Bloodline

by Alan Gold

  “Where are you taking me?” he asked.

  “Our band of fighters needs a doctor,” said Samuel.

  “They’re wounded?” asked the doctor.

  “Until now, those who were wounded were a burden, but now that you’re here, they can be saved,” Jonathan replied.

  “Burden?” asked Abraham.

  “We have to move swiftly for the safety of all. If a man is wounded and needs to be carried, it is better to slit his throat. We can’t carry him, and if he falls into Roman hands, he’ll be tortured. Better to end his life mercifully.”

  Abraham looked at Jonathan, then at Samuel, in horror.

  “Listen carefully to me, Doctor,” said Jonathan. “In a few days we’re planning a raid against a Roman armory in Jerusalem. Because they think that I’m their servant, they speak more openly in front of me than they should. This is where I learn information that I pass on to my brethren. This is a new armory that isn’t yet fully guarded, so we’re going to take their weaponry and use it against the Roman army, which will be marching south from Syria into the Galilee. There may be many wounded in the assault, and so you’ll be coming with us, to heal those who are able to return without being a burden.”

  “So you’re deliberately provoking a counterattack by the Romans,” said Abraham. “Do you know how many of you will be slaughtered?”

  Samuel turned and looked back at Abraham. “We’re provoking Cestius Gallus, the legate of Syria, to bring his XII Fulminata legion south into Israel. While they’re marching through the valleys of the Galilee toward Jerusalem to put down our rebellion, we’ll attack them from the hills. We know the Galilee like the backs of our hands. We’ll attack and kill hundreds from our positions high in the hills, and when they start to counterattack, we’ll just disappear into caves and out of sight. We know the Roman army: their war machines can only move slowly through our valleys because there are only tracks—no roads—and that will make them vulnerable.”

  “Are you so stupid, all of you, that you think the Senate in Rome will just meekly accept what you’re doing? They’ll send tens of thousands of their toughest soldiers against you. They’ll decimate our land. You’ll kill us all. You’ll make this into a land of widows and orphans, with rivers of tears. I beg you to stop this, to reconsider, to talk with the Romans instead of fighting them,” he said, his voice breaking with fatigue and emotion. “We’ve been conquered many times in our history, and God has always driven our enemy from our land—the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and the Greeks. Now it’s the Romans, and soon they will realize the folly of conquering a people chosen by God Himself.

  “But if we fight, if we show aggression, then they will retaliate a hundredfold. Have you not heard of the punishment of decimation, in which all of the villagers are treated like captives and lined up along the edge of a cliff, and every tenth man is pushed to his death? Will you be that tenth man, Samuel, or you, Jonathan? Or your children?”

  “Many of us will die,” said Jonathan. “But the remainder will live free, in a free land, and be free to worship our God. But enough of this. We make camp in the clearing down there”—he pointed to a place below the level of the road where their fires wouldn’t be seen at night—“and in the middle of the night, we’ll return and kill as many Romans for their bows and arrows and spears as we can.”

  His men cheered, but Abraham’s heart sank.

  * * *

  THE FOOD WAS BARELY EDIBLE, but it filled his stomach. Exhausted from his traveling, and now from being kidnapped and trussed up like a sheep, Abraham saw the men arm themselves with the evil Sicarii knives that bandits used, as well as bows, arrows, and swords. They’d re-bound him when they left the wagon to rest and make food, but as they left, Samuel the merchant cut his bonds and said, “You’re on your honor, Doctor, not to escape. For if you do, we’ll find you.”

  Abraham rubbed his wrists to return them to life. He looked at Samuel and asked quietly, so that the others couldn’t hear, “Why are you involved with these Zealots, merchant? You live the life of an emperor, yet you risk everything by what you’re doing.”

  Samuel looked at the Zealots sitting around the fire on the other side of the encampment, talking about tomorrow’s raid. Softly, he said to Abraham, “I come from a long line of merchants; my father and his father before him traded with pagans and devil worshippers, with idolaters and all sorts. Like you, Doctor, I treat well all people, regardless of who they are or what they think. And like you, I love my country and I worship my God just as fervently as does any priest in the temple. So because I straddle the world of the Roman conquerors as well as sit comfortably with my brothers in Israel, I’m able to glean information to which others aren’t privy.

