Lady of the Eternal City (47 page)

“Sell them,” Hadrian said. “They cannot rise again if they are enslaved.”

“No,” I agreed bleakly, “they can’t.”

I looked at him and he looked at me.

“I forgot how much I dislike this place,” he said at last. “It’s ugly here.”

“We made it ugly,” I said, and he nodded. We sat drinking wine for a silent hour, and then I rose and dealt with the slaves. Throughout the whole war, that was the one time I disobeyed Hadrian’s orders. I sent a good many Jewish prisoners to be sold at the great markets in Hebron and Gaza, enough to satisfy the records—but after so many years doing the Praetorian Guard’s endless paperwork, I knew how to falsify reports. A good many of those captive Jews never made it to the auction blocks. I funneled them onto ships and into wagons, into any vehicle that would take them to Syria, to Arabia, to Africa and Numidia. To anywhere, as long as they were gone and free. I diverted supplies too, supplies to keep the prisoners fed and clothed until they could be delivered to their new lands. I suppose a great many died on those leaking boats and creaking wagons, and the ones that arrived would have arrived threadbare and homeless—but it was a chance. A better chance than a slave block, or so I told myself.

I did my best, I swear it. I wish I could say it was pure kindness on my part, or whatever was left of kindness in me. It wasn’t. It was the guilt and shame that stabbed me when I thought of my mother, of the bitter sorrow I’d see in her eyes if she could see me selling the remnants of her people, and I made my amends in whatever small way I could. Although it wasn’t all for my mother, or for my own shattered conscience.

I hoped I’d find Mirah among those broken survivors.

But I didn’t find so much as the gleam of her hair or the whisper of her name, not in all the reports or in all the wagonloads of hunched figures—and while I spent that summer and autumn disposing of Judaea’s survivors, Bethar fell.

Fell in a welter of betrayal and starvation, in blood and in desperate back-alley fights. Precious few left alive there for me to save with my paper tricks. I suppose you want battle heroics, something rousing and noble for the brave rebels who had played their desperate game to the end, but I didn’t see much of that, and anyway, my final part in Judaea’s rebellion didn’t come until the end. Just like at the rebellion of Dacia.

Two rebellions: so different. But at the end of each was a siege, and a doomed warrior . . . and a fight to the death at my hands.

*   *   *

Hadrian had no interest in watching the captive rebel leaders die. Would I never understand the man? I didn’t think he had interest in anything
but
death anymore. Maybe it was because he’d had another of his troubling nosebleeds that morning, and he could do little except sit leaning back in a chair with red rivulets running down his throat as his dog whined and his physicians fluttered. He summoned us four commanders for no more than the barest of instructions.

“Kill them quickly,” he said, one fist curling and uncurling on the arm of his chair.

“You don’t want to march them back to Rome in chains, Caesar?” Severus sounded disappointed. Captives in chains always looked well at a triumph, and all the commanders were hoping for a triumph.

“No.” Hadrian sounded curt around his bloody nose. “Kill them here, and do it quickly. Just bring me the head of Simon bar Kokhba when it is done.”

I felt a chill, because those had been Emperor Trajan’s orders in Dacia for another rebel king—and those had been Hadrian’s orders to me at the start of his reign, when I’d had to bring him four heads in a sack. Echoes and echoes. Is the past ever truly done with us?

“‘Kill them quickly,’” Severus said with disgust as we retreated to the open square in Bethar where such executions were best conducted. “I was hoping for some crucifixions at the very least! Flaying bar Kokhba alive, would that count as quick? I could skin him fast . . .”

“If you want the Emperor to skin
you
.”

It was a cold winter’s noon when the rebellion’s final act began to play, the sky blue and hard overhead, the square a blinding white in the grim sunshine, lined by my legionaries in their battered armor. Blood underfoot, dried between the stones from the city’s fall, and curls of smoke still rising into the air from buildings that still smoldered. I wondered if one of them had been my wine shop.

