Take This Cup (25 page)

“Go on,” Timothy urged. Guessing at the cause of my reluctance, he added, “He said you could call on him for help.”

I offered a crooked grin. “That was kind of him.” Sweeping
one hand across my shepherd’s garb, I continued, “But this is daylight. Do I look like I belong inside these walls?”

“So he gives us each another penny and tells us to go away,” Red said pragmatically. “Go on, ring it. If you don’t, I will.”

Plucking up my courage, I gave the rope a tug. We heard no corresponding signal from within.

“Harder!” Timothy ordered.

This time a melodious jangling sounded inside the enclosed courtyard, followed immediately by the rhythm of swiftly tapping feet. We heard the sliding swish of a bolt being withdrawn. The portal was opened by a pleasant-faced woman older than my mother, but of the same size and build, and about the age I guessed my grandmother to be.

“Bless me,” she said, running her eyes over the three of us, then fixing her gaze on me. “However did you get here so soon? And where have you left Abel?”

“Ma’am?” I said. “Is this the home of Joseph the Younger?”

“Of Arimathea the Younger,” Timothy corrected.

“Aren’t you the link boys I sent Abel to summon?”

I was baffled and then grateful when Timothy responded as our leader. With a bow he indicated Red and himself. “We have the honor to be Jerusalem Sparrows. At your service. But we don’t know of any summons, nor were we sent here by anyone named Abel.”

“Then why have you come?” she asked, bending forward. Her brow furrowed, but it displayed the same good-natured lines as her smiling mouth. Suddenly her expression cleared, and she put her knuckles on her hips. “Wait! What did you say your names were?”

“I’m Timothy, this is Red, and the one we guided here . . .
the one who is seeking admittance . . . is Nehemiah of Amadiya.”

She laughed then, a peal of laughter that rivaled the chimes of the bell pull.

The youthful form of Joseph of Arimathea, again wearing my mother’s unique handiwork, emerged from the home’s entry across the courtyard. “Hadassah? Have they come? I want to send for—” As his eyes lighted on me, he stopped.

Grasping my shoulders, Hadassah pulled me in front of her, facing the young master. “I believe you wanted to locate Nehemiah, grandson of Boaz the Weaver?” she said.

The housekeeper ushered us into the receiving room of the home, where I encountered still more surprises: Raheb and his son Tobit, from the caravan, were also there!

“So now our party is complete, I think,” Joseph said. “But perhaps explanations are called for.”

The mystery was soon unraveled. Joseph said, “I did not realize you had traveled with my friends. Otherwise I would have insisted that you come home with me. You see, my father is partners in business with Raheb here, and the two of them with Lazarus of Bethany.”

I was listening to the explanation, but I could not stop staring at Tobit’s face. There were no bandages, and his eyes were not watering or red or puffy.

“They were in the group from Bethany I met on the Temple Mount,” Joseph continued. “And they have been staying in the Bethany home where Jesus of Nazareth has also been residing. I think Tobit may want to add something.”

Both Tobit and his father wore wide grins.

“Healed me!” Tobit responded. “I knelt beside Jesus. He
dabbed my eyes with mud, then told me to go and wash. Now I can see perfectly!”

“And Dinah, my boy Yacov’s wife,” Raheb added cheerfully, “says she believes she will be barren no longer. Says when she touched the fringe of the rabbi’s tallith she felt something change, knows it.”

I had missed my own encounter with Jesus of Nazareth. “That is truly amazing, wonderful news,” I said. Then I asked Joseph, “But you sent for me, sir?”

He smiled. “I thought about it all the way home from the service. It is not an easy or a safe road for a boy to travel to Joppa alone. I have a load of exports I’m taking to a ship waiting there. You can go with me. Two more days, and then on your way.”

Two days, and Jesus no farther away than a home in Bethany? “You are very kind. Thank you.” I could see Jesus, complete my mission, and then locate my family in Joppa. I said as much to the group.

Raheb shook his head. “They’ve gone. The teacher and his band of students.”

