Джеймс Миченер - The Source

“Feed him,” the governor directed the guards, and he was about to consult with the brothers concerning the fugitive’s story when shouts came from the northern wall of the town, and excited figures started running toward the governmental quarters. “What’s happened?” the governor called, and the messengers turned in their running to cry, “The tunnels have met!”

He hurried to the main shaft, at whose base he heard the shouting of the slaves, and excited hands wanted to lead him down the steep stairs so that he might see the penetration, but he was satisfied with their report. After a while Meshab the Moabite climbed out, exulting, and the governor greeted him as an equal. “Hoopoe told me that when this happened you would be a freedman,” the governor said.

“I am.”

“Are you returning to Moab?”

“I promised Hoopoe I’d help round out the tunnel.”

“That will please him. How did the two ends meet?”

Using his forefingers Meshab started with his elbows wide apart and slowly brought the fingertips toward each other. Even without words the gesture was dramatic, and the governor could sense the blind probing that had been involved. “At this point we could each hear the other side, and Hoopoe’s tunnel was slightly off line, but right in elevation. Mine was a little high.” He brought his fingertips together, not perfectly but showing his tunnel a little high and Hoopoe’s skewed to the north. Only a quarter of the two faces had met, and the nearness of the miss demonstrated what a miracle had occurred.

“We were fortunate,” the governor said, appreciating the drama.

“Hoopoe did it,” the Moabite replied, and the governor realized that this was not flattery.

“What do we do next?” he asked. During the months when it looked as if the project might fail he had shown no interest in the slaves burrowing under his town, but now that success was assured he was clever enough to see that it could be used to bring him to the attention of Jerusalem. Henceforth it would be “our tunnel.”

“The rest is easy,” the Moabite said, but before he could explain, Hoopoe came through the postern gate, dirty and happy, and Meshab deserted the governor, running to Hoopoe and embracing him as a brother, after which the governor called in to Hoopoe’s house, “Kerith, come and greet the victor!” She appeared in a shimmering blue robe which her husband had brought her from Aecho, which it had reached by boat from Greece, and as a pendant she wore the braided glass rope. She understood the happiness of the two men and kissed her husband warmly, whereupon he directed her, “You must also kiss my brother Meshab, who is today a freedman.” Gravely Kerith kissed the former slave, and he had to bite his lip to keep his face from trembling, or perhaps even from showing tears. He grasped the hands of his two good friends and said, “You are indeed of my family.”

To Hoopoe the governor said, “Tomorrow we start paying him a salary,” but to Meshab he said, “Why not accept circumcision and become one of us?” As the governor spoke he gestured toward the temple with his right hand, and to those who were watching, the movement was a subtle invitation, for his hand indicated the many different peoples who had come to make up the Hebrew population of Makor: the men from Cyprus, who had accepted circumcision in order to marry local girls; the Hittites, who had made a secure place for themselves after years of slavery; the Babylonian refugees; the clever Egyptians, who had stayed behind with local families when their empire crumbled; the dark-skinned Africans and the red-headed Edomites. All were now legally Hebrews and there was no reason why a Moabite should not join them.

Affected by the moment, Meshab took the governor’s hand and kissed it. “I have seen the greatness of Yahweh, but I am a man of Baal.”

“You could be both,” the governor reminded him, pointing out that foreign wives of the royal family were not only permitted to retain their ancient gods but were encouraged to do so. “Jerusalem contains many private temples to Egyptian and Philistine gods, and you could have the same here.” He indicated the mountain and concluded, “Baal will remain there for you.”

Meshab bowed his head and looked at the ground. “I belong to Baal of the Moabites,” he insisted, and the governor tried no more to contest his dedication. As Kerith watched with admiration he congratulated Meshab on his freedom and departed, pausing to look again at the three grim-faced men who stood guard at the temple, waiting till the murderer tried to escape. It was not necessary, the governor thought, to post his soldiers to protect the temple where the man had taken sanctuary, for this sacred privilege had not been violated in hundreds of years; there was little likelihood that the brothers would want to set an ugly precedent and the governor was satisfied that after a few days of waiting, which blood-feuds required, they would, as the murdered man had predicted, climb on their donkeys and go home.

In the days that followed, the presence of the fugitive in the temple became a matter of general interest, for it had been a generation since a murderer had sought sanctuary in this town, and children begged then-mothers to be allowed to take him his food. Of course, the Levites, those assigned to tend the temple, were required to provide him with water and privy accommodations, which they did by means of clay pots, but townspeople were responsible for the feeding, and so a stream of children filed in and out bearing gifts. And when the prisoner had eaten, the children stayed to hear him tune his lyre and lean against a wall and sing old songs of the mountains and new ones that he had composed while tending sheep in the valleys:“I shall sing a new song to Yahweh,

A song of the hills,

From whence comes my redemption,

From whence comes my salvation

And my sustenance.”

The children were surprised that from his slight body could come so strong a voice and they brought their parents to hear him, and the older people noticed what the children had not: that no matter how impassioned the man’s songs became, he always kept himself in position to grasp the altar horns should the watchers suddenly burst into the temple to catch him unawares. He was wise to take this precaution, for often one of the brothers would push open the door with his sword to ascertain where Gershom might be at that moment.

On the third day it fell on the house of Hoopoe to feed the murderer, and since Hoopoe was occupied at the tunnel Kerith gathered together some food and took the pots herself to the temple, where she heard for the first time the sweet singer of the hills. He was seated in the shadows, his dirty, sand-stained sheepskin about him and his matted beard hiding his thin face. His lyre was tuned and he was strumming it for some children, so that when she entered he did not see her but continued singing idly, and she remained by the door waiting both with food and the exciting news that would set him free. And as he sang she listened:“Yahweh is my abode forever,

His palace is the firmament,

The pathway of the heavens.

He is the joy of morning

And the consolation of the rising moon.

Him I worship with song

And the cry of seven strings,

For he is my salvation and the song of my heart.”

When he finished with the latter phrase he drifted his fingers across the strings and smiled at the children crowding in upon him, but as he did so he saw Kerith standing by the door, and as they stared at each other he plucked the strings with one finger. He did not stop playing but he did stop singing so that he might watch her as she came across the temple to bring him her gift of food, and as she approached him she said, “They have gone away.”