Eight shackled prisoners marched into the square, shoved into a rough line. Such flinty pride in those straight shoulders and bloodied, bearded faces—though the only face I really saw clearly was Simon’s. Severus read out the list of their crimes and the sentences to be passed, voice booming, and I didn’t hear a word because I was looking at my old friend. Simon was gaunt from Bethar’s months of starvation inside the siege wall, pared down to bone and sinew and whipcord muscle. His beard had gone wild, and his eyes still glittered with calm watchfulness. He turned his head, looking down the line of crested helmets and gleaming breastplates until he saw me, and then his eyes stopped. I swallowed, realizing I’d broken into a sweat under my breastplate.

Finish it
, I prayed.
Just finish it.
But even if Hadrian had decreed speed and mercy in their executions, the executions must still happen, and seven others would precede Simon to their deaths. Die they did, as swiftly as a sword could strike their heads from their shoulders.

Then Simon’s turn came.

He stepped forward among the heads of his comrades, shackled hands folded before him, and a stolid soldier stood by with a bloodied sword. The men shifted, eager to see the great “son of a star” whose prophecy had crashed to the earth instead of soaring to the heavens—and I hadn’t planned to move, but somehow I was stepping forward.

“Mirah,” I said low-voiced, and my mouth was dry. “Do you know what happened to your niece?”

Simon’s eyes connected with mine slowly, as though he were dragging himself away from some inner citadel. “Mirah,” he repeated, and his deep voice vibrated me like a lyre string.

“If she made her way to you from Syria,” I said, “tell me.”

“Yes,” he said. “She made her way to me. A woman of God, worthy of all honor.”

Severus was coming toward me with a puzzled frown, but I saw nothing but Simon. “Where is she?”

“Dead.”

Some part of me must have known it.
Until one or both of us is dead
, I had told her when we last spoke,
you are my wife
.

Then I pray death comes to one of us
, she had hissed at me.

Her prayer had been answered. Not mine.

Mirah. My Mirah, only she hadn’t been
my
Mirah for a very long time. I bowed my head, my eyes dry and burning, and I wished I could tear the heart out of my frozen chest. “How did she die?”

For the first time, Simon smiled.

“How?”

“Aren’t you going to kill me now?”

I drew my sword. “Tell me how she died.”

He bared his throat for me.

“Vix?” Severus tramped up to my side, scowling like a jowly hound. “Why are you mucking about?”

I reached for the
gladius
at Severus’s waist and unsheathed it in a quick yank. “He’s going to fight me.”

Severus’s hand caught mine over his own hilt. “What?”

“Let him fight like a gladiator,” I snarled. “They think we’re barbarians for our gladiatorial games? Let him fight in one.”

“Have one of your legionaries do it—”

“No,” I said. “Simon bar Kokhba fights me.”

Severus grinned. “Just don’t let the bugger win, will you?”

He stamped back to the side, and I turned in one motion and tossed his sword to Simon. He caught it with a quick swipe, still fast despite the shackles, and I didn’t give him a chance even for a practice heft. This bloody square had become arena sand, and there wasn’t room here for pity. “How did Mirah die, Simon?” I snarled, and made a savage stab toward his belly.

“She was caught in our retreat past Jerusalem by a party of Roman sentries.” He sidestepped my thrust, parried it, and began to advance on me. “Men from your precious Tenth. They raped her to death and left her to rot under a tree. Maybe that’s how it happened, Vix. Or maybe not. Why should I tell you?”

I came for him again, short brutal jabs that could have disemboweled an ox. He had no shield to catch them, but a chunk of charred wood lay discarded in the bloodied square, remnant of some burned house—he snatched it up, and there was enough length in the chain between his wrists that he could hold it as a shield to parry me. “Tell me!” I snarled.

“Maybe she died of a fever in Bethar.” Block again, and then he was the one attacking. Advance and thrust, crisp as the legionary he’d once been. “Maybe I buried her somewhere in these walls and said the mourning prayers for her.” His sword rang against mine, and he was starved and beaten but he was ferally strong. I heard a growl from my legionaries as I retreated before those vicious stabs. “Or maybe she starved to death when your siege wall went up.”

I stabbed at his makeshift shield, seeing charred splinters of wood sift down on the blood-flecked stones. “Or maybe she still lives.”

“No.” Simon’s voice lost its mockery. He stepped back a moment, lowering his
gladius
just a touch, and I stepped back too. A moment of stillness, both of our chests heaving. We were neither of us young, like the men who had marched together in Dacia. “No. She’s dead. That I do promise.”

