A group of five horseriders, with covered faces and torches in hands – was slowly moving on a small path. It was an evening hour. They were crossing heavy bushes that surrounded the small town of Mareisha. Having arrived to the houses’ settled area, their commander, Mathan, counted five houses from the bare hill on left side of the small town. He pointed on an average sized hut, hiding behind a few thick olive and fig trees. The riders dismounted, but still remained staying there behind bushes, taking care of their horses and looking around from their shelter.
Mathan was dressed as a peasant, and he removed the mask from his is face, unlike the others. He gave the reins of his horse to another horserider, and walked toward the hut, opened its unlocked gate and cautiously stepped at the courtyard’s path. He approachd the front door and knocked twice on it.
A woman opened, barring the entry with her obese body.
“Good evening, lady,” he said politely, “I’m looking for the house of Yesheivav Ben Joram.”
“It’s here. I’m his wife. He’s fallen asleep…Who are you?”
“They call me : Bo-az Ha-tim-ni. Your man owes me some money. But...- don’t wake him up. I’ll come another time.”
“Wait, sir,” she said, “I’ll get a look. Perhaps he’d taken a slight slumber only…”
Matham moved out, not waiting for the result, sleep or slumber.
He closed cautiously the entry door and ran toward the gate. He soon met his four men, who were impatiently waiting behind the bushes.
He whistled twice, their agreed sign. They gathered around him, set fire in the torches they had brought with them. All raised their burning woods in the air, ready to attack.
Mathan masked his face with a black rug, like the others. Only his eyes were exposed, as his head was covered by a broad kerchief... He pointed on the hut’s direction, indicating the men to enter it from both sides - by curving his both hands like they were tongs .
Mathan penetrated the back entry to the house. He opened the door and illuminated the area by his torch and knew he had arrived to a bedroom. From the other side of the house – a voice of screaming women and a child had been heard in the darkness. Mathan found himself facing a thick bearded man of forty, who had already risen from his bed, but his eyes were still winking from the sudden torch light. The man mumbled and Mathan stabbed him by his spear. As he had fallen on the floor- Mathan tread his body, rolling it . Then he bent above it and waved a feather over his nose. It had not moved.
The four corners of the wooden cottage were now on fire. Enormous flames were bursting from the windows. The man and his wife and kid had been on fire, and the smell of burning bodies, mixed with smoking straw matrtesses and other furnitures - caused the attackers to breath heavily.
Soon the incendiaries were running back to their horses. They discerned that all the area had become illuminated by the fire’s light. Mathan whispered shortly to his hired folks: ‘Well done’, while they had already been on their rwo horsebacks and two ‘porters-donkeys’. He seperated the men into two groups, himself leading one of them. There were torch-holders in each group, and he told a masked man, called Nimrod- to turn with one of his colleagues to the town Lakhish, which was in the far southern part of the area.
“There you should do the same job, that we’ve done here,” he said, “Kill Tsefania, the non- bastard son of king Jehoram, from his concubine Bosmath. Baal and God bless you, sirs.”
Mathan led his little group – three people, including himself- back to Jerusalem. They entered the town’s gate after midnight, and the gatekeepers had not asked anything, having recognized the priest. He soon dismissed his men. He himself continued riding straight to Athaliah’s palace. He knew that two other groups of his hired men should have already brought there valueable prisoners.
He entered the palace hall and turned to the stairs, leading to the basement. It was a large wines store. Some sheepskins and green glass jugs, filled with old sharp liquids, were put on wooden racks. Those were set up on planed stones seen in the corners.
The dim light that came out from Mathan’s burning torch, prevented his eyes to differentiate between blood, that had already been shed there, and red wine poured on the floor. Nearby on the floor was lying Athaliah. She was drunk as Lot, the Nephew of Abraham, screaming noisly on whoever had been in her presence.
Next to her he soon discerned five or six men. Three of them were moaning while dying from stabs or stones, that had apparently broken their heads. The others, still alive, had their eyes bound with black cloths, and their hands and feet arrested by ropes or chains.
Mathan walked between them, and two or three times his shoe treaded -unintentionally - an arm or foot of the dying or living ones. Loud cries from pains and horror were breaking there, filling the dense air.
