The Last Disciple (39 page)

“I am so glad you’re alive!” As she spoke, Amaris rose from a couch in the outer courtyard of the family’s upper-city mansion and rushed to Ben-Aryeh.

Night had draped the city with merciful darkness. Oil torches flickered and burned. The light breeze across the mountaintop of Jerusalem did not reach this courtyard.

Ben-Aryeh had passed by five temple police standing at the arched opening to the courtyard. Under normal circumstances, he would have been slightly embarrassed to have any witnesses to the long, tearful hug that Amaris gave him.

These were not normal circumstances. Although he knew all five men were watching, he returned her hug with fervent love, stroking her hair, whispering endearments, kissing her forehead.

The sun had set on the slaughter of hundreds more in the city, dead at the hands of Roman soldiers. Ben-Aryeh had been among those fighting near the temple. He was thankful and relieved—with the guilt of a survivor—to have returned home. And to have a home waiting.

When Amaris relinquished her hold on him, Ben-Aryeh turned to the men at the archway. “We would like our privacy now.”

These were temple police he’d sent to protect Amaris during the height of the fighting, an indication of his high political status that they would obey at that point. He saw no need for any other way to speak but as a curt command.

They slipped out through the archway toward the dark street.

Ben-Aryeh led Amaris to the couch and sat beside her.

“My love,” she said, “the noise that reached me here in the afternoon! What has been happening?”

He held her hands as he explained. How Florus had told them to send a crowd out of the city to greet and salute the soldiers to prove that they could remain at peace. How the soldiers had refused to acknowledge the salutes. How they’d struck with no warning as a single troublemaker shouted an insult.

From there, the riot had grown so quickly it was difficult to comprehend. From horseback, armed with clubs and swords, the soldiers had begun to kill without discrimination. Many died by the soldiers’ swords, many from the horses that tramped them, and many more as those in the crowds panicked and fought each other to escape into the city.

At the city gates, it worsened. The great crowd jammed at the narrow opening. Dozens suffocated under the weight of those pressing from behind. Dozens more were crushed so badly that their bodies were beyond recognition.

The soldiers pursued them into the city, and when Florus brought his other garrisons out of Antonia Fortress, it became obvious that the attack had been well planned, and that the soldiers meant to seize the temple.

The citizens rallied. In the narrow streets, the soldiers lost any advantage that horses and organized fighting gave them in the open. With the streets blocked and many citizens throwing a hail of darts, pottery, and stone blocks from the rooftops, the soldiers were forced to retreat.

At this point Ben-Aryeh left the tunnels beneath the temple. He first dispatched bodyguards to his mansion, then joined those who had begun tearing down the cloisters that connected the temple to Antonia Fortress.

Darkness had fallen as the fighting finally ended. But the wailing had just begun, as once more, relatives went into the streets with lit torches to search for those who had not returned home.

When he finished relaying all of this to Amaris, Ben-Aryeh kissed her forehead again. “I fear,” he said, “for the city. By deceiving us into greeting the new cohorts today instead of protesting their arrival, Florus now has enough soldiers within the city gates to begin a measured and deliberate war, quarter by quarter. In short, we have let the enemy inside, and the temple will eventually be taken.”

“Something can be done. Surely.”

“Our own resistance was in the heat of panic. Emotions can only sustain our fight so long. Florus is no fool. He will most surely begin to go from one household to the next to eliminate resistance. When that is finished, the temple and its treasury are his.”

“What about us?” she whispered.

“I will do everything in my power to see that nothing harms us. The city will always be here. So shall we.”

“And if something is out of your power?”

“Wealth and connections,” Ben-Aryeh said. “Unless there is more rioting, we will not suffer. Again, I reassure you. Now that Florus has enough military power in the city, he will proceed in a way that will keep him in control.”

“But what if you lose your wealth and connections? If—”

“Nothing will harm us!” In his determination to quell her fears, he missed the pleading edge in her voice.

“Please tell me,” she said, “that you have done nothing to betray me.”

“What?”

“You love me and have always been faithful to me. That is what I need to hear. Not about your money and your politics. All I really want is you and your love.”

Ben-Aryeh stood. “I have never betrayed you. Nor ever contemplated it!”

“Never?”

For a moment, he again considered telling her about the brigand attack, about the woman he had rescued, about fleeing her at the city gates. The evening before, here on the same couch in the same courtyard, he’d come very close. Yet Amaris had been so happy that he’d returned from Sebaste and survived the first day’s riots that he had not wanted to dampen her relief, especially since it seemed unlikely that his false accuser would ever be able to identify him after his successful escape.

If he told her now, she would wonder why he’d kept it secret a day earlier, and whatever he said would be tinged by her suspicions, unjustified as they might be.

And circumstances had changed since the woman had almost seen him at the temple earlier in the day. The city was once again in great confusion. Chances were she’d been killed in the riot. If not, the next few days promised a systematic war that would reduce further the likelihood that he would be seen by her, let alone accused again.

Why then, Ben-Aryeh told himself, should he worry his beloved Amaris with the story? Despite the fact that keeping silent was a form of falsehood, he was an innocent man and had not been unfaithful to her. That was what was important.

Ben-Aryeh knelt beside her. “You are my one true love. Nothing will change that. I have never been unfaithful to you. I would never consider it. I would rather rip my eyes from my head than look at another woman with lust in my heart.”

