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IV. HANNAH OF BRANCH
Josh wiped the sweat from his brow, making mud of the dust on his forearm. He leaned backwards against the cool wall he was carving in the fourth level of Herod's Tomb. The moment he stopped working, he began to chill in the subterranean vault.
This latest degrading occupation disturbed him: from rough mason--a respectable profession--to quarrier, from stone-smith to miner, grave digger, a lowly mole in the service of the Idumean. What next? Would he end his days cleaning the Essean middens?
Josh spit on his hands, seated them once again on the pick handle and tried to imagine all this worthless slag as a shining pile of gold, and he the dragon counting it, chip-by-chip. One and two and...
The midday sun was probably frying the surface crew. But they did not have to fear each moment would be their last, they did not have the constant possibility of being crushed beneath the fickle mount of this desolate plain. Josh stretched his sore shoulders and shook off his impression the cavern was shrinking. He thought instead of his family and Date Home, and how Mira was going to make him wealthy and he was going to make her free.
After the betrothal, he had invited Jake for Purim at the house in Date Home. Jake had come reluctantly, in the worst of moods, with little Mira in tow. Mary's fine meal had been wasted, untouched or untasted. Jake sat at the table's head, his pitch black hair and beard cloaking his shoulders and chest like the robes of judgment and his sharp, forbidding lineaments set in grim planes of elegant long-suffering. Little Jude had run from the table whimpering in fright when Jake demanded he pass the bread in the same tones that Moses must have said, "Would you mind very much telling me what this gild cow is doing here, Aaron?"
Mira excused herself and went to comfort the twin, leaving her father to stun their senses with his menacing embodiment of the elder patriarchs. Cleopas, displaced from his usual position of prominence, sulked and tugged his new robe, ignoring his wife's pleading glances that he entertain Josh's new father-in-law. Josh busied himself unenthusiastically with the meal.
A longer or less comfortable repast he had never known, lest it was the one with Lydia's shiva
They had all nearly choked when James asked if Jake were really and truly a djinn. Jake wiped his mouth slowly, pinned Josh's son in a baleful stare. Mira's esteemed father planted both his elbows on the table and leaned malevolently towards the young boy. The threatening gesture brought Josh to his feet.
But Jake's face relaxed slightly round the stony rift of his hard mouth and something like a smile or sneer formed itself there. "Yes," he hissed his answer to James.
Mary’s gravid belly shook with her silent laughter as she hid her face politely behind her hands. The rest of them displayed no grace whatsoever and all of them, even Cleopas, roared at Jake's arid mirth.
Mira returned and helped Mary clear the table. Josh took Jake aside after dinner and paid him the least bride price the law allowed and spoke the proper words, with Cleopas witnessing. All the while he wondered if old Jake would not succumb to a furious apoplexy before he was done, and if Cleopas were not so much performing the duties of witness as he was ensuring that Jake did not commit murder.
Jake and Josh both survived the ritual. Cleopas took Jake to the courtyard with Mary and the children to read from the book of Esther--Jake playing the part of the evil Persian king.
Josh took Mira on a walk around "his mountain," as he called the olive grove. He showed her the new tomb and she was suitably impressed, though Cleopas' wife had scolded him on their return, apologizing to Mira, "Joshua cannot help dragging every visitor round the hill to see his ghoulish diggings."
Mira was a delightful child, such an easy soul to be with, for all her tender years. He had confessed the reason for the new tomb, something he'd never revealed to anyone except Gabe. He could not disturb Lydia's resting place, could not allow her bones to be gathered and placed in an urn on a shelf of the tomb. So he had sealed her grave and made the family another. Night after night, he had come home, weary from the quarry, and chipped away at "his mountain," yawning beneath the moon, new to old, wane to wax. Lydia would have thought him foolish, but the work was very much a part of his love for her, the part which had not died with her, which would only die when he did.
Mira understood. She told him he was not foolish. He took her up the mount to the very top where Mary kept her garden by the court of the oil press. Mira had played with the old jenny, scratching the donkey's grizzled ears and singing a Greek poem about asses to it. A delightful child, she got along famously with his sons, even moody little Jude.
Josh jolted back to alertness, his hands stinging from a misplaced blow of his pick. Maybe he would rather have Mira than the money, but Mira was at the beginning of life with other concerns beyond pleasant conversations with old donkeys, jennies or jacks.
Somehow Jake had contrived through his many connections with the court to have Josh offered a lucrative contract at Herodium, five leagues southeast of Jerusalem. Jake took the further precaution of sending Mary to Branch, but beyond that, Jake had been powerless to dissolve the betrothal.
Josh thought of poor old Jake, worrying himself ill over the ghastly match fate had made for Mira. Josh had no intention of completing the marriage. He only meant to bedevil the wealthy elder. A month or two more of waiting and Jake would be begging to buy the divorcement bill for a tidy sum. Then Josh could help Eli furnish the hearth at Bread Home for Anna, and still have a little left over to put away.
