Time Travel Omnibus Volume 2

by Anthology

  It was a choice wholly his own.

  Yeshua began the long walk to the Fortress, to Masada. It would be a journey of weeks. As he had for too many years, he walked alone with no friend at his side or Father to guide him.

  Of the two Romans at the approach to the wall, the younger looked at the old man with barely concealed boredom.

  “What are you, one of their holy men? A priest?” Yeshua shook his head. “I’m not. Once I was a teacher, a rabbi.” He paused, then stated what must be obvious. The youngster looked on edge. “I’m not armed.”

  He’d been searched twice before, then waved on to these two at the wall surrounding the foot of the high hill. On it stood a walled fortress, which itself surrounded a walled palace and temple.

  Herod the Great had earned many enemies, and so he’d built many walls, upon which sprouted many towers; all of them but this one on the ground at the foot of the high hill where Herod’s great fortress, Masada, stood.

  And yet, the Romans had done damage to the outermost wall, battered it with siege engines and built embankments and ramps high enough so that archers would make it hard for any defender from with the Fortress to so much as put up his head.

  “Why do you want to go there?” the elder of the two solider asked. “Don’t you know they’re all mad up on that hill?”

  “I’ve heard it said.”

  The solider snorted. “Do you have a calling to death, old one?”

  I’d heard it said.

  “No. I have a calling to this place.”

  “Another one of their mad prophets,” said the young man to his companion. “He’s unarmed, he might try to pray us away, but I’m not worried about that. Their god hasn’t been paying too much attention to prayers lately. Let him go, he will find plenty of company among the madmen.”

  The other thought for a moment. Two roads went out from the Fortress, one from the top of the hill led to the lake and it was a trader’s route for bringing supplies into the city. The other had been known always as Snake, the brutal, winding path leading up the hill from the east.

  Grinning, the elder soldier nodded toward the winding way.

  “There’s your road, old man. Go if you will.”

  But the younger stopped him before he could take a step. He thrust a leather bottle into Yeshua’s hand. “The day is hot. Take it.”

  A moment later, the young soldier appeared ashamed before his companion, muttering about not wanting to be the one to have to go kick the corpse off the side of the road when the old man fell down dead. Still, he didn’t withdraw the water, and Yeshua was glad to have it.

  Yeshua thought the road might better have been named Anvil, for it was hard as iron underfoot and heat rippled before and behind, even off to the sides where the drop was so deep he could not see to the bottom. He went with great care, letting his staff feel the way before him, for the road had long lain in disrepair and the edges crumbled easily. In some places, he must go one foot in front of the other.

  But he came to where he wanted to be, and he had little trouble gaining admittance. No one thought such an old man could be a danger to the well-fortified multitude sitting now in old Herod’s ancient fastness.

  Certainly Eleazar the Zealot didn’t think so. With less interest than the Roman soldiers below, he looked up from where he sat among a cohort of a dozen men, all hard-eyed and lean. He glanced at the newcomer and then looked away. As though the looking away were a signal, a small woman left a covey of others and came to greet Yeshua.

  “Adonai be with you, old father,” she said. White teeth flashed in a face fine-boned and brown as a nut. “I’m Marta bat Yakov, and the wife of Eleazar there. If you have only come up the hill, you have come a long way to be here among the besieged. Though I think you have come farther. Have you eaten? Are you thirsty?”

  Yeshua glanced around the compound at the men, the women and the children going about the task of a warrior’s encampment. The place felt like the hour before a storm. He declined her offer of food and drink, and he too gave his name—said he was Yeshua ben Yosef, a rabbi come to see if all they said about this place was true.

  “Well, if they say we are all mad here, they could be right. If they say we are the last of the Jews, they are probably right about that.” Marta drew a breath and let it out softly. “If they say my husband leads an army of a thousand—they are wrong about that. You cannot count the children; not the little ones. Most of us are farmers and shopkeepers, but we can fight when we have to. We don’t lack for weapons. Just as we don’t lack for all else.

