The Last Temple Read online

  “Eleazar.”

  “Dead. Executed by Simon Ben-Gioras.”

  When Ben-Aryeh finished his list of names, he learned that most had been killed. Two were moderates. Two were Zealots.

  “Now,” Ben-Matthias said, “you’ll tell me what brings you here and why it was so important that Bernice and Titus protect Vitas on your behalf? Was it a conspiracy that involved all those men?”

  “Some whom I asked about were involved,” Ben-Aryeh said. “I added other names so that you will never know which were involved and which were not, but I had to know if the few are still alive.”

  “I trust the ones you need are not dead.”

  “You will get no answer from me in that regard. Let me simply say that these men have been called to a duty that goes back generations and is of utmost importance to our people. Vitas was chosen by these men and will learn his role tomorrow.”

  “What!” Vitas was startled. Chosen? By a secret circle of Jews he did not know?

  The old man rubbed his face, then gave a weary smile. “My friend, I have borne much guilt over these last few years, hiding from you that I am, in a sense, an infiltrator.”

  “Our friendship has been false?”

  “No,” Ben-Aryeh said. “Otherwise, I would not carry the burden of guilt. Otherwise, I would not be making this confession now, asking forgiveness.”

  “You protected Sophia and brought her back to me. Don’t ask forgiveness.”

  “I must. From the beginning, once I learned who you are and of your love for Sophia, I realized you were the one person who could help should this day ever arrive, with the fall of Jerusalem so imminent.”

  “Then explain,” Vitas said.

  “You were chosen because you are a Roman with influence and a man the Jews can trust. I was given the task of becoming close to you. At first, it was a role, gladly accepted because of how it might help my people. But I have come to love you as a father loves a son.”

  “Forgiven,” Vitas said softly.

  “If I die tomorrow,” Ben-Aryeh said, “I die in peace. Thank you.”

  “Let’s not die,” Vitas said lightly, looking for a way to break the mood. “Instead, tell me more about why we enter the city.”

  “Aside from my promise to help you look for Damian,” Ben-Aryeh said, “I must keep my silence.”

  “Surely,” Ben-Matthias protested, “you can tell more than that? If it is this important that you enter the city while it is on the verge of destruction, then it is important enough for future generations of Jews to know.”

  “I promise you it truly is this important,” Ben-Aryeh said with finality. “And such is the importance that it must never be known to history.”

  Venus

  Hora Prima

  The Romans had long conquered the outer walls of the northern part of the city, moved into the suburbs, and gathered assaults at the base of the Antonia tower at the corner of the Temple Mount.

  It was all that stood between Rome and the Temple itself.

  At dawn, under a sky streaked with red, Titus stood on a hastily constructed platform and addressed the legions. They were men in polished breastplates that reflected the reddish gleam in the sky, men with spears and swords, standing in organized columns, utterly silent, as not a single man shifted from one hobnailed boot to another.

  “Fellow soldiers,” Titus began. It was said that a commander needed more than a grasp of military strategy to succeed. He also needed to be a skilled orator, one who knew not only how to assemble words but how to project them. The great Greek orator Demosthenes, as legend had it, practiced his speeches by delivering them with pebbles in his mouth, at the waves of the sea to be heard above the water. Skilled orators learned to speak above the disrespectful crowds at the forum; here, Titus had the focused attention of every man, and his words carried clearly. Vitas sat on the back of a donkey at the rear of all the massed soldiers and heard his friend Titus as well as if they were having a conversation in a quiet courtyard.

  “I am fully of the same opinion as you,” Titus said, “that it is a difficult task to go up this wall. But it is proper that those who desire reputation for their valor should struggle with difficulties like this, and I have particularly shown that it is a brave thing to die with glory.”

  Titus scanned all the soldiers to see the impact of his words. When command of a legion was a political appointment only, oration like this was hollow. But Titus was a fighting man, and every soldier knew it. They would die for him because they knew he would die for them.

  “Listen as I say this. The courage here necessary shall not go unrewarded for those who first begin the attempt.”

