Zealot (9 page)

Israel: 14 Nisan, The Present

The sun shone bright over the Dead Sea, its rays reflecting off the shimmering blue surface. On the road that skirted along
the edge of the sea, Avram Mordecai reached into the glove box for his sunglasses. With one hand he flipped them open and
put them on, relieved to be able to see the road again.

There wasn’t much traffic on the narrow road that wove its way through the craggy desert surrounding the sea of salt. It wasn’t
yet high season for the seaside resorts, despite the unseasonably warm spring, so the hordes of tourists who flocked to the
area to encase themselves in mud baths or just float in the briny waters had not yet begun to clog up the roads. He could
never see the attraction, himself.

He was only a couple of miles out of the oasis town of Ein Gedi, the last speck of green for miles in this wilderness, when
he spotted it, up ahead in the distance—Masada. Its sheer rock facings towered more than a quarter mile above the sea far
below and then stopped abruptly to form a vast plateau, as if God had begun to make a mountain, and then been called away
halfway through. Avram was still some miles away, but the promontory on which King Herod had built his fortress dominated
the landscape.

Avram glanced at the dashboard clock. It had taken him less than two hours to make the drive from Jerusalem. The first time
he had made the journey, it had taken over a week. He and his father had nearly died in the wilderness, and their first glimpse—like
now, shimmering through the heat in the distance—of the impenetrable stronghold high atop the mesa had seemed like a beacon
of hope sent by God.

The rock loomed ever larger as Avram sped toward it. A trick of the light, a small cloud shadowing the sun—he was certain
he saw, just for a moment, the magnificence of Herod’s palace perched precariously on the steep north face, resplendent in
white and gold. But he knew it was illusion, nothing more. He’d been with the party that unearthed the secrets of Masada in
the years after the liberation of Israel, slung a trowel and hauled rock with the other students and soldiers and housewives
eager to find the truth. Avram had seen for himself that nothing remained now but patterns of rocks and the sands of time.

He pulled his car into the parking lot by the youth hostel at the foot of Masada and got out. In a pair of faded jeans, hiking
boots, and a T-shirt proclaiming a popular Tel Aviv coffeehouse, he could easily pass as one of the many Israeli teenagers
who made the pilgrimage to Masada each day, looking for their cultural heritage, looking for their own identity. And in many
ways, he was.

A cable car whisked tourists from the base to the summit in a matter of minutes. Avram rolled his eyes disdainfully at the
idea of such laziness and walked on. To truly know Masada, one should suffer, at least a bit. There were two other paths up
the face of the rock for those who preferred to climb under their own power. Most chose the huge earthen ramp that sloped
from the foot to the top, an easy ten-minute walk. Avram refused. The enormous ramp was all that remained of the giant siege
engine the Romans had constructed to take Masada. He’d watched it built, day by day, bit by bit, on the blood and death of
ten thousand Jewish slaves forced to toil in the desert heat. Each day it had crept closer to the summit, each day closer
to the last remaining bastion of Jewish freedom. He’d sooner die than justify its existence now.

He chose instead the torturous serpentine path that wove its way in and among the rocks on the craggy eastern face of the
rock. It was by this path he had originally come to Masada, it was by this path that Herod had created his fortress a hundred
years before that. During his work with the archaeologists excavating Masada in the 1960s, Avram had needed some fancy excuses
to explain why he always preferred the fifty-minute he up the serpentine to the easy walk up the Roman ramp—Professor Yadin
thought he was an exercise nut—but he’d sworn he’d never take his ease on the broken backs of ten thousand of his Jewish brothers.

Once he finally reached the top, Avram wasted no time. Bypassing the bathhouse, the synagogue, the swimming pool, and the
other remains where the excited tourists all gathered, he moved away from them to the far southern end of the site, to the
thick stone wall that had surrounded the plateau, creating Herod’s fortress. Avram passed through an opening in the rocks.
Just beyond him, another wall of stones. Together, the two was formed concentric rings around Masada. And within the space
between the walls, the remains of walls more narrow, partitioning the space into smaller rooms. He moved quickly, confidently
through a maze of ruined stone partitions standing no taller than his waist, sure of his destination.

