King Jesus (Penguin Modern Classics) (5 page)

Hannah said : “The Lord forbid that I should ever look forward to the death of my husband, who has never stinted me in anything and is a just and devout man.” She cut her hair close to her head and continued to mourn while four Sabbaths passed.

Judith came to Hannah early one morning. “Mistress, do you not hear the shouting and music in the streets? Do you not know that the Feast of Tabernacles is already upon us? Take off your mourning garments and let us ride up together to Jerusalem in the company of your neighbours to lodge with your sister there and celebrate the season of love.”

Hannah said angrily : “Leave me to my grief !”

But Judith would not leave her. “Mistress,” she cried, “your kinsfolk will be coming to the Feast from all the villages, and if you miss their gossip you will grieve for a twelvemonth. Why heap misery upon misery ?”

“Leave me to my grief,” Hannah repeated, but in a gentler voice.

Judith stood there boldly, arms akimbo and legs straddled apart. “There was a woman,” she said, “in the days of the Judges and she was childless like yourself, and of the same name. What did she do? She did not sit at home, mourning to herself like an old owl in a bush. She went up to the Lord’s chief sanctuary, which was at Shiloh, to welcome in the New Year, and there she ate and drank, concealing her misery. Afterwards she caught hold of one of the pillars of the Shrine and prayed to the Lord for a child, silently and grimly like one who at the sheep-shearing wrestles for a prize. Eli the High Priest, my lord’s ancestor, saw her lips moving and her body writhing. He took her for a drunkard ; but she told him what was amiss, how she was childless and how her neighbours taunted her. At this, Eli assured her that all would be well if she came to the Shrine to worship early in the morning while it was still dark. She did so, and nine months later a fine child was born to her, and a fine child indeed, for it was Samuel the prophet.

“Fetch me clean clothes,” said Hannah with sudden resolution. “Select some fitting for the occasion, for I will go to Jerusalem after all. And my bond-maid Judith shall come with me.” As she spoke the high tenor voice of the priest rang down the village street : “Arise, let us go up to Zion, to the House of the Lord !”

They rode up together to Jerusalem the same day, in a carriage drawn by white asses. Joachim owned six pairs of white asses, and this was the finest pair of all. Presently they overtook the faithful of Cocheba who had started some hours before them : men, women and children in holiday dress trudging on foot with gifts of grapes and figs and pigeons carried in baskets on their shoulders ; driving before them a fat bullock with gilded horns and a crown of olive for sacrifice ; flute-players
leading the procession. Every village of Judah was honouring Jehovah in the same style and the roads were clouded with dust. Outside the gates of Jerusalem the citizens lined the roads and shouted greetings.

The streets of the City resembled a forest. Green branches were fastened to the houses : arbours had been built at each of the City gates, in every square and on every house-top. In the markets, beasts and poultry were for sale in prodigious quantity, warranted suitable for sacrifice. There were stalls for fruit and sweetmeats, and wine-stalls ; everywhere little boys ran about with armfuls of thyrsi for sale, and branches of quince. The thyrsi were for celebrants to carry in their right hands during their joyful procession around the altar of burned offering ; the branches of quince were to be carried in their left hands at the same time.

Judith asked Hannah : “Mistress, is it true that this Feast was instituted to remind the Israelites of their desert wanderings with Moses, when they lived in arbours, not in stone houses? It is hard to believe that the desert provided sufficient leafy trees for the purpose.”

“You are right, daughter. The Feast was celebrated on this mountain centuries before the birth of Moses, but do not quote me as having said so, for I shall deny it.”

“Since it seems that you know more than the priests, Mistress, will you tell me why the branches of the thyrsus are tied together in threes—willow, palm and myrtle—the palm in the middle, the myrtle on the right hand, the willow on the left ?”

“Though I do not know more than the priests, at least I am free to tell you what I do know. This is the Festival of Fruits, the Festival of Eve’s Full Moon. Once when the moon shone full in Eden the Second Eve, our mother, plucked myrtle and smelt it, saying : ‘A tree fit for an arbour of love’, for she longed for Adam’s kisses. She plucked a palm leaf and plaited it into a fan, saying : ‘Here is a fan to warm up the fire’, for at that time Adam loved her only as a sister. This fan she hid. She also plucked a palm branch, with the leaf still in its knob, saying : ‘Here is a sceptre. I will give it to Adam, telling him : “Rule me, if you will, with this knobbed sceptre.” ’ Lastly she plucked willow—the willow that has red rind and lance-like foliage—saying : ‘Here are branches suitable for a cradle.’ For the new moon seemed like a cradle to her, and Eve longed for a child.”

