Lilah (23 page)

Toviyyah is fat, not unlike one of Parysatis' eunuchs. I suppose he is younger than his corpulent frame and air of dissatisfaction suggest. He is a child of Israel but his family have refused to recognize Yahweh as their God and submit to His will. On the contrary, they took advantage of the abandoned state of Jerusalem after the exile to pillage what wealth remained, suck out its strength and turn it to their advantage. And it was that wealth that he displayed proudly before us that morning.

But while it was easy enough to dazzle those who had always lived amid the poverty and decay of Jerusalem, we were unimpressed: we had come from Susa and Babylon, the treasure-house of the world.

We might have eaten dust on our journey and might look like beggars, but we recalled vividly the palaces of Babylon and the Citadel of Susa.

A silver ladder was brought to help Toviyyah down from his she-camel. He asked to see Ezra, his sharp voice echoing between the pools.

Ezra stepped forward, hair covered with ashes, tunic open, the precious leather case containing Moses' scroll swinging against his bare chest. ‘Do you want me?' he asked, surprising us with his composure.

Toviyyah's lower lip curled. He circled round Ezra, and regarded the priests, Levites and zealots disdainfully. They were dressed as shabbily as Ezra, a
strange species that seemed half man, half animal and dwelt among the ruins. They moved close to Ezra, forcing Toviyyah and his guards to step back.

‘It seems you have a letter from the King of Kings in Chaldea!' he whined. ‘You entered the city of Jerusalem brandishing this letter and proclaimed it your home! You're saying the Temple belongs to you and your priests, and everyone here must submit to you and your throng because you have that papyrus scroll in your possession!'

Angry voices were raised in protest. But Ezra put up his thin hand and demanded silence. He pulled Artaxerxes' letter from the case where he kept it, along with the scroll of the Law, and waved it under Toviyyah's nose, although he took care not to let him touch it.

‘You're right about one thing,' he said. ‘This is indeed a letter from Artaxerxes, King of Kings, master of the kingdom of Judaea. But you're wrong about the rest. Jerusalem isn't mine, any more than it's yours, and the Temple doesn't belong to the priests. But this city was set aside for the children of Israel by Yahweh. This is the Temple, and this the altar, where the people of the Covenant present burnt offerings to their God. This is the land of Canaan where the Law and the justice Yahweh taught to Moses must hold sway. And I am Ezra, son of Serayah, son of the sons of Aaron. The reason I'm
here to bring this about is because the hand of Yahweh is upon me and upon those who follow me.'

This long speech seemed to glide off Toviyyah, like water from a bird's feathers. He looked at the huge crowd and smiled. ‘And just because you're supported by Yahweh,' he mocked, ‘you think that all you have to do is come here with a letter from the Persian king and your dreams will come true?'

Ezra said nothing.

Toviyyah's smile grew wider. ‘You're a young hothead. This letter you hold is worthless. I, Toviyyah the Ammonite, rule here, and I decide what's good and what's bad. And don't count on the armies of the Persian to support you – they haven't been here for many moons.'

His words were greeted with an icy silence. Pleased with this reaction, Toviyyah flung open his arms and addressed us all in his shrill voice, which was even shriller when he spoke loudly. ‘Look at you, all of you! You arrive in a country your fathers' fathers left because they couldn't defend it. Your God abandoned them, as He abandoned Jerusalem. Your fathers' fathers went off to the rich fields of Babylon and forgot all about Jerusalem and their God. And now you've come back, singing, but knowing nothing about the land of Judaea. You've come back, proclaiming, “This is my home, it
belongs to me, I should burn incense in the Temple!” But I say, “No!”'

The priests and zealots around Ezra muttered angrily, but my brother again ordered them to be silent.

Toviyyah's fat cheeks shook with rage. He pointed at the men covered with ashes. ‘It's Toviyyah who decides whether or not the walls of Jerusalem can heal. It's Toviyyah, the great servant of Ammon, who decides what's good and what's bad for the Temple of Jerusalem. And it's Toviyyah who receives taxes.'

