Zealot (10 page)

“I know. I wish I could have, too.” Deborah had never got-ten along well with Avram’s father. He’d made it abundantly clear
he felt his only son had married far beneath his station. It was Deborah’s hope that once they had children, Mordecai would
accept her as the mother of his grandchildren. “If it makes you happy, we’ll name our firstborn Mordecai.”

“Now, what makes you so certain our firstborn will be a boy?” Avram wondered.

Deborah laughed. “Because you’re a man, and that’s all men ever want.”

“Haven’t you realized by now, I’m not like other men?” Avram tugged playfully on one of her ears. “A beautiful little Deborah
or two will always be welcome. Or three. Or five. As many as you want.”

She ran a hand across his taut belly. “Easy for you to say, you don’t have to bear them all.” She rolled over slightly so
she could Look him in the face. “And we name the first girl-child Tamar.”

“Tamar.” His voice caught a hit as he said the name. “I think my mother would be very pleased.”

Deborah lay her head on Avram’s chest. “Then it’s decided. Tamar and Mordecai.”

“And Zebediah and Benjamin and Dan and Tabitha and Esther and-”

She reached up and put a hand across Avram’s lips. “Stop!” she laughed. “I’m exhausted just thinking about it.”

There was a knock on the wooden door to their chamber. Deborah and Avram sat up. “Yes?” Avram called out as he stood, reaching
for his tunic.

“It’s your father, Avram, I need to speak with you.”

“It’s late,
Aba
, give us a moment.” Avram handed Deborah her gown with a weak smile and a shrug, then pulled on his own tunic. When he was
sure his wife was decorously clothed, he untied the latch and opened the door to his father. “Welcome,
Aba
.”

Avram’s father stepped into the room. The years of the Revolt had not been kind to Mordecai ben Enoch. He was a bearded man
of middle age, grown gray and stooped beyond his span of years. Lately he’d taken to walking with aid of a cane. He inclined
his head briefly toward his daughter-in-law. “Deborah.”

“Welcome,
Aba
. Would you like some wine?”

If he had heard her, Mordecai did not show it, moving straight to his son. “Avram, we must talk.”

Avram waited a moment, and, when further conversation was not forthcoming, he prompted: “So, talk.”

“Not here.” He indicated Deborah with his eyes. “Alone.”

Avram looked at him, unable to read his expression, then reached for his girdle and began to tie it around his middle. “Fine,”
he said, “alone.” Without prompting, Deborah found his sandals and knelt at his feet to lace the thongs.

The silence in the tiny room was palpable. Helping her husband dress, Deborah thought to lessen it. “Guess what we’ve decided
to name our first girl,
Aba
. Tamar, after Avram’s mother, God rest her soul.” There was no response from Mordecai. “I hope that pleases you.”

A dark shadow passed across Mordecai’s face, then he said, as gently as his gruff demeanor would allow, “That would please
me.” He stepped out into the corridor, “Come, Avram.”

Avram picked up his mantle and followed his father out of the room. Deborah closed the door behind them.

As soon as they had passed out of earshot of Avram’s room, his father took him to task. “Why do you fill her head with such
things?”

“What things?”

“You know. This nonsense about children…and the future. She should know the truth.”

“Why? So we can all share this pit of despair you’ve been living in? What’s the harm in living with a little hope?” Avram
stopped walking and turned to face his father, angrily. “What should I tell her,
Aba
? That in a week’s time she’ll be forced to pleasure some oily Senator and his pagan friends in a house of decadence in Rome?
Or that by sundown tomorrow I’ll be dead on a cross along the road to Ein Gedi? Or that maybe I’ll be lucky, and face the
wild beasts in the arena at Caesarea instead? Is
that
what I should tell her?” He could feel his eyes beginning to well with tears, tears he could never allow his father to see.
He turned away from the old man and started walking quickly down the corridor that ran between the two walls ringing the fortress.