“Mistress, the quince boughs that I see—for what reason are they carried ?”

“It is said that our mother Eve, by giving Adam quince to eat, forced him to love her as she required to be loved.”

“But the star of the quince which childless women eat in the hope of quickening their wombs—”

“It has no virtue,” Hannah interrupted. “I have eaten the thing with prayers every Feast for seven years.”

“They say that the quinces of Corfu succeed where all others fail.”

“Then they are wrong. Twice I have sent for Corfu quinces, once from the islet of Macris itself. It was money thrown away.”

Judith clucked in commiseration.

“I have tried everything,” sighed Hannah.

They drove on in silence for a while.

Judith began again : “I once heard a woman say—an old, old Jebusite woman—that it was the First Eve who planted the tree of the garden, and Adam who plucked the forbidden fruit, and the First Eve who expelled him for his fault.”

Hannah flushed. “The old woman must have been drunken. You abuse my confidence. Let me never hear you repeat such dangerous tales again in my hearing.”

Judith laughed silently, for she was herself a Jebusite. The Jebusites were the poor people of Jerusalem, descended from the original Canaanite inhabitants, whom because of their usefulness as slaves and menials the Jews forgave their many idolatrous superstitions. At this Feast they still secretly worshipped the Goddess Anatha, after whom the village of Bethany was named and whose sacred lioness had mothered the tribe of Judah ; and at the Passover, or Feast of Unleavened Bread, they still mourned for Tammuz, her murdered son, the God of the Barley Sheaf.

Hannah’s sister welcomed them to her house, where they sang hymns, told tales and gossiped in the roof-top arbour until midnight. On the next day the Feast began. The sacrifices on this first day were a he-goat for a sin-offering, two rams, thirteen bullocks with gilded horns, and fourteen lambs. The goat was for the past year ; the rams for summer and winter ; the bullocks for the thirteen new moons ; the lambs for the first fourteen days of each month, when the moon is young. With each beast went a sacrifice of flour and oil, and salt to make the flames burn blue. Then followed the Night of the Women, when tall golden four-branched candlesticks were erected and lighted up in the Women’s Court at the Temple, and the priests and Levites danced a torch-dance around them, with trumpet music and rhythmic shaking of the thyrsi to each of the four quarters of Heaven in turn, and aloft to the zenith. These gestures had once been made in honour of Anatha, marking out the five points of her pyramid of power ; but now Jehovah claimed all the honour.

Towards evening Judith said to Hannah : “Mistress, let us go to the Women’s Court and afterwards join the merry-makers in the streets.”

“Wc will go to the Court, but afterwards we will return to this house. Since my husband has ridden off, I do not know where, it would be unseemly for me to go about the streets with you and seem to rejoice.”

“Eve’s moon shines only once a year. Here are the clothes fitting for the occasion which you asked me to select from your cedar-wood coffer.”

Hannah recognized the bridal dress which she had worn ten years before at her wedding. She looked steadily into Judith’s eyes and asked : “What is this folly, daughter ?”

Judith blushed. “We are commanded to rejoice to-night and to put on our richest clothes. These are your richest clothes, Mistress, and what woman rejoices more than one who wears her bridal dress ?”

Hannah gently fingered the many-coloured embroidery and said after a long silence, but in the voice of one who wishes to be persuaded : “How can I go dressed as a bride, daughter, when I have been married for ten years ?”

“If you wear your bridal dress nobody will know you for the wife of my lord Joachim ; and you may rejoice in the streets to your heart’s content.”

“But the headband is missing. The moths fretted away the wool and I put it aside to mend.”

“Here is a better headband, Mistress, than the one in which you were married. It is a gift from your bond-maid Judith, who loves you.”

Hannah looked at the purple headband, braided with pearls and embroidered with gold and scarlet thread. She asked severely : “From whom is this beautiful thing stolen ?”

