The Last Sacrifice (26 page)

Annas tossed it at Eleazar’s feet.

Eleazar ignored it.

“You really should read it. Remember your father, the high priest? the man you trust?” Annas grinned. “Think about this. There in the transcript, you’ll find that he has pledged to throw the first stone at your execution.”

“Malka, Malka, wake up!”

Malka blinked sightless eyes as Quintus roused her from restless sleep. She shivered beneath a blanket that she clutched to her chest. Although it was summer, her bones never seemed to hold any heat.

“Malka,” Quintus said. “Remember what day it is?”

She’d fallen asleep dreading this dawn. Yes, she knew what day it was. Quintus would leave today and not return.

“Feel this,” Quintus said.

Before she could reply, he pulled her hands and thrust something into them. Soft fabric.

“New clothes,” Quintus said. “So you can look your best today.”

“My best?” In the perpetual darkness that surrounded her, Malka was confused. Did Quintus know he was leaving today? If so, why his joy? Unless . . .

Her breath caught. Had the young woman changed her mind and decided Malka would not be such a burden after all? For a moment Malka entertained the notion, allowed herself to feel the joy that she would not be left alone, that she would be allowed to travel with the boy to his home.

“You can look your best!” Quintus answered. “For the wood-burning festival. Today? Remember?”

The Festival of Xylophory.

Evening after evening, she sang songs to Quintus, told him stories about the Jews and their history and their customs. One of his favorite stories had been about Malka meeting her husband, now long dead, during a party on the day of the wood-burning festival.

“This is too much,” Malka said. The boy had given her a gift! “We can’t afford new clothing. And I have no wood to bring to the Temple.”

“Yes, you do,” Quintus said. “You told me how important it is for Jews to give wood, so I’m giving you this to take today.”

She felt Quintus press coins into her palm.

“Where did you get this?” She was astounded. At the gift. At the boy’s thoughtfulness. At his excitement.

“When you’re ready,” Quintus said, dodging her question, “I’m going to take you to the Temple myself.”

Malka reached for his hands, found them, and placed the coins back in his palm. “No. We can’t do this.”

“It’s the wood-burning festival. You’re a Jew. You have to go. Remember? You told me how important it was.”

The boy would be gone today, Malka told herself. No chance to say good-bye. The boy would escape as long as she said nothing to him about his chance for freedom, and she would be left alone.

What harm could it be for her last memory of him to be of a walk to the Temple, with him leading her by the arm? It would be so lonely without him. At least she could have that to cherish. And the memory of his gift to her to make it possible to partake in the festival.

Malka allowed herself this small piece of selfishness. “We’ll go then,” she said, thinking of when she was supposed to have the boy ready to be taken from her. “But we must not take long, understand?”

The Second Hour

Valeria waited among a dozen temple priests, all of them standing on the top of the massive wall that guarded the southwest corner of the Temple Mount.

An hour earlier, Nahum had arrived with her and introduced her to the priest as Valerius, a Greek boy who was his apprentice and who would act as a courier in the place of Raanan.

Nahum had accepted the grave commiseration from the priests at the death of his son. In a guilty way, Valeria had been fascinated to observe. Growing up in a wealthy Roman household had sheltered her from the difficulties of the world and from the ways of men. Here, she was learning about both.

Nahum’s son had died less than an entire day before. Nahum had divorced his wife the evening before and had made a decision to join the rebels in a fight to the death. Yet aside from his equally grave acceptance of the priests’ sympathy, he’d given little indication that any intense emotions might be tearing him apart.

As for the temple priests, they too said little to show that they were locked in a deadly siege against soldiers who would kill them at the first opportunity. None spoke about other deaths, their families, or their hopes or dreams.

How could this be?

Valeria had listened to conversations with older slave women and had joined in on many herself. Events of this magnitude needed full discussion, a chance for each woman to vent not only opinions but feelings, and then opinions about the feelings. This was the way to deal with tragedy or joy.

In the first half hour after the departure of Nahum, as she’d watched the priests and listened to their trivial banter, it occurred to Valeria that she, too, had been forced into a silence that was placing her in terrible isolation. She rarely spoke because she did not want her voice to betray her gender, but also because the men around her each seemed like self-sufficient islands. Did this explain the malaise that had been settling upon her over the last weeks?

In the second half hour, however, Valeria had begun to fight apprehension. She’d promised Malka that she would be there to get Quintus at the second sounding of the trumpets, and that would be very soon. Yet until the priests sent her away with a message to be delivered to another post, here along the top of the temple wall would be her prison.

The wall was wide enough for five horsemen to ride abreast. On one side, looking down the sheer drop into the Temple courtyard, it was so high that a man below would have difficulty throwing a stone the size of his fist up and onto the top. The other side overlooked the crowded squalor of the lower city, and because the Temple Mount was on a plateau, the drop in that direction plunged straight down at least three times the distance it did on the other side.

The strategic importance of this position was obvious from the armaments nearby. There were catapults, javelins, and stacks of stones the size of a man’s head. Pots of oil bubbled over three different fires. In short, attack from below was ridiculously simple to defend against. And because the temple priests controlled the entire perimeter of the temple walls, all of their positions were safe.

Valeria hid her agitation as time passed. She was grateful that she’d decided to take Quintus from Malka a couple of hours ahead of when she was supposed to meet Joseph Ben-Matthias at the Damascus Gate. The old woman would wait for her, she was sure, and as long as she could escape these priests sometime in the next hour, she would have plenty of time to get to the gate.

