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IX. THE DRAGON'S DREAM
Joseph and Gabriel entered the western precincts of the Upper City at the Gennath Gate. The guard made a pithy comment about the angel, but neither man noticed. They were both too sodden with rain and too vexed with each other.
"There are some robes in the back room," Joseph grumbled as he opened the door to the servants' quarters. "Mirriam, would you get us something warm and-. Mirriam!" Joseph rushed into the room, dashed into the adjacent chambers and returned to the door. "Mirriam's gone!"
Joseph made the angel wait in the shadows while he knocked at Rabbi Hillel's door. No, Mirriam had not been by. Yes, Gamaliel and the boys were still in the Lower City with their grandmother, Hannah.
Joseph ran past Gabriel, back to the Gennath Gate. The angel fell thrice before he caught up with the mason. The guard nearly burst apart laughing to see the blonde catamite covered head-to-foot with clay like an idol awaiting the kiln. He informed them that the woman they sought had passed through the gate not an hour earlier. She was wearing the most beautiful blue cloak. She had said she was bound for the quarry to fetch her husband.
Joseph hurried through the gate with Gabriel on his heels. Beyond the gate's light, the night pressed in on them. The tiny sliver of new moon was spare illumination, even multiplied hundreds of times in the many puddles.
Joseph did not need light to find the quarry of skull-white stone. Except for his sojourn at Herodium, he had spent the year trudging, day-after-day, to this dusty white pit. Gabriel stumbled along behind him, muttering anxious questions to himself.
Joseph answered one of them for him. "She's probably in the cave with the jenny, waiting to make sure it does not rain again." Joseph bounded down the stone steps and veered leftward along the northern wall. He ducked into the second cave and groped along the wall until he came to a small lantern and flint. He lit the palm-sized oil lamp and raised it high. The rope lead and halter still dangled from the iron ring, but the donkey was gone. The halter had burst and frayed along one cheek strap and the straw bedding had been kicked up in frantic heaps.
Someone or something had been after the jenny. She must have gone into a frenzy and torn loose from her tether.
"Joseph," Gabriel called. "Joseph," he said again with a stricken, minor tone that chilled Joseph's heart and sent him running to the center of the pit.
Gabriel stood there, holding Mirriam's blue robe, streaked with blood, muddied and ripped. He tore it from Gabriel's hand and buried his face in it, letting the smell of her bring him back to his senses.
"Mirriam!" Gabriel called out. There was an echo and then nothing.
"Come on!" Joseph threw the cloak over his shoulder and together they walked the pit looking for her in the glimmer of the tiny lamp.
"Heavenly Father!" Joseph sank to his knees beside the carcass of Mirriam's jenny. The lamp quivered in his hand as he lifted it. The donkey was crushed and slashed. Shards of its ribs stood out like bone claws and great ribbons of fur and flesh had been sliced from its shoulders and flank. "What could have done this?"
Gabriel stepped backward, farther and farther away from the jenny's remains. His face turned the color of the grey, pasty mud around them.
"Gabriel!" Joseph pushed up to standing. "What is going on? What do you know about this?"
Gabriel stared as if blinded. "She may still live, but we have to find her quickly. You will have to help me. I don't know where he took her."
Joseph grabbed Gabriel's shoulders. "Took her? Who took her?'
"I think one of my brothers has come for her. Joseph where is she?"
"How could I know?"
"You are the only one who could know, Joseph. Please, try to think where she is. The way that you felt when you came to get me. Search for her with that sense."
"I do not understand, Gabriel." Joseph felt his friend collapsing. He let him down gently and then sat beside him, rubbing his neck. "What do you want me to do?" Dear Lord, did Mirriam's life rest on such slender threads as this shaky angel-turned-mortal and this old mason-turned-whatever?
"Try closing your eyes and talking--anything that comes to you, Joseph."
Joseph blew out the lamp and set it on a rock above the water. "I will try. All right. It is dark. I am cold and wet. I am afraid for my wife. I wish I had never come to get you and left Mirriam alone, worrying. I cannot get the image of that poor jenny out of my head." Joseph opened his eyes. "No, this isn't working at all. I can't do it."
"Then we are lost, Joseph. What were you doing before? What were you thinking when the warning came?"
"I wasn't thinking anything. I was working here and the feeling washed over me like a wave. How can I will something that came to me unwilled, Gabriel?"
Gabriel waved his hand in the hair. "Turn around, Joseph."
