Jerusalem's Hope (30 page)

It was difficult work keeping the three factions from coalescing back into one. Ha-or Tov aided Lev, but the lambing barn attendant had roughly rejected Emet's offer to assist, telling him to keep out of the way.

Dejected, Emet stared in the direction of Siloam Tower and listened to the sounds of hammering coming from there.

There was little that Roman ingenuity and willpower could not accomplish in short order, Marcus thought as he studied the changed landscape around the Tower of Siloam. In just a day the supply yard was visibly more ordered and a single wagon track was clearly delineated. The scarred pasture yet exhibited its wounds but would heal up after another rain.

The work on the new supporting structure for the juncture of the two aqueducts was proceeding nicely.

There was still no love lost between the shepherds and the masons, but at least today's exchanges were in words and not blows.

Oren and his son, Benjamin, brought a report to Gaius Robb as Marcus stood nearby. “We're ready to remove the last of the old buttressing and let the bracing take the load,” Oren said. “Ahead of schedule.”

“And no more riots,” Marcus put in. “And no more stolen lambs. Peace comes to Siloam, which they tell me means ‘sent.' Do you know why it's called that?”

Robb didn't look up from the wax tablet of computations over which he muttered to himself, but Oren seemed surprised that a Roman would be interested in Jewish customs. “Everyone knows,” Oren said, “how parched Yerushalayim is for water. We're especially grateful for it and regard it as divinely ‘sent' to the Holy City. That's why the pool at Yerushalayim is called that. At the fall festival the
cohen hagadol
sends for a golden pitcher of water to be brought from the Pool of Siloam to the altar of sacrifice. Then the high priest gives thanks and prays for rain for the coming year.”

“I've seen a man who said he was the water of life,” Marcus noted. He recalled when Yeshua of Nazareth stood up at the Jewish Temple and made this puzzling announcement just as the water from Siloam was being poured out. “What do you think he meant? Was he claiming to be sent from your God?”

Oren's face clouded, and his expression grew guarded. “I can't imagine.”

Ruefully Marcus interpreted the change in mood. Oren must suspect all Romans of trying to implicate Jews in rebellion. Given the machinations of Pilate, Herod Antipas, and the high priest, Caiaphas, there was ample reason for him to be suspicious.

Robb contributed, “Says he's water, eh? Probably a madman. This country has more than its share of crazy holy men.”

“What kind of . . . ,” sputtered Benjamin angrily. After silencing his son with a look, Oren visibly stiffened. There would be no further open discussion of Jewish beliefs.

Marcus tried to recapture the friendliness. “At least you and the shepherds have worked out your differences. Like water from the Tower of Siloam is
sent
to Jerusalem, perhaps we can
send
peace from here to the city of peace, eh?”

It was a wasted effort. When Oren spoke again, his tone was markedly cooler. “Centurion,” he resumed, “you may think things are settled, but you're wrong. Just this morning my son was accosted by a pair of shepherds and accused of stealing more lambs.”

Marcus glanced up sharply. “He didn't, did he?”

As Benjamin blustered Oren snapped, “Of course not! What reason would he have? The shepherds hate us because they hate the aqueduct. They're trying to start more trouble. You should hear them muttering about earthquakes and curses and the stones tumbling down on our heads.”

“Do you frighten that easily?” Robb inquired dryly. “Because that's what the herdsmen want.”

Oren ignored the jibe. “Don't try to play peacemaker here,” he warned Marcus. “Some of them really wish we were dead. It'll be enough to do our jobs and get the water for Yerushalayim. Then I can go home and forget about the Tower of Siloam.” With that he gave Marcus a cursory salute, snubbed Gaius Robb altogether, and, with Benjamin, exited the tent.

“These Jews.” Robb sniffed. “Did you ever see a people more prone to argument and controversy? It's lucky for them we're here to keep order.”

Robb wasn't expressing any unusual sentiments as far as Roman attitudes toward Jews, so Marcus didn't bother to reply. Instead he asked, “What about the threats? Is there any reason to take them seriously?”

“You mean sabotage?” Robb pondered. “Surely not.”

The workman named Amos poked his head through the tent flap. “Pardon, Engineer,” he said, “but you asked to be alerted when the final braces were moved to take the weight atop the wood scaffolding. We're ready now.”

“I'll be right there,” Robb returned. “Join me, Marcus? You might find this interesting.”

Square-based, tapering pyramids were the architectural wonder of Egypt. Graceful marble columns were the peculiar contribution of the Greeks. But the most memorable achievement of Roman design was surely the arch. Using soaring, buttressed parabolas, Roman engineers were able to suspend spans higher over obstacles with less visible support than any civilization's previous efforts.

Though so far only outlined in timber scaffolding, it was already clear that the new project would be a swan to old Herold's ugly duckling.

“This is the time when the outward pressure of the existing structure is transferred to the temporary bracing,” Robb pointed out. “There'll be a momentary shaking, and then it will come to rest.”

Nodding to one of his assistants, Robb signaled for the work to proceed. By use of a flag system and shouted orders, the command was relayed to men atop the scaffolding. The workers there were poised with heavy hammers.

The resulting crash of stout clubs against wooden beams sounded like a colossal drumbeat, the call to arms of a phantom army.

