Nor could there have been a worse time for Vitas to enter Judea, not given what Florus needed to keep hidden from Rome.
Judea was a backwater, yet it had its riches to be plundered, as previous procurators had discovered. But it was far from the imperial courts, and for a century Rome had been accustomed to loud incessant complaints from the Jews, which meant that any complaints a new procurator generated did not seem unusual. In short, as long as a decent amount of taxes continued to flow from Judea to Rome, a corrupt procurator here could make a vast fortune, virtually untouched by the restraints of Roman law.
But Florus had been too greedy, worse still than his predecessor Albinus, and his recent abuses had gone too far. So far, in fact, that Florus desperately needed to find a way to cover up all his activities over the last eighteen months. He’d long anticipated an inquiry and had set aside considerable funds to bribe any representative sent by Caesar.
Any representative except for Vitas.
And from reports that Annas had gleaned from his extensive spiderweb of spies and passed on to Florus, Florus knew that Vitas had not intended to make this a public visit but a surreptitious one. Did it mean that Nero already had doubts about what had been happening in Judea?
Insperata accidunt magis saipe quam quae speres. Any other man but Vitas and any other time, and Florus would be totally safe from punishment by Nero. It wasn’t the atrocities against the Jews that Nero would find offensive, but the fact that Florus had been siphoning far more tax money than he sent to Rome.
Even so, Florus might narrowly be able to escape the punishment of Rome. The army in front of him was his solution.
Annas did not know it, of course, but he was a fool. He actually believed that he would receive the silver that Florus had promised.
Just as Annas was stupid enough to trust that Florus had come with an army for the sake of appearance. His warning about making sure the soldiers didn’t break rank and cause a riot outside the city walls? Florus appreciated it, simply because now he could tell a centurion to ride ahead with fifty horsemen and do everything possible to antagonize the Jews so that any report would make it look like they were the ones responsible for the riot he hoped would ensue.
Tomorrow Florus would have two cohorts in the city. And he had a plan to get another two cohorts inside. Then the balance of power within Jerusalem would tip in Florus’s favor, and he could assure himself of such turmoil in the land that he would be absolved of any blame for treating the Jews as harshly as he had.
Yet if Vitas gathered enough information in a short period of time . . . and if Vitas lived long enough to get back to Rome with that information . . .
At these thoughts, Florus felt a rumbling within the depths of his bulk and a spasm of his guts. He told himself it was not fear but something he had eaten the evening before. He never liked or fully trusted food cooked in encampments, and this was the price he paid for leaving the luxurious accommodation in Caesarea.
“Sebaste? Vitas is in Sebaste?” Florus said to Annas. “You assured me that . . .” He paused to lick his lips. His mouth was dry—too dry. And it wasn’t the heat of day up here in the mountains. “You assured me that he intended to go to Jerusalem and that he would see nothing of the countryside.”
Florus left the rest unspoken. That Vitas would see nothing of the havoc Florus wreaked on the people of the countryside. That he would hear no reports to indicate how much wealth Florus had been stealing from the Jews.
“You know that Ben-Aryeh’s assistant spies on him for me,” Annas said.
Florus nodded impatiently. Annas always found a way to brag about his arrangements.
“I’ve learned from him, since you and I last spoke, that Ben-Aryeh is in debt of some kind to Bernice, a debt that forced him to meet Vitas in Sebaste at her request.”
“Bernice and Vitas? That is new to me.”
“And to me,” Annas said. “I’ve just learned it from Ben-Aryeh’s assistant, who listened in on his conversation with Bernice. There’s an ex-gladiator in Jerusalem, a friend of Vitas. This ex-gladiator has served as a go-between for Vitas and Bernice, so no government officials would realize that she is helping him.”
“What could she gain from Vitas?”
“The right-hand man of Nero?” Annas countered.
Florus grunted acknowledgment of the obvious benefits for Queen Bernice.
“The real question,” Annas said, “is what does Vitas want from Bernice that he is prepared to owe her political favors?”
