To the Death (17 page)

Swallowing hard he continued, “The Greek port of Caesarea is the headquarters of the procurator and the Fifteenth Legion. From there messages can be sent to Caesar requesting reinforcements. In the meantime we can join with the Fifteenth Legion and wait with them for Cestius Gallus and his Syrian legions, for he will surely march on Jerusalem to punish the rebels”.

What Metilius had no way of knowing was that as even as he addressed his troops, the Greek population in Caesarea had seized the opportunity to
cleanse
the city of its Jews.

Florus, who was in the city, learning that the Greek authorities had voted on a policy of “ethnic cleansing”, had shrugged his shoulders, negotiated his usual cut and looked the other way.

Metilius continued, “When we leave the Antonia we will meet our escort, which will guarantee our safety to Caesarea. It is at this point we will lay down our arms.” As a groan greeted these words, the Commander looked sharply at his centurions, who simply stared stonily into space.

“Those are the conditions of the solemn treaty we have agreed. We have a choice. Staying here to die like rats in a trap or accept the Jews' terms of a safe conduct to Caesarea, from where”, he concluded, “we live to fight on, to return with Caesar's legions.

When they had marched out of the Antonia, more than a few secretly doubted they would ever see Caesarea. At the city gates Eleazar was waiting to receive them. With him, drawn up into orderly ranks, was the heavily armed escort that was to accompany them. Outside the fortress a breeze scented with juniper could be felt. Herds of black goats being driven out to pasture passed by, their owners wide-eyed at the sight of mounted soldiers.

As Metilius and his senior officers conferred with Eleazar and his subordinates, the column stood at ease. A donkey brayed somewhere. Sparrows flickered across the stones lying at their feet, the early morning air pellucid as crystal under a pale blue sky.

Eleazar spoke directly to Metilius, indicating with a sweep of his hand an area of flat ground. “Please ask your men to stack their weapons. While they are doing that your officers can discuss with mine how they will perform their escort duties, the arrangements for camping at night and the route we will take”.

Metilius inclined his head in acknowledgment and turning in his saddle gave the order to disarm.

As the Roman soldiers filed passed and stacked their weapons, Eleazar discussed the route with the Romans. There was little dissent. The Romans had built the road on which they were to travel. They knew every inch of the terrain between Jerusalem and Caesarea. Bereft of their arms the Romans felt naked, viewing the heavily armed escort that virtually surrounded them, with a feeling of foreboding.

The day, however, passed peacefully enough. The military routines governing the march, the taking of rest periods, agreeing plans for the first night's encampment, had passed without incident. In the late afternoon, emerging from a ravine, the Roman column made its way onto open ground patched with clumps of thistles. This was a point where several wadis met and the scouring of winter rain had created a small hill.

The escort, which had been out of sight for several hours, suddenly reappeared. Ominously it had been reinforced. The Romans suddenly found themselves surrounded by thousands of heavily armed men. On the low hill a group of horsemen silently watched them. Metilius gave the order for his men to form a square which out of habit they did, but as more than one man observed, “Without weapons, what's the point?”

Metilius could just make out the figure of Eleazar among the group of horsemen. He was on the point of calling out when a blast from a ram's horn sounded. This was the signal for the silent ring of men and horses to suddenly open, revealing companies of archers. A second blast was the signal to fire. The air turned black with arrows. The defenceless Romans didn't even have their shields for protection. They called out in anger, cursing the Jews, damning Eleazar. But to no avail. Four times the archers fired before the ram's horn sounded again, then the encircling Jews charged in, swords and axes swinging.

In less than an hour they had massacred the entire Roman column. Unbelievably they took Metilius alive. Disgracefully he had begged for his life, even offering to convert to Judaism and be circumcised. When Eleazar, who had roared with laughter at this, had recovered, he agreed. Then he and his men laughed and jeered as Metilius had to suffer the painful indignity of the operation, carried out by a nationalist using a none-too-clean knife and who, on Eleazar's orders, also slit Metilius' tongue.

