James slowed for Saad’s sake. “You don’t need to tell me it’s immature and not very creative as far as revenge goes, but I can’t begin to describe the sinful pleasure I derive from defiling my father’s dinner table after the fuss he goes to maintain a pure kitchen. I’m too contrary to make a good Pharisee. And his constant harping that I follow every jot and tittle of the cleanliness Laws, whether we are serving in the Temple or not, brings out the worst in me.” He shrugged. “We go through the purity rituals again at the Temple, so there’s no real harm done.”
Saad rubbed at one knee. “I think I can help you with your problem.”
“Could you be more helpful? Contemplating the cornucopia of troubles that is my life makes my head hurt.”
“Ridding you of your father’s company so you can make your meeting with the apothecarius.”
“I knew there was a reason I enjoyed your company.”
“Do you want to know the details?”
“No. The angels know my dreary life could use a surprise or two.” James halted at the head of the uninspired grand stairway. “How many times have you been up and down these stairs this morning?”
The slave stopped massaging his knee, stood taller, then winced and grabbed his kneecaps. “Not more than four or five times.”
“I don’t want you climbing them for the rest of the morning. I’ll visit the upper market while I’m out. Hozai promised to procure me a special salve from Egypt that’s supposed to works wonders on sore joints.” James had also asked after cures for Elizabeth. Who hated him. Not that it would deter him from keeping his promises.
Saad frowned. “Don’t tell me Hozai is the apothecarius?”
The truth wouldn’t please Saad. “You keep your secrets, and I’ll keep mine.”
“Go find my son!” a surly voice rang out from the dining chamber, bouncing off the gray walls of the vestibule below.
The new slave scurried white-faced into the entry hall and stared up at them. “Master James, please hurry. Your father is anxious to speak to you.”
A cold fist squeezed James’s heart. He took a deep breath and tromped down the stairs. “The faded paint and dusty furniture aren’t the only things that never change in this house.”
Saad nodded at the familiar complaint.
James’s sandal slapped onto the vestibule’s dull tile floor. He hoped the person responsible for choosing the lifeless stones had lived out their life in an unpleasant manner, worthy of the agony James suffered every time he laid eyes on the ugly floor.
“Hurry,” the slave pleaded, wringing thin-fingered hands.
James grabbed the man by the shoulders and looked him in the eye. “Don’t act intimidated. He picks on the weak. And never let him know he got the best of you.”
Leaving the stunned slave behind, James strolled into the dining chamber with a smile plastered to his face. “Ah yes, another pleasant breakfast in the Onias household.”
His father stood beside a chunky table polished to indecent brightness. A cluster of nervous slaves hovered behind his shoulder. A scowl as familiar to him as the ash-colored walls didn’t perturb James, but the presence of his father’s prized washstand stopped James cold. “What new madness is this?”
His father held up a thick sheet of parchment, the remnants of a broken wax seal clinging to a curled edge. A Roman seal. “What’s this?”
Beyond curious, James pretended nonchalance. “Is it from a man or a woman?”
“A Roman aristocrat, you licentious imbecile!”
“There’s no need to yell. The slap across my face didn’t ruin my hearing.”
Ignoring the insolent remark, his father shook the letter at James. “Someone named Lucius Castus is offering you a shipload of coins to return to Rome. Castus wants you to design and build a small temple dedicated to Mars. Explain yourself.”
James had refused the offer several times…and not just because he had dallied with Lucius Castus’s wife, an older woman with interesting talents. She’d offered to entertain James again the next time he came to Rome, but her husband would spear James’s head on a pike if he learned how his wife spent her time while he sailed off to war.
Jews didn’t build shrines to foreign gods. But if Lucius Castus was present, James would be mightily tempted to accept the offer for the pure joy of watching his father foam with outrage.
James forced his tight lips into a smile. “A temple to Zeus would be more to my liking. I’ve always found Mars boring as the gods go.”
His father threw him a ferocious glare and tore the parchment in half, and in half again, then threw the pieces. “You are to have nothing more to do with the stonecutters, or builders, or Romans. Do I make myself clear?”