Florus grunted again. “And you will find that out for me?”
“That is why you need me, remember?”
Annas had become too confident. Which meant he had sensed that Florus was rattled by the name of Vitas.
“Perhaps you should remember that I’ve had occasion to order a soldier to split a man open,” Florus said. “At which point I step on one end of his entrails and force him to walk away with the rest unwinding behind like a rope.”
“I’m aware of those stories,” Annas said, probably not as calmly as he wanted to appear.
Florus enjoyed his petty revenge. “You’d be surprised at how far a man can walk like that. And how long it takes for him to die. It can be amusing actually, watching some try to pile everything back inside. One man—”
“Yes, yes,” Annas said. “I’m aware of those stories.”
Annas ran his fingers through his hair several times. To Florus, it was an annoying habit.
“I want to know what Vitas wants here in Judea,” Florus commanded. “Or better yet, I want him dead. Find someone to kill him in Jerusalem.”
“A murder in Jerusalem would seem suspicious, would it not?” Annas said. “On the other hand, you already have bandits watching and waiting for Ben-Aryeh. It is more than likely Ben-Aryeh will travel back from Sebaste with Vitas. Simply send them orders to kill Vitas also. To Rome, I’m sure, he’ll appear to be a tragic victim of random thieves.”
“Vitas . . . dead,” Florus agreed after a moment’s thought. “It does have a pleasant ring to it.”
“Remember, however, even the great Maglorius has aged and now serves our family. What would you rather be? Master or employed freedman?”
Valeria’s stepmother, Alypia, stood with Maglorius. Maglorius held Valeria’s stepbrother, Sabinus, who had been born about a year earlier to Alypia. Both Alypia and Maglorius gazed directly at Valeria.
It was an indication of Maglorius’s status in the household that Valeria felt regret that he had overheard the insult. She would have had no such concern about the feelings of any other of the servants, slave or not.
In the past, Maglorius might have erupted in sudden fury, something he’d been famous for, even when he’d been their slave, not a freedman. This, too, spoke of his status in the household. Any other would have been flogged for such an action, yet it was something he had done regularly since joining the household.
But Maglorius had changed in the last weeks. He seemed more at peace, and the simmering fury had disappeared. He smiled first at Sabinus, then turned to Valeria and spoke calmly. “Stultus est qui stratum, non equum inspicit . . . ,” he said.
After years among the Romans, he spoke almost without an accent. His prowess had taken him to arenas across the world, including the one in Smyrna where he’d survived a sword attack before retiring and accepting a contract with the Bellator family as a bodyguard.
His statement in the courtyard now pierced Valeria. “Stultus est qui stratum, non equum inspicit.” The man who inspects the saddle blanket instead of the horse is stupid.
“M-Maglorius,” Valeria stuttered, “I did not mean . . .”
“. . . stultissimus qui hominem aut veste aut condicione aestimat,” he finished. The corners of his mouth twisted upward slightly, to let Valeria know he was truly not angry as he completed his answer to the question she posed to Quintus about master or slave.
“Yes,” Alypia said, repeating the proverb that Maglorius had spoken, as if Valeria
were too dense to understand it without help. “The man who inspects the saddle blanket instead of the horse is stupid; most stupid is the man who judges another man by his clothes or circumstances.”
But Valeria did not need her stepmother’s help. She’d understood full well what Maglorius had meant. Master or slave or freedman serving the wealthy—each was simply a condition of fate.
Valeria felt her cheeks burn, and she wanted to squirm at Maglorius’s gentle reproving of her rash question to Quintus. There was something about Maglorius and the way he gave her his attention, something that she could never quite define, something that made her secretly wish he was a Roman of dignified descent and she was a woman of another household. Maglorius always treated her with dignity and respect. She adored the way he showed love to Quintus, too, as if Quintus were his own son. Maglorius who had fashioned Quintus toys by carving them out of wood. Maglorius who had mesmerized her with tales of faraway lands and of noble warriors. Maglorius who was so gentle with the baby Sabinus he now held.
