Devil's Island (9 page)

“Then let's go!” another soldier called, anxious to move on.

Tobias knelt over Abraham and reached for his belt, pretending to search for a wallet. “I'll never make it out of this alive,” Tobias murmured. “Save them . . . if you can.”

Abraham saw the silent pleading in Tobias's eyes, which filled with tears at the reference to his family.

“And if you can't,” he added, “then save yourself.” His voice choked with emotion, he stammered, “F-f-find a way out.”

“Tobias, what are you doing?” The soldier's voice was angry, and a scowl twisted his face.

“I thought he might be carrying money.”

“And what would there be to spend it on?” the other man asked bitterly.

“Freedom,” Tobias whispered, giving Abraham a final look that held the significance of a shared understanding. “God be with you, Abraham.”

“And with you,” Abraham replied softly. There was so much he wanted to say that his heart ached more than his head, and as Tobias turned and left, Abraham knew with a certainty that it would be the last time he ever saw his cousin. He also knew that Tobias had spoken the truth: he would never survive the final battle for the heart and soul of Jerusalem; Tobias would die a reluctant martyr to the cause.

Abraham remained motionless on the ground as the soldiers departed. He watched them step over several bodies heaped in the street, casualties who'd been allowed to die where they lay. When the group was finally out of sight, he sat up and touched his head gingerly. The wound was not deep and the bleeding had stopped. A large lump was rising and he had a raging headache, but he would be fine. He bore no ill will toward Tobias for the injury, for he knew it was an impulsive attempt to spare Abraham the same fate Tobias had met. And it had worked.

Light-headed but heavyhearted, Abraham made his way slowly through the deserted streets back to the house, debating whether to tell Rivka. Would the news that Tobias was alive renew her strength and revive her will to live? Or would it only throw her deeper into despair, knowing his chance of living through the final battle was virtually nonexistent?

His internal debate turned out to be an exercise in futility. When he reached the house, he found Rivka sitting against the wall, her eyes closed, her breathing shallow. She still held the baby clutched tightly to her chest, but Abraham perceived instantly that something was drastically wrong.

He knelt down beside Rivka and reached over to touch Joel, stroking the baby's cheek lightly with the back of his index finger. The child was cold and clammy and unresponsive. Abraham gently closed the lifeless eyes, which had been fixed on his mother's face. One pitifully small hand held on to Rivka's sleeve, and Abraham carefully pried the tiny fingers loose. Judging from the stiffness, Abraham surmised that Joel must have been dead for several hours.

Abraham started to lift the child, but the motion roused Rivka and she opened her eyes.
No.
Her mouth formed the word silently.

“Rivka . . .” He didn't know what to say. Did she not know the child was dead? Could she not comprehend what had happened or could she just not accept it?

Rivka's arms moved from side to side ever so slightly, and a faint sound escaped her lips. Abraham leaned closer, his face only inches from hers, and listened. She was trying to hum.

He lost his composure then. He sat back and leaned against the wall beside her, letting the tears fall down his dust-streaked face.
Why?
he silently asked God over and over, begging for an answer to his unanswerable question.

After a few minutes, he noticed that Rivka had fallen asleep again. He took the baby from her arms and carried him into the bedroom. Rummaging through a storage chest, Abraham found several yards of linen fabric and tore off a long strip to use as a shroud. He wound it tightly around Joel's tiny body and then wrapped the cloth over the baby's old-man face, the visible hallmark of starvation. Abraham emptied another small chest and laid the baby inside. There was no place to bury him, and Abraham didn't know what to do next. He finally decided to place the chest in the
mikvah
, the small bath used for ritual cleansing in the wealthier Jewish homes.

Rivka nodded her approval later when Abraham told her what he'd done. “Thank you,” she said weakly. “For everything.”

He held a cup to Rivka's lips and gave her small sips of water. That evening he crushed the last few kernels of wheat and tried to feed them to her, but she could no longer swallow.

