Highlander - Donna Lettow [33]
When he knew she was gone, he released her and carefully arranged her body on the sleeping mat. Her bridal garments were stained in her blood like their marriage bed had once been. He lovingly placed her wedding veil over her beautiful face, so she would not be disgraced by the gaze of some lecherous Roman pig.
Avram heard movement in the doorway. “It’s done, Aba,” he said, not taking his gaze oft’ Deborah.
Mordecai entered the room. With sorrowful eyes he took in his son kneeling by the body of his dead bride, covered in her blood. “Avram, I’m so sorry.”
Avram stood and faced him. “No, Aba, I’m the one to be sorry, sorry I ever brought you here. We should have gone to Galilee, or Bethlehem, somewhere we could have had a normal life.”
Mordecai shook his head. “Any life under Roman rule is not normal. You did the right thing. I lived to see my son grow into a man, to see him take a bride. at more could a father ask for?”
Avram looked at his father in amazement. “Then…you’re not angry with me?” Mordecai hugged his son close to his bosom as he’d not done since Avram was a child.
“My little Avram, I have never been more proud of you than I am right now. Yes, we die, but we die free. See, you’ve even taught your old Aba something.” He reached up to kiss Avram on the forehead—Avram had never before noticed that he was taller than his father. Then he picked up the bloody knife and handed it to his son. “Let’s get on with it. The sooner we get this over with, the sooner I see your mother again.”
Mordecai painfully lowered himself to the floor near the sleeping mat and lay down, carefully adjusting his tunic, making sure the fringes on the corners of his mantle weren’t tangled. He folded his hands on his chest and closed his eyes in prayer. “Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, Whose judgments are true.” Then, with a sigh, he tilted back his head, exposing his throat. “Strike well, son. Trust in God.”
Avram knelt beside his father. “Good-bye, Aba,” he whispered, then pulled the knife swiftly across his father’s throat.
Avram didn’t know how long he knelt there, watching the blood rush, then run, then trickle from his father’s throat. He was numb. Completely numb. Beyond pain. Beyond grief. Numb. He stared at the knife in his hand, watching the patterns the red fluid made against the iron blade, his Deborah’s blood mingling with the blood of his father.
Finally, he managed to rouse himself, his task still unfinished. He opened the wooden box that housed their possessions and removed the few pieces of pottery and glass inside. With all his strength, all his anger, all his grief, he hurled the bowls, the cups, and Deborah’s cooking pots at the wall, shattering them, until nothing remained that the Romans could use. The rest of their meager possessions—their clothing, a few wooden implements, some cloth—he placed in the wooden box and moved it near the oven. He emptied the last of the lamp oil on the box and set it alight with the wick of a lamp.
He was still staring wide-eyed into the flames when Eleazar came for him. His commander was covered with blood, like a demon butcher, and his face was haunted with the horror of his deeds.
“Avram.”
Avram turned to look at his commander, haunted by his own demons. “I killed them.” The anguish in his soul manifested in his voice. “God forgive me, I killed them,” he wailed.
“He will, Avram. You know He will.”
Avram nodded numbly. He moved to the sleeping mat, lay down beside the body of his wife. He put one arm around her lovingly, protectively, then looked to Eleazar. “Now,” he said. Avram closed his eyes and prayed as Eleazar’s sword drove into his heart.
Masada: 14 Nisan, The Present
Avram opened his eyes and wiped away an escaping tear with a shrug of his shoulder. Nearly two thousand years had passed, yet the memory stayed with him, as sharp as if it had happened only yesterday. He could still feel the pain, not of Eleazar’s sword, but of his heart as it broke when he awoke to discover that he had failed, that he could