Part One: Jerusalem, 161 A.D.

Chapter One

            Samara slowly opened the heavy street-gate of her father’s house. For a long moment she stared into the darkness outside, her heart pounding at the thought of what the Romans would do to her if they caught her. Then she slipped into the street, and the gate shut behind her with a solid thud. She rushed down an alley familiar to her that led into the labyrinth of back byways crisscrossing her beloved Jerusalem.

            A sudden wind blew her scarf back, and she hastily pulled it over her head, shivering half from the cold and half from dread of being seen. The Romans did not treat captives kindly, especially those that attacked their way of life. Like Judah did. Yet what the Romans were planning for this city was abominable to her, and she had to do whatever it took to stop them.

            Jerusalem was sleeping in silence as she half-ran up and down the hilly streets towards the Temple Mount, hoping she would not hear the tramp of a Roman patrol. I am surely insane, she thought. Were Judah here, he would stop me from taking such a risk. Yet Judah was thousands of miles away, and she needed to know whether he was right. Again and again Judah had told her he was certain that the Romans stole her people’s most sacred object.

            Of course, a woman acting alone could not retrieve the object. She could not touch it, shouldn’t even look upon it. Even thinking about its mysterious powers was unnerving. But if she found it, she would tell Judah’s brother Saul, and then he would follow through. She, Judah and Saul agreed that if her people had it back in their possession, the Hebrews would rally against the Romans. 

            Her skin prickled from the rough cloth of the coarse shirt and trousers she wore for anonymity and safety – the garb of a male laborer. As the cold wind whistled down the alley, warmth arose in her heart as she thought of Judah’s twinkling brown eyes and crooked smile. Judah had given Samara her first taste of love, but the Romans tore him away and sent him into exile. Now he was a slave in faraway Britain.

            She longed for Judah, yet slowly had come to accept the brutal fact that he would not be returning. When her father, cold and unyielding, announced that he was going to marry her to a man she could not bear, it had fanned the embers of her passion for Judah. Now those embers were aflame and they warmed her soul. Judah’s determination to face the Romans made her feel strong, like his presence had so long ago.

            Mount Moriah, her destination, loomed before her, and she gazed up at the gleaming white Jupiter temple that surmounted it. To her, it was an atrocity, a Roman blight profaning the sacred site where the Lord’s Temple stood for so many generations.

            For four nights she had kept a lonely vigil in an alleyway watching the handful of Roman legionaries who lock-stepped around the Jupiter temple. Finally she found a moment in their nightly routine when none of them were near its broad marble steps.

            That moment was NOW.

            Passing a knot of Hebrew workers who were filling holes in the street, she rushed across the boulevard, up the wide stairs, through the courtyard and into the temple. The workers stared after her.

            Inside the chilly marble building, she was relieved to see that no one was there. Her heart raced. In the dim light, her hand traced the cold stone wall as she crept forward, past the flat slab of an altar, brown rivulets staining its sides, where the Romans sliced animals open to read their guts and tell the future. She shuddered at the thought. A torch in a wall-sconce cast fitful shadows on a white stone statue of Emperor Hadrian looming over her. Hadrian butchered the Hebrews the year she was born, and now here he was, set up as a god. Her anger rose and pushed her forward.

            In front of her was the room where, according to Judah, the Romans kept their treasures. Hopefully the sacred artifact would be there. The door to the room, ornately carved with scenes of the vain and absurd Roman gods and goddesses, was held shut by a thick copper bar, secured with a padlock of gilded iron. The blood rushed to her face as she raised Judah’s rod over her head and with the pent-up fury of generations of Hebrews, smashed the lock to pieces.

          As the inner chamber’s door slowly swung open, she crept inside.

            Valerius, armored and on horseback, silently exulted in his freedom as he rode through the dim streets. His second-in-command rode at his side, and ten soldiers tramped on foot behind them. To a legionary, riding on patrol would be routine. To Valerius, it was a relief to be free of his high responsibility for a few days and cruise the byways of this city, this Jerusalem he loved like a demanding, unpredictable, endlessly fascinating woman.

            He heard shouting ahead of him. “Someone has violated the temple!”

            He pushed his helmet’s faceplate up, and in the dull light cast by the oil-burning street lamps, he saw three figures waving frantically: a stout man and two young boys. Drawing his horse near to them, he realized with a shock that the man was Sergius Caius, the flamen, the high priest.

            Sergius’ leather skullcap, headgear of the temple priests, was askew, its strap flapping beneath his double chin. A golden clasp in the image of Jupiter held the priest’s wool cape around his neck. The priest was struggling to get his breath, and the two boys, who looked about ten, stood by him helplessly, shivering in thin white tunics. 

