Scourge of Rome

XLIV

‘My informants counted one hundred and fifteen thousand bodies carried in the past two weeks from a hidden gate to be pushed from the cliff into the valley of Gehenna. Not a dog, a cat or a rat survives in Jerusalem, but, outwith, they gorge on its leavings. I hear stories of mothers so hungry they cut up and eat their own dead children. Families sift the dung heaps and sewers for any seed of grain that may have survived another’s ingestion.’ Josephus paused, apparently overwhelmed by the horror evoked by his words. Valerius noticed his rugged features were pale with exhaustion and his hair seemed greyer than the last time they’d met only a few days earlier. The Judaean still wore the bandage around his forehead from the stone that had struck him. He had just returned from a final mission to negotiate Jerusalem’s surrender. This time he went alone, with Titus’s agreement. Despite his suspicions, Valerius felt a certain sympathy, even an affection for the man. Time after time he’d circled the walls, bearing humiliation and insult to persuade the defenders of Jerusalem to surrender, or attempting to undermine their resolve. The lion head shook as if doing so would clear it of what he’d seen and heard and he looked up. ‘They say that since the siege began no less than six hundred thousand have starved to death.’

Valerius watched Titus’s face for a reaction to this enormous figure and the anguish that underpinned it, but the general only nodded thoughtfully. ‘But still they won’t surrender?’

‘Simon bar Giora would not even see me.’ The lie came as easily to Josephus as reciting from the Book of Genesis. He’d used the time spent with John of Gischala to urge him to devote more men to search for the Book of Enoch, but the Galilean had argued there were only so many he could trust. ‘What if one of them came across the book and somehow managed to smuggle it out to a certain person?’ In the end the crazed light in the other man’s eyes had persuaded Josephus to concede the point.

‘Then if they will not finish it, I will.’

‘Lord,’ Josephus protested. ‘I urge caution …’

Titus shook his head. ‘The time for caution is past. If they will not surrender with hundreds of thousands dead and a mountain of evidence that their god has deserted them – in fact that this god now supports their enemies – they will not surrender until the final defender of Jerusalem breathes his last.’

What no other man in the tent knew, not even Tiberius Alexander, was that Titus had received a secret dispatch from his father the previous day. Titus Flavius Vespasian had arrived in Rome to discover himself the ruler of an empire with barely enough gold in its treasury to pay its soldiers for another two months. Vespasian needed Jerusalem, but even more he needed the fabled contents of the temple. And Titus was the only man who could give it to him.

‘The Antonia earthworks are complete?’ He put the question to Phrygius and Cerealis who would jointly command the assault. ‘Everything is in place, lord,’ Phrygius assured him. ‘We can have the siege towers and the rams in position by first light. The engineers have undermined the walls beneath the western tower of the Antonia …’

‘You hesitate, Phrygius?’

The two legates exchanged a glance. ‘We agree it must be now. We cannot allow the Judaeans to make another successful sortie against the ramps, as they did a week ago. Every scrap of wood we have left has gone into the frame and the supports of the new ramps. Not a tree stands within a three-day march of Jerusalem, and what is left beyond is of poor quality. If we fail this time, it could be …’

‘Months.’ Titus finished the sentence for him. ‘But we will not fail.’ He smiled as if relieved his generals had taken the decision from him. ‘I sense the hand of the gods in this, perhaps even the hand of the Judaean god. Assemble your legionaries. I will speak to them in an hour.’

Valerius saw Josephus slip out of the tent and hurried to join him. ‘You seem troubled,’ he said.

‘All these months of …’ Josephus shook his head wearily, but stopped abruptly as if alarmed he’d been about to say something he didn’t intend. ‘I mean, it saddens me to hear Titus say God has deserted the Judaeans, even these rebels who face us. John and Simon and the men who fight for them are wrong, but they are still my countrymen. Their god is my god.’ The intensity in his eyes was impossible to ignore and it was directed at Valerius. ‘I do not believe my god would allow so much death and destruction without allowing proper recompense for the sufferers, or at least those who follow them. Something good must come of this, Valerius. And someone will feel God’s guiding hand during the horrors still to come. It is my experience that God often chooses those who least expect his guidance. I believed I was that man, but perhaps he will choose another of greater resource.’ Josephus placed a hand on Valerius’s shoulder. ‘Do not believe everything you hear about me, Gaius Valerius Verrens. And if you feel the hand of God, for the sake of the Judaean people, do not disregard it.’ He walked away with the gait of an old man, leaving Valerius with a premonition of something close to dread.

The Roman’s mood lightened when he returned to his tent to find Tabitha with Serpentius. She wore a dark cloak over a damson dress that surprised him by its richness, and her feet were encased in rugged sandals. It was obvious they’d been talking, but they stepped apart when he appeared through the tent flaps. Her eyes shone when she saw him and she approached to look into his face as if to fix every curve, angle and line so she would never forget it. She reached up to touch the scar on his cheek with her fingers.

