The Eighth Veil

by Frederick Ramsay

  “I see, yes. I am not happy about it, but I see. I was just about to ask you why climbing the branches of the late king’s family tree is relevant?”

  “Sorting out this tangled family will be difficult if not impossible. Yet it may have to be done to get at the murder, I think. Perhaps not to the extent I have laid out for you. Beyond that, I have no idea, but my sense of the thing is this, if you can pry out a motive for the murderer, you will be that much closer to knowing who he is, and it is in this conspiratorial milieu that you will find it.”

  “Again, with respect, I am singularly unqualified to carry out this task. Do I have a say in any of this?”

  “None. I have already sent a message to your High Priest, foolish man, and requested that he so inform the Sanhedrin of this commission. The king has kindly provided this man here…What is your name?”

  “Barak, Excellency.”

  “Barak, will serve you in whatever capacity you may require.” Pilate slipped a ring from his finger. “This you will show to anyone who questions your authority to act in this matter.” He handed the ring to Gamaliel. “Wear it until you have completed your commission. I will expect to hear from you daily.”

  “But this Archelaus. Is he or is he not in the palace?”

  “Have you been listening, Rabbi? I have no idea. He may not even exist. I have only rumors and hearsay, the veracity of which, as I have just explained, is less than reliable. You people have a talent for obfuscation and complex thinking that quite dismays me. You should be able to sort through this tangle as well as anyone. Do that and who knows, you may have your killer.”

  “But—”

  “There is no but, Rabban. Your Holy Days will last seven days and have just begun. You have Shabbat coming and I understand nothing will be accomplished on that day. A foolish rule in my view. What do you do if you are under siege? At any rate, because of your Sabbath, I will give you an octave. Eight days, Rabban, and then I expect a solution.”

  With those words, the great Pilate stood and stalked away, leaving Gamaliel to ponder what he should do and, more importantly, what he should not do. His issue with Caiaphas faded away with the morning mist.

  Chapter IV

  Gamaliel stood immobile in the center of the atrium and watched Pilate disappear into the clamorous streets of Jerusalem. Somewhere nearby a late blooming tree dropped its petals and they, borne on a soft breeze, fell like early snow. A string of servants passed him on their way to the kitchens carrying bundles of foodstuffs. The king did not stint on comfort, not even in a palace he rarely used and irrespective of the occasion. Gamaliel wondered what would have been in the bundles the previous week during the Day of Atonement. Judging from this king’s demonstrated spiritual inertia, probably pretty much the same.

  He had stood at the Prefect’s departure. Now he sat again. What an odd assignment to task a Talmudic scholar. What should he do next? His expertise was in divining the mind of the Lord from dry and dusty ancient scrolls. He had little or no experience in sorting through the cluttered minds of humans. The old man assigned to him waited anxiously in the shade of a small date palm shifting his weight from foot to foot like a child who needed to excuse himself. A pair of beaded women’s-sized sandals, evidently hastily abandoned by their wearer, lay beneath the same palm. If he were truly a solver of human mysteries rather than the witness to spiritual ones, he might have thought they were a clue. Since he wasn’t, he didn’t, and they weren’t.

  “Barak, you are a servant in the king’s palace, I presume. Tell me what you understand of this business.”

  “Yes, sir. I am. I can tell you all there is to know. You see it was I who found the unfortunate woman there in the bath.” He shivered at the memory and pointed to his right at an archway set in the palace’s wall. Gamaliel assumed it must lead to the previously mentioned bath.

  “Through there? Suppose you show me this place and tell me what happened, how you came upon the murdered woman and what happened next.” For better or for worse, his inquiries into the death of the servant girl had begun. Where they would ultimately lead, he could only guess but he wasn’t optimistic about their eventual outcome.