Mathan soon became used to the dim light and deadly sight. Now he saw Athaliah moving, then rising to face one of the cellar’s corners. Her hair was uncombed. On her head she was already wearing a golden crown.
Then he discerned her turning around. Her swinging body approached the chained persons lying on the floor. Her terrified balled eyes were gazing at them.
Mathan saw now that she was grabbing a spear in her right hand. From time to time she was waving it in the air, calling: “flip-flop, flip-flop”.
Three good-looking soldiers, from the palace gate keepers, were stepping at her sides. She turned to one of them, indicating him to stab a prisoner who was lying nearby, his face turned to the wall, waving his hand and moaning loudly. After having given the murderous order, Athaliah retreated alone back to the corner, turning her head to the wall.
Mathan rushed to a prisoner, at whom a soldier was kneeling, but he still had not been hurt. The priest pushed the spear-holder aside, and shouted: “What are you doing, soldier?”
“The queen had ordered me…Haven’t heard?” said the soldier, who recognized Mathan..
“The hell with you!” shouted Mathan, “go and call her back . . I will explain to her. That massacre should stop…”
He was kneeling near the man, whose lips trembled and his wounded arm was bandaged, but blood still was shedding from there. Mathan recognized the victim as his friend from the far past.
“Is that you, Shovy?” he asked the wounded man, who shook his head and murmured:.
“Save me, Mathan. I was your best friend. We have learned together in Priest Samuel’s class. Remember? I have saved your life once…”
Mathan put off the old rug that wrapped his ex-friend’s arm, put off his own shirt and was wrapping his friend’s stabbed arm with it very tightly.
Athaliah turned her head again to the room’s center. From distance she saw that Mathan was staying too much with the man, that she had just ordered to be killed. She called her two guards, who surrounded her, and sent them to threate Mathan.
“Go away from here, Baal’s Priest,” said one of them, “Let’s do our job…peacefully.”
“No, wait with this man.” he answered. Athaliah approached him slowly with a reproacful glimpse. Her mouth was smelling from the sharp apple spirit liquid she had drunk. The soldiers surrounded him. They were waiting for the queen’s order.
“Why d’you disturb my soldiers from doing their jobs?” she scorned him, “Had I disturbed you from extinguishing the souls of others? Some of them …were once most distinguished and respectable offsprings - of an extraordinary dynasty. Haaa?”
“Your Majesty,” Matahn kneeled before her and implored in a mild voice, “I really cannot bear the sight of this particular man, begging for his life. He is an old friend of mine. Please, spare him! He is only a second cousine of the immediate- maybe- crown claimants.”
”The hell with you!” she treaded the man, who was still lying there. Then she kicked him by his ass in hatred.
“Please, Queen. Once he had rescued my life. I can’t be indifferent to him.”
“You coward, Mathan! You can’t slip away from me! Now Yo
ur hand will kill him!- Or my disdaining hand will split out your brain here, in this stinking cellar!”
Mathan prostrated himself before her, touched her shoe and kissed it. She did not move. He rose up, and looked at her strangely.
“Dear Queen,” he said, feeling that his fright from her had suddenly passed away, “Your generosity will only strengthen your regime. People will appreciate you as strong- if you show mercy to somebody. Hear me well, dear Queen.”
“I think the opposite!” she scolded at him, “You have risen up, to show me that you are my equal. Villain Mathan! I have a queer impetus to harm you, to humiliate your boastful nature. You had just demonstrated it to me. Kneel again on the floor, fool!”
She threatened him by her spear, and pointesd on him to one of her soldiers.
“If he resists me again – stab him,” she ordered. Then she came behind Mathan and kicked his ass on both sides by her shoes. She faced him again, and ordered him to rise up. She handed her spear to him, pointing on the man lying on the floor.
“Execute your task. Finish quickly. It is already dawn time. I have still to see other brave men - that I myself have hired directly…I haven’t hired you. You are my slave. However, I need you much more than a regular one, Don’t I?”