Joseph's hand darted out. "I have really had it with that stupid trick, Bird!"
"Turn around," Gabriel snatched the comb back. "You asked me a question. I think I have an answer for you."
Joseph turned and let Gabriel comb his hair. The angel's voice grew melodious, hypnotic. Joseph did not understand the words, but the music floated round him and the comb stroked his mind with his hair. He found himself drifting towards the stillness.
He tried talking again, "I see Lydia." He stopped. He did not see Lydia at all. Why had he said that? "Oh, God. Is Mirriam also dead? Is that what it means?"
Gabriel's voice stilled his terror, telling him not to interpret, that it would only confound the divination.
"But I do see Lydia. She is telling me to be delivered. I am arguing with her in the garden by the oil press. There is someone else in the garden, an old man. He is leaning over a small boy. Stop! I cannot seem to move. The boy is tied. The old man means to kill him!"No, he does not kill the child. He takes the boy away to, to--his wife! The boy is his son! But his wife has died. Thinking her son is killed. her heart has broken. The old man lays her tenderly in her grave."
Joseph was dimly aware of Gabriel's hands on his face. He saw Gabriel's mouth moving, but he heard nothing except the old man's mourning wails.
"Joseph?" Gabriel worried that his friend would never return.
Joseph drew a deep breath. "I know where Mirriam is! I know. I--Unhh!" He bent forward, his whole body drawing into a fist.
Gabriel wrapped the mason in his arms and waited for the paroxysm to pass. Joseph's limbs loosened and he began to pant.
"What is it, Joseph?"
"I'm all right," he replied sheepishly. "I used to do this with Lydia. You cannot imagine the ribbing I took from my men." Joseph struggled up. "Mirriam is at the cave above the Shepherd's Field where they took me after the trial. It is across from the tomb where Abraham buried his wife, Rachel. And you are right, Gabriel, we must hurry!"
Gabriel ripped off Joseph's cloak and began to center. "What is wrong?"
"Mirriam is starting into labor. She's been having false twinges the past two months, but this," Joseph rubbed his stomach and grimaced. "This was real."
Gabriel landed south of the cave and Joseph handed him Mirriam's robe which was still draped over his shoulder. They crept up to the cave, staying out of the bright beam which shone like a signal fire through the rift of the entrance.
Subtle, sensuous voices spoke softly within. They sounded in different ranges, but they bore the same lyrical quality of Gabriel's lilting speech. A den of angels? Joseph wondered. How many were there? Why did he not hear Mirriam's sweet soprano in this ominous throng?
The next contraction drove Joseph's breath out in one great gasp, but it comforted him at the same time. She lived. They would somehow deal with the rest. He watched Gabriel's bright eyes mirror the seriousness of their straits.
"Ouch!" Mirriam squealed.
Without thinking, Joseph and Gabriel rushed into the cave.
"Unhand her!" Gabriel roared. The entire cavern trembled from the sound he made.
"Oh, little brother," Michael chuckled lovingly. "Late as usual."
Joseph stood in mute shock. His eyes squinted and blinked awkwardly in the glare of Gabriel's three fabulous brothers. No candles, no lamps, no fire lit the cave bright as day. These beings were their own light.
He looked at Mirriam basking at the center of all this radiance. She was sitting on pristine linen overlying a mound of straw. One of the angels sat behind her, putting weaver's knots in the back of her hair, with fingers so slender and deft and graceful that Joseph felt a swell of sullen jealousy that he would never feel right to touch Mirriam with his own rough hands again.
The angel with the wondrous hands continued tying Mirriam's hair. He did not look up. "Good even' Joseph Ben'eli Joachim. Peniel will attend you."
A blond man, slightly shorter than Gabriel stepped forward and bowed.
"Michael will attend you, little brother. Joseph, I am Rafael. We will talk when you have finished bathing and are dressed more suitably."
Without really meaning to, Joseph found himself following Peniel out of the cave to one of the stone mangers, filled again with warm water. Peniel took his sopping tunic and Joseph eased himself into the delightful bath. The chill mist round his shoulders mingled with the steam as Peniel washed his hair and kneaded his back loose of all its tight anticipation.
And all the while, Gabriel spit and coughed and yowled like a mad cat at his wide-framed, black-eyed brother. The Archangel Michael stood with his thick forearms crossed over his deep chest and, except for a nod now and then, paid little attention to Gabriel's diatribe. Joseph enjoyed it all: the sheer relief that Mirriam was safe, the warm bath, the sensual attendance of Jacob's wrestling partner. But more than all the rest, he relished the sight of these divinities acting the way all brothers act. Gabriel did not love his brothers? Hogswill.
