John Masters (10 page)

Julius nodded. "Is that all?"

"No. He has taken the menorah from Jochanan's house and Ben Zion's Torah and thrown them down before the statue of Vespasian in the Temple as offerings."

Julius stared dully at the great Rock face a league away to the south. No refuge there. No refuge anywhere.

"It must not be," he said.

"No," his wife said. "It must not be."

Refuge was the wrong word now; he thought it was no longer a matter of refuge but of duty or sacrifice. Whose sacrifice?

"I am ready," Gavrielah said. "With the Temple gone, which all my life I had dreamed of, I do not feel that I am really alive. Yet I love you." She put her hand on his head and stroked his cheek.

"Our people will be dispersed all over the world," Julius said. "They will have no home now. Nor will we, for Jerusalem was our home, too."

"Perhaps we should bow our necks, so that they of the dispersal will have places to come to," Gavrielah said.

"Perhaps," Julius said, "but what if bowing the neck only makes it easier for them to cut off your head? ... And there are the children to be considered. Ophira's only eleven.... Leave me, wife. I must think."

It was the ninth day of Tishri, harvest time. From his roof here near the edge of the town he could see the woods across the river. The hills beyond were full of great bustard and succulent partridge. Along the sea the orchards groaned with the quilted custard apples. All around stretched the wheat. On the threshing floors mules trotted out in circles, drawing sledges, and children rode the sledges, threshing the wheat. Men threw up the grain on long shovels, winnowing, and the wind blew the chaff away in a golden haze. He could see the paved road and the warehouses piled with wool and the long sheds of the tunny-pickling factory. The wind blew from the west, cool with a freshness from the great ocean. There was a smell of autumn flowers and ripe com in the air and over all fields the gold of the threshing. They would have been harvesting in Judea, too, when the legion went up against the city. He could see the auxiliaries out in front making their short rushes, shouting their shrill war cries that made the legionaries laugh and imitate them. Behind, he saw the steady tramp and clink of the legion, the optios on the flank measuring the pace for each century, the eagle riding steadily on above the dust....

Near sunset there was a purple light on the bay, and he could think that it was not a reflection of the sky but the dye itself, leaking from the vats to the west to stain the sea. It was the color of the Judean priests, that purple. Men wore it in stripes on their prayer shawls, and often the wrappings of the Law were dyed the same purple. Two years ago the community here had bought an especially good amphora of the dye and sent it as a gift to the Temple treasury at Jerusalem. It would all have been used up before ... the end.

The Rock stood up like a strong man, bareheaded, neck unbowed, shadowed gray face turned square to the land. It was a strange Rock, joined to the land but not part of it. Many grazed their flock on it, but none owned it, not even the colonia. The idea of owning it seemed sacrilegious, as to say, who owns the TZUR YISRAEL, the Rock of Israel? It was a good place to make a sacrifice, even as the pagans and the tribes did.

The sun set. The tenth day of Tishri, the Day of Atonement, had begun. He got up, sighing and shivering. Then he squared his shoulders. It couldn't be any worse than facing the frigidarium.

Two hours after he lay down to sleep, he awoke, because he had set himself to do so. The little naked woman of ivory, his family's heirloom and love charm for the marriage bed, gleamed pale where she hung on the wall above his head. He knew that Gavrielah, beside him in the alcove, was awake. Probably she had not slept at all; He said, "I must go now, my love. I may not come back."

"I know. What do you tell me to do?"

"Know nothing. Rely on Fidus."

He bent and kissed her long on the mouth, then left her, went to the outer room, and dressed as though for a legion ceremony—tunic, breeches, cuirass, cloak, woolen neck cloth, sword, dagger, boots, and his centurion's helmet. He hooked his shield onto his left arm and faced the alcove where the gods would have been kept in a pagan household. He bowed three times to the menorah set up in it, then left the house and marched slowly up the street toward the prison.

