The Stones of My Accusers

by Tracy Groot

  It was not a hundred years since Pompey sacked Jerusalem, too short a time for Jewish dreams of independence to die. With Jews, Orion suspected it would take a lot longer than a hundred years. The others who made up the “Gentile” portion of Palestinia—to the Jews, they were all Gentiles, not Syrians or Greeks or Parthians—did not seem to have the same drive for the old autonomy.

  “Think on it.” Theron nodded at the papers. “See what you can do with those. It wasn’t easy to get them, and you got a whole week to work with them. Orion . . . sure, you can run a place like this. Maybe that very same talent includes the chin to finesse old Pontius Pilate.”

  Orion did not respond.

  “Now. I will see what I can do about an architect for your granary plans. I’ll be back tomorrow with ‘new’ boards.” He grinned suddenly, happy as a child. “This is exciting, don’t you think? I’ve got a chance to do something for my people, and that is fine. They’ll be calling me Theron the Maccabee. What’s the matter? You look uptight.”

  Exciting? When was the vomiting kind of fear exciting?

  Theron began to rewrap the tiles. Loudly he exclaimed, “What do you mean, not good enough?” He gave Orion a delighted grin, one Orion could not return. Bribe an architect. Disobey a direct order. What else would he do before sundown?

  “It was good enough for Sossus, you barbarian! It is good enough for the majestic Pontius Pilate!”

  To my honorable father from your corrupted son . . .

  Theron had the boards on his shoulder and was backing out of the doorway. “You wouldn’t know beauty if you drowned in it! You wouldn’t see brilliance and dignity and emotion and grace if it slammed you on the head! I’ll be back tomorrow, you offspring of a Cretan, with a pattern to make the emperor weep. He would weep over this one! You have the discernment of a—”

  “Good enough, Theron,” Orion whispered.

  “Right.” He looked both ways, winked at Orion, and departed.

  Orion watched until he disappeared, then turned into his workroom. He went to the window. It wasn’t a bad view. When he leaned left he could see the entire length of the Great Stadium. He could see where the charioteers careened around the corner. The harbor was straight ahead, and when he leaned right he could see a good portion of the Mediterranean. He felt for his stool and dropped heavily onto it.

  After a moment he pulled the stool to the table and pushed Theron’s documents aside. He began to pick through the notes by his calendar. He was working on the guest list for the Festival of Luna, and had the month of Augustus laid out—a specially cut piece of papyrus large enough to accommodate various addenda. Augustus. It used to be Sextilis. Become a Caesar and they rename a month for you. Would September become Tiberius? Who would replace November?

  Eyes on the calendar, he reached for a stylus in the vase and drew a hard line through the unscratched item on the tablet. He blew the curls of beeswax from the stylus and dropped it into the vase. Then he took Theron’s documents and slid them under the calendar. He made sure it was flat and smooth, as though nothing was underneath. He weighted the edges with objects from his table, a stoppered inkwell and a tablet, a small sack of withered dates. Then he reached for the smallest tablet at the corner of his table and looked at what he had written.

  Write Father.

  Pick up fish sauce at Falnera’s.

  Get sandal fixed.

  Beneath the last item, he added Confirm balance in Ostia fund. He pulled open the table drawer and took out a small correspondence roll. He unrolled it flat, selected his favorite pen, dipped it, and touched the excess ink to a scrap of felt:

  To my beloved father, Appius Galerinius Libertus, from your son, Orion Galerinius Honoratus, greetings.

  We are putting in a mosaic walkway, Father, and the design is splendid. I think you would like it. Before I forget, thank you for the new tablet. It arrived precisely on my birthday. Well, precisely a day later. Truly a fascinating Roman innovation. I look forward to its use.

  The pen stopped. He lifted his gaze to his view.

  Today I will disobey a direct order, Father. Today Pilate keeps a Jewish whore.

  I’ve been thinking about her. It’s ridiculous. It doesn’t make sense. Sometimes I want to ask her about it. I want to say, What are you doing? What are you thinking? Because you can see it in her eyes, she was not born for what she is—so much for Stoicism. What she is, Father, is a whore.

