The Gathering Storm

by Bodie Thoene

  So at last Eben was going to give me a glimpse of his past. I had heard of the famous Abbey church of St. Albans. Once I had seen it as my train passed by. It loomed above the surrounding countryside from the mist. I asked the conductor the name of the place, then looked it up in my red Baedeker’s Guide. But I had never visited it.

  The church dedicated to the first British martyr was located at the top of a steep hike up from the station. As we trooped through the crowded market square, Eben did not entertain me with stories of local history, as I expected. When had he lived here? Had he been married at the time?

  Along the road he paused to silently gaze upon some building or wall as if it was an old familiar friend. He led me through an almost hidden pedestrian corridor between two buildings. We emerged in the back gardens of the ancient church.

  More recent, Victorian-era pinnacles surrounded a lofty central tower of red brick. The church loomed above us. While I was impressed with the present vision, Eben’s eyes grew misty with scenes of the past.

  “Five hundred feet from end to end,” Eben said in a reverent tone. “Second longest in England. The oldest part you can see—the tower there in the middle—was built from red brick rubble before 1100. Beneath that, a Saxon crypt. Below that…” He shrugged.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said.

  “It’s a hodge-podge,” Eben corrected. “Look: Square tower of red tile. Pointed Gothic windows. Flint-stone walls in the nave. Sold and almost scrapped in the time of Henry VIII. Restored with those elaborate Victorian stone decorations at the far ends just fifty years ago.” He added, in a kinder tone, “This spot has been an object of devotion for close to 1800 years. And each succeeding generation expressed their love of this building in the way that was most meaningful to them. The entire history of Britain is woven into this building.”

  I looked at him curiously as he paused. Eben stared at an enormous rose window as if it reminded him of something intensely personal.

  “Was St. Albans your church?” I asked. “Your home?”

  “I lived there.” He gestured down the hill toward a broad expanse of open field. He began to walk, passing the entrance of the church.

  I called after him, “Eben? Aren’t we going in?”

  He shook his head. “Later. What I have to show you can best be seen from out here.”

  An expanse of lawn extended down another steep slope to the south of the church. Above us a great hawk spread his wings and circled slowly. In the middle of this greensward was an ancient, gnarled oak. The hawk flew to perch in the branches nearby. It studied Eben with golden eyes. It was to this marker that Eben escorted me, placing me on a low horizontal branch as an impromptu bench.

  “Look down the hill,” he prompted.

  I did so, taking in a creek, and a millrace, and beyond, a green pasture broken up by softly mounded stone walls. “I have the feeling like I used to have as a child when Papa told me a story.”

  “Yes.”

  I settled in. “All right then.”

  “My home—it was there,” he said with that same faraway look. “Just there. The Romans named it Verulamium. A great city marching up that hill and out of sight in the distance, all built of perfectly formed, shining red tile. A theatre. A market square. Temples. Horses and chariots. And…Albanus. He lived just…there.” He pointed to a knoll.

  I was certain I was being entertained with a view of the ancient world as an Oxford scholar might see it. “This is lovely. I ask the questions and you give the answers? Is that right?”

  “Something like that.”

  It was a good game. “Tell me,” I whispered, wanting to encourage this story and not interrupt it. He spoke as if telling his personal life story, and not as a historian giving a dusty lecture about the long-dead past.

  “It was a major Roman town. Almost as big as Londinium. So important that it was a municipum, meaning, to be born here automatically made one a Roman citizen. My wife and I were born in a municipum. Both of us Jews.”

  “You and your wife. Roman citizens, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Alban? A friend of yours.”

  “Yes.”

  “Of course.”

  “A Roman, of noble birth. He became a Christian when it was forbidden by Imperial decree. Penalty: death. Saved a Christian priest from being captured and killed by exchanging clothes with the man.”

  I knew part of the history. “The priest escaped?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you know him too?”

  “Very well.”

