Sunrise on the Mediterranean

by Suzanne Frank

  Half swimming and half walking while clinging to the rope, we moved upward against the current. Then we began dog-paddling at a 60 percent grade as the passage narrowed again, pushing the water almost to our chins. I barely heard the sounds of the dozen soldiers above the roar. Then we were walking level again, the water at our thighs.

  I would have missed the opening had I not been running both hands along the wall. A crevice, with a breeze. I halted, feeling the next soldier come to a stop just behind me. Craning my head, I looked out—daylight! We were close!

  Now how did we get out of this channel and into the streets? This was the part none of the women had known.

  Seeing no other alternative and realizing that the Jebusi were now noticing some guards missing, which meant time was running out, I tied my skirt around my thighs, then squished myself through the crevice. I gritted my teeth as the stone abraded my skin. Fortunately I was tall and skinny and could slip through sideways. Also, I could probably make an excuse for being there, if I got caught. A tribesman would be spotted in a millisecond.

  I wedged myself through the five-foot-long crack-style shaft, halting for a moment at the mouth of it. Would I be ambushed? I waited two, maybe three minutes. No one. Was that to lure me into a false sense of security?

  After five minutes I hissed at Abishi to walk on through the water. I was safe, and I would meet him at the mouth of this thing, wherever that was. Please God, let me find the source.

  I dropped immediately onto all fours, watching and alert. I heard nothing out of the ordinary—not yet. To my north I saw a mansion. I knew the tunnel ended inside it in the courtyard there; that’s what I’d been told. So far, the directions were accurate. If the queen had cleared out the rooms, as she’d promised, then I’d be okay.

  If not, then this could be the worst part, for no one was there to help me. I was on my own. Oh God, please don’t let me get caught.

  Surveying the front of the house, I saw no guard dogs, just an older man slumbering on the front stoop. It was the Mediterranean siesta hour, and the sun was hot, drying me almost immediately. No one was moving as I skirted the front in favor of the back doorway.

  It would be open, right? I pushed against it, then harder, enough to feel the catch of metal. The door was bolted from within. Damn, she hadn’t gotten to the doors. Backup plan? I walked around, looking at the windows. They were high and narrow. And barred. Great.

  Scaling a house wall in broad daylight was not smart, but I didn’t know what else to do. Beneath me soldiers waited; throughout houses in this city women waited. I sighed and unwound the rope from over my shoulder. It took me six tries before it looped around the wooden bar in the clerestory window.

  Grinding my teeth against crying out when the rope cut into my already agonizing palms—which inspired me to shred part of my dress for protection—I climbed up and slipped in between the wooden poles.

  The courtyard was painted floors surrounding a large pool. But every inch of wall space was covered with shields—stunning dress armor, made of gold and silver, adorned with semiprecious stones. There must have been more than fifty of them. A waterfall cascaded from the side of the house into the pool. Sunlight played off the water, then reflected onto the shields, giving the whole room the sense of being submarine. I watched, mesmerized, as it roared into the mirror surface of the pond, drowning out any other sounds, filling the warm air with a brisk chill of spray. Then it dawned on me: they’d built a house into a mountain!

  Holding my breath, I dropped to the courtyard floor, rolling and rising, watching. Waiting. I was safe, since no one could hear me. But would they see me? I waited a moment more. Apparently the queen had done this part of her job. I could see a man dozing before what must have been the storerooms. There were no animals at all, an unusual thing for this day and age. A man’s ass was treated better, certainly fed and watered better, than his children. Especially in a city without children, I reminded myself. Another moment of waiting.

  Nothing.

  After pulling up the rope, I approached the pool, keeping to the shadows.

  I couldn’t see the bottom, which was good since there should be no bottom.

  As I tied the rope around one of the supporting pillars, I stifled a sneeze, the sound lost under the rush of the waterfall. I hoped the rope would be long enough. The flax in my hand, I took a deep breath, then surface dived, feeling for the bottom, then the “drain.”

