Scourge of Rome

XLVII

They made their way through a miasma of death up the paved street of steps leading from the Pool of Siloam towards the temple. At first Valerius thought the bodies lying in the street must be casualties of fighting between the Judaean factions, but closer inspection indicated they’d recently died of starvation. Tabitha clutched at his arm as they passed through the crumpled honour guard, appalled at the sight of the dead women and children.

Dawn was breaking by the time they reached the hill’s halfway point, but the flickering glow to the north almost outdid the rising sun. Valerius fretted that they would be too late. He had no way of gauging the progress of the attack. Titus’s three legions had been fighting all night but the sullen roar in the distance, coupled with the fires, was evidence of some kind of Roman success. His suspicions were confirmed when they reached the hippodrome where the intermittent flow of refugees heading for the Lower City became a constant stream.

‘They must have believed the temple was the safest place in Jerusalem,’ Tabitha whispered. ‘They placed their trust in God and now God has abandoned them.’

‘They placed their faith in John of Gischala,’ Valerius corrected her. ‘And now he has failed them. John and Simon both. They should have surrendered when they had the chance.’ Part of him would always wonder if that were true. Would Titus, so in need of a military triumph, have found some way to make surrender unthinkable for a man of honour or pride? ‘But they’re running because they are frightened and they’re frightened because the Romans are coming.’

‘We must reach the temple before they plunder it.’ Tabitha pulled at his arm, urging him to greater speed, and they forced their way through the river of lost souls like swimmers breasting the waves pounding on a beach. Ahead the road narrowed, funnelled by the soaring walls of the hippodrome and a crumbling city wall from an earlier age. The crush became so great that the pressure lifted Tabitha’s feet off the ground and Valerius feared she would be dragged away from him. Her grip on his left arm tightened and he pulled her close, growling and cursing as he shouldered his way past young and old alike. A gate appeared in the wall to their right and Tabitha pulled him towards it.

‘This is the quickest way to the Huldah Gates,’ she gasped. ‘And the road will be easier.’

They pushed their way through against the flow. The crowd eased, but if anything the sense of terror in those they met heightened. Many ran in a blind panic, not caring who or what stood in their way, their only aim to escape what lay behind. Valerius and Tabitha could see the milky-white stone of the temple’s outer walls, their magnificence made all the starker by the black smoke billowing beyond them. By now the familiar clamour of battle had replaced the sullen roar; the clash of iron upon wood vying with shouted commands, desperate cries for aid and screams of fear, defiance and death. Tabitha froze as a shrieking figure plunged from the wall away to their left. ‘Keep going.’ Valerius dragged her onwards up the slope to the base of a flight of broad steps leading up to two sets of gates, one double arched, the other triple.

‘The triple arch is the entrance, the double the exit.’ Tabitha studied the gates. In the chaos, terrified Judaean soldiers carrying wounded friends used both sets, their blood spattering the polished stones as they fled the fighting above. A guard of Galilean rebels hovered uncertainly by the gateway, unsure whether they should stop the deserters leaving or join the fighting. Tabitha glanced to one side where carved stones surrounded a pool of water and her face twisted into a grimace of uncertainty. ‘I should purify myself at the mikveh before entering the temple.’

‘There’s no time,’ Valerius urged. ‘And you have no need. You have been purified in the Pool of Siloam, and in any case your temple is a battlefield now, defiled by the blood and flesh of the dead.’

She set her jaw and nodded determinedly. ‘You are right,’ she said. ‘And I must be prepared to set myself beyond God’s grace this day for the future of my people.’

Valerius was still puzzling over this last statement as they hurried up the steps, two narrow followed by two broad in a repeating pattern. Tabitha reached the top first. Her eyes hardened as she saw the guards stiffen. She marched straight towards the gate, throwing back her cloak so the Galileans could see the quality of the clothing beneath. Now Valerius understood her choice of fine dress.

‘Why are you lurking here when your comrades are fighting to save the temple?’ she demanded before the guard commander could confront her. The man’s brow darkened at the suggestion of his cowardice from the beautiful woman in the dripping clothes. Her natural authority and the richness of her dress confused him at a time when his mind was already spinning with uncertainty. He and his men had been at their posts throughout the previous day and all through the night. They had orders not to leave, but the sounds of fighting echoing down the stairway from the Court of the Gentiles tested his resolve. That fighting grew ever closer with daylight, to the point where he could hear men struggling for their lives little more than a dozen paces away. A few months ago he’d been a simple farmer eking out a living outside Gadara. For all his inexperience he was a good soldier. Still, he’d been tempted, and now …

‘I have my orders.’ He eyed the hooded bodyguard lurking behind his mistress. ‘The Romans …’

‘Do you see any Romans here?’ Contempt thickened her words and the guard commander sensed the spearmen behind him flinch. All around them women and children continued to flee the battle. The only civilians who’d tried to enter the temple complex in twenty-four hours were this woman and her servant. Tabitha shook her head and raised her voice. ‘We expected so much of John of Gischala and his brave Galileans, but this …? Did you come all this way only to stand back as your comrades spilled their blood in defence of the Great Temple?’ After a moment’s hesitation she made to brush past the guard commander. ‘Well, if you will not fight …’

The commander heard the rush of feet as his men turned for the stairs, and with a last perplexed glance at Tabitha he ran to join them.