Almost worth these months of dreary darkness. Josh had returned once for Pesach, the middle of Nisan, only to find the priests had intercalated a second Adar for this year. Cleopas was in a state. His greatest pride was his position on the Council of Dates. He was responsible for affirming the witness of each new moon, for determining with the two others of the council, whether the month was embolismic, thirty days or not, and for deciding which year would correct the tally of days, the deficit of the twelve months. Cleopas had been personally entitled to light the flares signaling each new month, though they had discontinued that practice of late because the Samaritans were lighting false fires to confuse the northerners--as if the Galileans needed help to be confused.
This year, High Priest Simon had over-ruled the Council of Dates and intercalated the Veadar at his father-in-law's, Herod's, request. Cleopas tore his robes in the Temple and retired to his house for several weeks of muttering and stomping and cursing, much to his family's dismay.
Josh argued the Idumean must need an extra month for some devious scheme which would be made apparent in time, and after all, what did it matter when Pesach fell? Spring would come when it would come. To which fastidious Cleopas, proper in all things, had spit on his half brother and bade him come back when the bastard, Herod, should see fit to proclaim the season had turned.
Josh had returned to The Tomb and was several weeks into the Veadar when he threw his pick down suddenly one day and roared to the darkness, "That bastard of a vixen's get has cheated me a month's pay!"
The intercalation of the Veadar had not figured in the contract at all. Josh was several more days muttering and marking the tomb walls of the fourth level before he had calculated that staying at the quarry would have netted him more than slaving in this dismal hole. Jake was a djinn.
Jake had tricked him into living in this damnable sepulcher, sleeping, eating, working for days on end with never a glimpse of the sun, like the stubborn eremetic sects who had broken with the Sons of Zadok, over the latter's propensity to bow beneath political prerogative. Josh marveled at the ease with which the wealthy Sons had interred their detractors in the chalk of the Dead Sea.
Some days, nights--too dark to tell--Josh was gripped by momentary mindless panic. He was not alone. They had lost a few men to cave-ins, more to madness. Something about living in the lightless, dayless, nightlessness of this tomb buried them alive. But Josh endured and the men in his crew fared better than the rest because of his tenacious example and calm mastery.
His son, Joshua, would never understand the courage his father’s occupation required--albeit, a boring kind of bravery, a drudgery of will and spirit, but a valor of sorts. Perhaps this was not the dramatic fearlessness of Joshua's Galilean zealot friends, but Joshua was wrong about his dad's lack of spine. A stiff spine it was, a back to bear what would come, whatever would come.
"Joshua of Date Home! Joshua of Date Home!" The howl echoed down the man-made caverns so loudly it seemed to come from a thousand places, a thousand voices, a cacophonous choir, screeching his name--or one of them, anyway, one of the more respectful at that.
Josh looped his pick through his belt and started up the ladder. He had not reached the second level when a young man lurched at him so suddenly Josh nearly lost his purchase and fell.
"Back away, man! Do you want to kill me?" Josh struggled onto the ledge and confronted the nervous servant who could not seem to stand still for an instant.
"Joshua?" the man ducked and clutched at Josh's belt.
"'Josh' will do." Josh moved away from the irritating touch. "What do you want with me?"
The man shook his head and pawed through his dingy clothing. He produced a small medal. "You're to give this to the legion commander and get a horse to return to Date Home, this very day. That is the message but, Lord, forgive me, I was held up coming here. Serpent scared the horse--I told them I could ride. Only a little--and after I fell, it was two days before I could walk here.
They had sent a servant on a horse for him and wanted him to take a horse back to Date Home? Something terrible must have happened. Something for which he was already two days late and one more day, even on horseback, given that the dim light of the central well signaled evening was upon them.
"What has happened?" he tried not to shout at the anxious slave.
The man only babbled. Josh cuffed him, but this only served to frighten the idiot into silence.
The stars found Josh cursing and bouncing on the back of a square-gaited old pony, pushing the nag to its dim-witted limits up the trail to Jerusalem, the back side of the Bloody Ascent out of Jericho. The moon was new which meant they were out of Veadar and into the spring. Nisan at last. Probably the beginning of the second week.
The night wore on slowly. Josh rode no better than the slave, but he had the good sense not to push the horse too fast in the dark. The trail led due west for most of the way. Luck was not with him. He missed the northern fork and ended wandering the sheep fields for several hours, but he was damned if he would ask his way of a despicable shepherd.
Over-correcting, he missed Bread Home by four stadia to the west and was nearly to Surrender before he discovered his error. Convinced that Bread Home was avoiding him, Josh decided against visiting Ann's betrothed, Eli, He skirted the outer wall of 'Salem crossing the Hinnom Valley and entering into the Valley of Kidron. The wind was up and both valleys were proclaiming loudly their names: "Wailing" and "Mourning."
At last, the pony's ragged hooves clopped onto the road which girdled his grove. Josh rubbed his eyes and squared his shoulders. The ache in his backside was replaced by a sudden spasm in his gut over the mysterious summons for which he was now--thanks to the lame servant and his own poor sense of direction-- three days late.
