Take This Cup

  My friend sniffed and wiped his nose with the sleeve of his robe. “Is that the truth? Or are you just making up another story?”

  “Truth,” I insisted. “My teacher, Rabbi Kagba, taught me.”

  The canyon walls were so sheer that finding an incline we could ascend was not easy. Two more box canyons provided no outlet. As it grew still darker, I began to fear we would have to spend the night in the gully.

  “What’s that noise?” Michael asked, then answered his own question. “Hoofs. I hear hoofbeats. They’re coming to find us! Over here!” he called.

  “Wait!” I said urgently, catching him right before he ran toward the sound of riders. “Wait! No one in our caravan has a horse. Camels and donkeys don’t sound like that.”

  “But it doesn’t matter,” he protested. “They will help us.”

  I was not so sure. “Just keep quiet. Remember when we found the caravan that had been attacked by bandits?”

  Michael’s voice squeaked. “And murdered?” Now he looked like he wanted to run the other direction.

  “They won’t turn into this draw,” I explained. “Get behind me. Crouch down and keep still till we see who it is. They won’t see us if we stay below this ledge.”

  The clopping beat of horses being slowly ridden in file echoed off the canyon walls. I did not have to see them before scooting as far back into the shelter as I could. I recognized Zimri’s voice. Clamping my hand over Michael’s mouth, I hissed, “It’s them—the bandits! Don’t move!”

  He gave a trembling nod, and I released his mouth but kept a hand on his shoulder.

  Leading a troop of six riders, Zimri was in advance. The chief murderer did most of the talking, plotting an attack on a group of pilgrims heading west. He spoke of how they would launch the assault when the camp was asleep and the fires burning low. He talked of knifing the men in their bedrolls and carrying away the women and children as slaves.

  I realized with a shudder he was speaking of our caravan. Biting my lip, I squeezed Michael’s arm. We were almost safe. Half of the riders were already past our position.

  Michael tapped me in the back of the head, then on my cheek. Was the boy trying to give away our position? Angrily, I shrugged away his touch. A moment later he tapped harder, drumming my face with his fingertips.

  Pivoting away from the annoying slapping turned my face to the rock wall . . . and brought me eye-to-eye with a horned viper no more than three feet from my nose. The snake’s tongue darted in and out, testing the air. He must have emerged from his den for a night’s hunting.

  Horned vipers are deadly poison.

  The broad, fat, arrow-shaped head lifted from the stone shelf and swung slowly back and forth, as if deciding what to do about me. The serpent was three feet long. Father taught me they could strike more than half of their body length. I was safe for the moment . . . and then the snake slithered another foot forward.

  The last rider in the line of bandits clucked to his mount. Lagging behind the others, he trotted to catch up. The snake heard the change in the rhythm and turned his ugly, evil snout toward the noise.

  I waited, holding my breath, as the horsemen retreated down the canyon.

  When the snake again fixed his unblinking gaze on me, I could not wait any longer. Seizing Michael, I lunged away from the rocks. We tumbled together onto the sand as the viper struck at empty space where my chin had been a moment before.

  Now our line of travel had been decided for us: we scrambled quickly in the opposite direction taken by the bandits. By following the hoofprints in the sand, I knew we would emerge from the ravines eventually.

  And, soon enough, we did.

  “But we’re still lost,” Michael whimpered.

  “Not for long,” I corrected, inhaling the expanse of the heavens the same way I enjoyed breathing the open air. “Look,” I urged my friend, “there’s where the sun set. That star is the jewel on the forehead of Ophiuchus, the Snake Handler.”

  “Snake handler?” Michael repeated nervously.

  “It’s all right,” I reassured him. “He’s winning. I’ll tell you that story some other time. But look, there’s Mizar in the handle of the Plow. Halfway between Mizar and the jewel is our camp.”

  “How do you know?” Michael sniffed suspiciously.

  I shrugged. “I just know. Besides, can’t you smell the smoke of the cookfires? It’s coming from that same direction. Hold my hand. We’ll be there in less than an hour.”