  The old man led him through the archway into the bath. It bore no resemblance at all to the mikvah Gamaliel expected, or rather hoped to see. Instead it more closely mimicked the baths common to Romans and pagans he had heard about, but had never visited. The air, heavy with water vapor, still bore the pungent scents of olive oil, cinnamon, and exotic perfumes from the east, the residue of the previous evening’s bathers. His experience with scents of any sort was extremely limited, the product of a self-imposed ascetic life. He cast his gaze upwards and took in the mosaics on the ceiling. A cascade of nymphs and satyrs cavorted across the heights, their intentions clearly not a thing the Rabban wished to plumb. Greek pantheism and its complex, erratic, not to mention erotic relationships stubbornly refused to make sense to him. Joining them in their antics were men and women all of whom, judging by their attire or lack thereof, were fully prepared to join in the same behavior. His direct knowledge of activities at places like this was limited to what he’d read and heard and he shuddered at the thought that the King of the Jews, even this attenuated branch, would condone it, much less support it in his palace. Gamaliel did not consider himself a prude or squeamish about most things, yet for this display of crass nudity and sensuality, an obvious pagan scene, to be included in a Jewish residence, palace or not, bordered on the blasphemous. What sort of king had we here?

  He knew, of course. Everyone knew that this Herod Antipas had no more faith than his father, which is to say his religious practice was strictly a political and public undertaking. He was, after all, only one generation from the pagan practices of an Edomite. Gamaliel sighed in the sure knowledge that the king was not alone in that paltry level of belief. Many of the Sanhedrin, though they would deny it vehemently, shared it with him. He blamed it on Alexander the Macedonian who had Hellenized the country centuries before and even now there seemed no way to eradicate his continuing influence.

  “I came here in the sixth hour of the night,” Barak was saying, “And I noticed the water in the bath is not quite right.”

  “How, ‘not quite right,’ Barak?”

  “Well, sir you can see for yourself. It’s all discolored. Red it was. That’s why I didn’t see the girl at first. Because of the water being red-like.”

  Gamaliel pivoted and took in the scene. The bath water steamed as the cool morning air wafted through the arch from outside. He stepped to the edge of the bath to look at it. It was discolored certainly. Across from him on the pool’s lip the body of the girl lay under a sheet of some sort.

  “Where was this dead woman, when you found her?”

  “Why, in the bath, of course. How else could blood have filled the water?”

  “I can think of several ways Barak, but that is not important just now. So, you came in at the sixth hour, midnight, you say. Was that your duty, or were you simply wandering about in the middle of the night?”

  “Oh no, sir. I had the watch last night. I was to check this room and the adjoining atrium. Check the lamps for oil, pick up any debris from the evening’s revelries, and so on.”

  “Revelries? A Holy Feast is upon us and Shabbat just over and the king is not fasting and preparing to celebrate Tabernacles?”

  Barak barely suppressed a smile. “No, Rabban, he is not. Not in this house. Most nights there was feasting and music and later many of the court would repair to this place and—”

  “Men and women together?” Gamaliel had heard of the license taken by the occupants of the king’s court but he’d always supposed it was mere gossip, the product of envious men. It appeared to be true. He shook his head. “Continue with your narrative, Barak. You said it was about the sixth hour. Measured how?”

  “The guard makes a circuit of the palace. Three circuits take an hour, he says. When he said he’d done eighteen of them, I was sent on my rounds. Well, ther
e is not much more to tell. I came in here, saw the water, saw the girl, and raised the alarm.”

  “And then?”

  “Then the guards came and so did Chuzas, the king’s steward. They sealed off the bath, set the palace guards to seal off the bath, and pulled the body out and laid her over there,” he pointed to the shrouded form, “and went away leaving me to watch over her until morning.” Barak shuddered at the memory and tilted his head toward the three men standing at the three entrances to the room, one to the atrium from which they had just come, and two at the arched doorways leading to various parts of the palace. “The guards are still here as you can see.”

  “No one has entered since?”

  “Only yourself and the Prefect, of course. It is as it was when I found her.”

  “Nothing removed, no one tried to come in?”

