Bloodline (45 page)

As the last of the men marched around the bend, the centurion Marcus Julius Tertius glanced around, held up his hand, and called for his men to halt. Abraham was surprised. They should have continued to march forward into the ambush, because where they had stopped was too distant for the Zealots' weapons to harm the Romans. He, Jonathan, and the Zealot army wondered what they were doing.

Abraham watched in fascination as the centurion dismounted and led his horse to the water. He barked a command, and a dozen soldiers ran to the edge of the track where it rose up the hillside, standing there on guard while the other soldiers sat on the ground and rested, drinking from flasks and eating bread from their satchels.

The Zealots were forced to wait until the Romans had finished their rest period, frustrated that their battle had been delayed. Suddenly, unexpectedly, there was a piercing scream from halfway up the hillside. Horrified, Abraham turned quickly to see one of the Zealots farther up the hill behind him stand, clutching his shoulder. Then he staggered forward and fell over the edge of the cliff, plunging earthward. Another stood, clutching at his neck as though trying to remove a bee's stinger. Frantic, the man twisted and turned and it was then that Abraham saw an arrow that had pierced the back of his neck; its point was sticking out of his throat. His eyes were wide in fear and pain as he struggled to do something, but it was immediately apparent to Abraham that the man was already as good as dead. From the wound, a fountain of blood gushed out of the man's throat and mouth as
he pitched forward, headfirst. He fell just beyond the ledge and crashed onto a rock below. There was a sickening thud as the man's head was crushed, and as he fell farther, Abraham saw the streak of blood that colored the rock.

As the dead man cascaded downward, another scream came from behind a tree to his left; then another as the men to Abraham's right and left tumbled down the steep hill toward the valley floor, each man pierced by an arrow or a spear. More men on the opposite side of the valley screamed and seemed to dive from their hiding places on the mountainside down to their deaths. Each was pierced in his leg or arm or back or head by a vile Roman weapon. Abraham held his breath in shock, not knowing what to do. He was well hidden, but any movement would lead to his certain exposure and death.

And then he heard a warlike scream in Latin: “
Aperi portas Inferno!
” He'd heard it once or twice before when he was in Rome. It meant “Open the gates of Hell!” The moment the words echoed off the walls of the valley, breaking the once-peaceful silence, a further swarm of arrows and spears fell from the heights of the hills down onto where the Zealots had positioned themselves. Abraham watched in dismay as the Jews tried to return the assault but instead were rewarded by a hail of arrows. Five, then ten, then thirty Zealots clutched their chests or throats or legs as the arrows and spears found their marks. All around him was the hideous whistle of arrows in flight and the sickening thwack of spears burrowing deep into chests and arms and legs.

The Zealots stood in panic from their hideouts, looking up to the tops of the hills as they tried to defend themselves from the deadly rain of a thousand arrows and spears. But they stood no chance. Hundreds of Roman soldiers had silently gathered on the hilltops in a deadly trap. Some of the Zealots managed to shoot arrows upward toward the Romans, but it was useless, and within the blink of an eye all of the Jews were slaughtered and falling down the hillside into the ravine below. Abraham cowered,
terrified, unable to move a muscle. By the good graces of Adonai, he had hidden himself on a rock ledge out of sight of the valley floor, and because of the overhang of the cave's entrance he was out of view of the soldiers on the tops of the mountains.

But he could see some of the Roman soldiers on the crest of the hillside, taking aim at the Jews as though they were killing cattle in a pen. He saw that all of the Roman soldiers in the valley had stood and were running forward. As they reached the Zealots who'd fallen down the hillside, they slit their throats to ensure that they were dead.

It was all over in what seemed like the time it takes to dress for morning prayers, but these poor patriots would never pray again. At the beginning, before the ambush, there was silence, but the moment it started, there were screams from the very depths of Gehenna; then, when the arrows and spears were in full flight, there was a cacophony of shouts and curses and threats and yelps and prayers for help. Then, just as suddenly, there was a mysterious and enveloping silence. And in the silence Abraham knew with certainty that there was death.

