Immediately her hands wavered.
But her life depended on holding the stone high!
She found new strength. A low groan escaped her as she strained to hold her arms up. Yet against her will, they began to sag downward.
“This is a cruel torture, is it not?” Matthias whispered, pulling her hair even tighter and caressing her throat with the knife’s blade. “You know that eventually you won’t be able to hold the stone. Yet you are so desperate for life that you strain to keep it aloft for just one more breath.”
He was right. Her every thought was consumed with the stone, with finding the energy to stave off death. Tears rolled down her cheeks. Her groan grew louder.
How much longer could she hold the small stone in front of her?
Then she decided. If she was going to die at the hands of this calm madman, she would ensure his death with hers. Her last strength would be to yell for her guards.
The stone fell downward as her arms collapsed.
She opened her mouth to scream.
Yet he was faster. He clamped a calloused palm across her mouth and cut her short. “Yes,” he said. “Now you are dead.”
With his hand over her mouth, he pulled her head into his chest. He touched the full length of the blade against the cartilage of her throat.
She was totally helpless.
In the moments before dying, her head against his ribs, she heard the beat of his heart. She smelled his odor and clothing, not entirely unpleasant. She saw the blue of the sky through the window. Tasted the copper of fear. And wondered why death and oblivion suddenly seemed simple.
Yet the blade was not drawn against the softness of her skin.
“I do not want you dead,” Matthias told her. Without warning, he pushed her away. Unharmed. “Say nothing to draw the guards or truly I will kill you before they arrive.”
Her own heart thumped so loudly that she expected the noise alone would draw the palace guards. “What is this brutal game you play?” She was angry. Confused. Relieved.
“For you, it is only a game. Because you still live.” He closed his eyes. “I want you to imagine my small household. Unadorned and simple. Yet filled with love. My wife. A four-year-old daughter. A two-year-old son.”
Matthias looked at her. Through her. As if he were peering into her soul. “Have you ever picked up a sleeping child to move him?”
Bernice shook her head.
“It is a wonderful thing. The child is so full of trust that he remains asleep. You rise with the child in your arms, and the child’s arms wrap around your neck. Trust and love. Worth far more than this palace. That is what I had.”
Matthias sat down beside her, as if he could no longer bear the weight of his own burden. He slumped, arms around his knees. His voice was muffled. “That day, John of Gischala and his ten men captured me and my family. He gave me the stone you held. Gave me instructions to hold it in front of me. Promised that as long as I could keep it aloft, my daughter would remain alive.”
Matthias lifted his head. Tears streamed into his beard. “I held that stone out in front of me and begged for the life of my child. She had never seen me afraid, and my fear brought her to a panic. I only had eyes for her, my little girl. She tried to rush forward so I could hold her and comfort her as I had always done. The brigands held her back. I stood there, knowing she would live for only as long as I could keep the stone aloft. When one arm grew weak, I clutched it with the other. When both arms lost strength and the stone fell . . .”
In his grief, he could not speak. He fought for composure.
“Remember, Queen of the Jews,” he finally said, “how badly you wanted to keep your own life when you believed I would kill you if you set the stone down. Know this. A parent would gladly give his life a hundred times over to save his child. Badly as you wanted to live, infinitely more was I desperate to keep them from killing my girl. Yet, when my arms collapsed, in front of my eyes they drew the knife across my little daughter’s throat. Her blood spilled at my feet, even as she gasped to me for help until she could no longer gasp.”
Matthias lifted his eyes to Bernice. “Can you comprehend my pain? Then? Now?”
She nodded. Horror and grief filled her for what the man had endured.
“My son,” Matthias said. “First they allowed my arms to rest. Then they placed the stone in my hand again. Told me he would remain alive for as long as I could hold the stone in front of me. You will never understand the agony in my muscles as I fought and fought to keep my arms from betraying me and my son’s life.”
His voice became ice. “You know the inevitable. His blood joined the blood of my daughter. Then my wife’s blood added to theirs. On the ground where we had played and sang songs. Then, most cruelly, they set me free to live with the memory of how I failed my family. Of how their eyes met mine as the brigands reached to open their throats. They wanted me alive so others would learn of what happens to those who oppose them.”
Bernice took in a breath. Realized she had not taken one in far too long.
“That, my queen, is why I am here. Because of what you have allowed to happen to your people.”
“I . . . I . . .”
“Make whatever excuses you want. If you are blind to what Florus is doing, you are blind by choice. While you live in luxury in the palaces across the land, all the sons and daughters of Abraham cry out for help. I accuse you of ignoring the plight of your people. That is why I am here.”
“Did Ben-Aryeh send you?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. If any person in Jerusalem could have found a way to get this man into her private chamber, it would have been Ben-Aryeh. “If it was him, tell him I am sorry. That I will now honor the agreement we made two years ago. Tell him I will send a man out against the Christians to prove their claims about the Nazarene false. Tell him I will—”
“No one sent me,” he said savagely. “I am here because of the memory of how I watched my family die. I am here because Florus is on his way to Jerusalem and I want you to meet him. Find a way to force the Romans to free us Jews from the injustice. You are queen. You have that power.”