Cleopas' home was dark. Well, they could hardly be expected to stay up for so tardy a response as his. Josh slipped down from the horse and groaned, leaning his chest against the salty, warm hide of the nag and waiting for his knees to stop buckling beneath him.
"Josh!" Cleopas rushed up behind him. "Oh, Josh, Josh!"
Such was the tenor of his brother's whisper, Josh was loathe to turn around. Whatever had happened must be terrible. Josh tapped the courage his eldest did not appreciate and faced Cleopas.
"What is it, Brother?"
"Anna." Cleopas was able to say only this before he grabbed Josh in a desperate hug and wept as if he would never stop.
Josh stilled the question which rose in his throat with his heart. He held his brother and thought of the worst. If he could stand the worst, then whatever had happened could be borne. Anna was dead. That was the worst.
The strategy was effectless, however, because Josh could not imagine being able to survive one of his own children, when surviving his wife had nearly killed him. Anything else, he could stand. Let it be anything else.
But it was not anything else.
When Cleopas had calmed enough to speak, he announced the death of Anna as gently as he was able, having rehearsed this carefully the three days they had waited for Josh to return.
Josh's response was immediate. He bashed Cleopas on his slender nose, bloodying the front of his fine robe. "I will not believe it!" he shouted. "She is young and healthy. She is just married. Eli will be coming for her soon."
Eli had already come for her, but Josh had lost his sense of time, with his sense of direction, being buried so long in the Idumean's tomb.
"Four days ago, Josh." Cleopas held his nose, blinking the stinging tears away. "Eli carried her here in his arms, all the way from Bread Home, but there was no help, no hope. She was already dead."
"Eli! He--!" Josh's shoulders and arms knotted into stony masses of furious rage.
"There was no mark upon her. Eli had just settled her in the house you gave them, had stepped out only an instant. He returned to find her on the floor. He thought she had fainted from exhaustion, from the walk to Bread Home, but she was dead."
"I must see her! I will not believe until I see her!"
"No, Josh. It would not be wise--"
Josh lifted his brother up by his neck and pushed him against the horse who scuffled backwards and bolted into the night.
"Where?" Josh hissed.
"We are going at sunrise to pay respects--" Cleopas gasped.
Josh tightened his grip and Cleopas began to choke, his nose spurted upon them both. "Where?"
"Tomb," Cleopas murmured as Josh released him.
Cleopas crumpled to the ground, dabbing his face with his sleeve and trying to remember the proper prayer for a half-brother, gone mad with grief. Josh had already disappeared into the olive grove, unblessed by fate or God or a half-sibling with a broken nose.
Gabe returned to Babylon on loftier heights than his bright wings alone could attain. He came to consecrate his vows before the altar of his Father. The wondrous city was filled, alleys to concourses, courts to gardens, portico to highest tower, in preparation for Beltane.
Gabe melted into the crowd and made his way undiscovered to his cell in the Lith quarters of the ziggurat. Countless of his Lith brethren milled round the shelves, gathered at the tables to exchange all the greater notions of Creation, expand the older knowledge, reveal the new. The joyful sound of their cheerful banter echoed up the stacks and blew through the room like the breathing spring.
Gabe was more happy than they. He was utterly distracted, thoroughly inebriated, though he had taken no spirits, except The Spirit, and that was with him so strongly now, his mouth hurt from smiling over nothing and everything. He was rapturously sensitive to their corporate jubilation, but he was at the same time removed by his own greater joy.
He had stood at the door to his room now for several minutes, his hand fiddling with the latch. It would not open. That was odd. Locked.
Gabe relinquished himself to the Greater Glory and watched his hand direct the awesome focus of being into the defenseless lock. He laid the pitiful lump of it down upon the floor and promised himself he would fix the latch when he had the time. Gabe reached out towards the door, but it opened before he touched it, as if the wood had cringed upon its bolts.
He tried to breathe more deeply and to dissipate the remainder of his might on the tide of his inspirations. Standing in the deep arch of the doorway he looked across his cell and spun for a moment in the vortex of the sunlit image at the far window.
In the deep stone sill of the window, a young woman sat serenely, holding a book in her lap. Mira? God Bless me, Gabe thought, has she found a way to be with me always? Is it possible--?
"Lord Michael?" the woman asked. Not Mira, but--
"Anna?" Gabriel entered the room and walked forward to kneel in the full light so she might see him. "Anna, what are you doing here?"
"No," she said dreamily. "You are not Mica. Your hair is like wheat." She placed her palm on his bowed head. "I don't know you."
Gabe lifted his eyes to the daughter of his friend. "I am a friend of Josh. I am Lord Michael's brother."
Anna grinned at him and stroked the corner of his mouth.
He was smiling again. He could not seem to stop. He had no untoward intentions for this child, but her touch was a pleasure he would never have known before Mira. His newly-awakened responsiveness did not seem to own a lesser degree.