“And why should I—”

“I swear it in the name of the kingdom of Israel that was mine for two whole years before you came to tear it down.” He said something else in Hebrew, and it had the sound of an oath. “My niece is dead, and I wept for her. But you’ll never know how she died, Vix. Never know how she spent her last hours. Never know where her body lies. Not ever.” He spat between my feet. “Consider that your punishment, you dog-whipped, Roman-veined
traitor
.”

When I was young I would have roared. Young men always roar. Old men lack the breath, and I just flew at him in bitter silence.
Gladius
met
gladius
as we clashed and parried, and over the pounding of my own blood I could hear my men cheering me. Simon’s lips skinned back from his teeth. Maybe it was rage powering him or maybe he really was the son of a star, because his sword was like a wall ever blocking mine. We had sparred together in Bethar for so long, and he must have thought he knew all my tricks.

“You know what your trouble is, Simon?” I panted. “You fight like a fucking Roman.”

“I am not a Roman,” he snarled.

“But you fight like one,” I said, and with that I tossed my
gladius
from my right hand to my left.

Roman legionaries are all trained to fight the same way. Sword on the right, regardless of which hand they favor. Keep behind the shield; short jabbing strokes; the point beats the edge—everything that had been drilled into Simon and me during our legionary training, and that was how we’d always sparred together because it was all he knew. But legionary training hadn’t been the beginning of my partnership with a sword, as it was his. I’d been trained first with the left hand, by Rome’s greatest gladiator who also happened to be my father. The left hand recognized no rules, fought in no formations.
The point beats the edge
, the right hand said.
Hell with that
, the left hand thought.

It was how I’d destroyed a Dacian king’s escape at the end of another siege. Echoes and echoes.

“You fight like a Roman,” I taunted again. “That’s one
Roman
part of you that never died. You’ve got Rome in your veins, same as me.” He came after me like the legionary he once was, teeth bared. I abandoned all my careful footwork in an extravagant sideways leap, spreading my arms wide like a gladiator taunting his opponent in the arena. He made the stolid lunge that I wanted but I wasn’t there, I was sliding away in a half turn, and my sword came around in one whistling-fast sweep, and it opened Simon’s belly from side to side.

His sword dropped. His guts dropped. And he dropped, ashen-faced, blood pouring over the stones in a viscous flood, and I leveled my
gladius
at his eyes. “Tell me,” I panted, and the roars of my legionaries were just a dull roar behind the hammering of my own heart. “Tell me how Mirah died.”

He stared at me, holding his own guts. Just stared. “
Sh’ma Yisrael
,” he managed to say.
“Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Eh
ad.”
He drew out the last word in a hiss of agony, his eyes full of hatred for me and everything I was. “
Sh’ma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Eh
ad,
” he repeated louder. The final prayer that is supposed to be the last words of any Jew. And I drew my sword back and I took his head in one sweep that dropped me to my knees. I stayed there, kneeling in Simon’s blood, head bowed and eyes stinging, his head lying beside me and his eyes still open.

Echoes and echoes.

Full circle.

*   *   *

When I killed King Decebalus, I had let someone else take his head to the Emperor. But I took Simon’s head to Hadrian myself.

He would not look at it. “I have lost my taste for taking heads,” he said, staring at the smoking city.

“So you make me do it for you?” I flung the head at his feet. “May your gods rot your bones.”

“They are.” His eyes turned to me, tired. “I know what you did, Vercingetorix.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” My men were celebrating and the other commanders getting drunk, but I paced back and forth in front of the Emperor, blood roaring in my ears and blood drying on my face. “What do you mean, you know what I did?”

“The Jews intended for the slave blocks. All the ones you spared.”

I stopped pacing. I scrubbed my bloodied hand off on Antinous’s lion skin. “Do you care?”

“At the beginning, I wanted every rebel in Judaea sent down to Hades. But now?” Hadrian’s hand stroked the dog in his lap. “Let the survivors alone, so long as they make no trouble. I merely want to go home.”

“Well, we can. Because it’s finished, all of it. I finished it for you.”