            “Pontifex Sergius,” asked Valerius, sounding as respectful as he could, “what’s wrong?” He did not like Caius. The man was self-indulgent and vain. Yet to keep the peace, Valerius needed everyone’s cooperation.

            “Invaders,” Caius gasped. “Invaders in the temple!”

            “Maybe it is the Zealots again,” declared Flavius. His attitude annoyed Valerius. Like so many legionaries, Flavius thought he saw Zealots everywhere.

            However, a temple invader was a serious issue. Valerius could not ignore the possibility that the violent insurgents were on the rise again.

            “Ride with me.” Valerius quickly extended a hand and easily pulled the heavy priest up onto his horse behind him. To one of the soldiers, he said, “Stay behind and protect those two boys. They are cold. Find some blankets for them.” To Flavius and the other men, he shouted, “To Mount Moriah!”

            Riding next to Valerius and the priest, Flavius could not contain himself. “Zealots,” he hissed. “See? I told you they would be back.”  

            “Perhaps,” said Valerius. He still hoped not.

            As they rode the short distance to the building, the priest Sergius Caius said, “I was with little Petronius when I heard a crash. His brother Filius came running and shouted that someone had broken into the temple, so I came looking for help. Severus Valerius, I am surprised to find you here. Do you go on patrol often?”

            “Caius, do not share this information. It is not generally known.”

            Now Valerius would have to increase security, at least at the Jupiter temple, and it was an unpleasant thought. With no insurgent attacks in Jerusalem for more than ten years, he had been posting only a few guards there.

            Near the temple steps, half a dozen Hebrew laborers with pickaxes, shovels and pikes were repairing potholes. Flavius dismounted, pulled himself up to his full height and tilted his face at the tallest of them. “What are you doing here? Who just went into the temple?” he demanded.

            “Flavius,” Valerius admonished him, “you know that these are just workers. They have been here every night this week.”

            Flavius ignored him –something Valerius would have to take up with him privately– and persisted in pressuring the workers. “You know something,” Flavius insisted. “Out with it.” The tall laborer opened and shut his mouth, his Adam’s apple trembling.

            “Cease this, Flavius,” commanded Valerius. “You go too far. This is a road-repair crew. Come. We have to enter the temple now.” Valerius got off his horse and strode towards the steps without looking at the laborers.

            “They are troublemakers, Valerius. I can tell.” As if he had lost his head, Flavius gave the tall one a shove, and the laborers started shouting and swinging their tools at him. The rest of Valerius’ squad rushed up, along with the ten legionaries on temple patrol, and they all entered the melee. The priest cringed and ran down an alley.

            “Enough!” Valerius shouted, and most of the Romans stopped. But that just gave the laborers a chance to strike at them, which they did, and the fray started up again.

            Maybe this was not the city he thought it was. Maybe she was not a woman he wanted to be married to. Maybe she was not governable at all. Such madness! Let them have each other.

            He turned away from the noise and ran alone up the temple steps, taking them two and three at a time. This was the price he paid for training his soldiers to be so tough and aggressive. Now, of course, he would have to arrest the laborers and question them. Nothing would come of it, but he had to do it.  

            Samara trembled, alone in the Roman Holy of Holies. An unpleasant smell crept into her nostrils. She surveyed the room, which was faintly lit by a smoldering torch in a wall-sconce. Judah said that if the Romans possessed the great Hebrew artifact, the Aron, this is where it would be.

            The Aron was said to be box-shaped, rectangular, no wider than the span of a person’s outstretched arms, no taller than a person’s knee, covered with gold, a pair of golden angels surmounting its lid. Not a large thing – yet so holy and powerful that she knew it could stir the hearts of her people into action against the Romans.

            Her eyes adjusting to the light, she gazed hungrily around the unkempt room. It had a waist-high altar in the middle. On top of it, she could make out the outlines of a box-like shape.

             It was said that looking at the Aron directly could destroy a person. Heart thudding, she crept closer to the box, averting her eyes, glancing only at its silhouette. Once she was certain there were no angels on its top, she peered more closely at the shape.

            It was just a wooden box, not gilded. Carvings on its side showed a fat man wearing laurel wreaths, drinking from a wineskin, surrounded by nymphs. This was no Hebrew object. This was a Roman thing. 

            In disgust, scanning every corner of the room, she reluctantly murmured the painful truth to herself: There is no Ark here! Tears of frustration welled up in her eyes.

            She wiped her face and took a closer look at what lay around her. Chicken bones and empty wineskins littered the room. She recognized the smell that pervaded the place. It was urine.