He met and saw no one. A cloud passed over the moon as he neared the prison and he approached the sentry's post in almost complete darkness. The man was half asleep, pacing slowly in front of the main gate, his drawn sword resting flat on his shoulder, his head nodding. He was an old ex-soldier of the Seventh. He turned as the cloud passed away from the moon and saw the centurion striding toward him, the cloak billowing, the great helmet glowing. He straightened, bringing the hilt of his sword to his mouth. Julius raised his own right hand in salute and stepped straight in behind the short dagger in his left. It struck under the ribs, and the sentry toppled silently, blood gushing from his mouth. Julius lowered him to the ground and quietly opened the main gate. As he had thought, the rest of the watch on duty were asleep in the guardroom. He pulled the corpse inside the gate, hid it behind the guardroom, and closed the gate, bolting it from inside.

With the dead man's sword in hand he entered the prison building and went to the cell where the five Turdetani were awaiting an escort from the mines to take them back into slavery. They were awake, and he whispered in their tongue, which he knew almost as well as he knew Latin. "I am going to release you, on one condition. That you take four other prisoners, Romans, with you and see that they escape to Hispalis, or wherever in Baetica they want to go."

No one spoke. Then a voice from the dark muttered, "Who is it? Why do you do this?"

Julius said, "I am a Jew. The Romans have done worse to my people than to you. I do this..." He searched for the right words, which these men would understand and appreciate: "... to make peace with myself."

"You are he who saved my life when you could have killed me on the Rock," the voice said. Julius remembered the man well for his red hair and blue eyes, though he could not see them now. "I am called Pendreth," the man went on, "a leader among my people. We will do as you ask. I give my word."

Julius pulled back the double bolts and said, "Take this sword. Use it if you have to. Come." At the end of the prison he found the four condemned conspirators in a single cell. One muttered, as he worked the bolt, "Already?" but Julius answered, "Quiet! I have come to release you. The Turdetani will take you to the hills and hide you until this blows over, as I think it will soon. Or you can start life again in another city and send secret word for your families to join you.... Follow me now, all, but make no sound."

He led the way out of the building. The watch snored in the guardroom, and when he was outside, he bolted them in. Then he pushed the tribesmen and prisoners into a rough file, and, at their side as though in charge, sword drawn, he marched them to the wicket gate in the town wall, near his house. It was unguarded except in times of war or tribal unrest. "Farewell, Ben Zion," he said in a low voice. "If I do anything for the Covenant tonight, it is thanks to you.... Farewell, Pendreth."

The chieftain clasped his hand. "Where are you going? Come with us."

Julius said, "I have more to do yet. None of you should know of it, in case later you are interrogated." He raised his hand, closed the gate, and went back into the town.

The Temple of Jupiter and the Temple of the Divine Caesar stood next to each other in the Forum. Votive lamps burned in each, shining on garland-hung busts of gods and emperors. Before the busts there were offerings of food in earthenware bowls and wine in rare jars.

Julius threw down the images, so that they broke. He scattered the flowers, overturned the food and wine, and set fire to the curtains with the votive lamps. It only took two minutes, then he gathered up the menorah and the Torah that had been cast before the bust of Vespasian and went quickly toward the house of Marcus, the chief magistrate. Putting down the sacred objects at a little distance, he went on. A servant lay asleep across the threshold, but Julius' dagger quieted him before he could stir. Julius went through the atrium to the side room where he expected that Marcus would be sleeping. He was there, a low oil wick smoking, and his wife beside him on the couch. He started up with a cry as Julius entered the room, snatched a torch, and dipped it in the flame. He stumbled back, fumbling for the sword on a table behind him, the red flames bursting high, his wife's face frozen.

"Julius the centurion," he cried.

"Julius the Jew," Julius said. "Come to make amends for what I did ... or didn't do ... last night. And to punish a needless sacrilege."

"You'll never escape alive," Marcus said. "And killing me won't help the Jews in Judea or anywhere else."

"There are times when a man can't afford to be reasonable," Julius said. "Otherwise he finds himself walking meekly into the slaughterhouse."

Marcus snatched the sword from the table, but Julius struck first, plunging his sword straight through the other's body and a hand's width out behind, to the left of the spine. The duovir fell back across the couch. Julius put his foot on his neck and jerked out his sword. To the woman he said, "I am alone. Tell them, when they come." He strode out of the house, gathered up the menorah and Torah, walked to the wicket gate, and left the town. At the beach he turned left and walked along the sand toward the dim bulk of the Rock. When he reached it, he found a patch of grass, wrapped his cloak about him, put his shield under his head, and slept. After a time dreams troubled him, but not of his wife or children, whom he could never see again, nor of all the dead in all his battles; but of a naked woman, terrified, running, a low-browed woman, ugly but with deep, lovely eyes, who cried to him for help.