Peniel led Joseph back to the cave and dressed him in soft robes of a material Joseph had never seen before. It seemed to be silk, but it lacked the slimy feel. It seemed to be white, but it shimmered different colors the longer he looked at it--and moving patterns also, unless that were only a trick of the angels' light. Dragon Light, his daughter would say.
Mirriam was sleeping softly on the straw bed, curled on her side. Rafael looked up as he approached. This brother's eyes were not blue like Gabriel's, neither were they grey. Joseph wondered if they were always this argent brilliance or if the angels changed their eyes as easily as they changed their shapes.
Rafael bade him sit down. "I am finished. She will sleep for a time. If we speak softly, we will not wake her. I am honored to meet you, Joseph." He extended his hand, but Joseph could not bring himself to touch it.
"I am sorry," he said.
Rafael smiled and Joseph felt the same precipitous ache beneath his heart that he had felt the first time he met Gabriel.
"It is all right," Rafael's gentle graciousness was unnerving. "We surely must seem an odd lot to you." He laughed. "And you have yet to meet Samael."
Mirriam's brow furrowed in her sleep and Joseph bent over his lap.
The silver eyes flashed. The elegant hands brushed lightly over Mirriam's belly.
Joseph sat up again. "How did you--?"
"I was about to ask you the same thing, Joseph. You are in labor also?" Rafael reached for Joseph's stomach. Then he thought better of it and folded his hands.
"No," Joseph murmured. "This just happens sometimes. I am fine."
"You know, I had heard of this, but I never--." Rafael looked past Joseph. "What is it?"
Michael answered from the doorway, "He won't come in. He says he does not want Mirriam to see him naked." Michael rolled his eyes.
Rafael's hand found his mouth, but not in time to hide the expression that was at once bemused, disgusted, and saddened. "Peniel," he called.
Peniel looked up from folding and sorting and broke out in wicked laughter. He nearly choked beneath Rafael's disapproving glower. Bending over the pile of linens and robes, he picked one up and threw it to Michael.
Gabriel entered a few minutes later, stalking past Michael who was still laughing at him.
"Join us, brother," Rafael said.
"Where is Sama?" Gabriel sat across from Rafael on the cave floor.
"He went to fetch some medicines and Baal Th'zaar," Rafael bowed his head.
Joseph noticed that Rafael's curls were almost blood red and copper where the light danced, brown as the Jordan's bed in the shadows.
"Stop admiring him," Gabriel reached forward and punched Joseph's knee. "These are the men who killed your daughter!"
"If I did not revenge myself upon you, who wielded the blade, then what do you expect me to do with these, who only tricked you into it, Gabriel?"
"Why did you take Mirriam? What are you up to?" Gabriel's petulance turned on Rafael again.
"Mirriam was about to be stoned to death in the quarry. Sama was on the watch at the time--"
"You've been spying on us!"
Rafael closed his eyes and rubbed his temples, causing Joseph to wonder if angels were susceptible to headaches. "Sama had the watch and when he saw there was no other way to save her, he manifested in full dragor and flew her out of the pit." Rafael turned to Joseph. "He apologizes for the donkey, but she bolted in front of him as he was preparing to lift and he could not stop. We will see you have a replacement by morning."
"Why would anyone want to stone my wife?" Joseph was gripped by his imagining of Mirriam's frightful experience in the dark quarry.
"The Temple High Priest sent a contingent of men. He accused her of being a witch. We knew they had been watching her. We interfered with them when they tried to abduct her from your dwelling, but when she went out alone in the night--" Rafael shrugged. "She has a few minor bruises and a cut on the back of her head which bled a great deal, but was not serious. I tied the edges together with her hair. The knots will loosen in a few weeks, but by then the cut will have healed."
"And the baby?" Joseph asked.
"What are you doing here?" Gabriel interrupted.
"The baby does not seem injured, Joseph."
"What--" Gabriel began again.
"Mirriam is still in very early labor, Joseph. It will be several hours before the actual travail begins. I would be most grateful if you attend her--Peni will get you anything you need. In the meantime, I must take my dear brother out and have a--well, discussion. You understand."
"I also have a brother, Lord," Joseph answered. "I do indeed understand--only, if it is in his favor, Lord, he saved my life, and he is as dear to me as Mirriam or my children."