            Nausea filled her and bile rose in her throat. Could this really be the sacred space of the Roman priests? They were even more vile than she had thought.

            Suddenly the door swung open wide, and she reflexively pulled her headscarf across her face. Filling the doorway was the shadowed form of a Roman centurion in a plume-crested helmet.

            He held a torch in one hand, and she noticed that, strangely, he hadn’t drawn his broadsword.

            Fury filled her, and an unearthly roar escaped her lungs as she rushed at him, shoving him aside. In the heat of the moment she dropped Judah’s rod, which clattered on the marble floor. She stopped at a pillar topped with a bust of Hadrian, and with a mighty heave, she pushed it over, directly at the Roman.

            He scrambled out of the way as the pillar hit the marble floor and the great stone head broke into pieces.

            Valerius snatched up the iron rod and raced after the intruder, who fled across the broad courtyard, down the wide steps and out of sight. On the street, the legionaries were standing in a circle around the handful of laborers, taunting them. Was that all legionaries were good for anymore? He shouted “Are you all blind? Did you not see the wretch run past you? Flavius! Domitius! Cassius! Come with me!”

            Down one alley, then another, Valerius rushed with his men, more furious with every empty street he encountered. Why had they goten so distracted by a useless fight that they missed catching the criminal? He was angry at himself for never noticing all these alleys near the Jupiter shrine before. And he was in charge of this city? He wished he could blame it on Jerusalem – she could be so secretive, elusive and taunting – but that was no excuse.

            He kept seeing Hadrian’s stone head breaking into pieces. It was, he knew, the image of the head in the temple just moments before – yet there had been another head – Hadrian’s, too – and he, as a boy, with his brother, had shattered it. It was not a memory he liked to revisit, yet now, he could not avoid it.

            As he looked on, disappointed, the legionaries bound the Hebrew laborers with rope, and Valerius dispatched three soldiers to take them to the garrison. He picked up the heavy iron rod the intruder had dropped, and puzzled over the Hebrew inscriptions along its length. He knew the language fairly well, yet these were in some archaic form. He thought he recognized the words hha-non, to show beauty, and ta-hor, pure, and hha-seed, the kind one. Yet he wasn’t sure.

            More embarrassed than angry, he ordered Flavius and the remaining legionaries to go on patrolling the area. Next he inspected the temple. Nothing was damaged, save the shattered lock and the bust of Hadrian. Had Flavius been right? Were the Zealots on the rise again? Had they heard about Rome’s plans to level more Hebrew homes and expand its imperial presence here?  

            The last uprising had been almost thirty years earlier. Hadrian had quelled it with twelve legions and harsh measures. Would a new revolt be even more violent, and would Valerius himself be able to do what was required? He would try to use diplomacy and negotiation along with subversion, but those above him would demand torture and the use of force. Tempori parendum: one must yield with the times. It was all about force today. Yet he knew that force did not work in the long run. Rome was bleeding to death from self-inflicted wounds.

            It was necessary for Valerius to learn what the intruder was up to. But how? He was the only one who had even seen the man. He had let the intruder shove him aside; he had left his sword in its sheath. It was because, he realized, of a feeling that the intruder would not harm him—an inexplicable feeling. But why?  

            He remembered the intruder’s eyes. In the light of the torch, he had seen them up close. They were a smoldering grey-green, with long lashes. Like a woman’s.  But that, of course, was unthinkable.

            Samara woke with a jolt from a swirl of troubled dreams, flooded with images of what she had done the night before. Judah was wrong. The holy artifact of her people wasn’t in the Jupiter temple after all.

            The worst part was that she had left Judah’s rod behind. It was ancient, from the days when Judea was a great kingdom. It stood for Judah’s convictions, and now it was in Roman hands. The thought made her stomach turn.

            She planted her feet on the packed-earth floor of her bedroom and pulled a smock over her head. Rushing to the kitchen, she hastily prepared a plate for herself: bread, hard sheep’s-milk cheese and soft purple figs. She had to go through the paces of her day without attracting suspicion. No one could learn that she had broken into the Jupiter temple or what she was seeking. If news got to the Romans, they’d put an end to her.

            The dawn was barely filtering into the room, yet she could already hear the clatter of chariot wheels on cobblestones and the cries of vendors. Kitan, a merchant from the Silk Road, was due that morning, and she had to be ready for him. She sat at the table to eat, yet the thoughts that tumbled through her head dampened her appetite. How had she managed to escape the scene of her crime? Why had the Roman centurion not stabbed her? Had he seen her clearly enough to identify her? Would Roman soldiers come smashing into her father’s house?

            Smelling a familiar blast of garlic breath, she turned with a start to see Gershon’s bearded face inches from hers.