  “Not that I am aware of, no sir. Wait, I forgot—the man Graecus looked in, I think, but did not enter. The steward’s orders, you see.”

  Gamaliel stared at the murky water. Aside from the fact it impeded his ability to investigate the bath further, blood in the water raised some serious questions about purity. It could not remain this way, obviously. “Can this pool be drained?”

  “Indeed, yes. There is a clever hole in the bottom that can be unplugged and the water will flow away into the valley. It is drained when the king is not in residence.”

  “I want the plug pulled. Can you do it?”

  Barak frowned uncertainly. “There is a device, I believe, that allows it to be pulled somewhere about, but I do not know where it is kept. Otherwise, I will have to climb in the bath and pull it by hand,”

  “It is unclean. I do not want you to do that. Send for someone to find the device and empty this pool. Let us hope that a spate of bloody water appearing in the valley does not start a panic and a call for Father Moses to appear and strike it with his staff. Now, let us have a quick look at the corpse.”

  “Sir, must I?’

  “I need you to witness everything I do, Barak, so that later, if there are questions, you can verify my account of things. Yes, please pull that sheeting back so that I may see for myself.”

  Barak did as he was asked but Gamaliel noticed he averted his eyes from the woman’s nakedness. Gamaliel had no such scruples. The woman was dead. Were she still alive, it would have been different, of course. He bent closer and inspected the body. Her throat had been slashed, he could see that. There did not seem to be any other obvious marks on her.

  He stood erect and scratched his beard. What to do next? Interview the household, of course. The King? Queen? Princess? This Menahem person, and what of the ubiquitous Archelaus? Would anyone admit his presence? Did anyone know of it? Did he, as the Prefect implied, even exist?

  “Barak, I want you to do two more things for me. After you find someone to empty the pool, go up to and through the Sheep Gate. Ten paces on your right you will find the dwelling of the physician, Loukas. Tell him that I require his presence immediately. If he demurs, describe this ring to him and tell him who currently wears it.” He held the ring out for Barak to see. “Then I wish you to summon the king’s steward for me.”

  Barak scurried off. Gamaliel replaced the sheet over the dead woman and began a careful reconnaissance of the room. If Barak told the truth, the room would be as it was when the body was found. Perhaps there would be something left here to indicate how this terrible thing came about.

  He circled the area and the entrances several times picking up odds and ends and memorizing where he’d found them. A pile of clothing, probably the dead girl’s, lay in a heap under a bench. There were palm fronds, empty jars still sweet smelling from the ointments they once contained, but nothing he would describe as significant or lacking an explanation for its presence. He was still at it when Barak returned with Loukas the physician.

  Chapter V

  Barak scurried off to find the steward. Gamaliel escorted the physician to the body. He slipped back the sheet. The woman, he now saw clearly, was a young girl, almost a child.

  “I have been tasked by our Prefect to discover the nature of this death, Physician. I do not know why, and I do not know how I am to do it, but there it is. I will need all the help I can get and I immediately thought of you. So here is the victim. I know nothing more than what you can see for yourself except I am told she met her death around the middle of the watch. Tell me about this murder. What can this unfortunate girl say to us from the grave?”

  Loukas shook his head. “Such a pity, she can’t be more than fifteen or sixteen. I need to place her on a table where I can examine her more closely. Can I use that one?” He indicated a broad marble table that more than likely held food and drink in better times. Gamaliel nodded his assent but made no move to help lift the body onto the smooth surface. The physician made no comment. He knew enough about observant Jews to appreciate, if not completely comprehend, the complex laws regarding food, corpses, the living, and the dead.

  The king’s steward arrived and Gamaliel turned his attention to him, leaving the Greek to do his postmortem study of the dead girl.

  “Steward, greetings in the name of the Lord. Am I correct in remembering you are called Chuzas?” The round little man nodded his assent. “As you have surely heard by now, I am commissioned by the Prefect with the concurrence of your king, to investigate the death of the girl in this room last night. Why that is so will have to be a question for another day.”

