The view was excellent from here, and dramatic too; for immediately in front of her were the deep shadows cast by the looming structure of the Temple and its walled courts; and beyond that, the spread of height and distance. Her grandmother had chosen well to build a palace here, on the mighty, upthrust shoulder of Jerusalem. The very sense of the place renewed you, and Berenice could understand why, in the olden times, all of these high places were considered sacred to the gods—in the old, old times, when the people knew other gods besides Yaweh. The air was clear, cool, and sweet as wine—as it so often was in the very early hours of the morning in Jerusalem. Rarely did the weather disappoint one here. It was almost fifteen years since she and Shimeon had taken to the habit of spending the warmest months of the year in Jerusalem, to escape the cloying heat of the lake bowl at Tiberias, and bit by bit she had come to love and feel this city. For all of its cold and forbidding aspect, its stone streets, stone walls, stone elevations, mighty stone staircases, and cobbled reads, it was a thing of purpose and emotion, alive in its own strange way.
