One Illumined Thread, page 27
I could tell her the answer, but I leave it.
She throws back her head and laughs. I can’t help but laugh with her, she sounds so much like her mother.
‘Vieni! Come!’ she says, threading her arm through mine.
We take another flight of stairs up to a landing, a door either side.
‘Lucrezia Borgia would have a covetous fit,’ says Bianca, her hand on the doorknob.
Lucrezia Borgia is the daughter of the late Pope Alexander VI, and her reputation for finery equals that of her scandals. That Bianca might have something to make a woman of such power and wealth envious makes my heart thud with anticipation. She pushes open the door.
Inside, cascading black silk draperies ripple, oily and shining, like the skin of a grass snake. They billow in the breeze against brilliant white walls. In the centre stands a bed, half the size of the room, carved in black walnut and draped with white silks embroidered with roses in black silken thread. And, above us, a small glass cupola where light floods in, emphasising the drama of black against white.
‘Sick with envy, she’d be,’ says Bianca. ‘The curtains and bed silks are morello di grana. They cost more than seven of Lucrezia’s gowns. I bartered with my husband when he took a mistress.’
Lucrezia Borgia brought black out of the domain of mourning and clergymen’s dress and into high fashion, commissioning silks and velvets that stunned with their lavish audacity. So long had black been the colour of gloom that her velvet gowns were met with a mixture of awe and confusion. Feared for their powers of seduction. Once a colour connected with devils and doom, on Lucrezia, black became a symbol of wealth and desire.
‘Damn the mistress.’ Malachite flies through the door and settles on a tall bedpost, bobbing up and down, batting his great wings.
‘Rascal bird,’ says Bianca. ‘Who knows where he learns it?’
She walks to the bed and strokes the bird, who purrs like a kitten. ‘He taught himself that sound,’ she says. ‘Confuses our cat.’ She scratches the bird under its throat and his eyes, half closed, flicker with pleasure.
‘The room is inspired by my father’s gift,’ she says, opening her hand. The black glass vial, so like mine, in her palm. ‘My way of saying sorry for being ungrateful.’
‘Take the biscuit.’ Malachite clacks his large beak against the glass in her hand.
She snaps her fingers closed around it. ‘Rascal bird.’ She nudges the bird away. ‘You’ll get a biscuit when you behave.’
The bird drops its head in a sulk.
She reopens her fingers. ‘Who knew black could shine like a jewel?’
I take it from her palm and hold it up to the light that streams down from the roof. Perhaps now I will see it glimmer like mine. I twist it this way and that. But it doesn’t, it is a truly pure black. In some ways more stunning.
‘I want to know what’s inside, but my husband says I’ll ruin it. “Can’t have your wine cask full and your wife drunk,” he says. Go on, shake it!’
I put the object to my ear and shake it. I hear nothing.
‘You must shake it hard,’ she says, impatient with my caution.
I do so. A dull rattle.
‘Allora! You must bring yours to my husband; he’s sure to know everything about it.’ Bianca claps her hands with excitement. ‘He says if this one’s not from Egypt or the Levant it is certainly from a glassmaker who learned the art there. Although the black is unusual. But he says we may never know what treasures lay buried, things that might cause us to question all that we know.’
I turn the vial over in my hands, hold it up once more to the cupola’s light. And it all happens too fast.
Perhaps Bianca screeches first, or the bird swoops then she screeches, but before she or I can do anything to save it, Malachite snatches the vial and flies out the window.
‘Drop it now, rascal bird!’ she orders, leaning half out the window, her palm outstretched.
‘Please be careful,’ I say, gripping her skirts.
Malachite circles the rooftops while Bianca whistles and pleads, offering bribes, making threats.
‘Marcello warned me I should clip his wings,’ she says. ‘But what is a bird if he can’t use his wings? “Clip off your tongue,” I said. “Let’s see how you argue your deals and pleasure your mistress.”’ The bird wheels above us, flying higher and higher. ‘Drop it now, rascal bird!’ She is outraged at not getting her way, reaching out her hand, palm to the sky. ‘Fai come dico!’ Do as I say!