There was a corresponding thump as the bracing dropped only a matter of inches into the joints and grooves prepared for it. This secondary vibration was not as loud as the first, but much more powerful. As the shock transferred to the ground, Marcus noticed it in the soles of his feet.

A cheer went up from the stoneworkers and laborers.

Shepherds in the nearby pasture turned to see the cause.

An insignificant cloud of dust at the base of the column was easily dissipated by the morning's breeze.

But not the tremor. Marcus sensed it rising up, as if the earth itself were trembling.

“Robb,” he said with concern, but that was as much as he managed before the air stretched with creaking and groaning . . . the screeching of straining timbers. Massive planks corkscrewed, as if a giant unseen hand twisted them like wisps of straw.

The scaffolding shuddered.

The top of the existing tower bowed outward, visibly overhanging the workmen underneath, who scattered in alarm.

Gaius Robb, heedless of the danger to himself, ran toward the structure shouting, “Get clear! Get out, now! It's not going to hold!”

A block shattered at the top of the arch. Fragments struck a worker in the head, knocking him off the construction and propelling him sixty feet to the ground.

Another fleeing mason looked up. The far end of a ten-foot beam dropped loose, pivoted, and swung free, clouting the man as he hung from a ladder. The blow batted him away like a swatted fly.

Marcus tackled Robb. “Get back!” he yelled. “The whole thing is coming down!”

Arms flailing in a futile attempt to fly, a stonecutter jumped clear of the collapsing tower. He plummeted through the air and landed atop a heap of sand.

The arch leaned still further, lumber cracking louder than whips as eight-inch-thick planks snapped like twigs. Then, roaring like an avalanche, a rockfall of hewn stones and tree-trunk-sized planks poured across the pastureland.

Marcus sheltered the diminutive Robb as best he could, while trying to get as much of himself under his helmet as possible.

A jagged shard struck him in the back, then a blast of choking dust, roiling outward from the destruction, swept over him like a black sand-storm.

LEMOR

E
met was the first to catch the shuddering. His head snapped up.

There was no wind, no hint of cloud. What was that sound? He experienced the grumble in his chest, the same way he had sensed vibrations back before Yeshua gave him sound.

The rumble rolled over the pastures of Migdal Eder like thunder out of a cloudless sky.

Others noticed the sensation too and looked around with alarm.

Jehu pointed toward the line of Herod the Great's aqueduct. The three pylons within sight swayed, bits of mortar flaking off.

Emet read the man's lips: earthquake, he said.

A half-dozen lambs guarded by Ha-or Tov while awaiting Lev's inspection bolted in fright and disappeared back into the flock.

A swirl of dust rose up in the direction of the Tower of Siloam, blocked from Emet's view by an intervening knoll. “That's not just an earthquake,” he heard someone shout. “The tower's collapsed!”

Emet was the last of the shepherd band to reach the top of the hill. The others from Migdal Eder already stared at the destruction.

Stones and timber lay everywhere. Where the scaffolding had been was a heap of rubble. Some blocks lay a great distance away, as if trying to return to the quarry from which they were mined. Emet recalled a time when his sister was beaten for dropping a skein of yarn and tangling it up. This disaster was that sort of snarled confusion on a colossal scale.

Wails of pain reached Emet's hearing. Around the scene men stirred, picking themselves up slowly. Some had dangling, useless arms. Others limped as they walked.

Dust-covered, many of them bleeding, workmen tore into the rubble.

Then Emet realized that the horror had not ended: there were men trapped under the ruins.

Marcus jumped to his feet. His bruised back arched in a spasm that made him grit his teeth. Seizing Robb by the collar of his tunic, Marcus hauled the engineer upright. “Are you all right?” he asked.

Wiping dust from his eyes, Robb replied, “Yes . . . yes, I think so.”

“Come on, then,” Marcus urged. He approached the debris and immediately located a worker half-pinned underneath. When Marcus grasped the man under the arms and attempted to drag him free, the fellow screamed in pain and fainted.

“Here,” Marcus ordered, grabbing Amos and another dazed laborer. He thrust a beam into their hands. Locating a hollow at the base of the heap, Marcus planted the end of his makeshift lever. If anything went awry it would be the centurion's hands crushed under the stone. “On three, push with all your weight and hold it till I get him clear. One! Two! . . .”

The quarter-ton weight raised bare inches, but enough for Marcus to draw the pinned man toward release.

The pry bar slipped and the load wobbled.

“Can't hold it!” Amos shouted.

“A couple of seconds more!”

The rock slithered sideways.

With a tremendous backwards heave, Marcus dragged the injured worker loose . . . an instant before the mass slid off the lever and dropped with a crash.

Marcus gazed down at the man he'd rescued.

“What can we do, Centurion?” Amos asked urgently.

“Nothing,” Marcus said dully. “He's dead. See to the others.”

Benjamin rushed up to the centurion. “Over here! Help me!” he pleaded. “It's my father.”

Marcus found Oren caught between two timbers. The master mason was conscious despite a gash on his scalp that bled profusely. There appeared to be room for Oren to slip out between the imprisoning beams. “Can't you move?” Marcus asked, fearful that the man's spine was broken.