The Last Disciple (22 page)

Bernice thought of years earlier when she’d made similar promises to Ben-Aryeh for a different reason. Promises she now intended to fulfill. “You will have that,” she repeated. “And more.”

“More? Then I ask you for one last thing.”

“Anything.”

“Cry out to the guards.”

“What?”

“Call them into your chamber.”

“You will not be punished,” Bernice repeated.

“Call.”

She did.

“Louder!” he commanded.

“Guards! Guards!”

Footsteps clattered in the corridor.

Before the door opened, Matthias pulled a rag from his waistband. He wrapped it quickly around her mouth, tying it behind her head, gagging her.

Then the door crashed open. Four guards filled the doorway.

Matthias raised his knife, as if to kill Bernice. Then hesitated. And held his position as he waited for the guards to draw the obvious conclusion.

The guards rushed forward, raising their swords.

“No!” Bernice screamed into the rag. But her efforts to stop the guards were useless. They saw her life in danger and had only one response.

The swords came down.

The Fourth Hour

Annas saw the full extent of the armies that Florus had assembled, and despite his satisfaction that Florus had made the arrangements with the bandits as agreed, Annas the Younger now raged.

At the temple, around subordinates, he had no hesitation at openly venting his frequent rages.

But here, out in the open countryside, with the hills rising on all sides instead of temple walls, he was forced to keep his rage hidden. Against the assembled discipline and equipment of two cohorts of Roman soldiers, he knew his personal strengths, reputation, and power as a former high priest of the exalted temple were inconsequential.

The soldiers passed and the horsemen came in waves on their way to Jerusalem. They towered above Annas on their fully armored beasts, and it irked him further that he sat on a donkey instead of on one of the magnificent stallions belonging to the temple stables.

He’d traveled five or more miles out of Jerusalem on the main road from Caesarea. Here, down from the mountains, the road was wide and safe. At any given time, one could look back or ahead and be reassured by the sight of at least a dozen other travelers moving along the road. Some walked; some rode horses or donkeys or camels. Some were on wagons or chariots. When it had stopped to encamp the afternoon before, a day’s march from Jerusalem, there had been ample time for those continuing to the city to bring word of the army’s presence.

An army!

Now, pushed off the road by the mass of soldiers and forced to plod on uneven ground on a stubbornly slow donkey, Annas felt his rage build. He maintained his outer air of calm until the end of the lines neared, with Florus, the Roman procurator of Judea, at the rear, seated in a chariot and holding the reins of a horse, while slaves on each side walked along and held umbrellas to shield him from the sun.

Annas dismounted and immediately caught the attention of Florus.

Florus barked an order to a nearby centurion. The order was repeated down the line, and both cohorts of soldiers stopped, remaining solidly in formation.

This was a light coat of balm on the rage inside Annas that at least his presence stopped a Roman army.

As Annas stepped closer to the chariot, Florus dismissed the slaves, another indication to Annas that he had information the procurator wanted. Whatever would be said in their conversation was important enough to remain between the two of them.

Florus was a large man, a former soldier. His political astuteness and his rise to power as procurator of Judea were based on a simple system. Bully those who could be bullied, bribe those who couldn’t, and learn quickly which category best suited his opponent. But whatever athletic poise and grace he’d once had as an active soldier had been lost to years of living far too well. There was redness in his face, broken veins in his nose. Wide as his shoulders were, the melon belly that strained at his toga dominated his upper body. His hair was thick for an older man—he was in his fifties—but he’d had it dyed black, and because of the deep wrinkles on his face and his sagging jowls, the vanity made him look like a parody of himself.

“Unusual,” Florus remarked with a smirk when they had their privacy. “The prophet has left his mountain.”

It was useless to try to explain to Florus that a temple priest was not a prophet, for he made the same inane comment every time he met Annas, something that fueled his anger. As a result, some of the rage inside Annas slipped past his efforts at composure. “An army—especially one of this size—was not part of our agreement.”

“Where are your usual fawning niceties?”

Annas bit back the sharp obscenity that first leaped into his mind. He knew that in the eyes of Florus, he was not much more than the donkey on which he’d ridden from Jerusalem to meet the army.

Furthermore, Annas was acutely aware that Florus wielded a heavy stick. Despite Annas’s high ranking among the Jews, Florus would have no hesitation at snapping an immediate command to have him slain on the side of the road. Especially here, where not a single witness would contradict any story that Florus wished to concoct.

On the other hand, the unchecked power in Judea that Florus was capable of sharing also meant he dangled a considerable carrot. Annas continued to play the role of donkey in pursuit of that carrot of power.

“The fawning niceties?” Florus repeated, raising his eyebrows.

“It is a hot day,” Annas said. “I’m sure you would rather not have any of your time wasted.”

“Don’t presume to guess what I want or don’t want.”

Annas itched in the peasant’s rough clothing. He felt a drop of sweat on the end of his nose. He resisted the impulse to wipe it away.

Florus waved for one of the attendants to approach. “Give this man the umbrella,” he barked. “Then leave again.”

Annas accepted it from the slave, surprised that Florus would be so considerate. The shield from the sun felt wonderful.

“Shade me as we speak,” Florus said with another smirk, casually resting the reins between his fingers. “Then I won’t have any concerns about the length of our conversation, will I?”

Annas felt his stomach clench with involuntary protest. He was a former high priest and would have the position again one day!

“Shade me,” Florus repeated.

Still, Annas hesitated.

“Think of all you have risked and all you can lose if I speak a single word in Jerusalem about our arrangements.” Florus was calm. “Shade me.”

