John Masters (12 page)

"And since
I
was a boy," Yakov said, "the barbarians ... Alans, Sueves, Vandals, Visigoths. But that one who was washed up on the Rock last year, the day of the storm, said that they were fighting
for
Rome, against the others." Her father cried, "I don't know their tribal names, nor what they claim to be doing. In fact they sack and bum and kill.... It is my turn for guard upon the Praetorian Gate tonight, so I must go. Woman, it is the Haggadah night tomorrow. Do you have all that you need?"

Her mother said, "All save the kid. Pick and slaughter one for me before Rachel takes them out in the morning.... And there is no wine."

"Yes, there is," her father said. "There are two small flagons behind our couch hidden from those who might make over-free with it. They are properly sealed." He looked meaningly at Yakov and went out.

Sighing, Rachel took down the bronze menorah from its niche, began to polish it with the end of her dress, and thought of Avram.

The next morning early, after her father had ritually killed one of the kids, she herded the remaining dozen into the street, out of the eastern gate, and through the fields to the shore. She moved them smartly along, whistling and crying and running to head them off if they tried to break into the fields, for they were mischievous and cunning as devils.

At the place which she called, for herself, the Woman's Stone, for it was here, under the stone, that her dog had turned up the ivory woman, a man now stepped out of hiding, his arms spread. It was a narrow place between the cliff and the sea, and the goats stopped. She saw it was Peter, James' son, a young man little older than herself but much taller, for all that family were tall, slender, and graceful. "No farther, Rachel Cohenky," he said. "It was agreed.... What is this?" His voice changed as her father and young Akiba and Yakov, hirpling with staff, came up from the beach toward them. Then he smiled, "We seem to have had the same idea." He put a finger to his mouth and whistled. His father, James, and his younger brothers, John and Young James, scrambled down from the rocks higher up the slope. The two families met around Rachel and her flock.

"What are you doing?" Yakov shouted angrily. "We have the right."

"Not yet," Peter said.

A stone whizzed past his ear. Her father shouted, "Don't do that. Akiba! James ... boys ... be still! We want to talk... "

But the young men were at each other's throats, snarling like dogs, rolling on the ground. Rachel saw John grab her brother Akiba from behind and ran to help him. Peter held her with ease as she struggled and spat in his face. Smiling, he drew back his head. She sank her teeth into his arm. He flung her away with a yell. As she lay half stunned, the fighting stopped. The men stood separated, breathing deeply and muttering fiercely at one another. Akiba's nose was bleeding and so, she saw happily, was Peter's arm, and there was a taste of blood in her mouth. Her father turned on his heel and called curtly, "Come." He led his family toward the town. James and his sons followed a hundred paces behind.

Yakov was crying with vexation. "Oh, why did you not bring your spear, father?"

Akiba growled, "Where is our flock to graze now?"

They tramped back in silence to the town. Outside the gate her father said, "Take the goats up the river, Rachel. There is some fresh grass on this side, less than a mile up, on land which is fallow since Terence's wife died and he ran away."

The dog began to herd the goats around the outside of the town, but she heard a startled yell behind her and looked around. James, the Christian father, was falling backward, an arrow in his throat. Then she saw men coming out of the rank scrub which reached right to the wall. Peter cried, "Outlaws!" The day watchman at the gate seized his horn and blew until an arrow thumped into his chest, and the note quavered, hiccuped, and died. Rachel ran into the town, Akiba and the goats helter-skelter behind her. She saw a ragged outlaw rip his knife across Yakov's throat, then feel in his scrip. As she ran, she shrieked, "Outlaws! Outlaws!" Women rushed into their houses, doors slammed. Most of the men are in the fields, she thought, but they will hear the horn, they will come.

Theophilus stood naked in the middle of the street, his hand raised, his gray hair streaming. "Die, die! The hour of wrath is come! Slay the Jews, slay the wicked, let evil be wiped from the earth!"

She ran into her house, crying, "Block the door! Mother!"

Yakov's wife screamed, "Mother is at the river with Hadassah. Where's Yakov?"

