Empire's End (15 page)

“Paul, Paul,” the old man said, “you are the very embodiment of Isaiah!”

That stopped me and I turned to face him. “What on earth are you talking about? Isaiah?”

Alastor rose and reached around the curtain for one of the ancient Scripture scrolls. He tucked it under his arm while carefully sliding my cluttered parchments out of the way. Unrolling the spool before him, he said, “Come, look. When Isaiah is called to be a prophet, Yahweh reveals Himself. You know the text.”

“Yes, on the throne, high and lifted up, the train of His robe filling the temple, the seraphim crying ‘Holy is the Lord,' the earth full of His glory, the smoke . . .”

Alastor traced the text with his finger. “Here Isaiah says what you are feeling now: ‘Woe is me, for I am undone!'”

“Come now, Rabbi,” I said. “I am distraught, but Isaiah had seen God, the Lord of hosts.”

“Yes, but then God has the seraphim touch Isaiah's lips with the coal and purge his sin, and the Lord asks, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?' And how does Isaiah reply?”

Finally I sat and my shoulders slumped. “‘Here am I! Send me.'”

Alastor slowly rerolled the cylinder, set it down, moved behind me, and dug his fingers into the muscles on either side of my neck. “You've already answered the call, son. Just write to Taryn so you can get on with your task.”

My head lolled as he kneaded my shoulders. “But will she understand? And forgive?”

“Only God knows,” Alastor said. “You must do what you must do regardless. If she does not, will your course change? Will you not follow your calling?”

I covered my face with my hands and wept as the man I hoped would become my father-in-law prayed for me.

I took a stool and table to my sleeping area, found fresh parchments and a quill, and filled both an inkwell and a lamp. I was puzzled when Alastor left the tent, until he returned shortly with a digging tool. “Don't make an old man do this work for you,” he said. “And do it now, before you begin writing.”

I nodded, resigned. It wouldn't take long to dig a hole large enough to store my parchments. “Can I trouble you to find me a dry hide?” I said. “A square yard or so should be all I need.”

I had dug a two-foot square by the time he returned. My parchments would stay clean and dry wrapped in the hide if I could find a suitable covering when I finished my letter. “I must hurry,” I said. “I fish tonight and am on watch tomorrow night.”

“Oh, no, I'm sorry, Paul. I was to tell you that you have been relieved of both obligations for the time being.”

“I have?”

He nodded. “The entire compound knows who you are—who you were. Do you suppose anyone does not worry about the implications?”

“But they know me, Alastor! I have been here nearly three years!”

“Most know you. But many don't. Not really. When you arrived we had how many tents—a dozen?”

“Nine. I repaired them all.”

“You see? We're at two dozen now. That new family, with the prematurely balding husband—”

“The dark one everyone says looks like me, except for that missing little finger on his left hand.”

“Yes, Brunon. He will take your place fishing and on watch.”

“And I am under suspicion.”

Alastor shrugged. “Among many, certainly. Naturally.”

“So my persecution has begun.”

The rabbi grunted. “If that is the worst you ever face, consider yourself fortunate. I doubt the suspicion of those in this little enclave is what the Lord has been warning you about. Now get to work.”

My precious Taryn
,

I hesitate to employ that endearing term I have felt bold enough to use only recently with you, knowing what you must be thinking of me just now. Yet you are precious to me
.

I can only assure you, beloved, that anything you read in my parchments is the truth. For all the sins of my former life, dishonesty was not among them. That is of little virtue, for you now well know the depth of my depravity. But to whatever extent I knew myself, I was truthful to the point of offense. Many suffered under my self-righteous judgments
.

But as God is my witness, where my journal first records my morbid connection to you, that is precisely when I became aware of it. And my anguish over keeping it from you is, if anything, muted in that account. I pleaded with the Lord to know when and how to reveal it to you, and further, how to explain the delay
.

My most wretched fear is that even if you can somehow absolve me of my guilt, you could not abide sharing a life with me without it daily defiling me in your mind's eye
.

I can do nothing but leave that to you and to God
.

Taryn, I plead with you to understand me. Entirely apart from my unabashed desire for you, strictly from one human being to another, I am without excuse. I am unequivocally guilty. I was wrong. I am sorry, and I beg your forgiveness. My actions robbed you of your loving, godly husband and the father of your child. I undeservedly cast myself upon the sea of your mercy
.

Painful as it is to admit, I recognize I am asking something that may be beyond your capacity to bestow. You would be justified to refuse ever to see me again. And while I cannot fathom the desolation of that loss, worse would be missing my last chance to tell you how much I love you
.

God has taught me that when I am finally loosed to preach in His name, love must be my sole theme. He has made clear that even if I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, if I don't have love, I will become like sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And even if I have the gift of prophecy or understand all mysteries and have all knowledge, and though I have enough faith to move mountains, if I don't have love, I am nothing
.

Even if I give all my goods to feed the poor and give my body to be burned, if I don't have love, it profits me nothing. Love is longsuffering and kind; love is not envious; love does not boast, is not puffed up, is not rude, does not seek its own way, is not provoked, doesn't think the worst, does not rejoice in sin, but rejoices in the truth
.

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails
.

Prophecies will fail; tongues will cease; knowledge will vanish. When I was a child like Corydon, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things
.

There are faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love. And I love you. Forgive me
.

Your devoted Paul

As exercised as I had been, getting my thoughts down had put my mind somewhat at ease. I reread the document several times, trying to imagine
Taryn reading it. Would she be eager to receive it, read it immediately, or be busy with Corydon or still too upset? Would her father stay with her, read it as well, discuss it with her?

These were the kinds of things I had never pondered as an official of the Sanhedrin. I had a reputation with Nathanael for tracking every detail of his schedule as vice chief justice of the Sanhedrin, but certainly that never concerned matters of the heart.

