Sunrise on the Mediterranean (56 page)

In mass chaos the people fled, trampling each other, screeching with fear as they raced away from the totem. Cheftu fought
his way to the Levi’s side, dragged back by the bolting crowd as they tried to escape the Seat. Finally Cheftu broke free
and ran to the man, kneeling beside him. The oxen bucked, edging the Seat farther up on end, two corners of it wedging into
the dirt, the cover sliding. Tribesmen and -women screamed and cried, threw themselves on the ground, and raced for the hills,
fleeing Shaday’s wrath.

Cheftu’s hands moved over the man’s body, ascertaining what was damaged. Bits of bloody foam flecked the priest’s lips. His
hair was on end, and scorch marks streaked his chest with black. Cheftu closed the dead man’s staring eyes, then he looked
up. Only seven people—no Chloe, thank God—the frantic oxen, the instrument of death, and the resultant corpse were left. It
was eerily silent.

“To touch the Seat is death,” N’tan whispered. “I thought it was a punishment we were supposed to enact.”

“Looks like Yahwe took that decision from your hands,” Cheftu said, his nostrils filled with the smell of burned flesh. He
glanced up at the box, sitting at a seventy-five-degree angle in the road, erroneously named the Mercy Seat.

N’tan took a step forward. “Stay back,” Cheftu said.

“This man—”

“Tzadik,”
one of the remaining priests said, “you are not to touch the dead. You are a priest.”

Was that yet another gibe at the religion of Egypt? Cheftu wondered.

“What happened?” Dadua asked in stunned voice, running up from his cart, Avgay’el behind him. He knelt beside the body, also
not touching it, staring into the man’s face, eyeing the Seat askance. “What happened?” His wife touched his shoulder as she
tried to calm him.

“Shaday struck him down,” N’tan said slowly. “The penalty is death.”

“He was trying to keep it from falling!” one of the priests burst out.

“What exactly occurred?” Dadua asked, turning to the young man.

“The cart, it must have hit a rut.” The priest gestured toward the Seat. “The Be’ma began to slide and, and …” His face crumpled.
“He tried to keep it from falling! That was all. There was no … he didn’t …” He buried his face in his hands. Dadua embraced
him, glaring over the youth’s shoulder.

Cheftu looked at the body, remembering what happened. What had that sound been? That
zzzzzp
sound? Then the man had fallen, clasping his arm and chest, crying that he was on fire. Where had the flames come from? The
ground where the Seat was cantilevered was now black, also scorched. Cheftu backed away from the Seat. What was it?

“Why would Shaday do this?” Dadua asked. “
Ach
, he accidentally touched—”

N’tan spoke in monotone, his eyes closed, his hands outstretched. “We were welcoming Shaday and the Seat into our midst as
though we were the focus for the occasion.”

“You were acting like pagans,” Cheftu said, crossing the arms of the corpse in the position of death.

“We were excited!” Dadua said angrily. “We were delighted to have him among us again! There was no evil intent!”

“The Egyptian is right,” the
tzadik
said. “We were focusing on the Seat like an … idol. It is not our possession, it is the residence of God.”

They all glanced toward the Seat, sitting in the dirt, surrounded by a starburst of charred land.

N’tan turned to another of the remaining priests. “Get some women to prepare the body.”

The man, white-faced and shaking, nodded, then ran.

“What did he die of?” N’tan asked Cheftu, crouching beside him.

“See those marks?” Cheftu said, pointing to where the priest had raked his chest, clawing at his garment. “See his face? How
his features are drawn down?”

N’tan grunted.

“I believe his heart seized up,” Cheftu said. “However, I have no explanation for this.” He turned over the corpse’s hand,
his blackened hand. “Or the fire. Or how his hair is still on end,” Cheftu said. “More than one thing happened. A stroke when
he realized he’d touched it? Or perhaps …” He turned the hand over again. “I do not know for certain.” He looked up at N’tan.
“Who was he?”

“My uncle Uzzi’a.”

The words popped into Cheftu’s brain at that, the Bible story of the failed entry of the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem.
Why couldn’t I recall it earlier? he wondered. Perhaps I could have said something, warned them. He looked at the body, the
marks on a man who was trying to assist. It made no sense.

“What does Shaday want?” Dadua said to them all as he paced a safe distance from the Seat. “Can we not be like other people,
worshiping our God in joy?”

