The Sheen of the Silk

Sixty-two

DRESSED AS A PILGRIM ONCE MORE AND HAVING TO FORCE herself to adopt the habits and gestures of a eunuch again, Anna asked the caravan master at the Sion Gate for passage across the Negev Desert to St. Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai. She still had a great deal of Zoe’s money, more than was necessary to pay for her passage. He haggled a few minutes, but time was short and the money she offered was good, even generous.

Anna was unused to riding a donkey, but since there was no alternative, she accepted the assistance of one of the guides. He was a dark, mild-faced man of whose language she understood only a few words, but his tone of voice was sufficiently explicit that even the camels were obedient to him.

The caravan that left the shelter of Jerusalem numbered as near as she could tell about fifteen camels, twenty donkeys, and about forty pilgrims, plus a number of camel and donkey drivers and two guides. It was apparently a small number compared with what was usual.

It was a journey that began easily as they followed the road south. The first place of any note they passed was desolate, unremarkable, until the man on the donkey beside her crossed himself and began to pray over and over again, as if warding off some evil fate. She was startled by the fear in his voice.

“Are you ill?” she asked in concern.

He made the sign of the cross in the air. “Aceldama,” he said hoarsely. “Pray, brother. Pray!”

Aceldama. Of course. The Field of Blood, where Judas slew himself. Surprisingly, it was not fear that took hold of her but a savage and overwhelming pity. Was that really a road from which there was no returning?

When they moved past Aceldama and into the ever-shifting, ever-changing desert, there was nothing left behind but an old grief.

The first night she was stiff and cold, too tired to sleep at first, and very aware of the miserable accommodations: three dirty, leaking sheds where they huddled together, trying to find enough rest to gain strength for the next day.

It was a relief to eat and drink a little and begin the day’s journey. At least it was warmer to move, even in the wind, than to lie still.

The scenery changed from black and white to faded colors, bleached by heat and cold, almost devoid of life except for miserable little tamarisk trees thick with thorns. Pale sand gave way to almost black, flat and hard, covered with little flints. Black mountains were dense and jagged in the distance. The wind roared and stung with hard little edges of sand, like myriad insects stinging. They were told quite cheerfully by the guides that at other seasons it was worse.

They were warned not to leave the caravan for any reason whatever. To stray was to invite death. One could become lost in minutes, disoriented, and perish of thirst. The wastes beyond the known path were littered with the white bones of the foolish.

At night, the sky was ink black and burned with stars so low as to seem barely out of reach. Beautiful and alien, they exerted such a profound fascination that Anna found it hard to tear her gaze away from them and remember that she must sleep if she was to survive.

Day followed day. The scenery changed, limitless horizons giving way to lines of hills. Black desert changed to pale or even white with gray lines and shadows across it.

Then at last, on the fifteenth day, almost as if a cloud had cleared, in front of them, two towering summits appeared with a deep-clefted valley between, high and steep.

“The Mountains of Moses,” the caravan master announced with pride. “Horeb and Sinai. We will climb. We will be there before nightfall.” Anna thought they must already be several thousand feet above Acre and the sea.

At last they reached the outer walls of St. Catherine’s. The vast, square fortress towered above them thirty to forty feet high, crammed into the fork between the peaks of Horeb and Sinai. It was built out of smooth, dust-colored rock hewn into giant squares and placed together so one could barely get a knife blade between.

The only way in was to hail the watchtower and request entrance. If it was granted, a small door opened high above and a knotted rope was let down. The guest would place his foot in a loop at the end and, on command, be hauled up.

After only a short hesitation, Anna found herself clinging with desperate hands, numb and dizzy, while she was raised up the outer face of the great wall. The sun burned red and purple on the western horizon. She would have liked to look at the scene until every last vestige of light faded, but already her hands were locked and slipped on the rope. Her legs ached so fiercely, she found it difficult to keep them straight.

She scrambled a little awkwardly through the small door. An elderly monk greeted her civilly enough, but with little interest. Perhaps he was so used to seeing pilgrims that they had all melted into one for him. So many of them would come with impossible dreams, expecting miracles, here where Moses had seen a burning bush from which God had spoken to him.