She felt Quintus press coins into her palm.
“Where did you get this?” She was astounded. At the gift. At the boy’s thoughtfulness. At his excitement.
“When you’re ready,” Quintus said, dodging her question, “I’m going to take you to the Temple myself.”
Malka reached for his hands, found them, and placed the coins back in his palm. “No. We can’t do this.”
“It’s the wood-burning festival. You’re a Jew. You have to go. Remember? You told me how important it was.”
The boy would be gone today, Malka told herself. No chance to say good-bye. The boy would escape as long as she said nothing to him about his chance for freedom, and she would be left alone.
What harm could it be for her last memory of him to be of a walk to the Temple, with him leading her by the arm? It would be so lonely without him. At least she could have that to cherish. And the memory of his gift to her to make it possible to partake in the festival.
Malka allowed herself this small piece of selfishness. “We’ll go then,” she said, thinking of when she was supposed to have the boy ready to be taken from her. “But we must not take long, understand?”
The Second Hour
Valeria waited among a dozen temple priests, all of them standing on the top of the massive wall that guarded the southwest corner of the Temple Mount.
An hour earlier, Nahum had arrived with her and introduced her to the priest as Valerius, a Greek boy who was his apprentice and who would act as a courier in the place of Raanan.
Nahum had accepted the grave commiseration from the priests at the death of his son. In a guilty way, Valeria had been fascinated to observe. Growing up in a wealthy Roman household had sheltered her from the difficulties of the world and from the ways of men. Here, she was learning about both.
Nahum’s son had died less than an entire day before. Nahum had divorced his wife the evening before and had made a decision to join the rebels in a fight to the death. Yet aside from his equally grave acceptance of the priests’ sympathy, he’d given little indication that any intense emotions might be tearing him apart.
As for the temple priests, they too said little to show that they were locked in a deadly siege against soldiers who would kill them at the first opportunity. None spoke about other deaths, their families, or their hopes or dreams.
How could this be?
Valeria had listened to conversations with older slave women and had joined in on many herself. Events of this magnitude needed full discussion, a chance for each woman to vent not only opinions but feelings, and then opinions about the feelings. This was the way to deal with tragedy or joy.
In the first half hour after the departure of Nahum, as she’d watched the priests and listened to their trivial banter, it occurred to Valeria that she, too, had been forced into a silence that was placing her in terrible isolation. She rarely spoke because she did not want her voice to betray her gender, but also because the men around her each seemed like self-sufficient islands. Did this explain the malaise that had been settling upon her over the last weeks?
In the second half hour, however, Valeria had begun to fight apprehension. She’d promised Malka that she would be there to get Quintus at the second sounding of the trumpets, and that would be very soon. Yet until the priests sent her away with a message to be delivered to another post, here along the top of the temple wall would be her prison.
The wall was wide enough for five horsemen to ride abreast. On one side, looking down the sheer drop into the Temple courtyard, it was so high that a man below would have difficulty throwing a stone the size of his fist up and onto the top. The other side overlooked the crowded squalor of the lower city, and because the Temple Mount was on a plateau, the drop in that direction plunged straight down at least three times the distance it did on the other side.
The strategic importance of this position was obvious from the armaments nearby. There were catapults, javelins, and stacks of stones the size of a man’s head. Pots of oil bubbled over three different fires. In short, attack from below was ridiculously simple to defend against. And because the temple priests controlled the entire perimeter of the temple walls, all of their positions were safe.
Valeria hid her agitation as time passed. She was grateful that she’d decided to take Quintus from Malka a couple of hours ahead of when she was supposed to meet Joseph Ben-Matthias at the Damascus Gate. The old woman would wait for her, she was sure, and as long as she could escape these priests sometime in the next hour, she would have plenty of time to get to the gate.
Yet the temple priests did not give her a message. They chatted quietly, ignoring her, drinking water from leather bags and eating fruits and bread.
Inspiration hit Valeria. She knew how to escape.
“Tell me what you see,” Malka urged the boy.
They stood on the elevated platform of the colonnades of Solomon’s Porch, overlooking the Court of the Gentiles. Quintus held for Malka the wood he had purchased on her behalf, and they were about to join the line of Jews waiting to carry the wood to the entrance of the Court of Israel. To Quintus, the sights of the Temple were a marvel almost beyond his ability to describe.
The outer court of the Temple was capable of holding more than a hundred thousand people. Quintus could not know this nor comprehend a number so large; to him, with three-quarters of the courtyard filled with milling peasants, each holding an armload of wood, it seemed as if the entire world had gathered here.
Nor could he know that the temple priests themselves numbered in the thousands, each with specific daily or weekly tasks, working in rotating shifts through the day and night.
He could see, however, the Levites in a massive choir, singing psalms as was their special privilege, accompanied by other distinguished Israelites who played harps and lutes, as other instruments were only allowed in the Temple for different festivals.
As a backdrop to all of this was the Temple itself, rising on white marble blocks from the center of the courtyard, with a large column of smoke partially obscuring the gold plating of the roof of the Holy of Holies.
