The Last Temple Page 18

  “Had I but known,” Ruso said. He could hardly breathe. The potion of hemlock must have been barely diluted with wine.

  In sudden rage and with the last of his strength, he ripped the parchment in half. Vitas took a step toward Ruso, but it was too late. With flashing hands, Ruso shredded the document and threw the pieces into the water beside him.

  “In the end, I served the false god,” Ruso said. “Now I am finished.”

  He tried gasping for more air, but his lungs were failing him. His face contorted with terror and his tongue fell from his mouth. Then, slowly, the light left his eyes.

  August 15, AD 70

  Jerusalem

  Province of Judea

  Look, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him. So shall it be! Amen.

  REVELATION 1:7

  From the Revelation, given to John on the island of Patmos in AD 63

  Mercury

  Hora Duodecima

  With dusk approaching, Vitas was perched on a large boulder, on the west side of the upper slope of the Mount of Olives, overlooking Jerusalem on the other side of the valley. Nearly three hundred feet higher than the city, this position had afforded a panoramic view of events as they slowly and tragically unfolded over the course of the summer.

  Yet he was not thinking about the violence and bloodshed.

  He was trying to grapple with an unfamiliar emotion. Homesickness. After three months away from Alexandria, he was becoming increasingly aware that memories of his family were no longer bringing him joy, but a melancholy that he could not shake.

  Following his return to Alexandria after the suicide of Nero, he’d cherished nearly two years of domestic peace and joy with Sophia. They’d welcomed another child into the world.

  Alexandria.

  The perfect place for a man to live during the hazards of near civil war across the empire following the death of Nero. Far enough away from the deceits and treacheries of Rome, but far from being a dusty, obscure province.

  The memory of something as simple and meaningless as a child at play or an infant’s nap was enough to make Vitas ache with this homesickness. Tutillus was a strong and sturdy three-year-old, already happy to play with a wooden sword and duel any vertical objects that would serve as suitable opponents—chair legs, unsuspecting tree trunks.

  Little Marcella loved to snuggle with Vitas. Not as much, however, as he loved to snuggle with her.

  In long, hot, lazy afternoons, Vitas would retire to a shaded room, carrying Marcella as she reached up and played with his hair. Then he would lie on a bed with her on his chest.

  He knew what made her drowsy.

  His soft singing.

  She would squirm at first, but as he sang, her movements would begin to slow. Then, like a cat settling into a blanket, she would shift and turn her body into the most comfortable position and begin to sleep. Unfailingly, her right hand would reach upward and clutch his hair, as if the reassurance of his presence was all she needed to feel safe.

  Only then would Vitas permit sleep to fall upon him, contentment filling him. Often, when he woke, he would find his own hand upon his daughter’s, where it was intertwined with his hair.

  And upon waking, he would stare upward for long, long minutes, grateful for what he had but always afraid that someday it might be taken from him.

  Yet perfect as it had been in the tranquility of the balmy sea breezes beneath the palm trees of Alexandria, all it had taken was a rumor for Vitas to board a ship for Caesarea immediately, to travel the road from that port to Jerusalem, where his longtime friend Titus, now the son of an emperor, was encamped in the hills around the city.

  The rumor had come directly from Titus, delivered by letter.

  Word has reached me that Damian has been held prisoner within the walls of Jerusalem since your time in Caesarea. I cannot promise this is true, for as you have undoubtedly heard, the city is not receptive to Roman visitors. However, I promise I will do my best to find your brother once we break through the walls.

  Typical of Titus, the dry understatement. The city not receptive to Roman visitors? Jerusalem was under siege, the violence of one side against the other almost beyond comprehension.

  His brother, Damian, alive?

  His brother, Damian, alive!

  Vitas would do everything in his power to help rescue his brother. The strong friendship between Vitas and Titus meant that he could expect any and all resources possible from Titus.

  Thus far, both men had been unable to do anything.