Avram stopped in an opening between the rocks where a door once stood. In front of him the stones marked out a tiny cubicle,
hardly bigger than a closet. He entered with reverence. In one corner, set into the walls, a small clay oven, worn and eroded
by time. Still, he thought he could smell bread baking…

Masada, Idumaea: 14 Nisan 3833 (
A.D.
73)

“More bread?” The flat rounds of dough were still warm from the oven and filled their tiny stone room with a fresh, homey
scent. Deborah reached across the tattered cloth that functioned as their table and served her husband, placing more bread
next to his bowl of pottage. Avram took both her slender hands into his own and brought them to his lips, kissing them gently.
His face was filled with love and the certain knowledge that he was the luckiest man in the world. He turned one of her hands
in his and covered her palm with kisses. Her hands still smelled of yeast and flour, and he drank in the perfume. Then his
lips moved down her hand to her delicate wrist, stopping only at the embroidered sleeve of her gown.

Deborah laughed, a silvery sound like the jangle of coins. “Does that mean ‘thank you’ by any chance?” In the sputtering lamplight
that bathed their chamber in a golden glow, her eyes were burnished chestnut, and they sparkled at his touch. Her thick, black
hair, free and loose only in the seclusion of their room for the delight of her husband, adorned her face as no jeweled bauble
ever could.

Deborah’s whole world was the barren plateau on the heights of Masada. She’d come here when she was ten, her parents dead
of fever, her brother Judah one of the fighters who helped Menahem the Galilean recapture Masada from the Romans early in
the Great Revolt. In the seven years since, Jerusalem had fallen, the Great Temple destroyed, but Masada had held and Deborah
had grown into a beautiful young woman within its protective walls. “Whatever you don’t eat, we’ll just have to burn before
Pesach
begins tomorrow.”

Avram pushed aside the bread and pottage. “Funny, I don’t feel hungry anymore.” He rose to his feet from his seat on the floor
and offered Deborah a hand to stand. “Not for food, any-way,” he said with a smile, as his young wife stood before him, willing,
wanting. He touched her cheek, her hair. Even now, after three months of life as man and wife, the simple act of touching
her sent sparks through his body. He knelt at her feet, carefully removed her sandals, kissing the dusty tops of her feet.

Avram had been nineteen when he arrived at Masada three years before. He was a scholar and a Pharisee like his father before
him, and his father before him. His whole life had revolved around the study and interpretation of the Law and the Prophets
and strict adherence to the ancient traditions of the Jews. He and his parents had been trapped in Jerusalem when the Roman
forces of Titus laid siege during the festival of
Pesach
. Every day, like the rest of the besieged city, they had scrabbled to find a little food, enough water to stay alive. In
the fourth month of the siege, Avram’s mother Tamar finally succumbed to the hunger and disease that was claiming thousands
each day, and died. But somehow Avram and Mordecai, his father, managed to hold on. At the end of summer, the Romans finally
breached Jerusalem’s defenses and took the city.

In front of thousands of starving Jews, they burned the Great Temple to the ground, trapping hundreds inside. His father was
in shock at the destruction of the Holy of Holies, but Avram managed to get him out of the city in the midst of the chaos.

They escaped to the wilderness. Mordecai, all spirit gone, had begged to be left there to die, but Avram, the scholar who
had never held a bow or a sling, was determined to fight for his birthright. He herded, cajoled, and sometimes even carried
his father across the wasteland until they came to Masada. There, Avram had found purpose in his life, united with his fellow
Jews to reclaim their homeland. And there, Avram had found Deborah.

Avram’s hands slid up the sides of Deborah’s legs, gathering and raising her woven tunic as he stood, hands tracing the gentle
curve of her hips, her waist. Deborah dropped to one knee, arms raised high, and he pulled the linen garment off, revealing
her splendid body in the light. Slowly, almost ritually, she untied the lacings that twined up his calves, and removed his
sandals. He shrugged off his mantle and pulled his tunic off over his head.

