Agrippa's Daughter

by Fast, Howard

  And the Jews celebrated differently. They said the Kaddish, the ancient prayer for the dead. Wherever the news came, they gathered together, in homes and in synagogues, and they said the prayer for the dead. They said it at the House of Hillel. Berenice gathered with all the others under the terebinth tree, and as the setting sun touched the western hill, they spoke in unison, men and women and children, “Increase and make holy His mighty name in this world which is His creation as He willed it. May He build His kingdom in your lifetime, in your good days, in the lifetime of the House of Israel—quickly and soon.”

  They said. Amen, and then they wept. The whole world was weeping, Berenice felt. It was one thing for a city to die; it was another thing for a city to murder itself. When the Rabbi Hillel Bengamaliel, leading the service, said to them, “The Zealots are dead. We will pray for them,” Berenice could abide it no longer. Many things she would do, because the only meaning life had for her was the meaning the House of Hillel had given to it, but she would not pray for the Zealots and she would not mourn for the House of Shammai.

  She walked away, and no one tried to halt her. This at least was her privilege. She walked away and up the hillside to where Shimeon was buried. But again, as before, this brought her none of the peace or comfort she yearned for.

  Agrippa came to the House of Hillel bringing three men with him. One was Anat Beradin, the wool merchant and onetime sponsor of Polemon, the king of Cilicia, who had died almost eight years ago. Beradin was old, past seventy, but dry and sound as a nut and alert, with clear eyes and a clear mind. The second of the three men was Gideon Benharmish, who was the head of the great House of Shlomo, who ruled over an empire of fishermen from Alexandria to Tarsus and whose ships with their Phoenician crews traded from Caesarea to Cornwall. And the third man was Jacobar Hacohen, that strange, round-faced, pale-eyed Jew of mysterious antecedents, who admitted to no paternal name yet insisted that three quarters of his bloodline was priestly, and who had once been the greatest Jewish banker in Jerusalem—and perhaps in the world. He had departed Jerusalem before the civil war broke out, being of the party of Hillel, and had withdrawn his resources too. He was a stony-faced, angular man, past sixty, with a haughty eagle’s beak of a nose. It was said that there was no city in the civilized world where he could not immediately command half a million shekels on demand.

  These three men came with Agrippa to see Berenice. They were welcomed as all were welcomed who came to the House of Hillel; and then in the shade of the terebinth tree they were given food and fruit and cold wine—and then left alone with Berenice and her brother-in-law, Hillel. They had already offered their sympathies and condolences to Berenice, and now Jacobar Hacohen said to her,

  “We must understand, hard though it may be, that a city has died—not a people, only a city. True, a great and ancient and holy city, but still only a city—”

  “Only a city?” Berenice raised a brow. “Is it only a city that dies? I shed no tears over brick and stone or even over the Holy Temple, for we of Hillel are not taught that God is a thing that can live in a temple—or be worshiped there; but I was in Jerusalem while it was dying—I was there. I tell you, Jacobar, people died. Not a city.”

  “If I express myself poorly—”

  “No, no, no,” said Benharmish. “We must understand each other—because there is no disagreement. If we don’t mourn with every word, it is because the present necessity is not for mourning but for something else. May I say something about Jerusalem?”

  “Please,” Berenice agreed. “Please. And if I appear churlish, it is only because I have been so long alone, with no companions except my grief.”

  “We have all made companions of grief,” Beradin nodded.

  “All right,” said Benharmish, “we will talk to the point of Jerusalem—not as priests or prophets, nor politically nor in judgment. We leave that to others. Specifically, we are men of affairs, and your brother, Agrippa, called us to him precisely because we are men of affairs. We have each of us been of some service to him in the past, and perhaps now, together, we can still effect something—”

  “That is well put,” said Jacobar Hacohen. “Do you see, Queen Berenice? I am better with numbers than words, and you must not have a sense of indignation about me.”

  “I have no sense of indignation about you,” she replied gently. “I was petulant, that’s all. I frequently am.” She touched Benharmish on the arm. “Go on, old friend.”

  “All right. Now there is a situation in Jerusalem that we must approach as men of affairs. Mind you—there are no certainties in what I say, but I think my figures are realistic and make sense. Other figures are very unrealistic and make little sense. Firstly—what was the population inside the walls of Jerusalem when Titus began his direct attack on the city? A million? Nonsense! There never were a million souls in Jerusalem—not if they slept ten to a room could the city have held a million. I would guess that its normal population—if such a city as Jerusalem was has a normal population; and I put this in terms of the tens of thousands who constantly come and go—well, a normal population of four hundred thousand. Then it increased—well, say, to half a million when the civil war in the city began. During the civil war, a hundred thousand left—escaped or somehow made their way out of the city. During the two years of the civil war another hundred thousand perished from violence, disease, starvation—leaving three hundred thousand to a quarter of a million when the city was attacked. I think the lower figure is more nearly accurate—and of these I estimate that at least a hundred thousand perished in the fighting of the past few months, killed by the Romans most of them, and others by Bargiora—who is now a prisoner in the hands of the Romans. And what does this mean? It means that in his slave pens and in the slave pens of his Greek and Syrian dealers, Titus holds captive perhaps a hundred and fifty thousand Jews.”