  As I suspected, just as before, the tunnel went down, through a narrow passage, then … I fell, water all around me. Unlike my last fall, this one was not cushioned by a pool. I dropped about six feet, then landed on a rock that was jutting up from the streambed. My screech indicated to Abishi and company that I’d arrived.

  He splashed through the water, racing to my side. “Up,” I said through gritted teeth; I hurt! “In the royal harem, in a courtyard.” I winced as I got to my feet. “It’s on the eastern side. The gate is slightly downhill.”

  “You are coming with us?”

  I stifled a sneeze. “I will join you and the women at the gates. Remember your word—no raping, no pillaging, and no women killed. We wait for everything until Yoav arrives.”

  Abishi’s voice got sharper. “It was not my promise, but I will hold to it.”

  “They are betraying everything,” I said softly. “Don’t punish them for helping you.”

  Aching from the series of falls I’d taken, in addition to the general misery of a cold, I backtracked to the fissure and squished myself through. The city was strangely silent; people should have been up and moving now, for it was approaching sundown.

  I had an unsettling feeling that something had gone wrong. Where was everyone? Walking downhill toward the main gate, I saw no one, I heard no one. What was up? There should have been people on their way to market, women on their way to the well. Jebus was a ghost town.

  You made it this way, my conscience whispered. You are to blame. Somewhere above me I heard the cry of the shofar, then a roar of men. Inside or outside? I didn’t know, but I ran to the main gate, which was still barred. It would take at least ten of us to lift that piece of wood. Within in the city I heard a scream—“We are betrayed!”—that was suddenly silenced.

  Nothing. No one. This was getting downright eerie. “Hello?” I called. “Anyone here?”

  “Isha!” Yoav called from the other side of the gates. “Open the gates!”

  Suddenly I knew this was my chance. I had the city; it was up to me to give it to him. “Only if you take a solemn vow, Yoav.”

  “What?” Only in this language it was very abrupt: Mah?

  “Promise hal will not apply.” “Mah?” He didn’t sound pleased. “Open the gate, isha. Akchav!”

  Now, huh? “Promise on the name of the Most High,” I said.

  “Open the damned gates!”

  “Assure me that these women will not be punished. They have helped you get the city, you must spare them.”

  “This is not the time to discuss this, Klo-ee,” he said.

  I looked over my shoulder. Three women had grouped, wide-eyed and shaking. “Akchav we discuss this, Yoav. No herim, no hal.”

  There was a pause. “B’seder. Open the gates.”

  “No slavery, either.” The group had grown to about seven.

  We were back to his shocked “What?”

  “Where is Waqi?” I asked one of the women softly.

  “With the queen, in the palace.”

  “What has happened?”

  “We passed around a sleeping potion. Most of the men are asleep.”

  Yoav was banging on the door. “Your promise on God’s name, Yoav,” I shouted to him, speaking softly to the women. “And death to no men, except the soldiers.”

  He yelled in anger, outrage. I knew this wasn’t the tribes-men’s way.

  “It is not the Jebusi way to betray their loved ones,” I reminded him, looking at the growing group. “Only men who are soldiers die.”

  Anoth
er five women came running down the street. “The highlanders,” they shouted right before the soldiers I’d led through the tzinor burst onto the street. I grabbed one of the women’s knives and held it up menacingly. “Promise, Yoav,” I shouted through the gate. Abishi halted, quickly taking in the scene.

  “Yoav!” he yelled. “Get that crazy woman to open the gates!” Yoav bellowed back. “This is becoming a farce!”

  Abishi took a step closer. “Stay back,” I said, waving my knife. “I know how to use this.” I did—carving turkey. “Promise these women will be safe, well,” I said. “All they want is the freedom to have and keep their children, their nonmilitary husbands. No more sacrificing to Molekh, no sacrificing as hal.” I watched as he wiped blood from his sword.

  “Isha, Yoav is going to gift Dadua with the city. These are not his assurances to make.”

  “I don’t care what the rules usually are. Promise, Yoav,” I shouted again. The thoroughfare was growing crowded with watching women.

  Zorak, who came through the water with me, though I hadn’t known it, yelled over to Yoav. “She is unreasonable, Yoavi. We must agree, I fear.” Abishi turned to him, glaring.

