town. The stones of the street were torn up; some of them piled in
heavy masses against the city gates; others carried to the walls,
ready to be hurled down upon assailants. In vain did those returning
from the knoll, where they had taken part in the heathen worship,
seek admission. Their rapping and calls to their fellow-townsmen were
answered by taunts. Mattathias insisted on their exclusion, lest there
should be division in counsel and action, while he foresaw that there
was no alternative other than fighting for their lives, or voluntarily
surrendering themselves to the atrocities of the foe. A low wail of
lamentation could be heard from hundreds of homes, like the murmur of
a torrent. Now and then it broke into a sharp cry of defiance from
maddened groups on the house-tops, as a torrent leaps and splashes high
in air over some sharp obstacle that opposes its course.
The night that followed was one of fearful expectancy in Modin. The
news of the assault upon the King's representative might bring the
Greek soldiers, who were scattered along Bethhoron, in retaliatory
vengeance. But the sentinels on the walls made no alarms. The next day
the extemporized scouting parties reported no hostile movement. But it
was certain that the authorities at Jerusalem would not long delay a
blow which would vindicate their power, and the honor of the monarch.
In the little town all was confusion, for the inhabitants made
preparations to migrate from their now insecure homes. The excitement
increased as from the hills and valleys around their herdsmen hastily
gathered the flocks, and drove them close to the city.
On the second night strange sounds floated everywhere through the
darkness--the lowing of cattle, bleating of sheep, braying of asses,
and the occasional grunt of camels resenting the unseemly hour of their
lading. These moved eastward through the darkness, and later were
followed by an exodus of the inhabitants from the town. Deborah noted
the women, whose hands had scarcely lifted heavier weight than the
distaff, now bowed beneath bulky loads of household stuff. Boys carried
jars of provisions as big as themselves. Men, armed with swords,
javelins, bows, and bludgeons, led the way, or deployed as guards on
flank and rear of the unsteady column.
In the confusion little notice was taken of Deborah and Caleb, except
as some one peered into their faces in the endeavor to identify them.
They trudged along with a group of women and children, old men and
cripples, whose slow pace excited impatience and an occasional unkind
taunt from the stronger limbed.
In the company with Caleb hobbled a lad some years older than he. The
feet of this boy were strangely malformed. Both were so twisted from
their normal relation to his legs that his toes pointed very nearly
backward. This infirmity and the weight of his heavy wooden sandals
were, however, largely compensated for by the boy's muscular strength
and alertness of faculty. With the aid of a stick, crotched at the
upper end, he swung himself along the road and over obstacles in the
fields which tangled legs better than his own. Only by the harsh words
and cuffs of the men who were leading or guarding the multitude was the
boy kept with the weaker folk. Now some sentinel, with hand to ear,
pausing, and listening for the remotest sound of approaching soldiery,
was startled by the rattling of the stones under the boy's feet and
crutch. Now, again, he was hobbling along with the rear guard as
valiantly as if his stick were the sword of Goliath of Gath.
Through the dim night the lame lad noticed that Caleb's gait was
different from that of the others. His occasional stumbling and his
clinging to his sister's hand excited the curiosity of his observer.
"Say, are you lame, too?" the strange boy asked.
"No, I am only blind, the Lord be praised!" replied Caleb.
"Only blind! Whew!" and a long whistle threaded the stillness of the
march.
"Silence!" said a gruff voice.
"Can't you see a bit?"
"No, not as you see."
"Haven't you any eyes?" and the boy drew Caleb's face close to his.
"Oh, such big eyes! and can't see? But such eyes must see somewhere.
Maybe they are like my feet, that look in the direction they aren't
going. Can't you see the inside of your head?"
Caleb laughed, and fell in with the mirthful mood of his companion.
"They say I can see out of my ears and from my finger ends."
"I shouldn't wonder," replied the lame boy. "And can you see as well in
the dark as in the light?"
"Just as well."
"Whew!"
"Silence there!"
"Say, couldn't you and I have fun with the jackals?"
There was a pause.
"Say, can you see"--and the boy's voice sunk to a whisper--"can you
see God? Or maybe the angels? What are they like? Like Judas? or old
Mattathias? or like--like your sister there?"
Caleb protested against his companion's irreverence and ignorance.