  We spotted the dots of the campfires in only a few minutes and arrived safely well before my allotted time was up.

  When we told of our near encounter with the bandits, and what we overheard, Michael’s mother hugged him fiercely and gave me angry looks, but Hosea thanked me. The caravan captain ordered the guards to be doubled. Then he brought me more praises, together with my supper. I understood that I was not going to be punished for my foolishness.

  Yacov brought in the flock of goats. Not one was missing. Even Beulah had somehow rejoined them, wagging and bleating like the picture of innocence.

  Two Sabbaths later the mood around the caravan’s cookfires was upbeat. So far the trip had been unusually easy, free from bad weather, bandits, and illness. There had been the normal difficulties of life on the trail: animals that pulled free of their pickets and wandered off in the night, straps that broke, dumping supplies and trade goods into the dirt, but nothing major.

  “Tomorrow we reach the river,” Hosea announced to a circle of families, traders, and drovers. “And the Almighty permitting, we will cross it.”

  “The Euphrates,” I whispered to Michael. “It’s the border between the Parthians and the Romans.”

  “Since Sabbath begins at sunset tomorrow,” Hosea continued, “we will rest the night, the Sabbath day, and perhaps one day more. We reached here three days ahead of the best crossing I ever made, and we need to resupply and do mending. An extra day will do us good.”

  I slept next to the remains of the fire, beside Michael. Reena and her granddaughter, Beryl, snuggled together just beyond Michael. Raheb was snoring close to me. Sons Tobit and Yacov and their wives rested in a pair of canvas shelters one rank farther back.

  Raheb’s snoring awakened me. I blinked up at the panorama of stars, trying to recall what Rabbi Kagba had taught me about the sky this time of year. To the south the pale orange dot hovering above my big toe was Mars, what the rabbi had called Ma’Adim, the Adam.

  I examined the starry pattern surrounding Mars. An owl hooted in some rushes off in a dry wash while I pondered. The constellation in which Mars hung was the Sign of the Two Fish. Some said its name linked the two kingdoms of the Jews: Israel and Judah.

  But Rabbi Kagba, while agreeing with that position, also taught something more. He said the image of the fishes, their tails connected by a ribbon, was also a reference to the Jews and the Gentiles. The rabbi quoted the words of the Almighty about his anointed Messiah, as recorded by the prophet Isaiah: “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob . . . I will make you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”1

  Another owl called from the opposite side of the camp. An errant swirling breath of wind tugged a handful of sparks from the dying fire and tossed them aloft to glimmer beside Mars.

  The bandit assault came from both sides of the camp at once. A dozen men, faces wrapped in scarves up to their eyes, wearing dark robes and brandishing short swords, charged in. They attacked in silence from the pitch-black surroundings before bursting into the pale light of the glowing embers.

  I shouted and, in so doing, saved Raheb’s life. A bandit slashed downward at Raheb’s head but missed when my protector rolled out of the way. Jumping to his feet, Raheb parried a second blow with a stick of firewood.

  Others in the camp were not so fortunate. Cries of pain echoed in the night.

  Then the air was split by a trumpet blast. Hosea, an antelope horn to his lips, sounded t
he alarm. “Bandits! Up! Up and fight!” the caravan master shouted.

  Now the night rang with the sound of blows given and received. Across the fire from me, Reena gathered Michael and Beryl to her.

  Tobit and Yacov flanked their father, engaging the lone assailant with their swords, while their father hammered away at him with the chunk of wood. The bandit gave ground before their combined onslaught. The echoing alarm and the speed with which surprise had been lost disconcerted the attackers. They were outnumbered by the men of the caravan by three or four to one.

  A pair of camels, their ties slashed by the marauders, blundered into the scene. They trampled directly across the fire, scattering it and plunging the battle into even greater darkness.

  Driven apart from Raheb and his sons by the animals, the bandit seized the moment to escape, but not empty-handed. Knocking Reena down with his shoulder, he grabbed Beryl and began to carry her away with him while the child kicked and screamed.

  I launched myself at the kidnapper, tackling him around the knees and bringing the man down. Beryl rolled free and ran back to the protection of her grandfather.

