"My heart is eager for the festivities of to-morrow night," Martha said as she gathered the cups and bottles. "Lights will shine and the silver trumpets blow, and great will be the throng in gay apparel carrying bright lulabs."
"Yet far will the eye travel before it falleth on such fragrant boughs as these," Mary added.
Anna and Martha laughed. Before they turned from the housetop, Mary picked a blossom from the branch on the arbor roof. "This goeth to my pillow," she said. "It is a sign."
[1] Festival branches carried at the annual Feast of Ingathering.
CHAPTER XIV
WITH WHAT EYES
Without the walls of Jerusalem, the hills and vales were dotted with booths of green. Inside the gates the city seemed to have burst into springtime bloom, and the populace looked like a walking garden, for every Jew carried an armful of green boughs, and in his hand a sprig of willow to be placed on the great altar. Many pious ones had witnessed the early morning service when a priest, entering from the water gate, brought a gold pitcher full of water from the Pool of Siloam. At the sacred altar it was mixed with wine and through silver basins and pipes sent on its way to Chedron while a thousand trumpets proclaimed the ceremony. But it was at night the great crowds thronged the Temple at the most festive of all Jewish holidays for at this time the Great Lights were lit, the altar piled with leafy offerings brought by pilgrims from all Palestine, and the thanksgiving music of the priestly choir made a glorious shout of rejoicing.
Into the Court of the Gentiles the crowds passed, and up the marble steps of the Beautiful Gate with its Parian marble sculptured in gold and set with jewels. There had been the brightness of flambeau and lanterns in the outer court, but it was in the Court of Women that the Great Lights, branching out on high supports, were lighted. Just beyond this pillared and shining court and approached by fifteen marble steps, rose the Nicantor Gate with its titanic doors of Corinthian brass, more costly than fine gold, and towering to such a height that the moving throng looked like a line of ants creeping between its burnished pillars.
In the crowd thronging the Court of Women was Zador Ben Amon, and with him a Temple lawyer, who passed here and there to hear what the populace might be saying. When the people had turned toward the Nicantor Gate, just beyond which ten thousand candles illuminated the willow-decked altar, Zador stopped suddenly and stepped aside saying, "Let us tarry. I would use my eyes." After pausing a moment Zador pointed toward the steps and said, "Look, seest thou the woman with a man on each side of her? She weareth white with a veil. And the one man is a Rabbi with uncovered head and carrying a staff. The other weareth a blue turban with fringed sash on the side. See them? Midway of the third step they stand. Let us move toward them."
Keeping to the outer edge of the animated throng, Zador soon came to a place from which, by standing on the base of a pillar he could see over the heads of the people. "Yea," he said to his companion, "it is Lazarus and his sister as I thought. And at his heels is the other sister with her man. Now I will get me on the track of my anklet. Watch thou my standing place while I call a guard." Leaving the Temple lawyer by the pillar, Zador Ben Amon soon found a guard to whom he said, "The woman in the white cloak and veil who walketh between the Rabbi uncovered, and the man in blue head-dress, with a sash, hath in times past vexed me sore because of a lost anklet which she prayed me to find for her. Since I have seen her last, good fortune may have brought her the trinket. This would I know. For her right leg just above the ankle was it made. Pass thou behind her as she maketh her way to Nicantor. There are fifteen steps, on one of these shalt thou overtake her. When thou hast done so, lift thou her skirt and—if she be offended, swear that thou didst it unwittingly. If she wear not the anklet, lift thy sword as though thou wouldst open a way for a priest. If it be there, make haste to tell me and a piece of gold shall be thine. I will watch thee from the base-stone of the fourth pillar."