“I will have to source more wool, if the flock cannot produce it. But the wall itself.” She shakes her head. “I cannot give up on it. The sheep?” She waves her hand through the air, to dismiss them. “I will buy more. Sheep are dispensable. Do you think that the Almighty cares for little people, like you and me? Are we not just a flock of sheep in His eyes?”

He stiffens from shock and horror. “Sheep are counted. Each and every one passes under the staff of his master.”

“Sheep are counted only to make sure that there are sufficient numbers. Who cares about an individual lamb or ram? You just need enough wool.” She bites her lip. “I will have to put Yishai on the job.”

Eliyahu picks up a candle from the table. The wax drips onto his fingers and he feels the heat and the pain, but it is distant. “Potei’ach et yadecha… He opens his hand and satisfies the will of every living creature. Do you not pray? Do you not believe that G-d has created each and every one of us and allotted each of us a task?”

She laughs. “But if we do not do our task, He will give it to another.”

She stands and her servants take a step back. “Did you hear that there are great tracts of land across the oceans? Travel far enough and you will find them. The world is vast and unknowable. There are more people than we can imagine. History is wide and deep.

“A navigator may die as he lands in the New World, but someone wise will take his place, and learn the craft through books, or trial and error, or simply from desperation. I do not matter. It is what I am part of.

“All of us can fade, become translucent, unless we fight it. And we do that by dedicating ourselves to something bigger.”

She begins to pace the room. “A doctor is discovered dissecting a cadaver. He is tried and burned for his crime. But will that stop it? He has found a heart hidden under muscle and bone, but those who come after will count the number of chambers. Man wants knowledge and he wants power and he will hurl himself at his limits, finding a fissure in the wall that is the end of knowledge, prying that space open so that even if he does not survive to walk through, others will do so.

“If he dies while he does so, does that matter? For we are sheep. If one or two of the sheep die, so be it. But the flock must continue, the flock must be exposed to air and wind, to grow their wool. And now, if you must be part of something then it should be this wall. This wall of Jerusalem.”

The hot wax drips down on his hand. One, two circles of heat. The words are taken from his mouth, ground into nothingness.

Do none of them matter? Did their baby not matter? Did Tziporah not matter? Is that why she was taken from him? And what of him?

But did the Almightly not send Yannai to the cave to find him? Coax him back into the world. Is that because he was simply a sheep?

He could open his mouth and tell her pasuk after pasuk, he could ask her how she could live this way, but he feels that his words would drop into the darkness. He does not know how to refute her. But he does know this: The woman’s soul is an abyss.

“This may be your plan, but it is not my plan,” he finally says. “I need not follow your decision.”

She looks at him, quietly, for a moment. “How long were you gone from Tzfat?”

Tziporah and the baby died in Cheshvan, that bleak, cold month. He returned here two years later, just before Shavuot. “Two and a half years.”

“And you know the rulings of our kadi? The Ottoman laws?”

He stares. What is she trying to say?

“A house that has been empty for two years is legally considered abandoned.”

He shakes his head. “I came back to reclaim it. And not only that, I gave part of it — the main part — for your use.”

“You did. I admire your generosity of spirit. But under Ottoman law, your house does not belong to you. I made claim of it. I rescued it from dereliction. From cats and mice. From worse: Muslim warlords, looking for a base in the hills, could have made it into an escape house. Petty criminals could have used it.

His mind seems to have slowed, so that he cannot quite understand what she is saying to him. “What do you mean?”

“Very simple. In truth, your house belongs to me. But I graciously allow you residence there. And if you want to continue your ownership, without me bringing my case before the kadi, then you will do as I say and travel to Jerusalem.”

He stands very still, though he feels like he has been struck. But she will not bend him. He knows people like this, he knows their methods. They think they are showing strength, but they only bely their weakness. Still, it is a shock.

He forces himself to remain calm. She may be right according to Ottoman law, but there is a halachah, a din d’Shmaya.

But she received a psak. A psak that by taking over the house, she is preventing Jewish property from falling into non-Jewish hands. Now, the psak does not extend to a claim from him… but certainly, it is ammunition. In the beit din of his neighbors’ minds and hearts, he will be culpable.

What would it mean to lose his house?

It is the repository of his memories. It is the place where he sat and wrote his poems, longing for the redemption. The place that filled him with yearning, where it was safe to open up those places. That was Tziporah’s gift to him, those poems. He thought that they were his, because they were his words. But it was she who enabled him to stop and think, and feel and search for those words.

But now he has them. It is as Yannai says, do not be afraid that the noise outside will erase the voice of your wife, because she is there in your heart, always.

So what is it? He needs nothing. Not walls. Not possessions. Thus, he lived for more than two years.

But something in him resists. Is it just the brazenness of this woman? The injustice? The horror of having to face her manipulation?

When he was bringing Yannai to Tzfat, with trepidation and fear, he whispered a prayer. That he return not to a mausoleum of memories, a coffin of quiet. But that he return to a place of life and noise. It was a strange prayer, unlikely to be fulfilled, yet his life had depended upon it.