  Those words reverberated. Titus truly was a good orator. He did not speak until he knew every soldier had absorbed his promise. The Temple held untold riches. Titus would share the spoils according to each man’s bravery.

  “It is unbecoming to you—who are Romans and my soldiers, who have in peace been taught how to make wars, and who have also been used to conquer in those wars—to be inferior to Jews, either in action of the hand or in courage of the soul,” Titus said.

  Vitas smiled. Titus had offered the carrot first, and now he was showing the stick.

  “And this especially when you are at the conclusion of your victory,” Titus continued, “and are assisted by God himself. Our misfortunes have been owing to the madness of the Jews, while their sufferings have been owing to your valor and to the assistance God has afforded you. The seditions they have faced, the famine they are under, the siege they now endure, and the fall of their walls to our engines—what can they all be but demonstrations of God’s anger against them, and of his assistance on our behalf? If we go up to this tower of Antonia, we gain the city.” Titus let excitement and fervor build in his voice. “Pull up your courage, set about this work, and mutually encourage and assist one another—and your bravery will soon break the hearts of your enemies.”

  He drew a breath and raised a fist to the sky. “As for that person who first mounts the wall, I should blush for shame if I did not make him the envy of others by those rewards I will bestow upon him. If such a one escape with his life, he shall have the command of others who are now his equals. Step forward and be that man!”

  Titus surveyed the soldiers.

  Collectively, the soldiers seemed to hold their breath. And then movement. One man strode down the line between the columns and stood in front of Titus.

  “Who are you?” Titus asked.

  “I am Sabinus. Syrian by birth.”

  From the vantage point of the donkey’s back, Vitas had a good view of the Syrian. His color was black, and he was lean and thin. At first glance, he appeared too small and too weak to be a soldier of any measure. But he stood with his back arched and his chest forward and spoke with a fervor that made it clear Titus had inspired him.

  “I readily surrender myself up to you, General,” Sabinus said. “I will first ascend the wall, and I heartily wish that my fortune may follow my courage and my resolution. And if some ill fortune deny me the success of my undertaking, remember that I choose death voluntarily for your sake.”

  He made a fist and touched his chest above his heart as he said this. Titus made the same gesture, and as if in a single voice, every soldier in the army roared.

  Sabinus spread his shield over his head with his left hand and, with his right hand, drew his sword. He began to march up to the wall, and eleven others fell in behind him.

  Titus motioned the commanders to hold back the other soldiers.

  As the twelve men approached Antonia, Jewish defenders started hurling rocks and rolling stones. Some of the eleven fell, but Sabinus seemed to emerge unscathed from the hailstorm as he dashed up the ramp and clawed to the top.

  The Jewish defenders, in apparent astonishment at his bravery, allowed him to stand at the top of the wall, and without hesitation, Sabinus pressed the attack with his sword. Sabinus stumbled, but even then, on his knees and covering himself w
ith his shield, he lashed out at the men who surrounded him.

  That was when Titus waved his commanders to send their men forward.

  The soldiers roared again in one voice. It felt to Vitas like the rumble of thunder.

  And the battle began.

  Leaving the battle well behind them, as planned, Vitas and Ben-Aryeh led a convoy of twenty soldiers and camels south through the Kidron Valley below the Temple Mount on the east side of Jerusalem. They kept close to the outer Roman wall, passing beneath the watchful eyes of soldiers in the staggered garrisons along that perimeter. Titus had not committed all his men to the battle; others were needed to keep the Jewish defenders penned.

  While Vitas and Ben-Aryeh were far enough from the walls of the city to be safe, it was an unnecessary precaution; the defenders had left their posts for a last stand to keep Antonia out of the hands of the Romans.

  In less than half an hour, moving parallel to the lower city, they reached the southeast corner of the city. The wall turned at nearly ninety degrees, and they followed it, moving directly west. Another half hour at a slow and steady upward climb took them to the southwest corner of the city, and they turned again, heading north along the walls, with the upper city now on their right. The outline of three towers farther up the wall cut cleanly against the sky. They were the towers that overlooked Herod’s palace—Phasael, Hippicus, and Mariamne.

