Take This Cup Read online

  Immediately afterward, Sarah retreated to her bedchamber on the rooftop. Storm clouds gathered, and the half-moon shone through the silver vapor. She had been in bed an hour when Boaz and Rebekah rapped softly at her door.

  “Enter.”

  Rebekah’s expression was wistful, hopeful, as she blinked at Sarah. Boaz’s lower lip protruded as it did when he was negotiating a sale.

  “Daughter, are you asleep?” Rebekah whispered hoarsely.

  “Not now.” Sarah sat up.

  “Good.” Boaz pulled up a stool and, sucking his teeth, sat down slowly. “The chicken tonight was . . .”

  “Just a chicken, Father.”

  “Lamsa enjoyed it very much.” Rebekah leapt in too quickly.

  Sarah did not reply at first, but a sense of dread filled her. “Father? What have you done?”

  Her parents exchanged a guilty glance. Boaz cleared his throat. “You’re no spring chicken.”

  “Not slaughtered and plucked quite yet, you mean, Father? Not stewed or roasted?” Sarah covered her face with her hands. “Just tell me.”

  “It’s good news, really.” Rebekah stroked her back. “He . . . Lamsa . . . likes you.”

  Sarah sighed. “Mother, everyone here likes me. I have only friends here. I have sisters and nephews and nieces who like me. Who love me. Strangers stop to watch me weave. They like me. I love my work.”

  Boaz cleared his throat. He smelled of too much wine. “Here’s the bargain. Lamsa came here looking for a wife. Here. I mean, to this house. My house. He remembered that I had five daughters. He is looking for a wife, you see, from Jerusalem. He is not finished having children, and he wants a wife from Jerusalem, which will add stature and authority to his descendants, since his people did not return from exile when the captivity ended. He came looking . . . for you.”

  “No, Father! Not for me. I am the leftover daughter. The only one of five who is unmarried.”

  “That may be, but that made his choice easier.”

  “His choice?” Tears welled in Sarah’s eyes.

  Rebekah glanced nervously at Boaz. “Yes. He is a good man. A rich man.”

  “He lives eight months in a tent with sheep,” Sarah protested. “Is this what you want for me?”

  “Here is the bargain,” Boaz reasoned. “His choice of my five daughters is you. No matter that your sisters are married. Lamsa chooses you. He came here for you. But he says . . .”

  Silence hung in the air like a large spider suspended from a web. Sarah looked from Rebekah to Boaz, then back again. “What?”

  Boaz continued cautiously. “Lamsa says he will not force you to marry him. Will not force you to leave your family and go back to Gan Eden unless you are certain you want to go.”

  Sarah blurted, “Then it’s settled. The answer is no!”

  Rebekah clasped her hand. “Sarah, your last chance . . .”

  “No, Mother.”

  Boaz drew himself up. His eyes simmered in anger. “He is a fair man. He says you should pray on the matter and ask the Lord if there is some way you might be happy. That is what Lamsa says, and I command you to pray!”

  Tears spilled. “What about my work?”

  Boaz’s chin lifted slightly. “Lamsa will take your loom to Amadiya. You will weave there. Your fabric, your prayer shawls, will be returned here to be sold in Jerusalem. I could not lose my most skilled weaver. For Lamsa, it is less raw wool to be caravanned. Thus, more economical.”

  “What about my limp? The mountains? Walking?”

  “He says you may have your own donkey to ride. I would have nothing but the best for my daughter. He is a wealthy herdsman.”

  Sarah could not utter another word. All the details for a marriage contract had been worked out.

  So, she pondered, this is how marriage happens. A distant relative in need of a woman walks through the door, and a bargain is struck. With the one caveat, I must agree. “All right, Father, Mother. I will consider his . . . business arrangement.”

  “And pray?” Rebekah clasped her hands in a desperate pantomime of prayer.

  “Yes, Mother. I will pray. I promise. I will.”

  The two scuttled like crabs out of her room and closed the door.

  Sarah rose and leaned her chin against her hand on the windowsill. Male voices drifted up.