He had not been answered two years before, when he sat by Tziporah’s bedside and saw her in conversation with her dead relatives, body shaking from heat and cold. It had not been answered when his infant son lay limp in his arms and he thought — why so far? How did You send him on such a long, arduous journey so very distant from Your throne, only to summon him back again within a few days?

But when he returned to Tzfat, his prayers were answered. The Almighty’s Hand gently led him here again, and knowing that the silence would fill him with terror, He filled the house with children, spinning marbles and tapping out rhythms on the wooden tables with their spoons.

So, this is his house. Perhaps this is a sign from Heaven that he rescind it.

As the thought rises, something in him rebels. No. This is his house.

So, then, instead, perhaps this is Heaven’s way of pushing him to Jerusalem.

Against his will.

Later that night, the chaburah is escorted to the stables, where they are greeted by the smell of hay and horse.

There are 18 horses in Leonora’s stables, or room for 18. At the deep end of the stables, where even the filtered light of the moon is banished, a black stallion paws the ground. The stable is a flickering cave of shadow, but the horse’s presence is unnerving; its burnished coat catches the light of the candle and it is like a great demon stands before them.

The stableman points. “Incubo.”

Nightmare. A description of the horse, or its name? Or both?

“This is the horse of the mistress.”

The rest of the horses furnish her agents, who ride back and forth to Aleppo and Damascus, down to Alexandria, and even further afield. The man in charge of the horses has been brought over from Italy. From his shaven face, it is obvious that his home is in the stables, not the town of Tzfat. He unhooks a lantern from the wall, lights it, and begins to introduce them to the horses one by one.

The piebald that never startles, but starts the first hour of the day in a walk and will not speed up to a canter unless she’s good and ready. The great chestnut that can continue on for hours without a rest, but needs a firm grip — a young man’s grip — on the reins.

The horse master leans against a stable door and scratches the muzzle of the dappled gray. “There is the question of how long you will be away. I shall have agents arriving, needing new steads. And letters to be sent out. The mistress has business not only in the Ottoman Empire, but through Europe. Antwerp, with the bankers. The tax collectors in the Low Countries.”

He walks away to fill a water trough and the chaburah burst out in talk.

Pinchas rakes his fingers through his beard; as he talks, he walks in a circle, addressing each of them. “What did she mean? What did she mean? That we would become boneh Yerushalayim? What does she expect of us? We are scholars. Teachers. We know how to pray. We do not build.”

Eliyahu watches him. It is easier, he realizes, when they are smothered in darkness. Easier to bring up the doubts and — he swallows — anger, too, which he has felt since Yishai stood up and conveyed his mother’s wishes.

“A fool’s errand.” This from Chananya, one of the eldest members of the chaburah. He shakes his head. “What can she mean by this?”

Yannai’s voice is thin and reedy. “We owe her hakarat hatov.”

“Why?” It is not a question, but a demand.

“She pays us.”

Chananya snorts. “She does not pay us. She simply compensates us. So that we can stay up all night and still have the coins we need at the end of the day, though we have slept in the afternoon.”

“Surely—” Yannai begins, but Chananya interrupts him.

“Besides, hakarat hatov has limits. You do not pay back more than you have received.”

Murmurs of agreement.

Eliyahu waits.

Yannai speaks. “This is not true for me. The honorable lady saved my life.”

Was it not he, Eliyahu, who saved Yannai’s life?

But still, had it not been for Leonora, Yannai would never have been able to return to Tzfat.

“I was at the last of my strength.” A pause. “And so was young Eliyahu here, when we saw her riding through the hills. Eliyahu waved her down and asked her for help. Within hours, she had sent steads and servants.”

His last words are a whisper. “How do you repay life? What is too big and what is too small?”

The answers are a volley of arrows, released all at once.

“Even the Almighty, having given life, withdraws just a little, to give us the space to live our lives. Albeit a dream world, but within which we can forget our debt to Him, just a little.”

“Why have hakarat hatov to the woman and not to He who sent her? She was only a messenger of the Almighty. So gratitude to Him is limitless, but to her… well, the Almighty could have arranged another messenger.”

“Megalgelin zechut al yedei zakkai… She was sent because she was worthy.”

“Chavrotai,” Eliyahu gives a light bang on the stable door to gain their attention. But their arguments continue. He calls out louder: “Chavrotai!”

The huddle of men turns in surprise. They are not used to him speaking up. “This is not a question of gratitude. It is a question as to whether ten elderly men, with families and obligations, should put their lives at risk and haul stone and mix lime. Which is no question at all.”

He is shouting now, and Chananya puts a hand on his arm to calm him. “Listen, Eliyahu. We can go and pray, and who exactly is going to put us to work? We are our own masters. No one will force us to do anything at all.”

There is a general exhale at these words. Indeed, who exactly will put them to work? They may travel at the great lady’s bidding, but they are their own masters.

The stable man claps his hands and calls for attention. “So now that we have met, I bid you good night. Go home and prepare for the journey. The armed guard will be here in the morning to escort you.”

Eliyahu whips his head back, and finds the horse man’s face.

The man’s smile jerks his cheeks into a strange shape, and he spreads his arms wide in a question. “What, you did not think that the great lady would send you unaccompanied, did you?”

to be continued…

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 824)