  A vile word, I hate it. Prostitute does not lessen it, but whore is vile. I use it for reality. Like I’m taking up a handful of the beach to rub my face. I need reality, Father. She is a whore. I even made her Pilate’s whore.

  The pen started.

  What are your plans for the Festival of Luna? What, your gilt invitation from Tiberius has not arrived? I’ll see what I can do. I’m practically wearing purple here. Not bad, for the son of a freedman. Well, it is hot here, and that on the coast. Hot! Hotter than summers in Rome, and I never imagined to say such a thing. How is Aunt Vesta feeling? Better, I hope. . . .

  He finished the letter and carefully blotted the ink. He took a wooden dowel and worked the edge of the parchment into the long slit in the dowel and began to roll up the letter. He paused and stared at his hands. They were trembling. He held them out to stare at them.

  He could not tell his father, not even in an air letter, how afraid he was. He had talent to run a Praetorium Palace. He had talent to present to the public a Pontius Pilate free from wrinkles in his purple-bordered toga, a Pilate knowledgeable of local customs and up-to-date on the latest names and faces and situations. Orion knew what he could do. What he could not do was tread the grapes of deceitfulness for long. His fear would expose him, he would blunder. Today began a course to he knew not where.

  He rose and went to the recessed shelves. He took down the box. He held it long, then brought it to his table. He sat on the stool and looked at the sea, put his hand flat on the box. One thing was certain. Two things. Today a woman’s tree was safe. Today he did not give a cruel decree. The splayed fingers on the box curled to a fist.

  6

  JOAB DROPPED THE BUCKET of shells on a workroom table. Jorah was crouched at one of the tiles, examining the edge. She rose and came to the bucket, inspected a shell, and clicked her tongue. “How many days have we been working together, and you still cannot tell the difference between crimson and scarlet?”

  He should have expected that. He gets a pinch in his back gathering all these shells and that is what she says, not thank you, Joab, not a single word of appreciation. “That is not crimson or scarlet. That is pink. There are no crimson or scarlet shells to be found anywhere on the beach. And we’ve been together four days now. Four very long days.” He glanced to make sure Marina was not at the curtain flap.

  Jorah tossed aside the shell—not into the bucket, but on the floor as if she were Theron himself—and took a mortar stick. She stirred up the shells, then stopped when a shell seized her attention. She examined it closely, holding it to the light at the doorway.

  Joab picked up a broom and started to sweep debris from under the worktables. His father would have had a fit if even a portion of the dye room looked like this. He glanced at Jorah. Four long days. She hadn’t said a word about the silver box. “What are you doing with those shells, anyway?”

  “I’m trying to come up with a new color,” she murmured.

  “A new color . . .”

  “To maybe border the tiles. I want to try grinding up shells like this—exactly this color, see? This is crimson, this rippled edge—and I’m going to mix it with mortar. I’d like to paint it on the border, like a paste. I want to see what Theron thinks of it.”

  “It would crumble away. It wouldn’t be consistent with the surface of the tiles.”

  Glaring at him, Jorah went back to the bucket and took up the stick. “How do you know? Have you tried it?” She stirred up the shells until she saw another she liked. She took the shell, then yelped and dropped it.

  Joa
b came close. He bent to warily examine the shell. “What? Is there a spider?”

  “No. Seaweed.”

  Slowly, Joab looked at Jorah. “Seaweed?” He regarded the shell. It had a teeny tiny gob of stringy seaweed on it. The size of a thumbnail. “You’re afraid of seaweed?”

  She drew herself up. “I’m not afraid of it, I don’t like it.”

  Joab scooped it from the floor with a half shell. “It’s a plant. People dry it and eat it. What are you scared of?”

  “I’m not scared,” she protested, but backed away when Joab came closer to her with the seaweed-filled shell. “It’s disgusting.”

  Joab took the shell and dumped the bit of seaweed onto his palm. He held it out to Jorah. “It’s time to face your fear, Jorah.”

  “Joab . . . ,” she warned.

  He came closer, palm out front. “That’s what my father says. You have to face your fear.”

