Judas

by Frederick Ramsay

  “Judas, please. I cannot do any more than I am already. I suffered worse things, and here I am. Dinah, pay attention to Mummy, you can’t just mope about.”

  “Mother, she is only ten. They hurt her and…she didn’t know…”

  “Judas, this is about what women do. You have no idea. Dinah, speak up. Say something.”

  She never spoke.

  Chapter Eight

  There were other children like Dinah and me in the House of Darcas. Most of them were part of what the house offered in the atrium, competing with the women. Apparently, I was too ugly to be of much use, but Darcas wanted Dinah. She pestered Mother constantly for her to join the other children in the atrium.

  “She would be very popular, because of her eastern looks and that golden hair. I could get a very good price for her,” Darcas said and eyed Dinah with one of her shall-I-buy-or-not looks.

  We needed the money. Darcas repeatedly increased her rents and what she charged for food. Some of the women could not pay, and were forced to leave or, if they wished to stay, indentured themselves. Most of them were simple country girls from the hills—girls whose parents or lovers left them to fend for themselves. They did not know enough to survive. Most of them did not even know their way home. Off and on, Darcas had a dozen slaves, which were very profitable for her. Some she worked to death, some she sold. I think Darcas had in mind to make slaves of us, too.

  Our lot grew worse when the agents sent by the House of Leonides arrived. I saw the men speaking to Darcas, big men with eyes of ice, men who exuded power and confidence. I could see her talking and gesticulating the way she did when she was excited. They had followed our trail from Caesarea. Someone told them a woman and her children, a prostitute and her brood, was the way it was put, had sailed for Corinth. They scoured the waterfront and then the brothels. They planned to bring us their own form of justice. Leonides, it seemed, told us the truth about his family. I suppose Darcas found the reward too meager to give us up. But, from that day on, she owned us.

  ***

  Once, Darcas brought a man to our room.

  “You, boy,” she said, “I need you to go to the herbalist and bring back a package for me.” She handed me a coin and gave me a shove toward the door.

  I did not go. I hid in the shadows in the corridor. When Dinah screamed, I ran back into the room. She was curled up in as small a ball as she could make, her arms wrapped around her head. The man was very angry and hitting and yelling in a tongue I did not understand. He yanked at her legs and arms. Darcas reached toward Dinah. The expression on her rat-face frightened me. She tried to pinion Dinah’s arms. I drew my knife and stepped toward the man.

  “Never mind,” Darcas said, catching her breath and looking at me and then at my knife. Whether she thought I would use it or not, I do not know, but the thought of bloodshed in her house seemed enough to stop her.

  “I have another girl who is a virgin and who will fight you, too,” she said to the man, scowling at me.

  They left, he complaining and she wheedling and apologizing.

  I shook all over. So did Dinah. I held her in my arms until Mother came back to our room in the morning.

  “Darcas will never do it again. She has promised,” Mother said later.

  “I don’t believe her. We have to do something. We have to get away from here.”

  “And just how do you plan to do that?”

  I did not have an answer for her.

  ***

  The city of Corinth is located on a thin peninsula that separates the Ionian Sea from the Saronic Gulf. It is really three cities, Cenchrea, its southern or eastern port, Lechaeum, its northwestern port, and the city that bears its name, which lies between the two, but closer to Lechaeum. Connecting all three and dividing the peninsula in half is a broad paved road, the Diolkos, a tramway that joins the two seas. The Diolkos is a miracle of engineering, as wonderful as anything in the empire, they say. Many years ago an attempt was made to dig a canal from one coast to the other but abandoned.

  The bit of completed canal shallows out abruptly. Smaller boats maneuver right up to the Diolkos and onto rollers and marvelous machinery, and then onto land still completely laden. Enormous teams of oxen are brought, hitched up, and the ship and all of its trappings are transported the four and a half miles to the other coast. Ships too large for the rollers transfer their cargo onto pack animals and send it to Corinth or northward to the opposite coast where it is loaded onto another ship headed west. Of course, large ships, heavy merchantmen, and ships of war sail around the Pelopennisos, but small coastal trading ships can be carried overland. It is a dry land canal complete with walls, which keep the way clear for boat traffic. They say the Diolkos in Corinth determines the size and shape of all the trading boats in this part of the world, so profitable is this shortcut.

  ***

  During the day, I wandered about the marketplace, the agora, looking for ways to get us free. One day while out exploring, I met Gaius. His mother worked in a house a short distance from ours.

  “Why are you on the streets?” I asked. “You could work in the atrium.” He was certainly handsome enough.

  “Not me, not anymore. No more fat, sweaty men are going to have me that way ever again,” he said, eyes flashing. “Besides, there is more money to be made on the streets than in the atrium.” He showed me a fistful of coins.

  “Where?” I wanted to see this gold mine of his. He motioned me to follow and we crossed the Diolkos and walked to the agora.

  Cenchrea’s agora is splashed across the width of the city beside the Diolkos. It is a grand sight with hundreds of gaily canvassed stalls and thousands of people moving about, bumping into one another, buying and selling. People bargain with their hands and voices, especially with their voices, yelling at each other at the top of their lungs. When the yelling reaches its shrillest, the sale is made.

