Masada by Gloria D. Miklowitz

Author:Gloria D. Miklowitz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Eerdmans Books for Young Readers
Published: 1998-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter XIII

By Erev Shabbat I had had enough of laughter, wine, and song. I had lost all patience for frivolity. The specter of our plight hung over me like a shroud, and when others tried to drag me into a dance, I smiled and quickly withdrew. There was a gnawing inside me to get on with life. The wedding seemed a postponement, an escape, a setting aside of reality.

My mind returned to the plans for tonight, made a week ago. We had agreed to send a large group to draw water from the hillside cisterns. This would be followed by a raid on the Roman camps on the west. Why was it that something now seemed wrong about the strategy? Reviewing its purpose, its advantages and disadvantages, I felt a foreboding that we had not taken all into consideration.

First, there was my father’s reasoning. Everyone knew that to keep our cisterns full, we must make many trips on many nights. Then what kind of arithmetic would send 150 people in one evening to bring up water for one thousand? Considering how much water might be carried, and how many trips could be made while it was still dark, at best those people could supply us with water for perhaps four days. So why the plan for this one evening? And why on the eve of the Sabbath?

And then there was John. His eagerness to stage a raid puzzled me. With thirty or forty men, what could he achieve? Kill a few Romans? What was my peace-loving farmer friend after? Glory! The repugnant word came back again and again because no other answer made sense.

The more I considered this, the more set I became against the raid, and even against my father’s orders to obtain water. In the early evening, I finally approached him.

Eleazar was seated at a table beside his bed, a flickering oil lamp for light. Intent on studying the maps spread before him, he did not hear me when I entered.

“Father, I wish to speak with you about tonight’s plans,” I began.

He looked up and quickly pushed the maps aside. “Yes?” he asked.

“I do not understand what will be gained. Why are you doing this?”

“I have reasons.”

“Can you not tell me?” I prodded, wondering why he had been studying maps of the surrounding areas at this time, when the prospects of leaving Masada seemed as remote as rain. “I feel sick at heart. At first I was as excited as the others about the raid, but the more I consider it, the more pointless it seems. John is like a child playing at war!”

My father had risen from the table to place the map rolls in a wall niche. He turned angrily and said, “For weeks now you have been sniping at John. Is it because of Deborah? Do not belittle your friend, Simon. He is the kind of man we need: forceful, courageous, a natural leader. This is no time to carefully weigh alternatives in each hand. It is a time to use those hands!”

“Just for the sake of keeping busy?” I asked sarcastically.

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