Stone and Steel

by David Blixt

  Their living area was located at the far end of the yard, above the masonry workshop. A modest home with three rooms and a balcony overlooking the yard, it had served the family for five generations.

  Judah pounded up the stairs, calling out, “Father? Father?” There was a stench of vomit and urine. But also something much sweeter – lemon blossoms and an earthy scent that reminded him of spring. Knowing to whom it belonged, Judah moved faster, his breath catching.

  Turning a corner, he reached the door to the old mason's bed chamber. Sunlight was creeping through the slats of the windows, and there was a single candle burning. Matthais the Mason lay unmoving in the bed, looking shrunken and grey. Beside him, holding his hand, knelt a woman with raven-dark hair.

  “Deborah.”

  She turned and, as ever, Judah lost the ability to breathe. Looking at her, he always felt like he was falling. Most men focused on her good hips and ample bosom. But Judah's eyes never strayed from her face. Shaped like a teardrop, but with a proud chin, it was framed by a luxurious fall of thick black hair. Her full mouth was made to pout, but her eyes held an amused kindness that came only in wise old men or young girls blessed by the Lord.

  The amusement was absent now, and the kindness was tempered by grief. But looking at him there was a moment of fear. “Judah – is it you?”

  Had he been able to see himself, he would have asked the same question. Caked in blood and grime that had dried then been partly sweat away on the ride, he was a ghastly figure. The breastplate, the silver greaves, and the two Roman swords on either hip made him all the more menacing. “It's me.”

  “Thank the Lord,” she sighed, in such heartfelt relief that he felt guilty. He had rushed off without thinking that anyone would grieve if he fell. Not only had his father suffered. Clearly Deborah had worried as well. He felt like a heel.

  Another apprentice was in the room, little Chaim. Judah nodded at him, but felt strangely unable to cross the threshold into the room. “How is he?”

  Deborah's expression and the hangdog slump of Chaim's shoulders told all. Laying Matthais' calloused hand gently down, Deborah said, “It was a blessing, at the end.”

  Judah slumped in the doorframe. In a strangled voice he croaked out, “Thank you.” It came out almost a whisper. Swallowing, he said more clearly, “Chaim, Malachai is downstairs. He's exhausted. Find him some water and see he's all right.”

  Chaim rose to obey and Judah let him past. Still he did not enter the room. “Did he say anything?”

  “Nothing you want to hear.”

  Judah nodded. “Asher.”

  “Both of you. He said you were both destined for great things. That the Lord came to him when you were born and told him so in a dream. He was angry that the dream hadn't come true.”

  Judah thought about that for a long time. His eyes burned. Finally he crossed to his father's bedside and looked at the grizzled face, so oddly slack now. Deborah had cleaned him, washing the filth out of his beard and changing his tunic. But the marks of the stroke were all too evident. Even in death, the left side of his face was fallen and listless.

  “I took a Roman eagle last night, father. Me. They're calling me the hero of Beth Horon.” Deborah stared at him, and he nodded once, a hopeless half-smile on his lips. He knelt and clasped his father's cold hand. “All that fighting in the streets? All the times I came home with bruises and swollen fists? It was all for something, father. You'd've been proud.”

  “He was always proud of you.”

  Judah shrugged. “It was Asher that he was focused on.”

  “Only because he didn't understand him.”

  “True. Me, I was too simple. Simple Judah.” He shook his head. “Asher should have lived, not me.”

  After a moment, Deborah rose and crossed around the bed. She knelt beside him and took his face in her hands. “You took an eagle?”

  “Yes.” He wanted to nod, but she had a surprisingly strong grip.

  “Could Asher have done that?”

  Judah smiled outright at that. “Not without me by his side.”

  “Then it was the Lord's will that you were spared. And I know at least one person who would grieve for you.”

  “Would you?” She was close. Very close.

  The moment lingered, two birds at the edge of the nest. But both knew how inappropriate it would be to take flight. She let go and leaned back, breaking the moment. “Yes. Even if you pulled my hair and trapped desert crickets in my dress.”

