Keepers of the Covenant

by Lynn Austin

  Once again, Amina saw the men look at each other. “Mama, their home is gone. We burned all the local villages last night so the men couldn’t regroup and attack us again. She and the other survivors will have to find someplace else to live.”

  “Then you have to help them find their family. Where might your parents have gone?” she asked Amina.

  “They’re dead,” she whispered. “We’re the only ones left.”

  “Come on, then,” Hodaya said, helping her to her feet. “I’ll take you home with me. You must be hungry. Tell your sister not to be afraid. She can come, too.”

  “You can’t take them home, Mama,” one of the men said. “They’re our enemies.”

  “They’re children. Look. She’s shaking like a leaf.”

  “But they’re still our enemies. The Almighty One curses those who curse us. Tell them to go back to their people. They must have relatives somewhere.”

  Hodaya clutched Amina tighter. “Well, until we find them, I’m taking these girls home.” She motioned to Sayfah. “Little one, you’ll be safe with me.”

  Sayfah refused to move at first, but Amina finally coaxed her to follow as Hodaya led them out of her booth and into the smoky sunlight. Amina wondered if she was making a mistake. Hodaya was kind, but her sons hated her. These were the men who’d killed Abba and her brothers. Would they kill her, too, if they got the chance? She grew more fearful as they walked, listening to them talk as if she and Sayfah weren’t even there.

  “You think they’ll forget this bloodbath?” the one named Jacob asked as they left the marketplace and turned down a narrow lane. “These girls will grow up to hate us, Mama. They’ll look for revenge. They’ll murder us in our beds.”

  “We need to show them mercy,” Hodaya said.

  “Why should we show mercy? Their people wouldn’t have if the battle had gone the other way.”

  “But it didn’t,” Hodaya said. “We must do it because God is merciful. He spared us all from a horrible death yesterday.”

  “Our leaders will never approve. These girls are Gentiles and—”

  Hodaya halted and turned to stare up at her three sturdy sons. “Yes. And you also know that I was born a Gentile. You’ve heard my story countless times. I was also an enemy of the Jews, but the Almighty One spared my life. And now you’re going to help me spare theirs.”

  “We shouldn’t go with them,” Sayfah whispered. “I’m scared!”

  “Everyone is dead, Sayfah. What else can we do?” Amina dragged her sister behind her, trusting Hodaya. When they reached the warmth and safety of her home, the aroma of bread baking made Amina’s empty stomach rumble. She sat down beside the fire and accepted the food Hodaya offered. Sayfah refused to eat.

  “We don’t belong here,” she wept, rocking in place. “I should have died with Mama.”

  The bloody scene from the market square sprang to Amina’s mind, unbidden. She closed her eyes, trying to push it away. “Hush, Sayfah,” she soothed. “Don’t talk about it anymore. We’re safe.”

  Chapter

  19

  BABYLON

  Jude was dead. Devorah stared at his motionless body in disbelief. It was riddled with stab wounds, emptied of blood. She had watched the life drain from him as if a door were slowly closing, shutting him off from her, shutting out the sunlight and joy, leaving her in darkness. The hands and arms that had once fashioned pottery, lifted his daughters, embraced and caressed Devorah, now lay pale and limp at his sides. She would never feel them surrounding her again.

  “No . . . no . . .” she repeated. “No, this can’t be. . . .” She had begged God to save him yet Jude had died. Why hadn’t God answered her prayers?

  She couldn’t imagine life without Jude. Miriam had once said the same thing about Asher. But the unimaginable had happened. Jude was gone. Gone. Just when the battles were over and the enemy defeated, the angel of death had won after all.

  Devorah felt someone take her arm, try to help her to her feet, try to separate her from her husband, but she fought him off. “No . . . no, leave me alone.”

  “Devorah, it’s time to let go.” Ezra’s voice was gentle and hoarse with emotion. “Time to go home. The girls are asking for you.”

  She couldn’t leave him, didn’t want to leave him, but Ezra gripped her tightly as he pulled her away. His eyes were red with grief, his right arm wrapped in a blood-soaked bandage. Why hadn’t the Almighty One taken him instead of Jude? Ezra didn’t have a wife and children.