  Not for the first time did Vitas contemplate the city from his vantage point, wondering how he could get inside and search for Damian.

  A crunch of sandals against stone drew Vitas.

  When he turned his head toward the noise, he expected to see a soldier sent by Titus. The entire Tenth Legion was camped on one of the lower slopes of the Mount of Olives. Titus would know where to send the soldier to find Vitas, for it was Titus who often sent Vitas up to the perch to ponder the military situation for any advice Vitas might offer in the evenings when both of them met at a fire in the center of camp.

  But it wasn’t a soldier.

  It was an older man, picking up his pace as he neared Vitas.

  “Ben-Aryeh!” Vitas said, rising quickly. Alarm rose in his heart. He’d left Ben-Aryeh in Alexandria to watch over Sophia and the children. What had gone wrong? What had been taken from Vitas?

  “All is well,” Ben-Aryeh said, correctly reading the emotion that Vitas could not help but show. “I am not here to deliver bad news. All is well with your family.”

  “And with yours?” Vitas asked. “Chayim and Leah?”

  “All is well. Daily, I rejoice that my son was returned to me. Much thanks to you for it.” Ben-Aryeh held open his arms.

  Vitas took a deep breath and stepped forward to accept an embrace. He wryly thought that at the least, Ben-Aryeh had managed to dispel the melancholy.

  They stepped back from the embrace, and each took measure of the other.

  “I’ve just arrived,” Ben-Aryeh said. “Titus said I would find you here. Any word of Damian?”

  “None,” Vitas said.

  Now that his alarm had subsided, Vitas felt the familiar return of constant dread for the safety of his brother. Was it possible that Damian had survived these years and lived somewhere inside the walls of Jerusalem, when every Jew seethed with hatred against the Romans?

  Yet buffering that emotion, Vitas sensed the warmth of his affection for Ben-Aryeh. During the years in Alexandria, with Ben-Aryeh exiled from Jerusalem, the older man had become a family member.

  “Your travels were unremarkable, I hope,” Vitas replied. No man wanted adventure during travel, especially here in Judea. Titus and the legions had cleared resistance in all directions from Jerusalem, but there were still no guarantees of safety.

  “Bah,” Ben-Aryeh answered. “I had an escort of Roman soldiers along the entire road from Caesarea. How do you think I liked that?” Ben-Aryeh had been among the priests of the Temple, as staunchly nationalistic as any Jew. “As I passed through the town where I was sent to wait for you,” he continued, “I could not help but think of how much I hated you when we first met, before the revolt. You, a despicable Roman.”

  “You were a cantankerous old man then,” Vitas said, recalling that day in the market, where Queen Bernice had sent Ben-Aryeh to meet him. His personal mission had been to get to Jerusalem to search for a woman he could not put out of his mind, a Jewish slave girl he’d met in Greece. Sophia.

  “And,” Vitas added, “nothing has changed about you.”

  “But these changes . . .” Ben-Aryeh swept an arm toward the city below and the earthworks and ramparts arrayed along the wall. “Four years ago, this was unthinkable. But observe the mighty Roman war machine. That is the reason I should hate you again.”

  Ben-Aryeh sighed, still facing the city. “Bu
t Rome is not entirely at fault in this. And it is painful to admit that. My heart broke at the news that reached Alexandria, and it has fully shattered to behold what is before us. I could hardly bear to look over as I climbed up here to find you.”

  “I can hardly bear it myself,” Vitas answered. “And I only see what happens at the walls. I don’t let myself think of what it is like inside. Time and again, Titus has offered good terms for surrender. Yet they refuse. Prophets inside tell the people that God will smite us down.”

  “The second and third walls of the city, gone,” Ben-Aryeh said. “I can see it from here. Jerusalem’s suburb destroyed.”

  Jerusalem consisted of four parts, clearly visible from their location. Directly opposite them, on the east side of Jerusalem, was the Temple Mount, protected by the most massive walls, with the Antonia Fortress looking down on the Temple proper and the altar.