He awoke then, and it was dawn. He continued south, moving diagonally up and across the west face of the Rock, past the Great Cave but lower, until he reached a flat place half a mile from the southernmost point, where the mass of the mountain ended its first severe southward fall. Here he sat down, facing the way he had come. He felt hungry for a time, but that passed.

He waited there on the edge of the escarpment until nearly noon. Then he saw the party working along the edge of the sea below. There were six horsemen, including some dignitary in a purple-lined cloak, and twenty men of the watch on foot, led by the aedile—he recognized Octavius' gray stallion. He smiled slightly to think what a compliment they were paying an aging centurion to bring so many against him.

At last one of the men saw him—the sun may have glittered on his helmet or touched the red of its horsehair plume—and pointed and called out. Julius stood up and, without hurrying, crossed the escarpment toward the eastern side. A goat track led from the corner along the eastern cliffs. For a hundred yards it was four or five feet wide and flat. Then the cliff swept down vertically from above and dropped again vertically below, and a narrow ledge snaked between, sharply curved round the beak of the mountain. Beyond, the path ended in a big cave—the Eagle's Nest. There was no other approach.

Julius put away his shield—he would not need that there—and, with a brief prayer, threw the menorah and Torah into the sea eight hundred feet below. Then he waited behind the angle of the path, looking out over the water shimmering far below. The autumn crocus were in bloom, stems sprouting like tall pink girls from the crevices in the limestone. A redlegged partridge saw him and flew out from the cliff, but a falcon stooped, striking it with a great burst of feathers.

Julius was looking toward the east, toward Rome and, beyond Rome, toward Jerusalem, which was no more. The wind was from the west, so he was in shelter here, but eddies sent whorls of dust down the cliff and shook the tiny flowers in the crevices.

He heard the clink of metal on stone and took up position, pressed into the cliff, sword raised. From round the corner Octavius spoke. "Are you there, Julius? Alone?"

"Yes."

"We came here once together, didn't we? The year we settled in Carteia. We were looking for wild pig and ate bread and onions and wine in the cave. It was the first time I'd ever seen a squirting cucumber. And Fidus talked of the cave the other day. A place of no escape, he said.... Now that Marcus is dead and another duovir fled, our chief magistrate is Plinius—a friend of yours. Things might have been arranged, but you chose a bad day. The procurator of the province arrived on a surprise visit at sunrise. He has come out with us to see that we do our duty. He has ordered that you be taken at once, at all costs."

"And then ...?"

The voice from around the angle of the cliff said, "Crucifixion, in front of the temple. But you have a sword. I'll give you five minutes, then we'll have to come."

"It'll be an expensive business, Octavius."

"I know. I shall lead. In five minutes."

Julius waited. Time passed. Another partridge, forgetful of the fate it had just witnessed, whirred out over the gulf. No falcon struck. It was warm, the sun blazing along the cliff, Africa shimmering beyond the sea, the gusty wind laden with the smell of hot stone and lavender.

Octavius came fast, crouched behind his shield. Another man was on his heels, spear arm drawn back. Julius stooped and stabbed at Octavius' legs below the shield. The spearman thrust, the point entering Julius' left shoulder. He hurled himself bodily against the shield, and Octavius fell. He struck left-handed with the dagger. The aedile rolled over and vanished over the cliff. The second man turned and ran.

Julius waited. He heard murmurings from along the path. Then, after a quarter of an hour, leather creaked close by.

"It is I," a voice said, and Julius stiffened. "Fidus."

"My son."

"A tribune of the Seventh Legion. The procurator has confirmed it."

"Your career may be short."

"I am not afraid."

He came round the angle of the rock then, spear in one hand, dagger in the other, and no shield. Julius waited for the spear thrust, then seized the haft, jerked it out of his son's hand, and thrust it between his legs. Fidus stabbed with the dagger as he fell. The blade struck Julius low on the right side under the ribs, and he knew he was badly wounded. Fidus fell, one leg over the edge. Julius pulled him back, his sword point at his son's throat.