The Realms of God--A Novel of the Roman Empire (The Shards of Heaven, Book 3)

by Michael Livingston

  The only thing that stood taller upon the Mount of Abraham, gleaming against the sky in the middle of it all, was the Temple itself.

  And beneath that, Didymus feared, was one of the Shards of Heaven.

  Their party made a turn around a line of buildings and at last found themselves making their way through the open space beside the high retaining walls that leveled the Temple Mount. Heading south along the west side of the complex, they passed under a high archway that was topped with a walkway leading to the upper levels of the Temple stoa, high above. What the purpose of the walkway was, Didymus didn’t know, and he didn’t have long to consider it before they had reached the southern end of the complex. Here they turned again—below the stoa now—and began climbing a set of wide steps toward the height of the Mount of Abraham and the holy Temple at its crest.

  The open spaces here were crowded, but they were not as hurried as they had been down within the city. The people here were supplicants, not travelers. They came to seek guidance, to seek help, to seek blessings. Many of them, Didymus could see, were making their way to ritual bath areas in order to purify themselves before continuing onward toward the holy summit. Still others carried small animals or were pulling them up the steps on leads. Above the looming walls of the stoa, lines of smoke trailed lazily into the late afternoon sky, and even before he could smell the sweet balm of the Temple’s incense Didymus could smell the charring scent of its animal sacrifices.

  There were five archways into the stoa: Didymus could see three next to each other far off to his right, and Tiberius directed them through the right-hand archway of another pair before them.

  Even for the librarian, who was trying to take note of all that he saw with a scholar’s attention to detail, it passed by in a blur. The stoa was enormous—stretching far to their left and right, yawning up to the distant roof above them—and it was filled with the chaotic commotion of people moving around and between the pillars that made long aisles across its expanse.

  Didymus, accustomed to quiet and stillness, found it stifling despite its enormity. He thought, too, how inappropriate it all seemed. It was commerce and trading and money-changing … all at the heights of what was meant to be a most sacred place.

  Thankfully, it did not take them long to pass through the stoa and step out from the covered portico onto the wide platform of the Temple Mount itself. Didymus, who’d studied it for so long, found it at once familiar and exotic. The entirety of the mount was covered with paving stones set in careful geometry. It was only covered local stone out here where it was exposed to the sky and the weather and the feet of non-Jews such as they were—Gentiles, the Jews called them—but Didymus had read descriptions of increasingly elaborate pavings as one moved into the inner areas inside the walls of the Temple proper.

  There were several circuits of walls upon the platform of the mount. The area they were crossing now, just inside of the perimeter porticoes, was the Court of the Gentiles. Within it was a roughly square area, framed by a low wall of latticework that the Jews called the “soreg”: it separated the area in which Gentiles could move from what was the original area of the Temple Mount, which was only open to Jews. Within that stood the larger walls and many buildings of the innermost Temple complex, surrounding further divisions of walls—smaller and smaller areas open to a smaller and smaller elite few. Inside it all was the sacred building of the Temple itself, which stood triumphant upon the center of the summit, aligned east to west so that the main doors between its magnificent golden pillars opened upon the rising sun.

  As Didymus thought of the further divisions of the sacred Temple—how within it all, like a nut within a dozen shells, was the Holy of Holies, where only the high priest could go, and beneath which the Seal of Solomon was surely hidden—the party marched toward the eastern side of the complex.

  Near the southeastern corner of the soreg, Tiberius called the party to a halt. He exchanged a quick word with the Roman and Herodian guards, and the men marched forward without them, turning the corner and heading directly for the main gate of the soreg, which faced the inner gates of the Temple itself. It was as far as a non-Jew dared to go if he valued his life. As they departed, the guards left the two scholars alone with the son of Caesar and the two pale-skinned figures who were not men.

  The demons floated up in their wake to stand beside Tiberius. The one that they called Antiphilus leaned close to whisper something in the Roman’s ear.

  Didymus yearned to get closer, to strain in an effort to hear what was being said, but even as he wished it so he was distracted by what was happening ahead of him.

  The guards did not turn. They marched purposely—unerringly, in perfect military fashion—toward the soreg gate of the Holy Temple of the Jews.

  Even before the armed men halted at the gate, a crowd was forming both around them and within the Temple itself. Didymus heard a few voices in the crowd—young and old, male and female—spitting curses at the men, but mostly the crowd just seemed anxiously curious. They gathered to watch, to witness whatever was about to happen.

  I’m witnessing, too, Didymus thought. That’s why Tiberius brought us.

  The guards fanned out, and in unison they turned around to face the growing assembly of people. They had, Didymus could see, formed a kind of protective arc around the outside of the soreg gate. And within that space, only two Romans remained.

  One of them was carrying something. Didymus hadn’t noticed that before. Whatever the object was, it was heavy and solid, and the Roman was carrying it in a frame-supported canvas bag over his shoulders. As the men took position around them, the other Roman helped him unlimber the load. Standing directly before the gate of the Holy Temple, they busied themselves unpacking the bag at their feet.

