The pool of mud was before her, and beyond that lay the lion.
In all the valley this beast alone had spied her, or perhaps he had picked up her scent. Yael had gone to the mikvah that day, and when stench is everywhere, the scent of what is pure is most noticeable of all. The lion raised his head and gazed across the pool as Yael made her way, wading carefully. I could not abide the thought of seeing her torn apart, ravaged and devoured while I watched, the little girl I had loved as though she were my daughter when I was but a girl myself. My grief was enormous as I stood alone in the falling dark, weeping for all I had done in the world and the many people I had wronged. I thought that perhaps I was witnessing the End of Days and that the Essenes had been right all along, and we had been merely too foolhardy to listen. I thought of what the bones I had thrown had revealed, and the future I had seen and all I had yet to lose in this world.
Yael had come to stand before the lion. He could have easily reached to attack her, yet he did not move. His tail switched, nothing more. Yael drew closer still. I could see them through a layer of mist. A fierce creature, a pool of water, a woman who was unafraid. Perhaps because she had once been bitten by a lion, she imagined she was immune to any further bites, as some who are attacked by bees never again react to their sting.
No one in the Roman camp had paid attention to the lion for some time, or had even thought to feed him since their arrival. One donkey was all he’d been granted. He had been mistreated, half-starved, made to stay unsheltered from the burning sun, unable to flee the torrents of rain when they came. He had served his purpose, to frighten us, and now he was abandoned. Ravens came close, but he could not reach them. Ibex and deer and sheep had been roasted over the fires of the Romans, but the lion had not been granted a shred of their meat or bones.
He did not move as Yael approached, nor did he shrink from her. Perhaps he did not maul her because he had been broken, taken from his land, abused, unable to act like a lion. Or perhaps he was merely waiting for a messenger from God, as we wait for Gabriel.
Yael now came close enough to unhook the brass buckle which fitted the creature’s collar to his chain. I could not breathe or move. I imagined he would turn on her then and I would see her death before my eyes. Instead the lion rose to his feet and stood before her. He stared at Yael with his yellow eyes, more curious than ferocious. He may have thought she was one of his own kind and wondered if she meant to accompany him. He may have believed she was a dream, for if lions dreamed it would surely be this, freedom in the night, hands that unleashed you, the mountains before you.
Yael lifted her arms, as we do to bid the doves to take flight. The lion turned to run across the valley, disappearing into the cliffs, his dun color the cloak which allowed him to vanish before our eyes.
I knew then I had witnessed a miracle. I waited where I was, praying, offering gratitude to the Almighty, my faith renewed, while on the valley floor the bravest warrior among us made her way back to our mountain, invisible to all men beneath her gray cloak, but radiant in the darkness, a shining star before the eyes of God.
*
OUR WARRIORS went out that night to find the soldiers of the legion intoxicated, maddened and half-asleep, for they had mixed the toxic honey with wine to make a mead, and many had drunk from this poison. Our men killed as many as they could before the cries of the slaughtered brought hundreds of soldiers racing. By then the warriors of Masada had begun to climb back up the cliff. Several were lost in the fray and were carried upon the shoulders of their brothers. At least we had their bodies and could prepare their earthly forms for burial. In Jerusalem we would have taken our dead to the caves of our fathers, then a year later collected the bones to be stored in stone ossuaries. Here there was no time for such practices. Though the Romans had retaliated with a storm of burning arrows, we gathered in the plaza to sing lamentations and tear at our garments and lay the dead to rest.
In the midst of our mourning, some among us looked down upon the valley. They saw that the lion had been freed from the chains of Rome to return to the cliffs of Judea. There were shouts and prayers. Crowds gathered, mystified, wondering if it had been Gabriel, the fiercest of the angels, who had brought this omen to us, for surely no man would have dared to approach a lion.
STILL THE ROMANS built their white ramp, still it rose higher. Though we sent down hot oil, stones, arrows, they continued on, a machine of death intent on victory. In weeks, the ramp was a few arms’ lengths from our walls, and the damage their soldiers could now manage was great. We had many losses and fires occurred every day. Whatever they destroyed with stone and flame we rebuilt, but we hadn’t enough hands, and there were ruins all around us. No one dared to leave the fortress now, or even venture close to the wall. We huddled together in the wind. There was a great silence over us. It was despair, and it passed from one to the other more quickly than a fever.