"Well, at any rate, the angels see you."
"How do you know they do?"
"Because, blind as you are, you do not stumble half as much as I do.
There, you stepped right over that rock that I nearly broke my heels
on; and the Psalmist said of somebody, 'that the angels keep him from
stubbing his toes.' Those are not the words, but something like them.
But how can the angels lift you over the stones if they can't see you?
Eh! But what's your name?"
"Caleb. What's yours?"
"Solomon; but they don't call me that. They call me Mephibosheth,
because Mephibosheth was lame in his feet; that is, they call me Meph
because the whole word takes too much breath, and folks need all
they've got, especially in such travelling as this."
The night wore wearily away. Once old Mattathias joined the little
group, but only for a few moments; for though the conduct of the
expedition was left to the younger men, chiefly his five sons, the
responsibility of the movement rested with the venerable priest. Once
Judas came to them, but it was only to insist that the daughter of
Elkiah should make use of a rude palanquin, which two strong-limbed
men carried between them upon two poles. This Deborah refused, and,
footsore and weary though she was, trudged by its side while the
bearers conveyed a sick woman with her babe at her breast.
In the early dawn the fugitives threaded the wild, narrow ravine in the
neighborhood of Michmash, once the scene of the adventures of Prince
Jonathan, during the wars of Saul against the Philistines. As the day
advanced, women and children sought rest and shelter among the caverns
and chasms which made that region frightful in days of peace, but a
welcome retreat to those whom the troublous times had ejected from
better homes. Here, at Judas' advice, Mattathias decided to halt the
little host. All fell to work building the defenses which they would
surely need in coming dangers, and which became ever after famous
as the eyrie whence the Maccabæan eagles, those sons of Mattathias,
swooped down upon the Syrian prey.
Rapidly the natural rocks grew into an orderly fortification. Loose
stone walls were built between the outcropping ledges, until a vast
space was enclosed and divided into compartments, where a few defenders
could withstand many assailants, and to capture which would be for
the victors to fasten themselves into slaughter pens. Across the top
of the natural chasms were laid poles covered with brushwood, which
screened the people from the sun by day and from the dews by night.
Great boulders scattered over the adjacent fields were connected by
ditches, which were so roofed that, while they effectually obscured
those passing beneath, they were at the same time pitfalls for any
intruders. Each great rock thus became an outlying fortress, behind
which, day and night, lay wary men.
At one place was a rude forge, where all sorts of iron implements were
wrought into weapons; reversing the ancient prediction, for plowshares
were now beaten into swords, and pruning-hooks into spears.
Day by day even the women and children were practised in archery,
and learned to hurl the javelin and sling stones; while the men were
drilled in companies to execute manœuvres which the genius of Judas
devised, and which were especially adapted to warfare in the craggy
battlements of the hills. Far and wide scouts answered one another
with mysterious signals, quick flashes at night, and sounds by day
in which the cries of birds and beasts were imitated according to a
code prepared by Jonathan. The country for leagues about was thus
practically under one eye and one voice of command.
One evening Judas came to the little enclosure of rocks which the
respect and sympathy of the people had assigned to the privacy of
Deborah. It was screened by a coarse matting, which served both as door
and wall.
"This is no place for the daughter of Elkiah," said the young man. "I
have come to ask that you allow half a score of our brave men to escort
you to a spot of more safety and comfort. The strong castle of Masada,
in the wilderness by the Sea of Salt, will prove impregnable to any
attack. The journey will not be more difficult than remaining here."
Deborah expressed her gratitude. She looked at the upturned face of
Caleb. It was pale and emaciate with fatigue and exposure.
"Surely, this is no place for the lad," she said, as she held his
cheeks between her hands.
"As soon as the shadows darken the ravine yonder you will start?"
inquired Judas.
Deborah for a moment made no response. She gazed upon the women and
children about her.
"And these?"
"They must remain where they are, and share the fortunes of the men. It
would be unsafe to move so many. Besides, the castle is a little one,
and would not hold them. But you, if I mistake not, as the daughter of
Elkiah, have claims of kinship with Ben Aaron, who occupies Masada."
Deborah sought the sky as if in prayer; then she said:
"Judas, call me no longer the daughter of Elkiah. Call me now only one
of the daughters of Israel. Why should I flee to the castle when these,
as worthy as I, have no such refuge?"
