Take This Cup

  “No!” Mother shouted, crashing the serving platter against the bandit’s head. He warded off a second blow with his upraised arm, then struck my mother across the face, knocking her down.

  “Run!” Father yelled. “Run and hide! Kagba! Help him!”

  The same bandit who had felled my mother reached across the heap of sticks and seized my ankle. Then Beni, dashing in from outside the firelight, sunk his teeth into the cutthroat’s wrist. The man howled and released his hold on me and dropped his sword as well. Beni kept his jaws clamped tight, even when the rebel swung around in a circle, bellowing with pain. He hammered on Beni’s skull with his other fist. “Get him off me!” the bandit shrieked. “Help!”

  “Run, Nehi!” Father yelled again. “Go!”

  My father stabbed with the point of his staff and hit Zimri in the forehead with it, opening a gash. The bandit chief staggered backward, blood smeared across his eyes, and lashed out with his sword.

  I fled.

  All I could think to do was to run toward the boulder from which I had first seen the bandit troop. It was on a steep slope above the camp. Once there I would be outside the firelight and could even throw rocks down on the rebels.

  As I ran, the sounds of battle continued behind me: the clatter of staff against sword, muttered oaths, sharp exclamations of pain. Over it all came shrieking and ferocious growling from the combat between the bandit and Beni.

  I had just reached the base of the boulder when there was a single high-pitched yelp and the growling stopped. I almost turned back at that. How could I fly when my father, mother, and best friend were in danger?

  I was climbing the rock for a better view when a hand seized the hem of my robe and dragged me downward.

  “Down from there. Come here, boy!”

  It was Rabbi Kagba. “No time for second thoughts. Your father and the men are giving you every chance to get away. We must not squander it. Up this canyon. All the way up. Hurry! No time to waste.”

  Into the darkness we ran. Beads of the sweat of fear dotted my face and trickled into my eyes. I did not know if my mother or Beni still lived, or how much longer my father could hold out with a wooden staff against an iron sword in the hands of a much younger man.

  Halfway up the canyon the footing turned to loose gravel, and I fell. My chin collided with a rock, opening a painful gash. I was dazed.

  Panting, Rabbi Kagba lifted me. “Come on, Nehemiah. We can’t stop yet. Listen!”

  Sandaled feet scrabbled up the same path we had recently climbed, echoing from below. How many bandits were in pursuit I could not tell.

  Hand in hand, the elderly rabbi and I continued upward into the night.

  Part Two

  Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High

  will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. . . .

  You will tread on the lion and the cobra;

  you will trample the great lion and the serpent.

  PSALM 91:1,131

  Chapter 9

  Rabbi Kagba and I traveled all night, climbing steadily upward. Our path into the mountains was illuminated by moonlight. The trees cast wavering shadows on the rocky crags. I spent the hours casting fearful looks over my shoulder, until while doing so I fell over a dead branch. When I tried to catch myself, I skidded along a jagged edge, which sliced parallel grooves in both my palms.

  The old man kept his eyes on the stars as if they were a map that would, in a thousand miles or so, lead us to Jerusalem. The rabbi jabbed a bony finger at the path of the constellations. “See? There is the great lion of the tribe of Judah. He rises in the east and sets in the west. Soon he will be passing over Jerusalem. A thousand miles from where we are yet we will see him even as he looks down on the Temple Mount. The one we seek may be looking up at him even now. Follow the lion in the sky, and you will find Jerusalem. You will also find Messiah . . . Jesus, son of Joseph, son of Jacob.”

  “I won’t follow anything other than you,” I protested. Why did the teacher speak as if I must find my own way, alone, to the Holy City? It could not happen! “We will go together, you and I. We will find my brothers and see the Messiah together.”

  Rabbi Kagba, breathless, did not reply for a long time. He pointed to the east-west track of the stars in the heavens. “You must learn, boy. You will never be lost if you set your course by the twelve star patterns that recount the story of our redemption. From here caravans make their way to Israel and Jerusalem.”

  I trudged in thought for several paces, then asked, “Must we still journey by night, Rabbi? I’m so tired.”

