Empire's End

by JERRY JENKINS

  My first hint something was awry came when Corydon was nowhere to be found in the open area around the well and the livestock pen. With the expansion of the refuge, this had grown as new tents had been constructed in a vast circle around it, maintaining a wide berth for animals, children, and women fetching water all day. Daily Corydon would break from his dusty playtime with others and run to welcome me as I entered the area.

  Not today.

  One of the original tents that backed up to this common area was the rather large dwelling of Zuriel and Kaia. Their tent’s repairs served as a model to newcomers of how they wanted the tentmaker to craft their abodes. It was common for me to come upon Kaia and Taryn—and sometimes a few others—talking or fetching water or baking or planting. Each day had become a new opportunity for someone to joke about Taryn and me. I would respond with some rueful statement about how she showed no interest in me, or she would claim her father was looking for a wealthier suitor, and all would laugh.

  Today, no Taryn either. In fact, the few people busy in the common area appeared unwilling to look at me. I noticed a stony Kaia standing rigidly behind her tent, almost as if on guard. When she saw me she stepped between tents and called to the front, “Zuriel!” Then she returned and resumed her post.

  I greeted several people I knew but elicited no more than a nod. I approached Kaia, who looked as if she had been given an assignment she didn’t want. When I searched her eyes, they darted everywhere but at me, and the hard line of her mouth made her look more like her husband than ever.

  “What is it, my friend?” I said. “Where is my beloved today?”

  “That is not for me to say,” she said, her voice quavery. “You might want to ask Alastor.”

  “And where might I find him?”

  “In his tent.”

  “Kaia, we’re friends. Is something wrong? Is everyone all right?”

  “Go about your business.”

  Zuriel would tell me. He wasn’t warm with anyone, but I had won him over somewhat with my work on his tent, carrying my weight on his fishing party, and even saving a couple of his goats from a jackal one night on my watch despite the noisy scuffle that had wakened many—including him. The next day Kaia had delivered a dessert of raisins and honey, whispering, “He won’t admit it, but this was his suggestion and his way of showing he’s grateful.”

  I told her, “Tell him I said thanks.”

  “I’ll do nothing of the kind.”

  And we had laughed. But that was then.

  Now I headed to the front of their tent to find Zuriel standing sentry and scowling at me with fierce, dark eyes. “Didn’t she tell you Alastor was waiting for you?”

  “She did, friend, but surely you can tell me what’s happened.”

  Before I could flinch, let alone elude him or defend myself, the older man clutched my mantle and tunic in one meaty fist and yanked me close. Exhaling what smelled like decades of garlic and leeks and fish, he growled, “Are you from Tarsus?”

  “Originally, or—”

  He shoved me away with such force that my sandal caught and I slid on my seat in the hard-packed sand. “You’re Saul of Tarsus!”

  I felt like a worm, struggling to my feet and dusting myself off. “Not anymore,” I said. “That was a previous life.”

  “Well, your previous life has come home to roost, Saul.” He spat my name with such disgust that it sickened even me.

  Then it hit me. They were guarding their tent against me. “Are Taryn and Corydon here?”

  “You’ll have to kill me to find out. Now move along.”

  I closed my eyes and sighed, desperate to get a message to her. But what? Neither Zuriel nor Kaia seemed in a mood to speak for me. And what could I say, especially through an intermediary, that could persuade Taryn to delay any rash decisions, to allow me at least to explain?

  “I love her,” I said.

  “You have a strange way of showing it,” Zuriel said, waving me off as if he could no longer stand me in his sight.

  I lumbered to our tent, or to what had been our tent—I couldn’t imagine calling it that again, and came upon Nadav out front. “He’s here, sir,” he called. Turning to me with knowing eyes, he said, “I guess we’ve solved the mystery of your horse, at long last.”

  “I hope it puts your mind at ease.”

  “No one’s mind is at ease here anymore, Saul.”