"But surely----"
"Nay, do not entreat me. Tell me, Judas, have you not a vow to live or
die in defense of Israel?"
"Truly, as God lives!" said he, raising his right hand.
"Would you break your vow? Nay, do not answer. And I, too, have a
vow--to die if God will take the sacrifice, with His people. Here I
can serve, if not with those who fight, then with those who watch and
care for the helpless. Take the lad, but here I must stay."
Caleb, who had been a listener, now uttered a cry such as never escaped
him except when in some agony of pain. He flung himself into his
sister's arms. No word passed between them, but there is a converse of
hearts that needs no speech. She loosened his embrace.
"It is His will. My child, we shall not be separated. We will both
stay."
Scarcely had she said this when cries of alarm rose without. Judas was
instantly gone.
In an hour came Meph, utterly winded with his haste, but he managed
with detached mouthfuls of breath to give the report of a wonderful
encounter with the enemy. He declared that--
"The Greeks came along--a whole army of them--marching as stiff as
a grove of palm-trees--shields on one shoulder and pikes on the
other. All of a sudden whiz! whiz! whiz!--and they dropped in their
tracks--lots of them did--as if they were bulrushes. The rest of them
closed up, and put their shields together like a tent; but rocks came
down on them like hailstones--and they broke and ran like hares."
With his crutch Meph mapped on the ground the plan of the battle, and
then appealed to Caleb to predict that such a magnificent victory would
be the end of the war. "The sword of the Lord and of Gideon is with
us! The sword of the Lord and of Judas!" and he whirled his crutch in
pantomimic extermination of the foe.
But, alas, such engagements were to be the almost daily experience
of the patriots. The Greek bands were worsted by the intense bravery
of the Jews, and the more shrewdly laid plans of their untrained but
heaven-gifted leaders. In resisting these forays, and in their devoted
care of the threatened people, the five sons of Mattathias won the
titles which history has added to their names--John, the _Good_;
Simon, the _Wise_; Judas, the _Hammerer_; Eleazar, the _Sunburst_; and
Jonathan, the _Crafty_.
The incessant excitement wrapt the popular mind with a frenzy of
religious enthusiasm and credulity. Much of the time was spent in
prayer and song. The devoted people saw in the skill of their earthly
champions only a fuller measure of that Divine Spirit whose impulse
gave wisdom and valor, and whose invisible Presence was a surer defense
than ten thousand phalanges of shields. As in the days of Elijah, so
once more ardent souls saw, as Deborah had done, "the chariots of
Israel and the horses thereof" in the embattled clouds at sunset and
sunrise; and God in armor strode among the spectres of the night.
In such experiences, in which mental exaltation put on physical
prowess, and the spiritual world was inwoven with the material--as
we may believe the soul is knit with the body--passed a year in the
"Fortress of the Rocks."
XIII
DAUGHTER OF THE VOICE
To Deborah this was a year of mighty transformation. The traces of
girlhood were worn from her face by the hardness of her daily life. Her
sparkling eyes deepened and steadied their fire. Her features became
more immobile and rigid under the stress of her one persistent thought
and purpose. Even her body was changed. She was taller. The rounded
contour of her form became more masculinely muscular. The graceful
carriage of the maiden, brought up in the elegance of Elkiah's home,
was somewhat lost in the heavier tread and more angular movement
developed by bearing burdens with her humbler sisters in the rude
encampment, and even by training at arms with the men.
Yet, if less fair and maidenly, she was more nobly beautiful than ever
before. Could Dion have seen her, he would have thought her more like
Athena than when he first saw her at Elkiah's gate. Hers was now a head
for a helmet rather than for ornaments. Armor would have fitted her
figure as well as robes.
To her people she had become the incarnation of patriotism. They gave
her the sacred appellation, "The daughter of Jerusalem," the name
by which the ancient prophets had designated the nation. Even old
Mattathias gazed upon her as if to take from her face some sign of that
diviner will he prayed daily to know. To the maiden's words he would
listen as to the counsel of his battle-trained advisers.
On one subject, however, the venerable leader was inexorably opposed
to her wishes. She asked that she might be permitted to wear the armor
of the soldier, and join in the battles. The old priest replied in the
words of the ancient law:
"The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither
shall a man put on a woman's garment, for all that so do are an
abomination unto the Lord thy God."