  I laughed with delight. “Oh, Eben! You’re so good at this. When the war is over you could be the world’s greatest tour guide. All right. What was the priest’s name?”

  “He was called, when he was young, Cantor. Amphibalus was his Roman name.”

  “But Alban was caught.”

  Eben nodded. “Given a chance to recant. ‘Worship Isis and all is forgiven,’ Alban was told. He refused. So they took him out of the city and”—he pointed behind me at the church—”up to that very spot, where they beheaded him.”

  He shuddered as if his imagination was so vivid he saw himself standing in the crowd watching the execution. Once more he shook himself free of its grasp. “The Romans didn’t just forbid the worship of Jesus. No, they wanted to crush it; to stamp it out utterly. They thought harsh repression could eliminate Christianity from these isles forever.”

  Eben pointed across the creek. “What do you see there?” he demanded.

  “A field. Some ancient walls.”

  Eben agreed. “What remains of the Roman city. Within a hundred years after Alban, Roman rule in Britain was in trouble; in two hundred, finished. Celtic tribes forced the Romans out, burned the city; tore down the walls, and the theatre, and the temples. Now look there,” he insisted, pointing again over my shoulder. “Look at the central tower of the church. What’s it made of?”

  “Red…tile?” I said, my eyes widening with comprehension.

  “Alban’s church is built from the rubble of Verulamium. The buildings where the pagan crowds jeered now form the church built to honor his martyrdom. Within that same two-hundred-year span there was a Christian church here. Dedicated to Alban’s memory….right there, where he died. And when it was time to rear a majestic tower, they built it from—”

  “They reused the red tiles from the ruins of the Roman town!” I said with excitement.

  “Exactly,” Eben agreed. “Those who vowed to eliminate the worship of Jesus forever were themselves dispersed and forgotten within four generations. But Jesus…” He waved again toward the red tile pinnacle gleaming in the westering sun. “Jesus remains. And Alban’s faithfulness inspires us still. And so it has been for two thousand years. That is why we cannot be afraid, Lora. Why we must not give up. Especially now with a new darkness threatening the people of the Lord.”

  Suddenly Eben looked sheepish. “I talk too much sometimes,” he apologized. “Why don’t you stop me?”

  “I want to know what you know. I want to love what you love. History. It is a wonderful story.”

  “A true one.”

  I laughed. “And you were here.”

  “The miracle is that I am here now. With you.”

  “And the girl you loved.”

  “You are very much…like her.”

  “Your wife?”

  He reached past me to touch the rugged bark of the ancient oak. “Buried here.”

  The hawk, startled by Eben’s move, launched himself into the air with a flutter of wings.

  I stood, suddenly chilled. Was this only a game? Or did Eben believe in fairy tales? “Buried here? Where?”

  “Beneath this oak.”

  I stepped away from the massive tree. I did not ask him any more questions.

  We did not enter St. Albans church that day. I thought as our train rattled back to London that perhaps the strain of events had driven Eben just a bit mad.

  He asked me, “You are so quiet.
What’s wrong?”

  I answered truthfully, “I’m disappointed. That’s all.”

  “Disappointed?”

  “I hoped you brought me here to share something about yourself. Your life. About her.”

  “Ah. It’s just as well. Sorry.” He lapsed into silence. He gazed out the window at the green fields and grazing sheep of the English countryside. I studied his clasped hands. Young. Beautiful. Strong. I imagined him in love with a girl who looked like me. I imagined his hands holding her. Did she rise to his touch like the crescendo of a symphony? And then, unbidden, the vision came of Eben’s hands on me. I longed to lie in his arms and dance with him again. It was clear he must have loved her very much. I wondered if it was possible for Eben to love me as he had loved her? I knew I loved Eben with the passion of a woman.

  34

  I did not ask Eben the questions swirling in my brain after our visit to St. Albans. I was afraid of the answers, I suppose.

  The guns of summer boomed into autumn, like near lightning strikes on the Heath. In Hampstead we called our two neighborhood anti-aircraft weapons, St. John and St. James, after the Sons of Thunder in the Gospels.