Tabitha closed her eyes and heaved a huge sigh. Valerius stepped forward and took her in his arms. ‘Are you sure?’ he whispered. ‘You know what is happening up there.’

She stepped away and looked up into his face, appearing very small and vulnerable and young. ‘I am ready,’ she said. ‘I have God to protect me.’

There was nothing more to say. Valerius drew his sword and led the way to the stairs. They rose to the level of the court in a series of doglegs and he signalled to Tabitha to wait while he checked the way ahead. A spear clattered close by forcing him to duck back, but whether it was aimed at him was unclear.

What he saw was like a scene from the seventh pit of Hades. Flames roared from the north cloister and black smoke filled the sky. The west was well alight, threatening to roast the hundreds of legionaries who rushed along it seeking ways to join their comrades in the court below. One glance was enough to convince him the fight could only have one victor.

This was a place of sacrifice, but Valerius doubted even the Great Temple had ever seen so much blood spilled in a single day. It covered the polished paving slabs in great dark arterial pools, ran along the cracks between like a thousand rivers, and in the form of airborne droplets had spattered every inch of the Court of the Gentiles. The stench of it filled his nostrils. For a moment he hesitated, only to find Tabitha by his side, her face a mask of determination. ‘This way.’ He led her towards the eastern cloister, where he reckoned they could avoid the worst of the fighting.

They hurried through the forest of marble columns unhindered apart from where a few Judaeans were being backed against the wall to be slaughtered by packs of snarling Roman soldiers. If anyone looked like contesting their passage Valerius shouted the previous night’s watchword, praying no one had replaced it yet. At last they reached a point directly opposite the temple’s east doorway.

‘Cremona!’ Valerius called, and they crossed the open space past a group of legionaries finishing off the men who’d been guarding the door. The Galileans knelt submissively to have their throats cut, and their blood mingled with that of their own previous victims. A centurion appeared in the doorway like a vision from a nightmare, gore-spattered and eyes staring. His lips curled back from his teeth in a feral snarl and he held his sword raised and at the ready. ‘Cremona,’ Valerius repeated. ‘Special mission for General Titus.’

The centurion blinked and his eyes narrowed as they drifted from Valerius’s wooden fist to Tabitha.

‘Special mission, eh?’ He swayed as if he were drunk. ‘Well, I suppose there’s more than one kind of special mission.’ He gestured inside and Tabitha and Valerius stepped over the threshold into the Inner Court, moving aside as four men brushed past them struggling with a heavy golden table. The open courtyard stank of oil and Valerius could see that in one of four side rooms a great cauldron had been overturned. Its contents had spilled out to mingle with the life blood of the men who’d died trying to protect the place, whose bodies littered the floor. From an inner room came the sound of hammers and chisels, wood splintering and a curious tearing sound.

More soldiers appeared from an inner room carrying a great golden lamp holder with seven branches. A tear rolled down Tabitha’s cheek as she recognized what must have been an important symbol of her religion, but her chin came up and she took his arm. ‘This way,’ she said. ‘We are in the Court of the Women and this is as close as I would normally approach the Holy of Holies. Only men may go beyond. But this temple is no longer as it was. It has already been defiled by the presence of Gentiles and the spilling of blood, and my cause is just.’

She passed through the doorway, stepping over the curtain that once covered the entrance, but now lay soaking up oil and blood. Beyond it lay a second chamber with a great bronze altar. This room too was scattered with the still bodies of the men who had attempted to defend the temple treasures. Whether by accident or design, one of them lay on his back on the altar with his head thrown back. A gaping tear in his throat still leaked blood on to the polished surface.

Tabitha barely glanced at the carnage as she strode through the room, leading the way unerringly up the steps and into the Great Temple proper. Valerius blinked as he entered a long narrow room now bare of any object apart from a dozen oil lamps. Sheets of buttery yellow gold lined every upper surface. He knew they were sheets because twenty legionaries worked frantically on ladders to tear them from the walls and throw them down to others waiting to carry them away. Something more than a curtain covered the far wall. Perhaps a foot thick, it was almost a wall in itself, but made of cloth. Holes in the ceiling close to the walls appeared to have no apparent purpose, but he guessed they might provide some form of light. Tabitha frowned, staring at a raised stone platform, and Valerius wondered if what she’d come for had already been lost to the looters.