"Traitor," Gabriel hissed at Joseph.
Rafael picked Gabriel up and threw him, literally, out of the cave.
Joseph moved closer to Mirriam and took her hand in his. Outside he could hear Rafael saying words that might have been his own.
"What is the matter with you!"
Michael sidled into the cave and joined Peniel ordering the things they would need for Mirriam's delivery. Occasionally they would pause and gaze towards the cave entrance when the scuffle outside accelerated, but otherwise they bent to their work and minded their own business.
Joseph knew Gabriel's brothers meant them no harm. Why couldn't Gabriel see that? Gabriel, whose bright eyes saw everything else so clearly?
Eventually, the fight moved away from the cave, and Joseph lay down beside his wife and watched her sleeping.
Gradually, inexorably, fall-by-bruising fall, gravity had moved the battle between Gabriel and his brother down the slope and out onto the Shepherd's Field. Rafael drove him down yet another time. They had long since stopped yelling and threatening, and their communications had deteriorated to just the blows and holds and kicks of brawling with an undertone of moaning growls and the odd grunt.
Gabriel staggered to his feet and Rafael straightened before him, waiting, his hands in a deceptively relaxed droop at his sides. Gabriel was far beyond himself with rage. Rafael had long since lost his anger and was merely blocking and throwing, in cold and calculating bursts of irritating effectiveness.
Gabriel lunged and he was down again, looking up at Rafael with a blood-smeared, tear-smudged expression of animal wrath. Rafael straightened his robe, wiped the blood from his lip and nose, and waited quietly for Gabriel to rise.
Gabriel pushed up, tottering like a drunken mortal, his breast heaving. He lifted his fists and dragged at the air. Then he faltered backward and sat down in a defeated heap, gasping for breath and staring at the night sky through the eye that wasn't swollen shut.
Rafael sat beside him and stared up at the sky also. "I have been waiting to do this for years now." He lifted a bloody forearm with studied indifference. "I know I feel the better for it. How about yourself?"
"If I could move," Gabriel gulped and tried to slow his panting. "I'd bash you again, you--"
"Whenever you are ready, brother dear," Rafael offered graciously.
"You'd only beat me again," Gabriel said.
"There is that," Rafael sighed.
"Why are you here?" Gabriel touched his swollen eye and flinched.
"Strange as it may seem, Gabriel, we have cast our lot with you."
Gabriel looked sideways out of his good eye at his brother.
"Do you think you are ready to listen now?" Rafael tore a strip off his robe and began binding his arm.
"Do I have a choice?"
"Not really." Rafael finished winding the bandage, but he could not tie it with one hand. Gabriel reached over and tied it for him.
Rafael's splendid reserve deserted him in the face of that single, simple kindness. He bowed his head forward and was silent for a long while.
"See?" he said finally. "I often said you would teach me how to weep."
"Oh, Rafael," Gabriel was utterly shaken to see actual tears in his wise brother's eyes. "I never meant to injure you so seriously. Where are you hurt?"
Rafael's mouth tried to smile. He laid his hand over his heart. "You did not injure me bodily, brother, but you have wounded all of us mortally, nonetheless."
"I am listening, brother," Gabriel vowed. "I am listening as I never listened before."
Rafael breathed heavily. "The four of us gathered together after you left and we spoke endlessly about what we should do, what we could do, to help you. It was finally decided that I should discover more about the vision we saw concerning Mirriam. Having escaped the Beltane, her future, which had only been a possibility, became inevitable. We were part of that future and I decided to move backward from that point and see what happened to lead her to such a pass, as well as to determine how we might be affected.
"This was very complicated since I was moving in the dark, with no reference, reaching out gradually from that point in time towards other threads in the pattern, like an ant traversing a tapestry and trying to ascertain the picture thereon.
"Your brothers helped me, or I should not have been able to do it in the time we had, but I did finally form an understanding." Rafael paused abruptly.
Gabriel watched his brother's face drawn into something very like mortal aging, a ghastly haggard transformation that was painful to see. "Rafael?"
"Forgive me, I--. What I understood led me to advance from that point forward into time and build the pattern beyond. We did this in small steps at first, all of us, together, but finally it was more than we could bear to know.
"I was unwise. I returned to the seeing alone, and I forced myself to perceive much farther--." Rafael stopped again. He reached out and touched Gabriel's cheek sadly. "I will not take you through all of it, but you asked why we were here, and this is the answer."
