The Weeping Chamber by Sigmund Brouwer

Author:Sigmund Brouwer [Brouwer, Sigmund]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sigmund brouwer
Publisher: Sigmund Brouwer
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-six

I climbed off the wall, knowing I still had business to attend to. The rest of the morning held less pain; I had, for the moment, a purpose. I searched out a lawyer and dictated to him the contents of an agreement I intended to deliver to Pascal.

The lawyer’s fees were double what I would have paid had my thoughts not been lured by the prospect of death from the temple wall. The lawyer had protested it was too close to Passover to finish the document before sunset that dictated all work must cease—I was so distracted I did not bother to fight such an obvious ploy for extra fees.

I left the lawyer with a scroll in the sleeve of my robe and returned to the mansion of my cousin, where I hid the scroll with the letters for my wife. Thus suspended from the sharper edges of torment, I managed to wait on a couch in a cool inner chamber until Pascal called for me. Together we made our way to the temple for the sacrifice of our Passover lamb.

There was no enmity between us. I understood the practical reasons why he could not purchase my holdings, and indeed found it a comfort that he insisted we remain together in the temple despite the raised eyebrows my presence drew when his Sadducean friends greeted us. He could not purchase my business, but he refused to publicly abandon me.

Among the crowd in the temple, I would have recognized the disciple named Peter had I seen him; his rigid rejection of my offer for money had left a vivid memory. The crowd around us was too thick, so I did not see him or the other disciple named John.

They were close by, however. Waiting, as we were, for the gates to the altar to open.

**

In front of the massive Nicanor Gate inside the temple courts, Peter held the lamb that Judas had purchased. He and John were hemmed in by a packed crowd of noisy pilgrims, each representing groups waiting to celebrate the Passover feast that evening.

On the other side of the tall, heavy doors, the Priests’ Court was filling with hundreds of white-robed priests and Levites as they prepared for the afternoon ceremonies; this was the one day each year that every temple priest was called to duty at the sacrificial altars.

While the trussed lamb in Peter’s arms remained silent, the bleating of other lambs rose above the babble of the crowd. The musky smell of the lambs mixed with the pungent aroma of fresh dung and the general odor of hundreds of people sweating in the afternoon heat. Of this dense crowd, it seemed to Peter that only he and John were silent. Peter could only guess that John felt the same terrible loneliness, for neither had the heart to discuss with the other his sense of foreboding.

Without realizing it, Peter soothed the animal in his arms with slow strokes along its neck and back, as if trying to allay his own fears.

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