“Of course,” Alypia continued archly, “if Maglorius were a better man, he would resist using Latin in a way that makes his barbarian heritage obvious. Disgraced soldier, slave, gladiator, freedman, and now bodyguard. His airs are pretentious and fool nobody.”
Valeria did not know what had come over her stepmother in the last weeks. She’d changed too. Alypia was irritable and almost vicious in most of her remarks about Maglorius. She had begun treating Sabinus meanly, leaving the little boy in the charge of servants and slaves. Maglorius, in turn, had simply shrugged off her barbs and given extra attention to the little boy.
Just as now. Maglorius turned and began walking away from Alypia.
“Come back,” Alypia said to Maglorius. “You haven’t told me what request the messenger from the royal palace brought to you.”
“It is of no concern to you,” he said.
“So,” Alypia said bitterly, “the rumors I’ve heard about you and Queen Bernice are true?”
Valeria was startled. Maglorius and Queen Bernice? That filled her with dismay. Bernice was the most beautiful woman in Jerusalem. If the rumors were true, how could Maglorius resist her?
“My affairs with Bernice are of no concern to you,” Maglorius repeated.
Alypia waved him away, apparently weary of argument. Valeria knew better. Whenever her stepmother lost an argument, she pretended she didn’t care in the first place.
Maglorius moved to Quintus and, still holding Sabinus, murmured a few instructions on using the wooden swords. Quintus appeared happy to try the new moves.
Alypia pointed the slave, who had been standing discreetly at the edge of the courtyard, toward Valeria.
The slave set the tray of food down on the couch beside Valeria and bowed slightly before escaping the courtyard and the argument that was sure to follow.
“Eat,” Alypia commanded her stepdaughter.
Alypia was now thirty. Her hair was naturally dark, matching Valeria’s, but like many other Roman women, she wore a blonde wig made from the hair of slaves from northern Gaul. Her fingers were full of ornate gold bands, her earrings made of bunches of emerald beads. On each wrist was a gold bracelet formed into the shape of a snake. There was no mistaking her wealth or her position as the wife of a high-ranking Roman administrator.
“Eat,” she commanded again.
“Oh, Mother,” Valeria said, rising and throwing her arms around Alypia’s neck, “thank you so very, very much for releasing me from the bondage of an arranged marriage.”
“I have done no such thing.” Alypia pushed herself loose from her stepdaughter’s embrace and forced Valeria back onto the couch.
Valeria pretended surprise. “I don’t understand. You asked me to eat.”
“It was not a request. It was a demand.”
“But, Alypia—” Valeria kept the same pretended surprise in the tone of her voice—“you know my vow. I’ll starve myself to death before I allow myself to be sent to Rome to marry an old man. Why would you ask me to eat if I am still expected to do this?”
“Don’t play games with me,” Alypia said.
Valeria dropped her act. “This is not a game. I would rather die than marry against my will.”
Even as she spoke, Valeria felt her mouth water at the sight of the bread and the honey and the fruit.
“Child, child, child,” Alypia said.
“Obviously I am not a child if I am expected to become a wife.”
“You are a child if you refuse to acknowledge the ways of the world. A woman must marry well. From within the marriage, there are ways of persuading a husband to do what the wife wants, without the husband knowing he is receiving such guidance. And ways for a wife to find pleasure outside the marriage.”
Valeria closed her eyes. She knew what her stepmother would recite next. That no Roman father would let a child, let alone a daughter, dictate his decisions. That Roman women were helpless unless married. That a Roman marriage was simply a contract of convenience, often broken if something more convenient arose. That Romans feared and ridiculed the concept of consuming love.
Yet . . .
What was it she felt for Maglorius? Something so deep and profound, something that she must keep hidden at all costs. Something—
A slap across her face jolted Valeria from her reverie.
“Listen to me, child!”
Valeria was stunned. Not once had her stepmother ever struck her. Valeria brought her hand to her face in disbelief, lightly touching the skin of her cheek that was hot with pain.