Returning to Jerusalem the victorious rebels passed a dirt poor village, a conglomeration of tumbledown mud brick houses divided by a few rutted streets. The village elder was given the Roman Commander as a present and, when Eleazar's men marched on, he dragged the
praefectus
into an almost pitch black room. Here a patient ox plodded endlessly round, milling the village's corn. Unable to utter an intelligible sound, the wildly gabbling Roman was stripped naked and fixed by his wrists to a pole in company with the shackled ox.

Before closing the door on his new acquisition, the village elder ran an appreciative hand over Metilius' buttocks. His new owner determined to ensure the Roman would be as well looked after as his beast. “Even better,” he mused, for as well as pleasuring himself, there would be those in the village who would pay for the novelty of pale flesh.

15

W
hen
Eleazar returned to Jerusalem he found the city centre packed with thousands of Sicarii. Every street leading to the Temple was lined with Menahem's followers. Deeply suspicious, the leader of the Zealots ordered the gates of the Antonia fortress, which he had taken over, to be shut. After posting a double guard, he and his closest confederates made their way to the fortress' walls which looked out over the Temple. What they witnessed took their breath away.

A coronation was in progress. Menahem, dressed in cloth of gold and accompanied by hundreds of his followers, was walking slowly down the central aisle of the inner court where a number of priests were gathered around a golden throne positioned under a canopy of royal purple. An incredulous Eleazar hissed to his companions “The bastard's being crowned”.

“But that's impossible”, replied Absolom, one of his lieutenants. “He is not of the house of David”.

“Neither was the Idumaean pig Herod”, interjected Judah, another of his companions, “yet he ruled for twenty years”.

“Go into the city”, grated Eleazar. “Find as many of the city's father as you can. Tell them what's going on. Tell them, if they storm the Temple to put an end to this blasphemy, we will support them”.

“The people will never attack the Temple” muttered Absolom.

“Yes they will, if blasphemy is being committed and the house of God profaned. It can only be cleansed by the blood of the transgressor. Now go and rouse the people”.

Eleazar returned to the Antonia, ordering his subordinates to get the Zealots ready to attack down the staircases that led directly to the Temple. “Let's make good use of what the fucking Romans left us” he shouted. “Place a chain of men between me and the Antonia staircases. On my signal, attack – which will be when I wave this scarf ”. Eleazar unwound a gold and white scarf from his throat and tucked it into his sleeve.

Eyes slit with hatred, Eleazar crouched in his hiding place above the Temple court, watching as Menahem took his place on the throne. The smell of incense reached his nostrils. To the sound of trumpets, high priests in their vestments of purple and gold unrolled the sacred scrolls. As the reading commenced, hundreds of Sicarii who had gathered to witness Menahem's triumph, prostrated themselves. A golden crown lying on a purple cushion, edged with cords and tassels braided from gold and silver thread, was brought in solemn procession.

Bile rose in Eleazar's throat. His normally dark face flushed with blood, his whole being filled with hatred. Tearing his eyes away from the scene below, he gave the prearranged signal which rippled down the line of hidden Zealots.

Absolom, who had readied his forces, nodded to a trumpeter who blasted out the signal.

Archers who had crept along the Temple balconies stood up, arrows notched. They volleyed flight after flight into the Temple court. As this murderous hail fell on the unsuspecting Sicarii, hundreds of heavily armed men poured across the Temple steps, to attack the gates leading to the inner court. As these gates were breached, the archers received a signal to stop firing.

As Eleazar's soldiers burst into the court they were reinforced immediately with hundreds of citizens armed with stolen Roman weapons. Eleazar, knowing the value of the Roman short sword - the
gladius
- had made certain every one of his followers had one. They also carried the light round shield favoured by Arab cavalry. Outnumbered and caught unawares, the Sicarii were overrun. Few of them even had weapons for they had respected the Temple law.

