Scourge of Rome

XLVIII

‘I told you you would feel the hand of God, my Roman friend. The hand of God brought you here and now you will lay down your sword. Good,’ Josephus said, as Valerius obeyed, his eyes never leaving the blade at Tabitha’s neck. Something flickered on Tabitha’s face and with the slightest shake of the head he warned her not to try anything that would risk her life. ‘You understand your situation?’ Josephus continued. ‘Our transaction must be conducted swiftly, because I fear your comrades have accidentally fired the outer court. Now the leather bag at your waist, which I assume brought you here. Untie it, remove the object inside so I can confirm its identity, return it to the bag and place it beside the sword.’ Again Valerius obeyed. The Judaean’s eyes lit up as he recognized the scroll. Valerius waited for a momentary lapse in concentration, measuring his distance and his chances, but Josephus read his look and smiled. ‘No, no, Valerius, I have no wish to harm the lady Tabitha, but I will have no hesitation if you force it on me. Back off from the bag and stand against the wall.’ When he judged Valerius was far enough away he moved towards the scroll, his sword edge never moving a hair’s breadth from the pulse in Tabitha’s neck. ‘My dear, you will-’

Without warning the Judaean cried out as something smacked into the centre of his back and dropped to the stone floor with a metallic clatter. The sword fell away from Tabitha’s neck, but not so much that she could escape. With a groan of agony Josephus turned to stare at his attacker. Hidden from Valerius in the doorway, Serpentius of Avala lurched into the room and stood with his right hand raised, ready to throw the second of his little Scythian axes.

‘I don’t miss twice.’ The Spaniard’s voice was a rook’s ragged caw. He swayed like a tree in a gale, but Josephus saw something in his eyes that told him that, even wounded, Serpentius was a deadly threat. With a last despairing glance he decided the scroll wasn’t worth his life and darted towards the thick curtain at the rear of the room.

Tabitha retrieved the scroll as Valerius picked up his gladius. He turned to follow Josephus, but she gripped his arm. ‘No, Valerius. Look to Serpentius.’

For the first time Valerius noticed the grey pallor of his friend’s features. He crossed the room in three strides and caught the Spaniard in his arms as he collapsed. Serpentius let out a groan of agony and Valerius felt a warm stickiness on his hand. Laying his friend to the ground he stared at his palm with a cry of disbelief.

‘I’ve killed enough people to know when I’m dead. That backstabbing Judaean bastard,’ the Spaniard rasped. ‘Get out of here with your woman.’

Valerius tried to turn Serpentius over and inspect the wound, but the Spaniard’s fingers gripped his wrist until Valerius thought they would tear the flesh. Still the Roman wouldn’t give up. ‘This is going to hurt.’ He took the wounded man by the shoulders and pushed him on to his side so he could see the injury. By now smoke had filled the altar chamber and flames were licking greedily at the curtained doorway of the sanctuary, sending tiny streams of sparks dancing upwards. Valerius willed himself not to panic. ‘See if you can find another way out,’ he called to Tabitha, trying to keep the fear from his voice.

Serpentius’s tunic was heavy with blood and Valerius winced when he saw where Josephus had struck the blow. A wound low in the back like this would invariably be fatal. He found the entry point and tore the cloth apart, revealing a puncture in the flesh close to Serpentius’s spine.

‘I told you I was dead,’ the Spaniard groaned. ‘Now give me my sword. Remember?’

Valerius remembered. A sword in my hand and a friend at my side. The gladiator’s farewell. ‘We’re going to get you out of here,’ he insisted. Serpentius gave a grunt that might have been a laugh. Valerius had never felt such empty despair. He’d always thought of Serpentius as a big man, but now he realized that his size was an illusion created by his strength and his speed and his presence. The Spaniard felt like a bag of bones in his arms.