  He smiled ruefully. “I was just a boy. A stupid boy.” He bit his lip, but couldn't keep it from her any longer. “A month ago I asked your family's permission to marry you.”

  Her eyes were shining. “I know.”

  “They said no.”

  She ducked her head. “I know.”

  He reached out to take her hands. They were filthy from touching his face. “Should I ask again?”

  “What?”

  He grinned. “They can hardly say no to me now. I took an eagle.”

  She said nothing and he waited, uncertain, his chest beating harder than during the battle. Finally she nodded, a light smile playing across her whole face.

  “Ask.”

  ♦ ◊ ♦

  THEY DID NOT SPEAK words of love, not then. There would be time. Instead they took up the vigil over the dead man, whose passing now seemed more mercy than sorrow. They sat side by side, hands folded together, and said prayers for the passing of Judah's father.

  After an hour they heard a low roar approaching. Music, drums and pipes and more voices than the city had ever heard raised up at once.

  Chaim came to the door. “They're back! Did you know, they captured an eagle!”

  Judah nodded. “I heard that.”

  “You should go,” said Deborah. “They'll be looking for you.”

  He shook his head. “I belong here. I'm the last of the family.” Hebrew tradition demanded that a family member sit with the body for a full seven days.

  She insisted with a statement he could not deny. “I'll be family soon enough.” So he walked outside, feeling lighter than he could have imagined. He did not join in the throng, climbing instead to the roof to watch the procession in the streets.

  The celebration parade stretched for miles. He scanned for familiar faces, but saw none in the press of humanity. He was watching for Levi or Phannius – he meant to have very different conversations with those two.

  The procession continued, and Judah was uncomfortably reminded of tales of the Roman Triumph, where the Caesars paraded captives and booty from their wars through the streets.

  He spied Simon bar Giora and Eleazar ben Simon, still mounted on their stolen Roman horses. They held the eagle aloft between them. Placed upon a fresh pole, it had been polished so it was at least recognizable. They heaved it high in the air, and men screamed themselves hoarse while women blew kisses and wept for joy. Eventually the eagle was marched up to the Temple, where the priests of the Sanhedrin took charge of it.

  From the New Gate all the way up to the Tomb of David, the people of Jerusalem went wild. For so long fear of this war had been like a massive fist clenching the throat of every man, woman, and child in Judea. The coming of war came as a relief – the Roman fist was gone, leaving the Judeans with their voice for the first time in living memory.

  Judah felt oddly bad for the golden eagle, captured and demeaned in this way. Then he shook his head. That's the danger with idols – too easy to treat them as if they were more than hunks of molded metal. But if it hadn't been a symbol, he'd never have fought to take it in the first place.

  As Judah frowned and puzzled over men's need for symbols, the reveling continued. There was dancing in the streets that night. Wine flowed freely. For a whole century Judea had been in Roman hands. Today they had declared their independence in a most spectacular way. Like the Makkabite revolt, this would be to a new Golden Age for Jerusalem. A new dawn for the Lord's Chosen People on earth.

  Deborah went ho
me at dusk, and Judah sat vigil in the small house looking over the masonry yard and tried to understand what he was feeling.

  I took the eagle. I lost my father. I'm getting Deborah. All because I'm too stupid to stay home when there's a fight.

  “Father, forgive me. I had to go. For Asher – for all of us. You never said so, but you fought, in your own way. I know it, consorting with men like your friend Simeon. Outlaws and heretics. You should understand. You wrote to Asher, demanding he come back and fight in the war. Then I go do just that and you drop dead. In fairness, father, you could be a right bastard when you had a mind to.” He smiled to show the dead man he was joking. They'd always enjoyed rough humor.

  He'd never known his older brother, dead of a fever at the age of two. Nor had he ever known his mother, buried these seventeen years. There was no pain for either of those strangers. No, for his whole lifetime it had been just his brother and father. Now only Judah was left. The last mason of a line stretching back two hundred years and more.

  Asher, I wish you were here. If only to throw some Greek quote at me and make me punch you. You'd tell me all about the history of eagles, or of war, or tell me a poem about Beth Horon. Maybe even compose one…

  Frowning, he recalled what Levi had said. That this was the start of something terrible. Judah shook his head, hoping the turncoat patriot would be proved wrong.

