It was nearly evening when I looked up to see a tall black Ethiopian standing in the doorway. He slowly advanced into the room, reed-slim in his long blue tunic. Stopping short of the couch, the physician held a cloth to his nose. “Was he was on the boat from Cypress?”
“Yes.” I nodded. “What is it? What’s wrong with him?”
“A foreign plague that has already killed hundreds. Victims die quickly—perhaps a blessing.”
Fear knotted my belly. “I will pay anything,” I said, reaching for my pouch.
“Money means nothing. Masters are as helpless as we who are their slaves.”
My heart dropped. I had waited so long for this man hoping that he might work some kind of magic. “You are only a slave?”
“Yes, my dominus rents me out.”
“But you do know something of medicine?”
He raised his chin proudly. “I was a doctor before my capture. The fee for a consultation is fifty sesterces.”
I pulled the coins from my pouch and handed them to him. “Heal him, damn you! Every second we waited for you, he has grown weaker. Will he live?”
The slave-physician shrugged. “Domina asks the impossible. A few will live, most will die. The gods decide.”
“There must be something you can do.”
“What have you given him to eat?”
“I fed him broth, but he vomited it up. He has been terribly thirsty but can keep nothing down.”
“Give him cabbage; or if he cannot swallow that, the urine of someone who has eaten cabbage.” When I looked up at him incredulously, he shrugged. “Some claim great success from that treatment.”
“There must be something else?”
“Try this,” he said, pulling a small packet from his bag. “It is dried horehound. Mix it with his wine. Force it down him. Keep him warm. That is all I can tell you except that you must guard your own strength. Everyone who came in on that boat has it. Most are already dead and now it has spread into the city.”
“What causes it?” I asked, following him to the door.
“Who knows?” The slave doctor shrugged again. “My Jewish dominus says it’s Yahweh’s punishment for our sins.”
“What kind of a god is that! What sins? All Holtan, all any of us, have ever done is merely struggle to stay alive.”
I ran back to Holtan, who was vomiting again. When I turned, the slave-physician was gone. “Close the drapes, build a fire,” I instructed Julian, who knelt beside the couch. “Then go downstairs, tell them to boil cabbage and make a broth of it. Bring wine. The doctor said some survive. Holtan is a fighter, he has got to be one of the lucky ones.”
Soon sweat poured off Holtan’s face. The sheet beneath him was soaked. I covered him with a heavy blanket. Julian returned with the cabbage broth and wine. I sent him back to the main hall to get food for himself. Pulling the damp hair from my neck, I skewered it on top of my head, then poured a cup of broth from the pitcher and resumed dribbling drops onto Holtan’s parched lips.
Hours passed. I looked outside for a brief moment and saw that the sky was pitch-black. When I turned, Holtan lay flat on his back, his eyes open, but unseeing. Frantically, I flung myself across him. My fingers clutched at his shoulders, still broad and powerful. “Holtan, Holtan, I won’t let you go,” I sobbed. Clinging to him, crying hysterically, I screamed curses and endearments.
“Claudia!” Holtan’s eyes opened. He shoved his hands into my hair, pulling my head back.
Sick with fear and shame I wiped away my tears. What awful things had I been saying—shouting?
“It is over,” he whispered. “I had…to see you, Claudia. Another time…somewhere…we will be together.” Wearily, he closed his eyes.
Holtan’s breathing grew so shallow, I could scarcely hear it. I pressed my ear against his chest and held him tightly. “Oh, darling, do not leave me,” I sobbed. My vision returned to me with sickening clarity. Why had I not heeded it? It was my fault that he had come to Caesarea, my fault that he was dying. “Please don’t leave me,” I begged, but his eyes remained closed. After a time, I slipped to the floor and sat with my head resting on the couch, one hand in Holtan’s.
“DOMINA?”
I jumped. Had I dozed off? Oh no! I stumbled stiffly to my feet, leaning over the couch. It was Julian who had spoken. He was beside me, a gently supportive arm about my shoulders. “Dominus is gone.”
“Noooooooooo!” I screamed. “He cannot die!”