Mordecai hurried to catch up. “Son, I—”

“She’s not stupid,
Aba
. She knows. Everyone knows. But when we give up hope, we’ve lost.” He tried to look his father in the eyes, but the tears
came again. He turned away and leaned his head against the stone wall, his shoulders shaking with sobs.

“Avram…” Mordecai reached out and touched his son on the shoulder.

Avram shook him off roughly and turned on him with an icy glare. “Why did you come here? You said you wanted to talk about
something. For once, let it not be about my wife.”

“The wind has shifted. The last barricade is on fire,” Mordecai said quietly. “Now even God has forsaken us.”

Avram’s heart sank. When the giant Roman battering ram built at the top of the earthen ramp had broken through first one,
then the second stone wall just days before, the defenders of Masada had quickly built wooden walls in the breach with loosely
packed dirt between to cushion the blows of the battering ram and render it useless. But what the Romans couldn’t batter down
they attempted to burn, hurling flaming torches at the wooden wall. When the fires were fast lit, the winds suddenly shifted
to the south, blowing the Romans’ fire back upon them and their siege engines, clearly a sign of God’s intervention in the
eyes of many of the besieged.

Now the winds had shifted to the north, driving the fire quickly through the barricades. There was no use in denying that
the Romans would try to take the fortress at first light. “So now we fight,” Avram said, resigned. “After three years, maybe
it’s finally time.”

“I don’t know what we do, Avram,” his father said. “There are ten thousand men down there, and we are less than a thou-sand,
even if you count the women and children. I don’t know what we do.”

Through the stone walls, they could hear the sounding of the shofar, calling the men of Masada to gather. “It sounds as if
we’re about to find out,” Avram said, putting on his mantle as he led the way to the door leading to the interior of the fortress.

Masada, Idumaea: 14 Nissan 3833 (
A.D.
73)

The men gathered at the crossroads near the northern end of the mesa, where the paths between the palace, the villas, the
barracks and the storehouses all converged. It was a long walk, nearly a third of a mile from the tiny stone room in the southern
wall Avram shared with Deborah. a walk made longer by his father’s halting gait. Far below them in the camps of the Romans,
they could see the lights of a thousand campfires, hear the shouts and obscene songs of the soldiers passing the night as
clearly as if they occupied the rock with them. Tonight Avram thought he could detect more activity and a tension-filled energy
from the camps than on other nights, as if the Romans could sense as well that the coming dawn would spell the end of the
siege of Masada.

Despite Avram’s urging his father to hurry, the meeting had begun by the time they arrived. Eleazar, Masada’s commander, stood
at the top of the stairs to the administration building, addressing his people. Eleazar was a tall, muscular man with flowing
hair and beard who carried himself like a soldier, and in Avram’s eyes he could do no wrong. As he came within earshot, Avram
was astounded to hear Judah, Deborah’s brother and one of Eleazar’s most trusted captains, openly confronting his commander.

“You are a coward! In your fear, you have lost your manhood, and I will follow you no longer.” The crowd of men shouted in
response, many trying to shout him down, others sounding their allegiance with Judah.

In the crowd, Avram found Simeon, another of his unit, and tapped him on the shoulder. “What’s happened?”

Simeon turned to him, his face a mix of fear and confusion. “Eleazar says that we’ve no hope against them. That we should
burn the complex and kill ourselves before daybreak.”

“No.” Avram was astounded. He was ready to fight, eager to take as many Roman devils with him as he could before he died.
“This can’t be.”

On the stairs, Eleazar bore the shouts and jeers from the crowd with great patience for some time. Then he spoke again. “We
cannot win a battle of weapons against the force arrayed against us. The Empire has us outnumbered twenty to one. To believe
otherwise would be madness. On this, we are in agreement. Correct?”

Begrudgingly, the crowd acknowledged their agreement. After watching the massive military force of the Roman Empire marshal
beneath them, only a foolish few harbored belief any longer that the meager forces of Masada could somehow defeat Rome and
liberate their homeland.