Annas finally shuffled forward and held the umbrella above the chariot, squinting as the heat of the sun baked him again.

Florus smiled in mock appreciation. He drew water from a leather pouch and drank deeply. “Now,” he said expansively when he finished, “remind me of our arrangement. Not the one that involves the old Jew you want ambushed. But the arrangement that matters to me.”

“It did not involve an army like this approaching Jerusalem.”

“The public demonstrations you arranged against me were substantial, almost too much. If I let it go without some sort of token punishment, I risk a true rebellion as your people lose their fear of me. Or worse, word of it would get back to Nero, and he would remove me for being too weak.”

“Seventeen talents of silver!” Annas said. “From the temple treasury. Gifts given by our people to God. We only agreed to five talents; your soldiers took seventeen! Worse, they spent an entire afternoon loading it in the temple square in view of all the people. If we hadn’t protested as we did, the people would have thought we were in collusion.”

“Your family and the temple officials have been in collusion with Rome for decades,” Florus remarked. “Are the Jews truly so stupid that something like your demonstrations against me will actually distract them?”

Annas did not answer.

“Listen to me,” Florus said. “I will appear with this army in Jerusalem. You and the puppet you control as a high priest will posture and bluff. I will posture and bluff. You don’t have enough military power to send me away. And I don’t have enough military power to actually take control of the city. Thus, after enough posturing and bluffing so that each side appears the winner, I will take the army back to Caesarea, and your people will believe that once again you have protected them. That I decided to bring an army to add to the show is meaningless. In principle, I am fulfilling our arrangement, am I not?”

“Along with the two talents of that silver set aside for me.”

“Are you implying I have forgotten?” Florus’s smile disappeared and he stared hard at Annas. “Or that I am going to steal it from you?”

“Only saying it aloud to satisfy myself.”

Florus drank more water and pointedly did not offer any to Annas. Not that he would have accepted. Pigs—and Florus was definitely a cousin to the four-legged ones—were repulsive to a decent Jew. It would be like sharing a livestock trough.

“Something bothers me,” Florus said. “You went to great trouble to meet me here in the countryside. We could have easily discussed all of this in the privacy of the palace where it would be expected for you to visit me.”

“I come to warn you, and not even for this would I make any exception and send a messenger.” Annas would never put any of his communications with Florus on a scroll where it could fall into the wrong hands and destroy his career and his life.

“Warn me?”

“Word of your arrival has already reached Jerusalem, of course. There will be a delegation waiting for your army outside the city walls. They intend to shame you with applause. I only say this because if your soldiers break rank and respond with any force, a true riot might break out. Any escalation would make it difficult for both you and I to simply, as you said, bluff and posture.”

“I see,” Florus said. He shifted his eyes to the horizon and then back to Annas. “I see indeed.”

“There is something else,” Annas said. “A matter of interest to you that we have discussed on other occasions.”

“Yes?”

“Gallus Sergius Vitas finally arrived on ship.”

“Vitas!” Florus lurched forward so quickly that the chariot shifted position, and Florus had to jerk the reins to keep the horse in place.

“According to my spies, he is now in Sebaste,” Annas said. “With Ben-Aryeh. Your enemy has now joined with mine.”

“Do you think today you will die?” Quintus asked his sister. “I would very much like to watch. I’ve never seen anyone die before. All I know is what you and Maglorius have told me about the arenas.”

Quintus was small for a seven-year-old. His hair was oddly dark and had been since birth. He wore a light blue tunic and laced boots of supple leather. In each hand he held a short wooden sword. He stood in sunlight, at the edge of the shadow cast by the courtyard wall, and squinted as he looked at Valeria and waited for her answer.

“Let me assure you that my death will not be a spectacle,” Valeria answered her brother. “The only women to die in the arena are thieves or murderers or slaves.” Valeria paused and sighed dramatically. “No, my death shall be dignified.” Another pause. “And very, very tragic.”

When only fifteen, Valeria had already begun to chalk her face and redden her lips and cheeks with the sediment from red wine. She’d looked fully woman then. Now at twenty, her beauty was amazing. She dressed accordingly. Her silk overdress was cream, with lace adorning the hem. She reclined on a couch in the shade, her bare feet tucked beneath her, her elegant sandals on the mosaic of the courtyard floor beside the couch.

“Will it be today?” One of the characteristics that marked Quintus was persistence. He had a beguiling mixture of naiveté and self-assurance, and Valeria adored him. She also found it amusing that, intelligent as he was for one only seven, he did not quite comprehend death. To him, she knew, death was simply a different form of going on a journey. No different than if she actually left Jerusalem for Rome to marry an old man she’d never met, which her parents were forcing her to do. Quintus didn’t understand death’s finality, for he adored her as much as she adored him. If he really understood that once she was dead she would be gone from him forever . . .

With that, Valeria frowned. Her father and stepmother understood full well the consequences of death, yet they were prepared to watch her wither away in their very household as she starved herself to death.

Valeria replaced her frown with a set jaw. She’d show them. Especially her stepmother, a woman hardly a decade older than she, a woman who had obviously married her father for his wealth.

“Will your death be today?” Quintus repeated. “I would hate to miss it.”

“Perhaps,” Valeria answered, hiding the amusement that replaced her anger at her parents. If only Roman women weren’t legislated to be under total control of their father. Quintus and his earnest innocence always did this for her. Took her mind from her troubles.

“Perhaps?” Quintus seemed vaguely disappointed. “You can be no more certain than that?”

Valeria pretended to give it thought. “I am feeling very weak. But as this is the first time for me, I have no experience in judging the symptoms. Perhaps one can feel on the verge of death for days before it actually arrives.”