John Masters

by The Rock

  When she awoke, she was alone. She lay back, her arms folded behind her head, and basked in the warmth still glowing inside her. There was no light, so it must be night. The ship seemed to have a different motion. She stretched and yawned, smiling. He would come back soon.

  She heard the rustle of the canvas, and he came with a lamp. She held out her arms; he took her hands and said, "We have sprung a leak below the waterline. It is not serious, but I must lighten the ship, throw overboard all the cargo. And all the food and water we can spare. We have begun already. And the wind holds from the west. I know land cannot be far away, but now I dare not go on. We have turned back."

  "It does not matter," she said. "You have the apple the goddess demands. But it is not gold, is it?"

  Smiling, he held out one of the fruits she had plucked from the floating bough. He had cut it open, and inside the dark gray, quilted skin she saw the dried remains of golden-yellow pulpy flesh. "It was last season's fruit," he said, "not fallen from the bough. It happens sometimes with all fruit. And now we need only one more miracle for a safe return." She was about to ask him what he meant when he said, "I am sorry your husband died. I meant him no harm."

  She said slowly, "I did not wish him dead. But I learned on this voyage that I could not live with him anymore, for what he did and did not do."

  The lamp flickered as the ship shuddered to a bigger wave. "I must go on deck," he said. "But, oh, I am sad to be heading back. We have come so close to the rim of the world, which I have so often dreamed of, lying on the top of the Rock and staring out over this ocean."

  "Will you go again?" she asked.

  He shook his head. "Not I. Some other man will seek the golden apples. Perhaps he will go from Carteia. He will sail past the Rock, certainly, for we hold the latch to the west. But if we come back safe, I shall not go to sea again. I shall build a house for us—you know where."

  "The Rock will be our fortress," she said. "Or will you be afraid of the spirits of the Great Cave?"

  "Not if you are with me," he said seriously. "I shall harvest the shells to make Tyrian purple. We shall have goats and bees to make cheese and honey such as they have never tasted in Carthage. My phallus shall plow my soil and make it fertile." He put his hand on her belly and squeezed it gently.

  "Our children shall be sons of the Covenant," she said. "For they will be born of the womb of a Judean."

  He said, "Well, I shall learn to do the correct things and say the proper prayers. Anything for a quiet life in the house. Besides, I like the sound of Hebrew songs."

  "Good. But you have yet to ask me to marry you. I am not a slave, to be disposed of at someone else's will."

  "Do you say yes or no?" he asked.

  She said, "Verastech li leolam. I betroth thee unto me forever."

  He kissed her long and deeply, then again turned to go.

  "Hold!" she said. "What is the miracle which...?"

  He stopped and stooped under the low beams to stare at something white swaying from the plank just above. He took it in his hand and saw that it was the fang Tamar had found in the cave where he hid his strong wine. But it was carved now into the shape of a naked woman. The hole in the thick part was now part of an elaborately rolled arrangement of her hair, piled on top of her head. She was lovely, a small smile on her face, the breasts pointed, the sexual slit exaggerated. So this was the meaning of the scraping he had heard so often, so long, from this cabin.

  She said, "I made it so he would have to look at me. It is I."

  "It is a miracle—the miracle," Pendril said. "A naked woman sends you, and only another naked woman can lead you, a third pluck the apple from the tree, and a fourth bring you safe hack home!" He hung the talisman around Tamar's neck and ran joyfully up to the poop. On the ninth day they saw the pillar of cloud over the Rock and on the eleventh ran the prow ashore on that corner of land he called his own.

  BOOK THREE

  PHOENICIA, CARTHAGE,

  ROMAN REPUBLIC

  The Jewish years 3188—3831

  AUC 180—823

  573 B.C.—A.D. 70

  The rulers of the Rock and the overlords of Carteia were the kings of Carthage. In 273 B.C. arrived Hamilcar, King of Carthage, with his son Hannibal, to extend their grip from a few coast towns to most of Spain. This brought Carthage into conflict with the Roman Republic. In 190 B.C. Carthage was finally crushed and succeeded by Rome. Gadir became Gades, and as the Romans put more men and money into the conquest of Spain, their first real colony, Gades increased until it became the second city of the later republic.

