Agrippa's Daughter

by Fast, Howard

  In this, the Jews were apart from all the world—in this defiance of all the tributes and implacabilities of fate; and possibly for this reason more than any other they were never tolerated, only hated or loved. Either the pagan turned Jewish, endured circumcision if a man, and embraced all that was Jewish—or the hatred of Jews became a chronic disease of his existence. The pagan lived in a world where defeat was accepted, where poverty and ignominy and slavery were accepted, where every turn and caprice of fate was accepted—and where every opportunity for lust, conquest, thievery, or enrichment was also accepted. For this, the Jew despised him; and knowing he was despised, he hated.

  Hillel said love; and in Caesarea twenty thousand Jews perished in a single day. This hammered in her head; it tore at her head and beat at her skull. And it beat at the city too. Berenice could almost hear it, like a vast drumbeat pounding at the heart of the city—and the city became very quiet. The city wept. In any or every street of the city, you could hear the sound of tears.

  The next morning, Berenice went up to the high roof tower of her palace—a pinnacle that rose above the temple court. Shimeon was already there, and when Berenice had joined him he said to her,

  “I think they will try to take the temple enclave today.”

  “Why?”

  “They must control the city. We are at war with Rome.”

  “Oh—no, no!” Berenice exclaimed. “Not from you—I will not hear that! Are my brother’s promises nothing? We said that we would go to Rome and make peace.”

  “Too late,” Shimeon said softly but with profound sorrow.

  “Why is it too late?”

  “I have not declared war on Rome,” Shimeon said. “This city has—”

  “The Sicarii!”

  “You make too much of the Sicarii,” Shimeon said impatiently. “Not the Sicarii—but the Zealots, the House of Shammai—and that means more than half of Jerusalem.”

  “How do you know? Have you counted? Have you asked? Have you gone to the people, to every one of them, and said to them—who are you for? For Hillel? Or for Shammai?”

  “After Caesarea?”

  “Do I ask you to do it? I only say that you have not done it—so how can you say who is for what? Of course Shammai moves. Shammai shouts! Shammai roars! Shammai has a sword in his hand. You see the sword—you respect it, you heed it. But Hillel—what is love to shout? There is no sword in the hand of Hillel.”

  “My dear, good wife,” Shimeon said, “you have gone to places I have never been.”

  “Why, Shimeon? You were my teacher. You were a physician—so it is with the sons of Hillel, they must learn to heal—and you healed. What has happened?”

  “I don’t know,” Shimeon replied, “because it is happening. How can I tell you why or what the end will be? Look there!” He pointed to the street that paralleled the temple wall. “It’s happening, isn’t it? Can I stop it?”

  She followed his hand with her eyes. “You’re the nashi, aren’t you?” And he said bitterly, “The nashi—yes.” They both stared now as the street filled with Sicarii bearing ladders. As the ladders were raised against the temple wall, another group of Sicarii dashed up the broad steps that led to the Temple, where one of the gates stood open.

  Inside the walls, the temple guards leaned on their spears, and all was right with the world so far as they were concerned. In the Court of the Gentiles a deputation of sheep herders from Idumea moved slowly, gingerly, staring about them at this legendary wonder that they were finally seeing with their own eyes, and in the inner court a group of five priests argued and gestured. Shimeon cupped his hands and shouted. He had a strong, deep voice, and the sound of his shout was like a physical violence against Berenice’s ears. In the Temple, at least the sound if not the words was heard, and one of the priests pointed to Shimeon and Berenice. The others bowed, accepting this unusual means by which the nashi asked for attention. He shouted again, and the Levite guards bestirred themselves, and now the first of the Sicarii topped the wall, and one after another they straddled the wall, knife in hand, knife in teeth—and then they leaped down, inside of the temple compound. The Levite guards ran toward them, spears leveled, and now the other band of Sicarii poured in through the open gate. They raced across the court, screaming an awful war cry, their demeanor not that of men but of devils, their knives cutting at the air in anticipation of the flesh. The Idumeans turned to flee and then went down before the knives, beheaded, disemboweled. The Levites tried to rally, but they faced the madness of dedicated and monstrous fanaticism. They leveled spears against screaming men who impaled themselves, yet lived to kill the Levites who held the spears. Other Levites raced from the inner court, to go down under the weight of Sicarii leaping from the walls, and then the Sicarii poured into the inner court. The priests tried to escape, but the Sicarii cut them down, sliced flesh from their bones, disemboweled them. The Sicarii did not know these priests or have hatred for them or reason to destroy them; but the priests were alive, and the Sicarii were insane with the lust to kill and the need to kill. They existed to kill, and this was a moment in which the truth of their existence was revealed to them—and so they killed. They poured through the Temple, killing everything that moved. They cut down the Levite guards to the last man. They killed priests and they burst into the Holy of Holies, screaming out the name of God in the ecstasy of their madness, and from where he had attempted to hide himself they dragged out Hananiah, who had been high priest only a while ago, and they cut him to pieces there upon the Ark of the Lord.