  He paused to let his words sink in, looking from face to face, and then continued softly, “Gentlemen and Queen Berenice—we Jews have been accused of arrogance to a fault, perhaps not without reason. We despise too many things that the pagans hold dear or sacred, but of the fact that we despise funerary cults—of this I have never been ashamed or apologetic. Since we came out of Egypt, fourteen hundred years ago, we have turned our eyes and our thoughts away from that accursed nation that is obsessed with the worship of death and the dead. We do not worship the dead—or feed them, or sacrifice to them, or brood over them. Our obligation is to the living—and only with the living are we concerned. Our problem is no longer those who perished in Jerusalem—but those who survived. Those are Jews who live and suffer. Each of us here had relatives in Jerusalem. Of the House of Shlomo, there were fourteen in Jerusalem, my youngest brother, his wife, my cousin and her husband, an old woman, a great-aunt, and children—the rest were children. How many are alive? I don’t know—but who is alive must be saved. They are our responsibility, and no others will lift a finger to help Jews. Do you agree?”

  No one disagreed, and then Barharmish turned to Jacobar Hacohen and said, “You have thought about this?”

  “A great deal,” Jacobar replied. “Last week, a slave was sold in the market at Tyre. Tyre is a very interesting and important market, for it provides immediate shipment by water to Italy, Africa, Phrygia, and the islands and mainland of Greece. Quick, cheap shipment. This particular slave was twenty-three years old, male, healthy, ungelded. He was bid and sold at the normal price—eight hundred and twenty sesterces. This, mind you, was a field slave with no house talents, no trade or cooking or ability for management or teaching. Illiterate. But quite strong, well fed, with all his teeth. Now our Jews will not be well fed and not so desirable and the market will be cluttered and very bad. So let us say, all things considered and including the fact that a good-looking woman fetches a very nice price indeed—well, let us say five hundred sesterces per person. To do the arithmetic quickly, averaging the price of a talent of silver at this moment in—if you wish, seven cities where markets are maintained�
�and calculating in the Attic talent, not the Judaic talent, then we have the possibility of purchasing fifty slaves for a talent-weight of silver. Or gold, as you see our potential—and over all—well, if I were to accept Benharmish’s estimation of the number of slaves, which I believe is somewhat inflated—we would require three thousand talents of money—gold or silver, that is an equation of the two metals; and that is providing that we can keep our intentions a secret and find sufficient trustworthy pagan front to bid at our behest—” His voice trailed away, and he shook his beaked, craggy head in sober doubt.

  “You mean to buy the captives?” Berenice whispered.

  It had taken on the air of a conspiracy, and Agrippa replied, talking as softly, “Exactly.”

  “There is no such sum of money,” Hillel said sadly. “How I wish there were. It’s impossible.”

  “Oh no—not at all,” Benharmish said flatly.

  “You see, my dear Hillel,” Beradin explained, “you are right, and you are also wrong. If we were Romans, we could throw up our hands in despair and admit that such an amount is impossible to raise. I doubt whether Titus will realize anything on the slaves, once the dealers are through cheating him. He will have a great deal of loot, but only a fraction of it will accrue to him—and that sum will be at best less than a hundred talents. The Romans are poor merchants, poor businessmen. Essentially, they are looters—looters on a scale never known before; and in this is the seed of their ultimate fate. You cannot operate an empire on robbery as a first principle. Their knights, their merchants and businessmen, are always puzzled as how to make a distinction between trade and thievery. But when you are a thief, your profits flow to the fence who is your middleman, and the Roman nobility—as they seem to style themselves, proud as peacocks over a bloodline that goes back three generations—this nobility is always begging, always in poverty. No—they could hardly raise three thousand talents on short notice. They have not learned yet that if you buy a city and sell it at a nice profit, you do better than the robber who burns it and then attempts to loot the ashes. Like all who disdain commerce, they are inordinately greedy, and since they only consume, they have no credit.”

  “And we have?” Benharmish snorted.

  “I think so,” Beradin nodded. “Don’t you, Jacobar?”

  “It’s not easy,” the banker said. “Just don’t believe that it’s easy—or that there isn’t many a wealthy Jew who won’t see those poor devils in hell before he’ll part with a shekel.”

  “I’ll part with everything I have!” Berenice cried. “Surely my wealth is a thousand talents!”

  “Indeed, Queen Berenice,” the banker agreed, “and much more, I am sure. But your wealth is not in talents of precious metal—is it?”

  “I have palaces, land, jewels—and gold too.”

  “But is there a market for palaces at this moment? A quick sale means a poor price—or no price at all. Someone who desires to sell a palace must be prepared to wait a year or five years for a buyer—or to give it away.”

