Lingering over the task of filling the water pitchers, Anna reveled in partaking in everyday life.
Such as the voices of the cloth merchant and Judith the Bethlehemite haggling over the price of a scarf. Though notoriously tight fisted, Judith bought new scarf after new scarf, from brightly colored silks to plain linen ones. She must own enough scarves to wear a different one every day from now to the age to come.
A door across the way opened. A boisterous group of men spilled out. Busy arguing good naturedly with one another, they paid no heed to the bazaar’s other occupants. They were her former neighbors, fellow dung collectors to Simon. A few of them had been Simon’s particular friends. Half-tempted to wave a greeting, she turned her head away and found a welcome distraction.
Peter and Rachael.
Jerusalem’s own lovebirds.
Famously inseparable, the couple stood with heads together over a ramshackle cart and examined an odd assortment of metal and wood tools and utensils. Taken up with each other, they were as oblivious to their brood of children noisily chasing each other in circles in and around the other vendors’ stall as they were to the multitude of understanding smiles or impatient frowns aimed their way.
The rash couple had scandalized their families by meeting one day and falling in love and running off together the very next. Talk of it would have died long ago except the marriage did not end a miserable and sorry affair as predicted. Quite the opposite, the luster had yet to wear off their blinding love. With child number eleven on the way, Peter and Rachael looked as happy and as in love as ever.
Absent a rebuke from their parents, the children’s cheerful antics nonetheless came to an abrupt halt. One child stopped and pointed.
Gaping awestruck at something beyond Anna’s shoulder. the tot cried, “Mama, tell the bad men it is not nice to throw rocks.”
The hushed silence descending over the plaza trailed down Anna’s spine like the devil’s own finger. Though she already knew who and what awaited her, it seemed to take an eternity to turn around.
Zara the Levite approached holding a jagged rock fisted in his hand. He led a band of similarly armed men.
“Stone the harlot!” they chanted.
Stoning.
Her mind rebelled against the idea. Panic rose like vomit.
Stoning was reserved for idolaters, adulterers, and blasphemy. There needed to be a trial and witnesses. The guilty were put to death outside the city gates.
She trembled at Zara’s hate-filled face.
The flock of young girls surrounding her scattered, leaving behind their water vessels in their haste to remove themselves from even a hint of disgrace.
Peter and Rachael gathered their brood of children under their wings.
Rabbi Saul watched with the cool-eyed detachment as his eager pupils spread out and scavenged the plaza for rocks. The notion her demise would be the teacher’s handy object lesson left her queasy.
“Harlot! Whore! Jezebel!” Zara whipped the crowd into a frenzy and all the while led the vengeful pack closer and closer.
Anna’s eyes lighted on the dung collectors.
Surely one of these, her former neighbors and Simon’s friends would step forward on her behalf. The dung collectors knew her to be an upright and good person. At least one of them must realize a mistake was afoot.
John of Gibeah stepped to the front of the pack. John had been Simon’s closest friend. John had taken many of his meals with Simon and his sons. Meals she had cooked.
“Cursed Anna,” he called out.
The words hit her like a slap to the face. But it was the pleased sneer on his face when he threw the rock hidden in his hand that really hurt. “That is for Simon.”
She ducked and the stone whizzed by her head.
“Cursed Anna. Cursed Anna,” a child’s voice called.
A rock struck her forehead. Though only a glancing blow, it stung. Massaging her forehead, her fingers came away slick with warm blood. Through watery eyes, she shot a glance from the young boy who had done this back to her blood-smeared fingers.
Not the children, too.
The boy set to crying at sight of the blood.
An arm circled the distraught child. Trance-like, Anna moved her gaze upward. Peter and Rachael stood shoulder to shoulder with their children gathered safely all around them and stared silently back at her. Grim-lipped, they patted their son’s head. Were they merely comforting the distraught youth? Or did they mean it as a sign of approval for what he had done?
“Stone the harlot! Stone the harlot!” more voices cried.
Zara’s men were within range of her now, but still they moved in closer and closer. The deadly stones might be unloosed any time now. Of those circling her, Peter’s and Rachael’s closed faces were the least hostile.
Shoulders hunched against the coming attack, Anna looked from the couple to her attackers. “Please help me. I am not a harlot.”
“We saw you at the river,” they answered in unison.
Terror growing like a consuming wildfire, Anna took a step toward the couple. “I am not a real harlot.”
The family jumped back as though avoiding urine tossed from a bucket.
That was all it took to set off the agitated crowd.
A wave of rocks darkened the sky.
Anna squeezed her eyes shut and said her last prayers.
A stone struck low on her back, driving her to the ground. Sprawled in the dirt and spitting grit, she watched the rest of the rocks sail harmlessly overhead. One stone did find a target. Anna was aghast to see a wayward stone hit poor Rachael, bloodying her face.
The wounded woman cupped her injury with one hand and with the other patted the heads of her howling children.
Anna was swallowed up by the riotous crowd. She curled into a tight ball.
The angry buzz of men gathered closer and closer. “Stone the harlot! Stone the harlot!”