  Eben told me he thought the two apostles would have been amused by the compliment. His casual smile at the remark sent my brain reeling.

  “How would you know such a thing?” I challenged.

  “They seem to have been fellows with a sense of humor.” He kissed me good-bye as we each departed separate ways for work. His answer was not an answer.

  At tea I studied the notes about the “Thirty-six” I had gleaned from the British Museum. It was good I had gotten the information. The Museum’s Reading Room had finally closed, due to bomb damage.

  Still, I was afraid to ask Eben directly what he knew about the Lamed Vav of legends.

  Daytime in London was close to normal. It was a matter of pride for us to hold our chins up, square our shoulders, and return to work. The red buses continued to run through bomb-damaged neighborhoods. Winston and Clemmie toured neighborhoods. The king and queen, whose palace had been hit, made the rounds of demolished row houses and visited the wounded in hospital.

  Eben and I continued to seek and find placement for evacuee children and refugees who were now homeless. His daily meetings and journeys were intense, and often he did not return to me until after blackout.

  The sirens sent up the alarm about seven each evening when the German bombers reached the coastline. About a quarter of an hour after that, James and John began to bellow. Shells flew up miles into the air, then exploded at a certain altitude, setting off a great flash in the sky. The fragments were meant to hit the enemy bombers and hopefully knock them down. The laws of gravity proved dangerous. The shrapnel from our friendly shells tumbled from the sky, piercing roofs, shattering automobiles, and sometimes hitting people. Men in uniform were required to carry steel helmets. Those of us counted among the civilian population preferred our umbrellas. Not even a tin hat could stop a fragment of hot metal falling from a mile high.

  Some evenings the Luftwaffe passed over London on their way to drop the deadly cargo on other English cities. Returning to Reich airfields late at night, the Nazis often dropped a spare bomb on a London neighborhood.

  We called such single bombs “incidents.” But when we passed the sites of such “incidents,” it was likely that an entire block of houses had been taken out.

  In spite of this, Eben and I did not take cover among the thousands of Londoners below ground in the tube stations. Each night we made our way to the White Stone Pond and watched and prayed as life and death for a nation and the world was played out above us and around us. We held one another and, when silence fell at last, we listened for the song of the nightingale from the tree beside the water.

  “We should go,” Eben said.

  “Not yet. It is the nightingale and not the lark.”

  He did not pick up my cue from Romeo and Juliet. Instead, he focused his gaze on the blazes across London.

  It had been an especially violent bombing that night in late September. Thousands of incendiaries were dropped on Central London. Beneath us the skyline bloomed like bright strawberries linked by a twisted vine of orange flame.

  “Very bad tonight.” I leaned my head against Eben. It was still dark when the all-clear sounded.

  His dark eyes reflected the carnage. “We sat upon this very hill when the great fire….”

  “Where are you? Where did you go?” I held his arm tighter.

  “Another time.”

  Did he mean he would tell me at another time? Or that he was envisioning another time?

  I asked, “When?”

  “It’s nothing. Nothing. From this vantage point it seems as if I’ve seen it all before.”

  “Eben! What are you talking about? What do you see? Tell me.”

  He glanced down at me briefly. “You know.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Your father knew.”

  “Papa?” All the things my father had said about Eben came back to me. The ancient voice. The nightingale.

  “Lora.” Eben spoke my name with a finality, as if he was speaking the name of someone who had already lived and died.

  I drew back. “Eben, you frighten me.”

  Long minutes passed. In the distance explosions rocked Central London. The sound reverberated against the hills.

  “I took you to St. Albans. You heard the story.”

  “The story—I understand the words, but not the nuance.”

  “Life is nuance.”

  “Then you must show me. I don’t understand.”

  He squeezed my hand. “Your notebook. It fell from the table.”

  “The Thirty-six?”

  He sighed with relief. “The legend.”

  “What is the truth?”