Gabriel had been in these visions with Rafael before. They were always filled with terror and despair, poor mortals who wished for death, the candidates for The Chosen of the Beltane sacrifice. He was surprised to find himself in a place that was sunny and cheerful.
He looked upon a simple room, beige walls of sun and shadow, molded in corners and angles, counterpointed with the darker shapes of benches and tables and plain-robed men, scattered round, some in darkness, some in the warm light of the several windows.
What is this place? Who are these men?
Gabriel, these men are waiting for their Master to join them. He has sent them to this house in Galilee, at Beit Said, by the lake. He is coming with others of their group to join them. They are excited because they have not seen him for several months and they all love him dearly and have missed him dreadfully.
Who are they? What are their names?
Oh, goodness. This took us a long time to sort out--because they have such an odd way of naming each other, because so many of them have the same name--but I think I have it straight. There are the three Joshuas, all sons of Joshuas, and the three Greeks, and the two Simons, and the two James', and Jude, John, Andrew, and Eli.
Gabriel was impressed, but he did not find the answer very helpful. He thought he would watch the men for a moment and then ask their names again.
Most of the men seemed about the same age, slightly younger than Joseph's brother. A few were much younger than that. Two men sat at a table by the door, one of them working sums and mumbling to himself. The man sitting across from him looked very familiar. He sat with his back to the wall, his face half in shadow, watching the others and counting out stacks of coins.
Not that there were many to count. He seemed to be fidgeting with them waiting for the other man--one of the younger ones, he sported only the wispy beginnings of a beard--to finish the sums.
Who are those two?
The older man is James the Elder. They also call him James the Just. He is a son of Joshua. He is quite the most sober member of the group, very devout, highly educated, but a little inflexible at times.
And the other.
That is one of the Joshua's Joshua. All three are surnamed God's Gift, but they call them that in different languages: Nathaniel, Mattathias, Zebdi. I think this one is Matthias, no, Matthew. They do not like him very much. He worked for a time as a tax collector at Tiberius on the other side of the lake. His brothers are sitting over there on the floor. The one in the green is James the lesser and the young man to his right is John.
But isn't James the Elder also a son of Joshua?
Different Joshua. That is what makes it confusing.
Gabriel agreed. His attention wandered over to the knot of men seated on the floor. One of their number, a tall brunette, was telling an elaborate joke and they were rolling with each new turn in the story.
"So," the tall man said. "Here was poor Matthew in one terrible dilemma. What was he to do?" He turned to the group seated at a second table, four of the older men, two of them blond.
"And I'm sure I don't know," said a heavy-set, brute of a man at the table.
The blondes laughed and slapped the table top. The fourth man woke up suddenly from some quieter realm.
"As sure as I am you'll tell me even if I wring that scrawny neck of yours to try and shut you up, Hunch," the large man at the table growled.
"Neck?" The man who was telling the story tilted his head over on his lifted right shoulder and let his right arm dangle as if he were palsied. "What's wrong with my neck?"
Everyone roared, except for Matthew, who still couldn't get his figures to tally.
Who is the big man at the table?
That is one of the Simons. He is sitting with the three Greeks, Horse Lover, Farmer's Son, and Proud Mouth. Let the Father strike me down, but that is what they call them. And do not ask me which is which.
Well, Gabriel thought, at least they are spared being called "Hunch."
Why do they call him "Hunch?"
His right shoulder is just a little higher than the left and he is so tall he is always bending down--to get through doorways, to speak with shorter folk. He has developed a stoop. It is something of a running joke with them. They are always asking Hunch why the Master doesn't heal him, and he replies, "If I can forego being dunked in that cold water again, then Papa give me two humps and I shall praise Him all my days." He has a sister--no, cousin--who is almost as tall as he. They call her Tower and they call him Hunchback, Hunch.
"Matthew was so in love with this lady, he could not eat, he could not sleep." Hunch craned his neck--which was actually well-muscled, as was the rest of him, but his length made him seem scrawny. He stared over at James the Elder and Matthew. "He could not even add two and two."
Hunch leaned over and whispered in the youngest man's ear.
Who is that?
That is Eli.
Eli piped up in the discordant tones of his adolescent throat, "He could not even notice that the third set in the second line is off by twelve."
Matthew checked and made the correction. "Thank you, Hunch." he snorted in less-than-grateful tones.
Hunch bowed excessively. His adoring audience cheered.
Name me the others on the floor.