“Gone where? Gone far?”

“Far enough, I suppose,” Raheb explained. “The other end of the country. Up to Perea, they said. Complete wrong direction from Joppa altogether.”

Once more I found myself part of a caravan, but it was a far cry from tramping through the brush, herding goats. Joseph of Arimathea rode a fine, prancing sorrel horse at the head of a file of ten camels loaded with trade goods. This was a wealthy commercial venture, carrying the wines of Bethany for shipment
abroad. Wicker baskets strapped to the flanks of the camels each contained amphorae of the latest vintage.

There were no straggling drovers coaxing lame animals, nor any lost children to be accounted for. The journey from Jerusalem to the sea coast would be completed in two days, rather than the weeks I had spent on the trail from Zakho. Instead of walking, I was mounted on a cooperative red-haired donkey named Esau. The bindings securing the fleece pad on which I rode were silk. Though still dressed in my thick coat and shepherd’s boots, I felt like a prince.

We were accompanied by Terah, Joseph’s steward. All the camel drovers were armed with short swords. Counting myself, we made a party of thirteen. As one of the main highways in Judea, the road from Jerusalem to Joppa was patrolled by Roman legionaries, a party of whom overtook us in quick march. The Roman officer, a centurion on a black horse, saluted Joseph as he rode by.

After we passed a village identified for me by Joseph as Emmaus, we entered a narrow, rock-walled canyon. The track descended rapidly from the heights of Jerusalem.

“This is the same route Joshua followed when he routed the Amorites,” Joseph observed. “And the same course Judah Maccabee came up when he launched the great battle near Emmaus and freed our land from the Greeks.”

I was surprised when, a mile later, the road climbed back out of the gorge, crossing the summit of a row of hills to its south.

Once atop the ridge, we paused to let the animals rest. Joseph handed me a bottle of water flavored with lemon juice and a sesame seed cake dripping with honey and scented with cinnamon.

We rested beside a shining bronze plaque affixed to a stone
pylon. Even though I had never been on this road before, I did not need to see the newly placed mile marker to know we were on a recently completed Roman road. The perfectly smooth, level, cobblestone surface, bordered on both sides by curbing, attested to the efforts of the Empire.

“Say what you like about the Romans,” Joseph confided in me, “but they are superior engineers. The two greatest needs of this land are aqueducts for water and better roads. The Romans surveyed this.” He swept his hand over the ravine from which we had emerged. “For a thousand years and more, the road to Jerusalem has gone up that canyon, following every bend of the stream bed. This new route saves three miles of the journey and is much more pleasant.”

The wind out of the west had a surprising saltiness about it. A distant line of dark blue, bisecting the world from north to south, confirmed that I really did scent the ocean.

We camped for the night eighteen miles from Jerusalem. The hill on which we stopped was the last elevation above the coastal lowlands. The Plain of Sharon spread out before us—a tattered blanket sporting patches of brown earth, yellow stubbled fields, and gray rock outcroppings.

The sun was still high in the west. Joseph saw my questioning look and answered my unspoken query. “There is good water here—and some grazing. Better than we would find on the lower slopes. Tomorrow will be an easy half day’s journey.”

Within moments a pavilion was set up for Joseph, which he invited me to share. A fire was kindled, and a haunch of mutton soon roasted on a spit. South of our chosen camping place was a solitary knoll crowned with the tumbled stones of a ruined fortress.

“Gezer,” Joseph said. “Built by the Canaanites long ages ago, then captured by the Philistines and the Egyptians in turn. Later it was fortified by King Solomon.”

“But no one lives there now?” I asked.

“Owls and badgers and foxes. Why?”

“I thought I saw someone moving among the boulders at its summit.”

Shading his eyes against the sunset, Joseph studied the remains of Gezer. “A wild goat, perhaps?” He shrugged. “Tell me again the story your rabbi told you, the one about seeking the infant Jesus.”