  Carteia fell on bad times. It had been founded by a commercial people to take advantage of the tunny fishing and the supplies of murex to make the purple dye. In times of war and conflict the Rock goes up in importance, but a small port like Carteia goes down. By the end of the Punic Wars (Rome against Carthage) it was perhaps in ruins, perhaps vanished altogether. Its resurrection was close at hand.

  In 171 B.C., the consuls for the year being Licinius Crassus and Gaius Cassius Longinus, the Praetor Lucius Canuleius found himself with a problem. His legionaries had fathered some 4,000 children on Celtiberian slave women encountered in the course of the wars in Spain. They were not allowed to marry these women, though in many cases they wanted to, as a legionary could not marry a slave. The praetor solved his problem by founding on the site of Carteia (if it previously existed!) a colonia libertinorum of the same name. It was the first true colonia in Roman Spain and soon became sufficiently important to be permitted to mint its own coins.

  As Spain had been the scene of the first spreading of the wings of the Roman Republic, so in its soil were laid the first foundations of the Roman Empire, when Julius Caesar defeated the sons of his chief rival Pompey, at Munda (near Coin, in the province of Malaga) on March 17, 45 B.C. After the battle, while Caesar concentrated on seizing the rest of Andalusia, Gnaeus Pompey and some of his followers escaped to Carteia. Pompey was carried there in a litter, since he had been wounded in the foot. As soon as he and his party arrived, the town magistrate sent a message to Caesar offering to give him up. Caesar sent a detachment down to take him, but Pompey managed to escape in a boat—past the Rock he must have gone, past the magic forest, the Great Cave, the secret shrine of Hercules: but Caesar's men pursued, a sea fight followed, and Pompey was driven ashore. He limped away to a last fight on a hill. Defeated again, he took refuge in a cave, and there on April 12, with Caesar's relentless hounds on his heels, he fell on his own sword.

  It is a grim tragedy, marching inexorable as the legions to its appointed end. But what hill? Where was the sea fight? Did they never leave the bay? Was that last scene played out in one of the Rock's uncountable caves, which have given brief refuge, over uncountable years, to uncountable other victims?

  Caesar is dead. Long live Caesar.

  In Judea a child was born into a time of trouble, for the unruly province and its stiff-necked people were beginning to chafe under the yoke of their new Roman masters. In A.D. 68, on the death of Nero, a series of civil wars broke out for possession of the purple. Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and at last Vespasian succeeded each other in rapid succession. An uneasy calm returned—a little war here, a little insurrection there, some expansion here, some withdrawal there—and it was to be the general condition of the empire for three centuries.

  The colonia of Carteia, near the western limit of the empire, lived through this time, too....

  A PRIVATE SACRIFICE

  The twenty men of the town watch moved slowly across the side of the Rock, their spearpoints glistening dully, loose stones rattling under their sandals. Julius, their honorary commander, was in the center, carrying a sword and wearing his old centurion's helmet with the transverse crest. Fifty paces behind him the aedile Octavius led a dozen volunteers of all ages, who had come out to join in the manhunt for the pleasure of it. It was a close and airless day, for the east wind was blowing, and its oppressive cloud hung over the Rock.

  Jul
ius saw that all his men were sweating heavily, and they looked tired, though they had been on the go barely three hours. Everyone was too young or too old, that was the trouble with watch-and-wards everywhere. In a legion the men would hardly have been damp by now, just smelling a little acid as the wine leeched out through their leathery skins. His helmet felt intolerably heavy, and he discovered he was walking like a turtle, his head thrust forward under its weight. He swore and straightened up; but age was one enemy not even a retired centurion of the Twentieth could hold at bay forever, he reflected gloomily.