Yet the temple priests did not give her a message. They chatted quietly, ignoring her, drinking water from leather bags and eating fruits and bread.

Inspiration hit Valeria. She knew how to escape.

“Tell me what you see,” Malka urged the boy.

They stood on the elevated platform of the colonnades of Solomon’s Porch, overlooking the Court of the Gentiles. Quintus held for Malka the wood he had purchased on her behalf, and they were about to join the line of Jews waiting to carry the wood to the entrance of the Court of Israel. To Quintus, the sights of the Temple were a marvel almost beyond his ability to describe.

The outer court of the Temple was capable of holding more than a hundred thousand people. Quintus could not know this nor comprehend a number so large; to him, with three-quarters of the courtyard filled with milling peasants, each holding an armload of wood, it seemed as if the entire world had gathered here.

Nor could he know that the temple priests themselves numbered in the thousands, each with specific daily or weekly tasks, working in rotating shifts through the day and night.

He could see, however, the Levites in a massive choir, singing psalms as was their special privilege, accompanied by other distinguished Israelites who played harps and lutes, as other instruments were only allowed in the Temple for different festivals.

As a backdrop to all of this was the Temple itself, rising on white marble blocks from the center of the courtyard, with a large column of smoke partially obscuring the gold plating of the roof of the Holy of Holies.

He did his best to tell Malka, and it gave him joy to see her smile. He had questions about the Temple, and she answered each one with patience.

As they were about to step off the platform, sharp trumpet blasts came from the western wall, cutting through the noise of the choir and the peasants in the celebrations. Silence fell almost instantly on the entire Temple, so eerie that Quintus stopped.

Valeria moved to the nearest priest and waited until he took his attention away from the conversation around him.

“Yes?”

“I need to relieve myself,” Valeria said, expecting him to send her to the tower and a staircase that would take her to a public latrine. She’d escape that way. “I won’t be long.”

“So stand at the edge,” he grunted, pointing at the lower city. “Aim at the royal troops at the aqueduct. No one’s hit them yet, but it’s not for lack of trying.”

Some of the other priests laughed.

“It’s not my bladder,” Valeria said, trying not to squirm with embarrassment.

“Hope you brought your own rags,” he said, shrugging. He pointed farther down the wall.

It took her a moment to understand. He was pointing at a bucket.

“When you’re finished,” he said, pointing again at the lower city, “throw it over the wall into the valley. Send the royal troops a different kind of message.”

More laughter. All eyes were on her.

She’d brought this on herself. Now there might be awkward questions if she didn’t use the bucket. She was grateful at the looseness of her tunic. If she moved far enough away, it would give her a degree of privacy. But it wouldn’t solve her need to escape the top of the tower as soon as possible.

Five trumpet blasts punctuated the air as Valeria began walking toward the bucket. She glanced down into the courtyard.

Among all of the thousands of people, two figures caught her attention, simply because they moved so slowly that all others flowed around them.

It was an old woman. And a young boy, holding an armful of wood. The woman had her hand on the boy’s shoulder.

Valeria recognized them immediately.

Malka and Quintus.

Malka clutched the shoulder of Quintus.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Did you hear five?” she said, speaking in a near whisper.

“Five?” He, too, was speaking quietly.

“Thekiah. Theruah. Thekiah,”
she said. “It is always three trumpet blasts.
Thekiah. Theruah. Thekiah.
Proclaiming the kingdom of God, divine providence, and the final judgment. But I heard five. Did you?”

“I wasn’t counting,” Quintus said. “But something strange is happening.”

Forgetting that she was blind, he pointed at the mass of peasants in front of him. Nearly all the men had set down their wood. En masse, they began quietly and purposefully walking to the south entrance of the Temple Mount.

“Tell me,” Malka said. “What is it?”

The men began to throw off their cloaks, leaving them behind like leaves scattered from a tree.

“They’ve got knives,” Quintus said. “All of them. They’ve got short knives.”

Malka breathed a single word. “Sicarii.”

“Sicarii?”

“Zealot assassins,” she said. “Hurry, take us away from here.”

From the top of the wall, Valeria stared down at the confusion in the Temple courtyard. From her viewpoint, it was obvious that panic had begun—the rear half of the crowd was pushing the front half, unable to see that the gates out of the courtyard were closed.

Quintus! Malka!

Where were they?

He was too small and she was too old. They wouldn’t have a chance if the panic grew.

Valeria strained without success to see them.

A hand yanked at her shoulder.

“Boy!” It was the priest who had pointed out the bucket to her. “Didn’t you hear me? Have you gone deaf?” He was agitated and angry. “Now’s the time to deliver a message for us. Not to be looking for entertainment.”

“What’s happening down there?”

“You’re still not listening,” the priest snapped. “You need to run.”

“My brother’s in the courtyard. He’s only a boy.”

This, at least, gave the priest some pause. He stopped and drew a breath. “Then he’ll be safe,” he said, a degree of kindness in his voice, as if he understood why Valeria had not heard him. “The gates to the Temple are closed, and they will remain closed until the fighting in the city is finished.”

“Fighting?”

“Sicarii. Thousands of them from the countryside. Armed with short swords. And willing to fight to their deaths to rid us of Rome. That’s why you need to run. Get ahead of them to the outposts along the siege line. Let everyone know about it so they can join the fight.”

“My brother . . .”

“He’s only in danger if we lose today’s battle,” the priest said. “That’s why you need to go. Don’t let anything stop you.”