  She gave a nervous giggle and backed up a step. “Okay, that’s funny. Now throw it away.” But he edged toward her. “Joab . . . !”

  “You can do it, Jorah. Just touch it.”

  “Go away! You’re acting like one of my brothers.”

  “I think you should taste it. Come on, you can do it. It’s only a little plant.”

  “Stop it!” she pleaded, then shrieked a nervous giggle as he took a step closer. She ducked around him and grabbed a mortar stick. “I will beat you with this!”

  “Here, look. Nothing to be afraid of.” He held up the gob to his mouth. She clapped her hand over her own. He popped it into his mouth, pretended to be surprised at the glorious taste, and chewed it as if luxuriating in the flavor. “Delicious.” He looked at the bucket with interest. “Is there any more?”

  “Disgusting! Hideous! I can’t believe you did that.” She dropped the mortar stick into the bucket, snatching her hand back as if the seaweed would slither out and grab her. She went to the tile and squatted next to it. Presently, not looking at Joab, she said, “How did it really taste?”

  “Awful.”

  After a moment the curtain flap, which had been parted an inch or two, eased back into place.

  He tried another note on the pearwood pipe. He’d never get it right. It was a tune that came and went, stirring his soul only to disappear. He didn’t sleep a minute last night, and once he realized sleep wouldn’t come, tried tricking his brain into remembering the tune. He made himself go back through the marketplace, made himself see the same sights and smell the same smells, hoping the tune would show up. It never did. He shoved the pipe aside, knocking things off the table, and rubbed his forehead.

  A sound in the corridor—he froze, heart seizing. He listened, breathless. It didn’t come again.

  The implements of his treachery were laid out before him. A land-grant scroll from the archives with the most perfect seal he could find. Soft clay to mold the seal. Wax to make a seal from the mold. More wax for the forgery, dyed deep purple, Pilate’s signature color. A small knife to scrape the forgery clean.

  Here was the scroll Theron brought to him this morning. It came blank except for the signature in the bottom left corner. Orion spent the entire morning copying the granary plans to the scroll. The only thing left was to forge the seal.

  Alexander Jannaeus was the name at the bottom of the scroll; apparently the architect was named in honor of the great Jewish leader. Orion had seen his name on various documents in the past few years.

  This Jannaeus risked much. He had knowingly and willfully put his signature to something that could one day implicate him if Pilate ever found out. Did he know it was for a prostitute? Orion rubbed his eyes, and tried to tuck his heavy eyelids under his brows. They fell down. It would be a long day before he could drop to his couch. He had to do this. He had to get it over with before the daily parade of problems began. He’d wasted an hour fooling with the pipe. Was he trying to find a nice accompanying tune for treachery?

  He tried to think on the injustice of Pilate’s decree. It was just a tree. It would have been a benevolent thing to do, sparing that tree. What kind of leader would Pilate be if he actually listened and cared about the petitions brought before him? He didn’t even have to care so terribly much, just listen. But he never really did. In any situation he only focused on whatever course should be taken that would most benefit Rome. Or his own career. Orion waited for the anger to come, as it had before when he would allow himself to think on Pilate’s decisions.

  He closed his eyes and tried the look of the Jewish laundress. Nothing. He even tried to imagine, as Theron suggested, a man whipped forty-nine times. He saw a splayed-open back, crisscrossed with lashes, dangling ribbons of flesh. He made the back bleed, heavily. He put in that image a wailing wife, added a few children. Nothing. Rivkah appeared next to the wife and waved at him. A corner of his mouth came up, and he twinkled his fingers back at her.

  It was futile. He could not conjure a wisp of indignation. Not even compassion. Which god had cursed him with this fate, to suddenly have need of that which he did not possess?

  So he picked up the land grant and blew the seal clean of dust with no bravery to do so. He took the soft clay and began to warm it in his hands to an easy malleability, with no anger. He didn’t even have a twitch of satisfaction that Pilate’s unjust decree would be thwarted today. He had only a surging headache. He raised tired eyes to his bit of the sea. What did he have to make him do it?

