In Canaan, which was also known as the land of Israel, in the spring of the year Christians called 1197, Muslems prayed openly but with a sense of unease. Jews, for whom the spring coincided with the celebration of Passover, called the year 4957. They prayed, too, in secret and with no less nervousness. Muslems and Jews alike were people whose families had endured and survived the injustices and cruelties of three Crusades. They knew, to a man and to a woman, that this brief respite from war would not last; a fourth Crusade would follow the third as surely as camels carried their own water across the desert.
The first three Crusades had been devastating. Entire Muslem families had been decimated; Jews, falsely accused of engaging in blood rites too horrific to contemplate, refused to convert to Christianity, to deny ha-rachamim, their Merciful Father, and laid down their lives for the sanctification of His name.
The Crusades denied fathers the pleasure of seeing their sons grow up; they denuded both communities of single men who could marry their daughters, so that they could no longer obey the Lord's or Allah's instruction to go forth and multiply.
And so it was that Meyer ben Joseph and Hamid el Faisir, who were the leaders of their communities and knew that they all needed protection against the evil to come, befriended each other. "If we are destroyed, it will not matter to the few survivors which God we worshipped," Meyer said.
Hamid assented.
On the first night of Passover, in the same spirit of co-operation, Hamid agreed to be present at the religious meal which his new friend Meyer called the Seder. "In this way," Hamid told his people, "I shall be an eye-witness to their rituals. If they do not drink of the blood of Christian children, as has been reported, then we shall defend our city together against the soldiers when they come."
And so it came to be that Hamid and his family joined Meyer, his wife, Rose, and their only surviving child Devora on the first night of Passover. They reclined and listened with respect as Meyer told the story of his people's journey across the desert in search of the Promised Land, they enjoyed the melodic songs, and they bowed their heads respectfully during the prayers.
"Pour the last of the wine, Meyer," Rose said, finally. "I sense that our guests are growing hungry."
Meyer poured a small amount of prayer wine for each person, though he knew that his Muslem guests did not drink. He was emptying the last of the carafe into a large goblet set aside for the Prophet Elijah, when there came a knock at the door. Meyer's hand jerked in surprise and a few drops missed the large goblet and landed on his wife's handwoven tablecloth. He grimaced; there was little more where that had come from. The extra glass of wine they poured each year — the extra place setting at the table — was a tradition he would never have ignored. But for a stranger to know the exact moment in the Seder bordered on miraculous.
"Timing is everything," he said, thinking, the Prophet has a good nose.
"Go, Devora. Open the door for our visitor," he said, addressing his sixteen-year-old daughter.
She was not surprised, for each year at Passover her father had not so subtly knocked under the table and instructed her youngest brother to open the door and welcome the Prophet Elijah. Of course, there had never been anyone there, though her father said that Elijah's spirit entered.
Not so this time.
Standing at the door in the darkness was a robed stranger, a tall man whose handsome face spoke of unbearable weariness. Slightly behind him stood a second man whose appearance and bearing cast him in the role of manservant.
"Welcome to our home," Meyer said, beckoning the strangers to the table and thinking that Rose would have to set yet another place. "It may not be much, but it is one of the best in Mea Shearim."
Gesturing first to his manservant in such a manner that it was apparent he would remain outside, the Stranger entered Meyer's house. He did not remove his robe, nor did he look into the eyes of his host.
"Will you pray with us over the wine?" Meyer asked, thinking that he must remember later to have Devora take food and wine outside to the manservant.
The man sat but did not speak, neither did he eat or drink, even after the prayers were done. He was dark and swarthy, but did not seem to be of Jerusalem.
"What road have you travelled, Stranger?" Meyer asked, wondering if the man had been sent to observe the blood rites of which the Jews were accused. If so, he would leave disappointed.
"I travel the Road of Humanitatis," the man said.
Those were all the words he spoke.
When the meal was over, there was one more tradition to be observed before the final song could be sung. Earlier, Devora — the oldest and the youngest — had hidden a piece of unleavened bread known as the Afikomen. Now she was sent to retrieve it.
"Let our daughter also take food and wine to the man who is outside in the moonlight," Meyer said to Rose. "She will be rewarded for returning the Afikomen to the table," Meyer explained to his guests, "for without it the Seder cannot be completed. It will not take long for her to find it. Rose and I watched her hide it in the garden."
After a few moments, when Devora had not returned, the Stranger stood as if to leave. Meyer bade him Godspeed and glanced at the family of Hamid el Faisir, wishing they too would depart. Despite his best efforts it had been a strained night; he wanted it to be over.
When their daughter still did not return with the Afikomen, which fairly translated meant Aftermath, Rose said, "I am worried about our daughter. It is that time of the month for her. She should not be outside alone and in the dark for so long."
Meyer excused himself and went to find Devora.
He found her in the small arbour which stood permanently in the garden, ready to be decorated each autumn in thanks for God's bounty. She held the Afikomen in her hand. Silently, she gave it to her father.
Silently, he took it.
"We have been waiting for you," Meyer said. "All but the Stranger, who came out of the night and has returned to it."
"I have been with him," Devora responded. "And I have fed his manservant."