Above it all, she could hear Peter warning the others away. “Stay away from my wife,” he commanded over and over.
Peter’s ferocious roar was growing louder and louder, as if he drew nearer and nearer. How could that be when Peter was standing next to her?
She lifted her head.
And there was Julian.
With the ease of a sea serpent cutting through the deep, he strode amidst the roiling mob. Men and weapons fell aside like so much flotsam. The mighty giant’s course was set straight for her.
In a heartbeat Julian burst through the last ring of men and came and stood over her. He held out his hand.
“Come, Wife,” he drew her to her feet. “You are legally my wife,” he said in her ear. “Do not dare contradict me.”
Wife? She could not remember being knocked silly by a rock, but she must have. How else to explain such nonsense? Married? But since Julian was staring holes in her with a pointed look that said she had better keep quiet, Anna supposed she must have heard right.
What was he up to? He could not possibly hope to get away with this whale of a lie. Could he? Unless. Unless…
The panic that had been ebbing redoubled.
What if she and Julian truly were husband and wife?
∞∞∞
Shaken over the fact he had returned to Jerusalem barely in time to save Anna from being executed, Julian was torn between wanting to kiss her senseless and wanting to give her a tongue lashing.
Instead of staying in hiding, per his orders, his would-be harlot had somehow managed to make herself the featured attraction at a public execution.
The woman falls into trouble as though born to it. A verdict not very far from the actual truth, he feared, and explanation enough for how she had come to earn the name Cursed Anna.
Onlookers lurked from a safe distance.
Regrouping and armed with clubs, Zara and the Temple guard closed in.
Anna snagged a jagged rock and hefted it threateningly. “I did nothing wrong.”
Julian placed a protective arm around his resi
lient charge. Marrying her was a risky gambit on more than one level. “Stand back!”
Zara’s bull-like chest puffed. “Do not interfere in matters that do not concern you, Roman.”
“The law, Roman or Jewish, says otherwise.”
“We will take the matter before the council.”
“My wife will never see the light of your court. If there is a problem, it is me you have deal with, not her.”
“Your lies will not save the harlot.”
A commotion went up among the spectators, and they scattered at the sight of Julian’s men marching into the bazaar with their swords drawn and led by Crispus.
Anna dropped the rock and pushed closer. “Please, no more bloodshed.”
Julian shot a pointed look at Zara. “My men are here to restore peace.”
Hate and resentment simmered in Zara’s eyes. “I know why you are here. You and your men take pleasure in making harlots of our women and love nothing better than to spit on our holy ordinances.”
The Levite’s wife might not have left him for a Roman soldier if he was not such a nasty lout.
“Crispus, show him the marriage contract.”
Securing the document had not been not an easy task.
Zara had the effrontery to grab the scroll from Crispus. He broke open the seal and directed a ferocious scowl from the white linen parchment to Anna.
She trembled like a skittish colt. “A child threw the first stone. A child.”
He ached for her. Her need to huddle against the enemy, a Roman soldier, for protection laid bare the painful extent of her vulnerability.
He glanced around at the angry stares of the guards wishing him back behind the fortress walls, or more likely wishing him to Hades.
Let the Jews hate him. He did not care.
Why would he?
The spiteful thought brought his mother’s face to mind, and she looked sorely disappointed.
The truth was he did desire the favor of at least one Jew in the land of Israel.
Anna.
His wife.
The thought made him unaccountably light-headed.
The marriage contract had been drawn up as a safety measure. It was the reason he stayed behind in Caesarea. Well-trained soldier that he was, Julian had not underestimated the enemy. Zara was not one to forgive and forget. The one sure way to remove Anna from Zara’s power was to put her under his protection.
The Levite could rant before his council all day long, but it would do no good. Roman law overrode Jewish law. If Zara was vindictive enough to take the issue to a Roman court, Governor Pilate would laugh the overblown man out of his presence.
What Zara did have was time.
As long as Anna was in Israel, she would be in danger and must live under the protection of Julian’s name. She would be safe once she was tucked away with his mother in Egypt. Julian would divorce her and straightway start the search for a Roman wife.
Except a Roman wife was not what he desired.
Julian wanted Anna.
He could tell himself all day long that he had married Anna for her sake alone, but in truth he was unconscionably pleased at the prospect of taking Anna to the marriage bed and making her his wife in every possible sense of the word.
But what of Anna?
Once she learned she was in fact married to a Roman would she view it as further proof her god was angry with her?
Zara flung the marriage contract at Julian. “Take the whore and go.”
He caught the scroll. “Watch your mouth.”
“We know who our fathers are.” Zara wore a defiant sneer. “If this harlot bears you a son, he could well be any Roman’s bastard.”
Julian grabbed Zara by the tunic and punched the him in the mouth.
Anna grasped his arm. “He is the Lord’s servant.”
The guardsmen shifted in place and murmured.
Blood trickled from Zara’s lip. He smiled nastily. “Let him have the cursed woman. And let us pray she brings the curse of death to the Roman scum like she brought death to Simon and her family.”