And the rascal bird does indeed do as she says.
We both watch the vial fall. Plummeting like a sparrow felled by a slingshot. Out of the heavens and down to the street.
26
Beit HaKerem, 5 BCE
A heavy drop into the water above us. From under the surface, I blink and try to focus. Did a rock shear off and plummet? I listen for the soldiers, but hear only the rushing of bubbles. I expected the world beneath the surface to be clouded, dark, but it seems the sun has lost its way and shines upwards from the centre of the earth. I blink again and see that the light streams through an opening in the rock. I pull myself along the pool’s rocky floor towards it, kicking my legs, flailing. As a woman of the hills, I’ve had little chance or desire to learn to swim. My lungs scream for breath. But I know this feeling, this pressure, from years spent inside the heat of the workshop, where the body begs for relief. So I do as Avner taught me and replace my distress with calm, with focus, so my body can endure.
I grope for the rim of the hole, its edges jagged like teeth. I pull Yoḥanan against me and try to angle us through. It’s not big enough. Not for us both. My son’s eyes are wide and frightened, but he does not struggle against me or my hard pinch on his nostrils.
Panic racks my body and my lungs squeeze harder. I try the gap again. We cannot pass through together. I meet his eyes with mine and hope they tell him to be brave, then I push him through with all the force I can muster. I follow. Push my head through and catch it on a jutting rock, a shot of pain flaring through my skull. I ignore it and push my shoulders, my hips through. Rock edges bite at me. I can see the wriggling body of my child, falling back down through the water, his small body in spasms. I flail behind him and push him upwards, thrashing my legs.
A moment, an age. We burst through the surface. His body is limp in my arms. The tips of my toes touch the rocks beneath me. I push through the water and my feet find a sandy embankment. But the water is still up to my chest and I can’t quite find my balance.
My eyes scan the rock face but I can see no place to rest, so I take my child and pump his body against my own. Once, twice, scrambling on tip toes, keeping his head above water. I thrust his body into mine until my ribs ache.
‘Come back to me. Come back.’ My voice echoes and bounces around the rock. One thousand voices calling back.
A fountain of water spurts from his mouth, and he blinks and coughs and struggles for breath. I hold him above the surface, lean him over and shake him, then pump my hand against the back of his chest. The water drains from his mouth and nose and he spits and whimpers. I hold him close, kissing his head and telling him how good he has been. How well he has played our new game.
The rock walls surrounding me scrape the sky, narrowing at their far top, forming a rim, From below it seems I am inside a hollow mountain, its top sliced off to let in the sunlight.
‘Video aquam.’ The young soldier’s voice from the other side. ‘Sanguis in aqua est!’
I cannot make sense of what he said. But I realise that while we are separated from him by a wall of rock, both his side and mine are open to the sky. The sound is echoing, travelling, finding its way between our parallel worlds.
Yoḥanan’s eyes search mine and I push my finger to my lips, make my eyes fierce so he knows not to defy me.
‘Sanguis ubique in aqua!’ The soldier is excited by whatever it is he can see.
I work my mind over these words, willing comprehension. Sanguis. Blood. I touch my hand to the throbbing spot on my skull, my fingers covered in blood. I hoist Yoḥanan high with one arm and wade towards the wall of rock. There is a firmer embankment underfoot, but the water is now up to my chin. I circle the pool searching for an outcrop, a place to rest. My limbs tremble with exhaustion and I clutch my child tighter.
A splash from the other side. I imagine the young soldier’s lean body swimming easily below the surface, finding his way through the underwater hole in the rock to this side. Another splash. But too light to be the weight of a body.
Above me the rock walls soar, almost touching, but leaving an opening, almost circular, where the sun streams through. It is so bright I squint against it. My eyes sting and run with tears. The stone around me seems to swell and shimmer, rock softening into a blur of rippling colour. I am out of air, out of energy. I blink and blink again against the glare of the light. Trying to discern somewhere to hide.