  Much of this Berenice saw, and more of it was told to her later; but she no longer reacted with shock—with all the outer adornments of horror. One thing had followed too quickly upon another; a kind of bleak desolation had begun to overlay her sense of compassion.

  Twenty-four hours later, Jerusalem had been split in half—or in three parts, depending upon how you saw it. The temple complex on the eastern border of the city was held by the Sicarii, who straddled the walls and filled the night air with their keening prayers. The northern half, or Lower City, was held by the Zealots under the leadership of a man whose father had been hacked and sliced to death by the Sicarii. His name was Elaezar Benananias, a Zealot by conviction and thereby of the House of Shammai in belief and philosophy; but by birth out of the bloodline of Aaron and thus entitled to style himself, if he so desired, Adon Elaezar Benananias Hacohen; and thereby a prince of Israel out of the oldest bloodline on earth. In addition to this, he came of a family both wealthy and important—and his father had been high priest over Israel, Hananiah Hacohen. His father’s body, disemboweled and cut to ribbons, lay in the inner sanctuary of the Temple, and only bit by bit did the proof come to him that his allies, the Sicarii, had slain his father.

  The southern half of Jerusalem, or Upper City, walled off from the rest of Jerusalem, a mighty fortress in its own right and containing Berenice’s palace and the Palace of the Herods, too, and most of the noble buildings of the city, was held by the nashi, Shimeon Bengamaliel. With him were four hundred and eighty-seven Levite spearmen, who had been in their barracks in the Maccabean Palace when the Sicarii attacked, and now these spearmen held both the double and triple gates that led from the Upper City in to the temple complex, and also the Xustus Bridge. The walls facing the Lower City were held by a hastily raised militia of about ten thousand men whose homes were in the Upper City—but how they would react if attacked by the Zealots and whether they would kill their fellow Jews to hold the Upper City from the Zealots remained to be seen. Shimeon himself was dubious, as were most of the members of the Great Sanhedrin, most of whom had made their way into the Upper City. After some discussion of the matter, Shimeon went to Agrippa, who was with Berenice on the roof of her palace. They had been doing nothing—simply sitting there through the hours and waiting. But for what they waited, Berenice did not know.

  Without any preliminaries, Shimeon came to the point and told Agrippa that he wanted him to go down to the House of Haked
ron and bring back with him into the Upper City the three thousand troops of the horse guard. “There is no problem yet,” Shimeon said. “I have checked at the Fountain Gate and at the Gate of the Essenes, and we hold both gates securely—and there are neither Zealots nor Sicarii in sight. I will send twenty of the Levites with you on horseback, and you can be back here with your troops before the sun sets.”

  Agrippa shook his head, smiling bitterly. “No, Shimeon—you want soldiers, and you mistake me. My horse guards are no more soldiers than I am a valid and real king. We are both fakes. They have never fought anything, and they know less about fighting than I know about being a real king. Most of them are the spoiled children of wealthy Jewish families, and if the Sicarii should shout at them, they will not stop spurring their horses until they are back in Galilee.”