  “I’m no Zealot, Abraham, but I’m useful, and while I live this double life, I feel I’m serving my God and my people. Now, tomorrow, we have a long march to the armory, and neither of us will get any sleep. So I suggest that we rest as best we can.”

  * * *

  THE FOLLOWING DAY they followed ridges and escarpments, avoiding roads and settlements in order to reach their goal. It took the men a quarter of the night to reach the outskirts of Jerusalem, until they came up behind the new armory building where the weapons were stored. Jonathan, the leader, put his finger to his mouth, and all of his men stayed in their positions while he crept silently through the woody undergrowth to see how many men were guarding the gates. Worried that a twig might crack and alarm the guards, Jonathan watched every footfall in the moonlight, and silently but surely worked his way to the front of the building.

  It was a full moon, and he could clearly see four men guarding the gate to the building, plus at least eight more who were sleeping under blankets around the dying embers of fires. Even the guards on the gates were sitting on low stools, holding on to their upright spears to stop themselves from falling asleep. But they were obviously tired, and in the still night air Jonathan could smell the heavy aroma of cheap Roman wine mixed with the stench of the burnt flesh of a pig. He wrinkled his nose in disgust.

  Walking more rapidly than before, he used his hands to signal to his men how they should position themselves and what resistance they might meet. Walking around the low mud-andstraw building, they formed the horns of the buffalo, a favorite Roman method of attack. There was no shout of “Attack!” and no order to shoot their weapons. Instead, silently two of the men crept forward and sliced the throats of Roman soldiers who were asleep. In the dark shadows cast by the glow of the dying fires, their movements went unnoticed by the drowsing guards who sat staring at the ground.

  With growing confidence, another two men on the opposite side of the building quickly cut the throats of four other soldiers, three of whom died silently in their sleep without a struggle. But the fourth soldier was already half-awake, thinking of going for a piss, when he was held by the mouth as a Zealot tried to cut his throat with his knife. He struggled and managed to yell out. Instantly, the four guards on the gate stood and looked around. As they did so, four arrows hissed through the air, two missing but the other two hitting their targets in the chest and the groin. The two men who had been shot screamed in pain, and the other two guards threw down their spears and reached for their bows and arrows on the ground. One of the two was hit by another arrow in the head, the metal tip slicing through his eye socket and burying itself in his brain. The fourth managed to pick up his weapons, but before he could fire an arrow, one caught him in the arm. Shrieking in pain, he dropped his bow, and two more hit him in quick succession in the throat and the leg.

  By this time, those guards who’d not yet been killed and had been asleep on the ground threw off their blankets and stood. But they weren’t able to reach for their weapons because the moment they were standing, they were attacked from behind by Jonathan’s foot soldiers, and stabbed in their backs, chests, and necks by the Zealots.

  It had taken only a short while, yet suddenly where once there were the screams of death, now there was the silence of
the grave. With no time to waste, Jonathan made the screech of a night owl, a signal for the man hidden in the trees to bring the donkey and the cart. They broke open the doors of the armory, and before the Romans of Jerusalem realized that they’d been robbed by Zealots, Jonathan and his men had disappeared into the night.

  * * *

  November 6, 2007

  YAEL COHEN DIDN’T CRY as she drove north from Jerusalem to Peki’in. There were no more tears left, although she knew they would return. She’d traveled this road a number of times with Shalman, and now she saw his gentle face and heard his beautiful voice all around her. He seemed to fill the valleys and hills. She could remember his face only as a much younger man and, in her mind, she heard his gentle cajoling, his loving support, his tender reproofs. And she smiled at the memory of when he’d taken her around the museum and shown her off proudly to his colleagues, telling them that one day she’d be a great archaeologist.

  His funeral would be in two days’ time, but no matter how much it hurt her, she couldn’t be there. His poor burnt body was being held by the police and the coroner pending its release, just in case evidence was brought to light that his death had been other than accidental.