  “My daughter says you are a most excellent man. She considers herself unworthy. You stride the mountains like a lion. She is lame and only useful at her loom.”

  Lamsa’s rich, deep voice replied, “When I was a boy, I owned a pet ewe who was lame. She gave me many lambs. Her wool was the finest grade. Yes, I have many donkeys for Sarah to use. She may choose her own. And I will carry her home riding on my own camel . . . if she will come. But I do not wish for an unhappy companion. It is a long way to my high mountain valleys. She will not likely see her family again.”

  And so, that night, Sarah prayed about the proposed match. Could she like this man? Could she live in tents among the sheep for eight months of the year? Like the Abraham and Sarah of old, Lamsa’s fathers were among those in Israel who stayed behind in Babylon when Nehemiah the prophet returned to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.

  Sarah reminded God that she was happy without a husband. Lamsa was a distant relation, a wealthy Jewish herdsman who lived in the land of ancient Babylon. He was not handsome.

  “Abba, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, you hear my prayers. I do not wish to leave my pleasant life and leave Jerusalem for exile in a wild land unless you have some greater purpose for me. But if I was to have a son, I would dedicate him to serve you. And then I would be pleased to leave my home and kin.” She stopped and thought, then continued speaking aloud to God. “If Lamsa says he will stay for a while in Jerusalem, and not leave until after the rainy season, Lord, then I will know. Just after the end of the rains. Tell me, please, Lord, what is your will?”

  In that instant, as she finished praying, a flash of lightning split the sky. It divided like forked antlers, and the clouds lit up in the shape of a giant hart. A thunderclap followed, shaking the house. The heavens opened and rain bucketed down, sluicing off the eaves and into the street.

  Sarah returned to her bed and lay for a while listening to the pleasant drumming of rain on her roof. Then she went to sleep, believing the Lord would give her a sign.

  In the morning over breakfast, Lamsa and Sarah’s father spoke about the weather.

  Lamsa did not look at Sarah. “Last night I saw a bolt of lightning like the antlers of a great white hart in the sky. And such a rain followed.”

  Sarah paused. “I saw it too. A great hart in the eastern sky. Beautiful.”

  Lamsa smiled. “When there is thunder in our mountains, we say it is the sound of two great harts doing battle. The hart is a symbol for us who wander in distant land. Adam’s great hart, strong and wise. We will one day all be gathered here in Eretz-Israel, because the Lord promised that even the land where I dwell will be Israel when Messiah comes. I am waiting for that day.”

  Sarah blinked down at her plate of eggs and bread. “I am also waiting for Messiah. He must come soon.”

  “When we see him as conqueror, it is written that it will be as lightning flashes from east to west.”2

  “Yes.” Sarah swallowed hard as the answer came to her. “We will all see him at the same time. Jerusalem and your precious mountains and pastures.”

  Lamsa leaned forward slightly and studied her face. “You would love my mountains, I think.”

  Sarah nodded once. “Yes. I think. I think . . . I will. Yes. I would like to go see such a sight. Asparagus growing on a mountaintop . . . and such things. Thunder.”

  Lamsa leaned back and laughed loud and hearty. He patted his chest. “Oh, my heart! My happy heart!”

  Sarah laughed with him. “All right, then.”

  Boaz and Rebekah embraced. “Praise be to God! Praise be!”

  When things quieted down, Lamsa instructed, “Have the Ketubah drawn up, Boaz. I thi
nk it would be wise that we would marry here and stay here in Jerusalem with you until the rainy season is over. Sarah, would this please you?”

  All was well. The matter was settled over breakfast, and by dinner the contract was signed.

  The wedding took place in Jerusalem that very next week. From the first night, Sarah was happy with her husband. He was gentle with her, and she was cherished by him. It was a good match.

  By the time the rainy season ended, Sarah had intricately woven her husband a beautiful prayer shawl. She was more than content; she was in love. When the rains were over and the camels packed for their return journey to Eden, Sarah told her parents a secret: “I am carrying Lamsa’s child. I will send word when the baby is born.”

  So my mother, with her loom and carrying me, left all her family behind and traveled a thousand miles east and north by caravan.