  The bandit raised his blade over my head. I winced and cried out, flinging up my arm to ward off the blow. Raheb’s improvised wooden club pinwheeled across the intervening space, smashing into the attacker’s head and his sword at the same moment, and felling him.

  “Away! Get to the horses!” one of the bandits shouted.

  In the next instant the assailants disappeared into the countryside, their black robes allowing the night to swallow them up. “Don’t follow!” Hosea bellowed, then repeated himself to Tobit and his brother, who wanted to continue the battle. “I say, don’t follow! Give them no chance to pick you off in the night. Stir up the fires. Post guards. Tend your wounded.”

  Of all of us in Raheb’s camp only he had sustained any injury, and it was a slight cut on his arm. Our attacker, nose driven back into his skull, was dead.

  Beryl, in the arms of her mother, was still whimpering with fright, but quieter now. All Raheb’s family gathered around me. “Boy, I am in debt to you for two lives tonight,” Raheb said. “For my own and for my granddaughter’s. Command me. Anything of mine is yours.”

  The souk outside the walls of Damascus was a sprawling city in its own right. Camel-traders attempted to outshout grain merchants. Dealers in silk or spice or silver necklaces competed with each other for the attention of passersby from every corner of the Roman Empire and beyond. Next to Antioch, Damascus was the most important city in the Roman province of Coele-Syria, whose borders included the Jewish homeland of Judea.

  Hosea spat noisily when he shared that fact with me. The idea that from an outpost of pagan Assyrians, a pagan Imperial Legate held authority over the Jewish Holy City was worse than distasteful to pious Jews. Then he shrugged. “Of course the Romans have great disdain for all things not Roman, not just Jewish. The present appointee, one Lucius Aelius Lamia, has never been to Syria, much less Jerusalem. They say he never leaves Rome.”

  Damascus existed at the juncture of the highway called Via Maris, which connected the lands of the East to the Sea of Middle Earth, and the King’s Road, leading to the spices of Arabia. The mingling of Syrian dialects with the tongues of Cypriots, Armenians, Nabateans, and Ethiopians was overwhelming to the ear. A form of Greek was used as the trade language, but the sons of Abraham with whom we dealt spoke Aramaic and Hebrew as well.

  Equally confusing to the senses were the sights and smells of the place. I stood in one spot, revolving slowly and gawking. “If Damascus were the ark after the Flood, Noah just opened the gates,” I marveled. “Look at all the strange creatures.”

  “And pickpockets,” Raheb observed wryly. “Don’t forget them. Keep your coins and your wits about you, or someone will make off with them both.”

  At that instant a cry of “Stop! Stop, thief!” resounded from the direction of a dealer in dried fruit, proving Raheb’s point. Few of the other tradesmen even bothered looking up. Most resumed their patter as soon as the disturbance faded into the distance.

  I hitched the parcel containing the cup around so that it rode at the front of my waist.

  The Roman authorities had little concern for either commerce or crime outside the walls. Inside Damascus, it was another story. Tramping squads of Roman soldiers scowled at everyone they met, as if daring us to resist their might.

  “Damascus has a kind of independence,” Raheb told me. “It is the northern-most city of those ten states called the Decapolis. The emperor likes the tax money he collects from here, so Rome’s boot is lighter on its throat.”

  The emperor had even made an effort to show the regard Rome had for the local deity. An earlier temple to the god of the Assyrians, a storm god named Ba’al Hadad, had been dramatically expanded with Roman arches and columns. The structure was then rededicated under what the emperor said was Hadad’s Roman name: Jupiter. Of course the statue dedicated to the worship of Caesar himself was larger and grander than Jupiter’s.

  “Rome is happy to appease the religious sensitivity of conquered people,” Raheb observed with heavy sarcasm. “High Priest Caiaphas would probably let them do the same in Jerusalem if he thought he could get away with it.”

  Outside the pagan temple, merchants sold clay models of a squatting, bearded figure wearing a conical cap and bull’s horns and holding a lightning bolt. It made the Assyrian god look like an angry dwarf. “Unless that’s supposed to be Caesar,” Hosea muttered under his breath.

