The Gods Help Those

by Albert A. Bell

  What would it have meant if Aurora’s child had lived? I certainly want to have a child or two. My uncle adopted me because he had no children—at least none he could acknowledge—and I was my father’s only legitimate, surviving child. I inherited considerable wealth from my father and my uncle, but, if I died tomorrow, to whom would I leave my estate? Livia, as my wife, would try to claim most of it, but my will provides for funds to go to my hometown of Comum, to my mother, and to various of my servants.

  It’s not just about money, though. A man achieves immortality—the only immortality he can have unless he wins a battle or writes a great epic—through his children, especially his son. A son bears his name and passes it on to his son. A daughter marries into another family and provides heirs for her husband and that family, not for her father. The grandsons of Scipio Africanus, one of Rome’s greatest heroes, bore the name of Sempronius Gracchus because they were the sons of Scipio’s daughter and her husband. Scipio’s sons had no sons by birth, so his branch of the family lived only through an adopted son, like me, who gave most of his inheritance to his birth mother and died childless. Would that be my fate? The fate of my family?

  On the other hand, if Aurora gave me a son, could I emancipate them, marry her, and adopt him? I sighed. Certainly not while my mother was alive.

  I heard a knock on my door. I would have ignored it if it had not been the knock that Aurora and I have used as a signal since we were children—two quick taps, a longer tap, a pause and then two more quick taps. I opened the door to let her in.

  “Gaius,” she said, clutching the front of my tunic like a desperate supplicant, “I need to talk to you.”

  “Of course. What’s wrong?” I took her hands in mine, pulling them off my tunic, and had her sit down in the chair at my writing table. She had not combed her hair since we hoisted her out of the Tiber. Her eyes were wild, nervous, like a Maenad one sees in paintings of Dionysus and his crazed followers. I assumed she was still reacting to nearly drowning.

  “It’s Merione.” She glanced toward the door, as though the nurse was standing there.

  “What about her?”

  “She wants the baby.”

  “It looked like every woman in the exhedra wanted that baby.”

  “No, I mean she wants to take him away from me.”

  I sat down on the bed and put my arms around her. She crossed her arms over her chest so I could not pull her too close to me, something she has often done since she lost her own baby. As gently as I could, I said, “Aurora, he’s not your baby.”

  Tears welled in her eyes. “But I found him, Gaius, and we saved him.”

  “Yes, and we’re going to take care of him until we can find out more about him—who his parents are, that sort of thing. The injured woman that we brought back here may be his mother.”

  Aurora shook her head vigorously. “No, she’s not. I’m sure of it.”

  “How can you be?”

  “I believe that other woman—the one whose body kept me from being washed downstream—she’s his mother. She was doing everything she could to protect him.”

  “Aurora, darling, you have to keep your wits about you. That woman was dead. Her body happened to get lodged against a beam that had fallen into the water.”

  “I know, that’s your explanation for everything—it just happened. And I’ve always held to that. But what if we’re wrong? What if there is some order, some purpose, in what happens to us, even if we don’t understand it right now?”

  “A purpose decided by whom?” I snorted in derision. “The gods?”

  Aurora pulled her hair back out of her face. “That might be one name for them.”

  “But that would mean they intended for you to be sold into slavery and…to lose your baby.”

  “If I hadn’t been sold into slavery, I never would have known you, Gaius. If I hadn’t lost my baby, I wouldn’t understand how important it is to save this one. Naomi says her people have learned that their god sometimes puts them through hardships in order to strengthen them. Iron has to endure the forge and the hammer to make it strong, she says.”

  “By the—” I pounded my fist into my other hand. “She’s not infecting you now, is she?” As my mother has gotten older, she has seemed more susceptible to superstitions masked as religion. The eruption of Vesuvius and the death of her brother there left her shaken and frightened about the future. She spends most of her time with Naomi, whose influence in such matters, I’m afraid, is becoming pernicious.

