Historical Setting, 629 C.E. near Trier
I’m only starting to gather my wits and wonders. I asked these women where is this, “here”?
The older woman answers in a strange mix of old languages, “You are in a land of Burgundy of Gaul set aside for the Jewish refugees.”
I understand the words but not the meaning. Gaia, the younger woman, senses my confusion, and she repeats the older woman’s words to me but in the vernacular most familiar in Gaul, as though she is translating this mix of Old Greek and Yiddish.
I ask again, “But I don’t know where I am.”
“Papa Lazarus, with this woman’s help, Brandell found you in the soil here in a Jewish cemetery. We are near the vineyards where the vintners of Gaul battled with the Jewish refugees some seasons passed. Now that we’ve found you your family will come for you soon.”
The older woman leaves to get a flask of water. I hear her slow steps as I close my eyes.
At this waking my familiar thoughts of Brandell don’t explain very much. This woman, Gaia, is said to be his betrothed. She is here alone with me, and I don’t think she sees. She doesn’t know I am awake here. She reaches for the cloak, and pulls it to my chin.
I ask, “Brandell?”
“Yes, Papa Lazarus, he will be back soon. He went with the men who are settling on this side of the river. Our horses are on the other side, so they will take you to the boat when they come.”
“Gaia,” I remember I’d heard Brandell speak her name, “tell me all the things.”
“All what things?”
“Why are we here?”
“Is it because God made us, and loves us and put us here on earth to love one another? That’s what Brandell thought you would want me to know.”
“I mean why are we in the Jewish burial place?”
“Brandell remembered you had a mark of the Jewish root. So, then he imagined you would be here, and, here you are. We found you after all this searching.”
Some glimpses of memory tell me of a battle with hammers and scythes not swords, with tunics, not uniforms, with vintners, not soldiers, driven by fears, not by king’s orders. I, apparently, ended here in the Jewish ground.
I ask, “And what of the battle?”
(Continues tomorrow)
Lazarus Ink 