“I will not apologize,” Alypia said. “You are foolish to refuse to eat.” She smiled unpleasantly. “After all, most stupid is the man who judges another man by his clothes or circumstances. Accept what life has given you, just like your hero Maglorius has.” Alypia let the word hero drip with sarcasm.
“Like Maglorius,” Valeria said, “I refuse to live a life of falsehood, manipulating the people around me to suit my selfish will.”
Alypia’s eyes narrowed with an emotion close to hatred. “Is this what you think of me? False and manipulative?”
Valeria let her silence be the answer.
“As for false and manipulative,” Alypia said, “there are things about Maglorius that would surprise you greatly. He . . .” She stopped herself.
“He what?”
Alypia glanced to the corner of the courtyard, where Maglorius squatted beside Quintus.
“He what?” Valeria persisted. “If you are going to make accusations . . .”
“Silence, child,” Alypia hissed. “You have everything. Wealth, position, and whatever your heart desires.”
“To have an old man touch me like a lizard crawling across my skin?” Valeria asked. “How repulsive. You want me to accept my fate because that is exactly what you chose. If you can’t be happy you don’t want anyone else to be—”
This time, Valeria’s eyes were open. She saw her stepmother raise her hand. Valeria accepted the blow with defiance and did not touch her stinging cheek. She stared resolutely at her stepmother for several moments, then leaned forward, lifted the tray of food, and turned it over, letting the dishes crash into pieces on the courtyard floor.
Ben-Aryeh caught up with Vitas just before he reached Sebaste’s city gates. He discovered that Vitas didn’t even have a servant to help him with the two donkeys. “You travel alone,” Ben-Aryeh said.
Vitas was in the process of mounting one donkey. A rope tied the second to the first. “Except for these two.” Vitas indicated the donkeys. Smiled. “Good listeners, both of them.”
“What of the servant I saw with you in the market?”
“Someone I found in the city to watch the donkeys while I looked for you.”
“I see,” Ben-Aryeh said. He glanced down the road, where it disappeared around the curve of a hill barren of trees. There was no way around it. Florus was in Jerusalem! Getting to Jerusalem as soon as possible outweighed his pride.
“I’d l
ike to travel with you,” Ben-Aryeh said. He waited for the Roman to remind him that barely an hour earlier he’d given a couple of insulting reasons why he had no intention of sharing the journey.
Vitas surprised him with graciousness. “I’m glad you changed your mind. You take this donkey then. The other one has a habit of setting its feet down hard, as if it knows how to hurt a man’s back.”
“Are you suggesting that I am too old to deal with—?”
“You’re my guest,” Vitas said. “It’s that simple.”
Again, graciousness when Ben-Aryeh was determined to be rude. Ben-Aryeh hoped that the Roman would soon give him reason to dislike him again.
They departed Sebaste.
Together.
The Seventh Hour
To meet Maglorius, Queen Bernice had smudged her face with dirt and grease and bound her hair tightly. She’d thrown on the loose clothing of a man and covered her head and face with as much of her headcovering as possible. She’d worn clothing that the Greeks preferred, and since Greeks were clean-shaven, her lack of a beard aided in her disguise.
She felt vaguely ridiculous, disguising herself in this manner, as if she were playing a child’s game or rather what she imagined children might have played, for the memories of her own childhood consisted of continuous doting by various servants and no time alone or with other children.
Yet she saw no other way to accomplish what she felt necessary, and she was gambling that among the thousands who moved through the Court of the Gentiles, there would be no particular reason for anyone to examine her too closely.
Still, because of her disguise and because she had no servants or bodyguards in attendance, she felt vulnerable and exposed as she walked down Solomon’s Porch. It was a tremendously long covered porch—roughly a quarter of a mile—with hundreds of columns and arches, running north and south at the eastern perimeter of the Temple Mount.
Shaded from the sun, the man she sought stood as arranged, beneath the fifth arch of Solomon’s Porch, counted from the southeast corner. As she’d also arranged, he carried two empty turtledove cages and leaned against one of the marble columns that supported that arch.
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