  His skin seemed golden, ethereal, as if the light came from within him. “There were many more than Thirty-six in the beginning.”

  I managed to whisper, “Tell me.”

  “Haven’t I tried?”

  “No. Tell me plainly. In plain words. My future. The nuance is too high for me to grasp. I will grow old. If I live ten years? Twenty years? Forty years? Who…what…are you?”

  “Plainly, then. After the Cross. After the great earthquake. After Yeshua’s resurrection. Matthew wrote what he witnessed with his own eyes. How many were raised and seen alive in Jerusalem’s streets? Only thirty-six?”

  My mind leapt to Lazarus. Then to the son of the widow of Nain. The daughter of the official of Capernaum. All were raised by Jesus from death. Had they returned to life, only to die again?

  “Who…are…you?” Suspicions and fantasy came into sudden focus. My words were a hoarse whisper. The nightingale began to sing from her perch.

  Eben lowered his chin and gazed into the White Stone Pond. “A thousand years is as a day unto the Lord.”

  “And two thousand years?”

  “Some who were healed by Yeshua and managed to escape martyrdom lived on.”

  “On?”

  “Centuries.”

  “And you?”

  “Eben means ‘stone.’ The Hebrew letters, read in reverse, mean ‘prophesy.’ I was given the name…some time ago. I use it now…hoping. As for my past, here sits one whose name is written in water.”

  I began to weep as I saw in a very few years that time would come between us. “Eben! What is to become of me? What is our future?”

  He folded me in an embrace as if comforting a frightened child. “The hours grow short. Everything we have looked for…every word of Scripture. This is the beginning. Birthpangs. Terrible pain, increasing. Israel must be reborn. Prophecy proven. Messiah will come in that generation. And so the devil grows more fierce against the people of the Covenant.” He kissed my brow again. “Until then we few remain strong and faithful until the King of heaven and earth returns.”

  The pastel sky ripened as we walked slowly home. I heard the church bells call the faithful to pr
ayer. The ringing declared life must go on. One more day for those who had survived the night.

  Eben opened the blackout curtains. Dawn flooded the room. We lay together on our bed and made love as though it were the last sweet morning of the world.

  We had named the injured nightingale Rosalind. It was an elegant name I had always admired. Papa called me Rosalind in jest sometimes, in my more dramatic adolescent years. I fancied the name as a pseudonym if ever I went on stage as an actress.

  When Eben sang to the nightingale, Rosalind’s wings flicked with delight, and her golden eyes gleamed when she looked at him. She was indifferent to me. As she healed, I was of no more emotional significance in her little brain than the wind. I merely moved her cage from one patch of sunlight to the other. I was her source of bread crumbs and fresh water. But the sweet crooning of Eben Golah made her want to live.

  “You are the Bing Crosby of the bird kingdom,” I teased.

  Eben sang a comic Bing reply: “You are Paradise…her eyes afire with one desire…”

  I laughed as our nightingale fluttered jealously in her cage.

  “She’s ready to go back to her one true love,” I said.

  “I know a little fella who’s awaiting his gal on Primrose Hill.”

  “Let’s hope he hasn’t found a new love while she’s been gone.”

  We covered the birdcage with a pillowcase lest Rosalind keel over from the shock of London traffic. Boarding the bus, we traveled to Primrose Village, returning to the place we had found her.

  “Do you think he waited for her?” I scanned the trees.

  Eben set the cage on the grass, unperturbed. “He’s been waiting. You’ll see. The path of true love and all that.”

  I opened the cage door and Eben offered his index finger as a perch. The bird stepped on his hand and remained in his palm for a long moment. With perfect mimicry, Eben whistled, summoning the lonely male from his perch. The leaves rustled nearby.

  “Look! There he is, Lora!”

  In an instant Rosalind spotted her beloved and flew to his side. The two groomed one another as if her time away had been nothing but a bad dream.

  “I’ll miss her,” Eben said as we hurried back to the bus stop.