Great Lion of God

by Taylor Caldwell

  At first he was affrighted, thinking her a shade, and then he was appalled at the shadow of a young woman creeping about alone in the darkness, and he advanced upon her, and then, by the faint light of the stars he saw Elisheba’s shining countenance, mute, glowing, filled with helpless love for him. He stopped, struck and trembling. She raised her hands to him, and he saw her long uncovered hair and the whiteness of her neck and the quick lifting of her bosom.

  At what moment she was in his arms he could never remember, but with an acute sensation of joy he felt the pressure of her young breasts against his chest, and the warmth of her body against his own, and then his head bent and their lips met in hot and tender passion. All his flesh shuddered with an anguish of rapture when she put her arms about his neck and her sleeves fell back and the warm roundness of her flesh was unimpeded. This was quite different from the raptures of the spirit which he had known, yet in some fashion it was not too dissimilar.

  He held her tightly in his arms, as if afraid that she might be turned into mist or vanish, and he heard her warm murmurings against his throat, and his heart rejoiced and his eyes melted in tears of happiness, and yet his mind roared against him. He was betraying God, to Whom he had pledged his miserable life in absolute service. He was betraying the Messias, Who had forgiven his monstrous sins and had condescended to rescue him and give him a mission—though the mission, after a year in Tarsus, still eluded him. Another thought shrieked in his brain: Was the Messias permitting this new temptation of him, this glorious temptation, from Satan, to test his worthiness?

  But, how sweet was woman flesh, and the scent of a woman, and the softness of a woman! How could anything so desirable, so fulfilling, so lovable and so full of beauty, be sinful? Saul’s head roared with mingled passion and horror at himself.

  Now he could hear what Elisheba was whispering against his throat, and it was the love song of the Queen of Sheba, and never had it sounded so heart-shaking:

  “‘As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste. He brought me to the banqueting house and his banner over me was love. Stay me with flagons and comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love! His left hand is under my head, and his right hand embraces me! The voice of my beloved—!’”

  The whole spirit of Saul thrilled and leaped at these wondrous words and his lonely heart knew the heat of love and desire and total ecstasy, and he held Elisheba closer to him and murmured in reply, in the words of Solomon:

  “‘You have ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse. You have ravished my heart with one of your eyes! How fair is your love, how much better is your love than wine and the smell of your ointments than all spices! Your lips drop as the honeycomb; honey and milk are under your tongue, and the fragrance of your garments is like the scent of Lebanon!’”

  For an instant—terrible to him—a thought like fire flashed through his brain: Was not human love like this lovelier than love for God, and was not the touch of a beloved woman more complete and more comforting than all else?

  Human love was not forbidden by God. In truth, it was blessed. He, Saul, had none to love him now but this girl, this delight in his arms, this fragrant sweetness against his throat, and he knew that she loved him not in wantonness but in truth and humility and joy. His loneliness overwhelmed him. The emptiness of his days was like a cold lake creeping to his heart. He had only to take this gift she offered and life would hum with color and scent and laughter and pleasure and contentment.

  Then he saw the road before him, which he had accepted with reverence and rejoicing, and he knew he must travel that way alone. He could not take Elisheba and her distractions with him. His vows must be fulfilled. The road was bitter and hard, but at the end was a fulfillment beyond dreaming and imagining. While it was better I to marry than to burn, some men must not marry, and he was convinced that he was one of these.

  In the total service of God, a man must deny himself all things, even human love and human yearning. A man so dedicated could bring nothing but sorrow and bewilderment and loss to another human being, for he could not give his whole heart to that being. Elisheba must not be hurt; she must not be wounded, or he, himself, would expire in his pain and his remorse that he could not give her his whole self and his whole spirit and life.

