The Romans had killed him, the man who called himself Jesus. They had put him on the cross and left him there to die. But he had not died, even though the Romans guarding the hill on which he had been crucified thought he did even as the others crucified around him had all expired.
Joseph had given gold to the centurion in charge and claimed the body. He’d taken it away. What happened after that he had told only a handful of people, but already the stories had passed from whispered rumor into myth into religious belief.
That was fine with Joseph because he had never met anyone remotely like Jesus and suspected he never would again.
Joseph had been given a task by Jesus—guard the Grail, the cup from the Last Supper that Joseph, Jesus, and the twelve disciples had shared together. At first, it had not been a difficult assignment—he simply returned the Grail to its chamber deep inside Solomon’s Temple and hid it there.
That had worked fine for decades, but then came the revolt and the Roman reprisal. And he had heard of the commander of the Twelfth Legion, whom the Romans called Tacitus, but was known in this part of the world as Al-Iblis. A Shadow. Joseph had little doubt what the creature would be seeking once he entered the Temple.
There was the sound of footsteps echoing off the stone walls, coming closer down the stairs that led to this place. With great effort, Joseph of Arimathea got to his feet. The pillar he had been sitting on had been knocked down during one of the sackings of the Temple. Whether it had been the Syrians, the Babylonians, or someone else who had done it, he had no idea. But for all who had come pillaging through the Temple, none had ever found the chamber that housed the Grail.
A man entered the room. He carried two swords, each tainted with fresh blood, stuck in his leather belt. Also tied off to his belt was a stained leather satchel. “The Romans have breached the wall.”
“So that is Roman blood on your blades, Eleazer ben Yair?” Joseph asked.
Eleazer stared hard at the old man. “It is not. It is the blood of those who killed my uncle.”
Joseph sighed. “So even as the Romans enter the city, we still fight among ourselves.”
“It was a blood debt and it has been paid,” Eleazer said simply. He removed the leather satchel and opened it, revealing a severed head. Joseph recognized the face, despite the distortion of death etched on it—the leader of another band of zealots that had killed Eleazer’s uncle in ambush the previous month.
“And now?” Joseph asked.
Eleazer shrugged. “Now we will all die at the hands of the Romans, but we will take many of them with us.”
“Do you not wonder why I called you here?”
“I came here because you saved Judas, my uncle. I owe you a blood debt.”
“Then you will do what I say?”
Eleazer hesitated. “Do not ask me to dishonor myself.”
“I would not ask that,” Joseph said. “I am going to give you great honor.”
“How?”
Instead of answering, Joseph walked to the end of the room, where closely fit stones made up the foundation of the main wall of the Temple above them. He took a ring and placed it in a specific spot. A large stone block smoothly slid back and then to the side, revealing a passageway. Joseph grabbed the torch he had brought with him and indicated for Eleazer to follow him. They entered the passageway. It was a testament to Eleazer’s courage that he did not say or ask anything.
Joseph led the way, descending past stone blocks into the solid stone plateau on which the Temple had been built so many years ago. It had taken many men many years to carve this passageway out of solid rock. And from his father, the sixty-fourth Wedjat of Jerusalem, Joseph had learned that all who had worked on this part of the Temple had been secretly slain. Joseph was the sixty-fifth Wedjat, dating back to the time of the Exodus.
They went farther and farther down. The air cooled.
Finally, Eleazer spoke. “Is there a way out of the city via this tunnel?”
Joseph knew what he was thinking—Eleazer and his band of zealots could escape to continue to fight the Romans. “No. Not this way there isn’t.”
“But there is a tunnel out of the city from underneath the Temple?”
“Yes.” Joseph reached inside his cloak and pulled out a piece of papyrus. “That is a map showing the route out.”
“Then where are going now?”
“Here,” Joseph said as they came up to what appeared to be a dead end. Once more Joseph pressed his key against a spot on the wall and a stone slid open. Ducking, Joseph led the way in. They were now in a chamber cut out of solid rock. Eleazer gasped as he saw the piles of gold and jewels strewn about.