‘Don’t give up on me now.’ He studied the wound again. Somehow he needed to stop the bleeding. He sawed at the hem of his robe with his sword, cutting off a long length of makeshift bandage. Taking one end he wiped the blood from Serpentius’s back. It was only then he noticed the ragged edges of a second wound. A wound in Serpentius’s side. It couldn’t be. But when he looked again he saw the unmistakable signs of the sword’s exit. His mind racing, he traced the path of the wound with his fingers, ignoring the Spaniard’s groans of agony. Too low! Josephus the amateur had struck too low. Maybe Serpentius had twisted when he’d struck, or he’d been forced to make the thrust from an angle. The result was a blow that had skidded off Serpentius’s lower spine and under the flesh across the top of the hip bone. It must be agonizingly painful and could have nicked what Pliny called the renes, but it might not be a death wound. The Spaniard gasped as Valerius cut two smaller pieces of cloth from the bandage and plugged the wounds, then wrapped them in place with the rest. Ignoring his friend’s suffering, he hauled Serpentius to his feet.

‘You will not die, Serpentius of Avala. Do you hear me, you Spanish bastard? You will not die.’

‘Leave me,’ Serpentius whispered. Valerius shrank away as a gust of wind turned the curtain into a tower of flame and filled the room with a new blast of heat and smoke. ‘What better end for a man like me than in the ruins of a burning city? What greater memorial than the name Jerusalem, which will be spoken down the ages?’ By now the flames were licking the timbers above their heads and Valerius put an arm under Serpentius’s shoulder to take his weight and hauled him bodily towards the inner chamber. ‘Please, Valerius.’

‘Trust me, Serpentius,’ Valerius said into his friend’s ear. ‘Have I ever failed you?’

‘There’s no way out,’ Tabitha’s cry from the inner doorway sent a new thrill of fear through him, but his mind told him she was wrong.

‘Josephus found a way out,’ he insisted. ‘So there must be one.’

Between them they hauled the heavy curtain aside and pulled Serpentius into an empty room half the size of the other. A dozen store cupboards had been built into the walls, but their doors hung from the hinges where the plundering legionaries had smashed them open and they’d left nothing, apart from a few pieces of furniture and vestments scattered across the floor. By now the heat was becoming intense. Smoke seeped past the curtain and they could see a glow through the gaps at the sides. Valerius looked into Tabitha’s face and saw resignation.

He laid Serpentius on the marble floor. ‘Look after him,’ he ordered.

A padded couch with tapestry skirts stood against a bare wall and in desperation he hauled it aside. Cowering beneath was the figure of a heavily built man and Valerius’s hand went to the knife at his belt.

It was only when the big man raised his head that he found himself staring into the solemn dark eyes of Simon bar Giora.

The Judaean bowed his head and raised a hand as if to fend off the blade, but the blow never came. After a moment, Simon looked up into Valerius’s face. ‘I know you, Roman.’ His voice echoed his disbelief, but his next words proved his mind was still sharp enough. ‘Let me live and I can save you.’

‘Kill him,’ Tabitha spat. ‘He more than any man is responsible for this.’

Valerius shook his head. ‘I’d rather save your life than see him dead.’ He looked to where the bottom of the curtain was already alight and turned back to bar Giora. ‘If you can save us, why didn’t you save yourself?’

The Judaean looked fearfully at the smoking curtain. Time was fast running out. ‘The legionaries trapped me, then Josephus took the route that was mine. If he sees me, he will kill me. There is a tunnel that leads to the Antonia. All I ask is that you get me past the Romans there.’

‘Why wouldn’t I let you show us the tunnel and then kill you anyway?’

Simon bar Giora looked into his eyes. ‘Because I knew the first time I saw you that you were no Josephus. Valerius Verrens is a man of his word.’

‘Then show us the tunnel before we all roast.’

Bar Giora went to one of the vestment cupboards and groped into a recess above the door for a cunningly concealed lever that made the false back panel slide away to reveal an entrance.

‘How did you know about this?’ Valerius asked as they manhandled Serpentius through the narrow opening after Tabitha. ‘It can hardly have been common currency.’

‘This is but one of several.’ Simon’s spirits had recovered now that he had a way out. ‘I was informed of their location by one of the priests in my pay. John of Gischala tortured it from Eleazar, the High Priest, before he killed him. Since I learned of John’s interest I’ve had men waiting at the exit in the Antonia to cut him down. But you Romans took the fortress before he could use it.’