Gabe took her hand and kissed her palm lightly. "How is Eli?"
Anna’s answering smile disarranged itself into stupid confusion. "Who?"
Gabe rose and sat beside her in the warm window. He took the book from her lap and held her face in his hands, turning her toward the window. "Close your eyes."
She drifted off into slumber almost the instant her lids lowered. He had to shake her before she woke and opened her eyes again. The pupils did not react to the sudden rush of light. Gabe suffered a sudden pain at the base of his throat.
"Anna, listen to me. You cannot stay here."
"Mica said I might read these books if I were careful with them. He said I might have anything I desired, so long as I did not leave this room. He locked the door so I would be safe. Last night, I thought I saw a dragon fly past the window, and I've heard the strangest sounds..."
"Your father sent me," Gabe lied. "I am going to take you home now. Be very quiet and do everything I say. Do you understand?"
Anna's soft brown eyes grew very round and she nodded.
Gabe led her away from the window and sat her on his bed. Then he climbed onto the sill and placed his hands on the ornate bars. Once again he surrendered to the grace that Mira had manifest in him. The metal groaned in his grasp and loosed its moorings. After he had set the bars aside and removed the glazing, he returned to Anna.
"I am going to change now, Ann. It may seem frightening, but you are in no danger. I will not harm you in any way. Anna?"
"Who are you?"
She had asked him a little too slowly and he had already begun the transition, and the "what," if not the "who," was revealed in violent immediacy. Anna fell to her knees and covered her eyes behind her tremorous hands.
"Anna?" He pulled her wrists down. "It is finished, Ann. I am Gabriel, Anna. I am sent from Josh to take you home now."
"But Lord Michael said--"
"Forget what my brother said, Anna." Gabe's wings stretched widely, ruching out like an opalescent fan, raying the room in contradictions of ominous shadow and portentous luminosity.
Anna stopped pulling back, stopped shaking. He drew her to him. "I know you play at donkey-ride with your father."
She made a face.
"I mean, when you were a child, Ann. I will kneel down and I want you to climb onto my back between my wings and hold tightly round my neck. You can do that?"
She could.
"Now, I am going to take us out that window, and we will drop a bit, just at first, until I can drive us aloft. It will be a little scary, but you are not afraid, are you, Ann?"
He misjudged her silence as affirmation.
It was every bit the drop he had promised. Anna muffled her scream in the back of his neck and then held her breath as his wide shoulders pumped them out of the dive and over the splendor of Babylon. Gabe landed at the Ishtar Gate and Ann slipped down.
"Wait here, Anna. I have to find the exact point of The Gate."
"But the gate is here," Anna tilted her head and pointed at the great stone bridge.
"This is an invisible gate, Anna. Trust me. No harm will come to you." Gabe left her and walked across the bridge, feeling for the point of intersect between the world that was and the Babylon that was not.
Halfway cross the bridge, he found the point and turned round to call Anna. His wings drew forward suddenly into full yarak, the attitude of attack.
Anna smiled at him and her head draped sleepily onto Mica's muscled forearm which was wrapped around her shoulders. Mica stood behind her, stroking her hair and talking quietly to her, but his fiery glare was focused on Gabe.
"After all these centuries, our patience has abandoned us, as have you, Gabriel." Gabe heard Rafe's voice behind him, beneath the echo of his false promise to Anna that he would keep her from harm.
"Come with us now, Brother," Rafe continued. "There will be a punishment, but it is senseless to compound your misery by inviting us to beat you before the walls of this holy place.
"How long would you have us suffer your deceits?" Peniel asked, almost pleading.
Gabe did not turn round to answer. He could not take his eyes from Anna. Mica stooped to gather her up in his arms and she snuggled into a contented slumber.
"No!" He heard the denial escape him, loud and lorn. "Kill me instead!" Samael was also behind him. Gabe felt his brother's strong hands clasp his shoulders between the wings. "When Rafe told us you would one day offer yourself as The Chosen, rather than give up one of your sheep, we did not believe it. But so you have done, Brother, and so shall we pray for you this day. Woe unto us all that you could have fallen so far from Our Father's Grace.
"But I swear to you upon our love: none of us will rest until you are returned to sanctity. Come with us now. Make this no more grievous than you already have, and we will find, in God's Great Mercy, the way of your salvation."
Gabriel's wings drooped slightly and his brothers mistook this for assent.
They were too near Gabe when he delivered himself to his new-found powers.
Sama was pitched into the drink, being the closest to the point of detonation.
Rafe and Peni were too astonished to react quickly enough to avert their being beaten bloody before the Gate of Babylon.
Mica saw the two were no match for Gabe. He laid Anna down and entered the fray in full dragor, a great gild gryffin: talons and fangs, fur and fury, larger than the Temple Sphinx. Gabriel went down beneath him just as Sama clambered over the edge of the bridge.
"It is over, Brother. Lie still." Sama placed the iron fetters on Gabe's wrists.