  “The old king had such an armory that no one here need worry about running out of spears and swords. Water still fills the wells, for there are springs in the caves below this fortress and the water is always fresh. His granary was as fat as he used to be. He laid by figs and dates and olives. By some miracle or the quality of the air so high up, much of his provisions remain edible.”

  Marta nodded toward a line of low buildings. “There is where we are quartered. We have room for you, Reb Yeshua, if you wish. Rest, refresh yourself and when you are able, tell us what news you have heard in the world outside of here.”

  She showed him to a cool chamber, windowless and protected from the sun in the shadow of one of the inner wall’s great towers. She gave him a pile of thick blankets to lie upon and left a jug of cool water.

  “I’m glad to have a rabbi among us,” Marta said. “A man of sense and learning.”

  She said no more. And as he lay down to sleep, Yeshua thought that in Marta’s eyes, he saw storm coming.

  In the hour before dawn, he woke to shouts of glee and cries of triumph. Yeshua ran from his chamber to see that a storm had indeed come—a firestorm.

  Fire lit the sky as though the firmament itself had been set ablaze. Yeshua saw dark figures running through the compound, women after their children, men and boys for their weapons. He found Marta at once, and she herded all her frightened flock toward him and went to look for more. He, in his turn, hurried them to the nearest well.

  One or two brave boys scrambled up ladders to see where the greatest danger lay. No one had expected to hear their hoots of derision and scornful laughter.

  “Adonai wills!” one shouted, turning to yell the news into the compound. “The Romans forgot to check where the wind felt like traveling!”

  Indeed, the fire the Romans had set ran before the north wind, which turned the flames back upon their makers. A great cry of dismay arose from below as Flavius Silva’s soldiers ran desperately here and there trying to move their wooden siege engines.

  At the well, Yeshua saw no joy in the frightened children. Smoke and shouting and a sky turned red by fire left them all trembling and the smallest crying. Old joints creaking, he sat on his haunches and took the smallest into his arms, told the older ones to stand look out.

  “For Romans,” one said, somewhere between bravado and terror.

  “No.” He ruffled the boy’s hair and turned him to face outward. “For Marta. She will want to know where we are.”

  Nor was it long before Eleazar’s wife came to the well, trailed by women searching for their lost ones. Low voices murmured, “Thank you, Rabbi; Adonai bless you, Reb Yeshua,” as each mother claimed her child from the well to bring them to safety on the other side of the fort, far from the fire.

  Yeshua didn’t go with them. He watched as one after another, men and boys climbed to the towers and onto the walls to jeer at the Romans and watch them run before the fire. And so he was there when the wind turned, the fire ran back to the fortress wall and the cries of the watchers on the wall became cries of anger, terror, and despair.

  Yeshua joined the water line, taking his place behind a brawny youth pulling buckets from the well. One after another, he passed the brimming containers and saw them go man to man in the frantic endeavor to save the wall.

  Old man, he thought each time his muscles groaned or his joints cried out in pain. Old man, old man. Old Man Yeshua, what are you
doing here?

  Fear not . . .

  The words settled like a balm on his soul. An old phrase from another time, he thought, and made his aching arms swing another brimming bucket to waiting hands.

  When the fire was out, the women and children and the men of Eleazar’s army were black with soot and streaked with sweat. Reb Yeshua stumbled back to a pallet of blankets. He lay in a stupor of exhaustion, and he heard a long, howling cry winding out of the darkness.

  Eleazar the Zealot, he who’d led his people out of Yerushalayim and to this fastness, walked through the fortress, like ghost wailing.

  “We are the abandoned of God!”

  Too weary to give voice, Yeshua could only move his lips to frame words before he fell asleep.

  Fear not . . .

  When he woke again, he heard Eleazar holding forth not far from the door of his chamber. The zealot’s words of despair had hardened into something else, something like stone rushing down a hillside plowing all before it.