Though Alastor had but fewer than seventy feet to walk to deliver the missive, I carefully rolled it and sealed it with wax. I found him tidying my pile of parchments, apparently in preparation for my burying them. They remained facedown as he arranged them in a crisp stack. I was alarmed, however, by his grave expression.

“What is it, Rabbi?”

“Nadav is missing.”

Missing? If there was one rule in an encampment of refuge it was that everyone knew where everyone else was at all times. While I enjoyed my solitude from just before dawn until just after midday, not a person over the age of twelve in Yanbu had a doubt about my location. Some may have had to search to find the exact rock outcropping where I stationed myself, but it would never have taken longer than half an hour to fetch me.

“What is Anna saying? He couldn't be far.”

“He took a horse, Paul.”

“He doesn't own a—”

“He took one of the new men's horses.”

“Meeting a caravan? Buying or bartering?”

Alastor shook his head. “This is entirely unlike him. He's always been suspicious, but he understands our rules. He's never been any trouble.”

“Anna?”

“Some of the elders are questioning her, and she's crying.”

“Because she's frightened, worried? Or because she knows something and is not saying?”

“I fear the latter. But Zuriel will get it out of her.”

“You should be there, Alastor. He can be overbearing.”

“Perhaps he needs to be.”

“Anna and I have always gotten along,” I said. “Perhaps I could—”

“Oh, Paul, no! You dare not show your face just now. Many fear this may be about you.”

“About me? You don't think—”

“I don't know.”

“Nadav hasn't trusted me from the beginning.”

“I know. But I'd sooner think he'd rally the others to cast you out than seek help elsewhere that could expose us.”

“Rabbi, you need to be there.”

“You're right,” he said, rising. I must have looked worried about my letter. “I haven't forgotten,” he added, reaching for it.

Suddenly, strangely, drowsiness overtook me. With so much on my mind, I couldn't explain it. I had my parchments to bury in the hide Alastor had provided, and now I needed a covering of some sort for the hole I'd dug—while avoiding curious and perhaps hostile eyes. Plus I was desperate to know when Alastor would deliver my message and when Taryn would read it, what she would think, when she would respond, what she would say. And hovering over all this like a fresh storm cloud churned the matter of whatever Nadav was about.

I carried the parchments to my sleeping area and wrapped them snugly in the hide, setting the package deep into the hole. When I ventured outside for something to fill it that would be easy for me to remove each time I wanted to access the pages, I felt as if I were wading in deep water and longed to lie down.

Trying to ignore the raised voices coming from the common area, I perused my workbench, gathering scraps of wood left over from the hide-drying frames I had fashioned. I also collected scraps of hide and fur too small for tent repairs. These nicely camouflaged the hole without making my parchments hard to retrieve. But once I had finished, the fatigue that had begun nagging me now overwhelmed to the point where I could barely move. I made my way to my sleeping mat and sat, hoping the feeling would pass.

My eyes fluttered and closed and I couldn't resist stretching out on my back. I wasn't aware of falling asleep, but I found my mind a mix of everything that had occurred that day, interspersed with the account of Isaiah seeing the Lord on His throne, high and lifted up.

The ambient noise of the camp faded to silence, and suddenly it was just me lying in the stillness, unmoving. No wind, no tent flaps, no footsteps, no animal noises, no conversation, no insects, no birds, no crackling fires, no water sloshing. Nothing.

I felt transported, and though I knew—or believed—I still lay on my cot, it was as if I flew silently through the roof of the tent and into the sky, past the slightest wisps of clouds and toward the sun itself. Yet even my flight created no sound.

Below lay the symmetry of the twenty-four large tents I had built or repaired, hulking black mounds on the desert floor, encircling the common area comprising the well, the livestock pen, the corral. Children played, women talked, men worked, and a crowd, headed by the elders, milled about the entrance to Nadav and Anna's dwelling. How was it possible that the cacophony that had to be rising from all that activity had not reached my sleep chamber—where I had the distinct feeling I still lay? Nor did it reach my ears as I winged my way above the sun, which felt every bit as real.

Had my unexplained weariness been of God for the very purpose of this ethereal journey? Of one thing I was suddenly certain: I was not napping. I did not know then, and neither have I been able to determine since, whether I was in my body or out of it, but this was clearly God's doing. He was transporting me, at least my soul, somewhere to show me something. I was no longer tired, no longer vexed, no longer worried about Taryn or Corydon or Alastor. I did not fret about my calling or the warnings of persecution I would face when He sent me to the Gentiles.

I felt a peace as vast as the heavens.

Wherever God was leading, whatever I was to experience, I sensed it was for my edification and that I would be back with plenty of time to engage again in earthly pursuits. For now, however, they did not matter. Body and soul or just soul, I didn't care, my being now majestically rose above the sun itself. I found myself among the stars, dazzling in their sheer whiteness against the blue blackness of the unending immensity of the heavens.

On I soared, for how long and how far I have no reference point or memory. All I know is that I had transcended the earth and sky where the clouds and sun resided and now fearlessly sailed—I don't know how else to express it—not upon the sea but through the star-strewn inkiness of the heavens. What made me consider that my soul had left my body was that I felt no wind, no heat, and no cold, and in that immeasurable darkness, illumined by only the dazzling orbs, I should have been shivering.

For whatever interlude I spent traversing the colossal canopy of the night skies, I suddenly left it and found myself thrust into a brightness so infinite that no description of its colors could ever do it justice. That I was able even to keep my eyes open against its brilliance was all the evidence I needed to know this was God's domain.

Unable to speak aloud, in my spirit I said,
Lord, what would You have me
—

Be still
.