“Part of the riches King Solomon collected,” Joseph said.
“ ‘Part’?”
“Most of it was taken away by his son during his reign to be hidden in another place.”
“And where was that?”
“I do not know,” Joseph lied. “They also took the Ark of the Covenant with them.”
“It is too late to try to bribe the Romans,” Eleazer said as he lifted up a handful of gold coins. “They can come here and take this.”
“They will never find this place,” Joseph said.
“Then why do you bring me here?”
“Not for the obvious treasure,” Joseph said. He went to a stone pedestal on which was an object draped with a white cloth. He pulled aside the cloth, revealing a golden object. “I brought you here to take this with you when you escape.”
“The Grail,” Eleazer whispered as he walked up to the pedestal. He reached out, then hesitated. “Can I touch it? It is said that any who touch it will die.”
“You can take it,” Joseph said.
Eleazer lifted the chalice. “It is heavy.”
“In more ways than you know.”
“Why are you giving this to me?” Eleazer said, staring at the golden object he held.
“I want you to keep it safe,” Joseph said. “The Romans will not stay in Judea forever. When it is safe, you can bring it back here.”
“Where can I take it in Judea that will be safe?” Eleazer asked. “The Romans are everywhere.”
“Masada.”
Eleazer’s head snapped up. “Herod’s old hideaway? The Romans had an encampment there for a long time. But it is empty. We will be trapped.”
“You will be trapped,” Joseph acknowledged, “but you can hold that rock against anything the Romans will throw at you. There is only one thin path to the top. It cannot be taken by force of arms.”
“They will starve us out.”
“No, they won’t. I am a rich man. I have foreseen this day. I have had stores placed in the granaries on Masada. You can live there for many years. More years than the Romans could survive camped around it, besieging you.”
Eleazer hefted the chalice in his hands as he considered the proposition. It did not take him long to decide. “We will do it.”
“Then go. And God be with you.” He paused. “Leave that,” he said, indicating the leather satchel. Eleazer shrugged and placed it on the ground.
As Eleazer dashed out of the chamber, Joseph sank down on a pile of bags filled with gold coins with a deep sigh. Heneeded a brief moment of rest before he could move on to the next phase of his mission.
The streets were flowing with blood. Aspasia’s Shadow had entered Jerusalem through the breach and he followed the path of death that his soldiers were plowing through the city directly toward the Temple. Tactically, Aspasia’s Shadow knew that was not what Titus had ordered him to do. He should have turned along the walls and opened as many gates as possible to let the other legions into the city. But what Titus wanted was not Aspasia’s Shadow’s priority.
There were the bodies of women and children in the streets and Aspasia’s Shadow knew his men were giving no quarter. They had no time for prisoners. These people had chosen their fate and now they were reaping the results of that choice.
Soon, Aspasia’s Shadow could hear the
sound of fighting. He remembered these streets. They were not much changed from when he had worked for Solomon, designing and overseeing the construction of the Temple. He turned a corner and saw his legionnaires in fierce combat with the Judeans. They were still three blocks short of the Temple itself.
Aspasia’s Shadow backtracked slightly and went down a side street until he came to a blacksmith’s shop. He entered the courtyard. Movement to his left caught his attention and he spun, drawing his sword. A woman holding a child stared at him from the corner of the courtyard. He had to assume the blacksmith was with the defenders, trying to save the Temple. An interesting choice, he thought as he walked up to the woman and child with a smile on his face—church over family.
“Do not worry,” Aspasia’s Shadow said.
The woman slowly stood, holding the child tight to her bosom. Aspasia’s Shadow still had the comforting smile on his face as he thrust, the blade easily going through the child and piercing the woman’s chest. He relished the surprised look on her face as she slid to the ground, still holding her lifeless child tightly in her arms.