  These were monstrous fortifications within the city, for in Herod’s lifetime, as a king put in place by Rome, he had always needed to keep a wary eye against revolt from his own people. Now, the fortifications had served to protect the moderates and Simon Ben-Gioras, who had held the upper city in their battles against John of Gischala and his Zealots.

  With the towers in sight, Vitas again wondered how they would enter the city.

  At the wall at the base of the Phasael tower, Ben-Aryeh held a shofar in his hands. Made of a ram’s horn, it was traditionally used by priests to sound alarm or call a congregation to worship.

  Ben-Aryeh blew three times through the ram’s horn, paused, then three more times.

  Vitas kept his gaze upward. Solid stone blocks extended so far above him that he had to tilt his head as far back as possible to see the top of the Phasael tower. It was square with ornate ramparts; the tower continued rising above the ramparts with rectangular openings just below the roof.

  Again, Ben-Aryeh blew through the ram’s horn, keeping the same pattern.

  Behind Vitas, two hundred steps away from the wall and well out of range of anything that might be flung at them, the soldiers watched impassively. They had been given simple orders. Remain in place with the camels until ordered otherwise by the authority of Vitas or Titus. These were older soldiers, not motivated by dreams of glory. Vitas guessed they were content not to be in the forefront of battle at Antonia.

  For a third time, Ben-Aryeh blew the horn, then watched expectantly.

  Vitas wasn’t surprised to see motion far above him—two men leaning out from one of the rectangular openings of the tower. Nor was he surprised when he realized they had begun to lower a knotted rope down the tower wall. Short of tunneling beneath the walls, the only way into the city was by climbing. He certainly wasn’t surprised that the horn had called them to action, for the scenario had obviously been prearranged.

  What did make him curious, however, was how they had known to expect Ben-Aryeh and what the arrangements were, for Ben-Aryeh would not have been able to get a message of any kind into the city.

  Vitas knew better than to ask Ben-Aryeh, for the older man had made it clear he wasn’t revealing anything until the moment any new information for Vitas was necessary.

  Instead, when the bottom of the rope touched the ground, he began to climb into a city of Zealots ready to tear apart any Roman on sight.

  Hora Secunda

  For the next fifteen minutes, Vitas wondered if each breath would be his last. He was exposed on the wall and a very slow-moving target. He kept waiting for a cry of alarm from somewhere along the ramparts, followed by a barrage of arrows.

  Each time he looked down, Ben-Aryeh’s head was just below his feet. More than once, he felt the man’s hand brush against a heel. He was impressed at the older man’s strength, and that spurred Vitas to climb faster, knot by solid knot.

  Soon, though, Vitas stopped looking down. The height began to dizzy him, and he focused on the sensation of rough hemp against his palms and the burning in his biceps from pulling upward.

  Near the top, Vitas was gasping with exhaustion, his face and forearms dripping with sweat. If he hadn’t been able to support much of his body weight on the succession of thick knots in the rope, he doubted he would have made it.

  When he reached the opening, men grabbed him with secure grips just below his armpits and hauled him into the coolness of the tower.

  The room was a square, about ten steps wide and ten steps long. The rectangular openings gave plenty of light, but there was nothing to see inside the room. It was bare.

  Vitas noted this as he was drawing deep breaths and trying to recover. Seconds later, the two men pulled Ben-Aryeh inside. They immediately began to pull up the rope, coiling it at their feet.

  “Your strength put me to shame,” Vitas told Ben-Aryeh, almost euphoric at surviving and glad to be in a position to joke about it. “I’m twenty years younger, but it was like you were trying to pass me as we climbed.”

  “Not strength,” Ben-Aryeh croaked. “Terror.”

  Ben-Aryeh dropped to his knees and kissed the stone floor.