Athaliah indicated her guards to stab the prisoner. Mathan refused to see him being murdered, and rushed to an opposite corner. He heard his screamed from pain, and when he became quiet he heard Athaliah calling him. he came to stand near her. She grabbed him by the elbow and began walking with him arm-in-arm, to check each victim and validate the killings. She was talking loudly to herself, with a strange laughter after each sentence:
“You hear me, bandits? Ha! We are just removing stones from a bad ground. Ha! That’s what we’re doing! Ha! You, men, had no souls - even being alive! Ha!”
In her drunkenness she was deeming that drums and violin music was playing around. These noises were mixed in her imagination with a memory of the screams of the butchered offspring of king David’s dynasty.
“Who is the music player there?” she asked suddenly, “who do I hear now? He makes me mad - by his delicate violin’s tones. I can’t bear it, I can’t! He’s playing like David, the abominable king. I can’t bear even your memory, ancestor of all the evil that had found my and your family... How could you, Shepherd David, believe in the Almighty God of Israel, who has dedicated himself to annihilate and destroy? He could not build your offspring a strong and solid fortress. He was always using a ridiculous argument for your ruin. That your sole sin with a woman called Bathsheba – had caused His anger. Therefore he had to punish all your forthcoming inheritors. So say his Prophets still today. And why had his son Solomon so successful and prosperous, notwithstanding? He had built a marvellous Temple on the fucken bodies of thousand women, who incited him against you, God. All these simple examples, my Lord, show me only the irrationality of your existance. Yes, of course- of your behavior, even if you exist somewhere… You simply play games with us. But you can’t admit it. So, you’re cheating your humble human beings. . . Ha ha!”
Then Athaliah rudely kicked a victim’s body, while still reflecting and arguing with the Lord by the mumble of her lips. She gazed at Mathan, who unveiled the cloth, which was covering the corpse’s face.
“Who was this?” she asked, “have you identified another comrade, from your priestly days with God?”
“No. This one was Aviah, son of your husband’s brother,” told her Mathan.
“Well well!” she laughed, “Now I can see the end to king David’s dynasty! I have brought it; I - the daughter of the greatest of kings, Ahab. No more David! Even his name would be forgotten from now on.…Soldier, let me have now another full sheepskin, with Hebron wine. I am so thirsty. Let me toast for my successful future. Drink with me, soldiers. You are all my sons!”
The soldiers began toasting with her, laughing and pointing on each other. They soon quarrelled – about the issue who of them had become drunk sooner...
Atahalia was suddenly coughing, feeling bad. The sight of the corpses choked her.
“Oh, I am going to vomit…” she murmured, “Where are you, Mathan? Take me out of this disastrous place. And bring other soldiers to remove all that, to clean this hell... Who has brought all this stink? Is all this deadly cellar – really in Jerusalem?…Who had killed these people?”
“You’ve ordered it!” cried Mathan.
“I haven’t given such an order! Oh … I need air, Let me get to the window…”
She vomitted, crying: “Why do I hate …All of David’s offspring? These worms had penetrated my womb, entered in my bloodstream...Damn me!”
She grabbed her dagger, and furiously stabbed her own hand. Then she was sitting on the floor, weeping while gazing with balled eyes at her bloody fingers.
Mathan came close to her. He looked at her bruise, and helped her to wrap it with a cloth he had torn from one of the victims’ dress.
Athaliah began to sing wildly, holding her sheepskin bottle in her hand. She took a long gulp of Hebron vinyards’ wine at the middle of the poem’s first sentence :
Oh Samariah, Oh Jezre-el.
Oh, lost kingdom of Israel.
Where are your lovers’ giggles?
Where is your rock, that breeded eagles?
Oh, my father, Ahab! Oh, - great dead king.
What more disasters will the idols bring?!
Mathan raised her by her elbows, and tried to carrry her toward the stairs leading upward, to her bedrom. Athaliah’s legs dangled over the stairs, while he had dragged her from the bottom up. While he carried her to her room, he still told her something, not sure if she had comprehended or not:
“Please fix an hour to visit General Abner tomorrow,” he said, “He’s sick, so I’ve heard.”
He brought her to her bed and saw she had fallen asleep, still dressed. He thought that the blood smell, still in his noostrils, would drive him mad.
Mathan went to his tent by foot. He was tired no less then her, and fell asleep till noontime, despite the screams and smells and fire sights bubbling-boiling in his senses.
CHAPTER 10