  She had to escape Jerusalem. The police had told her it was a tragic accident, an old man driving too fast and losing control on a bend. But too much had happened; she had seen too much in the past days. She knew the accident for what it was. She knew that somehow, inadvertently, she’d led the killers to him. And that she’d been the instrument of his death was a grief too shocking for her to contemplate. Instead, a hatred of this man began to grow in her breast—this spider in the center of the web he’d spun from his office in Shin Bet to ensnare the people she loved.

  And now there was nobody. Not her mother or father, her grandparents, anybody. All dead. All gone. Now she was all alone as she drove slowly on side and minor roads toward the Galilean village of Peki’in. One of the roads north led her through a narrow ravine with steep walls, a two-lane track that meandered beside a little stream. On any other day she’d have pulled over and had a picnic lunch beside the brook, but not today.

  She’d never driven north this way on her own, always using the main mountain or sea roads, and it gave her a chance to appreciate the precipitous hills and rock-strewn valley sides. But the landscape was of less interest to her than her feelings of isolation and distress that everybody around her was in mortal danger. Yaniv had been consoling about her grandfather, but there was nothing he could do, and he begged her to leave Jerusalem, ensure she wasn’t followed, and come to him as quickly as possible.

  He wouldn’t tell her what he’d done, but he tried to convince her that he had a solution. She wasn’t in the mood to ask him what. She just wanted not to be alone. All her life, she’d been self-reliant; now she just wanted someone to make things right.

  She continued to negotiate the narrow road.

  * * *

  SITTING IN HIS OFFICE, Eliahu Spitzer watched the tiny red dot travel along the spidery lines on his computer. The tracking device on the young doctor’s car showed that she was traveling north, then east, then west, and then north again. She was obviously trying to avoid being followed.

  He smiled to himself. This naïve girl obviously had no knowledge of the craft of espionage. She had no idea about the way agencies such as his relied on satellites and sat-nav and GPS technology to peer down unseen into the darkest corners where their enemies thought that their nefarious activities could be conducted unobserved.

  Eliahu opened his desk drawer and took out his prayer book. He thumbed through the pages until he found a suitable blessing for the bounty that the Lord God had provided. There was no blessing over cars, but this one would do. After all, what he was doing was thanking the Lord for delivering his enemy, just as Joshua must have thanked the Almighty for delivering Jericho and Ai.

  When he’d finished the prayer, he looked again at the little red dot. She was driving north toward the Galilee. She was going there again; she was going to that tiny little village. He smiled. It would be a date with destiny.

  * * *

  70 CE

  ABRAHAM BEN ZAKKAI hadn’t seen his wife and children in four months. He and the group to which he’d been forcibly enlisted had traveled along the mountainous route north from the outskirts of Jerusalem to Bethel and Mount Gerizim. They hid in the numerous crags and caves in the district of Mount Gilboa and Mount Tabor, raiding Roman encampments, stealing their weaponry, war machines, and animals, and after the raid, when they were being chased by Roman infantry, disappearing into the woods and mountainsides like early-morning mist on a hot day.

  Though not a soldier, Abraham tended those who had been struck by spears or arrows and carried to safety by their comrades. He used his herbs and other medicines to cure men who suffered the ailments caused by being constantly outdoors, sleeping and eating in the wild, and living such a harsh life.

  Samuel had anonymously sent Abraham’s wife a purse full of coins minted by the Roman procurator in Judea, Porcius Festus, as well as another purse containing silver shekels in case the Roman coins weren’t acceptable where she shopped for food and drink. She prayed that these amazing gifts came from her husband, even though she didn’t know if he was alive or where he was.

  Knowing his wife had money and that she and their children wouldn’t starve was good news, but Abraham wanted to tell her that he was being held against his will, guarded every night to prevent him escaping, and forced to march with the army when it attacked the Roman foot patrols. But he couldn’t because he knew that were he to try to smuggle a letter to her, Jonathan would read it before it was sent.