  I heard muttering and tried to imagine what it looked like on the other side. Suddenly I saw the arrows rain down just as I heard the cries from the first hits. Jebusi guardsmen from the towers were lining up on the wall, aiming into the city. In haste I opened the gate, the women and some soldiers helping. Behind me I heard the sounds of battle, of shrieks and groans.

  We lifted the bar and pulled as the soldiers on the other side pushed. “Promise, Yoav!” I shouted into the men. “Promise, promise, promise!”

  He grabbed me by the upper arms, glass green eyes glaring into my face. “Damn you, I promise.”

  “On—”

  “Ken! Ken! On the name of the Almighty!” Then he pushed me away, fighting into the crowd.

  Movies had not prepared me for really being in battle, seeing people swinging swords with the intent to kill. No choreography and no tasteful blood. The sounds were awful: the sucking of a blade being pulled out, the thud of bodies falling to the dirt-and-stone path. I hid in the fading shadows of the gate enclosure, watching the soldiers pick the Jebusi men off the wall, so that they fell in front of us, splattering on the ground.

  Through it all, with every drop of blood, I heard my voice in my head: You did this. Because of you, Chloe Bennett Kingsley, this is happening. Had I totally screwed up history?

  Bloody late to be thinking about it now, isha, I responded to myself sarcastically. Then it was too much, the sights, the sounds, the smells. I vomited on the ground, dizzy and guilt-stricken.

  The fighting moved from the gates deeper into the city. The women vanished into their homes like a flock of sparrows into the sky. I huddled in the night.

  Sometime in the darkest moments before dawn, the unearthly cry of a ram’s horn echoed over the city and through the valley. By that signal, I knew that Abishi and Yoav had the citadel. The shofar had sounded. Jebus was open.

  Was I a betrayer? Or simply a woman with her back against the wall? The women had asked me, they had forsaken their husbands. Or was I rationalizing because it had been either me or them and I knew that Jerusalem ultimately went to Dadua? Had it happened this way? Had I taken some other person’s place in this story? Had I messed up history?

  Or was history like Cheftu said, just people muddling through every day, with only time and perspective to decide which event was significant?

  I didn’t know, I couldn’t think. My body was numb; I leaned against the stone, panting with the effort. My sneezing was unstoppable, I was bruised and cut in a dozen places; I just wanted to go home.

  Home where?

  Home with Cheftu, I amended; location and time meant nothing to me.

  As dawn tinted the stone, soldiers swarmed through the streets. The bodies of the men who had fallen in battle were laid out in the valley.

  Wrapped in wool and sneezing spasmodically, my dozen or so cuts scabbed over, I watched as the men separated the townspeople.

  Dadua was arriving soon. He would be entering the city on the back of a donkey.

  Apparently a mountain prince, nasi, rode an ass up a hill into his city.

  A king, haMelekh, commanded an army from a chariot. Therefore, while Dadua was haMelekh over all the tribes, because he led them in war and directed them from a horse-drawn chariot, here he was nasi.

  There was no sense of king and prince being in a hierarchy or that you had to be a prince before being a king. They were two separate categories. A prince, only of a mountain kingdom. A king, only as a war leader.

  Consequently, the Pelesti were kings because they rode in chariots with horses. Dadua was haNasi of Jebus because he entered on a donkey. My brain throbbed in counterpoint to my bruising as I tried to grasp this concept that upended my whole lifetime of understanding the prince/king relationship.

  Standing tall in the midmorning light, the remaining men and women of Jebus met the new nasi. Yoav stood at attention, bloodstained but proud, surrounded by his soldiers, who were bearing the gold-and-silver shields I’d seen. We watched Dadua ride up the hill, astride the donkey. Though his feet almost dragged the dirt, still there was a humbling majesty about him. Gold shone from his helmet, throat, and greaves.

  This was David.

  The donkey, white and clean, drew through the gated enclosure to stand in the shadows. Yoav walked to Dadua, the city and soldiers watching. “HaMelekh Dadua ben Yesse, I gift you this city, this dream of your heart and desire of your nefesh, to be yours always, a seat for the dynasty of Dadua which el haShaday will continue into forever.”