Rafael helped Gabe sit up and wiped the blood from Gabe's face where Mica's terrible talons had ripped his scalp.
Gabriel, his heart crushed by more than the gryffin's weight, began to weep. All his brothers drew back from him, aghast.
"Oh, Dear Father!" Rafael exclaimed. He touched Gabe's wet cheeks and then put his fingers into his mouth, tasting the salt of this all-too-human grief. "What has this Mira done to you?"
When Lydia died, Josh had lost his laughter. Now with Anna gone, he had lost his tears, and with them his ability to feel anything at all. There lingered only a mild astonishment that his well-hewn golal, the rolling stone with the complex levers and locks, could have failed so miserably.
He remembered little of the hideous instant when he had discovered the empty tomb, had become the empty tomb--not desirous of her corpse, yet wondering, always wondering, and incomplete somehow.
Did the jackals have her? The ground? The sea? Who? Where? Why?
Nor did he remember the dismal Passover or, afterwards, leaving Date Home. He did not remember being cheated out of the month's wages. He did not remember returning to Herodium.
He could not remember seeing the sun. He did not feel he had descended into the Idumean's tomb. He felt he had been born here, in misery and darkness, alone with his pick and his brother stones, out of the sight of men, away from the treacherous world.
Spring passed unheeded: Nisan and Iyyar, and Sivan. They sent a messenger to bring him home for Shabuoth, the fourth day of Sivan, the Feast of Weeks. He told them he was Gentile now and to leave him alone. Summer rolled by-Tammuz and Ab. The first day of Elul--when he should have been in the Temple to receive first word of the new moon--Cleopas came himself and instructed the Kittim guards to drag what was left of Josh out of the grave.
Josh did not come quietly, but his first look at the sun blinded him, and his defense was ineffectual thereafter. They swaddled him up like a babe, dumped him in the back of Cleopas' wagon, and trundled him, frothing like a rabid wolf, back to Date Home.
Mary had delivered the month before and Josh found himself coddled and fussed over as if he were the baby's, Marta's, twin. Day and night his young brother's wife was there, cooling his fever, singing with the baby at her breast, bringing life back to him in the rhythms of her new motherhood.
By the middle of Elul, he had recovered enough to do the major portion of the housework, which was a fascinating, if not altogether pleasant endeavor, mostly consisting of keeping the boys out of trouble and cleaning--a lot of cleaning. His hands were never so clean, though they had been as raw.
Several weeks of this convinced Josh it was time to get his life in order. He would start with Jake and the business about Mira. Cleopas informed him Jake had just left for Branch. Josh decided a sojourn in the north country would be good for him, and he could visit Joshua as well and see his new grandson--what had they named him? Ah, yes, James, like his uncle.
Josh thought of his own James, pining for his brother Simeon. Simeon had gone to Bread Home to live with Eli and apprentice as a carpenter, which was how Eli earned his bread. Rabbinical duties were entirely unrewarded, in the monetary sense anyway.
Simeon had been very close to Anna and it eased both men to share their loss. And it eased the burden on Mary and Cleopas' household. At ten, Simeon was hardly a man, but they were all older this terrible year. As the kings counted the days, they were nearly to the end of it. Let the new year be better, Dear Lord, than the last.
"Well?" Rafe offered the bowl of stew to Gabriel.
"I do not want it," Gabe shook his chains at his brother and slumped against the wall to which he was chained in the stark cell with the single high window.
"You will have to eat," Rafe admonished him.
"I am not hungry," Gabe growled through his clenched teeth.
Rafe sighed softly and placed the bowl back on the table beyond the limits of Gabe's chains. They'd shortened the links the first time he tried to strangle Mica with the extra length. This had meant he could no longer pace the doorless cube of stone. Once each day they took their lives in their hands to release him so he could walk the cell.
"You intend to starve, then?" Rafe asked wearily.
Gabe drew his knees up and bowed his head down. "Go away." They were deaf to him, or he was mute to them. Whichever, it mattered not. There was nothing to say.
Rafe picked up the basin and a towel. "At least let me wash you. You are filthy."
"Do not touch me. Do not talk to me. Do not come here any more. Is that clear enough for you, wise brother of mine, or shall I repeat it in Latin?" Gabe could not seem to muster the proper invective for such a righteous rejoinder.
Rafe put the basin down and studied his brother quietly, worrying over the bony protrusions that had replaced his full shoulders, the hollows of his cheeks and eyes, the listless tilt to his entire carriage.
"And don't stare at me!" Gabe shifted uncomfortably and wrapped his arm around his broken ribs. They surely should have healed by now, but they still felt like knives.
He noted, not without a sense of vindication, that Rafe was still limping, and prone to catch his breath if he stepped wrong. Gabe was sorry to have torn his knee. He would have been sorry if...
Rafe hunkered down in front of him, just beyond the range of the shackles' chains. "What can I say to you, Gabe? How can I help you see--?"
"I see," Gabe interrupted. "I just do not see what you want me to. And I never will!"