I ran my fingers through Holtan’s sandy hair, down over his face. I kissed his lips, seeking his spirit, longing to draw it into me. Did anything of him remain? His lips were cold, so cold. “He died when I was asleep,” I sobbed. “I let him die alone. How could I have slept when he was so sick, when he needed me most?”
“You were with him, Domina. He knew that. If you had been with us on the ship, you would have seen many die, the strong as quickly as the weak. You stayed with him. There is nothing else that anyone could have done. Now you must leave—as he wanted you to do.”
“Leave?” I repeated blankly.
“Ajax will go with you to the palace. I will see to everything here. You must go. The sooner you get to back to Jerusalem, the better. That is what Dominus wanted.”
“Perhaps…yes.” I tucked the ruby into my coin bag and handed the pouch to him. “He would also want you and Ajax to have your freedom, to start new lives. This will make it easier.”
“Are you forgetting?” Julian asked. When I looked at him dumbly, he handed me a coin. “For Charon.”
I nodded gratefully and placed the coin under Holtan’s tongue. Of course, he must have his toll ready. Without it the ferryman would never row him across the Styx. If only I could go with him to the Underworld. My fingers moved once more over my lover’s face. Then turning, I left through the door that Julian had opened for me. Kitchen noises and the sound of a child’s laughter floated in the air. Released from the thick, heavy smell of the room, I breathed in the fresh morning breeze knowing that nothing for me would ever be the same.
AS MY CURTAINED LITTER MOVED DOWN THE STREETS, THE TREAD OF the bearers’ feet echoed eerily on the stone road, an unaccustomed sound in the normally teeming city. A chill passed through my body. When I cautiously parted the curtain, I saw that plague had changed Caesarea overnight. Vendors had vanished. Even the beggars were gone. Shops were closed, streets deserted but for a few darting figures who averted their eyes from one another.
With so little traffic, we reached the palace quickly, but found its gates closed and bolted. I had never seen it so. Even in Pilate’s absence the courtyard was always jammed with impatient, jostling supplicants eager to speak with any underling willing to hear their pleas or propositions.
Ajax and the bearers hammered with their fists, shouting loudly for admittance until the massive cedar door opened a crack. A guard peered out.
“Is this any way to greet your domina?” Ajax demanded.
Slowly the door swung open and a familiar figure appeared, all leather straps, clinking steel, and blood-red wool. I nodded to Gavius, captain of the palace guard. His greeting was deferential, his bow militarily correct, but the soldier’s eyes lingered a fraction too long on my face.
Do I look as bad as I feel? “Pay these men,” I instructed him.
Gavius accidentally dropped the coins as he approached the bearers, then backed away as they scrambled for them on the ground.
“Thank you, Ajax.” I took the slave’s callused hand in mine, looked into his eyes. “Go now, go quickly.”
“You as well, Domina. Leave this accursed city.”
I squeezed his hand, then turned and entered the palace. My legs felt leaden as I ascended the stairs to my apartment. So many stairs.
Leah, a young slave, appeared in the doorway. “Is Domina ill?”
I saw the fear in her eyes. “No! Not ill, just exhausted,” I hastily explained. “A banquet, much too much wine. Help me off with my things. I want to rest.”
&nb
sp; I stood woodenly as Leah removed my clothing. Outside, I heard the surf crashing against the cliffs. Waves of fatigue swept over me. I had the sense of standing in a whirlpool, the mosaic floor tipped toward me, the blues and greens of the frescoed room blending with the sea sounds swimming in my head. “Go now,” I instructed her. “I will call if I need anything.”
Once she left I flung myself on the couch. Bitter tears wracked my body. How could Fortuna have been so cruel? What sort of joke was it to match Holtan in a battle where his strength, courage, and skill meant nothing? “Why, Holtan, why?” I moaned softly over and over until at last I slipped into a deep, exhausted sleep.
When I opened my eyes, Holtan stood beside me, not the wan, helpless creature I had last seen, but the vigorous, confident man I loved so well. “Dearest! You have come for me,” I exclaimed, joyously holding out my arms.