She stared at him for several moments. In the torchlight, her face was serious as she searched his eyes. Finally, she sighed. “I believe you.”

“Very touching.” The voice came from behind them. A voice from the entrance that led to an inner courtyard and the mansion beyond. “Very touching indeed.”

Ben-Aryeh recognized that voice.

He stood and whirled. “Leave this home!” Ben-Aryeh commanded. “You have no right to be here.”

“No?” Annas the Younger’s voice was silky. As if filled with pleasure. “Guards!” he barked.

Immediately, the temple police that Ben-Aryeh had dismissed from the outer archway stepped into sight. They’d been waiting.

“Ben-Aryeh,” Annas said, “these men are here to place you under arrest.”

“I have committed no crimes.”

“The Sanhedrin will judge otherwise, I am sure,” Annas said. “Perhaps you are missing this necklace?” He dangled it from his fingers.

Even in the dim light given by the torches, Ben-Aryeh knew. Without thinking, he reached for his neck where it had hung for years.

“Yes,” Annas said, “I see that you are. It was given to me by a woman. She took it from you as she was clawing to escape your grasp.”

“No!”

“No? I’m sure she’d like to tell her story to the Sanhedrin. Unless, of course, you are not the one. But why don’t we ask her?”

From the inner courtyard and into the torchlight stepped the woman whom Ben-Aryeh had rescued from the brigands the day before.

“Yes,” she said without hesitation, pointing directly at Ben-Aryeh, “this is the man who robbed me of my purity outside the city gates.”

As soldiers escorted Queen Bernice and her attendants onto a south-side balcony of Antonia Fortress, she was highly aware of the fist-sized rock pressing hard into her belly.

She wished it were a tent peg. She remembered one of the stories of her people’s history. In the time of the Judges. The Israelites had been oppressed for twenty years by Jabin of Hazor, a Canaanite king. The commander of his army, Sisera, had thousands of soldiers and nine hundred iron chariots. On the day that the Lord gave the Israelites victory over Sisera, he fled and came to the tent of Jael, wife of Heber the Kenite. She offered him shelter, gave him milk to drink, and covered him with a blanket. As the milk began to digest and sent him into sleep from exhaustion, she crept up with a hammer and a tent peg and drove the peg through his temple into the ground. From that time on, Bernice remembered from the story, Israel became stronger and eventually overthrew the power of King Jabin.

For this meeting with Florus, she’d allowed slaves to help her bathe, perfume, and wind her hair into fashionable braids. She’d uncharacteristically dismissed them, however, before dressing in her undergarments. She wanted no witnesses to the girdle that held the rock in place, no one to suspect after Florus was dead that she had found a way to murder him.

“Queen Bernice.” Florus greeted her in a flat, almost unwelcoming voice as he turned from the balcony. He leaned against it, the top edge reaching his waist. Below was a drop of forty feet, into a courtyard paved with rounded stones. This, too, was something Bernice was aware of with the same intensity that she was conscious of the rock she intended to smash into his skull as soon as he was too drunk to realize her intent.

“Frankly,” he said, “I’m surprised that you requested this visit. Especially after how you fled from me yesterday.” Again, his tone was flat.

She knew that stance and posture. It was of a man trying to appear uninterested in her. But it was a lie; she’d attended too many banquets where she’d caught him staring at her from across the room.

She also knew how to play such men. “I much prefer choosing my man instead of having a man choose me.”

The last of the evening’s sun was full on his face, and she caught the slight widening of his eyes. He shifted slightly toward her, and that told her enough.

“Where shall I send my attendants?” she asked Florus. “And be kind to them. They may be waiting awhile for me.”

“Send them back to your palace,” he said. There was a quickness to his words. “I’ll have my soldiers escort you home.” He paused and grinned, showing large stained teeth. “When you are ready.”

The arrogance of men, she thought. Provided a slight opening, they were all too eager to throw the door wide open. Subtlety—and understanding how much a woman appreciated subtlety—was lost on them.

Already Florus was puffing his chest slightly in his delight that she’d shown interest in him. As if he were the most desirable man in Judea.

“And your soldiers?” Bernice asked. “You’ll have them stay?”

“Dismissed, of course.” He raised his voice. “Immediately.” He did not have to repeat the command.

During the time it took for the attendants and soldiers to file back out the entrance to the balcony, Florus studied Bernice.

Unattractive as he was, she knew he was not a totally stupid man. He would notice the care that she’d taken to present herself. He would be aware of her reputation as a woman of few virtues.

Bernice pretended not to notice his vulgar examination. She knew what she wanted to accomplish.

In the dark Valeria could not guess at how much time had passed.

Then came a voice they had loved.

“Valeria!” It was Maglorius. “Quintus!”

They heard his footsteps above.

For a moment she wanted to rise and run to him.

“He’ll kill me,” Quintus whispered. “He knows I saw him murder Father. He’ll kill me. Then he’ll kill you too to keep it secret.”

Still, Valeria hesitated.

“He knows we are here because he asked both of us to wait for him here. He planned it all. Sent us to a place where he could find us and kill us,” Quintus said.

“No.” Valeria would not believe it. Yet had not Maglorius recently admitted to her that he had betrayed Lucius? And had not his ambiguous conversation suggested much more of a secret, one that Lucius knew? Was it enough of a terrible secret that Maglorius had taken the opportunity to kill Lucius when it appeared he would never be blamed for the murder?