  Chapter 2

  All in the encampment tending my father’s herds were asleep, except for the watchmen posted around the flock.

  A chorus of summer breezes curled down from the heights, filling the valley with whispers of tall pines and the creaking sighs of yews and junipers.

  My mother, heavy with me, had chosen to follow the grazing sheep with my father, rather than stay behind in a stone house in the fortress town of Amadiya to await my birth. There was a midwife in the shepherds’ camp and an elderly rabbi named Kagba, a wise man, who knew the secrets of Torah and taught the children. If I turned out to be a boy, Kagba would perform the circumcision.

  Sarah stood framed in the dark entrance of their tent. Her arms tenderly embraced me, dancing in her womb. “Your father is tending the flocks tonight, my little lamb.”

  Watch fires had burned to embers that winked and sparkled on the improvised stone hearth. The pleasant sharpness of wood smoke scented the air. Shepherds and vigilant herd dogs ringed the meadow. A psalm of the shepherd boy David came to her: “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.”

  Beyond the circle of guardians, an outer hoop of cedar trees protected the lush grazing grounds. A herd of a dozen roe deer cropped the grass at the near edge of the meadow. For a moment Sarah thought she saw the ghost-like form of a white hart watching from the shadows.

  The words of the psalmist continued, “He makes me lie down in green pastures.”

  The crescent of a waning moon climbed over the peaks, and a myriad of stars reflected on the surface of a small, pristine lake.

  “He leads me beside still waters.”1

  Night birds called from the rushes lining the shore. In the middle distance an owl hooted fitfully.

  There seemed no separation between earth and sky. Sarah caught a glimpse of Rabbi Kagba standing on a low hill, surrounded by her three stepsons and a half-dozen other children attending his astronomy class. He pointed out constellations and the movement of the stars.

  She had never really thought about the constellations or the names of stars when she lived in her lonely rooftop bedchamber in Jerusalem. But now she enjoyed the bits of information in the rabbi’s lessons.

  “A man will not be lost in the wilderness if he learns the path of the stars,” the rabbi told his students.

  Sarah whispered, “Stars above and stars shining up from beneath the surface of the water.”

  Turning, she followed the direction indicated by the silhouette of the teacher’s outstretched arm. He traced a waterfall of glittering stars spanning the breadth of the heavens. Kagba’s voice drifted across the pond: “The Great Sky River! Other peoples name it ‘The Celestial Way.’ It is said that when Messiah comes, his authority will stretch . . .”

  The breeze reversed its direction, and Kagba’s words swirled away toward the west.

  A meteor streaked across the sky, followed by another and another as they had done for three nights. Kagba had earlier explained these shooting stars were called the Perseids. They appeared for a month around the same time each year in late summer.

  I shifted slightly in my mother’s womb, and she smiled.

  “You’re late arriving, I think, my bright star. Can you hear me? We all wait for you to join us here beneath the stars that shone above Eden.”

  As if in reply, a brilliant streak flashed across the horizon, and I answered with a rhythmic tapping beneath her right ribs.

  “Soon. Is that what you are saying?” She rubbed the bulge. Was it elbow, knee, or behind? “The midwives say you are a big baby. A son, they say . . . ready to be born. Late summer while the Perseids rain down, they told me. Why do you wait? What you have to look forward to . . . You will love living here, little lamb. As I do. I never knew there could be a place on earth so beautiful. Beauty beyond what your father described.”

  A triangle of mountain ranges framed the valley. There was an opening at the bottom of the triangle so the rivers that watered Eden could flow into the plain. Jagged peaks reared up on her right and left—peaks so stony and so tall they scraped the clouds and pierced the heavens. Waterfalls tumbled from the heights into pools as blue as the eyes of angels.

  “Hurry, little lamb, so your eyes will see stars touch earth. You will hear the bleating of your papa’s sheep. Oh, when I think . . . what I might have missed if I had not come to Paradise!”