  “Watch,” Gaius said, and slipped into the crowd.

  I watched. He made his way toward a man shopping alone. Most people who regularly shopped in the agora knew it was best to come in twos and threes. But there were always a few who believed they could take care of themselves and a few who simply did not know any better and shopped alone.

  Gaius, his knife tucked up his sleeve, sidled up to the man. In one quick motion, he cut the purse strings at the man’s belt. As it fell, he grabbed it, and darted into the crowd. He was lucky. No one tried to stop him. A few moments later he was back at my side. He had more money in his hand than I had seen since the morning I lifted the sculptor’s purse. He was right about one thing—more money could be made in the streets than in the House of Darcas.

  “You should try it,” he said. His face was flushed and I could see his heart racing.

  “How many times have you done that?”

  “Five or six.”

  “I will think about it,” I said, tempted.

  “Suit yourself, but thinking won’t make you rich.”

  I stayed in the market to see if anyone else had discovered Gaius’ secret. I saw dozens of boys like me, like Gaius, slipping through the crowd. All of them had indeed discovered his path to riches. I decided to study them. I would go to school, the school of the streets.

  This is what I learned: All of those boys had dangerous cuts and bruises on their heads, arms, and legs from the near misses, the beatings they endured when they failed in their attempts at robbery, or when they slipped, trying to avoid their victim’s staffs, cudgels, and kicks. The wounds were dangerous because the filth that collected in the city where we lived made it only a matter of time before the wounds festered and, perhaps, killed with the green poison.

  Gaius had been lucky, either a genius at picking his victims, or his gods smiled on him. As for the rest, I watched as one boy edged up to a man bargaining for some sandals. Just as he stretched out his hand to cut loose a fat purse, its owner brought the hard knob of his staff across the boy’s wrist. Unless I missed something, that boy had a broken wrist to
go with his cuts and bruises. The people laughed at his shrieking. The man who struck him aimed a kick at his backside and sent him sprawling in the dirt. I would look elsewhere.

  For children without families, position, or influence, work in the atria is safer. There you would grow old in a hurry, even succumb to one of the diseases that come with that life, but you would not die bleeding, shivering, and alone in an alley, to be thrown on a dung heap and hauled off like so much manure before your sixteenth year.

  On the east end of the Diolkos, the empire was not so bright, not so grand.

  Chapter Nine

  Each day our situation grew worse. I helped out a little by running errands, polishing brassware, and scrubbing up after the cooks. But it was not enough. Mother got sick several days a month. Darcas kept up her insistence that Dinah be brought to the atrium. I sensed Mother weakening. She did not want to do it, but we were running out of ideas and time. Dark circles were beginning to appear under her eyes, circles that had to be covered with more and more paint. She looked worn out. One day when I saw her resolve beginning to crack, I said, “Let me go to the atrium. Don’t send Dinah.”

  “Judas, Sweet, Darcas doesn’t want you. She wants pretty boys and young girls like Dinah.”

  “If you send her there, she will die,” I said, frustrated and angry.

  “Judas, it is not your decision. I am her mother and I will decide. It shall be as the Lord directs.”

  “The Lord? Why is it always your god? What sort of god do you bow to, who allows these things to happen?”

  “You hold your tongue.”

  “Mother, look at us. Look at what we have become. Think of what you are about to do.”

  Mother and I were becoming enemies. I did not wish it, but it was so. Dinah heard us arguing. I did not know if she understood, but the frown on her face made me think she did.

  “Mother, wait a month. If we can’t find something in a month…” I did not finish. Why make Dinah worry.

  “One month? What can you do in a month? Judas, you are just a boy.”

  ***

  I spent a lot of time in the agora. With all the money that changes hands in that place I figured there must be something I could do besides cutting purses. Nearly all the merchants had boys working in their stalls with them. Twenty times I asked to be hired and always got the same reply, “Sorry.” The boys working in the stalls were sons or nephews. But one man, a seller of copperware, had no son. He had a hired boy. At the time, I believed him to be the luckiest boy in the world.

  “Do you need another boy?” I asked.

  “No. The only time I hire boys is when one disappears.”

  “How often does that happen?”

  “About every six months or so, but so far I have been lucky. This boy has been with me a year.”

  I followed the boy for over a week. I kept thinking, “If something were to happen to him, I could take his place with the seller of copperware. If something were to happen…”

  ***

  I do not know how it came about. People flooded the streets to celebrate one of their gods’ or goddesses’ days. The street boys were busy plying their trade. When it got crowded like that, they could cut purses with relative ease. Escape became more difficult, but as the crowd shifted and moved, they did not have to go so far to be safe. So Gaius and his friends were at work, and I shadowed the boy.

  We stood on the edge of the wall where the Diolkos shelved into the sea. There were no railings, only bollards and bronze rings set in the stone for the ships and barges to moor to while they waited their turn to be hauled out of the water and rolled north. If you were not careful, if you did not watch your step, you could easily trip and fall. I moved closer to the boy. He stood between me and the work I needed. He had no sister out of her senses, no mother who daily grew older and less able to function. That is what I told myself as I watched him out of the corner of my eye.