The body lit and shadowed by the oil lamps was no longer that of a boyish scholar. Three years of hard work on the rock had
tempered it. Sinews defined his calves and forearms; muscles rippled down his firm belly; the dark tendrils of his hair curled
to touch powerful shoulders. A boy had come to Masada wanting to play war with the Romans. Now, despite the Romans, a man
hoped to start a family there. He bent low and gathered his wife in his arms. As she reached out to kiss him, he carried her
to his bed.

Avram and Deborah had been betrothed for a year before their marriage, a year of waiting, of dreaming what might be. Neither
Deborah’s brother nor Avram’s father had consented to the engagement at first, both men firm in their belief that the times
were too unsettled, their situation too precarious for marriage. The young couple and the love they shared grudgingly won
them over. But soon after the betrothal, the Romans came with their siege walls and their engines of war, trapping the fighters
and their families on the mesa top. They all watched in horror as their enslaved Jewish brothers, once their friends and neighbors
back in poor Jerusalem, built the earthwork ramp that slowly crept up the mountainside toward them. Preparations for the wedding
had helped keep their minds, especially those of the women of Masada, from dwelling on the encroaching danger.

They wed in borrowed finery, Deborah wearing a simple gown and veil she’d covered with intricate needlework in the year of
their betrothal. There was no dowry, no bride-price, no elaborate procession on horseback. But all of the nearly one thousand
residents of the rock were gathered when Avram met his bride beneath the canopy in the courtyard of Herod’s palace. The feast
afterward lasted until dawn, the musicians playing and the revelers singing as loud as they could, to make sure the Romans
far below them had no doubt there was celebration, not fear, on Masada.

During the dancing and merriment, a group of men including Deborah’s brother Judah and Eleazar, the commander of Masada, had
escorted Avram to the tiny stone chamber built into the double wall surrounding the fortress that would be his and Deborah’s
new home. No longer would he live in the bachelor’s barracks with his father. Amid last-minute advice and lewd jokes, his
drunken friends departed, leaving him alone in front of the wooden door. Suddenly, he felt very nervous. With sweating palms,
he pushed it open.

On a pile of mats and skins that nearly filled the room, Deborah waited for him. She was arrayed in nothing but gold and gems,
collected from a dozen women. They had anointed her body with oils so that her dusky skin glowed with a marble-like luster
and had painted her face with rouges and powders. It was said that the wise King Solomon had had a thousand wives—Avram knew
not one in that thousand could compare with his Deborah.

He stood in the doorway for some time, speechless, simply staring at the vision of beauty that was his new wife. Deborah looked
to her new husband, waiting for a sign, a word, something to indicate that he was pleased. Neither of them moved.

Finally, when she knew if the silence went on much longer she was going to scream, Deborah spoke. “Avram, my love,” she began,
“would you mind closing the door? I’d rather the neighbors weren’t watching.”

His trance broken, Avram looked out at the open corridor, then at Deborah, and they both started to laugh. Avram shut the
door, still laughing, so great was his relief. He sat on the bed of skins and embraced his closest friend, this woman who
was now his wife.

Their marriage bed had been tentative, full of false starts and friendly laughter, both partners fumbling and inexperienced.
Now, three months later, as they’d grown to know each other’s needs, their lovemaking was confident and lasting. It was sensual,
yet spiritual, as they sought to express their love for each other and for God in the creation of a child from the joy of
their bodies.

After Avram had filled her with the promise of children yet to be, the couple lay back on the mat that was their bed, Deborah’s
head on Avram’s shoulder. She drew idle patterns on his chest with a gentle finger as he played with a lock of her ebony hair.
“What do you think of Mattathias?” he asked.

“It’s…” Deborah crinkled up her nose, “quite a mouthful for a child, don’t you think? 1 always think simple names are the
best. How about Simon?”

Avram shook his head. “I have an Uncle Simon. Can’t stand him.” He thought for a moment, wrapping her hair around his finger.
“We could name him after my father.”

“Mordecai? But then he’d be frowning and grumpy all the time, just like your father. I wouldn’t wish that on a child.”

“He hasn’t always been like that.” Mordecai had never re-ally recovered from the death of his wife and the destruction of
the Temple. “I just wish you could have known him before.”