Holtan shook his head, just beyond my grasp.
“Please don’t leave me again,” I begged, tears streaming down my face. I struggled to reach him, crying out as his form slowly faded. “Take me with you!”
An instant later Leah was at my side.
I stared at her in bewilderment. “The man who was here, where did he go?”
“Domina must have dreamed.”
“It was so real.”
“Nightmares often seem real,” Leah said, blotting the tears from my face. “Would Domina like me to stay with her?”
“Thank you, no. I have nothing to fear from that dream. Go, please, I want to sleep again.”
I closed my eyes, longing for death. Holtan waiting so near that I could almost touch him. Others, too, reaching out. Dear Germanicus, tall and handsome, armor gleaming. My joyous, laughing sister. Equals now in love, we have much to share. Mother, with her wise words and gentle warmth, is with me, and beside her Tata smiles proudly. How long since I felt the security of his embrace? Oh, Tata, I have missed you so! All the dear ones that I have lost. So close now. Holtan, dearest, I am coming…Somewhere far off the sound of sobbing. It is so good here, soft twilight, loved ones waiting to take me home. Why should anyone cry? Sobbing, still the sobbing. Who can it be?
And then I know.
A voice, strong and clear, echoes throughout the chamber. No, Claudia, death is not for you, not now. Your days on this earth will be many. Go back to Jerusalem. Go now.
The words of Isis. I know that, just as I know that it is she who has sent a vision of Marcella, the child of my body, still so small and dear, sobbing as though her heart would break.
It is dark when I open my eyes again to find Leah leaning over me. “You look much better, Domina. The banquet must be wearing off.”
I looked at her, puzzled, then remembered. “Oh yes—all that wine. I am better, much better. Please bring me fruit and water.”
“Anything else, Domina?”
“Yes, tell Gavius to ready a small guard and the fastest horses. At dawn I leave for Jerusalem.”
CHAPTER 38
My Vision
The moon had been up for hours. Tired to the bone, I prayed silently as the palace gates swung open. Isis, goddess of my faith, grant me the strength to do my soul’s work. Taking a deep breath, I urged my horse forward.
The courtyard was ablaze with torches as slaves ran to assist me. There was Rachel, waiting, wrapped in her night garb, a tremulous smile on her lips. “I have been watching for you from the parapet,” she said, her voice choked. “I prayed you would return.” Stiffly, I slid from the horse, all but falling. I clung to Rachel’s sturdy arms, struggling to hold back the tears I had fought throughout the long ride. “Holtan is gone—dead.”
“Domina!” She held me closer, whispering. “Did Dominus find out? Did he…?”
I shook my head. “Holtan died of plague.”
“Plague…so even he was not invincible. Are you all right?”
Fear flickered briefly in her eyes; I pulled away. “I am well—as well as I will ever be without Holtan. I want to see Marcella.”
“Domina, is that safe? The plague…”
In my weariness, I snapped at her. “Do you think I would have returned if I there was a chance that I carried it!” Seeing Rachel’s face, I softened. “For whatever reason, Isis chose to spare me. It was she who sent me home to Marcella.”
We left the courtyard and entered the palace, eerily quiet in the predawn. “It broke my heart the way Marcella kept crying for you,” Rachel said as we approached the nursery. “Dominus told her that you would be back soon. I was not so certain.”
I watched my sleeping daughter from the doorway. Marcella’s face was flushed and plump with health. She stirred and slowly opened her eyes. “Mama!” she murmured in a voice husky with sleep. I longed to rush forward, to sweep her into my arms, but held back. Tomorrow…“Yes, Mama’s home,” I said softly. “Sleep, my darling one.” Her outstretched arms dropped slowly as she drowsed.
Once out in the hallway, I asked Rachel about Pilate.
“Herod Antipas has come to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover. Dominus has gone to his palace to confer.”
I wondered briefly what new crisis kept the two men up so late. They were not friends. Only a thin veil of civility covered their suspicious aversion to each other. Pilate held Herod in contempt while fearing his popularity in Rome. The Jewish tetrarch wanted nothing more than to get my husband out of Judaea so that he might rule the country without a Roman presence as his father had done.