  Gently then, and almost with despair but with resolution, he disengaged the clinging arms of Elisheba and led her to a spot of darkness near the walls of her brothers’ house, and they sat down together, and she clung to him and rested her head on his shoulder, and in spite of his fierce resolve he could not put her away. The warm grass under them was bruised and a shower of jasmine blossoms fell over them like rain, and the great stars, scarlet, blue, white, golden, seemed to flame within reach. Somewhere a nightingale sang with so poignant a theme that the hearts of the young man and woman, listening, opened and quivered with mingled sadness and exaltation.

  One of Elisheba’s breasts leaned against Saul’s arm, and he held her hand and thought how beautiful and peaceful it would be to die like this and never wander again, never search, never hunger, never know despair. He tried to speak, but his lips would not open. So it was with the prescience of love that Elisheba spoke softly:

  “I have loved you long, my heart’s glory and delight, since I was a child and you were but a youth with your books in my grandfather’s house. I saw you before you saw me. I heard your voice before you heard mine. When I was a girl you were my dream of Paradise, the vision of an angel, a young Moses. Then you went away for many years, and I married, for it was my duty, but it was without love. Never was your face absent from my thoughts. It was you, and not my husband, who stood with me under the marriage canopy.”

  Elisheba drew a deep and crying breath, and then continued in her low and dulcet voice:

  “No, never did I forget you, my beloved one, not for an hour. Yet always did I know, even as a child, that you could belong to none on earth, and only to God. My grandfather spoke of this, in comfort to me, but I had known always. You cannot take me with you, for the way you go must be taken alone, for One loves you more than I, and from His call you dare not retreat.

  “I implore but one thing of you, my beloved. Do not deny me your presence after this night. Do not refrain from letting me gaze upon you. No glance of mine will disturb or distract you; no smile will cause you to falter. I ask only that I see you in my brothers’ house, and that I bring you wine and meat and fresh linen and serve your bread. Your shadow falling upon me will be brighter than the sun to my eyes. The sound of your step and your voice will be my consolation, my contentment. I am only a frail woman. I could not live, henceforth, if you deprived me of the sight of your face.”

  She lifted his hand to her lips and humbly kissed it. Then she looked at him and by the light of the stars he saw that she was whitely smiling and that her eyes glistened and sparkled with tears.

  He had thought all women weak and suspect and more than a little contemptible as well as dangerous, but now he saw a resolution and courage and self-denial that would have been glorious in the bravest man, and even in his agony he was awed and humbled, and his love for Elisheba became reverent as well as dear and beautiful beyond speaking.

  He took her slender face in his palms and bent and kissed her lips, and they were no colder nor saltier than his. Then he put her from him and rose and left her. She gazed after him until the night had taken him, and then with a little cry she fell on her face on the grass and moaned like a dying lamb, and she did not stir until the first gray light of dawn paled the east.

  Chapter 39

  THE fourth slow year turned at Tarsus, and Saul waited, and no sound came to him and no fresh revelation. He was like a ship thrown upon a beach and there left to dry and wither beneath the sun, useless and without a crew or captain, its sails flapping in the wind and no movement on its parched deck.

  Had it all been a dream, a delusion? Had Go
d forgotten at last, and left him to die here in this far spot? The spiritual leader of the Jews asked him, with hesitant compassion, not to speak in the synagogue any longer, for it angered the people who remembered that he had once persecuted his own. Nor was he welcome among the Nazarenes, who also remembered. I am friendless, he thought, save for those in the house of Reb Isaac, and the woman I dare not take, and my old tutor, Aristo, and his wife.

  He walked in his gardens. He labored with the servants. He picked crapes for wine. He had a small shop in Tarsus where he sold the Boat’s hair he wove for tents, and he had few customers. I am like Cain, with a brand on my forehead, he would think. There was not the furious hostility toward him that he had encountered in Jerusalem, but it was deep enough to make him a pariah to his own people. He wrote letters to his cousin, Titus Milo, in Rome, and was grieved to hear of old Aulus’ death and the death of his cousin, Hannah. Yet everything became as a dream to him at last, and he waited for the awakening, so long delayed.