Serpentius grunted something unintelligible and walked out to leave them alone.

‘I think he’s jealous,’ Valerius smiled. ‘You have bewitched him as you have me.’

Tabitha read the unspoken enquiry in his words. Her answering smile contained elements of sadness and confusion, and there was a catch in her voice. ‘You, Valerius. We were talking about you. In his own fashion Serpentius loves you as much as I, but in a way no woman could ever truly understand.’ She shook her head. ‘How could she? You have a warriors’ bond forged in the white heat of battle. You fought together, bled together, and it is only by God’s grace that you did not die together. But he fears for you,’ her nostrils flared and her voice turned fierce, ‘and if Serpentius fears for you, I must also. He believes each man’s life is a single thread and every fight and every wound cuts that thread a little shorter.’ She turned away so he wouldn’t see the tears that welled up in her eyes. ‘I do not wish to be your death, Valerius, but I cannot turn back from the path I have chosen.’

He took her shoulders and gently swivelled her towards him. The softness of her hair brushed his face and he inhaled the fresh scent of spring jasmine. He remembered Josephus’s lined face and intense, pleading eyes and the touch of a hand on his shoulder. God’s hand. Fate. ‘No man can escape his fate, Tabitha.’ He stroked her hair with the fingers of his left hand. ‘It seems our fates are entwined, but for what purpose and for how long only the gods can tell. All I know is that for us there is only the moment, and we must make what we can of it.’ He led her to the blanket that was his bed and her fingers went to the brooch holding her cloak at the neck.

Much later her fingers stroked the muscular hardness of his flat belly, playing with the dark curls of the line of hair that had so intrigued her earlier. ‘Titus revealed his plans to my mistress last night. How long will it take?’

‘He acts like a man who has run out of time.’ Valerius allowed the conference to run through his mind. ‘He has tried to spare his legions the worst of it, but I think he can no longer afford to hold them back. A week, perhaps less. He must have Jerusalem, no matter what the cost.’

He felt her nod. ‘We cannot delay too long before we enter the city.

I must reach the temple before he destroys it.’

‘He will do what he can to save it.’ But even as he spoke Valerius knew he had somehow misread what she’d said.

‘No, he has made his decision.’ Her voice burned with emotion, and Valerius wondered if she hated his friend for making her say it. ‘The reports to his father will tell a different story, but Titus Flavius Vespasian is determined there will only be one siege of Jerusalem. He will tear down this city stone by stone when he has taken it. He has said he will leave only such walls as a single legion might use as their camp, and three towers, Phasael, Hippicus and Mariamme, for their watches.’

Valerius thought of the magnificent buildings he’d seen on that first day when the Tenth set up camp on the Mount of Olives. Was it really possible Titus would destroy everything? The answer was yes. The legions had already levelled half the city during the siege. In what seemed another lifetime, Titus had called the temple a fortress within a fortress within a fortress. To leave it intact would be to present the Judaeans with a symbol of their indefatigability as a people and as a religion. A focus to which they could return and nurture the bitter taste of defeat, their hatred of Rome and their hopes for freedom. A symbol to hold and defend. Legends would spring up about the original defenders and those legends would spawn new heroes. No. The truth was that Titus couldn’t afford to spare the temple, any more than the Hasmonean Palace, or any other building that reminded the Jews there was a time they called Rome equal.

‘Then we leave in the morning.’ He drew her to him. ‘We will spend the day with Lepidus and the Tenth, discover what we can of the situation in the Cedron valley. You understand what awaits us there? Serpentius has told you?’

‘I am ready.’

Rather than the direct route across the wasteland of Bezetha, Valerius, with his borrowed Judaean robes in a roll behind his saddle, took Tabitha and Serpentius in a wide arc. The reason was that he wanted to look upon Jerusalem from where he and Titus had studied it nearly six months earlier. The fighting had left more than half the city little more than a barren wasteland pockmarked by small piles of rubble. How much blood had been spilled since? How many had died?

And more blood was about to be spilled, for even as he reined in by the Caesarea road more men were already dying. The final attack on the Antonia fortress had begun.

Throughout the night the air had shaken to the diabolical heartbeat of the rams thundering relentlessly against the walls of that mighty citadel, the key to the even mightier citadel of the temple beyond. In the airless darkness beneath the Antonia’s walls Roman engineers hacked at the rock and the dry earth to leave a gaping void. They worked quickly for fear of counter-mining by their Judaean counterparts, who were agile as rats in their own tunnels close by.