They were cut to pieces. Eleazar's orders had been specific. No prisoners, nobody to be spared - except Menahem who was to be taken alive.

The great swirling mass of attacked and attackers pulsed like some enormous jellyfish with an energy of its own. Eleazar found it difficult to pick out individual figures. He was about to leave his vantage point, when a flash of gold made him concentrate on a knot of figures that had broken away from the main group. Eleazar hissed with rage. It was Menahem, surrounded by his personal bodyguards, who was fighting to reach one of the exits. Eleazar screamed orders but could not make himself heard about the roar that filled the court.

Helpless to stop it, Eleazar watched Menahem edge nearer and nearer to an exit. With a curse of his own the Zealot leader ran towards the staircase. It would take him back into the Antonia. Pausing only to snatch up a sword, he shouted at the officer left in command of the fortress, “A hundred men to me now”. Without waiting for confirmation he sprinted for the entrance to the Temple.

It says much for the Zealots' training, which owed much to Rome, that the officer who had received Eleazar's order had fifty men under a competent officer at Eleazar's heels within seconds, and was busy organising a second fifty before the first had cleared the door.

As he burst out of the Temple, Eleazar hurtled down the steps in time to see several stallholders at the end of the road picking their goods out of the gutter. They were also cursing and shouting, fists raised in anger.

Without a second's hesitation Eleazar ordered his men to continue the pursuit. He would wait for the rest of the attack force. Impatiently he started commandeering horses. “Get him”, he roared, “but alive. Succeed and you can name your own reward”. He grabbed the captain of his men by the throat “Fail and I will have you flayed and staked”.

The young officer led his men in frantic pursuit, upsetting for a second time the merchandise of the street vendors. More of Eleazar's men arrived. “Horses!” he snapped. “I want them fast, no arguments. Kill anybody who argues; anybody. Now go”.

The captain nodded and turned his men away.

Menahem and a dozen of his closest companions, the remains of his personal bodyguard, had escaped the city through the gate close to the Hinnom valley. The track they were on cut through dense scrub. Turning and twisting, the path snaked around the base of the city wall. Massive boulders and huge outcrops of rock flanked both sides of the narrow path, creating a tunnel effect. Loose scree, slipping underfoot, slowed the fleeing men down.

Menahem knew that his only hope was to reach Masada. His plan was to secure horses from the pilgrims camped on the plain. As he and his men scrambled along the floor of the ravine, they stopped from time to time to listen for sounds of pursuit, but so far none had come.

A young boy, who often grazed the family's skinny black goats along the canyon rim, was perched in the shadow of a rock. He watched the fleeing men with interest. They were taking more chances than was safe on the rough ground. Whoever is after them, he mused, is feared.

He watched for a few more minutes before scrambling to his feet. He was thin as a rake, his sinuous body deeply tanned and uncut dark brown hair secured with a leather thong tied round his forehead. His only clothing was a tattered woollen smock belted at the waist ending at his knees. At his waist was a pouch that held a dozen or so carefully selected round pebbles - ammunition for the sling shot looped through his belt and his only other possession, a cheap wooden handled knife, kept in a homemade leather sheath on his belt.

Barefoot and as nimble as one of his own goats, he flitted over the tumble of boulders and rocky outcrops, making his way to the gate leading back into the city. Here he looked around for a vantage point. Scrambling onto a low roof of one of the many buildings that butted the wall, he settled down to wait.

Benjamin Bar Levi and a dozen young men burst into the main street at a dead run. Panting heavily, sweat streaming down their faces, they shouldered their way through the crowded street to the gate. “Two minutes”, he snapped to his winded men, who took advantage of the rest to gulp water from a public fountain.

Benjamin's gaze scoured the street with its many intersections. Automatically his eyes ran along the windows and rooftops. The boy was watching him, perched like a thrush, black eyes bright with interest. Benjamin spotted him. “Did you see men run this way?”