[Gaius Valerius Verrens 06] - Scourge of Rome (49 page)

Two dark eyes stared up at him, but they were the only recognizable elements of the young Syrian’s face. Unable to pierce his armour the Judaeans had concentrated their efforts on their enemy’s head. From the nose downwards the once-handsome features had been chopped into a gory red mess, spikes of bone and shards of teeth showing through like pearls in a grape press.

A terrible anguished groan came from Serpentius’s breast as he knelt over his dead friend. Had it truly come to the point where death would be a blessed release? He shook his head. No. Not while Valerius Verrens still lived. He reached down and closed Apion’s staring eyes with shaking fingers.

When he forced himself to his feet he realized the fight was almost won and his disbelieving eyes registered dawn breaking over the eastern hills. Dozens of legionaries were pouring up the rubble slope on to the roof of the cloister surrounding the temple complex, a paved walkway perhaps fifteen paces wide. From where Serpentius stood at the angle of the north and west walls, the temple sat like an enormous stone galley in the centre of an extensive outer court. Men stared up from the court fifty feet below and the first spears began to clatter among the soldiers on the roof. On both sides of the breakthrough, John of Gischala’s men struggled to keep the Romans from exploiting their success. Some built barricades from bales of cloth that had appeared from some hidden storehouse. Centurions urged their men to attack before the makeshift defences could be completed as smoke began to billow up from below the walkway.

‘They’ve set the cloister on fire,’ someone screamed. ‘If we don’t break out of here we’re dead men.’

A centurion struggled to the top of the slope at the head of a dozen men carrying a baulk of timber. Without orders they formed up at the front of four centuries preparing to attack the flimsy barricade. Serpentius watched them dash at the barrier in a compact column ten wide and thirty deep and the hastily erected structure burst open at the first attempt. With a roar of triumph the Romans surged through, tossing the bales aside and hammering at the demoralized defenders with shield and sword. The survivors screamed for mercy, but the legionaries threw them over the parapet to smash on to the paving below or cut them down where they stood. Serpentius followed in the victors’ wake across the blood-soaked flagstones.

A hand caught his arm and he spun, ready to strike down his assailant. ‘You?’

‘I must reach the temple,’ Josephus gasped. The Judaean was sootstained and sweating after the exertion of his climb through the rubble and the bodies, but the hand that held his sword was steady enough. ‘There are certain items Titus does not want to fall into the hands of his soldiers. Will you help me?’

Serpentius hesitated. Valerius had never fully trusted the man, but the temple was where Valerius would be and the Spaniard had a feeling Josephus would get him there by the most direct route.

‘Very well,’ he nodded. Ahead of them the legionaries had cleared the walkway as far as the opening of a stairway fifty paces ahead. When Serpentius reached it he could hear the sound of fighting below. ‘Stay here until I check. Titus wouldn’t thank me for getting you killed.’ The Spaniard advanced warily down the first few steps until he saw that the soldiers had cleared the stair down to a pillared walkway. He gestured for Josephus to follow. By now the battle-hardened Roman cohorts must have broken through in several places because Serpentius could see the shields of three legions. Knots of men hacked at each other all over the great courtyard and the air rang with the clash of swords and the screams of the maimed and the dying. Women and children were cut down with the rest as they attempted to flee the fighting. To Serpentius’s left, the entire length of the north cloister was ablaze and the torments of men trapped in the stairways pierced even the maniacal clamour around him.

‘We must get to the temple,’ Josephus urged. ‘The entrance is on the east side.’

Serpentius searched the chaos for an obvious safe route, but could see none. ‘There’s only one way,’ he told the Judaean. ‘And that’s straight through the middle.’ Josephus looked at the scene unfolding in front of him with horror, but the Spaniard slapped his shoulder to get his attention. ‘Stay close behind me and sing out if you see any threat.’

‘But how …’

‘Just follow me,’ Serpentius snarled, ‘and do what you’re told if you want to live.’