Just as quickly, Matthias lost his anger. Broke to his sorrow and bowed his head. Without wiping the tears from his face, he struggled to his feet. Overlooked the city. Spoke facing away from her.
“I am a Jew. God hears my cries. But He cannot take away my grief. If He allowed suicide within His laws, I would have ended my life that day. I have nothing to live for. Worse, living is what hurts me most. Who am I without my wife and children? Who am I with the knowledge of how and why they died? I don’t want life but cannot end it myself. Yet I long for death.”
“Whatever you want,” Bernice said, “I will get for you. You will face no punishment for bringing me this story as you did. I will seek vengeance, justice. Your home will be returned. Your village compensated. This John of Gischala will die.”
“What I want from you is a promise,” Matthias said. “A promise that you finally accept your queen’s duty to help your people. We have all suffered too long. Abused by the Romans. Ignored by our leaders. Help us. Ensure that Florus punishes the brigands instead of encourages them.”
“You have that promise.” Yes, Florus was on his way to Jerusalem. With an army. But she guessed he was appearing in force as part of the politics of ruling Judea. She would extend a dinner invitation to him. Cajole him. Threaten him. Do what it took to help her people.
Bernice thought of years earlier when she’d made similar promises to Ben-Aryeh for a different reason. Promises she now intended to fulfill. “You will have that,” she repeated. “And more.”
“More? Then I ask you for one last thing.”
“Anything.”
“Cry out to the guards.”
“What?”
“Call them into your chamber.”
“You will not be punished,” Bernice repeated.
“Call.”
She did.
“Louder!” he
commanded.
“Guards! Guards!”
Footsteps clattered in the corridor.
Before the door opened, Matthias pulled a rag from his waistband. He wrapped it quickly around her mouth, tying it behind her head, gagging her.
Then the door crashed open. Four guards filled the doorway.
Matthias raised his knife, as if to kill Bernice. Then hesitated. And held his position as he waited for the guards to draw the obvious conclusion.
The guards rushed forward, raising their swords.
“No!” Bernice screamed into the rag. But her efforts to stop the guards were useless. They saw her life in danger and had only one response.
The swords came down.
The Fourth Hour
Annas saw the full extent of the armies that Florus had assembled, and despite his satisfaction that Florus had made the arrangements with the bandits as agreed, Annas the Younger now raged.
At the temple, around subordinates, he had no hesitation at openly venting his frequent rages.
But here, out in the open countryside, with the hills rising on all sides instead of temple walls, he was forced to keep his rage hidden. Against the assembled discipline and equipment of two cohorts of Roman soldiers, he knew his personal strengths, reputation, and power as a former high priest of the exalted temple were inconsequential.
The soldiers passed and the horsemen came in waves on their way to Jerusalem. They towered above Annas on their fully armored beasts, and it irked him further that he sat on a donkey instead of on one of the magnificent stallions belonging to the temple stables.
He’d traveled five or more miles out of Jerusalem on the main road from Caesarea. Here, down from the mountains, the road was wide and safe. At any given time, one could look back or ahead and be reassured by the sight of at least a dozen other travelers moving along the road. Some walked; some rode horses or donkeys or camels. Some were on wagons or chariots. When it had stopped to encamp the afternoon before, a day’s march from Jerusalem, there had been ample time for those continuing to the city to bring word of the army’s presence.
An army!
Now, pushed off the road by the mass of soldiers and forced to plod on uneven ground on a stubbornly slow donkey, Annas felt his rage build. He maintained his outer air of calm until the end of the lines neared, with Florus, the Roman procurator of Judea, at the rear, seated in a chariot and holding the reins of a horse, while slaves on each side walked along and held umbrellas to shield him from the sun.
Annas dismounted and immediately caught the attention of Florus.
Florus barked an order to a nearby centurion. The order was repeated down the line, and both cohorts of soldiers stopped, remaining solidly in formation.
This was a light coat of balm on the rage inside Annas that at least his presence stopped a Roman army.
As Annas stepped closer to the chariot, Florus dismissed the slaves, another indication to Annas that he had information the procurator wanted. Whatever would be said in their conversation was important enough to remain between the two of them.
Florus was a large man, a former soldier. His political astuteness and his rise to power as procurator of Judea were based on a simple system. Bully those who could be bullied, bribe those who couldn’t, and learn quickly which category best suited his opponent. But whatever athletic poise and grace he’d once had as an active soldier had been lost to years of living far too well. There was redness in his face, broken veins in his nose. Wide as his shoulders were, the melon belly that strained at his toga dominated his upper body. His hair was thick for an older man—he was in his fifties—but he’d had it dyed black, and because of the deep wrinkles on his face and his sagging jowls, the vanity made him look like a parody of himself.
“Unusual,” Florus remarked with a smirk when they had their privacy. “The prophet has left his mountain.”
It was useless to try to explain to Florus that a temple priest was not a prophet, for he made the same inane comment every time he met Annas, something that fueled his anger. As a result, some of the rage inside Annas slipped past his efforts at composure. “An army—especially one of this size—was not part of our agreement.”