Julian released him, scooped Anna up in his arms, and shoved a path through the indignant crowd. “I hate this place,” he fumed. “I truly hate this place.”
Nineteen
Julian carried Anna through the streets of Jerusalem. He glared at anyone bold enough to stare a beat too long. If people were going to gossip about him, he was going to give them a good show. Anna hid her face in his shoulder, but from exhaustion, terror, or humiliation, he did not know.
When he arrived at the fortress, he took the stairs two at a time, barking instructions at the first soldier he saw to find his aide.
Julian entered the great hall as his pimple-faced aide caught up to him. “We did not expect you back until next week at the soonest, Commander.” The man fell into step beside him.
He did not slow. “Herod Antipas’s first wife told me I must return to Jerusalem without delay. I do not know who she buys her information from, but it is worth the coins she pays.”
The aide perked up. “Information?”
“I arrived in time to stop this woman from being stoned.”
The aide, who was new to the post, took a closer look at Anna. Julian cut off any remark he was likely to make with a stream of orders—fortress business that could not be avoided after two weeks absence.
They weaved through the maze of corridors leading to his suite of rooms. Julian turned to the task of informing the aide of the impending trip to Egypt and the reason for it. “I have married.”
The aide halted. “Married?”
Anna struggled against Julian’s hold. “Why do you keep saying that? Surely you can tell your soldiers the truth.”
“Just tell the men.” Annoyed at his defensive tone, he barked out his next order. “Come along. I do not have all day.”
Actually, he did. He had risen at dawn and been on his horse for hours already, but the day was still young. He wanted food and a bath. More importantly, he wanted the fortress business over and done with so he could make the woman squirming in his arms his lawful wife.
The aide hurried to catch up. Julian set a brisk pace and gave orders running from the important to the mundane. Around a few more corners, and they were met by the sound of men scrambling out of sight. At a guess, an impromptu game of dice had just come to an abrupt halt.
“Sorry, sir… it will not happen again,” the aide said, red-faced.
Yes, it would. Soldiers gambled. It was probably why they were soldiers in the first place.
The young aide would learn this fact soon enough. About to wave off the incident, Julian changed his mind. Using the flimsy excuse to send the flustered youth on his way, he said, “Obtain the names of the guilty men.”
The aide hurried away.
Julian made for his rooms.
He rounded the last corner, and before he reached it, the door to his private quarters opened.
Julian’s faithful slave, an all-knowing fellow who not once since Julian had purchased him had been taken unaware by his master’s erratic comings and goings, held the door open in welcome.
Julian set Anna on her feet. “Tevy, meet my wife Anna.”
“Oh no,” she exclaimed, all the color draining from her face. “You are in perfect earnest, aren’t you?”
The slave, discreet to a fault, paid her no heed. “Food and bath water are ready. Shall I arrange a separate bath for your wife?
Anna gasped. “I will not be bathing or doing anything else with this man.”
“Draw a second bath,” Julian said mildly.
Tevy’s inscrutable eyes remained on Julian. “Will you need anything else, Master?”
“No, Tevy. I think I have my hands full as it is.”
The slave ducked his head, but not before Julian saw a smile cross his lips. “Shall I stay within calling distance, Master?”
It was a shame Tevy was a slave because he would make a better aide than the one just dismissed e
ver would. “After the baths are drawn and the wedding feast is laid out, pass word that I am not to be disturbed. After that, you may take the night off. But stay away from the Syrians. They have a bad habit of using loaded dice when gaming with the likes of you.”
The slave was about to let himself out the door when Julian stopped him with one last command. “And Tevy.” He locked eyes on Anna. “Do not wake me at the usual time. I plan to sleep late.”
Her brown eyes widened.
The door snapped closed.
She took a step back and bumped into the reclining couch. “When will I return to Crispus and Miriam’s home?”
“You will not be going back.”
“This time, I promise to stay inside. I—”
Julian put his finger to his lips. “Hush, Anna. My wife stays with me.”
Terror and bewilderment shined in her eyes. “Salome will not be happy when she learns we are married.”
Salome and Herodias had pestered him and the king nonstop to arrest John the Baptist during his stay in Caesarea. “She will soon get over her disappointment.”
Her brow furrowed. “Miriam told me you were searching for a Roman wife.”
He welcomed the question. “Once we reach Egypt, I will divorce you.” He wanted everything out in the open. Almost everything, his conscience nagged.
She swallowed. “But—”
“You look tired, Wife. And beautiful.” He walked to the bedchamber door and his waiting bath. “We can discuss all the particulars over the wedding meal.”
Twenty
Anna paced the anteroom outside Julian’s bedchamber. The spare space served many functions—office, library, gambling den, private dining niche, and apparently, in a pinch, a handy spot for wooing one’s wife.
Married? It was difficult to get her mind around the idea. The problem was she did not feel married. None of the traditional marriage rituals, either Jewish or Roman, had been observed. Her wedding had amounted to a series of blunt pronouncements.
Stay away from my wife! Tevy, meet my wife. My wife stays with me.
Faithful Daughter of Israel Page 9