  Aurora took my face in her hands. “I just know that I feel so much stronger after what happened to me last summer, no matter how difficult it was at the time. I want—no, I need—to take care of that baby, and he needs me. But now your mother has turned him over to Merione, and I don’t trust her, not for the blink of an eye.”

  “What do you think she’s going to do?”

  “She’s going to take the baby, as soon as she has a chance.”

  “And do what with him?” I stood up, wishing I had room to pace. Aurora’s hands fell to her lap.

  “She’ll give him to Regulus. I’m sure of it.”

  My voice betrayed my impatience. “With his wealth and influence, why would Regulus want a Jewish baby that someone threw away? He made a generous gesture. Uncharacteristic, I’ll grant you, but generous.”

  “Gaius, have you ever known that man to do anything that didn’t have his advantage as its ultimate goal?”

  My mother knocked on my door and called for us to come into the garden. Aurora’s question echoed in my mind as we crossed the garden to the exhedra. The baby was now lying on a small table, with several people standing around him. At least my servant women had been sent back to their tasks. Malachi stood on the other side of the table, facing me as I entered the exhedra. With his long, mournful face and deep-set eyes, he looked like a man who needed more sleep than he typically got. His dark hair and beard, his unshaved forelocks hanging down over his ears, along with his Eastern-style tunic, set him apart in any crowd.

  “Welcome, Malachi,” I said.

  “Good day, sir. It is honor to be receive in home of noble Gaius Pliny and noble lady Plinia.” His Greek was still labored.

  “Thank you for giving us your time.” I pointed to the baby and spoke slowly. “Can you tell us anything about this child?”

  Naomi held the baby up, unwrapping him for inspection.

  Malachi didn’t have to look long. “I’m afraid not, sir. I did not perform circumcision. I have not done one in two months or so. This one is…not done neatly. I know of no woman in my synagogue who gives birth in last month.”

  “Is that how old the child is?”

  “I believe so, sir. By our law, circumcision we do on eighth day after child is born. This one is healed up, the way I would expect after few weeks.”

  “ ‘Weeks’? What are weeks?”

  At a loss, Malachi turned to Phineas, who cleared his throat and said, “We keep track of time in periods of seven days, my lord, which we call weeks. The seventh day of each week is the Sabbath, our day of rest.”

  “What day is this?” I asked.

  “It’s the fourth day of this week, my lord, and the twenty-first day of this month.”

  “Your birthday is in two days, Gaius,” my mother said. “That would be the twenty-third day of September by their count.”

  I waved my hand to dismiss this nonsense. “My birthday is on the ninth day before the kalends of October. It always has been and always will be.” Aurora had no idea when her birthday was. Her mother knew the year but only that it happened in the autumn, if there is even such a season in the desert climate of North Africa where Aurora came from. She and I had developed the habit of observing her birthday on the day after mine. She felt it would be presumptuous to put it on the same day.

  “You Jews are in Rome now,” I said, “even if not by your own choice. I suggest that you adapt to Rome’s ways.”

  After an awkward moment of silence my mother
asked Malachi, “Is there anything else you can tell us about this baby?”

  “No, noble lady. I’m sorry.”

  “Do you know,” I said, “of anyone else—perhaps someone not in your synagogue—who might be able to help us?”

  “There are several other synagogues in the city. I know leaders of two others. I will ask them if they have performed circumcision lately.”

  “Thank you. You’ve been most helpful. Now, if I can impose on you for a bit longer, I need to ask you about a couple of other people.” I motioned for him to follow me. My mother, Aurora, and several of our servants trailed behind us.

  When we came to the room where the injured woman was being kept, the servant who was sitting by the door to watch her—a young woman named Thalia—stood up. My mother said, “We cleaned her up, Gaius, and put a new gown on her. We did not see any evidence that she had recently given birth.”

  “Has she said anything?”