  “I heard, Rabban, but neither do I understand why, with respect to yourself, of course. She was no more than a servant girl, not even one of ours, strictly speaking, but brought here from some other land. And of another faith.” Chuzas shrugged his dismissal of the whole notion of wasting anyone’s time and particularly that of someone as important as the Rabban of the Sanhedrin on a matter into the death, however violent, of a foreign servant girl.

  “That may be so, Steward, but hers was a life, nonetheless, a life taken before its appointed time and, more importantly, a life taken in the king’s palace. The latter elevates its significance and therefore, we must account for it. Can you tell me what you know of the events of last night? Who feasted, who bathed, who seemed to be behaving suspiciously, and so on? I have only Barak’s testimony but he had no part in the festivities, if that is what they were. He was only the poor soul who found the murdered girl.”

  “In truth, Rabban, I cannot tell you much more or recall anything beyond the general state of things. The court assembled as usual and dined. Musicians played, dancers danced…”

  “Perhaps the dead girl was among the dancers?” Visions of a lissome Princess Salome whom he’d recently discussed with the Prefect, resurfaced. He pushed the image aside.

  “The girl? I do not think so. No, she served at the queen’s table, I believe.”

  “You believe? Surely as the king’s steward, you would know the location and duty of every person in service to your master.”

  “Yes, but you see…” Chuzas looked away and shuffled his expensively sandaled feet against the floor tiles.

  “What are you not telling me, Steward?”

  “In point of fact,” he said, looking extremely uncomfortable as he did so, “she is not of the king’s household.”

  “Not?”

  “This is awkward.” Chuzas’ gaze drifted away again to inspect the fresco on the near wall. “She is in the party of the queen.”

  “Herodias, the Queen, is not considered part of the household? I think you must have misspoken.”

  “It is complicated, Rabban.”

  “Most of life is, Steward.”

  “Yes, of course. This girl came to us when the queen…when the first…I do not wish to forward scandal or speak ill of the royal family—”

  “Let me guess, then. What you are suggesting is this girl might have witnessed the adulterous liaisons of Herodias and Antipas before the separation, divorce, and remarriage and so had to be brought along from Philip’s court to keep the secret safe. Servants t
alk, do they not? Am I close?”

  The steward seemed to be sweating and Gamaliel did not think it had as much to do with the steamy ambiance of the bath as with the subject matter under discussion. He cleared his throat with a great deal of huffing and heaving. “I honestly do not know, Rabban. It is a delicate um…yes, near enough, I don’t know.” he finally murmured.

  “So then is it reasonable to suggest that this girl was in fact part of the entourage of the prince, Archelaus, who, it is rumored, traveled from the north somewhere to Herod Philip before he subsequently dropped out of sight in Cappadocia?”

  “Who? Archelaus? I have no knowledge of Philip’s court or…Archelaus? Why would you think that, Rabban?” Actually, I am guessing, Gamaliel thought. A stab in the dark but it did not strike home. Well, so much for international intrigue. Why did Pilate even bring up the man’s name? “With respect for you and your office, no one can say what the circumstances were before our king took his new bride. I never served the king’s half brother so I cannot say whether this, who did you say…Archelaus?…Certainly not him, I should think. I have no knowledge of who may have come or gone to Caesarea Philippi.”

  “Of course not. Very well. I only ask because the Prefect tells me he heard the man in question may be in Jerusalem now and the logical conclusion would be that he would be here with his uncle and if so, he suggested, it could help solve this mystery.”

  “Could it indeed? I am afraid the Prefect is mistaken. He is not one of us, and certainly not native to the area, so he could not know. It is, after all, my responsibility to know who comes and goes and when they do so in the palace. There is no Archelaus here, prince or otherwise, not now, not ever.”

  “Yes, I see. Well then, is it remotely possible this girl met her end because she knew of the king and queen’s illicit liaison and possession of this knowledge, if shared with the wrong people, could someday embarrass the king?”

  “Surely you are not implying the king had anything to do with—”