"Dead," she snapped. Yakov's wife sank wailing to the floor. Rachel swept up the baby twins, hurried up the second ladder to the roof, left them, went down, found little Isa playing in the kitchen, and took him up, too. Akiba had seized a spear, and Rachel took a short, strong knife from her mother's carving board. She went back up to the roof.

The shrieking and shouting that had been so loud by the gate were muted here, and she saw few people—a man running; two outlaws, recognizable by their matted hair and short, filthy kirtles, breaking into a barricaded house across the street; a woman dead in the dust directly below the corner of the house.

The ladder creaked, and Peter joined her. "It's hopeless," he said. "There must be a hundred of them, and we are ... a hundred women and children, twenty men. John's dead. Clubbed when we were trying to close the gate. Your father's safe in our part of the house.... Here they come!"

She heard her name called from the street below and went to the edge of the parapet. Two score outlaws were gathered there, and out in front, by himself, Julius. The pagan who had been a lawyer and had fled to the mountains. She remembered him well.

He called up, "Let us in, and no harm will come to any of you."

She said, "Let them in, Peter. Or they'll break in and kill us all. I have children to look after."

A minute later Julius came to her on the rooftop. She heard the sounds of pillaging in the house. Peter stood back, glowering. Julius spoke in a low voice. "Your mother and little sister are dead. They saw us coming and some of our men held them under water. So is Avram. I had to kill him myself. Were you not to be betrothed to him?"

She wondered whether she would be able to sink her knife in his heart before he could raise his short, old-fashioned legionary sword.

He said, "Come with me to the forest, Rachel. You heard the Lover of God? He's right. There is no law, no government, no god."

"We trust in the Lord God of Israel," she said automatically.

He said, "I love you, Rachel. When I left, you were—what? thirteen?—and I loved you then."

She thought of Avram dead. Now she had no man to be her husband. Julius was strong and subtle and clever. He would give her babies and protect them. But where would be her home? What would be her land? She would never return to the Rock, towering there, cloud-crested. And what of her Secret, the deep-cleft ivory woman?

She said, "I must stay."

Confused shouting and curses rose from below, and Julius swore. "These people are hard to control, even for a moment, even in their own interests. Well, we shall be back when you have saved some more food." He ran quickly down the ladder and out of sight. Soon all the outlaws had gone, staggering back into the woods with their booty and driving stolen livestock.

A little later Rachel's father came to the rooftop. "They have taken everything except my special wine." He laughed wildly. His eyes glittered, and he moved with a quick nervous energy. "Your mother and sister are dead. Did you know?" She nodded. "It will be you next... me ... all of us."

She said, "Father," sorrowfully, and suddenly he broke down and wept, wailing brokenly. Her breast ached, and her eyes filled. Could this be her father, the lord of the household, now weeping like her child in her arms?

Peter said hesitantly, "Isaac, we cannot stay here. There is nothing, no seed com, little food, only one or two animals. We must throw ourselves on the mercy of Vitellius at the Villa Flaviana."

"Why should he take us?" her father said. "He already has a hundred men, all armed, most of them exlegionaries."

Peter said, "Because if he does not, then we must join the outlaws. All together, we would be strong enough to take the villa and sack it."

"Take, sack, bum! Ai, what a world! But I fear you are right. Gather our people. I will speak to a duovir, if I can find one."

The Villa Flaviana was two miles round the bay to the west. The estate, covering five thousand acres on the near bank of the next river, was one of the great latifundia where the very rich escaped from the duties of the towns and the supervision of the tax collectors and lived under the care and protection of a private army of field hands, guards, and servants, who were in fact almost slaves but better off in their semiservitude than as free men in the decaying towns.

Rachel thought, there would be no place but a barn or empty hay loft for them to sleep, no pots, no utensils. Yakov's wife was less than useless. She was the mother now. She called, "Akiba, here, fill that sack with..."

The doorman at the great house called loudly to the interior when he saw them coming. Other servants came out, swords drawn, but Isaac went forward steadily, bent under a heavy sack, and then Peter, and she after. Soon the majordomo came and then the lord of the estate, old Vitellius Flavius, fat and small-eyed, and later his son, young Gaius, plump and smooth, estimating her like a piece of choice meat. Isaac began to talk, dignified in his weariness.