‘That is where the Ark of the Covenant should stand,’ she said with a hint of satisfaction. ‘Perhaps John and Simon are not the fools we believed they were. Beyond the curtain is the Most Holy Place, where the sacred ceremonies take place.’

But the Most Holy Place held no interest for her. Instead, she turned and crossed to an insignificant doorway set in a part of the walls yet to be stripped. Ignored by the legionaries, Valerius followed her to a claustrophobic stairway barely wide enough to accommodate his broad shoulders. As they climbed almost vertically through the darkness to the next level, dust rose from beneath Tabitha’s feet. No one had visited this place for months, perhaps even years.

‘How will we find it in the darkness?’ Valerius said quietly.

‘We will find it,’ she assured him. The reason for her confidence became clear when she opened a trap door and they climbed into a gloomy wood-panelled attic. Yellow light from the oil lamps filtered through the slots he’d seen from below, complemented by narrow openings in the walls that provided a little natural illumination.

‘These are for the priests to polish the upper walls of the Holy of Holies.’ Her voice shook with emotion. ‘And this,’ she pointed to a series of covered niches on one wall, ‘is where they keep their instruments.’ She pulled back a small curtain and reached in to pull out a long pole with a cloth wrapped round one end. It surprised Valerius that such mundane implements should have individual repositories, but he guessed that, like everything in the temple, they probably possessed some kind of ritual significance.

Tabitha replaced the pole and counted the niches. When she found the one she sought she hesitated as if what it held was too overwhelming to contemplate. Just as Valerius was about to offer his help, she reached inside. And froze. He saw her eyes widen. Was it some sort of trap? He realized he was holding his breath.

Eventually, with infinite care, she drew the mysterious object clear of its hiding place and held it in her hands, staring at it as if it were the finest jewel in all the Empire. A simple leather bag tied at the neck. She turned to Valerius with a question in her eyes. ‘Yes.’ His voice sounded hoarse. ‘Open it. It is yours.’

Tabitha winced at a great echoing crash as the legionaries brought down another section of the golden wall. ‘My mistress’s.’ She fumbled at the strings with awkward fingers, drawing them apart and pulling out a tattered, ancient-looking scroll attached to twin dowels of scarred, blackened wood. It was so old it looked as if it might fall apart in her hands, and she quickly returned it to the bag.

‘Don’t you want to check it is what you think it is?’ Valerius suggested.

Tabitha shook her head. ‘If it is here, this is what we seek.’

‘We should go, then.’

She crept across to look down at the destruction continuing below. ‘I think we should wait.’ She sat back against the wall with the leather bag clasped to her body. Valerius went to her and put his arm round her shoulders. She sighed and laid her head against his chest. ‘It will be over soon enough,’ she said. ‘Then we will be free.’

How long they sat there Valerius didn’t know, but at one point he heard the sound of nailed sandals on the narrow stair. He pulled his sword as a startled legionary put his head through the trap door. ‘Nothing to find up here,’ Valerius assured him. ‘We’ve searched everywhere.’

The man looked from Valerius to Tabitha and grinned. ‘Share and share alike is what I say.’ He raised himself on both arms only to find the point of a gladius pricking his throat. Above it, Valerius’s eyes glowed with the promise that his next move would dictate whether it went through his gullet.

‘I don’t think so,’ Valerius said.

‘All right.’ The soldier drew his head back. ‘I wasn’t serious. You’re sure you’ve searched, only I’ve got my orders.’

‘Sure.’

The helmeted head disappeared. ‘Plenty more Jewish bitches where she came from.’

Tabitha shuddered and moved in close to Valerius. ‘I hate soldiers.’

‘I’m a soldier.’

‘All but you.’

They must have slept because Valerius awoke to an unnatural quiet and he had to shake Tabitha before she’d move. ‘It’s time.’

She nodded and forced herself to her feet. ‘I can smell smoke.’

‘I think it’s the cloisters.’ Valerius prayed it was true, but he went down the ladder two steps at a time. When they reached ground level he held out his hand. ‘Give me the book. Better if you have both hands free.’ She hesitated, but only for a second, and he tied the leather bag to his belt.

When they opened the door a waft of oily smoke and the stink of burning cloth confirmed his worst fears. ‘Someone has set the Court of the Women alight.’

‘I can see flames.’ Tabitha stood by the entrance. ‘Check the rear chamber. There may be another way out.’

Valerius was halfway across the room when he heard a scream. He whirled with his hand on his sword, but it was already too late. Josephus had a hank of Tabitha’s dark hair in his fist and the edge of his sword at her throat.