For the next two days Abraham never left Rivka's side, watching helplessly as her life ebbed away minute by painfully slow minute. When it was finally over, he wrapped her body with the rest of the linen and laid her in the
mikvah
, next to the chest where he had placed Joel's body. Then he broke down and sobbed like a baby.

He kept thinking of Tobias's words: “Save them, if you can.”

I tried, Tobias. God knows I tried to save them.

At last, when he was able to speak, Abraham said the
kaddish
, the traditional prayer of mourning for the dead. He had not witnessed a funeral since he had become a Christian; therefore he did not know what the proper burial custom for a believer should be. So after the
kaddish
he added an extemporaneous prayer for Rivka and Joel, asking the Lord to raise them up on the last day.

Freedom.
Abraham could still see the look in his cousin's eyes.
That's
what Tobias said he would do with money.

Abraham understood Tobias's meaning: take the money and leave. “Find a way out,” Tobias had told him. Abraham wondered if there could possibly be a way out of the city now.

Months earlier the two of them had talked about trying to leave Jerusalem, had even planned what they would do. “We could sail to Ephesus,” Tobias had suggested.

“Why Ephesus?” Abraham asked. He knew it was a large, important city—the third leading city in the Empire—but he had no idea why it would appeal to Tobias.

“There's a thriving Christian community there, headed by the apostle John. He's the last living member of the Twelve, you know. It was one of John's disciples who led us to Christ several years ago.” Tobias had recounted for Abraham his and Rivka's conversion, and they had talked at length about John and the church at Ephesus.

“I have plenty of money for the trip,” Tobias had informed him. He had taken Abraham to a small room and revealed the place where he had hidden a small fortune in gold coins. Tobias's usually cheerful demeanor turned completely serious. “If anything happens to me before we can leave,” he said, “I want you to use this to take Rivka and the baby to safety.”

Something
had
happened to Tobias before they could leave, but by that time access in and out of the city had been completely closed. When the siege had started in earnest, just prior to Tobias's capture by the revolutionaries, the Romans quickly built their own wall around the city, constructing a five-mile-long fence in just three days and sealing the fate of Jerusalem's inhabitants.

Abraham often wondered why he had stayed in Jerusalem through the war that was about to destroy its very foundations. In the early days he could have left at any time, before the danger of staying behind enemy lines became so great. Even after that, he could have managed to see Titus or perhaps Tiberius Alexander, the general's chief adviser, and convince the authorities of his citizenship and loyalty to Rome. Had he done that, he could be home right now, dining at his father's table, his belly stuffed with the finest food instead of racing rats for a few grains of corn or wheat.

Perhaps that was one of the reasons he had stayed: to spite his father, to rebel against having his entire life planned for him. It had been his father's dream for Abraham to study rhetoric and embark on a law career as a prelude to political advancement. True, he had been gifted at it, and he enjoyed the study of law. The practice of law, however, was a different matter. Cherished ideals, Abraham had discovered, easily bent to corruption and manipulation. The system worked for the wealthy and well-connected but not the plebeian, and Abraham had no desire whatsoever to become embroiled in the hierarchy of political power and intrigue for the rest of his life.

Reluctant to return home and confront his father about the future, he had stayed in Jerusalem in spite of the risks. And once Tobias had been captured, Abraham could not bring himself to leave Rivka and the baby, knowing they would face starvation without someone to care for them. Ultimately, though, they had died in spite of his best efforts, and his failure to save them weighed heavily on him.

Save yourself.
Tobias's words echoed in his mind. But how? Could he get out of the city before it fell to the might of Rome? And what would he do if he managed to get beyond the walls?

Instantly he decided he wanted to pursue the course he and Tobias had originally discussed: sailing to Ephesus. It was as good a plan as any. He wanted to meet the last surviving apostle, someone who had actually walked and talked with Jesus of Nazareth. John had known Him personally, intimately, and Abraham wanted to see Jesus through John's eyes.

His plan would mean a daring escape through the impenetrable siege of the Roman legions, then walking all the way to Caesarea, on the Mediterranean coast. The journey would take several days under the best of conditions. With no food in his stomach, and no prospect of a meal for the foreseeable future, he would be too weak to travel that far.