Again, his words met with an icy silence. We were all too stunned to protest. What he had said was worse than anything we had expected. His words had clothed truth in lies and trampled on our most cherished hopes.

But Toviyyah was enjoying himself. ‘Ammon bids you all welcome,' he said, smiling contemptuously. ‘He'll be happy to receive his share when you start working in the fields. For the fields beneath your feet, where you've pitched your tents, don't belong to you and never will. Here, the Persians are of no importance – the soldiers of Egypt and Greece chased them away long ago. The only person who can protect you is me! I have two thousand armed men for that.'

At that moment, a stone struck his thigh.

Ezra had thrown it.

The gathering was plunged into disarray. Toviyyah's guards moved to seize Ezra, but the young zealots rushed forward, yelling, and pushed them back. The guards seemed ready to fight, but a gesture from Toviyyah stopped them in their tracks. He knew it was pointless: there were ten of them and twenty thousand of us. But he knew that he had other means with which to strike at us.

In their anger, the young zealots jostled Toviyyah, then lifted him onto his she-camel, which bellowed with fear and stood up so abruptly that he almost fell off. He clung to the saddle, waving his arms and squealing like a frightened bird, until finally he regained his balance . . . only to find that he was facing his camel's hindquarters. The crowd exploded with laughter.

Imagine, Antinoes, my love, twenty thousand people laughing! The sound must have echoed as far as the Jordan.

Only when the laughter had died down did Ezra speak.

‘You're wrong again, Toviyyah. Since the day Nebuchadnezzar entered Jerusalem, your father and your father's father have been wrong and have passed on their error to you. Now, a man may deceive himself, but a child of Israel cannot deceive Yahweh. You think the letter that brought me here was written by Artaxerxes – but no! It was the will
of Yahweh, His desire to return to His Temple, that dictated this letter. And you're wrong if you think we fear you – all we need is the help and strength of Yahweh. But you did right in coming here today. As you see, we've torn our tunics and covered our hair with ashes. It is the day of purification. Today we're preparing to wash the soil of Judaea clean of the refuse that covers it. And you are part of that refuse.'

Deathly pale now, Toviyyah, with his guards' help, turned in his saddle. Then he looked once again over the vast crowd. All at once, he burst out laughing. He whipped the neck of the she-camel and disappeared into the city. A little later, we saw him trotting along the road to Jericho.

We had mocked him, but as we watched him riding away, his laughter seemed more threatening than all of his poisonous words.

And not without reason.

That night, the fourth or fifth after we had arrived, the war began.

The tents furthest from the walls of Jerusalem were laid waste. Blood flowed, and screams tore the air. Men, women and children were cut down without pity. Wagons burned, lighting the darkness so that it appeared to be broad daylight and we could see clearly that the worst was yet to come.

It feels strange to be describing these events. They took place only ten months ago, but to me they already seem very distant.

Perhaps it is because I have seen so many dismembered bodies since then, so many women running through the night, clutching their dead children to their breasts or screaming in pain.

Not that I've become hardened – don't think that, Antinoes, please don't think that! But there comes a moment when you become like a grave that has been filled to the brim and cannot take any more bodies.

And I, who have only ever really learned one skill, that of helping women to give birth, must support those who open their legs so that the blood of life can flow once more, while my memory is still red with the blood of death.

I had to stop writing, because I was sent for.

Sometimes, the absurdity of what I am writing paralyses my wrist, and I cannot move my stylus across the papyrus. If only I could be like a gourd or a jar from which the contents pour out until at last it is empty. I am speaking to you, Antinoes, my husband, yet all the things I have told you remain inside me.

Perhaps that is one of the ways in which Yahweh is taking His revenge.

You try to remember, to force the words out of your mind to stop it exploding with pain. But then you suffer all over again because you remember . . .

But who knows? Perhaps you will read these words, my distant husband, and they will rekindle in you your love for Lilah.