            “Get out of the kitchen, cousin,” said Gershon. “That dog of an Asian merchant awaits you in the storeroom.”

            She glared at him. “Kitan is no dog. Tell him I shall be there soon. And do not be rude to him.”

            “Do not give that merchant an inch. It is our family’s money you are playing with, Samara.” He turned abruptly to leave, and she called after him:

            “I do not play with it, Gershon. I make it grow. Unlike you.”

            Over his shoulder, he shouted, “As soon as we get you married off, dear cousin, your job is going to be mine.”

            A congested feeling filled her heart. Her father was planning to marry her to a fat camel dealer, Hod ben Omri, and give her job to this insulting cousin of hers, and there was nothing she could do about it. She yelled helplessly: “Gershon, stay out of my kitchen!”

            Crossing the courtyard, she smelled the hot wind that drove dust through the city. The steady tread of a Roman foot patrol outside assaulted her ears. Shuddering, she hurried to the storeroom, gingerly stepping over the prone forms of her great-aunt and uncle Liliom and Esau who slept on the floor on mats. Her relatives were sleeping in her father’s house because their home had been razed by Roman edict.

Her beloved Jerusalem was overrun with swaggering soldiers, whorish women and grinning tax collectors.

            Just the day before, Kallikat told her a story about the Empire’s secret plans. Kallikat, an Egyptian papyrus merchant with contacts in Rome, said that certain senators were getting ready to destroy more Hebrew shops and homes near the Temple Mount, hundreds of them. They would be replaced by Roman apartment buildings and offices filled with Greeks, Syrians and Gauls to serve as city police and servants for the wealthy. Kallikat said that some wealthy Hebrews knew of this plan and were not trying to stop it. The Romans gave great rewards to the well-to-do to keep them from interfering – usually in the form of tax cuts.  

She prayed desperately to be shown a way to locate the sacred Aron, the Ark of her people’s Covenant with the Lord, the holy container that held the tablets of the Commandments. She was sure that if her people possessed it again, they would become strong as they were in days of old.

            Approaching the cool, dark space of the family storeroom filled with wares from the world over, she saw the bulky form of Kitan the Mongolian merchant, with shaved head and bushy moustache. He stood behind one of the broad trading tables, fur hat in hand.

            “You are rich, Samara,” he said by way of greeting, “so you must pay me well for my hides.” 

           She laughed. “Rich or not, Kitan, I shall give you what they are worth, nothing more.” She noticed how much he looked like ugly Hod.       

             “I shall bring my goods from my oxcart,” he said.

            As she walked with him across the courtyard to the broad, heavy street-gate, she heard a clamor of voices outside. She opened the gate onto a scene of tumult. Hebrews and Romans were crowded in front of the house, talking excitedly. “My cart!” Kitan wailed. “It has overturned! My goods, my precious goods, they are all over the street!”

            Samara could hardly hear his shouts over the bleating of his ox and the hubbub of the crowd. Six Roman legionaries were heaving on the cart, attempting to set it upright, treading on the goods that had spilled in the street. “Be careful!” Kitan shouted. “Watch out! You are ruining my fabrics!”

            Scanning the Romans, Samara focused on a tall centurion on horseback in a red-plumed helmet whose faceplate covered his features. He dominated the scene, shouting orders in Greek: “Is anyone hurt? Mind that the wheels do not break off the axle! You other men, gather up these scattered goods!”

            Samara backed away. She could not afford for anyone to recognize her as the intruder. Yet this centurion was not likely to be the one from the Jupiter temple the night before. There were over three hundred centurions at the Roman garrison commanding its huge occupying force of twenty-four thousand legionaries. Still, there was something familiar about this one.

            The cart lurched to an upright position and the crowd applauded. For a split second everyone froze, and Samara gasped. On the spot where the wagon had overturned was a still, prone form.

            It was a small boy.

            The centurion leaped from his horse and dashed towards the child, but Samara got to the boy first.

            As she knelt by the motionless boy and gently took his head in her hands, the Roman crouched down to meet her gaze. She saw the man’s eyes through the slit in his faceplate. They were sky blue.

             “Are you his mother?" he asked Samara.

            She shook her head. He said, "Then I shall take care of him at the garrison. It was our fault."

            His attitude caught her off guard. She hesitated, then wordlessly scooped the boy up and rushed with him into her home, grabbing the street-gate’s leather pull with one hand and slamming it shut behind them.

            Cautiously carrying the boy into the storeroom, her heart thumping, she inspected his face. He was breathing. There was no blood. No limbs looked broken. She laid him on a bench and spread a blanket of rabbit is fur over him.

            He opened his eyes. “Are you all right?” she asked.