“Where are your usual fawning niceties?”
Annas bit back the sharp obscenity that first leaped into his mind. He knew that in the eyes of Florus, he was not much more than the donkey on which he’d ridden from Jerusalem to meet the army.
Furthermore, Annas was acutely aware that Florus wielded a heavy stick. Despite Annas’s high ranking among the Jews, Florus would have no hesitation at snapping an immediate command to have him slain on the side of the road. Especially here, where not a single witness would contradict any story that Florus wished to concoct.
On the other hand, the unchecked power in Judea that Florus was capable of sharing also meant he dangled a considerable carrot. Annas continued to play the role of donkey in pursuit of that carrot of power.
“The fawning niceties?” Florus repeated, raising his eyebrows.
“It is a hot day,” Annas said. “I’m sure you would rather not have any of your time wasted.”
“Don’t presume to guess what I want or don’t want.”
Annas itched in the peasant’s rough clothing. He felt a drop of sweat on the end of his nose. He resisted the impulse to wipe it away.
Florus waved for one of the attendants to approach. “Give this man the umbrella,” he barked. “Then leave again.”
Annas accepted it from the slave, surprised that Florus would be so considerate. The shield from the sun felt wonderful.
“Shade me as we speak,” Florus said with another smirk, casually resting the reins between his fingers. “Then I won’t have any concerns about the length of our conversation, will I?”
Annas felt his stomach clench with involuntary protest. He was a former high priest and would have the position again one day!
“Shade me,” Florus repeated.
Still, Annas hesitated.
“Think of all you have risked and all you can lose if I speak a single word in Jerusalem about our arrangements.” Florus was calm. “Shade me.”
Annas finally shuffled forward and held the umbrella above the chariot, squinting as the heat of the sun baked him again.
Florus smiled in mock appreciation. He drew water from a leather pouch and drank deeply. “Now,” he said expansively when he finished, “remind me of our arrangement. Not the one that involves the old Jew you want ambushed. But the arrangement that matters to me.”
“It did not involve an army like this approaching Jerusalem.”
“The public demonstrations you arranged against me were substantial, almost too much. If I let it go without some sort of token punishment, I risk a true rebellion as your people lose their fear of me. Or worse, word of it would get back to Nero, and he would remove me for being too weak.”
“Seventeen talents of silver!” Annas said. “From the temple treasury. Gifts given by our people to God. We only agreed to five talents; your soldiers took seventeen! Worse, they spent an entire afternoon loading it in the temple square in view of all the people. If we hadn’t protested as we did, the people would have thought we were in collusion.”
“Your family and the temple officials have been in collusion with Rome for decades,” Florus remarked. “Are the Jews truly so stupid that something like your demonstrations against me will actually distract them?”
Annas did not answer.
“Listen to me,” Florus said. “I will appear with this army in Jerusalem. You and the puppet you control as a high priest will posture and bluff. I will posture and bluff. You don’t have enough military power to send me away. And I don’t have enough military power to actually take control of the city. Thus, after enough posturing and bluffing so that each side appears the winner, I will take the army back to Caesarea, and your people will believe that once again you have protected them. That I decided to bring an army to add to the show is meaningless. In princ
iple, I am fulfilling our arrangement, am I not?”
“Along with the two talents of that silver set aside for me.”
“Are you implying I have forgotten?” Florus’s smile disappeared and he stared hard at Annas. “Or that I am going to steal it from you?”
“Only saying it aloud to satisfy myself.”
Florus drank more water and pointedly did not offer any to Annas. Not that he would have accepted. Pigs—and Florus was definitely a cousin to the four-legged ones—were repulsive to a decent Jew. It would be like sharing a livestock trough.
“Something bothers me,” Florus said. “You went to great trouble to meet me here in the countryside. We could have easily discussed all of this in the privacy of the palace where it would be expected for you to visit me.”
“I come to warn you, and not even for this would I make any exception and send a messenger.” Annas would never put any of his communications with Florus on a scroll where it could fall into the wrong hands and destroy his career and his life.
“Warn me?”
“Word of your arrival has already reached Jerusalem, of course. There will be a delegation waiting for your army outside the city walls. They intend to shame you with applause. I only say this because if your soldiers break rank and respond with any force, a true riot might break out. Any escalation would make it difficult for both you and I to simply, as you said, bluff and posture.”
“I see,” Florus said. He shifted his eyes to the horizon and then back to Annas. “I see indeed.”
“There is something else,” Annas said. “A matter of interest to you that we have discussed on other occasions.”
“Yes?”
“Gallus Sergius Vitas finally arrived on ship.”
“Vitas!” Florus lurched forward so quickly that the chariot shifted position, and Florus had to jerk the reins to keep the horse in place.
“According to my spies, he is now in Sebaste,” Annas said. “With Ben-Aryeh. Your enemy has now joined with mine.”
“Do you think today you will die?” Quintus asked his sister. “I would very much like to watch. I’ve never seen anyone die before. All I know is what you and Maglorius have told me about the arenas.”
The Last Disciple Page 14