Ice prickling through his veins, James dropped down onto a narrow, hard chair. “Perfectly.”
“Clean the room of the gentile rubbish.” his father ordered, holding his wrinkled hands over the washbasin. Slaves dived for the scattered bits of paper to the sound of sloshing water.
His father’s young wife got up from her chair and tiptoed around the edge of the room, heading for the safety of the kitchen.
“Where are you going, woman?” his father snapped, shoving a waded-up towel at the new slave.
Parvaneh flinched and her mousy brown eyes bulged from her pale face. “To check on the food.” The vaulted chamber swallowed her whispered words.
His father’s face puckered. “Stop mumbling.”
“I’m sorry. I have a soft voice,” Parvaneh murmured.
“Don’t contradict me, you barren sow.”
A lone tear trickled down the girl’s cheek. A fourteen-year-old Persian princess whose name meant butterfly, gentle-spirited Parvaneh had been crushed before ever spreading her wings, smothered under an avalanche of hateful insult for her failure to conceive the male heir Simeon Onias craved.
James slapped the table with both hands. “Leave her alone.” His anguish wasn’t all for Parvaneh. The greatest portion was for Elizabeth, who as Simeon’s wife had suffered equal abuse at the hands of his father. James hadn’t lifted a finger to help. Worse, he’d showered his own bitter words on her.
Parvaneh fled.
His father shot him a dirty look. “You can coddle your own Persian whore when you marry. Stop interfering with mine.”
“When...” James enunciated his words slowly “…I marry my betrothed Persian wife, I won’t call her a whore.”
His father smoothed his expensive blue robe. “You have to watch these foreign women like a hawk. They can’t be trusted.”
James barely held onto his patience. “Could you clarify a small matter for me?”
“Speak. I don’t have all day.”
“Though I’m certain we are the two biggest hypocrites in Jerusalem, I still have to ask. How can you forbid me to construct temples to foreign gods when you married a foreign wife and now expect me and my cousins to do the same?”
His father’s eyes narrowed to lethal slits. “Your concern would be better spent earning back the good graces of the first order of Pharisees. Your six-month probation begins again today. The next time you backslide, I’ll have you whipped.”
James bit back an angry retort and attacked his breakfast, comforted by knowledge that the coming hours revolved around meeting a man about poison.
CHAPTER 17
James wished he’d had the leisure of enjoying the dramatic twist of this morning’s flight. Faithful Saad had kept his promise, arranging for a female slave from a neighboring house to accidentally brush against James when he and his father were on their way to the Temple. The slave girl confessed, with crocodile-sized tears in a voice loud enough to carry over half the city that her monthly flow was upon her, then apologized repeatedly for defiling James. His father almost burst a blood vessel expressing his outrage, but was probably as relieved as James when they went their separate ways.
Parting with his father always felt like an escape. James couldn’t get to Morta’s fast enough. What did it say about
him that the place he felt most comfortable in entirety of Jerusalem was a thin-walled hovel belonging to a middle-aged harlot? To be accurate the tired one-room shack sat beyond the city walls, a short walk from the Dung Gate, on the smoky border of the burning dump of Gehenna.
Edgy from the argument with his father over Lucius Castus and his temple project, and the coming meeting with the apothecarius, James paced.
Morta patted the blankets covering a thin bedroll. “Sit, I’ll pour you some wine.”
James paused. The faded tan robe she favored over the shiny red one he’d given her hung off dry, pale shoulders, the fabric skimming wide hips. His gaze lingered on her curved bottom. Not one to take a second look at skinny women, he liked them round and lush as a statue of Venus. “The apothecarius won’t hear a word I say if you don’t change into something less distracting.”
She pulled the parted robe shut. “You’ve given me three months’ rent in coins. Come lie with me. You know it always improves your mood.”
His guilt fresh from his recent descent into wickedness, James had sworn off drunkenness and fornicating with whores. “This morning’s dealings are deadly dangerous,” he warned, and resumed pacing.
She laughed huskily. “If I was concerned with danger I would find another way to earn coins.”
