The Centurion's Wife (2 page)

CHAPTER

TWO

Nine Days Later

LEAH FELT MORE THAN HEARD the sound of her name. She sat up on her sleeping pallet in the early morning darkness to a whisper so tender it could almost be ignored. It vanished with her return to full wakefulness, but the memory remained, making her feel in some undeniable way that whatever the reason, the call came surrounded in love and gentle caring.

She did not realize until she was on her feet that the fever was gone.

For over a week she had lain in the servants’ quarters, so weak she could not rise without help. She had counted the hours by the distance the sun traveled across the tiled floor. Now she washed her face in the basin against the wall and rolled up the pallet as though illness had never touched her. Her face was cool to the touch. She held out her arms and looked at her hands in wonder, for they no longer trembled. She shook her head, wishing she could recall the details of the dream. She was sure it had been a man’s voice that had called her name with such kindness.

The dawn was a faint wash upon the eastern sky, still so muted the breaking waves below the palace grounds were just shadows of varying light and darkness. A pair of stars defied the rising sun. Two guards walked the palace perimeter, dousing the night torches as they went.

With almost everyone else in Jerusalem, the palace was utterly still. When Pontius Pilate was present, the house buzzed and the atmosphere was sharp and pungent with tension. Even when the night brought quiet, the place was filled with an air of expectancy, sometimes dread. There was hardly a private moment, especially for a young servant like Leah.

Leah entered the kitchen to find Dorit seated on her pallet. The old woman preferred to sleep close to the fire, though it meant rising with the arrival of the first kitchen slave. But even with the household help away, Dorit never slept past dawn.

The old woman’s eyes widened. “Leah, what are you doing away from your sickbed?”

“I feel like I’ve just emerged from prison.”

“You’re better, then?”

“More than that, Dorit. I am well.”

“Come, let me feel your face.” Dorit stood and settled an age-mottled hand upon Leah’s forehead. “I feared for you, child.”

Leah’s response was interrupted by a guard’s shout from the direction of the palace gates. Leah straightened to the sound of approaching horses. She instantly recognized the voice that responded, coarsened by many years and battles. “It’s Hugo,” she remarked.

“That is not possible.” Dorit slowly moved across the floor to sit at the table. “He left after you were felled by the fever. Surely he is still in Jerusalem with the prelate.”

Leah did not waste time arguing. She bent to the kitchen fire, blew upon the embers until they glowed, and laid down kindling.

Footsteps stamped across the terrace, and Hugo’s voice said behind her, “So you’re awake. Good. I could kill for a bath.”

Pilate’s household guards came in all shapes and dispositions. Hugo was Leah’s favorite, a grizzled veteran who had been with the prelate since his earliest campaigns northward in Gaul. Hugo had nothing to prove, unlike some of the others.

“There’s no fire yet, neither for a bath nor tea.” Leah turned and smiled a greeting. “But it’s good to see you nonetheless.”

The big man grumbled under his breath, then settled with a sigh onto a stool across the table from Dorit. The kitchen was a massive affair, a full forty feet in length and almost as wide. Two storage rooms opened off the eastern wall. The table ran down the kitchen’s center, large enough to seat the servants and slaves at once. The guards were not permitted to enter the kitchen or the house proper, save for certain trusted soldiers such as Hugo. The others ate in the guardhouse, plaguing the unfortunate slaves sent to bring them their food.

Hugo groaned again as he stretched out his legs. “Been riding all night and all the day before. I was sent ahead from Jerusalem when Pilate departed.”

Dorit exclaimed, “The lord is already on his way back here?” She struggled to rise from her place.

“Stay where you are,” Leah said as she sawed at a portion of flatbread and set it on the table between the two of them, followed by olives and goat cheese and dried fruit. A soldier’s breakfast. “Would our Hugo be sitting down if the arrival were imminent?”

Hugo grunted his gratitude and glanced at her face. “You’re well again?”

“I am indeed.” Leah filled a copper pot with water and hung it to boil. She hesitated and then said into the open flames, “This morning I dreamed of a voice. Someone called my name—a man, I think. I woke up, and my fever was gone. More than that. It is as though I was never ill.”

She felt more than saw Hugo’s eyes lift again to study her, but he did not question or comment.

Leah turned and silently threw more wood on the flames. If he had asked for more, she would have had no more explanation to give.

They all dreaded the complicated and difficult transition from the one palace to the other. The governor loathed Jerusalem, and his foul mood tainted the entire household before every move. Leah never feigned illness as many did who hoped to be among the few left behind to tend the seaside palace, enjoying the breeze and languid days. No, her illness had been very real indeed. Frighteningly so. In her more lucid moments, she had heard other servants muttering predictions that she would not be alive upon their return from Jerusalem.

Hugo now said around a mouthful, “The mistress was worried about you. That is, until she fell ill herself.” Leah turned her full attention to his words. “Dreams, nightmares she’s been having. Since the night after we arrived in Jerusalem, she’s suffered from nightmares strong as the plague. Her cries wakened the entire household.”

Leah murmured, “I should go to her.”

“She’s coming to you, lass. They’ll all be back before nightfall. I came ahead to alert you—”

“Pilate is traveling with his wife?” Dorit asked quickly.

“He’s remained at her side the entire way.”

“Surely her condition has improved for them to be traveling.”

“Not when I last saw her.” Hugo popped an olive into his mouth. “Is there meat?”

“I’m certain there is some salted pork left from our meal last evening,” Dorit told him.

“And ale,” Hugo added. “Like I said, I’ve ridden all night, and I’ve a terrible thirst.”