They moved warily into the sea of fighting men. Serpentius led with his sword at the ready and his eyes flicking from left to right, instinctively knowing where a path would open up. His diagonal course took them towards the southern wall of the temple about twenty paces away. Josephus stayed close on his heels, almost touching the Spaniard’s shoulder and starting at every clash of arms. A rebel in close combat with a legionary stepped backwards into him and turned with a raised sword at the contact. Josephus brought his blade up, but the man’s face froze into a rictus of agony as the Roman slipped the point of his
gladius
beneath his armpit into his heart. As his victim dropped away the snarling killer would have turned on Josephus had Serpentius not stepped into his path and knocked his sword away.

‘The watchword is Cremona and he’s one of ours.’ Even that wouldn’t have stopped the man from slaughtering someone in Judaean clothing, but the look in Serpentius’s eyes was enough to make him turn away. ‘Stay with me,’ the Spaniard repeated.

A man reeled across Serpentius’s path with his jaw hanging off and the Spaniard dispatched him with an economic thrust that pierced his heart. A moment later he found himself facing a pair of Judaean rebels armed with spears, but after a few tentative thrusts which Serpentius parried with ease they exchanged a glance and stepped out of his path. Serpentius let them be. Josephus watched them carefully as he passed, but if they were going to die they were going to take Romans with them.

At last they reached the shadow of the temple. The great building stood on a raised platform surrounded by oversized steps. Serpentius bounded up with easy strides and turned to help Josephus. Three doorways entered the temple from this side, but all had been blocked up by the Judaean defenders. The two men were safe above the level of the fighting as long as no one else had the same idea. They made good progress along the sandstone walkway with Serpentius leading at a jog and Josephus struggling to keep up. Halfway along, a hulking legionary stepped into their path and took a swing at Serpentius with his
gladius
. The Spaniard calmly ducked beneath the blow and brought his foot up between his assailant’s legs, ramming him aside to clatter down the steps.

Moments later they reached the angle of the building. Serpentius ducked down to check what awaited them round the corner. Incredibly, the first person he saw was Gaius Valerius Verrens. The Roman disappeared inside the temple with Tabitha in his wake as legionaries struggled with men who’d been guarding the doorway. Others were already removing the temple treasures.

‘It’s Valerius.’ He half turned to grin at Josephus. ‘He’s got here fi—’

A bolt of white lightning exploded in the base of his spine and expanded to fill his entire being. Time didn’t exist any more in a world inhabited only by pain. Serpentius tried to push himself to his feet, but something seemed to be holding him down and his sword was no help because it had dropped from his fingers. He looked up to find Josephus standing over him with fear in his eyes and a bloody sword in his hand. As he watched the sword rise, the Spaniard’s pain-ravaged face twisted into a snarl of contempt. ‘Traitor.’

‘Hey you?’ Two legionaries armed with spears eyed Josephus suspiciously from the base of the steps, uncertain whether he was friend or enemy. Before they could decide, the Judaean darted past Serpentius and disappeared into the doorway of the temple. Serpentius watched him go until the world closed in on him: a mother’s smile, a woman’s touch, the scent of an old hunting dog and a final plunge into a pit where eternal darkness reigned.

They made their way through a miasma of death up the paved street of steps leading from the Pool of Siloam towards the temple. At first Valerius thought the bodies lying in the street must be casualties of fighting between the Judaean factions, but closer inspection indicated they’d recently died of starvation. Tabitha clutched at his arm as they passed through the crumpled honour guard, appalled at the sight of the dead women and children.

Dawn was breaking by the time they reached the hill’s halfway point, but the flickering glow to the north almost outdid the rising sun. Valerius fretted that they would be too late. He had no way of gauging the progress of the attack. Titus’s three legions had been fighting all night but the sullen roar in the distance, coupled with the fires, was evidence of some kind of Roman success. His suspicions were confirmed when they reached the hippodrome where the intermittent flow of refugees heading for the Lower City became a constant stream.

‘They must have believed the temple was the safest place in Jerusalem,’ Tabitha whispered. ‘They placed their trust in God and now God has abandoned them.’

‘They placed their faith in John of Gischala,’ Valerius corrected her. ‘And now he has failed them. John and Simon both. They should have surrendered when they had the chance.’ Part of him would always wonder if that were true. Would Titus, so in need of a military triumph, have found some way to make surrender unthinkable for a man of honour or pride? ‘But they’re running because they are frightened and they’re frightened because the Romans are coming.’