  Yeshua went out into the morning and found all the nine hundred sixty who had for long months of siege lived in the ghost of King Herod’s fortress. Upon the faces of all but the infants suckling or sleeping in their mothers’ arms, Eleazar had painted dread with his words.

  “Hear me,” Eleazar shouted. “We are deprived by Adonai himself of all hope of deliverance. That fire which was driven upon our enemies and of its own accord turned back upon our wall—this was Adonai’s anger against us for our sins. We have been arrogant, insolent, changed ourselves into the enemies of our countrymen!”

  Yeshua stepped out from the shade of the wall, into the sunlight.

  “Eleazar,” he said. The words came gentle into the heat of the morning. So they used to do, in the past. “Eleazar, you mistake Adonai’s will if you think a north wind turning south is such a thing of wonder that no one has seen it happen before.”

  The crowd’s silence rustled and became muttering. A child sobbed, another wailed. Eleazar turned as though stung, his bloodshot eyes like two red coals. Here was a man counting the dead, though they had not yet died.

  “The rabbi. And what do you know of Adonai’s will? What have you seen of it?”

  Yeshua smiled. “I have seen more of it than you, enough to say to you that—”

  Eleazar turned away, already exhorting the crowd as he did.

  “We are guilty of such sins that we deserve what punishment is ordained. We know this, for Adonai would not mete out punishment unjustly. And so I say let us not take our just deserts at the hand of the Romans—let them not be Adonai’s executioners!”

  The crowd came closer, and some on the edges began to murmur in agreement, though Yeshua could see they weren’t sure what they agreed to. Others shook their heads in confusion.

  “Eleazar,” Yeshua said, “how do you know the will of Adonai? Has he spoken with you?”

  He asked so seriously that none dared laugh.

  “Do I know the will of Adonai? No! I am his humble servant. And I say that we have earned his wrath, for he would not visit it upon us if we hadn’t.” Swift, like a snake, his fervor took another path, as it did, he turned to his people again. “My friends, I can only tell you what I have seen. I have seen how the Romans treat captives, how they use our women, how they use our men for sport in their arenas, feeding them to wild beasts.”

  Now the men among them grew loud in their agreement, though Yeshua wondered how many had seen what Eleazar claimed to have seen.

  “Listen! We will not let the Romans do Adonai’s work!”

  The crowd held it’s breath, and storm came creeping nearer.

  “We will do it ourselves!”

  From that moment, Eleazar spoke madness, telling them that each man must take his wife children aside and embrace them, kiss them, and in the next swift moment become their executioner.

  “For we will not let the Romans have them! We must not!”

  Then fell the storm, fed by the winds of madness and fear.

  Many in the crowd took up his cry as though it were a battle shout: “We must not! We must not! We will not!” Women wept, children sobbed, and Yeshua murmured, “Fear not.”

  To whom? He didn’t know, perhaps only to himself as he waded into the crowd.

  They parted for him, so many knew him as the rabbi who had sheltered their children and helped put out the fire.

  “Now,” he said, and he spoke in the voice of his youth. “Hear me. Adonai has declared no doom here. He has asked for no blood. My Father,” he said, “would weep to see the murder of children at the hands of their parents.”

  Abba! Beside him, Abba stood; Abba, the breath in his lungs, the beat of his heart.

  “Each man put up your knife and look into the face of your wife! Kiss the cheek of your child! Find your wit and your heart there and think of what this man asks you to do.”

  Like a pillar of white fire, Eleazar raged. He threw in front of their eyes the most horrific images he could summon. Some had heard of the terrors in Yerushalayim, the killings, the rapes, and the torture. Others had been there and did not need imagination to summon what Eleazar wanted them to see. As fire had spread in the night, so did fear now.

  They shouted down the words of the strange rabbi. “Yes!” Eleazar shouted. “Why fear death? We do not fear sleep. Death is no worse, only more! Am I speaking to brave men who will protect their wives and sisters, their children? Or am I speaking to cowards?”

  Knives glinted in the sunlight.

  Fear not . . .