A pile of unused torches lay scattered just inside the door, cached by the priests and presumably knocked over by Josephus in his rush to escape. Choking black smoke was already filling the room behind them, but Simon delayed closing the entrance until Valerius took out flint and steel and lit one of the torches.

When the door closed behind them the silence seemed almost unearthly after the clamour of what had gone before. Valerius saw in the flickering golden light that this was no damp, crudely cut tunnel like Hezekiah’s Conduit. A flight of marble stairs led down to a passage four or five paces wide, paved with stone and lined with tightly mortared blocks. He handed the torch to Tabitha and he and Simon took the mercifully now unconscious Serpentius between them.

Tabitha led the way and even struggling with their burden they made good time through the long, arrow-straight corridor. It could only have been a matter of minutes before Simon insisted they stop for a moment and lay Serpentius down.

‘We are close,’ he breathed. ‘Someone should go ahead and check the exit is safe.’

Valerius imagined the scene as the legionaries of the Fifth and Fifteenth sacked the fortress. Carnage on every hand and not a shred of mercy to be had. ‘Not you, lady.’ He unsheathed his sword and handed it to Tabitha, who shifted the torch to her left hand. ‘And certainly not you, Simon bar Giora. If he moves, kill him.’

Tabitha nodded and held the blade where the Judaean could see it. ‘You will find a lever to the left of the doorway at shoulder height,’ Simon instructed Valerius, undaunted by the lack of trust shown in him. ‘It emerges into a storeroom at the rear of the headquarters building.’

With a last glance at Serpentius, Valerius moved reluctantly out of the torchlight and into the darkness. He advanced slowly, keeping to the left-hand wall, feeling his way forward, his wooden fist held in front. The fist touched something solid and he used his good hand to feel for the lever Simon had mentioned. Eventually his fingers closed round a smooth wooden shaft. Holding his breath, he pulled it firmly towards him.

He used his left thumb to arm the knife in the false hand and tensed as the door swung back soundlessly into the corridor. The opening revealed a poorly lit room of modest proportions. Everything in it appeared to be scattered across the floor in a sea of grey sludge. Sacks of flour had been slashed open so that the grainy powder mixed with olive oil and wine from the smashed amphorae which stuck out of the mess like jagged rocks on a mud flat. In the centre of the room a bearded man with a cut throat lay on his back staring with disinterested, longdulled eyes at the ceiling.

Valerius picked his way through the debris to a half-open door in the far wall. It opened on to a narrow corridor, which proved empty, and in the distance he could hear the sounds of laughter and cheering. Clearly this battle had already been won.

Satisfied that he’d seen enough, he closed the door and made his way back to the passage. Within seconds of entering the darkness a chill ran through him as he sensed that something wasn’t right. Something was missing. Light. The corridor was straight; the light of the torch should have been visible somewhere in the distance.

‘Tabitha?’

His call went unanswered and his mind fought for an explanation. Where in Mars’ name were they? He quickened his pace but couldn’t hurry too much for fear Simon bar Giora might be waiting somewhere in the dark to ambush him. His senses strained to pierce the inky blackness. Somehow bar Giora must have managed to overpower Tabitha and taken the Book of Enoch. The thought that she might be lying bleeding her life out in the dark made him groan aloud.

He froze in his tracks at the faint sound of an answering whimper. Someone was there, somewhere close. He dropped to a crouch and crept silently forward, his left hand groping just above the floor and the knife point of the right extended in front. He stopped as his fingers touched something soft. Cloth … and beneath it flesh. Fearful of what he’d find, he ran his hands up the still warm body. Still alive. He could feel a faint heartbeat in the skinny chest. Not Tabitha, but Serpentius.

‘Tabitha?’ His hand reached out to the left side where she’d been sitting when he’d left them. Nothing. His situation suddenly hit home like a blow from an armourer’s hammer. He couldn’t move away for fear of losing Serpentius again. It meant he had to abandon her to whatever fate had overtaken her. He wanted to roar with frustration, but what could he do?