"Alas, Dear Brother, I begin to believe you when you say that. I begin to believe that this is hopeless. I begin to believe, Gabriel, that you will teach me yet how to weep, as you have learned to do."
Gabe worried the fetters at his wrist. They did not bother him so much as the faintly sticky way his hands felt now, even when they were clean. The sensation made him rub his fingers together constantly as if he had the palsy.
"Please," Rafe laid his hands over Gabe's. "Be at peace. We can bear what you do to us, but not what you do to hurt yourself."
"There is no peace after what you forced me to do!" Gabe bit his lip and tried to think of something else, but all that came to him was the image of Anna, dying so quietly, her head cradled in Mica's lap, and her blood on Gabriel's hands, his hands, his own hands.
"You left us no choice, Gabe. We could not take Mira. There was no time to select another more carefully. Mica decided to take one of the other Nazarites who was alone at the time. We did not know she was another of your 'special sheep.' How could we? You never spent any time with her at all. Listen to me, Gabe, the Assembly had begun to voice serious concerns. We could not make excuses for you any longer..."
Gabe was not listening. His pale eyes frosted with inattention. His thoughts wandered elsewhere. Rafe waited patiently for him to return. They should not have threatened Mira's and Josh's lives, should not have made Gabe kill the ewe to save the others. Rafe cursed himself, even as he knew there had been no other way.
"Rafe?"
"Yes?"
"You keep asking me to tell you what you can do." Gabe pushed up the wall to standing and looked down on his brother.
"Tell me."
"You can let me go. Let me return to Judea. Exempt my flock from the Beltane. Let us go our own way. Neither I, nor my herd, will trouble you more. Banish me from Babylon, from the Host, from God Himself. Kill me~ if it pleases you, but let my people be."
"Dear Brother," Rafe looked up slowly. "It may very well come to the last, but it will in no way please any of us. As to the first, you cannot return to your flock."
"Ever?"
Rafe shook his head, "You cannot be trusted. The sheep are not safe in your care. Another guardian has been appointed."
Gabe slid back down the wall. He began rubbing his palms together.
"I have asked twelve Lords of Powers to review all that is known in the mortal law that might pertain to this--occurrence. There is, of course, no actual precedent. There are also seven Lords of Virtues going over the ethical and religious parameters of the--situation. The Council of Lords will convene before the month is out to decide what is to be done with you." Rafael folded his elegant fingers. "And they will then decide how the rest of us shall be made to bear the consequences. I know you do not care for us, but could you not have heeded my warning to be careful, if only for your wards, whose interests comprise your holy office?"
"I do care--in my way, Rafe."
Rafe's full lips sketched a sorrowful smile. "Ah, but your way is a terrible torment, Gabe, and no blessing at all."
"For either of us," Gabe added glumly, but without repentance.
"Time is running out. You will have to tell me exactly what happened, so that I may speak your part in the Council of Lords."
"You will be my defense, Rafael?"
"The four of us met and decided I should do so. If you think I am inadequate, I shall find another, more qualified than--"
"No, Rafe. It is just--after all I have done, how can you possibly want to help me?"
"I love you, Gabriel. Is it possible you do not know that?"
"But I do not love you," Gabe confessed.
"I know, but I have not told the others. I think it would hurt them terribly to discover that. Please do not tell them. They so adore you, as do I." Rafe folded his hands over Gabriel's frantic wringing. "Tell me how it happened you were drawn into this predicament with the ewe."
"I could not see her die, any more than I could see you murdered," Gabe began. Maybe he would be heard at last. "It seemed the only way to save her life--to make her unfit for sacrifice."
"To ravage her, Gabe?"
"She thought of it, not I."
"But you assented?"
"Yes. I performed the ritual and she consented to the Ryn. When I returned here, I presented the fact of our marriage to The Father. Admittedly, it was a silent profession, done in the moment before the Beltane, but everything was completed as was proper."
Rafe's hands closed in fists around Gabe's fingers. "You entered into Ryn with this animal? You actually performed a wedding, One-with, this beaste?"
"I am a Lord of Virtue," Gabe replied indignantly. "I am well-schooled in the Way."
Rafe released him and staggered to his feet, mumbling, "This will not help your case, but it will certainly give the Powers Lords something to think about. You really do believe the sheep are men like us. You believe it so strongly you actually--. You are astonishing, Little Brother. When you have faith in something, you do demonstrate a wondrous certitude and consistency. You--"
"I was told to have faith and to be unafraid, and so I was, until you made me kill Anna. Now all I want to do is cut off my hands. Maybe the Council will oblige me." Gabe’s head sagged back against the wall and he stared out the high window at an errant cloud, smudging the infinite.
Sama shimmered into existence at the center of the cell, dark as a shadow beneath the leathern canopy of his wings. He was not fully into the room before he gestured anxiously for Rafe to join him as far away from Gabe as they could get in the tiny cell. Rafe joined him at a far corner and they put their heads together whispering.