“That is exactly right,” N’tan said. “We cannot be like other people.”

“We are to have no joy? No celebration?” Dadua asked, his voice rising.

His second wife looked at the Seat with calm eyes. “Perhaps our joy is to have a different motive.”

Cheftu coughed, hoping he was doing the right thing. “In Egypt we carry our totems on the priest’s shoulders.” He pointed
toward the Seat. “Perhaps that is what those rings are for?”

Soldered onto each corner, both upper and lower, were gold rings. Substantial gold rings. “If we carried it on our shoulders,
we would be exactly like the pagans,” Dadua said in frustration. The smell of seared skin still hung in the air. What had
burned Uzzi’a? The box appeared to be nothing but gold.

Cheftu covered the body as Dadua stared at the Seat, then shrugged hopelessly. “I know not,” he said. “N’tan?”

The
tzadik
shook his head. “We know not to touch it,” he said. “That has been passed down. To touch it is death.”

Everyone took a step back from the Seat, as though reminded. Cheftu looked at the
elohim.
“N’tan?” he gasped, staring in horror.

“Mah?”

“The
elohim?”

The
tzadik
looked up, then screamed, throwing himself facedown into the dirt.

Dadua stood stock-still. “Then it is true,” he whispered. “When we are in disfavor it shows among the
elohim.”

Cheftu stared at the box, at the figures that had been on opposite ends of the cover but facing each other. Now they were
each turned away. The inlaid eyes of the female were focused in the distance.
The statues had moved!

Dadua spoke, his voice heavy with despair. “How can I dare to bring this box into my city, knowing it may kill someone who
was only trying to help? How can we please such a God?”

Cheftu stared at the Seat, noticing details about it. Etched into the sides were depictions of winged lions, symbols and letters,
grapes and pomegranates. The top was ajar, allowing a small space no wider than his finger. As he watched, something black
flew up and away. A tiny black thing. Then another and another.

“The top is off,” he said.

“Only Abiathar may touch it,” another priest said.

“Get him,” Dadua commanded.

As Cheftu watched, the little black things continued spiraling out of the opening. His skin was crawling. What were they?
What was alive inside the Ark of the Covenant? He was grateful that Chloe wasn’t in range of whatever device this was. It
shot fire, and it was infested. He noticed people starting to slap themselves as they stood around, talking, watching the
Seat.

One of the black things landed on him, a vivid dot on his white tunic. Hesitantly Cheftu picked it up, examining it in the
late afternoon light. A flea. The Seat had fleas?

“In the desert,
ha
Moshe ground the gold of the Egyptian idol, then made those who had danced and defiled themselves before it, drink,” N’tan
said, continuing his conversation with Dadua.

“But Uzzi’a wasn’t trying to defile it,” Dadua reasoned. “He was trying to help, to protect the Seat. He was no pagan; indeed,
he was a handpicked priest in good standing. But Shaday killed him,” Dadua said. “Is there no tolerance?”

The
tzadik
looked away, closing his eyes as though trying to see something in his mind only. “We think motive overrides action,” N’tan
said, his tone entranced. “We think the wrong thing, done for the right reasons, will be accepted.” The prophet opened his
eyes. “It won’t. Shaday is mercy, but he is also justice. We forget the latter.”

As though they heard their names called, the stones shifted against Cheftu’s waist. The mercy and judgment stones.Would they
be of use now? Cheftu squashed the flea, then another.

Abiathar came huffing up the road, his skirts lifted, his white chubby legs moving slowly. He halted when he saw the Seat.
“The top is off,” he breathed. “On your knees, all of you! This is blasphemy! You court death!”

The group, now numbering about twelve, fell on their faces. Cheftu heard nothing aside from the pounding of his heart. When
he looked up again, the high priest was adjusting his breastplate. The hair on his head was standing up, and his white clothing
was spotted with tiny black dots.

The fleas.

Dadua spoke to them all. “I will give Uzzi’a a state funeral. It is a bitter thing to be a lesson used by Shaday to teach
others.”

Dadua arranged for the Seat to stay in the barn of Obed, a local Jebusi farmer, until the king knew what to do. “I cannot
risk the people of the city,” he said again and again.

