Jerusalem's Hope (31 page)

“It's my arm,” Oren replied, panting. “Plank splintered when it hit. Think . . . something went through . . .”

Crawling around behind the wreckage to Oren's other side, Marcus located the truth of the stonecutter's words. A wooden shard, as sharp as a spear and as broad as a man's palm, had pierced Oren's left arm. The point had emerged from Oren's flesh and was wedged in the debris, pinning the man to the ground.

Benjamin stood nearby, crying out that his father was killed.

“Benjamin,” Marcus snapped. “He isn't dead! Get me a saw! Jump to it.”

When Benjamin didn't respond, Amos brought the requested tool.

Determined not to lose another life to the tragedy, Marcus worked feverishly, bracing his back and legs against another canted fragment of scaffolding. He pressed upward to give himself some working room as he sawed at the wooden barb to cut it loose from the beam.

All the time Marcus could hear Benjamin muttering, “It's those shepherds! They've killed my father! They did this! They caused this! I'll make them pay.”

As the saw chewed through the splinter, Marcus heard Jehu's voice.

“Do you need help?” the shepherd called.

With a jagged chunk of rubble, Benjamin gave an incoherent yell and rushed toward Jehu, his weapon ready to strike.

Marcus was caught. Oren's arm was almost free, but not quite. Worse, the bulk of the plank pressing on Marcus' back had to be shifted to prevent it from falling and further injuring Oren.

The centurion needed to intervene between Benjamin and Jehu, but could not.

He couldn't prevent what was about to happen.

Jehu, Lev, and five other shepherds were in the front rank of those who arrived on the scene of the tower's collapse.

Ha-or Tov and Emet were ten paces back.

All looked stunned at the ferocity of Benjamin's attack.

Jehu warded off the first blow with an upraised shepherd's crook, but Benjamin's assault didn't stop. In a frenzy he slashed right and left. As he did so, he yelled for the other workmen to come help him kill the saboteurs!

“Are you crazy?” Jehu demanded.

Benjamin paid no heed. A swipe of his weapon sliced open the back of Jehu's hand. Another wallop creased Jehu's forehead, and he dropped to one knee.

Lev swung his crook at Benjamin but missed, and then the battle was truly joined.

Roaring about revenge for their comrades killed in the tower's fall, nine laborers swinging mallets and grabbing up rocks waded into the outnumbered shepherds.

Blue Eye snarled and rushed forward.

The mason named Amos struck at the dog. Blue Eye dodged, snapped at Amos' leg, and connected. Off balance, Amos tried to push the dog away.

Lev struck again, hitting Benjamin in the shoulder.

Two workers belabored Jehu, who from his kneeling posture defended himself one-handed against their blows.

Running between Jehu and his attackers, Emet yelled, “Stop! It wasn't shepherds who did this. Stop!”

A sweeping backhand clout of Amos' callused hand knocked him aside.

Blue Eye pounced on the hand, sinking his teeth into bone.

Even as Emet cried out, Amos smashed his hammer against Blue Eye, killing the dog.

With Lev assailed by three other aqueduct workmen, Benjamin returned to the assault on Jehu.

Emet saw the Roman centurion rush forward, but Marcus was too late.

Raising his clenched fists for a two-handed blow, Benjamin brought his stone spike down on Jehu's head.

Lev escaped his attackers and sprinted toward Jehu's defense, but Amos intervened. The shepherd swung his staff at Amos' neck.

Emet heard something snap, then Amos toppled to the ground, falling across the lifeless Jehu.

The boy was shocked into muteness . . . as if he'd never learned to speak a word.

Marcus batted at Lev's staff, knocking the crook from the shepherd's hands. With the point of his sword at Lev's throat he bellowed, “Down weapons, all of you!”

A shepherd ignored the command, acting as if he would strike Benjamin. But the shepherd stopped when Marcus threatened to kill Lev. “If one more blow is struck, this man dies,” Marcus said. “And whoever doesn't obey will be crucified! I'll take this scaffolding apart and use it for crosses!”

Cursing and jostling continued as the panting groups of bloodied men separated, but with Marcus' threat the fight had gone out of them. All knew that a Roman centurion was as good as his word when promising punishment.

All could visualize a line of crosses paralleling the aqueduct and bearing their tortured and dying selves.

Marcus looked in their eyes and saw it: naked fear had replaced the rush of anger.

He shook his head at the absurdity of this senselessly compounded disaster. His own wrath rose up, and he tasted bile in his throat. At that moment he could easily have ordered twenty crucifixions and had no remorse.

But he did not.

Even though he was but a lone man, easily overpowered, such was the authority of Rome that not one of them offered to resume the violence by challenging Marcus. These were not rebels, not assassins, and they had no desire to be martyrs.

Violence ceased as self-preservation came to the fore.