Gabe rubbed the back of his head against the stone. He had worn off a bald spot already from this neurotic habit, one of many he seemed to be acquiring.
"Gabe," Rafe knelt by his right side.
Sama knelt by his left. Both of them worked at the shackles, opening them. Then they removed the circlet round his neck.
"It seems you are to have your wish," Rafe said as they lifted Gabe to his feet.
"You're going to cut off my hands?"
Sama stared.
"No, Gabe. The wish about returning to your herd and being banished from our presence." Rafe explained about the hands and Sama shrugged.
"Something has happened which changes--" Sama began and then looked to Rafe for help.
"There has been a development which the Council considers takes precedence over any other decision. They have ordered you to return to Judea. You are to deal with the matter in whatever way you deem appropriate," Rafe finished cryptically.
"Because I am the only one who can manage this 'development?"' Gabe asked.
"No," Sama answered slowly. "Because it is your fault and none of us knows what to do about it, including the Lords of the Council, even the Holy Throne, himself."
"What development?" Gabe asked, but they were no longer there. He was standing on the plain west of the Euphrates, free as a 1ith, light as a lark.
Josh took the Watershed Way, the Route of the Patriarchs. He was on foot, but he made the journey to Branch in leisurely portions. The first night he stopped at Gophna, deciding not to take a side trip west to Arimathea. By the afternoon of the second day he made Sychar, old Shechem, where he lounged in the corner of a smelly tavern and listened to the tales floating around him in the many languages of his land and the lands which tramped their wares back and forth across the face of Palestine.
He had meant to make Ginae by the third day, but he was waylaid at Samaria--not literally, though that was always a possibility when one traveled the Watershed. Josh spent the entire afternoon haggling over a cargo of wool, coming away with enough for a profit and some extra to give Hannah for the loom she had placed in the day room he had built for her--for Jake--thirteen years earlier.
It was too dark to set out for Ginae until the fourth day, and the Garden City was too lovely to pass by. He stayed there several days, writing letters: an announcement of his impending arrival to Jake, a note to each of his sons, and a proposal for a new commission. He sent these with caravan masters who charged him entirely too much, but Josh was not in the mood to argue and he had been paid well for his time in the old Idumean's tomb, extra month or no. What was money for, if not to be spent?
Little enough time to spend it on the ones who mattered.
He went over the bill of divorcement. All seemed in order. Cleopas had witnessed it and so had Eli. Simple, really, no reason was required, only Josh's wish to put Mira away and the signature of two sons of Israel. He might have sent it to Mira, but he felt a certain responsibility to deliver it by hand, if only to relish the relief on old Jake's face. He had given up the plan to make Jake pay for the divorce.
Tishri, the first month of the regnal year, the seventh mishnaic division--eighth with the Veadar-- dawned with Josh already on the road to Branch, feeling a little guilty about his lazy, long stay in Ginae. He savored the high, clean air of the early fall. The land rolled away from him on every side, golden and green, the great plain of Esdraelon to the west and the mist cloud rising from the Gennesaret to the north and east.
The stupid Galileans were not so stupid, after all. Let Judea have Surrender. They had all the rest.
Branch was no different than his last visit, a dozen years past. It still dozed in the blanching afternoon sun, like a stately old matron. Josh decided to visit Jake first, then surprise Joshua's family for supper. He walked down the deserted street and north to Jake's large house by the generous well which used to belong to the entire township--before the djinn moved in.
No one met him at the door, so Josh walked round to the garden entry.
"Hannah," he called out as he came through the gate.
She rose stiffly and covered her face with her veil.
"Hannah of Branch," he bowed. "Such a pleasure to see you again, dear lady."
"I fear you find us unprepared, Joshua, son of Elijoachim." Hannah bowed her head, hiding her eyes in shadow. "The servants are away--and the master."
"So formal, wife of Joachim?" Josh came forward to embrace her but she scuttled backward. "I know it has been a long while since we spoke in this garden and I, a common laborer of your fine spouse, but--”
Hannah dissolved in tears. Had he said something to offend her? Josh helped Hannah to the stone bench at the garden's edge. He started towards the day room where he could see Mira working at the loom, but Hannah called him back.
"What is it, Hannah? How have I distressed you so? If it is about the betrothal, you have no worry on that score. I have come this day--"
"It is not that, Josh." Hannah lowered her veil from her face. There was a terrible bruise at her right temple and her left cheek was abraded and swollen.
"Oh, my God, Hannah! Who did this to you?"
"Jake," she said barely above a whisper. Her poor face was more marked by her humiliation than by Jake's cruel blows.
"Why?" Josh regretted the question. This was really none of his business. He knew Jake was a terror, but he had never envisioned him being so brutish. "Should I get Mira to--"
"Mira knows," Hannah shook her head. "She is packing to leave with you, Josh. Please take special care of the tapestry for the Veil--" Hannah broke down sobbing. "Mira is all that God gave me. She has been my whole life, Josh. I am giving you my life, all that I have that is dear to me."