  “It’s Paul now, Nadav.”

  “As you wish. You just concoct any reality that suits you, sir, and let Anna and me know what we should believe.”

  “Enough, Nadav!” The young man started at the fury in Alastor’s voice, and I realized I had not seen the old man angry before myself. “Send him in and return home!”

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to stay and—”

  “You heard me!”

  I slipped inside as if approaching the gallows, wondering if any of my future with this family was salvageable. And naturally, I was curious beyond measure how I had been found out.

  Alastor sat on the other side of the low table with his head in his hands, looking older than I’d ever seen him. My foot-high stack of parchments lay facedown in a ragged pile on the table before him, and he pointed to a stool across from him.

  “I was not unwise to let Nadav go, was I, Paul? You’re not going to stone me, are you?”

  I hesitated and hung my head. “First,” I muttered, “thank you for calling me by my Roman name. And second, if you know me at all, you know you are safe with me. Old things are passed away—”

  “Do I know you? I thought I did.”

  “I don’t know how much you have read, or why, but I have written the truth. I did not know who you were when God sent me here, and when I discovered it, I could not risk saying anything. When finally I knew I must, I did not feel freedom from the Lord—”

  “I read that much, Paul. The damage, the tragedy here, is that it was the lad who found your writings.”

  “Oh, no!”

  “As you know, he’s an accomplished reader. You have helped make him so. There was much he didn’t understand, but when Taryn discovered him with the pages, she scolded him and put them back where you had stored them. Then Corydon said you had worked in the Temple in Jerusalem. She could not help herself. I had no sons, Paul. Forgive me, but I taught her to read, and she read. She showed me. And she left.”

  “I know where she is.”

  “She cannot abide you just now, certainly not living in the same tent.”

  “I understand. Does Corydon know—”

  “Your role in the death of his father? No.”

  “Thank God.”

  “Taryn said you told her you had been raised a Pharisee and that you studied under Gamaliel.”

  I nodded. “I told her that until Christ found me, I was an enemy of believers.”

  “But Paul, you must know she had no idea the extent—”

  “Of course I know. Does she believe I did not know who she was when I arrived?”

  “She wants to, but she is having a terrible time. She loves you, Paul. She has given you her heart.”

  “And now?”

  Alastor sounded weary. “Put yourself in her place. The first man she loves is sacrificed to a cause she believes in. Despite her pain, she somehow draws strength from his memory and the depth of his character. Thinking she would remain a widow the rest of her days, she feels blessed of God when you find each other. And now the second man she loves is not who she thought he was. In fact, he may as well have personally taken the life of her first love. Paul, it’s too much to bear.”

  “Hurting her,” I said, “and the prospect of losing her, is too much for me to bear. Alastor, I have come to admire and respect you, to love you. Can you forgive me? Do you believe me, and can you tell me what to do?”

  “Bring your chair over here,” the old man said, and I rolled the stool to where I faced him on the other side of the table. He rested his palms on my shoulders. “I believe God found you.
I read your account of what happened to you on the road to Damascus, and I have never heard anything like it. Clearly, you have been chosen.

  “I don’t know what to make of your choices since you have been here. It’s difficult to say what I would have done had I found myself in the same predicament. As for me, yes, I believe I do know you and your heart. And I do forgive you. But I cannot speak for my daughter, and frankly, I would not hold it against her if she could never accept becoming your wife.”

  “That’s my fear.”

  “Imagine it. How long would it take for her to think of anything else anytime she lays eyes on you, you talk to her, touch her, embrace her?”

  “I know. I feel as if I might die if I don’t see her.”

  “It’s too soon yet.”

  “When?”

  “That is for her alone to say.”

  “What am I to do in the meantime?”

  “Plan.”

  “Plan what?”

  “Plan what you will say when she grants you an audience.” Alastor seemed to stifle a smile.

  “What could possibly be humorous right now?”