  At first, Didymus couldn’t see what it was. His view was blocked, and all he knew of what was happening was the self-satisfied smirk on the face of Tiberius, who had promised to bring to the Temple a spark that the son of Caesar hoped might grow into a flame of chaos.

  On the other side of the soreg, within the inner grounds of the Temple, a crowd of Jewish priests had gathered—mirroring the crowd of people outside it. As the two Romans began to lift what they had brought, those within gasped and visibly took a step back. They looked at each other in confusion, in anger. Didymus heard the sound of hammering.

  Then the Romans stepped back, and the librarian saw what they had done.

  The spark that Tiberius sought had not been struck with iron. The last light of the sun struck over the roofs and walls of the Temple, and what it lit upon in the shadows—what it made to shine in glorious and terrible, blasphemous horror upon the soreg gate—was gold. Even from across the increasingly crowded space of the Temple Mount, Didymus could see exactly what it was that the foreign soldiers had mounted to the gates of the Holy Temple of the Jews.

  The golden eagle of Rome.

  How Tiberius had set Herod to allowing it, the librarian didn’t know. He imagined that he’d told the king that Antipater’s actions could be read as an indication of Judaean disloyalty against Roman authority. Herod, if he wanted to keep in Caesar’s favor—if the old man wanted to keep his crown, and perhaps what was left of his life—would do well to prove his submission to Roman oversight. And what better means than to place the sign of Roman power upon the very seat of Judaean power?

  Or perhaps Tiberius had bribed the king.

  Or maybe Herod was indeed as mad as Antipater thought he was.

  It didn’t matter. Not truly. All that mattered was that the golden eagle of Rome had been affixed to a gate of the Temple.

  Seconds of stunned silence passed. Didymus took an instinctive step backward.

  “By the gods,” Thrasyllus whispered.

  Two young men stepped out from the crowd. They began to scream in their language, and though Didymus did not know the words they shouted, he understood them. It was a cry of revolution. A call for the end of Rome.

  The two men turned about,
imploring their countrymen as they gestured to the protective arc of nervous-looking guards. One of them saw Tiberius and the scholars and pointed at them, too.

  Tiberius had been grinning, but Didymus felt that expression push away like the light of the fast-fading sun. He, too, took a step backward, and Thrasyllus with him. Only the two demons stood unfazed, their heads turning as if in bemused curiosity as they witnessed the boiling human rage before them.

  Finally, in a single moment, something in the crowd broke. Backed by the imploring young men, more than half of them rushed forward with an extraordinary roar of anger. The rest turned and began running at the two scholars and the Roman beside them who was, though they could not know it, the son of Caesar himself.

  It was, Didymus would later recall, an orgy of blood and belief. He did not see the deaths of the guards, but he heard them, shrieking out their ends as they were torn apart, limb from limb, rendered by the bloodied hands of the streaming, screaming mob.

  He and Thrasyllus turned to run but found their way blocked by a second wave of people rushing out from the stoa behind them. Despairing, Didymus had just closed his eyes to pray—he didn’t know whom to—for a quick end, when he was grabbed by the arm and pulled away to his left.

  The grip was cold, like frozen and impassive stone. Didymus opened his eyes to see that Antiphilus had hold of him, and the demon was pulling him toward the eastern portico of the Temple Mount, a part of the structure he would later learn was called Solomon’s Porch.

  A large man rose up in front of them. His eyes were bulging, his cheeks red in his mob-fueled lust for blood. He lifted a long log of wood, surely meant to feed the fires of sacrifice within the sacred precinct, and he swung for the demon’s perfectly formed skull.

  Antiphilus, without losing his grip on the scholar’s arm, gracefully bent backward like a dancer sliding forward upon a stage. Floating beneath the killing blow, the demon’s free hand shot up, fingers extended as it struck into—and then through—the bottom of the man’s jaw. In a flash, the demon gripped and pulled its hand free. The big man made a sound like a scream at the edge of water, burbling in froth as his life’s blood sprayed into the darkening sky and fell like a splattering rain upon the face of the man whose students had called him “Bronze-guts.”

  Didymus, still lurching forward in the grip of the demon, vomited upon himself even as another threat loomed up and was torn apart before him.

  Minutes passed in a blur of nightmare as those who rose up before them died. Antiphilus had known of the Beautiful Gate, an eastern gate to the Temple that stood along another stair running from the Temple Mount down into the valley that separated it from the Mount of Olives. The three Romans and two demons fled by it, barely escaping the tumult that was engulfing the Temple.

  They wound their way around the complex, and soon they were passing by the great steps below the stoa, retracing their path through the streets of Jerusalem. The crowds they saw now were rushing toward the Holy Temple in a frantic mob, passing around the Romans like they were fish swimming against the stream.

  The five of them slowed from a run to a walk. Didymus, in stunned silence, reached up and wiped the gore from many faces off his forehead.

  At last, as the hurrying city grew sparse, the little party paused. Night had fallen, and they could see in the distance that a great fire had been lit outside the stoa, at the southern edge of the Temple Mount. Around it, their faces flushed by the flickering tongues of fire, the people danced and sang and shouted and raged.