He did his best to tell Malka, and it gave him joy to see her smile. He had questions about the Temple, and she answered each one with patience.
As they were about to step off the platform, sharp trumpet blasts came from the western wall, cutting through the noise of the choir and the peasants in the celebrations. Silence fell almost instantly on the entire Temple, so eerie that Quintus stopped.
Valeria moved to the nearest priest and waited until he took his attention away from the conversation around him.
“Yes?”
“I need to relieve myself,” Valeria said, expecting him to send her to the tower and a staircase that would take her to a public latrine. She’d escape that way. “I won’t be long.”
“So stand at the edge,” he grunted, pointing at the lower city. “Aim at the royal troops at the aqueduct. No one’s hit them yet, but it’s not for lack of trying.”
Some of the other priests laughed.
“It’s not my bladder,” Valeria said, trying not to squirm with embarrassment.
“Hope you brought your own rags,” he said, shrugging. He pointed farther down the wall.
It took her a moment to understand. He was pointing at a bucket.
“When you’re finished,” he said, pointing again at the lower city, “throw it over the wall into the valley. Send the royal troops a different kind of message.”
More laughter. All eyes were on her.
She’d brought this on herself. Now there might be awkward questions if she didn’t use the bucket. She was grateful at the looseness of her tunic. If she moved far enough away, it would give her a degree of privacy. But it wouldn’t solve her need to escape the top of the tower as soon as possible.
Five trumpet blasts punctuated the air as Valeria began walking toward the bucket. She glanced down into the courtyard.
Among all of the thousands of people,
two figures caught her attention, simply because they moved so slowly that all others flowed around them.
It was an old woman. And a young boy, holding an armful of wood. The woman had her hand on the boy’s shoulder.
Valeria recognized them immediately.
Malka and Quintus.
Malka clutched the shoulder of Quintus.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Did you hear five?” she said, speaking in a near whisper.
“Five?” He, too, was speaking quietly.
“Thekiah. Theruah. Thekiah,” she said. “It is always three trumpet blasts. Thekiah. Theruah. Thekiah. Proclaiming the kingdom of God, divine providence, and the final judgment. But I heard five. Did you?”
“I wasn’t counting,” Quintus said. “But something strange is happening.”
Forgetting that she was blind, he pointed at the mass of peasants in front of him. Nearly all the men had set down their wood. En masse, they began quietly and purposefully walking to the south entrance of the Temple Mount.
“Tell me,” Malka said. “What is it?”
The men began to throw off their cloaks, leaving them behind like leaves scattered from a tree.
“They’ve got knives,” Quintus said. “All of them. They’ve got short knives.”
Malka breathed a single word. “Sicarii.”
“Sicarii?”
“Zealot assassins,” she said. “Hurry, take us away from here.”
From the top of the wall, Valeria stared down at the confusion in the Temple courtyard. From her viewpoint, it was obvious that panic had begun—the rear half of the crowd was pushing the front half, unable to see that the gates out of the courtyard were closed.
Quintus! Malka!
Where were they?
He was too small and she was too old. They wouldn’t have a chance if the panic grew.
Valeria strained without success to see them.
A hand yanked at her shoulder.
“Boy!” It was the priest who had pointed out the bucket to her. “Didn’t you hear me? Have you gone deaf?” He was agitated and angry. “Now’s the time to deliver a message for us. Not to be looking for entertainment.”
“What’s happening down there?”
“You’re still not listening,” the priest snapped. “You need to run.”
“My brother’s in the courtyard. He’s only a boy.”
This, at least, gave the priest some pause. He stopped and drew a breath. “Then he’ll be safe,” he said, a degree of kindness in his voice, as if he understood why Valeria had not heard him. “The gates to the Temple are closed, and they will remain closed until the fighting in the city is finished.”
“Fighting?”
“Sicarii. Thousands of them from the countryside. Armed with short swords. And willing to fight to their deaths to rid us of Rome. That’s why you need to run. Get ahead of them to the outposts along the siege line. Let everyone know about it so they can join the fight.”
“My brother . . .”
“He’s only in danger if we lose today’s battle,” the priest said. “That’s why you need to go. Don’t let anything stop you.”
Quintus and Malka had reached a crowd of people already at the temple gate.
The eerie silence that had fallen on the Temple after the five blasts of the trumpet had long since been replaced by the noise of thousands of men and women and children pushing forward to escape.
Yet the crowd did not move.
Quintus could not see over the people in front of them. Malka kept reassuring herself that she had a grip on his arm by leaning over and calling his name.
“We can’t move,” he said.
A woman in front of them turned. “The gate is closed. After the men left, someone closed the gate.”
“All of the gates!” another said. “I’ve heard all of the gates are closed.”
Pressure began to build behind them as more people crowded forward.
Quintus shoved angrily back. “We can’t go anywhere,” he shouted. “Stop pushing.”
A scream came from the front of the crowd, and a sense of panic moved like a wave among the people.
Quintus kept pushing back at the people behind him. “Leave us alone!”
“Someone is pushing us,” a voice answered, desperate.