  He stubbed his toe on a sharp stone and swore again. This was a bad way to be celebrating the first week of a new year—it was the sixth of Tishri—hunting down poor devils of escaped mine slaves. Work in the mines upcountry was enough to drive a free man to drink even with the good pay. That's why the only free men were overseers. The rest were slaves, captives of war, criminals, and such as these Turdetani, local tribesmen rounded up by a press-gang for the mine management. "Run them down like dogs," Marcus the duovir had said before they started out.

  From behind, one of the volunteers called, "Straight ahead. A hundred paces!"

  Julius looked up sharply, for it was his son's voice. The young man ran up to his side, calling, "There, father!" Ahead he saw several human shapes flitting in and out of the wild olives. Now they were in the open, running away along the slope toward the south.

  "Well done, Fidus. You have sharp eyes." The aedile's voice was languid, as always.

  Julius plodded on. His eldest son, Barak—or Fidus, as he preferred to call himself—would go a long way. Any father should be proud of such a son. But—Julius frowned—he was a little too eager to please, a little too eager for blood. It was all very well for the duovir to talk of these Turdetani as dogs, but they weren't; they were peasants of the soil, mountain men, goatherds, players on the oaten pipe and the bagpipe. In their own village they wore roughly worked jewels and coarse-hammered armlets of gold. Their women were beautiful and for great occasions twined their long hair around long rods set on top of their heads and then draped a veil over all.

  Dogs? If they were dogs, then so were the Judeans, his own ancestors, whom Rome was chastising at this moment. As a legionary he used to think that all the people he fought were ignorant savages; but the police action in Judea, which seemed to have started last year, made him think again, and deeply. His father used to pray for Jerusalem every day. His mother had wept on her deathbed because she was going to die without seeing the Temple. If Jerusalem meant so much to him and his people, then all these others, the barbarians, must surely have their own proper loves and prides, which ought to be respected.

  A man to his right said, "Here they come!" It was just below the Great Cave. Perhaps the six Turdetani had thought to shelter in it, but they were out now, running, with a high, trembling scream. They came straight at Julius, and the watch closed in. The aedile called, "Try not to kill them, men. They're worth good money!"

  But the fellow running bare-handed at Julius seemed determined to be killed, a wild-eyed, tall man with reddish hair and eyes as blue as Julius' own, naked but for a rag around his loins. Julius made to lunge with his sword, and as the man dodged sideways, snarling, he stepped back and hit him hard on the temple with the pommel of the sword. The man stumbled, and Julius jumped on him, hit him again, and cried, "Lie still, fool. You want to live, don't you?" For a minute the fighting was general, and Julius saw his son kill a tribesman with a neat spear thrust: but it had been necessary, he gave him that. Then suddenly it was over, and they had five battered prisoners and a corpse.

  Julius took off his helmet and mopped his forehead. The watch began to rope the prisoners together. The aedile Octavius said, "For a moment I thought they'd gone around to the Eagle's Nest cave at the back of the Rock. It's a bad place to have to get them out of."

  "Nearly impossible, aedile, I think," young Barak said importantly. "But there's no escape, either. They'd either have to surrender, starve, or jump. Seven hundred feet!"

  "There's no escape anywhere on the Rock," the aedile said, "except perhaps in the Great Cave. No one's ever explored that. Some say it goes on forever."

  "There's no escape from Rome anywhere, now," Julius said. "The Rock at least looks like a place where you can die with honor."

  Then they started back for Carteia, the prisoners carrying their dead comrade, and the watch and the volunteers surrounding them.

  "Walk with me, Julius," the aedile Octavius said. "They can look after themselves ... especially with your Fidus among them. A very capable young man. You know, if we spend a little money, I believe we have influence enough between us, with Marcus' help, to get Fidus appointed to the Seventh as a tribune, direct."