  “The boy. In many ways, he will be your ally.”

  “How so?”

  “Corydon knows only what he understands. He doesn’t know why they are staying away from home. He won’t know why you are not visiting when his grandfather visits. He’s going to want to see you, and he’ll pester her until it happens.”

  “I pray you’re right.”

  “Of course I’m right. But while you’re waiting, use your gift to prepare your thoughts.”

  “My gift?”

  “The gift that has thrust you into this mess. I couldn’t believe how much you had written since you have arrived here. And praise God, what He has been telling you in the wilderness! That, too, is your ally, Paul, because it is hard for Taryn to separate the man God has called, and in whom He is confiding so much, from the man who for some reason has kept this terrible secret.”

  “I should write to her.”

  “That’s what I’m saying.”

  “And you’ll see that she gets it.”

  “Yes. But I can’t make her read it, and I can’t tell her how she is to respond.”

  “Am I still allowed to dwell in your tent?”

  “You are if you will do me a favor from now on.”

  “Name it, Alastor.”

  “You will bury your writings where the lad can’t find them.”

  10

  THE VISION

  YANBU

  FOR THE FIRST TIME since Christ had forgiven and redeemed me, my old nature come flooding back. I was terrified it could wash away the newness of life the Lord had borne in me. I wanted to pray, needed to, but could not. I stood, I paced, I sighed, I talked to myself.

  Legs crossed and arms folded, Alastor tilted his head and studied me as I rushed about the tent. “I am about to go mad,” I said, half the time facing him, the other spinning toward the opening and looking to the west. “You tell me to write to her, but what am I to say? Jesus arrests me, God calls me, sends me here, makes me an apostle, allows me to fall in love with the widow of a man I sentenced to death, doesn’t allow me to tell her, and yet now I feel no liberty to use Him as an alibi for my silence! I must own my unexplainable guilt.”

  “Paul, Paul,” the old man said, “you are the very embodiment of Isaiah!”

  That stopped me and I turned to face him. “What on earth are you talking about? Isaiah?”

  Alastor rose and reached around the curtain for one of the ancient Scripture scrolls. He tucked it under his arm while carefully sliding my cluttered parchments out of the way. Unrolling the spool before him, he said, “Come, look. When Isaiah is called to be a prophet, Yahweh reveals Himself. You know the text.”

  “Yes, on the throne, high and lifted up, the train of His robe filling the temple, the seraphim crying ‘Holy is the Lord,’ the earth full of His glory, the smoke . . .”

  Alastor traced the text with his finger. “Here Isaiah says what you are feeling now: ‘Woe is me, for I am undone!’”

  “Come now, Rabbi,” I said. “I am distraught, but Isaiah had seen God, the Lord of hosts.”

  “Yes, but then God has the seraphim touch Isaiah’s lips with the coal and purge his sin, and the Lord asks, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?’ And how does Isaiah reply?”

  Finally I sat and my shoulders slumped. “‘Here am I! Send me.’”

  Alastor slowly rerolled the cylinder, set it down, moved behind me, and dug his fingers into the muscles on either side of my neck. “You’ve already answered the call, son. Just write to Taryn so you can get on with your task.”

  My head lolled as he kneaded my shoulders. “But will she understand? And forgive?”

  “Only God knows,” Alastor said. “You must do what you must do regardless. If she does not, will your course change? Will you not follow your calling?”

  I covered my face with my hands and wept as the man I hoped would become my father-in-law prayed for me.

  I took a stool and table to my sleeping area, found fresh parchments and a quill, and filled both an inkwell and a lamp. I was puzzled when Alastor left the tent, until he returned shortly with a digging tool. “Don’t make an old man do this work for you,” he said. “And do it now, before you begin writing.”

  I nodded, resigned. It wouldn’t take long to dig a hole large enough to store my parchments. “Can I trouble you to find me a dry hide?” I said. “A square yard or so should be all I need.”