But staying in Jerusalem was certain death, and Abraham was not ready to become another corpse on a Roman cross.

8

HAVING DETERMINED TO ESCAPE FROM JERUSALEM and flee to Ephesus, Abraham retrieved Tobias's money from its hiding place with considerable trepidation.

What if by some miracle Tobias survives the war?
He hesitated, then put one of the two bags of coins back in the wall.
But if I leave
it here,
he reasoned,
looters will find it, and then what good will it do
Tobias?

Abraham did not ponder long. He took both bags of gold and fastened them securely around his waist, under his tunic. He also took the razor-sharp dagger he found with the money, then he draped his cloak over his shoulder and tied his belt over it. It was far too warm to need the cloak for normal wear, but it helped disguise the bulky treasure of gold under his clothes, and he could wrap himself in the outer garment at night. If—no—
once
he made it outside the city, he would be sleeping on the ground.

It was late afternoon when Abraham was ready to depart. He planned to head for the old aqueduct and explore the area just outside the original stone wall. Perhaps under cover of nightfall he could skirt the southern edge of the city, heading away from the camp of the Tenth Legion. Then he would have to find a way past the wooden wall the Romans had hastily thrown up to surround their enemies, while avoiding the camps of the Twelfth and Fourteenth Legions at the northwest corner of Jerusalem.

Before leaving, he stopped briefly in the
mikvah
and silently paid his last respects to Rivka and Joel, regretting yet again that he'd been unable to save them or to bury them properly. His grief tasted like bile as he swallowed hard and blinked back tears of exhaustion compounded with great loss. He tried to imagine the extent of Tobias's grief, and he wondered if he would ever live long enough to have a wife and child of his own.

Outside, the scorching August sun beat down on Abraham. He quickly realized that the source of the intense heat was not confined to the heavens: the city was on fire! It had not yet spread to the Upper City, but it would, and he prayed he had not waited too late to make his escape. Immediately below him the Lower City blazed in a wall of crimson fury. From a distance he could hear the cries of thousands of people as they fled their homes.

Like a moth drawn to a flame, Abraham turned to stare in the direction of the Temple Mount. The most sacred spot in Jerusalem— the most sacred spot in the world, its inhabitants would argue— burned like a massive torch. He stood transfixed, watching the conflagration for a few minutes. The magnificent structure—the place of worship King David had conceived and his son Solomon had built, that Zerubbabel had rebuilt when the exiles returned from Babylon, that Herod had restored and enlarged to an incomparable scale, the house of prayer that Jesus of Nazareth had purged of its corrupt money changers—had, in one form or another, occupied this piece of holy ground for a thousand years. Now it would soon be gone, an incomprehensible loss.

A stomach cramp broke Abraham's trance and propelled him into action: if he were going to survive the carnage that was bound to accompany the destruction of the city, he had to get moving. He headed for the southern border of the Lower City. That route would take longer for him to reach the aqueduct but would, he hoped, allow him to stay ahead of the rapidly spreading fires.

The streets were in total chaos. People were shoving and clawing their way through the terrified crowds. Smoke stung Abraham's eyes and made him cough as he picked his way through the alleys, keeping track of the position of the sun to make sure he was heading in the right direction. Once or twice he headed down a blind alley and had to backtrack, and once he was pushed hard, fell to the ground, and narrowly missed being trampled to death.

The smoke thinned out as he reached the southern wall of the city, but complete panic ruled the streets. Some people were committing suicide or begging someone else to kill them, so they could escape being sold into slavery or raped by the Romans.

A number of people were trying desperately to scale the massive stone wall with their bare hands. A hopeless endeavor, Abraham knew. If by some miracle a man managed to reach the top, there was no place to go from there. The wall was built on a cliff that dropped steeply into the Hinnom Valley—a precipitous fall that surely no one could survive. If someone ran along the top of the wall in either direction, he would soon come under fire by the Roman troops. The valley was where Abraham wanted to be, but he knew it was impossible to reach by going over the wall; that's why he planned to go underneath it.