”If everything goes well, you won’t have to put up with my company much longer.”
“Sputtering drunken nonsense is one thing, but this—” Her hard-bitten, age-creased eyes softened. “I wish you’d reconsider your plan. Murder stays with a man.”
“Everybody will be better off with him dead.”
“I don’t care about anybody else. I’m worried about you.”
Her genuine care touched him more deeply than any lecture could. He sat and laced their fingers companionably. “I plan to return to Rome once the deed is done.” Lucius Castus’s letter had reminded James that Rome was full of rich patrons, some of whom would be eager to hire an up-and-coming master builder. The past year and a half he’d spent in Jerusalem confirmed what he’d suspected. He hated the city. And what kind of a Jew did that make him? “Do you want to go to Rome? You wouldn’t have to fear for your life. They don’t stone harlots.”
Morta looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “What are you offering, exactly?”
He blew out an exasperated breath. “Marriage isn’t for me.”
“Why not?”
“I drink too much, I’m bad-tempered. I visit harlots...” he nudged her lightly with his elbow “...and ask the gorgeous ones to live in sin with me.” He shrugged. “What woman would want me for a husband?”
She gave him a sharp jab in return, tempered with a smile. “What makes you think a harlot would want you either?”
“I guess that means no to Rome?”
She gave him a chaste kiss on the cheek. “You’ve been unhappy as long as I’ve known you. Why this sudden urgency to kill your father?”
James couldn’t say Elizabeth’s name. Not in a harlot’s den. “He threatened someone dear to me.”
“You think about her when you’re with me. That’s why you insist I wear that lovely red robe?”
Lava-like heat shot up his neck and his stomach sickened. Elizabeth had wide hips and lush red lips, and he demeaned her with his thoughts every time he lay with Morta. He hid from the truth behind a blur of alcohol, but in the sober light of day he couldn’t deny the ugly truth. He was a worm. And Elizabeth deserved so much better.
Words she’d once reproached him with came back—don’t shame me with your eyes, James Onias. He wanted to make a vow, to promise in the name of the Lord that he would show Elizabeth proper respect, but his conscience kicked. He couldn’t turn to a life of prayer and vows and service at the same time he was making preparations to kill his father.
Morta touched his shoulder. “You don’t look well.”
Sure his face was red as the robe gleaming on a peg on the other side of the room, he shot to his feet and threw open the door.
Freckle-faced Niv stood on the other side smiling up at him, a beefy, balding man standing next to him.
James’s jaw went slack. Rahm was the apothecarius? Called the Samaritan Spy by Herod’s inner circle, Rahm wasn’t well liked. But he was a trusted informant, thanks to the excellence of his sources within the courts of Egypt, Syria, and Nabatea.
Recovering his wits, James hitched his thumb toward Morta’s shack. “Have a seat inside while I confer with my young friend Niv.”
Rahm frowned. The wind lifted the patch of oiled hair spread strategically over the man’s bald pate. “Make it quick. I need to leave for Antioch.”
James allowed Rahm to pass, snapped the door shut, clamped a hand on Niv’s plump arm, and dragged the boy to the back of the ramshackle lean-to.
Morta’s chickens clucked a welcome from their dirt-lined pen. The harlot raised hens to avoid arrest by religious authorities, pretending to be a widow scraping by with the coins she earned selling eggs. The constant clucking of the chickens had the additional benefit of covering illicit noises escaping the thin-walled shack.
James scowled down at Niv. “Does Rahm know I spy for Herod?”
The boy’s freckled cheeks wobbled as he shook his head. “I didn’t tell him anything. I said you wanted to meet with him, just like you told me.”
A servant in the royal palace, Niv had foolishly played a part in Antipater’s poisoning. James stumbled upon the truth, but agreed to remain silent in exchange for tidbits of palace information, which James passed on to Herod. It had been a beneficial alliance on both sides. James whispered in the right ears, and Niv was promoted from a table servant to a household slave charged with tidying High Priest Hasmond’s personal chambers. Plump rodent that he was, Niv had a nose for ferreting out hair-raising gossip, such as where to turn if one needed to purchase poison on the sly.