Devora, daughter of Rose and of Meyer ben Joseph, never spoke again of the two men or even of the child of the manservant, conceived that Passover during her time of bleeding and growing in her womb. More and more, she became morose. Each time she passed a mirror, it was spotted with droplets of blood and she was shamed before her father, the remaining man of her family. Soon she ceased to be obedient to him or to any man. As if she wished to die in childbirth, she baked challahs and deliberately neglected to take from the dough and give what she had taken to a priest in tithing.
Meyer did not like his daughter's behaviours but he accepted them as part of the changes wrought by childbearing, a process he did not pretend to understand. Rose was more frightened than angered. Though it was the word of God and of Allah that Their followers go forth and multiply, it was also His word that no child be conceived during niddah — menstruation — and for good reason.
She feared for the life of her daughter and trembled for her daughter's child, lest that child — conceived in blood — be claimed by the demon queen, Lilith.
The child, a girl, grew strong inside the womb of her mother, Devora. Like all embryos growing into the fullness of their heritage, this one saw the history of her people by the light of a candle which burned in the womb, a white glow which allowed her to see the beginning and the end of the universe.
Inside the womb, an angel kept watch over her, teaching her the Torah; outside the womb, Lilith — overpowered by the remembrance of her own childless and unhappy marriage — watched the angel and seethed with jealousy of Devora's motherhood. She bided her time, smiling evily as Rose constructed an amulet from the Sefer Raziel to protect the mother and child after birth and hung amulets aplenty around the walls and on the birth-bed to discourage the demonic queen from claiming the child.
Just before birth, when — as it was written — the angel readied itself to touch the child lightly on her top lip so that the cleavage on her upper lip could be formed and she could forget all she had learned, Lilith interfered. Dousing the light in the womb, she pushed the infant into the birth canal.
In that moment, Devora's soul took leave of its earthly body. In that moment, Marisa was born. She emerged from her mother's womb with a collective consciousness and with an arrogance which, in combination with her facial flaw, set her apart from the other children in Mea Shearim.
Of the 613 Laws of the Torah, Rekhilut — the first, though the least prohibitive, law against bad-of-mouth gossip — was the most frequently disobeyed in the quarter where Marisa was born. In the case of this girl-child, the gossip derived more from fear than from any intent to do harm. It was no secret that she had been conceived during niddah, nor could it be kept secret that the child had no cleavage on her upper lip. Since her mother had died in childbirth, it was logical to assume that she had been claimed as the daughter and servant of Lilith. But the greatest fear was the one spoken in whispers, that because of the circumstances of her conception and birth, Marisa could be infected with the most dreaded of all diseases, leprosy.
Meyer and Rose showered all their love upon their granddaughter, whom they called Marisa Devora and who was the last of their living kin. Unfortunately, no amount of their goodwill could change the nervousness of a community which had been so badly hurt by the passage of the years that they feared anything that might bring more trouble into their midst.
Again, Hamid el Faisir, who had reported favourably on the household ben Joseph, came together with Meyer. This time they joined forces to try to protect Marisa from those who, driven by unreasoned anxiety, threatened harm to the fatherless child.
The strength of the two proved to be sadly insufficient against the many. One evening, when it was almost sundown, Marisa was wrest from them and taken into the desert. There, a dried water-hole had been filled with the blood of several lambs and a meagre shelter had been built to shield the child from the last rays of the desert sun.
As if she were being baptized in blood, the little girl was submerged and held there until nightfall. Being barely six years old, she could certainly not fight her way out of the grasp of strong adults. She could have cried out, but she did not even do that and appeared, instead, to submit herself to the wishes of the good people of Jerusalem.
In the house in the district of Mea Shearim, Hamid said in an anguished voice, "Surely they intend to dry her off and carry her home at the rise of the moon."
"Surely they do," Meyer agreed, his eyes filled with tears for his granddaughter. "What do you say, Rose?"
Rose said nothing. She left the house and walked into the desert. Even had she wanted to speak, her anger and foreboding would have prevented the words from forming on her tongue. As the rim of the moon appeared on the horizon, she came upon the child.
She stood at a distance, her gaze riveted upon the little girl.
The child had never looked more contented. She dabbled happily in the red pond, drinking from her cupped hand with an eagerness she had never shown for her grandmother's chicken soup.
Looking up, Rose saw the Stranger, tall and hooded, riding a camel led by his manservant. "No," she cried out, as the townsfolk stepped aside and he laid claim to Marisa Devora.
The child raised her arms and the manservant lifted her up. The Stranger took her, seated her astride the camel with him, and rode away.
Rose wept, but she did nothing to try to stop him.
At dawn, the people of Jerusalem returned to their daily business and to gossiping of other things. Only then did Rose cease her weeping and make her report to Meyer ben Joseph and Hamid el Faisir. She did not tell them that she had heard a female voice, calling the man and the child to join her. She did not say that Lilith had taken the man and the child to her bosom.
Meyer and his friend Hamid embraced each other. Now it was their turn to weep. Then they dried their tears and waited as the message of Marisa Devora and the dark Stranger travelled to Cyprus and reached the ears of Amalric. "Beware," the messenger said. "In the land of Canaan, there is a daughter of Lilith who is loved by man and God and Allah and marked by the devil. Do not cause her to be angry, for her anger could devour you all."