  “Then what?” Agrippa asked bewilderedly. “I had often thought that my wealth is enormous, but when you state the practical and immediate need of three thousand talents—I just don’t know. I always keep two or three talents of gold at hand—you know, you can hire ten thousand mercenaries for at least three months with that much gold. And immediate—just how immediate?”

  “Now,” said Benharmish. “Now. That’s how immediate.”

  “Now look here,” Jacobar told them, “there is no need for panic on the part of anyone—because we will raise the money.” And turning to Berenice, “And as for you, my dear, may the Almighty bless you. We will not sell your houses and your land. But if you wish, we will mortgage them.”

  “Mortgage them?”

  “Yes—by that, I mean that I can put them up as security. Let us suppose that you have a palace worth twenty talents. I will go to a certain friend of mine and say to him, lend me ten talents and I will secure the loan with a palace belonging to the Queen Berenice—a palace worth twice what I lend you.”

  “But if you should fail him, and I can’t sell the palace for ten talents?”

  “Then you will mortgage it to someone else. No need to sell it ever. The value is locked into it—and you can mortgage it again and again, paying off one with another, providing you have the cost of the mortgage itself. But what of you?”—turning to Benharmish. “Surely the great House of Shlomo can raise a thousand talents.”

  “Of fish, yes—of gold, no,” Benharmish growled. “You don’t mortgage ships, because no one will lend you a shekel on that kind of security. Yes—yes, I could raise a thousand talents—give me a year to do it. And let me tell you this, Jacobar—Croesus himself could not go into his treasure house and weigh out a thousand talents. Nor could Vespasian, the emperor. Nor could Titus. Nor can this particular Jew. I can do something—give me thirty days, and I will pledge you two hundred talents, give me sixty days, and I will pledge you five hundred.”

  “A moment ago, you said now. Immediately—now.”

  “I said it.”

  “What can you do now?”

  “I will have a hundred talents of bar and money tomorrow—perhaps a hundred and fifty. Our house in Tarsus and Chalcis will send another hundred—enough to buy a kingdom.”

  “Or twelve thousand Jewish slaves, maybe fifteen thousand. What about you, Beradin?”

  “Now?”

  “Tomorrow—the next day—a week?”

  “I am a merchant. I don’t accumulate gold, I use it.”

  “We all use it. How much do you have on deposit—five hundred talents?”

  “Two hundred—three hundred if you include silver and property. But it’s spread among fifty cities between here and Nicaea—over three thousand miles of camel road.”

  “Then borrow.”

  “With what security?” Beradin demanded. “I have no palaces or plantations—”

  “You have your good name.”

  “Thank you,” Beradin said caustically. “So I will borrow ten talents on my good name—no, no, we are going about this the wrong way, Jacobar. I can recall no occasion where the speedy raising of such a sum was required—and we sit here, a handful of Jews, and attempt to think it into being. No. This must be an effort of all the Jews the world over, Italy and Spain and Greece and Egypt, not to mention Anatolia. And let me tell you something else, if you will. There is no market for a hundred and fifty thousand slaves; and who is to say that there are not two hundred thousand of them? No market. If they are worth three thousand talents at a depressed price—where is that money to come from to go into the slave market? You don’t buy slaves with promissory notes. You need gold or silver coinage—and there is no such amount of coinage available—if indeed in circulation. We sit here as rich men and estimate our wealth. I have no faith in Jacobar’s proposition for mortgaging property. Who will lend on such property? Jews. So we take it out of one pocket and put it into another. Do you know what I think?”

  “All right,” the banker snapped. “What do you think?”

  “I think that as soon as the major slave dealers—the really big commission merchants—can come to some agreement among themselves, they will fix a price and a number. I mean that if they set a price of seven hundred sesterces, then—to grasp at a figure—they will propose a market of fifty thousand souls. This will give them an opportunity to select the very best specimens, and all the rest will be slaughtered, crucified, sold in the games, put to death for the edification of the crowds.”

  The others shook their heads.

  “No?” Beradin asked. “I think you had best face it. Who ever heard of a hundred and fifty thousand slaves in the market? Did they ever do it with the Germans or the Gauls or the Spanish—and who is to say that they love the Jews more? No, I am afraid we are very much the hated ones. Yes—yes, I agree that eventually we can put our hands on a sum of money to add up to three thousand talents—and it will mean that every Jewish community in the w
orld must be involved. But meanwhile, either we act or we will never need the money.”

  In the silence that followed Beradin looked from face to face. Only Berenice responded, and she nodded and said, “I know what you mean.”

  “I am not intruding or gossiping when I say that I know he loves you. This does not impugn you. No secret has been made of it.”

  “I know.”

  “Or that you do not love him.”

  “I will do what I can,” Berenice said. “What I can—because I am not like a servant of myself, and I don’t know what I can do.”

  “The important thing is for him to stay his hand—give us time.”