  “Still, they wear armor and they know how to hold a lance and stand in a straight line. That’s all I need. God help us if it comes to more than that, if Jew turns his sword against Jew.”

  “And isn’t that precisely what will happen if Agrippa brings his horsemen into the city?” Berenice asked.

  “No. No, I can’t believe it—”

  “Then what future have you, Shimeon?” Berenice asked. “I ask you in all sincerity—and tell me, tell me truthfully—for what there still is between us, Shimeon.”

  “Still is? No, Berenice, I love you with all my heart. I never loved you more.”

  “And I love you—and we sit here talking like that, and the world comes to its end. Shimeon, what will you do?”

  “Hold the Upper City as long as I can—and pray to the Almighty that Benananias comes to his senses. What else can I do?”

  “What are his senses? What do you mean? Are we at war with Rome? And Florus—do we kill him or let him go? Will we have the blood of a procurator on our hands? That is something Rome never forgives.”

  “I let him go,” Shimeon said tiredly. “I let him go two hours ago. I took him myself to the gate and put him to horse. He will reach Caesarea before the twenty thousand Jews are buried!” His voice rose. “Yes, Berenice—I am a man and a human being and a Jew, and I have violences and hates and passions—and I could have killed that lousy bastard with my own bare hands. But I didn’t. I let him go—”

  His voice broke. He spread his arms hopelessly, and then Agrippa rose and said quite matter-of-factly, “I will go for my men, Shimeon. Understand me—you should have commanded me. I wish you had. I am king of sorts in Galilee, by the tolerance of Rome. But you are nashi because the Jews so made you, and by leave of no one—and my prince as well as Berenice’s. I don’t know what is wrong with us. We are being called upon for greatness. In the Bible, God speaks and man responds. God commanded Gideon to be great, and Gideon was great. I think that in the same way, He commands us, but I don’t know what His commands are and there is no greatness in me.” His shoulders were bent as he left them, and when he had gone, Shimeon said,

  “It’s true. Where is greatness—in me? In Agrippa? In Elaezar and his Zealots? In those monsters—the Sicarii? In you, my wife, I see greatness. What shall I do? Shall I say, Shimeon is no longer nashi; make his wife nashi over you. Because she has greatness. Oh, what nonsense. But what should I do, Berenice?”

  “Why do you ask me? You know what to do. Make peace—force it—command it! You are the nashi. No one will raise a hand against you. Be what you are, Shimeon the grandson of Hillel.”

  “Too late,” Shimeon said.

  “Why? Why?”

  “I suppose,” Shimeon said, “I suppose because I have lost my faith in peace.”

  Before dark, Agrippa led his three thousand horsemen into Jerusalem, and in the last rays of the setting sun the Zealots in the Lower City saw the long line of brazen breastplates, burnished helmets and long, iron-tipped lances parade on the walls of the Upper City. The people of the Upper City were encouraged by the magnificently armed young men, who made such a splendid sight as they rode up into the great plaza, and no one thought to speculate on the possibility that such handsome soldiers were perhaps the worst in the world. There were three thousand of them, and—apart from the few hundred Levites, indifferent soldiers at best, and the remnants of the Roman cohorts, trapped in their fortress towers—these three thousand were the only body of disciplined and professional soldiers in Jerusalem. Also, they wore body armor, which not one Jew in twenty possessed, and body armor always impressed civilian militia.

  The Upper City housed the priesthood, the wealth, the merchants, the professionals and the bloodline nobility of Jerusalem. There were three quarters of the fine houses, the palaces, the great villas, the counting houses, the warehouses, the huge olive-oil cisterns, and the wine cisterns—the new schools, the synagogues, many of which were devoted to the teachings of Hillel, the theater and the great Maccabean Palace. At the same time, the population of the Upper City was much less than the population of the Lower City, fewer in numbers, less militant, and almost without those dedicated and fanatical fighting men who called themselves the Zealots. If it had come to a pitched battle between the Lower City and the Upper City, Shimeon had no doubt who would conquer. The Upper City might hold out against the Zealots for a week or five weeks; but sooner or later it would succumb, and if that were to happen, the blackest pages of Jewish history would be written, brother against brother, and father against son.

