Faith of My Fathers (40 page)

She didn’t reply. The inn grew quiet as everyone turned to watch the spectacle. Joshua reached behind her and untied her apron, then tossed it to the floor. “Please come with me, Miriam.”

“Just a minute, mister!” The ruddy-faced proprietor hurried over to them, wiping his hands on a towel. “She works for me now. You’re not taking her anywhere unless you pay me for her.”

Miriam’s head dropped lower between her trembling shoulders. Joshua longed to lift her chin high and tell her that the shame was all his, not hers. He had broken his promise to her father. He had driven her away because of his own guilty conscience. Instead, he reached for his money pouch.

“How much for her, then?” he asked the innkeeper.

“Well, to begin with she owes me a week’s room and board in advance and—”

“But she already worked a couple of days, right?”

“Well, yes—”

Joshua’s eyes never left the innkeeper’s as he slammed a fistful of silver onto the table. It was part of the dowry money he had saved for Yael. “This should cover it.”

Before the startled man could respond, Joshua took Miriam’s hand. “Come on.” He pulled her with him as he wove across the room between the tables and hurried from the inn.

By the time Joshua and Miriam got to the Temple, Amariah was already there, wandering through the roped-off lanes, surveying each woman carefully. The two guards from the palace hallway walked on either side of him.

“That’s him with the reddish beard,” Joshua whispered. “Do you remember what to do?”

Miriam nodded. “You didn’t tell me he was a nobleman.”

“Make sure he leaves his embroidered robe behind in the booth. It will give him away.”

“Where will we meet up with you again?”

Joshua hesitated. “At our house.”

“Our house?”

“Yes, in Moab. Now get going.” He watched her walk calmly across the courtyard and enter Asherah’s sacred precinct as if she did it every day of her life. Her courage and poise astonished him. She unpinned her hair as he’d told her to do and tossed it over her shoulder with a shake of her head. Then she put on a garland of string and sat down. Joshua saw several other men watching her, too. It surprised him to realize how young and pretty Miriam looked beside the other women. He held his breath, hoping that Amariah would get to her first.

It seemed to take the prince forever to reach Miriam’s side and toss the silver into her lap. She stood and took his hand, leading him into an empty booth. It was close to the booth that Hadad and Dinah were in. The sun was almost directly overhead. Joshua heard the new shift of guards marching up the hill from the barracks to relieve their comrades. It was time.

God of Abraham, please let this work!

Joshua strode around the side of the courtyard as if he had a right to be there and headed toward the storage silos behind the Temple. His father had built them for King Hezekiah before Joshua was born, when Abba was still the king’s engineer. Joshua remembered coming here with Abba, holding his strong hand in his own small one and watching the golden rivers of grain pour into the silo. He also remembered the strict warning Abba had given the priests.

When Joshua reached the circular bin, he climbed the stairs that spiraled up the side and opened the small door halfway to the top. It was dark and cool inside the stone structure—the air vents allowed in only a little light—but Joshua knew that the silo would be nearly empty. The new grain harvest was two months away. He jumped into the bin, sinking to his knees, and quickly tied his handkerchief over his nose and mouth. Then he picked up the priests’ measuring basket and began scooping up the grain and tossing it high in the air. He scooped faster and faster until his arms ached and the showering grain coated his clothes and hair. Five minutes later, the air in the silo was filled with grain dust and Joshua could scarcely breathe.

Gasping and choking, he climbed out of the silo again, leaving the door ajar, and ran into the building next to it where the olive oil was stored. The earthenware jars stood stacked on their sides like cordwood, a taller pile of empty ones on his right, the full ones on his left. He took a torch handle from its socket by the door and used it to smash the full jars, spilling oil in a slippery stream around his feet. Then he tied his handkerchief around the handle and soaked it in oil.

It seemed to take forever to kindle a flame with his shaking hands, but the spark from his flint finally ignited the torch. He ran to the doorway and touched it to the tongue of oil flowing behind him. He could feel the heat on his face as the storehouse erupted in flames with a loud
whoosh
.

Joshua ran back to the silo and took aim at the open door halfway up the side. He would only get one shot at it, so he would have to make it count. He drew his arm back and threw the torch through the door into the bin, then he turned to run. A second later the force of the deafening blast lifted Joshua into the air, then smashed him into the pavement. He was already unconscious when the hail of bricks and grain showered down on top of him.

Twenty yards away inside the booth, Hadad was knocked to the floor by the explosion. Dinah tumbled down on top of him. It was a moment before he realized from the screams and shouts outside the door that this was the diversion he had been waiting for. He scrambled to his feet, pulling Dinah with him.

“Come on. We’ve got to run!” He had to force the door open.

Outside, the Temple courtyards were in chaos. Most of the people were lying on the ground, stunned, as bricks rained from the sky. Hadad stepped over a guard who lay moaning beside the booth and ran toward the burning storehouse.