More screams from near the gates. Then came a voice, clear, ringing above the tumult.
“People! People!”
It frustrated Quintus that he was so trapped. He could not see any farther than the backs and chests of the crowd squeezing him and Malka. He could not identify the voice, but it must have belonged to some kind of authority, because the crowd immediately became silent and expectant.
“People! You’ve seen the men leave the Temple, armed with sicae. Remember this day! Today is the day we throw off the chains of oppression!”
“Who is it?” Quintus asked Malka.
“Shhh,” came a voice from beside him. “It’s one of the temple priests.”
“We have shut the gates to protect you from the battle that is about to take place in the city!” the voice said with confidence. “No one will be allowed to enter or leave until the Zealots have defeated the soldiers.”
“How long?” someone from the crowd shouted.
“Find a place to rest and wait,” the temple priest replied. “You will be supplied with food and water.”
“How long?” Angry mutters joined in.
“How long?” The priest’s voice had lost no confidence. “By nightfall, we will be free!”
The pressure behind Quintus and Malka began to ease, and excited chatter swept through the crowd:
“The Sicarii smuggled in knives with the wood.”
“They’ll never defeat the soldiers.”
“Did you see how many thousands of men went out to fight?”
“Nightfall. What happens if the battle is lost?”
One woman’s sharp question to another haunted Quintus the most. “They’ve shut the gates to protect us. But what if the Zealots are defeated? Then we are trapped in here like sheep for sacrifice.”
The Third Hour
A dozen members of the royal troops guarded the city gate at the base of the Tower of Hippicus. Their duty was to check the loads of camels and the contents of carts for weapons. The bottleneck resulted in the usual mayhem of a crowd of irritated men standing impatiently in the hot sun, while travelers on foot without merchandise moved past them into the city.
Maglorius had fashioned a makeshift awning from a blanket to shade Amaris as they waited for the arrival of Valeria and Quintus. He stood to the side, alert for anything unusual that would suggest danger, unperturbed by the grunts of camels, the braying of donkeys, and the curses of stock drivers.
Nearby were Falco and Joseph Ben-Matthias, and behind them, standing guard over donkeys loaded with provisions, were Jachin and the thugs Jachin had hired for the journey.
Falco had been complaining constantly at the delay, and again and again Joseph had assured him the boy and girl would arrive.
Then a young man came running through the gates from the city. He scanned the crowd and, at the sight of Joseph, changed direction and dashed toward him.
Although Maglorius doubted the boy was a threat, habit made him move closer.
Joseph put up a hand to stop Maglorius. “My servant.”
Falco immediately snapped at Joseph, “After all my efforts to sneak away from the soldiers, you’ve made it public where we intended to meet the boy and girl?”
Joseph was frowning. “During this time of crisis, I keep my wife informed of where I go. This cannot be good news.”
The boy stopped directly in front of Joseph and gasped for breath before speaking. “A message was sent to your house from Eleazar. A warning.”
“Warning! Warning!” Falco interrupted shrilly. “What kind of warning?”
“Find your breath and speak calmly,” Joseph said to the boy.
The boy took a few more
gasps. “The Zealots have begun an assault on the line of siege. Eleazar says he is repaying your efforts to help the priests in Rome. He wants you to have time to make sure your family is gathered in your house. He is sending rebels as guards to keep it safe from attack but cannot promise anyone outside will remain unharmed.”
“Attack!” Falco said. “What kind of attack?”
“Keep your voice down,” Joseph said sharply. “Do you want to cause panic here?”
The boy looked at Joseph. “Sicarii. Hundreds from the countryside let in for the festival.” He gulped in more air. “As I left the house, I heard fighting in the lower city.”
Joseph shook his head. “The truce is broken. May God have mercy on us.”
“I never should have left the soldiers,” Falco said. “Take me somewhere safe.”
Joseph turned to Maglorius. “It might be a matter of minutes before the gate is closed and hours or days before it’s opened again. Waiting out here won’t do the children any good if they are stuck inside.”
“We leave now,” Falco said. “We’ve got donkeys and provisions. We’ll stay at an inn in a nearby town until the danger has passed, then come back for the boy and girl.”
Maglorius reached across and squeezed Falco’s shoulder. “The children will not be left behind.”
“I think we move inside on foot,” Joseph said. “We leave the donkeys out here with one of the men, and we wait inside the wall for the children. If they get here before the gates are closed, you can take the children with Falco as planned.”
“If the gates are closed?” asked Maglorius.
“I’m not waiting until the gates are closed,” said Falco. “Who knows how close the rebels will be by then? Take me immediately to your house.”
“Someone needs to stay at the gate until the children get here,” Maglorius said to Joseph. “You go to your wife. Take Amaris with you. If the children get to the gate after it’s closed, I bring them to you. If they make it before the gate is closed, I’ll take them to the next town and wait with them for Amaris and Falco.”
“I wait here,” Joseph said. “The boy will be looking for me. He’s never seen you before. I should be safe. If rebels get too close, the soldiers will let me into the tower.”
The Last Sacrifice Page 24