  “Yes. Thirty years ago I journeyed from my homeland, by night. I followed the tale of redemption recorded in the stars. And my companions and I found the newborn King of Israel in Bethlehem. The House of Bread, its name means. Surely by now Jesus is acclaimed in Jerusalem. In his thirties. A fine, strong man. I pray we find him well and soon to sit upon David’s throne.”

  We halted beside a stream just as daybreak lit up the eastern sky. I used the momentary rest and the growing light to pick splinters out of my ravaged hands.

  The horror of the battle in the sheep camp was miles behind us but very near and real in my mind. Had my mother and father survived? Were the bandits still combing the hills in search of any shepherds who might have escaped? There was more money in slaves than in sheep.

  My teacher’s voice cracked as he spoke. “ ‘As the deer pants for water’ . . . I understand the meaning of that thirst better now.” He was clearly suffering the strain of the climb.

  As he rested on a fallen log, beams of light shot through the trees, illuminating the rabbi’s ashen face. We had not had water in many hours. There was a limpid pool nearby. I plucked a large, green frond and fashioned a cup. Scooping it full of clear water, I carried it to the scholar. The rabbi drank slowly.

  I threw myself on the ground beside the pool and sucked up the water greedily, then returned to face Rabbi Kagba. “What has happened to my father? To my mother?” I finally had worked up the courage to ask the unthinkable.

  “Your father is a warrior,” Rabbi Kagba said. “It is written, ‘You will tread on the lion and the cobra; you will trample the great lion and the serpent.’1 Any snakes, crawling or human, foolish enough to battle your father will soon learn their mistake. Don’t let your heart be troubled, Nehemiah. Lamsa has killed bears and lions. He has rescued a lamb from the jaws of a leopard. Pity the man who seeks to overthrow your father.”

  “Then may we not turn back now?” I urged. “Return to camp?”

  His grizzled head wagged. “Jerusalem! Lamsa instructed me to take you to find your brothers and see King Jesus. I will not turn back. But I may not be able to go forward if we don’t sleep awhile.”

  The rabbi pointed to the form of a fallen tree. Away from the trail we followed, and not visible until I circled it, the downhill side of the log was propped up by a rock. The soil beneath had washed away, leaving a hollow large enough to shelter us. The outstretched, overhanging bark was shaped like the feathers of an enormous wing.

  “ ‘Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High,’ ” the rabbi quoted, “ ‘will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.’2 See here, boy: the Lord has prepared a nest for us. We can rest here out of sight of any who might be looking for us.”

  My stomach growled and I rubbed it. “Sir, I’m hungry. Will the Lord give us breakfast too?”

  “Aye, count on it,” the rabbi affirmed, scanning the forest floor. “It is written, ‘Call on me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you.’3 Nehi, my boy, the Lord provides for all his children. Look there, at the base of the cedar: a crop of mushrooms. Big ones, some as big as my hand. Go on, boy. Pick as many as you can eat. Wash them there in the pool. Two of that size is enough to fill me up. When we set out again, we’ll take a sack full with us.”

  I plucked the thick, meaty caps and rinsed them in the clean water. The rabbi made the blessing for the bread, and then we two made a meal. They are very good, I thought
as I munched, and filling too.

  A wave of exhaustion swept over me. With the rabbi already in the shelter of the fallen tree and snoring softly, I crept in beside him. In moments I was also fast asleep.

  When I awoke, I did not immediately recognize where I was or remember how I came to be there. The wounds in my hands stung, and my chin and jaw ached. Dirt sifted down the back of my neck, and a sharp rock pressed into my ribs. I wanted to move, to stretch, but was overcome with a sense of dread.

  Then recollection flooded me: The riders in camp. The attack. The escape into the darkness. The endless struggling uphill into blackness. The ominous sounds of pursuit. The collapse into the shelter beneath the fallen tree and the overpowering need to sleep away the dangers of daytime.

  What about my mother and father and Beni? Were they alive, or had all been killed? I refused to believe any of them were dead, even though I had seen how desperate the fight was. I shook away the gloomy thoughts. Surely my father was seeking for me . . . or was it only the murderer Zimri who followed us?