“It is stolen from nobody. Before I came to you I was under bond to my lord’s kinswoman Jemima, who inherited jewels and clothes from her stepmother. When I left her, she praised me for my dutifulness and gave me the headband. She said : ‘Since you are now to serve in the house of Joachim of Cocheba, who is of the Heirs of David, this headband may win your mistress’s favour or soften her heart if you displease her. I am not of royal blood and neither are you ; we may not wear it.’ ”

Hannah’s tears flowed afresh. She was sorely tempted to wear the dress and the headband ; but dared not.

Judith asked : “How long will you continue to humble your heart, Mistress ?”

“So long as my double grief continues. Is it a little thing to be childless? Is it a little thing to be suddenly forsaken by a noble husband ?”

Judith laughed gaily. “Wash your face, paint your eyes with green copper paint from Sinai, rub spikenard between your breasts. Wear this royal headband and the bridal dress and come out with me quickly while the household is busily feasting in the arbour.”

“Begone from my presence,” Hannah cried angrily. “I have never sinned against my husband all these years and it would be folly to begin now. Someone has lent you this headband in the hope that it will lure me out merry-making to my shame ; it is some bold lover of your own who wishes me to become an accomplice in your wantonness.”

“The headband was given me by a devout woman, as I call the Lord to witness! Are you inviting me to answer your anger with curses? I should do so indeed if I thought that any curse of mine would sting you into wisdom. But it would be presumptuous in me to say more when the Lord himself has cursed you by shutting up your womb and making you the butt of your fertile sisters.” With that she ran away.

Hannah took up the purple headband, of which the chief ornament was a silver crescent-moon, curved around a six-pointed Star of David
stitched in gold and scarlet : the golden pyramid of Anatha, interlocked with the scarlet
vau
triangle, her wedge. On either side of the star were embroidered myrtle-twigs, bells, cedar-trees, scallop-shells and pomegranates, the tokens of queenship. She considered the headband and tied it across her brow, but it looked out of place on her cropped head. Then she noticed that Judith had set a large round basket beside the bed ; and in it lay an Egyptian wig with crimped golden hair. She tried it on and it fitted her. She bound the headband across her brow again, then picked up her copper mirror and looked at herself. “Judith is right,” she thought. “I am still young, still beautiful.” Her image smiled back at her. She washed her face, painted her eyes, rubbed spikenard between her breasts, perfumed her bridal dress with myrrh and put it on. Then she clapped her hands for Judith, who came running in, dressed in gaily coloured clothes. They went out together quickly, shrouded in dark cloaks, without a word to anyone ; and no one saw them go.

When they came to the end of the street, Hannah said : “I hear the sound of trumpets. My heart fails me. I am ashamed to go up to the Women’s Court ; if I do, someone in the crowd will surely recognize me.”

“Where then shall we go ?”

“Let the Lord guide our feet.”

Judith led her this way and that through the narrow streets of the Old Quarter in the direction of the Fish Gate. This was the Jebusite quarter.

It seemed like a dream to Hannah. Her shoes seemed scarcely to touch the pavement, she skimmed like a swallow. No man molested them as they went, though the City was filled with drunkards that night, and twice they avoided a skirmish between screaming partisans who used the festal thyrsus for a club. At last Judith led Hannah down a narrow lane and, without pausing, pushed at a great gate which stood at the end of it. It swung open on well-oiled hinges and they found themselves in a deserted court ; on the left hand were stables, on the right an ancient wall with an ornamental door standing ajar.

They passed through the door into a garden. It was dusk and the noise of the festival came thinly through the boughs of the fruit-trees, so that as she paused for a moment with pounding heart Hannah could hear the plash of a fountain from the further end of the garden, where coloured lights were burning. She went eagerly towards the lights, while Judith remained standing at the garden door. They were lanterns, with coloured panes, hung outside a spacious arbour, at the back of which wax candles were burning steadily in a tall eight-branched candlestick. In the middle grew a laurel-tree, and fastened to it was a nest of silver filigree work containing golden sparrow fledgelings, with wide-open mouths ; the hen-bird perched on the edge of the nest, a jewelled butterfly in her bill.

“Come here, Judith !” called Hannah. “Come quickly, my child, and see this pretty nest.”