  To their left—south of the Temple—was the lower city, where most of the poor lived; behind it, the upper city with its mansions of the rich.

  To their right—north of the Temple—the new city had been built, its suburb once protected by a third wall. Well inside this third wall was a second wall, now destroyed, that separated the new city from the original upper and lower cities.

  Jerusalem was down to its remnants—the upper and lower cities and the Temple Mount. Its glory had been cut in half, but the remaining half was also protected by rugged geography that put its massive walls in the most difficult position to assail.

  “Titus is not entirely to blame for the destruction that you see,” Vitas said. “Again and again he has offered to spare the people if they give up the fight. Instead, they hurl arrows and spears at him when he speaks. There is something else—something you can’t see in the valley below from this angle. A wall built by the Romans to keep the Jews from breaking out of the city to fight.”

  “That doesn’t sound effective. There are miles and miles of hills on the other side of the city, where the Jews can disperse beyond reach of the wall and regroup over here.”

  “You don’t understand. Titus has put up his own walls around the entire city. Through the valley of Cedron, to Siloam, around the north, and back here again.”

  “Impossible.”

  “Titus had it built in three days. With thirteen towers filled with garrisons, dispersed around the perimeter to guard against any breach. Such is the power of Rome that a hundred thousand men can work together in unity and discipline and accomplish this.”

  Silence. Ben-Aryeh must have been contemplating the scope of that task and what it meant. Jerusalem was still solidly protected on its mount, yet now the entire mount was encircled by a new wall, ringed by soldiers.

  “How can the Temple survive?” Ben-Aryeh asked.

  “Take comfort,” Vitas said. “Titus has repeatedly said he will protect the Temple.”

  “I pray that it is so,” Ben-Aryeh said softly. “But I have journeyed here in case he fails to protect it. First tell me: Is it over for the people of Jerusalem?”

  “I have journeyed here in case he fails to protect it.” Vitas wanted badly to know what Ben-Aryeh had meant by that ambiguous statement, but instead of countering Ben-Aryeh’s question with a question of his own, Vitas chose patience and answered Ben-Aryeh. “It is only a matter of time.”

  “How long?”

  “Days, perhaps, until the Antonia tower is breached.”

  This was Titus’s next military goal. With the second and third walls gone, Antonia, at the northwest corner of the Temple Mount, was the most reachable. If he could breach Antonia, which before the revolt had held Roman garrisons but now gave protection to the Jewish defenders, the Temple itself would be vulnerable. And once the Temple was taken, the rest of the upper and lower cities could be breached as well.

  “Surely he can’t take Antonia,” Ben-Aryeh said. “Speak to me as if I were another general, just arrived. Tell me the advantages held by the rebels and the advantages held by the Romans.”

  Vitas furrowed his eyebrows, surprised by the request. “You’ve never seemed interested in the logistics of battle before.”

  “Will you trust me? I have good reason to ask.”

  “You never need ask for my trust,” Vitas said, thinking of how Ben-Aryeh had saved Sophia by helping stage her death, then taking her to Patmos and Caesarea. He owed Ben-Aryeh for Sophia’s life.

  Vitas spent the next minutes explaining. In January—after nearly a year without any action against the Jewish rebels—Titus had returned with his legions and resumed war. It had taken him until April to subdue the entire countryside, with tens of thousands of Jews fleeing for the unassailable sanctuary of Jerusalem.

  The larger issue, however, had resulted because of Nero’s suicide. With Vespasian’s retreat, it appeared as if the new state of Judea were secure and independent. Because of that, the Jews began to fight among themselves for rulership.

  At first, it pitted Zealots against moderates. The Zealots wanted to be totally independent of Rome; the moderates believed Rome would return and looked for a way to ensure peace with the empire. The Zealots, who had control of the Temple, executed all Jewish nobles, calling them Roman conspirators. The moderates managed to drive all the Zealots into the Temple area.