  "He would be overjoyed," Julius said formally.

  "I will speak privately to Marcus," Octavius said.

  The two men fell silent and walked on together without more words. They were both near fifty; both had served over twenty-five years in the Twentieth Legion, Valeria Victrix; both had now been settled six years in Carteia, which special privileges and exemptions to veterans made a particularly desirable place of retirement; they were friends, liked and admired each other well, and in the years of campaigning had saved each other's lives and got drunk together more times than either could count and in the long British wars had shared several snub-nosed English whores. Both were married—Octavius recently and officially, Julius in Rome twenty-three years ago to a slim girl of his own faith; but as private soldiers were forbidden to marry, he had had to pretend through the rest of his army career that the woman who trailed along behind the legion as and when she could was only a concubine, like the rest of them.

  For the rest, they were different as men could be: Octavius—Roman-born, cynical, immoral, brave only when he had to be but then amazingly debonair—the perfect camp prefect and politician; Julius—Carteian-born, son of a Judean ex-legionary, direct, courageous, devout, dutiful above all—the perfect centurion, farmer, and honorary, incorruptible head of the town watch.

  Striding easily along together, as they had done so often, they turned the last angle of rock and passed from under the cloud into sunlight. The sandy isthmus curved away like a golden finger crooked below them. The sun shone on rippling blue water, and white clouds traveled like lambs across the mountains beyond. They could see the river mouth, a score of jetties thrust out into it, palm trees and the masts of ships; and in the town, houses of white and marble, the green of gardens, and all around golden wheat, rusty vineyards, gray-green olive groves.

  The aedile sighed. "Peace, plenty, bliss. Or so it appears on the surface.... What do you hear of Horatius Naso?"

  "The man who some of us hoped would succeed Galba?"

  "Yes."

  "Nothing. Why?"

  "Well, as you know, Vespasian succeeded Galba and is our undoubted emperor. Nevertheless, it seems that many are still not content and are working in secret to elevate Horatius Naso to the purple. You know I went to Gades last week.... It was to learn more of this movement... to decide whether it would be wisest to denounce it or join it. I learned that it is strong, but not strong enough. It is supported by a number of discontented or jealous men and by the people of this new blood-drinking sect, the Nazarenes ... and by many of your co-religionists."

  "Jews? Why?"

  "Because of the severe campaign Vespasian's son is waging in Judea, I suppose."

  "By God, in that case I could join this Horatius Naso myself," Julius said.

  "And lose your land and your head! Listen to me, my friend. First, Naso cannot win. Understand that, grasp it! He cannot win. Second, the loyalists will use the conspiracy for their own advancement. To be safe, you must act on the winning side, and you must do it publicly. This is doubly important for you, as a Jew.... The conspirators are not quite ready yet, and we are going to strike first. In Carteia there are some thirty of us, all men of influence. Marcus is our leader, and though we hope we shall not have to she
d blood, we are quite prepared to do so. We shall seize the chief places and people of Carteia—as our friends will be doing in Gades and Hispalis and other towns—in order to make sure that no local authority can declare for Naso. At the same time we'll imprison the local conspirators until it is clear that the rising has failed all over Hispanis ... or, if it should perchance succeed elsewhere, then they will be useful to us as hostages."

  Julius said, "Why are you telling me this? I don't want to take part."

  "You are the commander of the watch, are you not?" Octavius said gently. "Does it not strike you that you would be one of those we would have to seize unless you were on our side? Besides, your son is leading the assault group. He will be the one to take the other magistrates prisoners."

  "Barak?" Julius cried. "He didn't tell me."

  "Join us," Octavius said. "Marcus detests all Judeans as insolent rebels. And he's been trying to get your vineyard ever since you planted it."

  Julius strode on along the sand, his head glumly bent. It was like the army again: will you have bread for dinner or bread? He said, "I'll come. But..."

  "Midnight then, the third night ... We meet in your back garden. Fidus suggested it."