Eleazar continued, “Then if we cannot save our lives, I say we save our honor. And the honor of our people.”

Judah climbed the stairs, challenging. “There is no
honor
in suicide. You want honor for the people of Israel? I say we fight like men and we die like men. Let our deeds be remembered.”

”That’s fine for you, Judah. You fight like a man and preserve your honor. But what about our wives? Our daughters? Look on
them.” Although it was forbidden, more than a few of the women of Masada had gathered in the shadows of the buildings surrounding
the meeting place to hear the decision of their men. It was toward them Eleazar addressed his words. “What of their honor?
Look them in their sweet and trusting eyes and tell them you wish to see them captive on a Roman’s couch. Made whore to the
Romans’ lust, slaves to their perverted appetites.” Some of the women present began to cry. Some fled away into the shadows
back to their homes, a few braving the wrath of the assembly to run to their husbands, clutching them for comfort. Eleazar
took little note of them. “And what about your sons, Judah. Dragged in chains to heathen lands, raised as heathens to service
heathens. Is that how the People of God are to be remembered?”

Judah was obviously affected by his leader’s words. Head low, eyes downcast, he started back down the stairs to join the throng
at Eleazar’s feet. But Eleazar stopped him, holding out his hands. “Put away your pride, Judah, and join me in one final victory
over the Romans.” Judah hesitated, the pain of his decision on his agonized face, then grabbed Eleazar’s hands like a lifeline.
The commander pulled Judah to him in a close embrace, then, with his captain by his side, turned to his people. “We will save
the honor of our fathers and their fathers before them. Our deeds here today
will
he remembered!”

The meeting ran late into the night, and by the time it had ended, the men of Masada were united in their resolve to snatch
the prize of victory from the hands of the Romans. Even Avram, who once dreamed of confronting the Romans face-to-face, conceded
theirs would be a victory in the eyes of God and of history. Each man would be responsible for easing his own family’s passing.
The ten unit captains would then help the men join their families. As the meeting ended, Eleazar, Judah, and the other captains
cast lots on shards of pottery to determine which of them would dispatch the others and put Masada to the torch.

The corridor running between the fortress walls was empty as Avram returned to their chamber, but behind the doors that lined
it, Avram could hear the wailing and howls of grief as the men told their families what must be. He didn’t know how he was
going to break the news to Deborah. How to tell her that everything they’d hoped for, everything they’d dreamed of was gone.
That their brief taste of life was over. He knew the look in her eyes would kill him more surely than any blade.

He opened the door to their chamber with trembling hands. Deborah sat on the edge of their sleeping mat, dressed in the embroidered
robe she’d made for their wedding, her hair and face obscured by the wedding veil.

“You know,” he said softly. He moved quickly to sit by her side, pushing back the veil to reveal her face.

“Hard to keep a secret in Masada,” she said, her eyes ringed red from crying, her face dark with the shadows of grief. Avram
reached out to her and pulled her close to him, embracing her as if he’d never let her go. He wished he had words with which
to comfort her, words that would make it all go away, that could restore their happiness. But the only words he had were “I’m
sorry” and the only thing he could tell her was how much he loved her. And he did, over and over again.

“Will it hurt?” she asked in a small voice.

Avram pulled back from their embrace so he could look into her chestnut eyes. “I don’t know,” he said honestly.

“Deborah, if I could take this away from you, you know I would.” His anguished words were choked.

“Avram, it’s all right,” she comforted him. “I can be brave, because I know we’ll be together. We’ll live as man and wife
for all eternity in the world to come.”

“And here I always thought I was boring you with my studies,” Avram smiled wistfully. It was the foundation of Pharisaic belief,
he had once devoted his life to its study, and yet in his dark hour of need it had taken an uneducated woman to remind him
that death was not the end, it was only the beginning. “On the day of Resurrection, we
will
be together again.”