  The two young men who had helped them into the small, bare room at the top of the tower were bearded, but even the facial hair wasn’t enough to totally conceal the gauntness of their faces.

  Vitas had been wondering about the sack that Ben-Aryeh had insisted on carrying over his shoulder, and his curiosity was answered almost immediately.

  “Thank you,” Ben-Aryeh said when he stood again. “I’m aware that you’ve risked your lives to help.”

  He reached into the sack and pulled out a loaf of bread and some cheese wrapped in a cloth. Both men stared at the food, almost in awe. Ben-Aryeh extended it to them, and one took the offering with trembling hands. Instead of immediately eating, however, he handed the bread and cheese to his companion and said, “It must be shared.”

  The second one nodded. Neither spoke as they moved toward the thick wooden door.

  Vitas took a step to follow, but Ben-Aryeh put a warning hand on his arm, and Vitas remained.

  Both men left, and Vitas heard the door lock behind them.

  They were now prisoners.

  “Your trust is important,” Ben-Aryeh said.

  “I’d rather know what is ahead of us.”

  “One thing at a time. I’ve told you that repeatedly.”

  “Then at least answer this,” Vitas said. “How did they know to be waiting with a rope?”

  Ben-Aryeh led Vitas to the opposite side of the tower. Because the tower was at the top edge of the city, the view east through the opening would have been breathtaking under any other circumstances. To the right were the expansive grounds of Herod’s palace. There the Christos had been taken to face a jesting Herod during his trials before crucifixion.

  Down the slope of the upper city were the mansions of the nobles, including the estate where Ben-Aryeh had lived in luxury before the false claims of rape had driven him away. Vitas remembered from his visit four years earlier that the gardens had been lush and the walls of the estates pristine and white. Now, burn marks scorched the walls, and the vegetation had been devastated by people desperate from famine.

  Directly opposite, at the far end of the city, where the land rose again for the Temple Mount, white smoke rose in a straight line, mixed with dark plumes. The wood around Antonia was burning, tainted by the oil used to keep the flames as intense as possible.

  Vitas now understood why the sounds of Ben-Aryeh’s shofar had drawn no attention.

  Below and outside of
the city, the massive walls of Jerusalem had shielded him from the sound of the fighting at Antonia. Up here in the tower, the shrieks and screams and wails carried clearly. All attention in the city was focused on the battle that might continue for hours. Only someone listening for the shofar would have noticed.

  Which was the question Vitas wanted answered.

  “Look,” Ben-Aryeh said, pointing at the top of the Mount of Olives, beyond the Temple.

  Even at this distance, Vitas saw what Ben-Aryeh meant.

  The top of a group of olive trees was swathed in white.

  “Cloth?” Vitas asked.

  “That was the signal to have someone waiting,” Ben-Aryeh said.

  Vitas squinted. Lost in puzzlement, the sounds of battle faded for him.

  “You had no way of getting a message into the city,” he told Ben-Aryeh.

  “Not recently,” the older man said. “This was arranged long ago.”

  Vitas cocked his head. “Am I to understand that for months, someone has been looking out every day at the Mount of Olives for that very signal?”

  “No,” Ben-Aryeh said. “Years.”

  The implications whirled through Vitas’s mind, but he didn’t have a chance to voice them.

  There was a sound of a key turning in the lock.

  “Give me a reason to trust you,” a man said upon entering the room. He pulled the door shut, and someone outside locked it behind him.

  Roughly Vitas’s age, the man had a crescent-shaped scar on top of his left cheekbone, above a sparse beard. He was unarmed but stared at them with unnatural ferocity.

  “No,” Ben-Aryeh said. “Give me a reason to trust you.”

  The man barked out the semblance of a laugh. “All right then. I’ll first tell you who I am. Simon Ben-Gioras.”

  Ben-Aryeh spit.

  It didn’t seem to offend Ben-Gioras, who barked his attempt at laughter again. “I see you know of me. I’m the one who captured and killed and tortured hundreds until my wife was released to me. And I’m the one who saved the upper city from destruction.”