King Jesus (Penguin Modern Classics) (6 page)

There was no answer, and when Hannah went back to the door she found it bolted and Judith gone away. Yet she was not a prisoner, for
the bolts were shot from inside. She returned wonderingly to the arbour. In a dark corner she saw a couch, spread with a purple cloth, which had escaped her notice when she first went in. She lay down upon it, with her head on a soft pillow, and sighed for pleasure, smiling up at the nest of sparrows.

Presently she closed her eyes and began to pray, silently and grimly, as her namesake had once prayed at Shiloh ; and when she opened them again, a grave bearded man was bending over her, so splendidly dressed that he seemed to be an envoy of some god. On a blue cord about his neck he wore an egg-shaped jewel set with twelve bright gems of different colours which winked in the candle-light. He took her by the wrist of the right hand and said in a deep voice : “Your prayer has been heard, Hannah. Take this cup and drink it, in honour of the Lord of this Feast.”

She asked : “Sir, who are you ?”

“I am the servant of One of whom it is written : ‘He scorneth the multitude of the City.’ ”

She asked again : “Sir, what is the egg-shaped jewel that you wear about your neck ?”

“When the childless Shulamite heiress asked the prophet Elisha this very question, he answered : ‘Beloved of the Lord, consult the silver moon of your headband.’ Now drink as the Shulamite woman also drank.”

He put a goblet into her hand. She raised it to her lips and drank obediently. It was sweet wine, with an aromatic scent and a bitter after-taste. It seemed to her that the arbour was filled with music though she saw no musicians. Then the candles were suddenly extinguished and the air grew bright with torches whirled in a figure-of-eight. He set the seed of a lotus between her lips, saying : “Swallow this seed whole, Daughter of Michal : do not mar it with your teeth, for it is a human soul.”

She swallowed the seed, and presently her limbs grew numb and her senses began to fail her. There was a roaring in her ears, like a tempest at sea, and it seemed to her that the round earth was wrenched from its socket and the stars danced in ecstasy ; the Moon and the Sun rushed together with a shout. She was caught up in a whirlwind to heaven ; and knew no more.

When she awoke, she was lying in her own bed at her sister’s house and it was the evening of the second day of the Feast. She clapped her hands for Judith, who hastened to her bedside and wept for joy. “Oh, Mistress,” she said, “I had thought you dead, you lay in so deep a swoon. You have slept now for a whole night and day.”

Hannah, still drowsy, asked : “How did I come here, daughter ?”

Judith opened her eyes wide. “How did you come here indeed! I do not know what my mistress means.”

“How? Did I find my way home from the garden of the laurel-tree without your guidance ?”

“Mistress, you have lain here without stirring for a whole night and day since you took this mirror to look into it.”

Hannah found that she was not wearing her bridal dress as she had thought, but the one in which she had come to Jerusalem, and that she had no wig on her head nor any headband about it. She sighed and said : “Why, then it is the Lord’s mercy. I was tempted to a great sin, and might perhaps have enticed your feet into the snare as well, had you come out with me.”

“The Lord forbid! I do not know what my mistress means.”

“Instead,” Hannah continued, “I have been rewarded with a wonderful dream. I dreamed that I went out in my bridal dress wearing a royal headband that you had offered me, and a head of golden curls, and presently came into an arbour of laurels where I saw a golden candlestick lighted, and a silver nest filled with golden sparrows. There I prayed fervently, reclining on a couch until an angel of the Lord appeared. He called me by my name and said that my prayer had been heard. In my dream he gave me scented wine to drink and a lotus-seed to swallow whole, and my soul was caught up in a whirlwind to the third heaven.”

“Oh, Mistress, what a dream of dreams! May it prove prophetic of good !”

They both offered up praise together. Hannah said : “I charge you to tell nobody of my dream.”

“I am a discreet woman.”

“You have been a kind and faithful servant to me, Judith, and I will reward you well. I will buy you three ells of fine cloth and a new cloak before we return to Cocheba.”

“Give, Mistress, and I will be grateful, but I am already well recompensed for any service that I may have done you.”

“For your modest answer I will make it six ells of cloth and a pair of shoes besides the cloak.”

Yet Judith spoke the truth. She had already taken back the royal headband and the wig to Anna, the guardian mother of the Temple virgins. She had said : “Here are the things, Holy One, that you entrusted to me. Praise me, if you please, and say that I have obeyed your orders well.”

Anna had answered : “I praise you, daughter, and twenty pieces of gold will to-day be paid to your mother to buy you a worthy husband ; but if you let anyone know, by sign or word, what you have done to-night you shall die miserably, you and all your household.”

“I am a discreet woman.