  My mother turned to Thalia, who shook her head. “She moans and reacts a bit when we touch her or move her, my lord, but she has yet to open her eyes or speak.”

  “She needs to eat, my lord,” Aurora said. “I could feel her bones when we were in the litter.”

  “I’ve tried to get her to swallow a bit of broth,” Thalia said, speaking to Aurora. “She spits it out. She acts like it’s poison.”

  “Keep trying,” I told her.

  I had everyone stand aside so Malachi could go in with me. Holding a lamp close to her face, I asked, “Do you recognize her?”

  While he took a moment to study her I also examined her closely for the first time. Her breathing was shallow and slow. Her hair was black; her thin, almost emaciated face had a mole on the right cheek, near her upper lip—what most Roman women would consider a mark of beauty. Her sunken cheeks, though, would not be envied. It was clear she had not eaten much recently. I lifted one of her eyelids and saw that her eyes were dark.

  “I am sorry, noble sir,” Malachi said. “I do not know her.”

  “That’s all right. It was an improbable chance that you would. There is one other person I need to ask you about.”

  “I will do what I can.”

  I dismissed my mother and the other women. Accompanied by Phineas and Aurora, we walked to the storeroom at the very back of the garden where the body of the man with the equestrian stripe was being kept. Boards had been placed between the seats of two chairs, since his comfort wasn’t an issue. The blanket was still draped over him, but the odor of death was becoming more noticeable.

  Malachi stopped at the door. “Is this man dead?”

  “Yes, he is.”

  “Then, noble sir, I cannot touch him or get any closer to him. It would defile me.” He drew back from the doorway.

  “I don’t need for you to touch him, just look at him and see if you recognize him.”

  Phineas held a lamp close to the body and Malachi leaned into the room, as though he could not even cross the threshold. I turned the body so that it faced Malachi.

  “I believe I have seen him,” the rabbi finally said.

  I was surprised. “At your synagogue?”

  “Yes. He has been there several times. I have not talked with him and do not know his name.”

  It was one thing for an aristocratic woman like my mother to take an interest in some peculiar religious cult, but a man of the equestrian class? “Why would he be at your meetings?”

  “Some Roman men come to synagogue. We call them ‘God-fearers.’ This man attended our worship recently but always stayed in background. His was not only stripe we saw. Some even with broader stripe.” He made a gesture, with his fingers farther apart, as though running his hand down the place on a tunic where a senatorial stripe would be affixed. “Many of you Greeks and Romans admire our way to live, but, for grown men, circumcision they cannot think of it.”

  “If a woman wants to become a Jew,” I asked, recalling Naomi’s comment that they didn’t have anything cut off, “what would she have to do?”

  “A woman takes a purifying bath, what we call mikvah.”

  A moment of uncertainty seized me. My mother could have done that and I would never know. There would be no change in her appearance. I shook my head to restore some sanity. “So you know this man.”

  “I have seen him. I do not know him,” Malachi said.

  “I recognize him, too, Rabbi,” Phineas said.

  “You have seen him at synagogue?”

  “Yes. Two Sabbaths ago he seemed to be arguing with another man outside the synagogue.”

  “Did you know the other man?” I asked.

  “No, my lord.”

  “Was the other man wearing a stripe?”

  “No, my lord.”

  “Can you describe anything about him?”

  Phineas shrugged. “He had black hair and a beard, my lord. There was nothing exceptional about him.”

  “Could you tell what they were arguing about?”

  “No, my lord, but it seemed heated. This man finally pushed the other man away and stomped off.”

  “In which direction?”

  “Into the Forum, my lord.”

  I had hoped I might get some idea about which part of the city the man lived in, but “into the Forum” was no help.

  “Is he circumcised, my lord?” Aurora asked.

  “That’s a good question. I haven’t looked. Phineas, I hate to ask this of you, but would you please check?”