  And then, as a chant of vengeance rose into the deepening night, far above the ancient city of Jerusalem, the moon was abruptly swallowed by darkness. In a flash, the broad circle of it turned to blood.

  Silence enveloped the city. Standing on one side of Didymus, the astrologer Thrasyllus took in his breath. “A sign,” he whispered. “War. Death upon death.”

  Didymus swallowed hard. He nodded.

  And then a new chant began. Louder and bolder with every beat of the scholar’s terrified heart.

  The demons were silent. But on the other side of Didymus—as if the deaths of those torn apart behind them mattered not at all—Tiberius began to laugh.

  Messiah, Didymus heard Jerusalem cry out. Messiah.

  PART II

  THE YEAR OF FOUR MESSIAHS

  11

  SECRETS UNTOLD

  PETRA, 4 BCE

  Miriam twisted her way through the narrow crack, the sandy dust lifting into small clouds around her steps. Behind her, Pantera was trying to step where she did, to hop over the bigger boulders as she did. For the third time since they’d entered the narrow canyon, she heard him miss his mark. His boot thunked noisily on one of the small rocks that littered the floor, and he cursed quietly at himself. “So you know where you’re going?” he asked.

  Miriam smiled to herself but didn’t look back. “I do. Are you sure you’re keeping your eyes on the trail?”

  In his silence she imagined him blushing and trying to refocus his attention on the earth.

  He liked her. She wasn’t such a fool as to miss it. Ever since the day on the Mount of Aaron that she’d killed a man to save his life—a moment that still gave her nightmares a year later—the Roman archer had seemed to always be around. If he wasn’t on patrol himself, he’d be wherever he thought she’d be. In time, she’d made sure that he knew where that would be. As now, she always had her bow with her. He’d continued to help her learn to use it over the months. So, like him, she carried the weapon in the Roman style, strapped to her back using a leather harness that he’d made especially for her. Some days they practiced together. Other days they simply walked and talked and laughed. He never pushed his interests in her, but never for a moment did she doubt them.

  And then, a few months ago, she’d realized she genuinely liked him, too. Not just as a companion, but perhaps as something more. She’d introduced him to Pullo and Vorenus, and in time they, too, had grown to approve of the young man.

  Still, it had taken until today for her to be willing to share the only place in Petra that might be more precious to her than the tomb that housed the Ark of the Covenant. She was supposed to be watching that tomb today—in another canyon entirely—but once she’d made up her mind to bring Pantera here, she couldn’t wait.

  Besides, there’d never been a threat to the Ark. Not once in her whole life. She kept watch out of duty and habit, but not out of fear.

  Miriam’s pace quickened as she lifted herself over a large rock that had fallen across the breadth of the thin defile. Her secret was close now.

  She hadn’t told him where they were going, only that it would be a surprise. He’d made a grand show of bowing in response. Wherever she would go, he said, he’d happily follow.

  That was three stubbed toes ago.

  “It’s just ahead,” she said.

  “You sure I’ll like it?”

  I hope so, she thought.

  But of course he would. He’d love it because she loved it.

  More than that, though, she’d already seen that he had a deep interest in the monuments of Petra. Whether it was the ancient shrine atop the Mount of Aaron or the magnificent tomb for the late King Obodas that they’d passed this morning while walking through the Siq. As so many visitors did, he’d marveled at the Siq itself—the high-walled crack through the mountains served as the secret southern entrance to Petra, yet it was only two men abreast in places—but he’d marveled even more at the former king’s tomb, which was truly magnificent. The structure—a carving, really—was slowly being cut out of the solid stone wall of the gorge. Like the rest of the hundreds of tombs in Petra, it was being revealed slowly from the top down, as if it had always been there, hidden in the bones of the earth, only waiting for the hands of men to melt the rock away around it. It had only been a year since King Aretas had ordered it built to honor his dead predecessor—dead, so many assumed, by his own doing—but already Miriam could see that the tomb in the Siq could be one of the
most astonishing monuments when it was complete: the facade of its roof was intricately formed, with beautiful designs, was crowned with a massive and beautiful urn. Already there were rumors that the urn contained a hidden chamber, filled with untold riches, but of course Miriam thought it nonsense. The stone carvers had no such secrets in their hands. They simply ran about on their scaffolds, chipping away the rock that didn’t need to be there, following the arcane scratches indicating great pillars, wide steps, fake windows, paradoxically building it up by tearing the stone down.

  Pantera had thought it fascinating. Miriam was sure that he’d be watching the workers still if she hadn’t pulled him away with the promise of something more special to her.

  The path they were on was sometimes called the Small Siq, an even thinner gorge that set off from beside the mouth of the larger one. It was little used, hardly anything more than a gash in the mountains, running from the southern entrance of the Siq to the northern edge of Petra. There was little reason for anyone to use it these days. Indeed, one of the things Miriam loved about the path was its seclusion.

  Well, that and the feeling of something ancient that she got from the forgotten, cavernlike hollow that she’d found there.