  ♦ ◊ ♦

  HE HOPED IN VAIN. It had already started. As news of the lost eagle spread, fighting erupted throughout Judea and the neighbouring lands. In Hebrew territory, gentiles perished. In gentile towns, Jews were slain. Worse, all this fighting took place on the Shabbat, the Lord's day of rest. Such a dark holy day took on a name all its own – Shabbat Chazon. The Black Sabbath.

  It was only the beginning.

  IV

  MARATHON, GREECE

  12 DECEMBER, 66 AD

  A FREEDMAN STEPPED into the tiring chamber. “Lucius Junius Caesennius Paetus to see you, domine.”

  “Hmph.” Whoever the man at the door, this visit was a message from Nero Caesar, and there was no doubt as to what the message was. Trust the man's perverseness to send a family member to demand a general fall on his sword.

  “See him entertained.” Struggling with his senatorial slippers, the old general gestured to the voluminous toga on the stand beside him. “Then come back and help me with this wretched thing.”

  “I'll help you, father,” offered Titus, stepping forward. This might prove to be his last filial act.

  They looked very alike – wide, squat heads that looked as though a giant had grabbed them by the ears and pulled. In the father, the effect was of perpetual straining, a permanent frown about the eyes. Whereas Titus' face turned upwards, a visage of good cheer. Which suited his personality.

  Another difference was the scars. Titus had none, whereas his father's skin was riddled with them. The old soldier could point to each one and name the battle in which he'd won it, and sometimes even name the man who'd given it to him. Odd names, Gallic or Celtic, German or African. Having risen through the ranks, Vespasian was a general who led from the front. As a young man, Titus looked forward to the day he, too, could name his scars.

  Father and son bore the same name – Titus Flavius Sabinus Vespasianus. The father was generally known by his cognomen, Vespasian, whereas the son was quite unusually known by the simple prenomen, Titus.

  Titus aided his father in donning the toga praetexta, white with a broad stripe of purple running along one edge. With his purple shoes bearing crescent buckles and a fat gold ring on his left hand, Vespasian appeared every inch the Roman senator. Appropriate garb for the coming interview. But Titus knew it was strange for an inveterate military man not to wear armour when going to his death.

  The general had considered donning a toga of mourning. He was certainly entitled – Titus' sister had just recently died. But it was unmanly to blazon that fact in this, his ultimate hour.

  Vespasian had been expecting the order for two weeks now. When Titus asked his father why, rather than return to Achaea or even Reate, he'd chosen to rent a house in Marathon, the old man had said, “Because my race is run.”

  “Funny way to honour the old oak,” said Vespasian now, trying to be wry. “So much for portents.”

  The night of his birth, back on the old family farm in Reate, a massive and dead oak tree had been split by lightning, and a shoot of green had burst forth to take new life. Taking it as a sign that her second son would be a great man, Titus' grandmother had forever pushed her son beyond his comfort. Vespasian was happiest upon a horse, a sword in hand. He was not made for the toga, nor for the Senate.

  Yet he had tried. If he was now mocking that portent, he really did expect to die. Titus cleared his throat. “Before we go in, father, do you wish to see Caenis?”

  Antonia Caenis was his father's mistress, a woman far cleverer than anyone Titus knew. Youthful lovers until Vespasian had married Titus' mother. The pity was that father couldn't marry her. But how could he? Caenis had been a slave, serving Mark Antony's daughter at court. She had known Tiberius, Caligula, and Claudius as men, rather than gods, and had lived at the heart of every intrigue and scandal that Rome had endured in the last fifty-odd years. She had been freed upon Antonia's death, and the moment Titus' mother had died, Vespasian had sought Caenis out again. It was almost poetic – true love conquering all.

  Vespasian surprised his son by shaking his head. “No. We've said our farewells. Besides, best not to keep your cousin waiting. Might as well try to keep you alive.”