  “He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness.”2

  Sarah knew the path she had taken was the right one. She had not realized how empty her life had been until she fell in love with Lamsa. Her stepsons had accepted her without question and loved her generously. Occasionally the youngest boy, Ezra, spoke to Sarah about his mother. He was the quiet one of the three. How he missed her! She had been a beautiful, fragile woman, and both she and a baby died in childbirth. This fact clearly troubled little Ezra when Sarah’s condition became unmistakable. He had lost his beloved mother. Would he also lose Sarah?

  Sarah had done her best to assure Ezra that she was as strong as an ox, never sick a day. Lamsa said she was made to bear children with ease. And Lamsa should know such things, since he had spent his life helping the ewes give birth.

  The sheep of Lamsa’s peaceful flock shone silvery in the moonlight, like a vast field of new-fallen snow. For months since her arrival, she had witnessed the miracle of life as ewes gave birth to lambs in the fields of summer. Sarah was ready now, and unafraid of labor and childbirth.

  “Though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.”

  Sarah had sung the psalm of David daily in Jerusalem as she plucked the strings of her loom, but she had never understood the meaning of the poetry until now.

  “Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”3

  She whispered, “Only let the baby come soon, Lord. So I can send word to my family in Jerusalem before the weather turns bad and none can travel to the west. My mother will worry all next winter if she does not hear!”

  As if in answer to her prayer, three meteors drifted slowly from the heart of the constellation. The muscles of her abdomen suddenly tightened in the first sign of labor.

  Sarah laughed, gazed up in awe, and stroked her belly. “Well! That was not so bad,” she said aloud. Glancing toward the nearby tent of Hepzibah, the head midwife, she wondered if she should fetch her now or let her sleep. Sarah decided she would wait awhile. Hepzibah, who had become her good friend, had explained that labor usually took several hours before a baby was ready to be born.

  Sarah returned to her soft fleece bed and propped herself up with pillows so she could view a patch of sky through the open tent flap. She saw the constellation of Perseus with his sword upraised. A meteor shot from the warrior’s head. She wondered if her mother could see the same flash of light in far-off Jerusalem. Her eyes brimmed with tears at the thought. For an instant she was filled with longing for her mother. Rebekah had, after all, been present at the births of all the grandchildren. This was one she was going to miss.

  Sarah shook herself free from sadness. She counted the Perseids between contractions. About one shooting star e
very minute. When there were four meteors between contractions, Sarah’s water broke. The intensity of the pain suddenly increased.

  So this is it, she thought as her belly became rock hard, held for a minute, and then slowly relaxed. Not so bad. I must tell Ezra not to worry. Not at all.

  Sarah said aloud, “Hmmm. So my sisters exaggerated their pain. Probably to impress their husbands.”

  Sarah rose from her bed. Yet another contraction seized her. This was much stronger. She groaned and gripped the tent pole for support, panting until it passed.

  All right . . . then . . . all right . . . So maybe they were not exaggerating all of it.

  Stepping outside the tent, she cupped her hands and called cheerfully, “Hepzibah, wake up, my sister! You’d better hurry. I need your help, Hepzibah. Our little one says he wants to see the dawn with his own eyes this morning!”

  Chapter 3

  I was born shortly before sunrise. They tell me I was a large, angry, big-voiced baby, with a full head of dark hair and fists that made my father proud. I had an appetite to match my size.

  “He’s going to be a big fellow.” My father smiled down tenderly at me. “A fighter, I think.”

  According to the tradition of our family, my name would not be revealed until the circumcision on the eighth day. My mother guessed that surely Father would call the boy something that honored a warrior ancestor. She mentioned a dozen names, but my father did not respond to her suggestions.

  “Can’t you tell me?” my mother asked him the day before my circumcision.

  “The Lord has not revealed the boy’s name to me yet, wife. Tonight, as is my tradition, I’m going to the waterfall for a mikvah. I will pray and ask the Lord to tell me what I should call my son. A name is so important. It sets the course for a life. I will bathe beneath the waterfall and immerse myself in the pool. Then I’ll listen for the voice of the Lord. Adonai will speak to me. He will tell me who my son is meant to be.” Father gathered clean clothes and a blanket and struck out in the dark up the path to bathe in the cold snow melt.