‘Tabitha?’ Much louder this time, his voice rising and elongating her name until it was a full blown shout that mocked him with its echo from the stone walls of the passage.

Feeling utterly defeated, he reached down to pick up Serpentius in his arms. The Spaniard let out a low moan. ‘Are we dead?’ he whispered.

‘No, but we might as well be.’

An hour later Valerius stood in the Court of the Gentiles with Serpentius at his feet, staring up at the inferno that was the greatest building the world had ever seen. Around him several hundred legionaries ignored the bodies of a thousand slaughtered Judaeans and watched the cataclysm for which they were responsible with grins of wonder.

He’d brought Serpentius here because it was the only way to get him the medical treatment he needed to keep him alive. When he’d staggered from the tunnel he quickly found his way to a courtyard filled with the victors of the attack on the Antonia. He’d left Serpentius with the unit’s temporary medicus and returned to the passage with an escort. The only evidence of human occupancy was a red smudge on the pale golden sandstone floor that probably came from Serpentius.

The more he considered what could have happened, the more confused he became. Why had there been no screams and no sound of a struggle? He’d been less than a hundred paces away for only a few minutes. In the silence he should have heard something. Yes, it was possible that bar Giora, a seasoned warrior, had managed to overpower Tabitha without a sound, but was it likely? She’d been feet away from him, and she’d had Valerius’s sword to protect her. And if he had overpowered her, why not kill her or subdue her in some other way, take the scroll and leave the body behind? Though he could barely bring himself to think it, the likeliest explanation now seemed to be that she’d gone with him willingly. But why, after all they’d been through together, would she abandon him? And, perhaps more relevant, why would she betray Berenice?

A clatter of hooves disturbed his thoughts and a cheer went up as a group of riders trotted into the court through the recently opened west gate. Among them was a familiar figure in a legate’s armour, wearing the purple sash of an army commander. Titus Flavius Vespasian and his staff reined in close by Valerius and Serpentius, but the Emperor’s son only had eyes for the burning temple.

‘I did not want this,’ he said loud enough for the closest fifty or sixty men to hear. ‘I would have stopped it if I could. This has been brought upon the people of Judaea by their own god, and I take it as a sign. What he has begun I will complete. We will tear this place down wall by wall and the city with it. Perhaps, someday, there will be a new Jerusalem, but not in my time.’

The announcement was greeted with a roar of acclaim. When it died away his eyes lighted on Valerius and he smiled, only for the smile to fade as he saw the crumpled figure at his friend’s feet.

‘Is he …’

‘No, but he’s hurt badly. I beg you to help him.’

Titus turned in the saddle. ‘Alexandros!’ he roared. ‘Where is that drunken surgeon of mine?’

The Egyptian doctor appeared with a servant leading a pony laden with his equipment. Titus pointed him towards Serpentius and Alexandros knelt over the Spaniard, working at the bandages as Valerius hovered close.

‘Can he be saved?’ Titus demanded.

Alexandros looked up. ‘His injury is very grave, lord.’

The grey eyes hardened. ‘I want him saved.’ The implication was clear.

Alexandros paled and shouted a string of commands as he bent low over Serpentius, crooning to his patient in Greek as his hands fluttered across the bloodied flesh.

Titus turned back to Valerius. ‘He saved my life,’ he said. ‘I had thought to reward him for his services. None deserves it more.’

‘His life will be reward enough.’

‘No.’ Titus shook his head. ‘If he lives he will never want again.’ He turned back to the burning temple. ‘There is still work to do. John of Gischala and Simon bar Giora are unaccounted for, but the taking of the fortress and the temple means Jerusalem is Rome’s and the rebellion is finished. My father has his victory.’

‘And you will have your triumph.’

Titus managed a wry smile. ‘And you, Valerius? You did as much as any man to bring this about. What will your reward be?’

Valerius stared in the direction of the Huldah Gates and his heart lifted as he watched a diminutive figure pick her way through the carpet of dead towards them. Tabitha’s expression was grave, but her eyes lit up when she recognized him. There was no sign of the leather pouch, but suddenly that didn’t seem to matter any more.

‘I already have my reward.’