Aspasia’s Shadow turned to the center of the courtyard where the blacksmith’s heavy anvil rested on a thick stone. The metal of the anvil was scored from centuries of use. Aspasia’s Shadow sheathed his sword. Then he wrapped his arms around the anvil and lifted. With superhuman strength, he moved it off the stone, and it tumbled heavily to the dirt. Then he placed the medallion around his neck into the center of the stone. It slid open, revealing a ladder that descended into darkness.
With a quick glance to make sure no one was watching, Aspasia’s Shadow climbed inside. Once his head was below the stone, he placed the medallion in the proper place and sealed himself inside.
He quickly clambered down the ladder, reaching a passageway twenty meters below the level of the city. He knew the tunnel—he had overseen its construction and also the slaying of every man who worked on it. He turned toward the Temple.
The tunnel he was in descended into the bedrock. Soon Aspasia’s Shadow knew he was under the outer wall of the Temple. As he came close to the door that hid Solomon’s treasure, Aspasia’s Shadow drew his blood stained sword. He used the medallion to open the secret door and carefully edged into the treasury. He knew of the Wedjat and, while he did not particularly fear them, an ambush now would be quite irritating.
The room was empty of life. On the stone pedestal restedan object draped with a white cloth. Aspasia’s Shadow didn’t hesitate. He walked to it and pulled off the cloth.
Aspasia’s Shadow stopped breathing for several seconds.
On the pedestal was a severed head. It was a face that Aspasia’s Shadow recognized. A leader of the zealots, who had had a blood bounty placed on his head by another leader of a different sect—Eleazer ben Yaír, a man wanted by the Romans.
How could Eleazer have known of this place and the Grail? Aspasia’s Shadow wondered as he exited the chamber and headed back the way he had come. The answer came as quickly as the question—the damn Wedjat must have given up the Grail to Eleazer for protection.
Aspasia’s Shadow knew there were several ways out of the city via the tunnel system he had had constructed during Solomon’s reign. There was little doubt that Eleazer and the Grail were long gone.
Aspasia’s Shadow climbed up the ladder and opened the doorway to the blacksmith’s courtyard. He sealed the stone behind him and stood still for several moments, listening. There were the screams of those being slaughtered and the continued sound of fierce fighting from the vicinity of the Temple. The fight for Jerusalem was far from over.
There would be time to track down Eleazer and the Grail, Aspasia’s Shadow decided, as he drew his sword. First there was blood to be let.
XIV
A.D. 73: JERUSALEM
Donnchadh and Gwalcmai didn’t know it, but they were standing in the exact same spot where Aspasia’s Shadow’s chair had been placed during the siege of Jerusalem. Now there was little other than mounds of dirt where parapets had been placed to show this had been the camp for a Roman legion. Looking across the valley, there was little to indicate that a large city had once occupied that location either, except for massive stone blocks that constituted the base of what had once been Solomon’s Temple.
“The Romans are as good at tearing down as they are at building,” Gwalcmai noted.
“The last report from the Wedjat of Jerusalem said that the Grail was hidden underneath the Temple,” Donnchadh said.
“And that report was over fifty years old,” Gwalcmai. “It seems that the information might be a bit outdated.”
It had taken them three years to make the journey from Rome to Judea because of Donnchadh’s untimely death at the hands of pirates off the coast of Greece. Gwalcmai had recovered her ka, buried the body on a stony hillside overlooking the Aegean, then been forced to return all the way to England and their ship under Stonehenge to implant her memories in the waiting clone.
He’d had to brief her on all they had experienced in Romeas they once more took passage to the south and east. It was a strained voyage, as both were now experiencing the out-of synch sensation of the multiple and disjointed lives they’d been leading. They bypassed Rome and headed straight for Judea, but it was obvious that the delay had been far too long.
There was a Roman garrison on one of the hills that had been Jerusalem, but beyond that, there was little to indicate that a city of hundreds of thousands of people had once existed there. The valley below them was littered with the bones of many of those people, picked clean by scavengers and time.
“Do you think the Grail is still underneath the Temple?” Gwalcmai asked.