  Together they entered the tablinum. The study was cramped but not airless, owning a fine ventilation grille that led to the brisk December air outside. For two weeks this little Greek villa had been their home. There was a bee farm nearby, and a stud farm. The scene was pleasantly rustic, and reminded Titus of their family seat near Reate. Probably why his father had chosen it.

  Paetus was waiting. Unmistakably Roman in both height and nose, those proper features had been over-layered with what seemed several dips in tallow. Not fat, exactly. Just thick.

  His immaculate clothes proclaimed he'd come by litter instead of horseback. Perusing the pigeonhole shelves of Vespasian's traveling library, Paetus exclaimed, “What a frightful bore you are, Titus Flavius! Don't you have anything other than military manuals?”

  “A pity you find them boring, Lucius Junius. A few more military manuals and you might have won your little war with the Armenians.”

  Titus grinned. If his father had to die, at least he wasn't going meekly. For a moment his cousin's smoothness vanished. Then Paetus threw his head back and laughed. “O, how glad I am they sent me, of all people! I do like you, Titus Flavius. You have a – a commonness that is utterly refreshing. How it pains me that I will now be denied your company.”

  Vespasian stared back, expressionless. Titus knew his father prided himself on the very trait that Paetus was now deriding. Plain speaking, common sense, lack of 'sophistication' – these were excellent qualities in a soldier. A man unburdened by genius, for all that life had forced him to be a politician, Vespasian was at heart a virs militarus – a Military Man.

  “Well, nephew, as much as it pleases you to see us, I assure you we are delighted in equal measure.” Rather than retire to couches, he crossed to the far side of his desk and sat in the hard chair behind it.

  It was an insult to force a guest to sit in a chair like a client. But Paetus merely smiled as he sat. He waved his hand again at the rows of scrolls. “Is it really bare of anything poetic?”

  “Probably a copy of the Aeneid in there somewhere.”

  “But nothing more recent? A copy of the Satyricon might earn you a fortune now that Petronius is dead.”

  Vespasian's eyebrows twitched. “I hadn't heard. Too much high living, or an angry Greek?” There was a double meaning in that.

  “Some are saying poison, but he's been poisoning himself for years. Petronius was an artist. They have large appetites
. Of every kind.”

  “So I understood from his little book.” The late Senator Petronius was rumoured to be the author of the Satyricon, the ribald adventures of a former gladiator and his young boy lover – based on his own relationship with young Nero. Hilarious, deliciously scandalous, yet social suicide to admit having read it.

  Not that it mattered. Vespasian had already committed social suicide. Since the early fall the nobility of Rome had been traveling Greece, a tail to the comet that was Nero, as the newly-minted god bounced from one Greek city to another for chariot races, wrestling matches, and poetry competitions.

  Vespasian had been among his train until two weeks ago, when, during a concert by Nero in the temple of Jupiter on Corcyra, Vespasian had fallen asleep. He had even snored. Audibly. Of all insults to give, a slur against Caesar's art was the gravest. Hence the expected order to fall upon his sword.

  “May I offer you something, nephew? Our fare is plain, but my cook might be able to create some honey-wafers, or wrapped sausages.”

  Malice danced in Paetus' eyes. “Actually, I have a hankering for some braised turnips. Or does your cook not keep them?”

  Titus bristled. While governor of Africa, his father had been so unpopular that the people had pelted him with turnips whenever he took to the streets.

  But Vespasian remained impassive, his permanent frown immobile. “Son, ask the cook to dig up some turnips for our guest.”

  Fuming, Titus departed. He had been sent off to control his temper, he knew. The Temper of Titus was famous in their house. But it was as quick to cool as to rise. When he returned, followed by slaves from the kitchens, he was calm again.

  Paetus had evidently been prattling about the frivolous scandals of Nero's court. Now it looked as if it was the old general's temper that was fraying. The father was just the opposite of the son – slow to anger, slow to cool. Titus could tell it was on the tip of his father's tongue to tell this fool to get his business over and done when suddenly they heard a commotion outside.

  The steward appeared in the doorway. “Domine, forgive me. Quintus Petillius Cerialis Caesius Rufus has called.”