  His sister wrote him with news of the dwindled family, and she tried to make her letters gay and comforting, as if she suspected his misery. He wished to speak of his dryness of soul and the grayness of his spirit, but could not. Only one truly knew, and that was Elisheba, and more and more he went to the house where she lived for the consoling sight of her, and her soft smile, and the sound of her step. Then he could go no more, for her brothers were becoming sullen and casting reproachful glances at him and lifting their eyebrows, and so even this oasis in the desert was closed to him. Sometimes he cried to the night: “God has forgotten me, and so should I not forget Him also, and take my joy to my heart and live as other men, and beget children and sit under my own fig tree and rejoice in the sight of my wife?” He would then leave his house and go to the house of Elisheba and stand without the gates like a thief, crushed with desire and loneliness and love. But Elisheba, keeping a pact with him and God, did not come to him though he knew, with a strange knowing, that she was aware of his presence. Then he would return to his house, vaguely comforted, as if her hand had touched his in the darkness and her heart had lain on his own.

  As he had done years before he argued, implored and wrangled with God. “I am like a steed, saddled and bridled, stamping his feet, and You do not call me to the battle! I am like a sword, rusting in the scabbard. I am a banner unraveling in the wind and the insignia upon it is fading. My helmet has dimmed; my armor is pitted. I am no longer young. Use my strength, O my Lord and my Savior! Use my years, or I will wither like the dried meat of a nut. Where is the altar to which You would call me? Why have You thrown me aside like the rind of a melon, like chaff, like useless straw? Here are my hands, my heart, my blood, my flesh! Take me before I die in old age, mumbling a forgotten dream!”

  There was no answer. Distracted, he would pace the empty rooms of his house. Mourning as if they were freshly dead, he visited his parents’ tombs. There he would speak to his father, imploring his intercession with the silent God. “You loved Him, my father,” he would murmur at the stone of the tomb, “and surely you served Him, and He will hear you, though He is now deaf to my cries. How have I offended Him, that He keep His countenance from me? Touch His garment, the shining garment of the Messias, and remind Him I await His call, as once He told me.”

  One day, in his hapless wanderings in the cool of the early evening, he found himself passing a small cemetery where the Gentiles were buried, but Gentiles of humble station such as freedmen and servants. The wall was low and he saw the graves and the dark cypresses. Then suddenly he was shaken, for on several of the graves he saw rude wooden crosses twined with flowers or ribbons, and he opened gate and went within, treading gently as if not to disturb the sleepers in the dust.

  The graveled path led around a cluster of cypresses and he upon more graves with the crosses upon them, and now he and almost fell back. For a young man was kneeling with hands before one of those crosses, and his red hair blazed in the sun, and his face was the face of the younger Saul.

  My son, thought Saul. He would have crept away but his slight movement caught the attention of the young man who lifted quiet blue eyes, as metallic as Saul’s own, to his face. Boreas rose to his feet, still gazing at Saul, and the two confronted each other in silence. The sun glinted on the cypresses and the withering grass of the summer. The wind talked to the trees and a distant chariot clattered on the hot road.

  “I know you,” said Boreas, and his voice was the voice of Saul.

  “Yes,” said Saul. He tried to smile. He felt his heart cracking with the old pain. “I saw you as a child. You are Boreas, are you not, the son of—?”

  Boreas did not answer. He stood, as stalwart as a young lion and did not move. A peculiar smile came to rest upon his mouth. A butterfly hovered near his shoulder. He surveyed Saul with penetration, and the odd smile increased.

  “I never forgot you,” said Boreas at last. “As the years passed, I remembered you more and more. And I have seen you in the marketplace, Saul ben Hillel, and I have heard you speak and harangue the people. I have followed you into the synagogues, for all it is unlawful,” and the smile deepened with satire and irony, “and I have marveled at your eloquence.”

  Saul could not speak. He wanted to flee, but Boreas’ look held him.