That first disaster lent weight to Yahezya's words and gave him the courage to go back to Ezra and the priests, and put forward his ideas again. Still as calm and gentle as ever, he explained that our attackers had not been Toviyyah's men. ‘However wicked he is, and however much he may hate us, Toviyyah wouldn't strike us. He claims he knows nothing about Yahweh, but he fears Him. Yesterday Toviyyah tried to obtain your submission in return for his protection. You refused both. So, he spread the word that your wealth was for the taking, like ripe fruit on a tree, and that he wouldn't defend you.'

‘Who attacked us, then?' people demanded.

‘Either the Moabites, or Gershem's men. From the arrows and the other traces we found, I'd say it was Gershem's men. Gershem's kingdom adjoins the territory of Judaea along the Jordan. In the last few years, he's attacked Jerusalem many times, just as he did during the time of Nehemiah. Not lately, though – Jerusalem was too poor and empty for him.'

‘How can we be at war with these people? We don't even know them.'

‘You
are
at war,' Yahezya assured us sadly. ‘Here you are, defenceless, unarmed, with thousands of women and children. You have wagons filled with clothes, furniture, carpets – even gold. Pardon my frankness, Ezra, but your weakness is as obvious as your wealth. A godsend for those whose only law is plunder and war.'

These words left everyone dumbfounded. I am quite sure Ezra had never thought about this. To be honest, neither had any of us, including me.

Zachariah was the first to object that no one had come to Jerusalem to make war, and that Yahweh could not have been waiting for us on the soil of Judaea merely to see it soaked with our blood.

‘That may be so,' Yahezya replied. ‘But you don't know how things used to be here in Jerusalem. Nehemiah rebuilt the walls, and he never hesitated to fight. “We're rebuilding Jerusalem,” he used to say, “with a trowel in one hand and a sword in the other.”'

There were cries of protest, but Ezra agreed with Yahezya. ‘He's right. Master Baruch, who taught me everything I know, showed me letters that Nehemiah wrote to Babylon and the King of Kings. Those were indeed his words: “With a trowel in one hand and a sword in the other”.' And he
declared that from this day on, those words would be ours too.

So began our new life in Jerusalem.

The purification of the Temple was postponed. Some set to work building permanent houses inside the city while others repaired the holes in the outer walls.

Yahezya led Zachariah and his people to a place near Jericho, where the blacksmiths worked, to buy swords and spears. It was a risky undertaking: Toviyyah's soldiers might have slaughtered them on the road before they had even acquired weapons to defend themselves. In fact, they did not encounter the slightest difficulty. Yahezya was almost certainly right: Tovviyah refused to recognize the power of Yahweh but he feared it all the same.

As soon as they returned, groups of men were formed and trained to defend us.

And so, before the great heat of summer made the work harder still, the city was repopulated, the streets cleared, the fields ploughed and sown. It was also a time when bonds of true friendship formed. The work varied a great deal from one house to another. Ezra and I were given a narrow building near the Temple. It only required about ten days of work, because the roof had not fallen in, but other houses took much longer. We all helped each other unhesitatingly, as the need arose.

Meanwhile Sogdiam had transformed a lean-to into a kitchen for all. It proved a great blessing for the many who had only the poorest of hearths. Every morning and evening old women, who had grown fond of Sogdiam, came to help him bake hundreds of loaves. He told them stories, making them weep with laughter – I had had no idea he knew so many. Day after day, they supplied food for a starving people, a people exhausted from cutting stone and wood, mixing and carrying mortar.

Those who went to the hills to fell the trees we needed or to pull blocks of stone from cliffs known to the old men of the city were accompanied by armed men. But, apart from a few fights with thieves, there were no more attacks.

In a short time, the city had come back to life. Children ran in the streets. Gardens sprang up. Workshops opened. Those who had had trades in Susa practised them again. People smiled at each other. Couples came to see the priests, and sometimes even Ezra, to ask for their marriages to be blessed. Children were born. When the building work ended, I went back to working with the midwives who had taught me the skills of childbirth. Every day, I had the great joy of welcoming one or two new lives into the world.

To everyone's surprise, even Yahezya's, Toviyyah did not reappear. He made no attempt to approach
Jerusalem and check on the progress of the rebuilding.

Merchants came to buy and sell. They told us that the neighbouring peoples were talking about us, with respect and a degree of fear.