  I was relieved when we got back to our own circle of camels and tents and away from the clamor. I felt guilty somehow, as if carrying the Cup of Joseph into such an unholy place had further tarnished it.

  I said as much to Raheb around the supper fire that night . . . leaving out the part about the cup, of course.

  “Just remember,” he warned me. “The Almighty cares for the Gentiles too. Didn’t he send the prophet Jonah to warn Nineveh to repent? It was, by all accounts, an even more wicked city than Damascus.”

  Seated with our group and several other families for a supper of fragrant saffron rice and mouth-watering minced lamb, Hosea asked, “Does anyone have a story to share? About Damascus, I mean.”

  To the surprise of everyone, including myself, I waved my hand. “My teacher, Rabbi Kagba, told me a story of Damascus.”

  Bushy eyebrows raised, Hosea gestured for me to proceed.

  “It was thirty-three years ago, he said. My rabbi, who studied the ancient writing, learned Messiah was about to be born in Judea. My teacher came through here on his way to Jerusalem.”

  I stopped, suddenly shy at the way the entire group, adults and children both, were silently, attentively listening.

  “Is that all?” Michael said. “That’s not a story.”

  I resumed. “It was here . . . in Damascus . . . that the rabbi met all the other scholars who were seeking the newborn king. Rabbi Kagba told me they all saw the sign of his birth in the sky while they were still on their journeys, before they met in Damascus.”

  Everyone glanced upward into the heavens. The blazing torches of the souk blotted out all the stars, except for a triangle of bright beacons hovering in the southwest . . . in the direction of Jerusalem.

  “But at Jerusalem they found King Herod ruling still.”

  Hosea and Raheb both made sounds of derision at the mention of the Butcher King.

  “After escaping Herod, they were guided by the star to a house in Bethlehem where they found him . . . the infant child.”

  I paused again.

  “His name? Tell us his name, boy?”

  “Jesus of Nazareth.”

  A profound silence existed over the group. No spoons clinked against bowls, no one spoke for the space of ten heartbeats, and then pandemonium broke loose.

  “You mean the Healer,” Raheb said.

  “The Teacher? The Prophet?” Hosea added.

  “The one we are going to seek?” Raheb continued. “You’ve known thi
s all along and never spoke of it until now?”

  “I . . . the rabbi sent me to find him too,” I said. “But I wasn’t sure if I should speak of it or not. Rabbi Kagba had heard that old Herod killed the boy babies of Bethlehem, trying to murder a challenger to his throne. The rabbi says Herod even killed his own sons.”

  Hosea nodded in agreement.

  “That’s why Jesus grew up in secret,” I said. “But for three years my teacher has been hearing of the miracles and the wisdom of this Jesus.” I waited again for the babbling to cease. “My teacher sent me to learn if the stories are true. To see for myself if Messiah has come.”

  “It is a question written very much on all of our hearts,” Hosea acknowledged. “By the Feast of Dedication, we will know.”

  Chapter 20

  Our caravan camped beside a creek flowing down from Mount Hermon. Even though it would still take two more weeks to reach Jerusalem, I felt great excitement on this Sabbath. On the day after tomorrow we would enter the northern reaches of the Promised Land.

  I was especially eager to set foot in Eretz-Israel. Soon I would see my grandparents and my brothers.

  “From Dan to Beersheba, our land stretches,” Hosea said when he announced our location. “Of course, King David ruled much farther north than this. And his son, Solomon, farther still. Now the country is all broken into little patches for this Herod or that Herod . . . but the land is still the land. It will all come right when Messiah comes to rule as King.”

  The Havdalah service had already concluded. Now a mixed group of northbound and southbound travelers swapped gossip by firelight. While the men talked politics, I visited with a pair of ten-year-old twin boys named Jachin and Sorek, who sometimes completed each other’s sentences.

  “We’re going to Damascus,” Jachin said.

  Sorek concluded, “To see our uncle.”

  Hugging the pack containing the cup, I asked, “And you come from Jerusalem?”