Blame, however, was another matter.

“We came to help!” a shepherd protested. “And he,” the man argued, leveling his staff at Benjamin, “he killed Jehu! They started this!”

“You caused it!” Benjamin said, sweeping his hand toward the ruins of the scaffolding. “You cursed us, and then you made it happen. You killed my father.”

Cries of protest from the shepherds made no impression on the angry masons, but Marcus said, “Oren's not dead. He and the other injured need help.” Then he added bitterly, “Help! Not more bloodshed! I
will
investigate this, and the guilty
will
be punished.” After pausing to let the full weight of the implications sink in, he resumed. “You,” Marcus said to a herdsman, “take Jehu's body. Get your men out of here. Send Zadok to me. Tell him I have Lev at Herodium. He and Oren's son are being held for murder.”

The men of Migdal Eder bore the body of Jehu away on a broken gate.

Excluded from the tight ring of grief, Emet and Ha-or Tov followed at a distance. They were newcomers. Outsiders.

Jehu's eyes were wide, fixed in horror. Blood flowed down his left arm and dripped from his index finger. With each jarring step the dead man seemed to beckon them to follow, first pointing at Emet, and then at the sky.

Emet looked up. The soul of Jehu must still be just a little above them. If the dead suddenly gained insight, did Jehu blame Emet for this?

Emet stepped cautiously around the gruesome trail. Hands trembled. He tucked them into his sleeves. He felt sick. He was to blame for everything. Everything. The sabotage and collapse of Siloam Tower. The death of the stonecutters. The fight.

And this.

Hadn't he heard the voices of watchers in the woods? On the dark hillside hadn't Asher cowed him to silence by threatening to kill him if he told? Now Jehu was dead. Lev in prison. Certainly Lev would be condemned to be crucified. And it was Emet's fault for remaining mute.

“Blue Eye.” Ha-or Tov mourned the dog.

Yes. Yes. And Blue Eye too. The dog was almost a person, wasn't he? Kinder than Lev. Braver than any man. Loyal to old Zadok when Jehu had been a secret complainer.

And yet the carcass of Blue Eye was left in the field. At the thought of their four-legged guardian Emet began to weep quietly.

He tried to say, “My fault,” but his voice would not form the words.

Ha-or Tov attempted to spit. “My mouth. I've got no spit.”

Emet kept his gaze on the path as they dodged red droplets. He lagged farther behind, unwilling for his friend to see that the responsibility for this rested on his shoulders.

“Come on,” Ha-or Tov urged him impatiently.

A messenger was sent ahead to notify Jehu's wife that he was killed.

What would Zadok say when he came back to find everything had gone wrong?

Wailing commenced in the City of David. Emet recognized the sound of keening for what it was, though he had never heard it before.

Strange: the sheep of the doomed flock grazed on, as if nothing had happened. And yet the world of Migdal Eder was shaken.

Women dashed from the houses and ran down the path to meet the procession. Emet raised his eyes long enough to see a woman supported by two others. Jehu's wife. She screamed the name of the fallen man. At the sight of Jehu's body she fell to the ground and flung dust into the air.

Ha-or Tov said, “If Yeshua was here, this wouldn't have happened.”

But Yeshua was far away in the north. Death was unrestrained. Violence unhindered. Men were given over as playthings of fury and sorrow. Heads cracked like ripe melons and life spilled out in the blink of an eye. And there was no putting it right.

Only Jehu was serene.

The killing was not done. They all felt it, knew it. Death whispered in their ears that the men crushed beneath the stones of the shattered tower and this lifeless remainder of a shepherd were glimpses of each living man's destiny.

Emet thought of Lev sharpening his knife on the whetstone in the stable. Soon he too would be dead!

And the son of the stonecutter? Young Benjamin, who had slaughtered Jehu! He would die with Lev!

The makeshift bier was carried above the heads of the shepherds toward Beth-lehem and to Jehu's house.

The pair of boys remained outside as the shepherd was placed solemnly on the floor of the cottage and the sounds of mourning increased.

So many colors of green on the hillside. Flowers bloomed beside the doors of little houses. Terrace gardens, newly planted for summer, were littered with tools flung away at the instant of calamity. Shovels and hoes and sacks of seed among the half-dug furrows identified the moment when everything changed.

There the stones and timbers of the tower collapsed.

There the first blow was struck.

And there Jehu's brains spilled out.

There Lev killed a man and thus put an end to his own future.

Emet, sinking down beside a stone fence, covered his face with his hands. Frail shoulders were racked with sobs. He could not make himself think about Jehu, a man. No. His heart cracked for Blue Eye.

Ha-or Tov awkwardly put an arm around him. “Emet! Brother! Brother! Go ahead. Cry. Go ahead.” Yes. There was relief in tears, but Ha-or Tov could not know the reasons Emet wept.