  How I longed for the security of our camp! For Father’s steady, confidence; for Mother’s quiet, peaceful strength; for Beni’s exuberant defense. Anguish bit off chunks of my hope. How much had been stolen from me in less than a day!

  Lying very still, I listened. A bird chirped across the canyon. Rabbi Kagba’s breathing was rasping but steady.

  A swirl of air brought the scent of pine. We must have climbed very high indeed to be so near an evergreen forest.

  I squinted at the light lancing down outside the shelter. A flat, dark green, knife-shaped leaf, sticking upright in the soft amber-hued soil, cast almost no shadow. So, it’s near noon, I thought. The rabbi said we must remain in hiding until nightfall; then we can emerge and decide our next move.

  A towering white thundercloud loomed up above the opposite peak. It spread out across the gorge, obscuring the light for a minute before retreating again.

  I reached over my head and patted the reddish-brown roof formed by the fallen yew tree. It must have been a giant before some storm brought it down. Its trunk was at least eight feet across. When the rabbi and I discovered the hollow on the downslope side, I had seen that the log stretched some sixty feet along the hillside.

  How long until it was night again? Was there still a reason to remain hidden, or were we fleeing from shadows without substance?

  A pair of finches, fighting over a sprig of red berries, fluttered to the ground in front of me. They chattered and argued, tugging against each other until a plump gray-and-rust-colored thrush swooped in and settled the dispute by seizing the twig and flying off with it.

  I looked over my shoulder at the rabbi. Still sleeping. I wondered if I should emerge and seek the water I was craving, or imitate Kagba and try to sleep more.

  Outside the overhang, a ledge of decomposed granite formed a bench just before the hillside dropped away into the canyon. A lizard, blue throat pouch pumping rhythmically, stretched his legs in the sunshine.

  I envied him and wondered again, What danger could there be on this pleasant-seeming day? Imitating the lizard, I half emerged from hiding. It was good to feel the sun on the back of my neck and stiff shoulders.

  Across the chasm the thunderclouds built again, threatening an afternoon storm. A pair of stones clicked together somewhere below our perch. That slight sound was followed by the sifting of sand and the crunch of gravel hurtling into the abyss.

  A voice called out, “We’re still on their trail, Captain. Two sets of tracks—one small, one larger—came up this way.”

  Despite the warm sun, the gruff words that replied sent a chill down my spine. Zimri’s unmistakable voice echoed up the passage: “Good. They can’t be far ahead. Let’s catch them before it comes on to rain so we can get off this cursed mountain.”

  Someone posed a question I could not overhear, but Zimri’s answer was clear enough: “We’ll kill the old man and sell the boy. That way we get something out of this mess.”

  My instinct was to burrow instantly back into shelter and pull dirt over my head, but I had to know what we were facing. I bellied-crawled to the lip of the ledge, my face and body sheltered from view by a clump of wild pistachio shrubs, and peered over.

  Three switchbacks below, about two hundred feet of elevation and a half mile of traversing the hillside, was a single file of eight horsemen and a riderless ninth animal led by a rope. So my father and our servants had accounted for four of the raiders. My spirits rose with that observation, even though it left unanswered my parents’ fate. I also noted with grim satisfaction that Zimri’s forehead was bandaged, and another bandit had one arm in a sling.

  It would take them no more than twenty minutes to climb the rest of the distance to the ridgeline and the fallen yew tree. When the rebels reached there and saw that the footprints stopped, they would scour the area.

  Should I rouse the rabbi now? Could the two of us flee ahead of the horsemen to another hiding place?

  I felt a sprinkle of water on my head. Wind from the thundercloud spattered me with raindrops. Would the rain come soon enough and hard enough to wipe out our tracks?

  Rabbi Kagba was still asleep! His breath was hoarse and his color not good. Even if I could rouse him, could the elderly man move swiftly enough to escape?

  Back out onto the ledge I found the choice no longer existed. After the rain squall passed, the trackers were coming on faster now.

  Hope and pray and hide were the sole options that remained.

