this morning, Gabe, and that is the story."
Gabe patted Josh on his tight shoulder. "I should not worry, Josh."
"Not worry! She's a little girl, for God's Sake! And I am an old man! I cannot properly see to the family I have now! How can I manage another?"
"I do not think there will be another, Josh."
"I am not that old!" Josh tried to achieve just the right note of verity in this statement: not too much indignation, nor too much protestation. Laughter was not the only skill he lost with the death of his wife.
"You are not old at all," Gabe smiled. "Even in your terms," he added.
Josh got up like a very old man, whosoever terms were being considered. "Walk with me back to Date Home, Gabe. I must at least make an appearance of dutiful father."
"You do the very best you can, Josh," Gabe praised him. "Even your children think so, and that is high praise indeed."
But Josh would not be lightened of his burdensome guilt. Gabe left him at the gate to Cleopas' garden and proceeded on to Surrender.
The Temple crowds had thinned and Gabe had no trouble at all gliding past the functionaries up the court levels. He was delayed in the Upper Court by a priest who was praying in the Holies.
The old man's prayers finally ended and Gabe slid into The Temple's heart, past the rather tattered Veil and into the Holy of Holies.
He patted the single Cheryb, Yakin, on its wooden brisket and then walked around the "cosmic ark" to stand in the empty space. He slipped his robe and tucked it under the ark. Very slowly and deliberately, he cleared his mind of all thoughts and concentrated on the image across from him, the gilded olive wood, the lion's paws, the sheltering wings.
There was a brief flash of agony as his shoulders dislocated upward and the second pair of arms emerged from the vacated sockets. Then the transition swept him away on a tide of puissance as he ascended in form to the six-limbed avian counterpart of the sphinx which the sheep thought of as angel.
Gabriel reached for the perfect stillness at the center of his soul and was surprised to find Mira there, muddling the process. For an instant, he regretted not being able to meet with her this day, but she would not be alone. There would be time to speak with her later, to explain why her marriage to Josh was not possible. She already understood she was promised to God. Had she not said exactly this during the betrothal ceremony?
Had he not treated her with absolute tenderness, with love, for all of her life? Had he not done all that could be done? Would he not weep when it was over?
He remembered the shepherd boy and the lamb.
Then Gabe found his center and stood absolutely motionless, thinking nothing at all.