  But it did not happen. A day went by, and then another day, and then a third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh day—and then the Sabbath dawned. There was no attack, not even by the Sicarii. Zealots were posted on guard all the distance from the Valley Gate to the wall of the temple enclave, hard, somber men who fingered their terrible bows—those ancient Jewish weapons made of layers of laminated ram’s-horn—counted their arrows, sharpened their curved knives, but did nothing. Almost shoulder to shoulder they stood in a line half a mile long, and silently they faced the line of Galilean boys in their brazen armor—and silently, the horse guards faced them. On both sides the injunction was given that no words be uttered, no taunts, no jests, no curses—and both sides obeyed. Thousands of men and women and children of Jerusalem came and stood behind the Zealots, staring at the beautifully caparisoned Galileans, but no one was allowed to pass through the line of Zealots. And then it was the Sabbath.

  Two hours after sunrise on the Sabbath, Elaezar Benananias, the leader of the Zealots and the titular head of the House of Shammai, pushed through the line of Zealots and walked to within twenty feet of the wall of the Upper City. He was dressed simply yet splendidly in a robe of pale blue, wide-sleeved and ankle-length, and he wore on his head the symbolic red stocking cap of the Maccabees; his costume almost identical with that one Menahem had worn to Berenice’s reception. For a while he stood in silence, arms akimbo, staring at the wall and at the Galileans who manned it; then he cupped his hands about his mouth and cried out:

  “Up there—whoever commands, I would speak with him! I am Elaezar, captain of the Zealots!”

  A few minutes, and then a tall young man came striding along the wall, stopped, facing Elaezar, and asked civilly enough what he could do for the captain of the Zealots?

  “Go to the nashi and tell him it’s time we spoke to one another face to face, the way two Jews should, and an end to this nonsense of Jew against Jew. Tell him to open a postern for me, and I will go in to him and his home.”

  “With how many guards?” the young officer demanded.

  “Alone, I say. Now go to the nashi, because I will not stand here on the Almighty’s Sabbath and bicker with you.”

  A little while later, the Demeter Postern—so-called because it was used in the old times by those who secretly worshiped the mother-god—was opened, and two of the splendidly armed Galilean troopers led Elaezar through to Berenice’s palace. A tremendous crowd had gathered from the Upper City to attempt to read something of their fate in Elaezar’s manner, but all they saw was the Zealot’s fascination with the horse soldier’s armor. Elaezar had become very armor-co
nscious during the past several weeks, and now he could not keep himself from fingering the cuirass of the man beside him to test its thickness and estimate its weight. There were any number of questions he would have liked to ask the young man, such as how it felt to wear the armor in intense heat and whether the weight of it had a debilitating effect—but the relationship of station hardly permitted it, and Elaezar walked along in silence.

  At the palace, Elaezar was taken to a rather small room Berenice and Shimeon were both fond of and where they spent many hours. This room was open to a spacious balcony that could be closed off with cane blinds; but when the blinds were drawn open, the balcony commanded a magnificent view of the sere mountains and lonely wadis of the South. It was a noble view from a noble site, and enviously Elaezar admitted as much. Here a table covered with a white cloth had been spread with fruit and wine and sweet cakes and a loaf of bread wrapped in a napkin. Shimeon asked Elaezar to be seated, unwrapped the flat disk of bread, and said to the Zealot,

  “Will you break bread with me—or do you come out of hatred?”

  “If we are going to talk, Shimeon,” Elaezar replied, leaning forward and tearing a piece from the bread, “then let it be like two sensible adults and not like a pair of street urchins who decide that one of them is of the House of Shammai and the other of the House of Hillel. Shall we say that we are both of the House of Israel?” He bit into the bread then.

  “I like that,” Shimeon nodded.

  “The bread is good.”

  Shimeon broke off a piece for Berenice and another for himself. “It’s the bread of life and not the bread of affliction,” Shimeon said as he poured wine for them. “Good bread and good wine—and love and companionship. That makes for a life that could be a good deal worse.”