More priests had rejoined the group at the Seat, so Abiathar directed them to edge some of Obed’s scythe poles through the
rings. Warily they lifted it. Everyone waited to see if lightning flew from the
elohim
or if another person was struck down. When nothing happened they carried it into the barn carefully. One of the priests began
to remove the scythes, but Obed motioned to leave them.

“But you won’t have scythes,” a priest said.

“The Seat has brought plague to those who touch it,
ken?”
Obed asked.

Dadua nodded.

“I’ll get new,” he said. “My body is uncircumcised, as is my household, yet we will honor the Seat of your God.”

“We will give you them,” the priest said hurriedly, glancing at Dadua.

Dadua looked over at the Seat, speaking in an undertone to N’tan. “Can we leave it here? Will it kill them?”

“I do not worship Molekh,” Obed announced.

N’tan looked over at Cheftu, who shook his head. Did Dadua see their communication?

“
Lo
, this household will be fine,” N’tan said dismissively. “We who touched the Seat, however, we will pay.”

Dadua’s color faded. “The death of a priest is not enough?”

“We sinned as a nation. We are admonished to live separately, to honor God above idols and legends and nature, to honor him
with our lives.”

The realization hit Dadua. Cheftu watched his face change, the anger and indignation fade to shame and brokenness. “I led
them in pagan practice,” Dadua moaned, falling to his knees, stricken. “I tried to make us as other nations! I led them in
believing the Seat was an artifact, not the home of the living God!” He picked up clumps of dirt and manure, rubbing them
on his face, in his hair, and onto his iris blue clothing. “Shaday, Shaday, I was wrong! Forgive me for blaspheming your holiness!”

“Are you sure we should leave the Seat here?” one of the priests asked. “Should we not try to take it into the city?”

“And endanger more of my people when the sin is mine alone?” Dadua asked, his face streaked with brown. “
Ani haMelekh
. The responsibility is mine, as is the punishment.” Tears overflowed his eyes. “We need, I need, to know more of
el ha
Shaday. I need to be forgiven for my pride in marching the Seat before the other rulers to impress them. I need to remember
that the Seat, the Tent, the practices, are for God, not for us.”

N’tan’s black pointed brows rose in fury. “You did this for pride? To impress the pagans of Egypt and Tsor?”

“I was wrong, I was wrong.” Dadua was sobbing openly now. “I thought nothing I could do would err, but I was wrong.”

“
el ha
Shaday looks on you with favor, as no man has ever seen, but he is still God, beyond the mountains, beyond the sea, beyond
the stars,” N’tan raged. “He is not controlled by us.”

A point made abundantly clear today, Cheftu thought.

“He is immortal and invisible; we are earthlings formed of dirt!” The
tzadik
spun on his heel, leaving. Dadua beat his head on the dirt, startling the animals that were being led away, drawing sympathetic
glances from the priests.

“As the deer thirsts and pants for flowing water, so my
nefesh
thirsts after you. My
nefesh
longs after you, Shaday, the living God. When can I meet with you? My tears feed me as I hear men say, ‘Where is your God?’
I remember these words as I pour my
nefesh
before you. In my youth I joined the tribesmen, leading the procession to where your house resided. With joy and thanksgiving,
we were a festive group.”

“There was no joy, no thanksgiving, today,” another priest said. “It was ownership, even lust.” He dropped to his knees, wiping
dirt on his robe, crying out.
“My
nefesh
is downcast and disturbed in my
guf,
my flesh. I place my hope in Shaday, I will praise him even now, for he saves me, he is my God.”

Cheftu watched the priest and Dadua speak in words Cheftu knew as the psalms, though now they seemed genuine pleas to God,
not written and poetic.
“Even as my
nefesh
is downcast, I will remember you,”
the priest said.
“Through the Yarden to the heights of Hermon. Deep calls to deep in the roar of the waterfalls, the sea has swept over me.

“By day
el
Shaday directs his love. At night I hear his song in me, a prayer to the God of my life.”

Dadua beat his breast, shouting at the roof, prostrate before the Seat.
“I say to you, Shaday, the rock of my life, why have you forgotten me? Why do I mourn, why am I oppressed like an enemy?”

His voice cracked as he raised up, his hands in the air. His next words were from a throat raw with weeping, a soul torn.
“Why is my
nefesh
downcast? Why this disturbance? I will trust in God, I will believe in his
chesed.
I will praise him, for he is God, my God.”