  The priests from the temple of whatever god they celebrated that day paraded past. Trumpets blared. Banners snapped and swirled around and the sheer number of marchers forced the bystanders to move back out of the way and pressed us closer to the Diolkos. I heard a shout from the left. Someone nearly fell. People laughed and hauled a man back to safety, grinning and looking embarrassed. The shoving and pushing continued. Suddenly, the boy disappeared. He was there and then he was gone. I heard a thud and the sound of a wooden crate splintering, followed immediately by a scream. The parade passed on and the people surged forward again. I turned and looked down.

  The boy lay moaning on the deck of a small coastal trader moored at the foot of the wall. He must have hit the crate first because straw, slats, and shards of pottery lay scattered around him. He stared at his leg, his face white as chalk. The leg stuck out at an impossible angle and the shaft bone protruded out of the thigh. The ship’s master waved his arms furiously and bawled at the boy, but he did not listen. The master blustered on. The boy fainted.

  I stared in disbelief and at the same time, relief. I wondered, did I do that? I could not remember. But I certainly wished it. I could have done it. I wanted to do it. Was wishing a thing the same as doing it? Would Mother’s angry old god think that?

  ***

  The life of a stall owner in the agora is not an easy one. I thought, naively, that all one had to do was buy goods cheap and sell for more. Trading is not so simple. The agora in Cenchrea, they say, is the best of the half dozen or so in and around Corinth. Many men wished to establish businesses there, and, therefore, vied for a space. That created a long waiting list. My new master, Amelabib, had to wait and then pay a big bribe to get in.

  He also had to pay the market master a portion of his daily profits. The Roman officials did not know about this fee, but no one dared complain. The few that did were later found floating in the harbor. Also, he had to bribe the soldiers who patrolled the market, or they would look the other way when the gangs came, roving groups of thieves and cutthroats, the few street boys, like Gaius, who survived to become men. If the soldiers did not keep them in check, they could destroy a man and his stall in a wink of an eye. Then someone else would have to bribe the market master to take his place and so it went. Amelabib did not know from one day to the next if his bribes were sufficient to keep him in the market or even alive. By cutting his profits to the bone, he had managed to stay in the market for three years.

  I quickly abandoned any ideas I might have had about owning my own stall. But I watched and I learned. Amelabib told his friends I was a quick student and he would have to be careful or he would end up working for me. They laughed when he said it. Money could be made in the agora. It just took a little imagination and a measure of cunning.

  Chapter Ten

  Amelabib, a short, stocky man, had the yellow hair you see often in Acacia, already streaked with gray, and his hands were permanently blackened from handling copper all day. Our booth displayed everything from cheap trinkets to elaborately worked salvers, pitchers, and bowls.

  We had to be paid in denarii. It was the rule—no foreign currency was to be used to purchase goods in this area. Roman officials determined the taxes they charged based on the day’s take, and they calculated their percentage in denarii. If someone tried to pay in coinage other than denarii, we had to send him to one of the official moneychangers. But often we changed the money for them and went to a moneychanger and converted it at the going rate. The officials understood this occasional necessity, and allowed it to go on in spite of the rules. Money changing without official permission, however, brought down a host of officials, including the local police and judicato. But a few people did, anyway. It seemed a better and safer way to make money than cutting purses.

  ***

  One day Amelabib closed his stall early and took me to Corinth. He bought his copperware from an artisan on the other side of the city away from the Diolkos and inland, where all of the master craftsmen, the workers of metal and gems, the potters and shapers—all had their shops. It was
nearly an hour before we reached the edge of the city. I could make out buildings up on the heights long before we reached the city. The Acrocorinth loomed above the city nearly touching the clouds, or so I thought. I had never seen anything quite like it.

  If the south port of the tramway is the cloaca, Corinth is the head and heart. In Cenchrea, many buildings were made of wood and thatch, only a few of stone. They were brightly colored but small and mean compared to Corinth where all the buildings were of stone, white marble and pink granite, many painted in beautiful deep blues and reds, their column capitals gilded. When we turned into the straight street I saw it—Mother and Dinah posing again. I stopped and gaped. It looked so much like Leonides’ work, for an instant I thought, how did they manage to get it repaired and shipped over here?

  “You have not seen Greek statuary before?”

  “Yes, I have seen statuary like this.”

  “It is Aphrodite and Eros, maybe you know them as Venus and Cupid?” Amelabib continued, “That is the way the goddess and the god always look. Artists look for models that have that look. You see the face and the way her body is proportioned…”

  I did. Except for the nose, it could be Mother. My mother looked like Aphrodite, the goddess of love and fertility. No wonder Darcas wanted her so badly. If she were her slave, she could be sold for a very large sum.

  “This is nothing,” Amelabib lectured on. “In Athens, there are even more. Now there is the city for the world. Even Rome cannot match Athens for beauty.”

  I did not know about that. I had never been to either and had no plans to go. In fact, I had never ventured into the part of Caesarea where the statues and fine buildings were nor the part of the city which had brightly painted columns. I did not know about those things. We walked down the street but I could not take my mind off the figures.