A Voice in the Wind Read Online Free PDF Page A

dead man’s leg. His face was crawling with maggots. The dead were everywhere. She felt faint.
    The farther they walked, the more horrifying the carnage. Decaying bodies lay tangled together like slaughtered animals. The stench of blood and death was so heavy Hadassah covered her mouth.
    “Where do we take captives?” Tertius shouted at a soldier separating the dead. Two soldiers were lifting a Roman comrade from between two Jews. Other legionnaires appeared with plunder from the temple. Wagons were already loaded with golden and silver sprinkling bowls, dishes, wick trimmers, pots, and lampstands. Bronze shovels and pots were piled up, as well as basins, censers, and other articles used in temple service.
    The soldier looked up at Tertius, casting a cursory glance over Hadassah and Leah. “Down that street and around through the big gate, but those two don’t look worth bothering with.”
    Hadassah looked up at the temple’s once pristine marble, the marble that had appeared as a snow-covered mountain in the distance. It was blackened, chunks had been gouged out by siege stones, the gold melted away. Whole sections of wall were broken down. The holy temple. It was just another place of death and destruction.
    She moved sluggishly, sickened and terrified at all she saw. Smoke burned her eyes and throat. As they walked along the wall of the temple, she could hear a rising, undulating sound of horror coming from within it. Her mouth was parched and her heart pounded harder and faster as they approached the gate to the Women’s Court.
    Tertius gave the girl a shove. “You faint and I’ll kill you where you drop, and your sister with you.”
    Thousands of survivors were within the court, some moaning in their misery and others wailing for their dead. The soldier pushed her ahead of him through the gate, and she saw the ragged multitude before her. They crowded the courtyard. Most were gaunt with starvation, weak, hopeless.
    Tertius lowered the child from his shoulder. Hadassah caught hold of Leah and tried to support her. She sank down weakly and held her sister limply across her lap. The soldier turned and walked away.
    Thousands milled around, looking for relatives or friends. Others huddled in smaller groups weeping, while some, alone, stared at nothing—as Leah did. The air was so hot Hadassah could hardly breathe.
    A Levite rent his worn blue and orange tunic and cried out in an agony of emotion, “My God! My God! Why hast thou forsaken us?” A woman near him began to wail miserably, her gray dress bloodstained and torn at the shoulder. An old man wrapped in black-and-white striped robes sat alone against the court wall, his lips moving. Hadassah knew he was of the Sanhedrin, his robes symbolizing the desert costume and the tents of the first patriarchs.
    Mingled among the crowd were Nazirites with their long, braided hair, and zealots with dirty, ragged trousers and shirts over which they wore short sleeveless vests with a blue fringe at each corner. Divested of their knives and bows, they still looked menacing.
    A fight broke out. Women began screaming. A dozen Roman legionnaires waded into the multitude and cut down the adversaries, as well as several others whose only offense was to be in close proximity. A Roman officer stood on the high steps and shouted down at the captives. He pointed out several more men in the crowd and they were dragged away to be crucified.
    Hadassah managed to draw Leah up and move to a safer place by the wall, near the Levite. As the sun went down and darkness came, she held Leah close, trying to share her warmth. But in the morning, Leah was dead.
    Her sister’s sweet face was free of fear and suffering. Her lips were curved in a gentle smile. Hadassah held her against her chest and rocked her. Pain swelled and filled her with a despair so deep she couldn’t even cry. When a Roman soldier came over, she scarcely noticed until he tried to take Leah away from her. She held her