  “I can’t leave my husband. I can’t . . .” she sobbed as he continued to drag her away.

  “I know. But we have to. We have no choice.”

  Somehow they reached home, where friends and neighbors waited in the lamplight to share her grief. They’d made a fire and brought food, fed Abigail and Michal, and put them to bed. Night had fallen. Devorah was surprised to see how dark it was. Yet it seemed fitting, as if the sun would never rise again. Jude had died just as the dreaded thirteenth day of Adar had ended. Why would God take him at the very end? Couldn’t her prayers have protected him a few minutes longer?

  Friends stayed by her side throughout the funeral and the dark days that followed. Miriam came to help, carrying her newborn son. Each time Devorah heard a footstep or a man’s deep voice, she had to remind herself all over again that Jude was gone, that he wasn’t coming home. A mountain of grief sat on her chest, unmoving, unmovable, day and night.

  As Devorah sat in the courtyard on the third morning, rocking Michal in her arms, Ezra came to her gate. He raised his hand and lifted his chin in greeting, and the gesture was so like Jude’s that for the space of a heartbeat she thought it was him. Then a fresh wave of sorrow extinguished her joy.

  “I hope I’m not disturbing you,” he said. He wore his right arm in a sling, and she remembered the bloodied bandage, remembered thinking he should have died instead of Jude. “I’ve come for my things,” he said.

  His things. It took Devorah a moment to understand what he meant. Alongside the bottomless crater of Jude’s absence, she’d barely noticed that Ezra hadn’t come home. It wouldn’t be proper for him to continue living here, even though one of Devorah’s friends stayed by her side, making sure she was never alone. “Yes. Of course,” she mumbled.

  Ezra disappeared into his room, and she heard him rummaging around. When he came out he carried a blanket-wrapped bundle in his left hand. He paused and met her gaze for a moment before looking away. “I miss him, too,” he said.

  Devorah’s anger broke free from its precarious tether. “Why did he have to die? Why did God take him? Can you explain that to me?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

  “Tell me what happened during the battle. You were with him. Did Jude look away for a moment or get careless? Did God look away? I want the truth. You owe me that.” Ezra set down the bundle, and she saw how weary he looked, as if he hadn’t slept, either. But she needed to know. “Tell me.”

  He ran his hand over his face, and again, it was a gesture she’d seen Jude make a thousand times. “There was a Babylonian man . . .” he finally said. “He’d been coming to the pottery yard, taunting Jude.”

  For a moment, Devorah couldn’t breathe. “Yes. He told me about him. He said the man had threatened me. Is he . . . is he the one who killed Jude?”

  Ezra shook his head. “No. The battle was over. The enemy was retreating when Jude saw him. He climbed over the barricade and went after him before Asher and I could stop him. He killed the man who’d threatened you . . . but the man was with six others. They killed Jude.” Ezra paused for a moment, exhaling. “We avenged his death, Devorah. All the men who attacked Jude are dead.”

  “He thought he was protecting me?” she asked in disbelief. “That’s what got him killed?” She wanted to rage, to scream at the absurdity of it, but Michal lay asleep on her lap. “I told him I didn’t need to be protected! I told him to ignore the man! I told him—” She covered her mouth, unable to finish
. Who would protect her now? How could she live the rest of her life without Jude? She was only twenty-five; he’d been thirty-two. They should’ve had a lifetime together. And she loved him. How she loved him!

  She remembered talking with Jude a few months ago, trying to convince him that God was trustworthy. “I’ve made up my mind to trust Him even if we all die,” she had said, “because God must have a reason for it. He must!” Could she say that now? Did she still trust Him?

  Devorah didn’t know how much time passed before Ezra spoke again. “I’m staying with Asher and Miriam for now. If there’s anything you need, please ask. I promised Jude—”

  “I know. I heard you promise,” she said stiffly. “The only thing I need is to know why God took him. Can you tell me that? Why didn’t He hear my prayers? How can He call Himself a loving God if He let my husband die?”