To this prohibition he was led to make one conditional exception--that
in the event of the Fort of the Rocks being taken by the enemy, any
disguise which might enable her to escape the danger peculiar to a
captured woman might be used.
"If," replied Deborah, "for the safety of one woman the letter of the
law may be set aside, why not for the safety of Israel?"
"You are right, my daughter. Should Israel need you, robe yourself as
you will, yet remember it will be as when a victim is arrayed for the
sacrifice. But with our brave men about you surely there is no need for
you to mingle in the common fray. Your womanly presence now encourages
us more than a band of swordsmen."
"But if--if"--Deborah hesitated in speaking--"but if the Voice should
bid me?"
"The Voice! The Voice!"
Mattathias bowed his head upon his breast. "The Bath-kol! The daughter
of God's voice! I may not dispute that Monitor; for only those
anointed of heaven can hear it."
"How may one know the Voice? Explain to me the sacred Bath-kol"--and
Deborah leaned forward, her hand upon the patriarch's knee and her face
upturned toward his in reverent and eager inquiry.
Mattathias put his hand upon her forehead. "Alas!" he said, "I fear
that the Voice has not been heard by any in our generation, for the
days are too full of evil. God's voice is wordless; or rather, shall
I say, the Eternal Word is voiceless. The Divine Mind shines through
the mind of man as the lightning through the clouds. But since Malachi
fell asleep, no soul of man has been so pure that it could transmit the
heavenly glory and interpret its meaning.
"Yet," he continued, after a pause, "it may be that the Lord still
teaches His own by indirection, by what we call the Daughter of the
Voice; the echo of the heavenly from earthly things. Some of our wisest
rabbis have held that, after one has prayed, the first words that
fall upon the ear, especially if they be sacred words from the Law,
the Prophets, or the Psalms, may be such echoes of the Divine Will.
But in these matters I am unskilled. I only know that if God may not
speak to a soul so true as thine, beaten pure by affliction, as the oil
is beaten for the lamps of the sanctuary, then, indeed, are we left
without the light."
Such words confirmed a conviction already vaguely felt by Deborah. She
recalled her tremendous emotion that night amid the ruins of the house
of Ben Isaac. She knew nothing of those psychological laws by which
she might have accounted for her experience without attributing it to
Divine suggestion. She had often observed how the atmosphere, hot above
the fire, becomes hazy and tremulous, so that objects seen through it
are distorted; but she did not know that her overheated mind might
render it just as uncertain a medium for thoughts.
A few days after her conversation with Mattathias, the venerable man,
shaken by age, and by the strain of duties that would have broken the
energy of the youngest and strongest, laid himself down to die.
Earth has witnessed few scenes so humanly sublime as that in the
rock-formed chamber, where the priest and warrior committed his work to
his children, and his soul to God.
His sons knelt around the couch. To them he gave special counsel,
correcting the weakness or encouraging the peculiar strength which
his prophetic soul saw in each. For Jonathan he invoked caution; for
Simon, courage; for all, faith in the Presence of the Lord, "who," said
he, "will surely appear for our deliverance. But by whose arm will He
smite? I know not. And yet----"
He looked long upon Judas. He put his thin hands upon his son's head.
Then his own uplifted face became strangely luminous--doubtless as once
was that of Moses. His lips parted as if they were burdened with some
glorious prophecy; but they uttered no further word. There issued from
them only--his soul.
They laid the body of Mattathias back upon the couch. A light seemed
for a while to glow about his head, and then to be absorbed into the
marble whiteness of his features.
Never was funeral cortege of warrior or monarch more impressive than
that which wound among the hills far away to Modin, watched by hostile
eyes, and guarded by the sharp swords of a band of patriots who
determined that their dead chieftain should not be deprived of burial
in the sepulchre of his fathers. The mournful train was accompanied for
a short distance from the Fort of the Rocks by the entire multitude of
women and children, wailing with low outcries, rending their garments,
and flinging handfuls of dust into the air until the armed procession
was out of sight.