‘Altum est.’ The young soldier sounds baffled. The plunk of a rock into water. I know he is standing at the edge of the pool where I stood moments earlier. Another plunk. A larger rock into water. He is testing its depth.
I scan the rock walls again, circle after circle, my body twisting in the water. Unable, unwilling, to accept these stone walls for what I know they are. A cage. A trap. Thinking I will drown my child with my own hands before letting him die at the sword of Herod. Terrified at what I am thinking. At what this has come to.
‘Festina!’ The voice of the older soldier is impatient. ‘Tolle gladium.’
Gladium. This I know. Sword.
I push through the water, following the rock wall yet again, running my fingertips across the stone, searching for a place to grip, to rest. But the walls rise from the water with no place to hide. My arms burn with the growing weight of my child. A sack of flour. A slab of stone. We could slide under the water and be done.
A flash of light. A quartz seam in the rock wall catching the light. An explosive upsurge of water. The sound of a body plunging in. The young soldier has dived in. He will see the light from below. He will find his way here.
I make for the sparkling seam in the rock face, gulping mouthfuls when the floor drops away. A slight shift in the sun’s angle strikes a bright jagged line through the stone. It runs up the length of the rock face but, as I reach it, I can see it is darker on one side. I grasp at the darkness and my hand hits a ledge.
I pull myself close and see a narrow opening, an opening not visible from the centre of the pool where we emerged. I push Yoḥanan inside and hoist myself onto the narrow ledge at its opening. I hear the outward breath of the soldier as he bursts through the surface, gasps and splutters, and I slide myself inside the rock, scratching the skin of my arms, my legs, as I squeeze through.
My foot is caught. I hear the soldier panting, sucking in air. I change the angle of my foot, set it loose and drag myself into a small cavern, damp rock walls on all sides. I scramble with Yoḥanan, push myself as far from the narrow opening as I can, the cavern floor gritty and cold. There is only enough room to sit, so I coil myself around my son, my hand on his mouth.
A sharp clang. Silence. Then another. His sword striking the rock. I hear him breathing hard, treading water with his sword weighing him down. But Roman soldiers are trained to swim in their armour, helmet on head, gladius in hand. To march in their armour, league after league, without rest.
‘Ubi es, cunne?’ he screams.
Cunne. The profanity spoken towards a woman, never far from any Roman’s lips. I pull my child closer, try to cover his ears. As if hearing these insults is the worst thing that could happen.
The young soldier strikes his sword against rock. I hear him making his way around the wall. Closer and closer, an echoing clang as he swims with his sword and hits the wall as he goes. I hear him splash by us. The flail of his arms slapping water. He is panting and I pray exhaustion takes him. Sends him with his sword to the bottom of this pool. In my arms, my child’s body pulses like a trapped bird.
‘Propera, asine!’ The elder’s from the other side of the rock pool yells its abuse.
‘Verpe,’ the boy says under his breath, comparing his superior’s head to his groin. All these insults I knew.
‘Cinaede,’ roars the older soldier.
I hear the younger swimming back our way. He pauses to rest. I can hear the rasp of his breath.
‘Evaserunt,’ he calls back.
‘Evaserunt? Quomodo?’ The elder soldier’s rage explodes in a litany of fast words that I cannot make out. The boy is calling back, not matching the tirade. Perhaps objecting. Perhaps begging. It is a discord of bawling.
More clattering stones. The elder’s harangue is growing harder to hear, perhaps swallowed by the gorge as he makes his way out. There is a splashing of water as the boy swims, not out of the cave but to somewhere near by. The scrape of rock scrambling, dislodged rocks lobbing into the pool below. Puffing, exertion. He is scaling the wall. Climbing out on some footholds he must believe we have followed. I hear him slipping but still climbing. The sound of the older soldier’s voice now from above. The two of them shouting like rivals, not comrades.
I do not dare move, but gently, not completely, I loosen the hand I have held on my son’s mouth.