  She closed her eyes, fighting tears. When she opened them again, Ezra was gone.

  Chapter

  20

  BABYLON

  Ezra awoke in the dark, his body stiff and cold. His injured arm throbbed with pain. He sat up, not remembering where he was at first. Clay jars and storage baskets loomed in the darkness all around him. He heard the squeaking and skittering of mice. Asher’s storage room. It wasn’t proper to live with Jude’s widow, so he had asked Asher for a place to sleep.

  Jude was dead. The memory brought renewed grief. Even if Ezra had been allowed to stay in his old room, he didn’t think he could bear to watch Devorah mourn or hear Jude’s bewildered daughters asking, “Where’s Abba? When is Abba coming home?”

  He would have to go back, though. Devorah wanted to know why God had allowed such a tragedy, what the purpose had been. Ezra asked the same question and many more as he wrestled with the Almighty One. He owed it to Devorah to offer what scant insight he could provide. Everyone in their community sought answers. They came to Ezra as their leader, asking for words of advice, unloading their burdens and sorrows, seeking God’s guidance. He knew the Torah better than any man in Babylon, so it was up to him to reassure them. A formidable task.

  If any good at all had come from this tragic ordeal, it was that God’s people were trying harder than ever to please Him. Yet following God’s laws was becoming increasingly difficult to do here in Babylon, surrounded by a pagan culture. If only Ezra could lead his people home to Jerusalem.

  The growing light in the room foretold dawn’s approach. He wouldn’t fall back asleep now, so he stood and put on his robe, careful to shield his aching arm. The enemy’s sword had slashed through skin and muscle, clear to the bone, leaving his limb so weak he could barely lift a cup. His arm would have to heal some more before he could write or do any work. He fumbled to fasten his sandals with one hand and went out for a walk in the early morning light. The streets were deserted, the wintry air cold. Asher’s house bordered the edge of the Jewish community, and it didn’t take Ezra long to reach the street where one of the barricades had stood. It was gone and so were the bodies of his slain enemies. What had happened to them? Had their families come to claim them? He wished he could have strewn the Gentiles’ corpses across the open desert beneath the sun, food for scavengers and birds of prey. He understood the psalmist’s deep hatred of Gentiles and his words: “Happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us—he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.”

  Ezra walked and walked, watching and listening as the community stirred and stretched and slowly came to life. He heard the sound of hand mills grinding grain into flour, smelled the aroma of smoke and baking bread. A woman sang as she worked the way Devorah often did—the way she used to sing, that is.

  His wanderings took him to the house of assembly, and he went inside to prepare to lead morning prayers. Ezra’s week of mourning ended today, a week filled with funerals and prayers for the fallen. Too many funerals. This evening a special service would honor all the men who had died: fathers, husbands, sons. Brothers. It wouldn’t bring any of them back.

  Eventually, the other men arrived for morning prayers, and Ezra led them through the liturgy. Afterward he and Asher recited the traditional mourning prayers for Jude. Then he sat in the tiny room behind the assembly hall that he used for his office and reread the latest proclamation that had come from Mordecai the Jew, the Persian king’s right-hand man. It told a miraculous story of how the Jewish Queen Esther had intervened to save her people. Throughout the empire’s provinces, seventy-five thousand of the Jews’ enemies had been killed on the Thirteenth of Adar. And now Mordecai had called for Jews in every province to celebrate the fourteenth and fifteenth days of Adar from this day forward as days of feasting and joy. They would remember it as the time when Jews got relief from their enemies, and their sorrow was turned into celebration. The holiday would be called Purim after the lots that Haman had cast in his attempt to destroy God’s people.

  Ezra could understand why Jews throughout the empire would want to celebrate, but for him, the price had been too great. He would excuse himself from the festivities. Life could never return to the way it was. His own life had changed irrevocably. Babylon was no longer home to him. He closed his eyes as he recited the words to one of the psalms of exile: “‘By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. . . . If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill. May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy.’”