Dorit untied the bundle of keys from her waist and handed them to Leah. Leah moved across to the locked chamber, found the proper key, and opened the door. She passed the shelves of gold and alabaster dishes meant for Pilate’s table, as well as the amphorae of honey and fine wine. She stopped before the stacks of cheese and salted meat. Lifting a platter of pork from the shelf, she carried it out to the table, then returned to fill a mug from the stone vat.

When she had locked the door and brought the ale to Hugo, he lifted the mug and drained it in one long pull. He sighed with genuine satisfaction, set down the empty vessel, and declared, “There’s been trouble over the prophet.”

Neither woman asked of whom Hugo spoke. Dorit asked, “Was there revolt?”

“Would I be sitting here if there had been?” Hugo’s gaze was on his plate as Leah arranged the slices of pork. “This land spawns trouble. And this prophet made more than most.” He lifted a bite to his mouth, shaking his head.

Leah dropped pinches of dried leaves into three mugs, ladled in water from the steaming pot, and set one in front of Dorit. Hugo took his own, pushed his plate away, and said, “The Sanhedrin threatened Pilate with revolt. They said this rabbi, this Jesus, was a blasphemer against their Temple and their God. That he’d declared himself king of the Judaeans.”

“He couldn’t be any worse ally for the prelate than Herod is,”

Dorit said darkly.

“Pilate questioned the prophet. I was there for the trial, such as it was. Strange, like nothing I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen more than my share.”

Dorit pressed, “Tell us what happened.”

“The man was innocent. His every breath said it. Pilate knew it, and so did I. The rabble garrisoned at the Antonia Fortress had their fun with him. He was scourged on Pilate’s order, and still the council demanded his death.”

“How—what did they do then?” Leah wasn’t sure why she cared.

“They no doubt crucified him.” Dorit grimaced. “I’m not sorry I missed that.”

“You have never uttered more true words.” Hugo’s features were carved from decades of wind and sun and weather and war, yet something beyond the forces of nature seemed to have aged him in the days since he left Caesarea. He stared out beyond the kitchen at the rising sun and the lapping waters. His voice dropped and deepened. Both women leaned forward to hear him say, “A storm rose at the moment of his death, and the earth shook.” He looked down at his hands clasped before him on the table. “I was afraid.”

“You?”

“Terrified. I thought the gods were attacking. I still have not untangled it. It was as though the whole world lost all hope.”

“But he’s dead now, and the trouble is behind us.” This from Dorit, the practical one.

“I hope you are right.” The soldier’s unfocused gaze and slack features left Leah shivering as though she had witnessed the moment herself. He shook his head and unclasped his hands, leaving them palms up in front of him. “But as I rode with only the moonlight to guide my way, I had the feeling that the trouble will be with us forever.”

Leah entered Procula’s bedchamber, opened the windows to the cool sea breeze, and laid out fresh bed linens in preparation for the woman’s arrival. Using the key attached to her belt, she unlocked the wall chamber and counted out six silver
denarii
. She noted the amount on a rolled parchment she had placed in the chamber when the prelate’s wife had turned over control of the household treasury to her. No servant before had ever accounted for the flow of money. She knew this because Dorit had held the responsibility before her, and Dorit could neither read nor write. And the one before Dorit had not done any such thing, because that servant had been a thief, taking what he called a tax collector’s percentage with every purchase.

Leah had no idea if Procula ever opened the scroll, for nothing had been said. But Leah could not afford the risk of an accusation, even if it turned out to be false. Her father had been accused by dishonest partners of being a thief, then disgraced by bankruptcy. Leah wanted absolutely no such scandal attached to herself. She took a moment to count the jewels and the money, checked the tally against her latest entry, then shut and locked it away.

When she left the palace, the perimeter guards eyed her but did not speak. They could be rough with servant wenches, especially those not already claimed in some fashion by one of their own. But the household knew Leah as Pilate’s niece, which was both true and not true. Her grandfather had been a close associate of Pilate’s father. Leah’s father had been adopted into the clan as an adult, a sign of affection that happened quite often at certain levels of Roman society. But then had come the financial calamity. The tales about Leah’s disgraced father had been told and retold during her three years in Judaea Province. Daily Leah wished she could deny the bitter truth.

Large for a town of its size, the Caesarea market drew traders from as far afield as Arabia and Alexandria and even Gaul. Merchants displayed the finest goods in permanent stalls around the center plaza. Caesarea’s entire administration was Roman, and most of its population was foreign to the region. Even the Judaean residents took pride in being Roman citizens and spoke Greek, rather than the Aramaic used in the rest of Judaea.

Leah flew through the market, impatiently ordering and bartering. She exacted the best prices she could, but today time was more important than saving a few denarii. She was in the habit of preparing an evening meal according to what she found fresh—forest mushrooms, smoked eel, newly caught redfish. There would be a soup of sorrel and sage to start, she decided, and to complete the repast the season’s first fruit would be baked with wild honey and cinnamon. She left orders at each stop for the deliveries to arrive within the hour. Her final stop was the apothecary, where she bought a packet of a foul-smelling pollen that was absurdly expensive, looked like tar, and tasted worse. But it was the only medicine that relieved Procula when her headaches struck. Nightmares meant broken sleep, and whenever the mistress did not sleep well she was susceptible to even worse attacks.

Though Leah drove a hard bargain, she had become friends with several of the stallholders. These traders spoke with her this morning of the prophet’s death and mused over the risk of revolt. Though she was not able to tarry long enough to hear more, from one she even heard a rumor that Herod Antipas also was coming to Caesarea from Jerusalem. For Herod to leave Jerusalem at the height of the spring festival season was unheard of. As the stall-holder counted coins into Leah’s hand, he wondered aloud if the sudden departure of both Herod and Pilate could be tied to the prophet’s crucifixion.

Awareness of such rumors and speculations was how a servant survived in a household of power. Leah tucked away the information with the remaining coins and returned to the palace.