Titus had arranged his formations so that the Fifteenth Apollinaris faced the northern flank of the fortress and the Fifth Macedonica the west. Lepidus’s Tenth would make a new assault upon the stubborn eastern towers from the Cedron. From his vantage point, Valerius could see disciplined ranks of legionaries moving into position between the big siege catapults. Cohort after cohort, their helmets and their standards glittered like individual jewels and the morning sun twinkled on their spear points. Then came the auxiliaries of the Empire’s many tribes and nations, their formations a little looser, their manoeuvres visibly more laboured. Valerius suffered a sudden moment of doubt. His place was with them, not on this foolish mission to hunt down a few scraps of parchment that meant nothing to him. It occurred to him that Titus would wonder where he was and might even be justified in having him arrested for desertion. But it was only a moment, and he turned away as the thud of the first big catapult launching its missile carried across the hillside.

His eyes caught those of Serpentius and the Spaniard met his glance with a mirthless smile. The former gladiator’s skeletal features seemed unnaturally pale, so the lines and the scars of old wounds stood out starkly against almost grey flesh. He had slept in the tent of his friend, the Syrian legionary Apion, and Valerius wondered if he’d had another shaking attack. But when he asked, the Spaniard only growled.

‘Nothing a little action won’t cure.’

When they reached the Mount of Olives Valerius found Lepidus and his staff watching the attack from a little promontory overlooking the fortress. The legate frowned when he recognized his one-handed friend. ‘You again? I hope you bring a little more of Fortuna’s aid than our last venture, though I doubt it. We’re just fodder for their arrows and spears and to draw attention from the others. The Fifth is in the best position to make a breakthrough. What game does Titus have you playing this time?’

‘No game, Lepidus,’ Valerius said quietly as he drew him aside. ‘But you’ll remember my previous visit with the Judaean …’

‘Ah, I thought so. You’re up to no good.’ Lepidus noticed Tabitha for the first time and his eyebrows rose. ‘At least the company is a little easier on the eye this time. My lady,’ he smiled, and bowed in the saddle.

‘What I would like,’ Valerius persisted, ‘is the use of a tent to rest in, and a centurion to direct me towards the path we used previously. I want to have a look at it in daylight.’

‘It’s your neck.’ He looked up at a shout of consternation. ‘Jupiter’s wrinkled scrotum, they’ve done it again. Claudius? I thought we’d stopped up all those ratholes.’ Below them flame was licking at one of the siege rams where a Judaean sortie had emerged from the base of the temple’s north walls. He glanced across to Valerius. ‘Claudius will make sure you get what you need. I doubt I’ll have time to see you before you do whatever it is you’ve come to do. Good luck, Valerius.’ His hand reached out and touched the wooden fist.

They took what rest they could while they waited for late afternoon when Valerius intended to make his inspection of the path. Serpentius, normally catlike in his ability to sleep at any time, tossed in his blankets, and Valerius talked Tabitha through the streets he’d used when he was in the city.

‘I know that long stairway,’ she assured him. ‘When the time comes I will be able to take us to the temple, even in the dark.’

Just before dusk, Valerius and Serpentius met a tall centurion by the camp’s west gate. The sound of the battle a few hundred paces to the north was muted now as exhausted men tired of trying to slaughter each other. Valerius heard the grumble of faraway thunder and decided it must be the gods laughing at the foolishness of men.

‘Good,’ the centurion said, when he saw they’d changed into their Judaean clothing and grey cloaks that matched the one covering his armour. ‘We’ll be within range of their slingers, so we have a choice of carrying shields and asking them to use us for target practice, or being a little less conspicuous. In view of what the legate told me, I thought this was best.’

He led the way down the slope and they quickly came to the diagonal path Valerius remembered. The centurion followed it, all the time glancing at the towering walls a bowshot away. Only a few men guarded the parapets, because it seemed an unlikely place for the Romans to assault. John of Gischala needed the bulk of his Galileans to defend the Antonia. Still, someone saw them, because a lead slingshot flattened itself against a rock with a loud smack a few inches from Valerius’s head. He picked it up and studied the mushroom-shaped piece of metal that would have put a hole in his head if it had been a little better aimed.

The centurion chuckled. ‘They’re bloody good, the slingers, but you don’t have to worry about their archers. They couldn’t hit a whore’s left tit if they were standing on her crotch.’

They reached the pair of tombs Josephus had used as a reference point. Absalom, son of David and a pair of brothers whose names Valerius couldn’t recall. Here, the Judaean had turned down into the base of the gorge, but Valerius kept to the path, his eyes always on the ground a few dozen feet below. He reached a point he recognized. A small, beehive-shaped tomb to the south and a mulberry bush to the north, with a flat platform between, and beside it a distinctively shaped rock.

‘Mark that spot,’ he whispered to Serpentius. ‘We need to find it again in the dark.’