Page 11 of Unveiled Tamar’s Story (Mysteries & Wonders of the Bible #1)

He stopped between his two comrades, all their gazes on the path by which they’d arrived.

Footsteps, several pairs of them, intruded upon their awareness and grew louder with each passing second.

He tensed because his training had taught him to, even as his mind insisted that thieves wouldn’t walk so boldly up the path.

Nor, he was certain, would they be carrying torches of their own, but the light from both torches and lamps soon broke through the night.

He frowned as the men—four of them—came into view.

They were dressed in the garb of temple guards, unarmed thanks to Roman laws prohibiting them from carrying any weapons, but well trained nevertheless.

He thought he recognized one of them from his visits to the Court of the Gentiles, but he couldn’t be certain about that in the night, and out of context.

Valerius did not need to call out the order to stop. The men seemed to expect them to be there and greeted them with raised hands, but they halted just outside the Romans’ torchlight circle. One of the four eased a half step beyond his compatriots. “Good Sabbath.”

A strange greeting from men who were breaking it—and to Romans who they had to know weren’t observing it.

As much as Valerius might like to, his superiors weren’t willing to entertain such things.

“Good evening,” he said in reply. Had the high priest decided that he couldn’t trust Romans to guard the Rabbi’s tomb? Had he sent his own men instead?

If so, why had he bothered beseeching Pilate for a guard instead of using the priests usually stationed at the temple?

He didn’t ask though. He waited for them to state their business.

He didn’t have to wait for long. The one who greeted them continued.

“We are looking for a fugitive—a woman. She is about this tall,” he said, indicating his shoulder.

“Pretty enough, between thirty-five and forty years of age. She was last seen wearing a dark brown tunic with a pale blue headscarf. Have you seen anyone meeting that description here?”

Valerius, Caeso, and Albus all shook their heads. Valerius asked, “What is she wanted for? Is she dangerous?” Unusual as it was to come across a violent female fugitive, it happened now and then.

But to be sought by the temple guard? Her crime had to be religious, not violent. Though he couldn’t think what would be so dire that these men would break—or at least risk breaking—Sabbath rules about the distance one could travel in search of her.

The man shook his head. “No, no, nothing like that. She is head of the temple weavers—the ones who weave the veil.”

“The veil” could only mean one thing—the wall-thick curtain that separated the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies. The veil that physically separated God from man.

A veil he had felt all his life, even if he’d never set his physical eyes on it. As a Roman, he wasn’t even allowed that far. He was kept always on the outside. Apart. Separated not just from God but from His chosen people too.

Perhaps his frown looked darker than he meant it to, because the newcomers eased back a step. “And what has this weaver done to warrant such an unusually timed search by the priests who guard the temple?”

The leader lifted his chin a degree. “She has provided a defective veil for service to the Lord—a sacrilege.”

“Defective?” His frown pulled deeper. “How could it be defective?” He had heard stories about the awe-inspiring curtain that took seventy-two women three years to weave.

He had even glimpsed part of the procession a month ago when the newest one was installed.

It was so massive that three hundred men were needed to transport it.

Had someone found a thread out of place? Frayed? A mistake in the pattern?

Was that worthy of being hunted down in the dead of night by priest-guards?

Silence stretched until it crackled. The priest seemed reluctant to say what had been found wrong with the veil, but Valerius could tell from the sounds of shifting beside him that both his men had moved into more intimidating stances, silently shouting, Answer him or you won’t pass by here.

The leader cleared his throat, glanced at his companions, and finally heaved out a breath. “It tore during the earthquake.”

Tore? A cloth of that size and weight? “By ‘tore,’ do you mean a little rip or…?”

“In two.” He gritted it out between clenched teeth.

The silence pulsed again. Valerius was careful to keep his shock away from his face, to call on every last bit of Stoic training he’d received at his father’s knee. It was unthinkable enough that a wall woven of cloth, one so carefully crafted, could be ripped in two by any force.

But the earthquake? The one that had shaken the city in the very moment that Jesus cried out to heaven? The moment He gave up His life? That earthquake had torn apart the veil separating man from God?

His insides went hollow. It couldn’t be. Could it? Yet if it was…if it had truly happened…

“Why is the weaver being blamed? An earthquake is an act of God, not of a woman—or even seventy-two of them.”

The priest started, clearly surprised that Valerius knew even that much about the weaving. Then he squared his shoulders, met Valerius’s gaze.

Yet Valerius could have sworn the man was no more convinced than Valerious was by his reasons for being here as he said, “There must have been some fault in the fabric for it to rip like that. How could it have happened otherwise? The high priest wishes for her to be held responsible.”

How, exactly, would a woman be expected to take such responsibility? He couldn’t imagine there was any fine that could be paid. Did the high priest mean to imprison her? Or, worse, send her to the Roman courts for execution as he had Jesus?

He could have asked. Instead he said, “And you think this woman is hiding here, among the dead?”

The priest shook his head. “Unlikely, I grant you. But we have been scouring all gates leading out of the city, and someone reported seeing a couple of women huddled outside the nearest gate, one of whom could have been Tamar.”

Tamar . Clearly, she didn’t think she was responsible for the rip. “Did she escape your authorities?”

The priests exchanged a look, and if he wasn’t mistaken, two of them fought back a grin. “She has a cousin in the temple. We think he must have helped her slip out while the high priest was distracted with other business. We have yet to find him either, though, to question him.”

Sounded like a wise family. Valerius nodded, but he didn’t move out of their path.

“I just searched the entire garden a few minutes before you came. There is no one hiding here, neither woman nor man. But if she comes this way, we will, of course, detain her.” At least for a moment, long enough to ask her if she’d seen this ripped veil with her own eyes. If it could be true.

What it meant.

The priests nodded, looking more relieved than inclined to argue. The leader lifted a hand again. “Thank you. We will bother you no longer, then.”

They turned and moved back down the path, leaving Valerius and his comrades to their circle of light and unanswered questions.

Albus slid up to Valerius’s side. “Please fill us in on what this means, my lord,” he said. “Why should a woman be arrested for this, even if there was a fault in the fabric?”

She shouldn’t be—but Valerius couldn’t admit that out loud. Couldn’t admit that if something had ripped the veil in two, then it had to have been the very hand of God.

He couldn’t say any of that. Because to speak it would be to hope that the impossible had happened. That God had torn down the divide. That they could all approach Him.

But to hope in that was too much to consider on top of everything else today. If that hope turned to dust as so many hopes did, he didn’t know if he would survive the resulting despair.

To his men, he said, “Only perfection is allowed in the temple of God. No blemish can be excused.”

Albus screwed up his face. “Seems like a rather demanding deity.”

Perhaps, if one looked at it only that way. But God knew they all sinned. He knew they were imperfect. It was why they had to offer Him the best in recompense. Only perfection could wash away the stain of imperfection. Only the pure could sanctify the defiled.

Only the worthy could forgive the unworthy.

He turned back to the sealed cave. Inside lay a man who had been worthy. Pure. Perfect. If He was gone now, where did that leave the rest of them? If the veil was gone as well, what was left to protect them from the wrath of God?