Zealot by Donna Lettow

with aid of a cane. He inclined
     his head briefly toward his daughter-in-law. “Deborah.”
    “Welcome,
Aba
. Would you like some wine?”
    If he had heard her, Mordecai did not show it, moving straight to his son. “Avram, we must talk.”
    Avram waited a moment, and, when further conversation was not forthcoming, he prompted: “So, talk.”
    “Not here.” He indicated Deborah with his eyes. “Alone.”
    Avram looked at him, unable to read his expression, then reached for his girdle and began to tie it around his middle. “Fine,”
     he said, “alone.” Without prompting, Deborah found his sandals and knelt at his feet to lace the thongs.
    The silence in the tiny room was palpable. Helping her husband dress, Deborah thought to lessen it. “Guess what we’ve decided
     to name our first girl,
Aba
. Tamar, after Avram’s mother, God rest her soul.” There was no response from Mordecai. “I hope that pleases you.”
    A dark shadow passed across Mordecai’s face, then he said, as gently as his gruff demeanor would allow, “That would please
     me.” He stepped out into the corridor, “Come, Avram.”
    Avram picked up his mantle and followed his father out of the room. Deborah closed the door behind them.
    As soon as they had passed out of earshot of Avram’s room, his father took him to task. “Why do you fill her head with such
     things?”
    “What things?”
    “You know. This nonsense about children…and the future. She should know the truth.”
    “Why? So we can all share this pit of despair you’ve been living in? What’s the harm in living with a little hope?” Avram
     stopped walking and turned to face his father, angrily. “What should I tell her,
Aba
? That in a week’s time she’ll be forced to pleasure some oily Senator and his pagan friends in a house of decadence in Rome?
     Or that by sundown tomorrow I’ll be dead on a cross along the road to Ein Gedi? Or that maybe I’ll be lucky, and face the
     wild beasts in the arena at Caesarea instead? Is
that
what I should tell her?” He could feel his eyes beginning to well with tears, tears he could never allow his father to see.
     He turned away from the old man and started walking quickly down the corridor that ran between the two walls ringing the fortress.
    Mordecai hurried to catch up. “Son, I—”
    “She’s not stupid,
Aba
. She knows. Everyone knows. But when we give up hope, we’ve lost.” He tried to look his father in the eyes, but the tears
     came again. He turned away and leaned his head against the stone wall, his shoulders shaking with sobs.
    “Avram…” Mordecai reached out and touched his son on the shoulder.
    Avram shook him off roughly and turned on him with an icy glare. “Why did you come here? You said you wanted to talk about
     something. For once, let it not be about my wife.”
    “The wind has shifted. The last barricade is on fire,” Mordecai said quietly. “Now even God has forsaken us.”
    Avram’s heart sank. When the giant Roman battering ram built at the top of the earthen ramp had broken through first one,
     then the second stone wall just days before, the defenders of Masada had quickly built wooden walls in the breach with loosely
     packed dirt between to cushion the blows of the battering ram and render it useless. But what the Romans couldn’t batter down
     they attempted to burn, hurling flaming torches at the wooden wall. When the fires were fast lit, the winds suddenly shifted
     to the south, blowing the Romans’ fire back upon them and their siege engines, clearly a sign of God’s intervention in the
     eyes of many of the besieged.
    Now the winds had shifted to the north, driving the fire quickly through the barricades. There was no use in denying that
     the Romans would try to take the fortress at first light. “So now we fight,” Avram said, resigned. “After three years, maybe
     it’s finally time.”
    “I don’t know what we do, Avram,” his father said. “There are ten