It was dark by the time the two centurions met, the burly one in the valley and the commander of the troops who had attacked the Zealots. They came together far below Abraham, beside the river, hugging and congratulating each other, laughing and joking about the success of their operation. And all the Romans formed up and marched out of the valley toward Sepphoris.

Abraham didn't move; couldn't move. He was the only survivor of the massacre. All the Zealots were dead and the Romans didn't even bother to bury their bodies, leaving their corpses as a testament to Rome's dominance and a lesson to any who thought to fight the might of their emperor.

And while Israel and its men were enslaved and killed by their conquerors, Abraham found that he was suddenly free to return to his comfortable life with his wife and children.

I
T HAD BEEN THREE WEEKS
since the Zealot group were slaughtered by the Romans. For them, it was a great victory, but it caused seething hatred and resentment among the Zealots in Jerusalem, who hid their activities by meeting in basements, outside of the walls in the many valleys that surrounded the city, and in eating places where the innkeepers served only those whom they recognized as being travelers or local Israelites—anybody but a Roman.

Samuel, who heard about the raid days after the bodies of Jonathan and his men became food for vultures and crows and lions, was bereft but had to pretend to look delighted when his Roman friends came to call. They gathered in his house, now one of the safest places for the nobility and senior echelons of the army to meet, and ate and drank and laughed uproariously as the Praefectus Alae, the Tribunus Cohortis, and the Praefectus Castrorum and their wives congratulated one another on their recent stunning victories. And Samuel and his wife, Lior, were forced to laugh and drink with them, agreeing that now that the Jews had been taught a severe lesson, perhaps they would behave like all enslaved peoples and respect their masters.

What none of Samuel's guests realized, though, was that the massacre of Jonathan and his men was the turning point in what had, until then, been a minor insurrection. The way in which the bodies of the Zealots were treated—left to become food for wild animals instead of being given a Jewish burial—caused the restrained hatred for the Romans to flare up. Within two days of the news reaching Jerusalem, men, women, and children who had previously observed the curfew were now walking in the shadows of the streets, watching the Romans and how they deported themselves. And they saw how frequently Samuel the wealthy merchant celebrated the Romans' success, how many important
governors, senior soldiers, and their wives gathered at his house, and the noises of laughter that erupted out of the windows and over the walls.

The disgust of the people grew with the joyous banter of the Romans along the streets near the temple. And Samuel's friendship was noticed by Zealots who were not privy to Samuel's relationship with Jonathan.

One evening, when Samuel was out dining in the home of the Roman garrison commander, a party of Zealots burst their way into Samuel's home. At first his Nubian slave put up a valiant fight, breaking the necks of two of the attackers; but he was soon forced to retreat from the door where he was trying to block their entrance and was speared to death outside his master's office, where Samuel's wife, Lior, their three daughters, and their two sons were standing in fear, listening to the melee outside.

Lior now realized that she had made a terrible mistake by entering this room for safety, because there was only one door, and if the intruders overcame the servants, she and her children had no way out. She enfolded as many of the younger ones as she could in her arms, and all hid beneath Samuel's table.

“Children,” she whispered, trying to keep her voice from sounding as though she were panicking, “your father will be home very soon, and he'll tell those horrible men to go away. But until your father returns, we have to remain here. The nasty men won't dare to enter into your father's office. He doesn't allow you inside, and so they will know to stay away.”

But while she was trying to stop her two little girls from crying, the noise of shouting and cursing from the vestibule suddenly stopped. Her heart thumping as though it would burst out of her chest, Lior listened and prayed to God Almighty that the men had been sent away. But when she heard footsteps approaching the office's door, she knew that her worst fears were about to be realized. The door burst open and four men suddenly entered the room.

“There they are,” said one of the men, pointing underneath Samuel's table. “Out, Roman whore. You and your bastards.”