To the left of James the Less, are the other Simon and his brother, Jude. They are brothers of James the Just, all sons of Joshua.
James and Simeon and Jude. Joseph's sons? No wonder James looked familiar. He was the image of his father.
Just so, Gabriel. Simon and Jude are come into this group from the Zealots, the Sicarris. They are as unlike their reserved older brother, as you are from me.
Gabriel turned his attention from Rafael's commentary, back to Hunch's story.
"So there he is, poor, poor Matthew--"
They all echoed, poor, poor Matthew, and Matthew sank disgustedly in his seat.
"--in the most compromising of situations with his lady love, and her husband just outside the door," Hunch paused.
Simon--not Simon Zelotes--roared finally, "What 'appened?"
Hunch smiled, his gold-brown eyes twinkling wickedly, "Well, his lady being clever--and perhaps practiced in this eventuality--dresses Matthew quickly in one of her robes." Hunch stood up, unwinding his long legs in one fluid motion, unexpected for one so tall. He pulled up his shawl over his head and lifted the corner as a veil for his face.
Then he flounced round the circle of his audience describing how Matthew did such a good job of pretending to be the new servant girl, that the husband had lured Matthew out in the hallway and propositioned him. When he swooped by James and Matthew, batting his eyes in a parody of demure maidenly refusal, even James laughed and, despite himself, so did Matthew.
Then Hunch dropped the shawl and slipped effortlessly into the character of the husband. "Oh, gentle damsel," he crooned. "Do give us a kiss."
Hefty Simon fell off his bench in apoplectic hysteria. The rest of the men likewise squealed and moaned that they would die if Hunch did not stop.
But Hunch went dancing round the room, his head almost, but never quite, banging the low roof beams, singing a song about poor, poor Matthew, in a voice that would have curdled milk.
He stopped suddenly, mid-verse and the gaiety dissolved in solemnity and reverence.
Two men were standing at the door.
James the Elder rose to see them in and all the others stood in respectful silence.
Gabriel knew the first man, Joseph's eldest son, Joshua.
Nor did he need to ask who the second man was. Standing in the sun of the doorway, the young man looked as if he were crowned in glory. His hair was pale gold, silken curls. His beard was the same luminous color, framing the lush petal lips that Gabriel recognized immediately as Mirriam’s. And the man's eyes were palest blue, nearly the silver of Rafael’s and every bit as intense.
And when he spoke, the clear, pure tenor filled the room with its sweet and sorrowful song. "They have taken John to Herodium under guard," he said. "We are all in danger now."
Gabriel vaguely heard his brother explain that the John they spoke of was the son of Isacariah and Elizabeth. He was a great prophet, the Master for whom these men had waited. Gabriel could think only of his son, standing in the light of the door.
Eli began to sob. Hunch knelt down beside him and held him in the impossible length of his arms.
James the Elder shook his head and his shoulders sagged beneath the weight of sorrow which lay on them all. "Tell us a story, Hunch."
Hunch sat down on the floor and lifted Eli onto his lap as if he were a child. The others settled around him. He thought a moment, stroking Eli's head. "There once was a fine and noble man, who put aside his father's wealth and went to live in the wilderness of Jordan, preaching the way of the living water..."
The vision dissolved into a night in the Field of Shepherds.
"Thank you for showing me my son," Gabriel said.
Rafael studied his brother closely. "You recognized the young man at the door?"
"Yes, of course. He is exceedingly fair and fine. He will no doubt be a leader of this group in time. You saw how they responded to him, how they listened."
"We all thought the same, at first. It is the way he looks, or our expectations of what such a child must be like as a man, or something else. Gabriel, the man at the door is Andrew, Simon's brother, the other son of Jonas."
"That was not my son? My son was not in the vision?"
"He is there, the third Joshua."
Had he looked past his son, unknowing? Gabriel tried to remember. "There was the Joshua Zebdi, Joseph's firstborn, at the door. And Joshua Matthew at the table doing sums. Was he sitting on the floor with the others?"
Rafael's grin widened with each guess. "It took us several times to get the answer, and even then, we did not believe it until we had searched beyond this point."
Gabriel shook his head slowly. Not the Greeks. Not Jonas sons. "Eli?"
Rafael lifted his right shoulder slightly and laid his head on it.
Gabriel's mouth flew open, "God in Heaven! The Hunchback!"
"I told you. He is not a hunchback. He just has one shoulder that is a little higher and he--"
"Oh, shut up!"