  I scrunched as far back beneath the overhang as I could. I resolved to make the bandits dig us out. I would not go easily into slavery or let them kill my friend.

  Outside the shelter, storm clouds spilled over the brink of the peaks and tumbled down, misting the gorge with vapor. Above me thunder boomed and rolled, bouncing off the walls of the ravine.

  A solid sheet of rain swept toward me, like a gray curtain blotting out sight and sound.

  Time passed. A flash of lightning briefly illuminated the underbelly of the storm before the day was shattered by a crash so immense that the ground jumped under my stomach, and I with it. I held my breath.

  Rain—soaking, glorious rain—turned soil into mud and erased footprints while forming puddles in every crack and crevice. Maybe the storm was ferocious enough that the riders turned back to seek safety at a lower elevation.

  A horse snorted and called. Another answered, sounding nervous amid the clashing peals of thunder and slashing rain. When Zimri spoke again, his voice came from right above my head. The raiders had drawn up alongside the fallen yew tree!

  “Well?” Zimri demanded.

  “It’s not good, Captain,” the tracker responded. “Washed out. Their tracks are gone. Nothing since that last switchback.”

  I felt like cheering until I heard Zimri say, “Maybe they went to ground right around here. We should search.”

  I lifted my hand to the tree trunk, as if trying to push them away, ward them off.

  A centipede, perhaps driven to seek protection from the storm, skittered over my hand. Yet my gasp of alarm and Kagba’s tortured breathing were both covered by the stamp of impatient horses.

  Another bolt of lightning slammed into a tree across the canyon, making it explode. The thunderclap that followed terrified the horses. I heard several riders shouting, “Hold up!” and “Stupid beast!”

  “Captain,” the tracker said, “we didn’t meet them coming back down, and there’s no place to hide around here. It’s more likely they went to ground up ahead, where there might be caves to crawl into, not here on this unprotected stretch.”

  Without wanting to sound cowardly, the man was suggesting it was not wise for men on horseback to remain outlined on the highest part of the ridgeline in a lightning storm.

  “All right,” Zimri grudgingly agreed. “We’ll push on.”

  When the hoofbeats moved off in the distance, I breathed a sigh of relief. Wiping my forehead, I checked my friend. The good rabbi wa
s still fast asleep.

  Throughout the afternoon Rabbi Kagba slept while I kept watch. We remained in the shelter. I did not think that if the raiders turned back along the trail they would stop and search the yew tree. Still, I would not give them any chance to catch me unawares, or leave any sign that might give us away.

  The thunder and lightning moved off toward the east, but the rain continued to fall, almost without letup.

  When there was no more than an hour of gray daylight remaining, a trickle of water managed to thread its way through a crevice to drip into Rabbi Kagba’s ear. The scholar groaned, rolled over, and awoke. Rubbing his eyes and coughing softly, he asked, “Nehemiah? Have I been asleep long?”

  I smiled. “Nearly the entire day, Rabbi. It’s almost sunset again. The storm has lasted all afternoon.”

  “Ah?” Kagba stared out at the drizzling rain. “So it was good we had cover here, even if there was no threat.”

  I explained how our hiding place had served a greater purpose than just shelter from the weather.

  Rabbi Kagba looked distressed as he listened, then laughed. “Truly it is written, ‘He will take pity on the weak and the needy and save the needy from death.’4 And perhaps it should be added, ‘He also pities the ignorant and insensible!’ ”

  “Do you think we could go out now?” I asked. “Since they went up the trail past us, couldn’t we turn back toward Father’s camp?”

  Though I did not speak it, I was anxious about my father and mother.

  Aware of what was really being asked, Kagba said kindly, “We should not attempt to go down the dangerous slope in this weather. Besides, as soft as the ground is now, we might not hear riders approaching. No, it’s best not to chance it. We should remain here tonight. Tomorrow we’ll go out, if the way is clear. I have an idea that should serve us well. Have we anything to eat?”

  “I saw some nuts . . . pistachios, I think . . . growing in the bushes near the ledge. I could crawl out and gather some.”