Even Rabbi Kagba seldom drilled me as did Joseph of Arimathea on that occasion. He wanted to know every detail, making me rack my brain for barely remembered bits of the tale. Between bites of roast meat and chunks of fresh bread, I tried to keep pace with Joseph’s insatiable appetite for more about Jesus of Nazareth.

“All within the Sign of the Two Fish: Jupiter, the Righteous King, and Saturn, the Lord of the Sabbath . . . coming together and moving apart and coming together again, three times in a year and a half.” I waved my dinner knife toward the horizon. Jupiter, together with Mars and the moon, danced between the signs of the Bull and the Twin Brothers.

“The Sign of the Two Fish means our nation,” Joseph said eagerly. Lifting his chin into the breeze, he murmured wistfully, “Could it be true? Could Messiah come in our lifetime? Could the cup of prophecy be filled and ready to be drained?”

At his words I touched again Joseph’s cup at my waist and remembered more of what my teacher had said. “ ‘And a sword will pierce your heart too,’ ” I quoted from memory.

“Eh? What’s that?”

I recounted what Rabbi Kagba had told me about the prophecy over Jesus’ mother at his dedication in the Temple. “The rabbi did not like the sound of those words.”

Joseph shook his head slowly. “Neither do I. There is much I do not understand. In one place Holy Scripture says Messiah will ‘proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners.’
¹
Like releasing us from the grip of Rome,” he added in an aside to me. “But in another place doesn’t it say, ‘He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities’?
²
How can they both be true? I’ve heard Jesus teach. I’ve seen his miracles. I want to believe in him, but something holds me back.”

The discussion was interrupted by a shout from the shadowed highway: “
Shalom
to the camp.”

Drawing a short sword, Joseph’s steward leapt to his feet and took a stance between his master and the unknown intruder. The ten guards drew their weapons and formed a protective circle about the camp.

“Easy,” said a hooded, cloaked figure, advancing to the edge of the firelight. “I’m alone. No threat to you.”

Terah and the guards relaxed slightly at those words, but I did not. I remembered how Zimri’s band of outlaws had sought shelter at my father’s camp before attacking us.

“Can I come to the warmth?” the stranger inquired.

This man was bulkier than Zimri’s sinewy form, and his voice was gruffer. I let the tension leave my shoulders.

“Come in and welcome,” Joseph invited.

The newcomer squatted between Joseph and me, extending broad, calloused palms toward its warmth. His face bristled with a coarse, wiry beard. The heavy ridges of his eyebrows made his eyes into deep holes above a crooked, flattened nose.

“Is it safe to travel alone so late, even on this highway?” Terah asked.

The lone man shrugged. “Perhaps not.” With those words he stretched, lifting his left hand high above his head.

It was the same signal Zimri had given to launch the bandit attack on my father’s camp! “Joseph!” I said with alarm, but too late.

The robber’s right hand darted into the fold of his robe. A knife flashed in the firelight before he seized me with one arm. He yanked me to my feet and pressed the blade to my throat.

Joseph’s guards sprang forward. The bandit barked at them, “Get back or he dies! I am bar Abba, and you know I mean what I say.”

Bar Abba! The notorious murderer who slaughtered and stole while pretending to be a freedom fighter. This was the assassin Zimri had said he was going to Judea to join.

“Hold!” Joseph shouted to his men. Then to my attacker: “What do you want?”

A ring of cloaked men appeared from the darkness at bar Abba’s sign. There were as many of them as Joseph’s entourage.

“Want?” Bar Abba smirked. “I want your men to throw down their weapons. And then I want your camels and your shipment.”

As the tip of his dagger jabbed my neck, Joseph ordered his men to drop their swords, and they complied.

I recognized Zimri even before he spoke. “Didn’t I tell you this would work?” he said to bar Abba as he strode forward. “For some reason they value the life of this shepherd’s cur.” Approaching me, he threatened, “You are so much trouble. I will enjoy slitting your throat.”

“No, you won’t,” bar Abba corrected. “He makes a valuable hostage. Remember who is chief here. All right, quickly now.”