‘We must reach the temple before they plunder it.’ Tabitha pulled at his arm, urging him to greater speed, and they forced their way through the river of lost souls like swimmers breasting the waves pounding on a beach. Ahead the road narrowed, funnelled by the soaring walls of the hippodrome and a crumbling city wall from an earlier age. The crush became so great that the pressure lifted Tabitha’s feet off the ground and Valerius feared she would be dragged away from him. Her grip on his left arm tightened and he pulled her close, growling and cursing as he shouldered his way past young and old alike. A gate appeared in the wall to their right and Tabitha pulled him towards it.

‘This is the quickest way to the Huldah Gates,’ she gasped. ‘And the road will be easier.’

They pushed their way through against the flow. The crowd eased, but if anything the sense of terror in those they met heightened. Many ran in a blind panic, not caring who or what stood in their way, their only aim to escape what lay behind. Valerius and Tabitha could see the milky-white stone of the temple’s outer walls, their magnificence made all the starker by the black smoke billowing beyond them. By now the familiar clamour of battle had replaced the sullen roar; the clash of iron upon wood vying with shouted commands, desperate cries for aid and screams of fear, defiance and death. Tabitha froze as a shrieking figure plunged from the wall away to their left. ‘Keep going.’ Valerius dragged her onwards up the slope to the base of a flight of broad steps leading up to two sets of gates, one double arched, the other triple.

‘The triple arch is the entrance, the double the exit.’ Tabitha studied the gates. In the chaos, terrified Judaean soldiers carrying wounded friends used both sets, their blood spattering the polished stones as they fled the fighting above. A guard of Galilean rebels hovered uncertainly by the gateway, unsure whether they should stop the deserters leaving or join the fighting. Tabitha glanced to one side where carved stones surrounded a pool of water and her face twisted into a grimace of uncertainty. ‘I should purify myself at the
mikveh
before entering the temple.’

‘There’s no time,’ Valerius urged. ‘And you have no need. You have been purified in the Pool of Siloam, and in any case your temple is a battlefield now, defiled by the blood and flesh of the dead.’

She set her jaw and nodded determinedly. ‘You are right,’ she said. ‘And I must be prepared to set myself beyond God’s grace this day for the future of my people.’

Valerius was still puzzling over this last statement as they hurried up the steps, two narrow followed by two broad in a repeating pattern. Tabitha reached the top first. Her eyes hardened as she saw the guards stiffen. She marched straight towards the gate, throwing back her cloak so the Galileans could see the quality of the clothing beneath. Now Valerius understood her choice of fine dress.

‘Why are you lurking here when your comrades are fighting to save the temple?’ she demanded before the guard commander could confront her. The man’s brow darkened at the suggestion of his cowardice from the beautiful woman in the dripping clothes. Her natural authority and the richness of her dress confused him at a time when his mind was already spinning with uncertainty. He and his men had been at their posts throughout the previous day and all through the night. They had orders not to leave, but the sounds of fighting echoing down the stairway from the Court of the Gentiles tested his resolve. That fighting grew ever closer with daylight, to the point where he could hear men struggling for their lives little more than a dozen paces away. A few months ago he’d been a simple farmer eking out a living outside Gadara. For all his inexperience he was a good soldier. Still, he’d been tempted, and now …

‘I have my orders.’ He eyed the hooded bodyguard lurking behind his mistress. ‘The Romans …’

‘Do you see any Romans here?’ Contempt thickened her words and the guard commander sensed the spearmen behind him flinch. All around them women and children continued to flee the battle. The only civilians who’d tried to enter the temple complex in twenty-four hours were this woman and her servant. Tabitha shook her head and raised her voice. ‘We expected so much of John of Gischala and his brave Galileans, but this …? Did you come all this way only to stand back as your comrades spilled their blood in defence of the Great Temple?’ After a moment’s hesitation she made to brush past the guard commander. ‘Well, if you will not fight …’

The commander heard the rush of feet as his men turned for the stairs, and with a last perplexed glance at Tabitha he ran to join them.