The Feast of Tabernacles was over. Hannah one morning came to Joachim, to whisper in his ear : “Husband, I think that I am with child.”

He looked strangely at her. After a while he said : “Tell me again, woman, when you are sure of the matter. ‘I think’ is nothing.”

A month later, as he returned from a visit to Jericho, Hannah came to
meet him, and this time she said : “Husband, I know that I am with child.” She clasped his neck and wept for joy.

Joachim was astonished and yet not astonished. He presently summoned his bailiff and ordered him to choose unblemished lambs and calves for sacrifice—twelve lambs and ten calves, and a score of kids as well. These he took next day in a wagon to Jerusalem and presented them at the Temple for a sacrifice of prosperity, but without explaining in what his prosperity consisted.

He still doubted in his heart as he approached the steps of the Priests’ Court, though in conformity with Temple ritual he mounted them with as much show of alacrity as if he were assaulting a city. He thought : “If the Lord is indeed reconciled to me and has granted my prayer, doubtless the golden plate on the High Priest’s mitre above his brow will make this plain to me.”

For as it happened the High Priest himself was officiating that day ; it was a feast of the New Moon. As he approached the High Priest, who stood by the Altar of Sacrifice, and asked permission to make his offerings, Joachim gazed earnestly at the golden plate, to see whether it were bright or cloudy. It shone bright as flame, and he said to himself : “Now I know that my sins are forgiven me and my prayers heard, and the prayers of my wife Hannah.”

The High Priest readily gave him permission, addressing him by name and asking whether Peace were with him.

A subordinate priest took Joachim’s beasts from the hands of the Temple servants. They kicked and struggled and the priest commented on their fine condition ; then, turning their heads to the north, one after the other, with a short prayer of dedication, he cut their throats and, catching the blood in a silver vessel, poured it on the earth around the altar. He next entrusted the carcases to the team of Levite butchers, who, working dexterously on their marble slabs, drew out the entrails, which were at once washed in the fountain of the Court, and cut out the joint of oblation —the thigh piece—from each carcase, together with the breast and right shoulder, which were the Levite’s perquisites. Next, each oblation was wrapped around with a length of entrails and enclosed in a double layer of fat. The priest laid it on a golden plate, sprinkled it with sacred incense and salt, and finally, ascending the ramp of the altar barefooted, cast it with a short prayer on the sacrificial fire, which blazed up fiercely. The smoke rose straight upwards instead of eddying sickeningly around the Court, as often happened in wintry weather ; and Joachim read this as another propitious sign.

The priest instructed him to send his servants to fetch what remained of the carcases, but he waived the privilege. “No, no, let them be given to the Temple servants, for this is truly an offering of prosperity.” He went down from the Temple with a serene mind, and meeting by chance with his neighbour Reuben saluted him with surprising kindness, but told him nothing ; not wishing to speak prematurely, lest his wife might miscarry or the child be born crooked.

The months went by, and in the height of summer Hannah was brought to bed and delivered of a daughter. When she held the child in her arms and found it perfect in all its limbs, she cried : “The widow is no longer a widow and the childless woman is a mother. Who will run to my scornful neighbour, Reuben’s wife, and tell her that I have borne a fine child ?”

Joachim said : “Let no one go ; for the child is young yet and may not live.” But he was a scrupulous man and immediately sent out two servants to fetch Kenah the Rechabite. When he came, the Well of the Jawbone would be made over to him and his people by a deed of gift, and ninety-two sheep besides.

Kenah rode down from Carmel a week later, accompanied by witnesses. The gift was made and registered, and the young man, Kenah’s nephew, prophesied sweetly as he played on the lyre. Kenah swore an oath of friendship with Joachim, saying : “If you or your wife or the child should ever stand in need of our help, these tents are your tents, come what may, and this people is your people.” When he had returned to his pastures, he sent a woman secretly to Anna the guardian mother of the Temple virgins, to give her a set of carved Egyptian jewels for the casting of lots and for divination ; with this gift went a casting-cup of Edomite sard and a white linen napkin to receive the lots.

Everyone was well satisfied ; those who lived in houses as well as those who lived in tents.

J
OACHIM
and his garrulous brother-in-law Cleopas were talking together in low tones by the well under the mulberry-tree at Cocheba. They did not refer to King Herod by name. It was always “He” or “That Man” or “A Certain Man”, except that once or twice Joachim called him “The Edomite”. There was no danger whatever of their remarks being overheard by one of Herod’s numerous spies, but talking in this guarded way had become habitual with them. They knew that Herod himself would sometimes darken his hair with charcoal, disguise his features, put on common clothes and go out among the people as his own chief spy.