“No.”
“You seem certain of that.”
Donnchadh pointed at the destruction. “Do you think this was all by chance?”
Gwalcmai didn’t have to mull that over very long. “Aspasia’s Shadow. He goes by the Roman name Tacitus.”
“And he is now with the Tenth Legion at a place called Masada, laying siege to the last of the zealots.”
“One would assume he would only be there if the Grail was,” Gwalcmai said.
Donnchadh shouldered her pack. “Let’s go.”
Masada is an isolated rock on the edge of the Judean Desert and the Dead Sea Valley, a most inhospitable location, even for a part of the world that is not very favorable to life. It towered over the surrounding terrain and there were only four ways to the top, all narrow and difficult to climb. The defenders of the rock had blocked three of the paths up and placed their defenses around the one remainingroute, known as the “snake path” because of its winding and torturous ascent.
The fortress on top had first been built by King Herod as a refuge in case of revolt and because of fear of invasion by Cleopatra. The Romans occupied the hilltop in the early stages of the Jewish revolt, then Menahem, Eleazer’s uncle, seized the fortress from the Romans. It was the perfect place for Eleazer to bring his surviving followers.
Naturally the Romans eventually followed. With Jerusalem sacked and the countryside scoured of rebels, Masada was the last holdout. It was isolated and the zealots there not really a threat, but Tacitus had spent months urging the new Roman governor Flavius Silva, to destroy this last pocket of resistance.
It was easier said than done.
For two years the Tenth Legion sweltered in the desert around Masada, laying siege to the place, believing they could starve Eleazer and his zealots out. But as the seasons came and went, the Judeans on top of the mountain showed no sign of starving.
Accepting the futility of waiting and the danger of mass desertions from the Tenth, Silva decided he would have to take the battle to the top of the mountain. Construction was begun on a massive assault ramp to reach from the desert floor to the walls of the citadel on top of the rock. Tens of thousands of enslaved Jews were put to work on the construction of the ramp and many perished during the work.
By the time Donnchadh and Gwalcmai arrived, tra
veling with one of the resupply columns of merchants, the ramp had reached the top of the rock and a battering ram was being assembled to be pulled up the ramp. Hiding among the merchants and camp followers, Donnchadh and Gwalcmai watched the next day as the ram was hauled by slaves toward the top. It desperation the zealots opened fire with spear and arrow against the slaves, trying to stop the ascent. The Romans responded in kind.
It was a losing proposition for the defenders, as Flavius had an almost inexhaustible supply of slaves and no concern about their losses. A dead slave’s body was simply shoved over the side of the ramp to the desert floor and another slave was sent to take the casualty’s place.
Gwalcmai watched the procedure with the detachment of the professional soldier. “They’ll break through tomorrow morning,” he predicted as the ram finally reached the outer wall of the mountaintop fortress and was secured in place. “Unless those inside attack. Which might be what the Romans are hoping for. It’s a losing proposition for those inside.”
Donnchadh’s attention was elsewhere. She was watching the small tower near the base of the ramp on which a group of Roman officers were gathered. “Aspasia’s Shadow is there.” She shook her head. “All this bloodshed over the Grail. We should have left it in the Hall of Records.”
“I think this bloodshed would be happening even if the Grail wasn’t involved,” Gwalcmai said. He rubbed the stubble of beard on his chin. “I need to be among the first to enter in the morning.”
“And how will you do that?” Donnchadh asked.
“Become one of them,” he said, with a nod toward the Roman camp.
The tinge of redness in the east indicated relief from The burning rays of the sun was soon to end. And on that day it brought the promise of death as the sound of armor being put on and swords sharpened filled the Roman camp. There was also a distinct air of anticipation as every single man in the Legion wanted to get as far away from this forsaken place as possible after two miserable years laying siege to it. There was no doubt there would be no quarter given to the Jews in the hilltop fortress and the Roman officers knew it. Their men were too full of rage over what they had experienced the past couple of years to be held back.
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