“Hold your breath!” he shouted to Dinah. “There’s a gate leading out of the city on the other side!” He pushed her ahead of him into the blinding cloud of smoke.

Hadad’s ears still rang from the blast, so he wasn’t sure if he really heard footsteps behind him or not. He glanced over his shoulder, his eyes stinging from the smoke, and saw a Temple guard quickly gaining on them.

“Run, Dinah! Keep running and don’t stop!” he told her. Then he turned to face their pursuer. His own short dagger was no match for the guard’s double-edged sword, but Hadad took a defensive stance, praying that he could buy Dinah a few extra minutes of time to escape.

As the guard charged, Hadad feinted to the left, then ducked right, anticipating the thrust of his sword. He heard the blade whiz past his head. The guard stumbled forward with his own momentum but quickly regained his footing to turn on him again. Hadad was ready for him. Quick on his feet, he dodged the sword a second time, infuriating his adversary. The third swing grazed Hadad’s shoulder as he dove to the ground and rolled away from him. But he could see the soldier coming toward him again and he realized he would never be able to scramble to his feet in time. Hadad knew he was about to die.

Suddenly a darker shadow emerged from the dense smoke behind the advancing guard’s back. The man never heard Dinah as she ran up behind him and smashed the brick into his skull. His sword clattered to the ground, and he toppled to the pavement beside it a moment later.

Hadad slumped back, weak with relief. “I thought I told you to run,” he said, grinning.

Dinah smiled in return. “I couldn’t leave you, Hadad. I don’t know the way to Moab.”

“What on earth was that?” Amariah cried as the explosion rocked the booth.

“It was Joshua, distracting the guards.” There was no doubt in Miriam’s mind. “Come on, we’ve got to get out of here!”

“That was one powerful distraction!” he murmured.

“Take off your robe and leave it here.”

“Why?”

“Are you going to question everything I say, or are you going to live through this? Take it off!”

Miriam opened the door and peered out. The courtyard was littered with bodies, most of them moaning and bleeding, some of them dead.

Joshua
. Was he among them? Had he survived the blast he’d created?

People ran in all directions, screaming in panic as a dense cloud of smoke billowed toward Miriam from the priests’ storehouses. Most of the guards were running to extinguish the flames before the fire could spread to the Temple. She grabbed the nobleman’s hand and took off toward the southern Temple gate as Joshua had instructed. She didn’t waste time looking back to see if anyone was following them. She could lose their pursuers in the maze of alleyways near her home. Within moments they were running down the hill into the city, leaving the Temple Mount far behind.

“Wait . . . I can’t run anymore,” the man panted. He was dragging on Miriam’s arm, slowing her down.

“Don’t stop now, we’re almost there,” she told him.

“Almost where?”

“Listen, my mother might be home, so just go along with whatever I say, all right? Do you have any money with you?”

“Money? Yes, I—”

“Get ready to part with some of it.” Miriam drew a deep breath, bracing herself, then opened the door to her house.

Her mother sat at the table alone, with a skin of wine in front of her. Miriam could tell she was drunk. “What are you doing back here?” her mother asked. “And who is this?”

“He’s my lover.” Miriam hadn’t thought to ask the man his name. She slipped her arm around his waist as she had seen her mother do with her lovers countless times. The man jumped, as if she had surprised him, then a moment later he gingerly draped his arm around Miriam’s shoulder. Her mother grinned.

“My, my, you’re a busy girl, aren’t you? What happened to your soldier-boy?”

“Mama, we need to use the house for a couple of hours, all right?”

“I thought you had a room at the inn for that?”

“The innkeeper wants too much of my pay. Wouldn’t you rather have the profit?”

“Who is this lover of yours? He looks familiar. . . .”

“Do you want the money or not, Mama?”

She hauled herself to her feet, swaying, and held out her hand. “Sure, sure. Let’s have it, then.”

Miriam had to nudge him. “Pay her.”

The man fumbled in his silver pouch and laid two huge pieces in her mother’s hand. She closed her fist around them. “Hang on to him, honey. He’s a generous one.”

Miriam pushed her mother out of the door and closed it behind her. Then she turned back to the man and took a really good look at him for the first time. He was as tall as Joshua but about three or four years younger, with curly reddish-brown hair and wide brown eyes. She could tell by his posture and bearing, and by the expensive linen tunic he wore, that he came from a very wealthy family. But as he gazed around the one-room house he had a dazed look about him, as if he had never imagined that people lived like this. And he seemed genuinely stunned by the transaction that had just taken place.

“That’s the second time I bought you in the last hour,” he said.

“And you paid way too much for me both times. Who are you, anyway?”

“Didn’t Joshua tell you?”

“There wasn’t time.”

He looked a little embarrassed. “I’m Prince Amariah.”

“
Prince?
You mean King Manasseh’s
brother
?”

“Yes.”

“Oh no!” Miriam remembered how she had been ordering him around and she dropped to her knees to bow to him. “I’m sorry, my lord. I’m so sorry. . . .”