An Echo in the Darkness(90)

He had tried for years to squelch those words, but still they rang, “The Messiah has come . . . the Messiah . . .”

And now, here was a pagan, an idol worshiper, a despicable Roman dog whose very presence was turning Ezra’s household upside down and inside out, asking the one question that had always terrified Ezra most: “Who do you say Jesus is?”

Why, Lord? Why do you bring this upon me?

The truth was that Ezra didn’t know who Jesus was. He was afraid to think on it, but, in his heart, he had always wondered. He had hungered and half-hoped, but been too afraid to find out for himself.

His uncle’s body had not been placed in a tomb. He had been crushed to death beneath the weight of the stones and left to rot in a pit outside the city walls. A terrible fate for any man. All because he believed in Jesus.

After his uncle’s violent death, not one word had been uttered about him or about Jesus of Nazareth. It was unspoken law from that day forth: neither man had ever existed, neither name was ever to be uttered again. And so it had remained for twenty-three years.

Ezra had thought his father had completely forgotten what happened. Until that day, when Ezra had been sitting near his father’s deathbed.

His father had given Amni, Ezra’s brother, a blessing. The time was short. Amni stood and withdrew slightly, waiting for death to come. Ezra knelt and took his father’s hand, wanting to comfort him. His father turned his head slowly and looked at him. Then he whispered the unsettling words. “Did I do right?”

The words hit Ezra like a blow to his stomach. He knew instantly of what his father spoke.

“Answer him! Tell him yes,” his mother pleaded. “Give him peace.”

But Ezra couldn’t.

Amni had spoken instead, vehemently. “You did the right thing, Father. The Law must be preserved.”

And still Ezra’s father looked at him. “What if it was true?”

Ezra had felt something near panic stir within him. He wanted to speak. He wanted to say, “I believed him, Father,” but Amni stared at him coldly, as if compelling him to answer the same way he had. His mother stared at him, too, waiting, frightened, unsure. He couldn’t even breathe, let alone speak.

And then it was too late to say anything at all.

“It is over,” his mother said softly, almost relieved. She leaned down and closed his father’s eyes. His brother left the room without a word. A few minutes later, the paid mourners began to wail and scream outside.

In the years that followed, with the hardship of making a living for himself and his wife and children, Ezra forgot what he had felt at his father’s bedside. He forgot in the intensity and demands of his work. He forgot in his love of being among his friends in the synagogue. He forgot in the safe boundaries of his existence.

And still . . . the question remained. And so he pushed it far back in his mind where it couldn’t intrude or complicate his life. Only infrequently did it return to him—in his dreams.

“Who do you say I am, Ezra Barjachin?” a soft voice would say, and Ezra would find himself facing a man with nail scars in his hands and feet. “Who am I to you?”

And now, that strange sensation he had felt so long ago returned, powerful, compelling, stirring something within him he was afraid to contemplate, terrified to face. His heart raced, like wings beating within his breast. He felt as though he was on a precipice, about to fall over—or be caught up.

O Lord God. Help me.

What if it was true?





19

Taphatha blushed when Marcus looked at her. His dark brown eyes had an intensity that made her stomach tighten and her pulse race. Several days before, he had asked her if he frightened her. She denied it, but later she wondered if fear wasn’t part of what she felt, fear of her growing fascination with a Gentile—a Roman, no less.

Marcus Lucianus Valerian was unlike any man she had ever known. Though he was gentle, she sensed he could be cruel. At times she would hear him say things to her father that were alarmingly cold and cynical. Yet, she sensed about him a terrible vulnerability. He was like a man driven before a wind, striving against forces impossible to comprehend, challenging them nevertheless, tempting his own destruction, almost eager for it.

Once she had overheard Marcus speak to her father of a woman he had known who had loved God. Taphatha knew intuitively it was love for that woman that still consumed Marcus’ thinking. Whatever he was seeking had to do with her.

What would it be like to be loved so obsessively by a man like Marcus Valerian? He had said the woman died, and yet he hadn’t given her up. She was with him every moment, even moments like now, when he looked at Taphatha so intently.