  Blocking Aurora’s view and with his face registering his disgust, Phineas lifted the man’s tunic with only his thumb and forefinger and immediately said, “He is, my lord.”

  I turned to Malachi. “So he’s not one of your ‘god-fearers’ after all,” I said.

  Malachi stroked his beard. “I am in surprise, sir. This man never act like Jew around us.”

  “Why would he not have joined in with you, identified himself as one of you?”

  “Some of us want to be not one of us.”

  I had to take a moment to parse that sentence.

  Malachi, shaking his head, took a long look at the dead man. “Some Jews who live among you Romans begin to forget who they are.”

  “How can they, if they’re circumcised? They must look at…that several times a day.”

  “To look at something is not always to see it.” He examined the man’s face more closely. “What is wrong with his lips? They’re swollen…and those marks?”

  “His lips were sewn together. Someone had crammed coins into his mouth.”

  Malachi’s eyes widened. “How many coins? What kind?”

  “We counted thirty denarii,” I said. “We still have them, in a bag.”

  “Thirty silver coins? About the number…you’re sure?”

  “Yes. Does that mean anything to you?”

  “No. It’s just…unusual number.”

  The nuances of language and facial expression make it difficult for a person to lie in a foreign language. This man was lying, but I couldn’t see how to challenge him.

  “What will you do with him?” Malachi asked.

  “I want to see if the body can tell me any more about how he died. Then, in a day or two, we’ll have to burn it, if the rain will let up and we can find enough dry wood for a pyre.”

  “If you are willing, sir, may I bury him by Jewish customs?”

  “But you don’t even know who he is.”

  “He bears circumcision, sir. That is all I need to know.”

  Letting Malachi deal with the body would solve a big problem for me. “All right, I’ll send Phineas to tell you when I’m done with him. You can come and get him.” I would be glad to let someone else haul a corpse across town. It would also mean that the body wouldn’t be burned, destroying any evidence it might still yield. Jews place their dead in an underground chamber and let the flesh decay. Later they put the bones in a box.

  “Thank you, sir.” Malachi made a quick nod that was almost a bow. “I cannot touch him myself, but I will send someo
ne.”

  “Well, I guess that’s all,” I said, announcing that it was time for him to leave. As I turned to walk with him toward the front of the house, I said, “By the way, do you know a man named Flavius Josephus?” I had met the historian a couple of years ago at Domitian’s palace, where he lives, and I knew he was not popular among his own people. My library contained my uncle’s copy of Josephus’ history of the war between the Jews and Romans. Given my mother’s increasing interest in those people and their presence in my home, I vowed to read it soon. “Do you think he, as a Jew with connections in high places, might know—”

  Malachi spat on the ground. “Do not call that dog a Jew, noble sir. He lost claim to be one of us when he betray us in war.”

  V

  As promised, Tacitus returned later that day. While we prepared to examine the dead man’s body, I told him how Malachi had reacted to the mention of Josephus’ name.

  “That’s no surprise,” Tacitus said. “The Jews vilify him. And I can understand why. He surrendered when others killed themselves rather than surrender or be captured. He took on Vespasian’s family name, like a freed slave, and his history of the war is simply an apology for the Romans. I know his book. You’ve met him. What sort of man is he?”

  “He’s quiet, studious. I think he regrets being a man without a country, so to speak. His own people reject him, as you say, while the Romans among whom he lives are suspicious of him. I can’t help but think, though, that he might be acquainted with another Jew wearing an equestrian stripe—one who, for some reason, did not make his identity known to others of that religion. Josephus has been forced to the edge of their group. Was this man drawing back by his own choice, or was he a kind of exile as well?”

  “Why don’t you invite Josephus over here?”

  “I was thinking that very thing. I’ll send a messenger when we finish here. But now we’d better learn what we can from this poor fellow.”

  “I suppose he’s starting to get odiferous.”

  “I had the servants burn some incense. Still, I think we’d better hurry.”