Her oldest son, Raphael, suddenly lost his temper and sprang to his feet. “You leave me and my family alone. Go away. You're not allowed to be in here and we don't like you.” He ran at the first man and started to bang him with his fists, but the Zealot grabbed the ten-year-old by the lapels of his tunic and lifted him off the floor.

“Brave little bastard, aren't you?” he said with a malicious sneer. “Shame your mother's a Roman prostitute and your father licks the Roman backside. But your whole family isn't worth my shit, so you'll die just like the rest of them.”

“No!” screamed Lior, and left her hysterical children under the table. She stood and ran to the man in order to save her Raphael. But as she ran across the room, a second man raised his dagger and plunged it into Lior's breast as she opened her arms to rescue her son. Raphael shouted for his mother as the first Zealot dropped him on the ground and kicked him mercilessly in the head. He then stomped on his neck and heard a satisfying crunch, which told him instantly that he'd killed the boy.

The other children under the table were frenzied and kicking their legs in their hysteria. Two men walked over and with a couple of light stabs with their Sicarii knives ended the children's hysteria. The men, satisfied that Samuel's family were all dead, left the room to search the rest of the house and find where the cowardly merchant was hiding.

But the Zealots couldn't find him, and so they rampaged through his whole house, killing all of his servants and scrawling in Hebrew on his pristine white plaster walls “So end the lives of those who lay with the Romans.” And just so the Romans would understand that Jewish traitors would be killed for helping the invaders, a man wrote the same message in Latin: “
Et ita finis vite iaceret Romanorum.
”

When the Zealots were certain that all of the merchant's
family and servants were no longer a threat to Israel, a neighbor, hiding and fearing for his own life, ran to fetch Samuel.

The merchant rushed home, crying and wailing and tearing his clothes while he cradled his dead wife and children. Through his tears and cries, he heard a faint voice calling, “
Abba
 . . .”

He looked around and saw his eldest son, Raphael, had crawled behind a tapestry and was lying there, dying. The boy was white from loss of blood and shock, and the wounds in the hair of his head and on his neck showed that he'd been kicked viciously by somebody. Desperate to save the sole remaining member of his family, in a flood of tears Samuel carried the boy to the house of the doctor, who'd recently returned from the captivity of the Zealots to his wife.

Abraham ben Zakkai was in the middle of saying a silent thanksgiving prayer to Adonai Elohim for keeping his family safe while he was abducted by the Zealots when Sarah, his wife of fifteen years, entered the room carrying a bowl of meat stew. It was the third such stew that week, unusual in that the family rarely ate meat more than once a week, despite the fact that he was a doctor and was quite able to afford it more often. But as he said a
b'rucha
over the wine, sipped it, and handed the cup around to his wife and his children to share in the Lord's blessing of the grape, he found his voice breaking. He was so relieved to be home, so relieved to see his beautiful family again, that for the third time that week he was moved to tears.

When all had drunk from the cup of wine, he said a
b'rucha
over the bread, which he tore into portions and handed around to his family standing beside the table. Then they all bowed their heads in their shared heritage of being Jews in Israel, even an Israel under the heel of the Romans, even an Israel being torn apart by the murderous Zealots. Silently, piously, each said his own invocation to Adonai Elohim for his own special needs, and when they'd finished their prayers they sat to eat. Since Sarah's entrance, the small room had filled with the delicious aroma of
the stew, the herbs and spices and the freshly baked bread, which the children would use to mop up the divine juices.

Sarah watched the way her husband was pondering his food, gazing down into the wooden bowl and stirring it with his spoon instead of eating it eagerly as their children were. Since Abraham had returned from his abduction by the Zealots, since the massacre of the patriots, she had become increasingly worried about her husband. He'd been distant and withdrawn since he wandered back to their home in the middle of the night, emaciated, exhausted, filthy, and appearing as though all life and spirit had been drained out of him. He kissed her and his children regularly, played with them, read biblical scrolls to them, but she knew him well enough to know that his heart wasn't in it. It was as though he had returned the same man but with part of his soul missing.