  A stalemate resulted, until the Zealots brought in Idumeans as extra warriors and, with the leadership of a man named John of Gischala, broke out of the Temple walls and penned the moderates in the upper city.

  The moderates fought back, allowing a man named Simon Ben-Gioras and all his warriors into the city. More fragmentation occurred; once the Zealots were driven back into the Temple, John turned against the high priests. This meant three factions were battling for control and straining the city’s resources.

  During Passover, the priests, who still controlled the inner Temple, allowed citizens in to worship. John took advantage of this and sent his own men in with hidden weapons, finally ending the priests’ control.

  Down to only two warring factions, Simon held the upper and lower cities, while John held the Temple.

  Worse, as Vitas explained, in John’s battle against Simon, John set fire to the supply warehouses outside the Temple, burning nearly the entire grain supply. What would have otherwise fed the city for years was now gone, driving it into famine.

  Ben-Aryeh could not help but break in. “All the grain!”

  Vitas nodded grimly. “Without that act, Titus would have expected the siege to last years. Finally John and Simon are working together to defend the walls. They have twenty thousand men. Even with Titus outnumbering them four to one, the defenders would have been unassailable, but every day they are weakened more by the deaths from starvation, and the survivors have less and less energy to fight.”

  “It’s like God himself has smitten the Jews,” Ben-Aryeh said.

  Both men surveyed the valley in silence, unable to shake a shared sense of awe at the meeting below of an immovable object and an irresistible force.

  By all accounts, Jerusalem was truly beyond conquering, for the walls of the city made it impossible for any force to breach.

  Faintly gleaming as the last of the day’s sun fell across the city, the stone of the wall was white marble, cut with such precision that the wall looked like one piece—sheer luminous limestone, reaching to the crowning glory of glistening gold that fashioned the Temple roof.

  Every monstrous stone block was ten paces long, five paces wide, and five paces high, and the wall was four blocks high. It would take twelve men, each standing on the shoulders of the man below him, just for the man at the top to be able to put his hands on the upper edge of the wall.

  But for added defense, Jerusalem was built on a high hill, and the valley was at its steepest below the wall. Thus, the geography made it impossible to stand level at the base of the wall; an arrow shot from the bottom of the valley could barely reach the wall itself.

  To add to the impossibility of conquering this city, huge towers dominated the wall, where
defenders could wait and pour forth at any attack.

  This was the immovable object.

  But the irresistible force was the Roman army. Tens of thousands of the most highly trained and disciplined soldiers had gathered in camps to surround the city.

  Despite being under constant attack from spears and arrows, over the previous months they had moved thousands and thousands of tons of dirt to build the bottom of the valley upward toward the walls.

  And once they had sufficiently elevated the ground, they had begun to build ramparts of wooden beams, again under hostile attack, losing hundreds of soldiers each day to the defenders, who had the tremendous advantage of height.

  Slowly and inexorably, the ramparts had been completed. And this was where the genius of Roman engineering became so fearful. The great battering rams were finally in place, day after day pounding against the walls. The men who moved the rams were covered in leather shields against the boiling oil flung down upon them and given the protection of soldiers who were finally close enough to the top of the walls to fire arrows back with a degree of effectiveness.

  “I would not have believed this unless I had seen it for myself,” Ben-Aryeh said, breaking the silence between them. “Indeed, that’s the reason I’m here. Because I had to see it for myself.”

  Vitas had not yet spoken the obvious. Ben-Aryeh’s wife was still in Jerusalem. If she was still alive. But he believed now was the time to broach the subject. “I will do everything in my power to help you find her,” Vitas said. “And Titus himself will give us both assistance.”

  “I pray daily that she will be spared,” Ben-Aryeh said. “As you know, I was not able to reach her by letter.”

  Ben-Aryeh had been unable to look for her himself. Not with three factions inside the city engaged in civil war behind the walls for the previous eighteen months.