“I hope Pilate’s conference is serious enough to detain him all night,” I said as we reached the door to my chambers. “How can I answer his questions? I have lost all but Marcella. What if he knows about Holtan, what if he banishes me?” I sank wearily to a couch. “I am not ready to see Pilate; I am exhausted. The roads are clogged with pilgrims, thousands of them. You cannot imagine the dust, the noise. It was a nightmare. I must rest first.”
Rachel frowned as she undid the fastenings of my sandals. “Everyone is troubled this Passover season. So much has happened…”
“Please not now. The rumors can wait. I want only to sleep.”
“It is more than rumor. The news reached us yesterday from Rome. The Dominus Sejanus has been executed. Everyone is talking about it, speculating about the future. What, who will be next?”
“I do not believe it!” I exclaimed, startled out of my fatigue. “The second-most important man in Rome—in the world! Tiberius dotes on Sejanus.”
“No longer,” Rachel insisted, her voice lowered. “Jealous courtiers managed to come between them. Whether their stories of betrayal were truth or fiction, I know not, but the emperor believed them. He ordered Dominus Sejanus’s whole family killed.”
I gasped as though I had been struck. “What! All of them? Even little Priscilla?” Priscilla with her merry smile and bobbing curls was hardly more than a child. “It is against the law to execute virgins,” I reminded Rachel.
“She was not a virgin when the guards finished with her.”
I slumped down on the couch. Sejanus had been a kind man, to me at least. How well I remembered good-natured Apicata with her quips and tittle-tattle…Warm friends lost to me forever. “How much more can I bear?” I murmured, shaking my head wearily.
“Better to worry about your husband—and yourself,” Rachel advised. “The emperor is surely aware that Dominus was Sejanus’s man.”
A chill ran through me. Poor Pilate, as though he did not have enough to worry about already. Oh, Isis! What if it had been our child taken, our precious girl. No! I would not think about that, not tonight.
Rachel signaled to another waiting slave to prepare my bathwater. “The Dominus Sejanus’s overthrow is not all that has happened in your absence.”
“No more, please.”
Rachel looked up, a worried expression on her face. “This concerns the Domina Miriam.”
I caught my breath. “Very well, tell me.”
“She has come to the palace three times this very night begging to see you. The last time the domina wa
s sobbing openly.”
“Strange.” I turned away, unwilling to think what this new development might mean. I struggled to ignore the mounting fear. “What could Miriam want of me?” I wondered aloud. “I saw her riding with Jesus on the Jerusalem road less than a week ago. She looked like the happiest woman alive.”
“Then you would not recognize her,” Rachel murmured sadly. “Jesus has been arrested. It was Caiaphas’s doing,” she explained, slipping off my shift. “He and the other high priests are determined to get rid of Jesus.”
Sighing, I slipped into the bath. The warm, scented water seemed to sink into every tired pore. “That does not make sense,” I reasoned. “Why would those powerful priests bother with Jesus? He is merely an itinerant rabbi who possesses nothing and wants nothing.”
“I do not know,” Rachel said, shaking her head. “It is difficult to understand Jesus. He angers people because he confuses them. He had hardly entered Jerusalem before a crowd of Pharisees and Herodians accosted him. ‘Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar?’ their leader asked him.”
“Oh, Isis! There is no right answer to that one.”
“No,” Rachel agreed. “They wanted to trap Jesus.”
“I see. If he says yes, he loses Zealots like Simon and Judas who believe he was born to fight their cause. If he says no, Pilate can easily have him arrested. I suppose that is what happened, why he is in jail.”
“No, Jesus was clever. He asked for a coin and they gave him a denarius. Holding up the side with Tiberius’s picture on it, he said, ‘Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s.’ Then, turning the coin over, Jesus told them to ‘Render unto the Lord that which is the Lord’s.’”
I sat up in the tub feeling a little better. “That’s wonderful!” I exclaimed, “so like him. Pay the taxes. They mean nothing. His kingdom, the kingdom of love and equality, is not of this world.”
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