  “I am a Nazarene, also,” said the young man. “And so was the good man I called my father, who lies in this grave.” He gestured at the larger cross. “I say he was good, for always must he have known I was not his son, yet he loved me and took me as his own. Was it because of the money? But the money did not come to him for several years after I was born, and I remember that he dandled me on his knee as a babe, and taught me to walk, long before there was money.” The ironic smile became colder and harder. “The money of my grandfather, Hillel ben Borush.”

  Saul’s face had paled to the color of clay, and his mouth opened as if he could not breathe. Yet he could not glance aside from that condemning and satirical young countenance, and the youth suddenly appeared amused.

  “You thought I did not know how you would creep upon me when I was a child, after we had first met,” said Boreas. “I pretended not to see you, and your peering through hedges or peeping over walls. Was I so dear to you, Saul ben Hillel, that you dared not speak to me, your son?”

  Saul’s eyes darkened with his sorrow and with the love that sprang at his throat like a tiger.

  “Look at me!” said Boreas, and he advanced a pace. “Do you deny I am your son? Do you know what they say to me, those who have seen you and know me? They laugh, as if at a good-tempered jest, and they say, ‘There is but one in all Tarsus besides yourself, Boreas, who has the color of your hair and your eyes, and your features, and that is Saul ben Hillel of the noble Jewish house. Perhaps, when your mother was carrying you in her belly she happened upon him and he impressed himself upon her mind, and so marked you!’ That is what they say, Saul ben Hillel, and they have said that since my earliest youth, and sometimes in the hearing of the good man who had taken me into his family.”

  His voice had risen and it lashed at Saul like a whip.

  Saul spread out his hands and he said, “Condemn me if you will Boreas, but I loved your mother, and I was hardly fifteen when I begot you, years younger than yourself at your present age.”

  “And she was but a miserable slave, and you were a Jew of a great house!”

  Saul shook his head. “No, no.” He could not tell this young man that his mother had known other men besides himself, and was not an innocent virgin when she had given herself to him, and that she was his first encounter with a woman.

  Boreas’ eyes narrowed and his red lashes were like a flame across his fair and freckled face.

  “I never knew my mother,” said Boreas. “But I have heard she was very beautiful and kind and loving, and she was the favorite of her mistress who freed her when she married, and gave her a dowry. Were the stories lies?”

  “No. They were not lies,” said Saul. He gathered strength. �
��I have told you: I was not yet fifteen. I am a Jew. Your mother was not a Jewish-maiden. I could not have married her, for my father would not have given his consent, and I had duties to my people.”

  Boreas said, “I have heard of those duties, for your fame preceded your return, my father.” Saul could not endure the words, nor the smile which accompanied them.

  “I am not a child,” said the young man. “I have lain with slave girls, as you lay with one of them. Why then do I condemn you? I do not know. Perhaps I have dreamed you would claim me, but that was a false dream, was it not? I am not a Jew.”

  Saul held out his arms in a vehement gesture, and he dropped his hands fiercely on Boreas’ strong young shoulders, and he cried, “You are my son, my seed, and I did not claim you, fearing what has already come to pass, and desiring only your peace!”

  Boreas started to recoil from him. He raised his hands to seize those of Saul to fling them from his shoulders. But as he touched his father’s hands his own came to rest on them, helplessly, and they stood and gazed into each other’s eyes, and slowly they began to smile at each other.

  Then Saul took his son into his arms and embraced him hungrily and said, “I have not forgotten you, Boreas, my son, as you know. I have longed for you through the years. But I would not have you harmed, nor derided. For your sake I did not seek you out. Condemn me for a coward, if you will, but I was a coward in your behalf. Oh, I would that my father had held you on his knee and had kissed your cheek!”

  “I visit his tomb, and the tomb of my grandmother,” said Boreas, and his voice became husky. “I am proud that I am of their flesh, and of yours also. Now I understand, and I implore you to forgive me.”

  Saul drew him closer and kissed his forehead, then his cheeks. “You have come to me as the sun, brightening my life,” he said, his voice shaking. “I have none but you, of my seed. All that I have shall be yours. For I am a man without a home, without a land now, and without a people, and perhaps even without a God.”