  Abraham woke early the next day knowing that another raid on a Roman patrol would be taking place shortly after morning prayers. He prepared his special fighting brew in a large pot of water gathered the previous evening from the river. Into the boiling pot he put herbs, spices, the stems of mountain flowers, honey, and what he told the men was a special ingredient that he refused to disclose, but which he assured them had been passed down to him from the acolytes of the great Greek doctors Androcydes, Eudoxus of Cnidus, and Hippocrates of Cos. In fact, it was a simple tincture of horseradish—bitter, pungent, and guaranteed to make strong men flinch. But the brew’s acrid unpleasantness made the men believe that it really gave them strength, and as long as they believed the medicine was doing them good, then it did them good. Even Jonathan said that since Abraham had joined the group, the men were now fighting with increased vigor and stamina.

  As the men gathered up their weapons and prepared to walk from their cave hideouts in the mountains through ravines and escarpments—eventually arriving at the valley where they would wait silently on ledges for the Roman patrol of forty or fifty men to pass below them on the floor of the ravine—Jonathan sauntered over to Abraham, who was clearing away his equipment.

  “Doctor, your medicine again has given me and my men the strength to continue our fight.”

  Abraham shrugged. “That’s why you brought me here.”

  “And to cure those who are sick.”

  Abraham remained silent.

  “Tell me, Doctor, have you taken any of your own medicine?”

  “Why would I need to?” he asked.

  “Because for months you’ve been attending to the health of the Zealot army, but you’ve not yet seen what the army does or how it does it. So today will be different, and you will need your strength.”

  Abraham looked at him coldly. They had never liked each other, and although Abraham had kept his mouth shut since his abduction, it was obvious that he still considered himself an unwilling captive and not a participant in what the freedom fighters were hoping to achieve.

  “You wish me to accompany you. But if you wish me to fight, you will be disappointed. I am a healer. A doctor. I cure people. I don’t kill them.”

  Jonathan smiled. “I want you to observe. I don’t want you to participate. I want you to understand why we’r
e fighting and what it is that we’re fighting for.”

  “Why do you assume that I don’t know that, Jonathan? I know what you’re doing. I disagree with the way you’re doing it.”

  “And you think that meekly allowing the Roman heel to crush our necks is how our lives should be led?” he said aggressively.

  “And how many of our men will die, how many women will be made widows and how many children will become orphans, while you and your army fight? Is there a better way to rid ourselves of the Romans? I don’t know, but I do know that violence will lead to more violence, which will lead to more horrors than you can contemplate. You haven’t, but I have seen Rome and some of its empire. Its strength is formidable. We aren’t even a consideration to Rome when its senate meets. Its emperors are increasingly unbalanced, and if we’re noticed by emperors as insane as Caligula and Nero, they’ll send armies to crush us as the Romans have crushed the Iceni of the Britons and the Gauls and the tribes of Germania, and then we Jews will be no more; we’ll be slaughtered by the thousands and exiled throughout all the countries in the world.”

  “Nonsense,” said Jonathan quietly, hoping that his men couldn’t overhear what Abraham was saying. “We’ve beaten great armies before, and—”

  “And look at the nations who sent their armies against us, Jonathan. Without any assistance from us, the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, and the Greeks are all gone or are in decline. If we wait, then Rome, too, will stumble and fall. All conquerors seem invincible at the time, Jonathan, but they all make the mistake of growing too quickly; they become arrogant and then their empire begins to fray at the edges like cheap cloth.”

  Jonathan shook his head. “So instead of just waiting meekly like servants at a banquet for Rome to decay and decline, why don’t we give them a hand? Let’s prick them in their rear with our sharp needles. Let’s annoy them and irritate them with our daggers and spears. Don’t you understand, Abraham, that we want them to send an army to try to beat us into submission? This land isn’t Britain or Germania or Gaul, where the landscape is flat and smooth. Israel is a rugged land, completely unsuited to vast war machines. Our rocky hills and steep valleys will make their ballistae, catapults, and battering rams useless. They won’t be able to transport them, and so they’ll have to fight us with hand weapons. And there’s no stronger or more resolute army than ours when it comes to bows, arrows, spears, and slingshots, which we’ll rain down on them like crushing hail from our sky.”