  Fear, he supposed. The only thing he had was fear he wouldn’t do it at all.

  Pilate told him to cut it down. Rivkah shut it out and put the two lengths of cloth next to each other. The one on the left had faded to a bluish lavender; the one on the right was a few shades deeper.

  “Kyria, look—I soaked this in alum before I put it with the hyacinths.” She held it up to show her.

  Kyria looked over from the pile of beads she was sorting and shrugged. “So?”

  “These were dyed last year, and all year I washed each cloth according to a normal month’s wear. Six days a week all year long I put them both in the sun for about two hours—except when I forgot. Now look at this one—the one with the alum kept the most color.”

  Kyria eyed it more closely. “Not much of a difference, for the trouble or the cost. Or the stink—I think I remember the stink.”

  Rivkah considered the difference between the two again. “Nooo . . . but it’s something. It’s cheaper than Tyrian purple. Do you know how much murex costs? If I could sell something close to the same color that wouldn’t fade in the sun . . . I’d be rich.” Then I could live in a southern villa. Nathanael would never again be ashamed to have his friends visit, because I would be a cloth merchant and not a whore.

  “You don’t think someone else has thought of that? You don’t think someone else has tried it? Nothing new under the sun.”

  Rivkah smoothed a wrinkle in one of the lengths of fabric. Kyria was right. She was a whore, not a cloth merchant.

  “You know what? I don’t care what you say. Maybe there’s nothing new, but what if I make a little modification to what’s not new? And what if someone really hasn’t tried it? Or they did, but they live in Briton and not in Judea? It would be new around here. Kyria, you could look at the face of God himself and find something to criticize.”

  Pilate told him to cut it down. Rivkah rubbed her middle finger on the headache at her temple.

  “You don’t face reality.” Kyria shrugged again. “Why set yourself up when you know it will disappoint you?”

  Rivkah ignored her.

  It wasn’t surprising, now that she knew. Why had she expected sympathy from Pontius Pilate? Her tree was a Jewish tree, and she was a whore. So why was it now safe? When did Pilate tell Orion to cut it down? What did he do to circumvent an order from Pontius Pilate, and why would he do it for her?

  A hard fast rap came at the door, interrupting Kyria’s drone and Rivkah’s thoughts. Kyria chirped, “That’s for you. Clients don’t knock like that.”

  Rivkah rea
lized she was fingering the two different cloths. She had heard that iron salts worked to keep the dye in the cloth. What if she combined iron salts with alum? What would that do? She left the cloth and strolled to the door.

  “Yes?” she asked of the young man. He was already sweating as though he’d been sitting in the sun box at the jail yard. His fists were fast at his sides, and they convulsively opened and closed as he shifted from one foot to the other.

  “You are Rivkah?” he asked in a shrill voice.

  “I am,” she replied, and for the first time she felt pity for these poor messengers of Zakkai. They didn’t want to do what he made them do; they did it because he made them. Because they thought they had a moral obligation to do so.

  The young man launched loudly into the scripture, never pausing, never once looking into her eyes. He didn’t even know she mouthed the words along with him.

  “Repent and turn away from all your transgressions, so that iniquity may not become a stumbling block to you. Cast away from you all your transgressions which you have committed and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit.”

  The young man fled. Mitzvah fulfilled. Or whatever it was.

  Rivkah slowly closed the door. She walked through the sitting room, past the table with her dyed clothes, to her beaded-curtain alcove. Kyria was saying something to her. She brushed the beads aside.

  She had a lovely bed, draped with gorgeous and tasteful fabrics. She had beautiful tasseled pillows she had made herself and a shelf lined with vases of perfumes and ointments. Antony Scarpus had given her an amphora of balsam. She had a small alabaster vase, so beautiful with overlapping tones of creamy translucence that she often picked it up to wonder at it and roll its smooth cool curves against her cheek. It shone with milky lavender sparkles in the sun.

  She had beautiful clothing and beautiful jewelry. And now she had the most precious treasure of all. She went to the silver box on the end of the shelf and she took it in her arms. She crawled onto her bed and wrapped herself about the box.