Christ the Lord - Anne Rice [80]
I looked at her face as she turned away. I heard the music as she heard it, the insistent beat. I saw the torches as she saw, flaring without a sound.
The twilight was gone.
The light of lamps and candles and torches was dazzling as it flashed and flickered in the lattices and on the rooftops across the way.
I could hear the singing rising with the strum of the harp strings, and the deeper throbbing of the strings of the lutes. The very crackling of the torches mingled with the singing.
Suddenly the horns sounded.
The bridegroom had reached Nazareth. He and the men with him were coming up the hill to joyful salutes and great volleys of clapping.
More torches flared suddenly in the yard around us.
Out of the central doors of the house came the women in their bleached woolen robes, beautifully banded in bright colors, their hair wrapped up in their finest white veils.
Suddenly the great white linen canopy festooned with ribbons was unfolded and hoisted. My brothers Joses, Judas, and Simon and my cousin Silas held the poles.
The street before the courtyard exploded with joyful greetings.
Into the torchlight stepped Reuben, garlanded, and beautifully robed, beaming, his face so filled with gladness that my eyes swam with tears. And beside him, the eager friend of the bridegroom, Jason, who sought now to present him in a ringing voice:
“Reuben bar Daniel bar Hananel of Cana is here!” Jason proclaimed. “For his bride.”
James stepped forward, and for the first time, I saw beside him the hulking, grim-faced Shemayah, the garland slightly askew on his head, his wedding garments not quite reaching their proper length due to the great width of his shoulders and the thickness of his immense arms.
But he was there! He was there—and he pushed James forward now towards the excited and explosively happy Reuben who came into the courtyard with open arms.
Silent Hannah rushed to the doorway of the house.
James took the embrace of Reuben.
“Joyous greetings, my brother!” James said loudly so that all the crowd beyond could hear it, and the clapping answered him fiercely. “Joyous greetings as you come into this the house of your brothers and to take your kinswoman as a bride.”
James stepped to the side. The torches moved in towards the door of the house as Silent Hannah stepped out and gestured for Avigail to come forward.
And come forward she did.
Swathed in veil upon veil of Egyptian gauze, she stepped into the flaring illumination, her veils encrusted with gold, her arms ornamented with gold, her fingers with glistening and multicolored rings. And through the thick and shimmering mist of white cloth, I could see the distinct glimmer of her dark eyes. The mass of her dark hair fell down over her breasts beneath these veils, and even on her sandaled feet were great rounded and glittering jewels.
James raised his voice:
“This is Avigail, daughter of Shemayah,” he said, “your kinswoman and your sister, and you take her now with the blessing of her father and her brothers and her sisters, to be your wife, in the house of your father, and let her from now on be a sister to you, and may the children you have be as brothers and sisters to you, according to the Law of Moses, and as it is written, let this be done.”
The horns sounded, the harps throbbed, and the timbrels beat faster and faster. The women lifted their timbrels now to join the resounding rhythm of those from the street.
Reuben stepped forward as did Avigail, until they stood before each other beneath the canopy, the tears coming silently from Reuben as he reached for the veils of his bride.
James put his hand between the two figures.
Reuben went on speaking to the face he could see distinctly now just in front of him, beneath its sheer drapery.
“Ah, my beloved,” he said. “You were set apart