The soul of Deborah had been too mightily stirred by these occurrences
to allow her to speak much with her people. A deep ravine hard by
became sacred to her as a place of meditation. There was something in
the very formation of this place that helped her thought. An enormous
rock projected many feet from a precipitous palisade, and overhung the
narrow width of the ravine. It seemed about to fall and crush her as
she sat beneath it. Yet she knew that it could not fall, for the mass
of visible stone was more than counterbalanced by a larger proportion
of the rock imbedded out of sight, in the hillside.
"So," she said, "I am always under impending danger. A black shadow is
always on my soul. But I can trust the unknown goodness of the Lord,
which outweighs and prevents the threatening evil!"
There, as in her sanctuary, she one day sat down to think and pray.
How wearied she was with her woman's work in the camp! Had there been
about her the duties and affections of a home, it would have been
different; for she was made to love, and love intensely. What a wealth
of devotion she poured upon her blind brother! Yet his care did not
furnish sufficient diversion for her excited brain and heart.
The form of her father was, alas! now only a memory. It was always with
her; but it drained her soul, as the dry desert drinks up the streams
that come from the mountains, and yet remains a desert, flowerless,
fountainless.
Her brother Benjamin? Ah, it is hard to love where we do not respect;
and while she would have given her life for his had emergency required,
the thought of him made her more lonely, since even brotherhood was
soiled with impiety and treason.
If Dion's friendship now and then flashed a pleasing thought through
her mind, it was only like a warm glow in the dark cloud of her
prevailing mood, and as quickly gone. Yet she was startled when she
noted how frequently that brightness shot through the cloud; and
she put herself under inner penance after each recollection of the
noble-hearted Greek. Indeed, she tried to hate him for his offered
love. It seemed incongruous, hypocritical, for a Greek to be so
generous and good. A Greek! Her soul tortured itself with detestation
of that whole racial type; yet somehow the man persisted in standing
out from his race, as a vein of gold gleaming from its bed of baser
earth. By strong effort she drove his image from her imagination. It
was not probable that they would meet again; and if they did, he would
see now no helpless girl appealing to his pity, but a woman, strong
and vengeful, whose words would provoke his hatred of her as the
embodiment of her hated people.
So, as she had said, her heart was empty--empty of all things that
ought to furnish a woman's nature. She seemed to herself an unsexed
soul, a mass of reckless, excited energy which could find repose only
in outward action. Oh, to be a man, strong of arm, as tireless as
daring! She looked with contempt upon her feminine attire, which she
thought no longer fitted her changed nature.
If she might not march in the ranks of the soldiers, why could she
not engage in the secret service of which she had heard Jonathan, the
Crafty, speak as necessary to their defense? She might act as a spy.
The little band of patriots could not hope to hold out ultimately
against the overwhelming numbers that Antiochus would send, unless
their valor were seconded by deep plotting.
To act the part she contemplated would require her to assume various
attire. Would not heaven grant her dispensation from the letter of the
law that made it a shame for a woman to put on a man's apparel?
Such thoughts surged through her soul as she sat in the ravine. At
length she knelt and consecrated herself again--as she had done a
hundred times--to her people's God. With mute lips and phraseless
purpose she waited upon the Lord to know His will. Oh, for some
assurance that it was right to follow her own intent!
The silence was for a time unbroken. At length a strange sound smote
upon the ear. It was like nothing she had ever heard--a ringing
note that seemed to come from the ground. Now another of different
tone; and another still. These sounds were repeated in an order that
suggested the notes of the music with which the players on instruments
at the Temple accompanied the chanting of the familiar hymn:
"Awake! Awake, Deborah! Awake! Awake! utter a song!"
Neither harp, nor lute, nor tabret, nor cymbal could have produced
these sounds. It was as if the rocks themselves had become mighty
timbrels, and were stricken by some spirit of the woods. Surely this
must be of superhuman agency: the noise was so unearthly, and the notes
so clearly belonged to the words they suggested. It was not a voice;
yet surely it was the Bath-kol, the Echo, the Daughter of the Voice, of
which the now sainted Mattathias had spoken.
She prostrated herself among the gnarled roots of a great terebinth
that projected from the side of the ravine as if they were the horns of
an altar. So, too, her soul clung to her Lord. She prayed in words that
His will might be her will. Perhaps in thought she prayed that her will
might be His will--a distinction she was too unskilled in moral anatomy
to note.