"I know how much she means to you, Hannah. I could not take her from you.' Josh thought at least this would comfort her, but it only made Hannah wail as if she had been struck again.
After that, Josh could not say anything but Hannah would erupt in anguished cries and unintelligible bursts of pleading. He retreated to the day room to see if Mira could help her mother, since he seemed to be doing such a poor job.
"Mira?"
Mira was casting off the last line of a huge purple tapestry--the Veil of which Hannah had spoken. She did not rise or turn towards him.
"I heard you speaking with Mother in the garden," she said. "I take it you mean to divorce me."
Josh was surprised at the even tone, the unvarying timber of her declaration. "I should have attended to this much sooner, Mira, but my daughter died. Anna, she was one of your classmates, perhaps you knew her. In any case, I know I said I would come for you sooner--that I would complete the marriage-- but in truth I only meant to give your father some of his own meanness back, which I can see now was greater than any of us suspected."
"Just give me the bill and leave," Mira said, reaching her arm out behind her. "And if you wait a moment longer, then you can take this tapestry back with you and deliver it to The Temple--if they will still have it. They can burn it for all I care."
Josh sensed there was something very wrong--something more wrong than Jake's brutality. He crossed the room and sat down beside Mira. She sat up very straight and refused to look at him.
"Mira?" Josh reached across and took her opposite shoulder, turning her towards him.
She ducked her head. "Just give me the paper and go."
He reached beneath her chin and lifted her face up. His first inclination was to smile. And though he knew this was disrespectful of Mira, he could not help beaming. Mira’s face was marked also, but not by any blow. There was subtle bronze shadow at her temples and over her cheeks, the same change he had seen on Lydia's face, the day she had told him she carried their first child.
He placed his hand on her stomach. "Oh, Mira, a baby!" In his appreciation of the miracle, he had momentarily lost all sense of decorum and practicality.
Mira was clearly awed, and disturbed, by his reaction. "The child is no concern of yours, Josh. Give me the bill of divorcement--unless you wish to drag me into the streets and proclaim I am to be stoned, as my father threatened." Her rigid back melted a bit and her shoulders began to sag. "Right before my mother stepped in and he hit her." Her head bowed down and her lip trembled. "He said I was a harlot and no daughter of his. He commanded I leave his house before sunset." She sagged against Josh's chest and cried quietly.
Josh wished he could have cried before now. There might not have been so many tears to shed with Mira.
Then they laughed at how silly they both looked with their eyes red and their noses running. Josh produced a very dusty kerchief and shook it, making a cloud that set them to laughing again. Mira found a cleaner piece of cloth and they both wiped their faces and blew their noses and laughed some more.
"Oh, Mira," Josh sighed. "I am too old to marry you, and who can say your young man will not return when he has time to reconsider--"
This set Mira off in another spastic mirthful fit, until the baby kicked her and stopped her short. She put Josh's hand on her belly and the baby obliged by kicking again, harder.
"Oh, Mira, Mira." Josh's heart flowed out to her and to the child, unreasonably, unreservedly. He felt Anna returning to him in this new life. Not that this babe was, or ever would be, Ann, but death had somehow been defeated once again, as it ever would be. Josh experienced Mira's quickening as his own return to the living. "I won't make you a husband, but I can surely make you my daughter. If Hannah agrees, I should be most proud to do so, and when the baby comes--Kislev, if my guess is right--then I shall also adopt the child, if your young man does not come to his senses."
Mira' s eyes filled again.
"Only tell me one thing, Mira?"
"Yes?" she answered unsteadily, waiting for the question which would make her newfound gladness disappear. He would ask now had she done this of her own free will and then--as her father had done--he would cast her aside.
"This man who took advantage of your tender age and generous nature--?"
"Yes?"
"He did not hurt you, did he? I swear by God, I will kill him if he hurt or frightened you in any way!"
"No," she whispered. Only Jake had hurt and frightened her.
"Well, then, you will come with me to my son's house for tonight,” Josh said, sounding every bit the masterful and proud new father. He had many children and he was far from new, but he was no less proud for all of that. "I will come back for your things. Will Hannah be safe?"
"I am the only reason my mother would ever stand up to him. If I am gone, all will be as it was. He would not have harmed her, but I made him so angry."
Much to Josh's utter mortification, his son--his son's wife, rather--would not have Mira in the house, which meant they would have to travel by night to the crossroad inn at Jezrael. Josh managed a reasonable price on a young jenny for Mira to ride and he shamed his son into taking her things to Megiddo to await the next caravan.
By moon's rise, Mira was mounted on the donkey, on top of the folded tapestry she had woven for the Temple. They made their way out of Branch beneath the new moon of Tishri, into the new year.
"Why do you keep rubbing your hand like that?" Mira asked.
"I broke my knuckles," he replied. Not his business, of course, but Jake would have the bad grace to return home just as Josh was loading the last of Mira' s things into the cart.
It was, after all, Rosh Ha-shona. Josh considered he had only given Jake his day of atonement--the Yom Kippur--ten days early.