She looked back. Ten more families stood behind them, patient in the spring rain. Ten more were on their way, and as many would come tomorrow. The rest had decided to stay in Carteia. Vitellius stared nervously at them from the porch, the twilight fading fast and his servants lighting lamps along the outer arcade. "They look dangerous to me," he said to the majordomo.

"We must take them in, master," the majordomo muttered. "There's that band of Vandals to the north and, I hear, Visigoths coming down from the east. We may need every man we can muster."

"Very well," old Vitellius said. "Put them in the barns. Give them something to eat. See that they work for their living and fight, if need be."

The majordomo motioned them around to the side, to the scattered buildings of the home farm. He showed them into a huge stone-built bam, nearly empty now of the hay which the cattle had been eating all winter. "Here and in the next bam," he said. "But no fires inside. Food will be distributed in ten minutes."

Isaac's family settled in a corner of the bam and Peter's close by. More families moved in and spread out until the bam was nearly full, but there was very little noise. Servants brought bowls of pease porridge, but Isaac took cakes of unleavened bread from his sack and gave a piece to each of his family. Next he opened a flagon of wine and mixed it with water in his brass cup. He bowed his head over it, and said,
Baruch atta adonay elohenu melech ha-olam borey peri haggafen
—Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who createst the fruit of the vine."

Then over the unleavened bread, "Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who bringest forth bread from the earth."

They drank and ate. The rain beat louder on the high roof. Isaac turned to Akiba, for his youngest son, Isa, was only two. "Akiba," he said, "do you remember the questions boys asked of their fathers at the Haggadah night?"

Akiba intoned, "Why is this night different from all other nights? For on all other nights we eat either leavened or unleavened bread, but tonight..."

The ritual of the Haggadah continued, with Isa asleep in Rachel's arms and Yakov's fatherless twins sprawled in the hay. When Isaac had finished retelling the Passover story, Peter came over to them and said, "We wish you a happier Passover next year than this."

"And a happier Easter for you," Isaac answered gravely.

Peter's chest was wide and flat, crossed with smooth bands of muscle. His eyes were wide-set and his nose short and straight. He was looking at her now, and she remembered how close he had held her ... could it have been this same morning? She remembered the taste of his flesh in her teeth and lowered her eyes.

Soon they settled themselves to sleep.

The next day they sent for her to work in the big house. She protested that she had little Isa to care for, but the servant said Yakov's wife must do that. Peter looked unhappily after her, but she had to go.

At the villa they had a swimming pool and a heated bathhouse and tinkling bells and everywhere a subtle perfume. They gave her clean clothes of fine linen and wool and told her to wait upon the lord's youngest daughter. She ate their leavings and even so ate more, and better, then she had ever known. Young Gaius smiled lazily on her and after a week said, "Come to my couch tonight, Rachel."

She made to pass by, but he said, "Otherwise, back to the barn and work in the fields."

She hurried on, frowning. But as the hours passed she knew she would go. It was too cold, too wet out there. With him she would never feel hungry again. He was not as handsome as Peter or even her dead Avram, but he was a man. He would give her children—and the Rock was still there within reach.

In the big house everyone slept for a couple of hours in the middle of the afternoon. She awoke to a scream. "Up, up! To arms!" She scrambled up, rubbing her eyes. A trumpet began to call. She ran through the villa to the front door. A ragged mob of barbarians was sweeping up from the river, shrieking, screaming, waving spears and clubs. Ahead of them, in the center, pranced the Lover of God, a flaming brand of wood in his hand. She heard his strangely accented Latin above the din. "Kill, kill!" Rachel ran to the bam.

The Flavian men-at-arms and the male refugees from Carteia hurried together out of house and stable and granary, short swords drawn, buckling on light armor, helmets awry; but more barbarians came from the river, and they were not such a rabble as they seemed, for groups of them wheeled in blocks, one such taking Vitellius' servants in the flank with a mighty shout.