  When Ezra emerged from his office an hour later, one of the men from the assembly approached him. “Rebbe Ezra, please. If you have a moment, I need your advice.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  The man asked an intricate question about the Sabbath laws, explaining how he felt trapped between violating the sacred day and not angering his Babylonian employer. “We’re their slaves, after all,” he finished. “But what should I do?”

  “Give me time to study the text,” Ezra replied, “and to research what the men of the Great Assembly have written about it. I’ll try to have an answer for you by tomorrow.”

  “Thank you, Rebbe. God bless you.”

  The subject of employment reminded him where he needed to go next. His brothers’ pottery yard had remained closed for more than a week before the battles, then for a second week as he and Asher had mourned. Ezra walked through his community’s twisting lanes, accepting greetings and condolences from people along the way, his grief as painful as the wound on his arm. When he arrived, Asher was the only person in the deserted yard. He stood beside Jude’s wheel, idly spinning the upper disc with his hand. He looked up as Ezra approached and halted the wheel’s motion. “I can’t stop thinking about him,” Asher said. “How foolish he was to go after that man!”

  “I know. I had to tell Devorah the truth. She wanted to know.”

  “Now what?” Asher asked. “We have to live among our enemies, but what do we do with our hatred? How do I live the rest of my life with it?”

  “I wish I knew. God knows I hate the Gentiles, too. If only we could get out of Babylon and live in our own land again.” Ezra gazed at the long row of clay pots, waiting to be glazed and fired, and thought again of the victory celebration. He should set an example for the people as they celebrated God’s faithfulness with thanksgiving and praise. But how could he rejoice?

  “I told the apprentices and other potters to come back tomorrow,” Asher said, interrupting his thoughts. “I need to get back to work. I came here today to look everything over.”

  “I was worried there might have been damage. There was no way to protect an open area like this from the enemy.”

  “There’s no damage that I can see.”

  “Good. Tell me what I can do to help.” He lifted Jude’s leather apron from the bench beside his wheel, and slipped the neck loop over his head.

  “What are you doing? Take that off,” Asher said.

  “I’m here to help you.” Ezra couldn’t tie the lower strings in back with one hand.
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br />   “How in the world can you help me, Ezra?”

  “Well, to begin with, we’ll need to take down those targets and the practice dummies. But starting tomorrow when the others return, I’ll be taking Jude’s place. He worked all these years to support my Torah studies, and now I need to support his family. I promised—”

  “You can’t make pots—especially with one arm.”

  “I apprenticed with Abba when this was his shop. I remember some things.”

  “Yes, but you gave it up to study Torah years ago. You’re a brilliant scholar, Ezra. That’s the work God wanted for you—what we all wanted for you. Now that you’re our leader—”

  “Someone has to take Jude’s place. You can’t run this place alone.”

  “I’ll figure something out. I just need a little time to train more craftsmen. Go back to the yeshiva, Ezra.”

  “Listen, if I’ve learned anything at all these past few months, it’s that I can’t stay in scholarly seclusion. I need to live and work like everyone else.”

  “You’re not a potter.”

  “That’s true. I can’t make pots as well as he did. But I can tally the accounts and talk to customers for you. And I know how to add fuel to the kiln while you make the pots and train the apprentices.”

  “What about teaching? What about studying Torah?”

  “I promised Jude I would take care of his family, and I intend to keep my promise. I’ll work here with you during the day and my students can study with me in the evening when I’m finished. I’ll continue my own studies whenever there’s time.”

  “And lead our people, too? Ezra, there aren’t enough hours in the day to do all those things. How can you pile any more onto an already full wagon?”

  He would make it work. His studies had taken on a new meaning these past months as he’d lived and labored with the people, sharing their trials and fears. The Torah had become a completely different book. In the past, he’d read much of it as history—the story of God’s dealings with Israel. But now, after their deliverance, he knew beyond a doubt that God was with them, speaking to them every day. Ezra couldn’t wait to reread the holy books with new eyes, listening for God’s voice. But he would have to do it in the evening hours, after laboring in his brother’s place, earning a living. He picked up a stick of wood with his good arm and carried it to the cold kiln.