  The donkey was a little nervous, prancing back and forth, pawing the ground. “As I step into this city, this gift of your loyalty, I tell you, Yoav ben Zerui’a, that you will be Rosh Tsor haHagana until breath leaves your body,” Dadua responded.

  “Thy will be done,” Yoav said, bowing.

  All around us the men cheered; Dadua looked in our direction. I wondered if he considered the cost of this. If he knew how well Yoav loved him, the price he paid for Dadua to have what he wanted but not to be tainted by the task of getting it.

  Dadua rode into the city amid the cheering, and we all dropped to our knees, bowing our heads. Today he looked like royalty. He dismounted and walked before us, an impressive figure in his iris blue girdle and cloak, a jeweled dagger at his side, the sun shining off his armor.

  “Jebusi,” he cried out. “I mean you no harm. Your ruler Abdiheba is dead, Jebus is no longer your city. Forever after, this city is mine, peopled with my chorim and giborim.”

  Friends and associates, the lexicon provided. Even I figured out that one.

  “Jebus is a new city today,” he continued. “A city of ancient promise to my people. It belongs neither to the tribes of the north: Zebulon, Asher, Y’sakhar, Gad, Binyamin, Efra’im, Manasha, Naftali; or to the tribes of the south: Yuda, Reuven, Tsimeon, Dan. It is a new place, the City of Dadua, Qiryat Dadua.”

  Though I’d been expecting it, I was still breathless. David. Israel. Jerusalem. Oh, Cheftu, what you wouldn’t give to be here right now.

  The crowd was silent, stoic. The women, whose fathers, brothers, and husbands were either sleeping or slaughtered through the women’s doing, stood stalwart. They held on to each fiercely, narrow eyed and questioning, listening to this man who had conquered the Pelesti. “I invite you to stay, to join with us in making this a city of promise. Two conditions I demand be met.” I glared at Yoav; had he told Dadua the promise made?

  There was a nearly audible intake of breath. I watched, waited.

  “The first is that the laws of our God be obeyed. He is the only God of our people, he will be the only God of this mountain. He is himself higher than these hills. Above us”—Dadua pointed to a plateau rising to the north—“I will build a house for this God, a place on earth where he can rest among us. No other gods will be tolerated in this city, withi
n these walls or on this mount. Ever.”

  The Temple Mount, oh my God. The Temple Mount? That had been the cause of almost all of Jerusalem’s troubles since the dawn of time, at least according to my father.

  Was this where it began?

  Dadua’s expression became cold. “No longer will the sacrifice of yeladim be permissible. No longer will you feed the belly of Molekh in the valley, with the seed of your loins. There will be no other God in Jebus, save el haShaday.

  “The second condition is this: Our custom offers protection to the widows and”—Dadua stumbled here, since there were no orphans—“ach, those who dwell among us. Should a man of our tribes approach you, wishing to take you as wife or concubine, you must know what is right. He is obliged to provide for you for a full month. During this time you are to observe mourning for your family, your losses.

  “Shear your hair, allow your nails to grow, know you have the security of a month’s protection to honor that which was lost. If at the end of this time, if he wants you still, he may take you to wife by knowing you. He will give you children, which you will not destroy.”

  I looked out over the women. We really are the stronger sex, I thought. Men have the easier task of falling bravely in battle. Women have to start over, join the enemy in bed, give him children, forsake old ways and adopt new.

  Had it been worth it? Were they exchanging old shackles for new? My gaze moved over the male merchants, the farmers whose lives had been granted. Did they appreciate what their women had done? Would they honor the new regime?

  “If after that time, that month, he no longer wishes to marry with you, he is obligated to let you go free. He cannot sell you, for he does not own you.” Thank you, God, I thought. No slavery, no hal, no herim. I breathed a sigh of relief as his words sank in. “You and your possessions are free and may leave.”

  But he gets to keep your house, I thought. Sneaky, Dadua. Really sneaky.