  In his heart, Yeshua cried, Abba! Abba! They will slaughter the lambs!

  Fear not, my Son.

  The voice of his Father was the beat of his heart.

  Yeshua turned and found Marta nearby. He waded through the crowd, trying to get to her. She met him, her fine-boned face changed into that of a warrior. Such a face must have been D’vorah’s, she who led the armies of the Israelites in the age of the Judges, tear-streaked and sobbing. Around them grew a storm of shouting and weeping, and suddenly came the smell of blood.

  “Listen,” Yeshua said. He took her by the shoulders. “Take what children you can and bring them to the caves in the place where the water feeds the wells. Hide there. Hide until this madness is over.”

  Fire had not bellowed as this crowd now did, and yet around the two a calm settled. Marta clung to his hands. “Come with us. Reb Yeshua, come!”

  Abba, the blood singing in his veins: Fear not!

  Abba beside him, Yeshua shook his head. “Go. I am where I must be.”

  She hung on her heel, then ran, leaving him, leaving her husband. Yeshua saw her grab the hand of another woman and saw them snatch what children they could, their own and a few others.

  He watched them vanish into the crowd, and when he looked back into the compound, he saw that the storm of exhortation had ended. Women sat on the bricks of the dusty courtyard, they stood their children in front of them. Men came and knelt beside them. Some took their babies in their arms, others kissed their wives, and tears rolled down their cheeks.

  In his heart, Yeshua said: Abba, make it stop!

  But his Father did not answer but to say that the will freely given to all mankind is not to be gainsaid by the Giver.

  Fear not . . .

  Abba!

  Fear not. Go among them.

  And so he did, for it had been always what he’d been destined to do. Go among men, minister to them, help them, teach them.

  Eleazar, too, walked among the people, quiet now, and sometimes he touched the dark curls on the head of a child, or the shoulder of a father while, here and there, like small silver flames, light danced on the blades of knives.

  And where Eleazar walked, Yeshua came after, his eyes the last a weeping mother saw, his step the last a grieving father heard when he ended his own life.

  They walked, the two, Eleazar and Yeshua, each aware of the other, until all the deed was done but one part. The last of his people left alive, Eleazar took a sword and wipe
d it clean.

  “Rabbi,” he said from across the vast, bloody courtyard. “Help me.”

  Yeshua shook his head. “You know the law as well as I know it: I shall not kill.”

  “And you will not defend yourself.”

  “No. If you do this, you do it of your own will.”

  The man walked away, his sword clean of all the day’s blood, and Yeshua, weary, weary, took himself to the pallet of blankets and lay himself down.

  He didn’t hear Eleazar die, but he felt it.

  Like the draining of my own life, Abba, my own blood seeping away.

  “And I don’t know what it has all been for. I have saved no one, redeemed nothing. I was, for a while, filled with your Spirit. And then . . .”

  And then, My Beloved Son, you were not. For a woman worked her will upon her husband, and the promise I made to all of mankind that their will would be free has been kept. If I had not kept that promise, what worth the promise of Redemption?

  Sickening in the reek of smoke and blood, Yeshua said, “But there was no Redemption. All is as it was.”

  It is true that all is not as it would have been with the world had you died Barabbas’ death. Yet all is not as it would have been here, had you not come. Five children live, and two women. Can you tell me, Yeshua, what will come from those seeds in ten years, a hundred, more?

  The last chance of Redemption has not passed, for the promise has not been fulfilled. The time will come again, one day. And we shall see again what may happen.

  Rest.

  No more did Abba say, but weariness became something else, something sweeter, like the assurance of peaceful sleep.

  Old man, old man. Yeshua stood and took a blanket from the pile that had been his bed. He folded it carefully, making sure the creases were even and straight. Then he went and put it at the threshold, laying out the old message.

  The work is complete.

  YESTERDAY’S PAPER

  Boyd Ellanby

  From the direction of the Tycho’s berth, Bill Danforth rolled up in his jeep and grinned at Peter Harrison’s worried face.