  I had dug a two-foot square by the time he returned. My parchments would stay clean and dry wrapped in the hide if I could find a suitable covering when I finished my letter. “I must hurry,” I said. “I fish tonight and am on watch tomorrow night.”

  “Oh, no, I’m sorry, Paul. I was to tell you that you have been relieved of both obligations for the time being.”

  “I have?”

  He nodded. “The entire compound knows who you are—who you were. Do you suppose anyone does not worry about the implications?”

  “But they know me, Alastor! I have been here nearly three years!”

  “Most know you. But many don’t. Not really. When you arrived we had how many tents—a dozen?”

  “Nine. I repaired them all.”

  “You see? We’re at two dozen now. That new family, with the prematurely balding husband—”

  “The dark one everyone says looks like me, except for that missing little finger on his left hand.”

  “Yes, Brunon. He will take your place fishing and on watch.”

  “And I am under suspicion.”

  Alastor shrugged. “Among many, certainly. Naturally.”

  “So my persecution has begun.”

  The rabbi grunted. “If that is the worst you ever face, consider yourself fortunate. I doubt the suspicion of those in this little enclave is what the Lord has been warning you about. Now get to work.”

  My precious Taryn,

  I hesitate to employ that endearing term I have felt bold enough to use only recently with you, knowing what you must be thinking of me just now. Yet you are precious to me.

  I can only assure you, beloved, that anything you read in my parchments is the truth. For all the sins of my former life, dishonesty was not among them. That is of little virtue, for you now well know the depth of my depravity. But to whatever extent I knew myself, I was truthful to the point of offense. Many suffered under my self-righteous judgments.

  But as God is my witness, where my journal first records my morbid connection to you, that is precisely when I became aware of it. And my anguish over keeping it from you is, if anything, muted in that account. I pleaded with the Lord to know when and how to reveal it to you, and further, how to explain the delay.

  My most wretched fear is that even if you can somehow absolve me of my guilt, you could not abide sharing a life with me without it daily defiling me in your mind’s eye.

  I can do nothing but leave that t
o you and to God.

  Taryn, I plead with you to understand me. Entirely apart from my unabashed desire for you, strictly from one human being to another, I am without excuse. I am unequivocally guilty. I was wrong. I am sorry, and I beg your forgiveness. My actions robbed you of your loving, godly husband and the father of your child. I undeservedly cast myself upon the sea of your mercy.

  Painful as it is to admit, I recognize I am asking something that may be beyond your capacity to bestow. You would be justified to refuse ever to see me again. And while I cannot fathom the desolation of that loss, worse would be missing my last chance to tell you how much I love you.

  God has taught me that when I am finally loosed to preach in His name, love must be my sole theme. He has made clear that even if I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, if I don’t have love, I will become like sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And even if I have the gift of prophecy or understand all mysteries and have all knowledge, and though I have enough faith to move mountains, if I don’t have love, I am nothing.

  Even if I give all my goods to feed the poor and give my body to be burned, if I don’t have love, it profits me nothing. Love is longsuffering and kind; love is not envious; love does not boast, is not puffed up, is not rude, does not seek its own way, is not provoked, doesn’t think the worst, does not rejoice in sin, but rejoices in the truth.

  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.

  Prophecies will fail; tongues will cease; knowledge will vanish. When I was a child like Corydon, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

  There are faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love. And I love you. Forgive me.

  Your devoted Paul

  As exercised as I had been, getting my thoughts down had put my mind somewhat at ease. I reread the document several times, trying to imagine Taryn reading it. Would she be eager to receive it, read it immediately, or be busy with Corydon or still too upset? Would her father stay with her, read it as well, discuss it with her?

  These were the kinds of things I had never pondered as an official of the Sanhedrin. I had a reputation with Nathanael for tracking every detail of his schedule as vice chief justice of the Sanhedrin, but certainly that never concerned matters of the heart.