Since he’d never planned a murder, James was bound to make mistakes, but hoped he hadn’t started off with a deadly one. “Did you mention that I want to buy poison?”
Niv’s shoulders hitched. “You didn’t say not to.”
“Fickle Fortuna,” James complained, clobbering the weathered boards of the chicken pen.
The hens jumped and squawked and accosted him with beady stares.
James rubbed his bruised knuckles. He’d rather buy the poison from a complete nobody. Since he already had plenty of friends and foes giving him the I-want-to-peck-your-eyes-out look, he turned his back on the chickens. “Did Rahm offer you coins for palace information?”
Niv flashed a smile. “I told him about the baker tripping down the basement stairs, and the palace guards sneaking drinks of wine, and the missing gold lamp stand. Rahm tried a few more times to get useful information, then got angry and told me to stop running my mouth.” Niv rocked on his heels. “I do have important news to pass on.”
The game had switched—Niv now held the upper hand. “What do you want in return for the information?” James asked, confident he could outbid Rahm. Being rich had its advantages.
Niv pointed north. “I want to be a soldier in Herod's army.”
James rolled his eyes. “First my cousins, now you. Is there a plague going around I don’t know about?”
“Plague?” Niv asked, brows arching. “My friend Joseph has curdled, smelly, white stuff growing between his toes.”
“Save me from young fools,” James mumbled heavenward, then directed a defeated sigh at Niv. “I’ll see what I can do about your request. Now, are you going to share what you know?”
“That coward Roman commander Silo took bribes from High Priest Hasmond and is threatening to pull his troops away from Jerusalem if he doesn’t receive a mountain of winter supplies. Herod is waiting for mule trains, which are supposed to be on their way from Samaria.” Niv looked over both shoulders, then leaned closer. “High Priest Hasmond plans to attack the mule trains and steal the goods.”
James scratched his bothersome beard and stared at the Hasmonean palac
e gleaming on the hill above. “The angels know Jerusalem could use the goods. Herod’s blockade is starting to hurt. People are grumbling. But I imagine High Priest Hasmond is more interested in the tactical victory. He hopes to hold out until Parthia gets around to sending reinforcements. Something Parthia won’t do if Hasmond’s cause looks hopeless.”
Niv’s pudgy chest puffed. “Herod is a great commander. He won’t allow High Priest Hasmond to get the best of him.”
Assured the boy’s high regard for Herod meant he could count on Niv’s cooperation for a while longer, James tipped his head toward Morta’s hovel. “We better go save Rahm from Morta.”
Niv grinned. “Is he bedding her?”
“Morta is likely to have a knife at his throat if Rahm flaps his gums with his usual lack of charm.”
“I’d pay to see that.”
James cuffed Niv’s red head. “Don’t be spending your coins on harlots.”
“Why not? You do.”
Tempted to lecture the boy, telling him you could only surrender your innocence once and ought to save it for your wedding night to share with your equally innocent bride, James walked faster. He knew from experience it wouldn’t do any good to lecture if a boy was bent on walking an unsavory path.
James opened the shack’s rickety door without knocking. Morta worked noisily in the back corner, adjacent to the spot James and Niv had chatted, dusting trinkets that hadn’t been moved in years. Rahm stood in the opposite corner frowning.
“How industrious of you, Morta,” James quipped. “Can I bother you to walk Niv to the Dung Gate while I confer with Rahm on a delicate matter?”
Morta swatted James with the dust-covered cloth in passing. “Watch yourself around this one.”
“Don’t tempt me to teach that whore mouth of yours a lesson,” Rahm warned softly.
Morta made a face and shooed Niv outside.
The door swung shut, plunging the windowless room into near darkness. Two sputtering lamps cast shadows over Rahm’s ugly face. “Who do you want to kill?” Rahm said, wagging his brows.
The truth would emerge when James’s father suddenly dropped dead. After a long moment, James asked, “How much will your silence cost me?”
Warring Desires (The Herod Chronicles Book 3) Page 12