When the platform was still not enough to breach the distance between the ramp and Herod’s mighty wall, the legion extended it with huge stones that fitted together. Then came the worst creation we had ever seen, one invented by Vespasian, then used by Titus, and now by Silva. It seemed this work of warfare had been fashioned in the demon world, and a thousand evil spirits had constructed it. We stood in awe and in despair. Even grown men had tears streaming down their faces. A metal-plated tower nearly a hundred feet tall had been set upon the wooden platform so the Romans could attack us yet be protected from our slingshots and arrows and darts. From this tower they were able to set forth huge boulders, striking the king’s walls that were meant to last for all eternity.
So it began. The mountain shook and the birds took flight, the ravens and the larks, the sparrows and hawks, every winged creature fled from us, save for the doves in the dovecotes, who had no choice but to remain. I felt the child inside me shift as I sat upon the rim of the fountain. All around me there was madness. Children of the ages of three and four were scraping the blood from spears that had been cast into a pile, pulled from the bodies of the slain. Our dead were so many they were brought into the field where the almond trees flowered with both pink and white blooms. There the dead were washed with rainwater and oil, then wound in sheets of linen.
When we had no more linen and still more dead, we used our own shawls to wind them in. Two of our young warriors, mere boys in armor, slipped through the gate to fight the soldiers on their own. Their heads were cut from their bodies and thrown up to us by catapult, their eyes still open. These boys’ mothers tore at their own flesh, horrified, caught in the nightmare that was our waking life.
Revka and her grandsons had come to stay with me, along with Yael and Arieh, for their chamber was too near the wall; their neighbors had been killed as they slept when an arrow soared through the slit in stone that had served as a window, setting their pallets on fire. Certainly, we had room enough. My daughter Aziza had set a tent in our yard. She no longer wished to sleep indoors and, like the warrior that she was, stayed beneath the stars. The Man from the Valley came to take his meals with her, and they sat there like brethren, not speaking, yet not lacking for comfort. This man’s sons, Noah and Levi, peered out at this grave warrior, for he had become more a legend than a man to them. Once I noticed his glance flicker over to them. His expression softened and something seemed to stir within him, but he turned away, attending to the meager meal of beans and lentils Aziza had cooked for them to share.
Revka had confided that on the day of her beloved daughter’s death, her son-in-law vowed two things: As long as he was in the world he would not take another woman into his bed, and he would never again cut his hair. But one night when he came for his meal, Revka groaned when she saw him, then hurried away. She stood with her back to us, shaken. Her son-in-law had cut his hair, then shaved his head. I followed Revka and took her hand in mine as she wept. It was over, she told me, this life of ours on earth. Her son-in-law had shorn his hair because the time had come for him to leave this world behind.
That same night I saw my daughter embrace this warrior in our garden. He seemed a brutal being, covered with scars, metal strands embedded in his flesh, his only clothes made of metal scales. Yet in that single embrace I saw what I had never seen between my daughter and Amram. I saw that love had led her not to ruin but to her own destiny. I could never have hoped to stop the path she was meant to be on. The Man from the Valley had vowed not to love a woman, but he had never sworn such an oath about another warrior. In becoming a boy, Aziza had allowed him to love her.
This was why so many had believed my daughter was a shedah, for when she cast her arms around this man who bound himself with strips of sharp metal, it was as though she was one of the thousand messengers who watch over us, sent to take him in her wings. I turned away when I saw him weep, for I knew what Revka said was true. This world was vanishing.
It had already been written.
WHO CAN SAY at what hour Herod’s wall was breached, the wretched moment when the first stone fell? It had been raining, but as the rain cleared, there continued to be thunder. Then, all at once, we understood it wasn’t thunder, but the battering ram continuously crashing against the wall. We stood and watched as God abandoned us, and then we did the best we could. There was chaos as the men raced to the plaza to build another wall, quickly, with mad fury. My cousin wanted a wall that would stand behind the stone wall the legion had broken through, one made of mud and grass so that it might sway with the battering ram rather than break apart. In a storm a blade of grass can withstand the fury of winds that bring the palaces of kings to ruin. There wasn’t a person who didn’t assist in building this second wall, for terror stirred in us all. Even Yehuda, the Essene boy, and my son, Adir, on his crutch were there, eager to help.