‘Clever boy,’ I whisper, and kiss his warm head, his hair soft on my lips. I sit and I rock him, my tears silent as sunlight. And when I hear his sleep sounds, his short, measured breaths, I let my eyes close. Darkness in the cave now, but behind my closed eyes, so much light. The light of the quartz seam as it glimmered in the rock face. I surrender to sleep. Leave the world of what is seen. For now, my fervent prayer, not to be seen. Not to see.
I don’t see the swallow flit back and forth, building her nest with pellets fashioned from mud. I don’t see the water spider emerge in a bubble and scurry into her dew-speckled web. I don’t see the fight break out above us. The older soldier cursing the younger for a wild chase on the strength of a torn veil. The violent shove from the elder to the young soldier’s chest, sending him tumbling, his elbows scuffed on the rocks. I don’t see the bullied young soldier charge for his elder, swiping his sword across the man’s weathered cheek. A deep slash, bone exposed. I don’t see the fury of the man transform into hatred. A single, deft strike. A blade through the young soldier’s juvenile chest. His body left in the dust they rode in on.
I don’t see the incensed soldier in the village, nose bent sideways from battle, tear the first child from the arms of his mother. I don’t see the flex in his muscle as he sets his mark in the soft sternum of the baby boy and bears down his blade.
And I don’t see my husband look up at the mountain to which he knows I have fled. Calling out to Ribon Alma to watch over us both. His body spread across Yiska’s and her one-week-old boy, the blotched marks of childbirth still on his scalp. The soldier’s mouth open and screaming for my husband to stand down. To depose himself of his futile protection and let King Herod’s work be done. Roman spittle pasting my husband’s face, his cheeks and forehead. The soldier’s final impatience, tearing my husband from Yiska’s cowering frame and piercing man and child in two swift stabs. Snatching Yiska’s scarf from her head to wipe the spatter of blood from his face. Pitching it into the dirt at her feet.
I see none of this. Only a light behind my closed lids. A beckoning dancing light, forged into stone. Bright as a lightning streak that shreds the night sky.
I awaken with a start. Silence. Soft dripping of water. Yoḥanan in my arms, breathing against me. Droplets of mist on my face, my skin. My child stirs, his small hands reaching for my breast. I bring him in to feed. His fingers then find my lips and I whistle the call of the hoopoe, as is our game, so he relaxes and feeds long. Tiny diamonds of water sparkle from the points of his lashes.
The swallow darts past us to her nest high up the rock wall. My eyes have adjusted and I can see her fine work. Tiny mud pebbles, layer upon layer, to cradle her eggs.
‘Bird,’ says Yoḥanan, pulling his lips from my breast.
He has mastered his new word and I pull him towards me and kiss his face.
‘Bird,’ he says, his chubby finger pointing. And I kiss him again. Bird. Kiss. Back and forth it goes until we both are laughing.
He pushes himself to standing against the cavern wall. I manoeuvre myself in the cramped space into a half-seated, half-crouched position, leaning over to peek out from the crevice into which we have crawled. The water is still. I cannot tell what time it is. I fret to think we must leave the way we came in, wondering if the soldiers will be out there, taking pot shots at ground birds with sharp stones, playing out the boredom of waiting to kill. But Herod’s soldiers are as notorious for their poor concentration as for their menace. More likely to have rushed to the village and carried out their orders, wanting to return quickly to gather their payment, to return to their drinking.
‘Shall we play in the water again?’ I ask Yoḥanan, who is reaching, straining towards the bird in her nest. Propping himself up to the wall, he shuffle-walks towards me and falls into my arms.
I squeeze myself out first, then reach for him. We wade through the pool to the underwater hole in the rock. Pinching his nostrils, I dive under the water. Him first, then me. I break the surface and press my finger to his lips. Listening for them, the soldiers. Only the chittering of birds. We follow the gorge the way we came in, the stones clawing at my tender feet. As the gorge opens up, a rush of desert air greets me, already drying our wet bodies. I descend unsteadily, clambering across rubble. And then I am back in the place where my wild sage grows, hidden. My sandals set neatly where I have left them.
