A.D. 30 Read online

  “Are you well?” I asked.

  He hesitated, then made himself plain.

  “I am Judah,” he said.

  I can’t say why those words struck me to the core as they did, but I could not stop the tears that flooded my eyes.

  He was Judah—a towering rock who could hardly think of his own safety, much less fear for it.

  He was Judah—eternally bright like the venerated stars in his sky.

  But more, he was Judah, who, though a man, saw beyond my shame.

  I impulsively reached through the bars, seized his arm, and pulled him as close as possible, my cheek pressed against the iron.

  “I was so afraid for you,” I whispered.

  I felt his hand grip my tunic. Though the bars separated our flesh, our hearts were one, I thought, and we held each other for a long moment before looking into each other’s eyes.

  “You are well,” he said.

  “I am.”

  “Then tell me… what has been decided? You bring me good news?”

  “You know that Herod has gone to Rome?”

  “Rome? They’ve told me nothing.”

  “Nothing?” I said.

  “They’ve refused the many requests of a slave to see his queen, no matter how persuasive my words.”

  I could imagine him bending their ears with his winsome speeches.

  “And Saba?” I glanced down the passage.

  “Past the door. They’ve prevented our speaking, but he’s unharmed.”

  Phasa’s request seemed as preposterous now as when she’d made it, but I had given my word.

  “When you can, tell him I have a message from Phasa.”

  “For him?”

  “Yes. She wants him to know that he is a stallion in her eyes.”

  Judah stared at me, then smiled. “It will be a great gift to him.”

  “To Saba?”

  “Don’t be fooled by his mask of stone. He is only a child behind it. Now tell me the news of Herod. He’s gone to Rome on your behalf?”

  I told him everything, speaking in soft tones that could not reach far. I told about my night with Herod and about my time with Phasa and how we had become like sisters from the desert. In whatever delighted me, Judah would reflect that same joy. Then he offered me a warning, reminding me of the dangers of Aretas and Herod and even Phasa, for he did not know her the way I did.

  Each moment I lingered increased the risk of my discovery, but I relished this encounter.

  He agreed that Herod’s departure must be taken as a good sign, even if kings were known for their betrayal. There was no better option for us than to wait as Herod’s guests, in strict accordance with his wishes.

  “It will be many weeks,” I said. “I cannot possibly go so long without seeing you.”

  “Nor I. But you must understand, Maviah… this too will pass. It is what happens after Herod’s return that concerns us most. I would have you safe with Phasa, beyond any threat from the guard. Brutus is a vile man.”

  “How can you remain here, caged like an animal?”

  “Me? I’ve spent many months in the Nafud until only my bones were left under the scorching sun. I have waged battle with a thousand arrows and blades, many cutting into my flesh. I’ve seen the worst and now the best that this world has to offer.” He opened his palm and indicated the cell. “Do you think a few nights here will harm me? It’s cooled by the earth and my bed is smooth. Herod’s dungeon is my place of peace and rest. He only makes his guest stronger.”

  Then he reminded me who he was once again.

  “I am Judah.”

  “Yes. You are Judah.”

  “Son of Israel.”

  “Son of Israel.”

  Satisfied, he turned from me and stroked his beard, pacing.

  “I have only one request of you, Maviah.”

  “Of course. Anything.”

  “You say that Phasa has an eye for Saba?”

  “Clearly.”

  “Then perhaps you might convince her to do what you cannot.”

  “To do what? Comfort Saba?”

  He took one of the bars in his hand and spoke in a very soft voice.

  “No. To go to Capernaum. To see Yeshua.”

  Yeshua. I had put the mystic from my mind, worried only for Judah.

  He continued, speaking quickly in a whisper. “Miriam told me that her son travels sometimes to Judea. He was by the sea in Capernaum when we saw Miriam, but he’s not likely to remain long.”

  “You fear that he will leave before Herod returns,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  I felt oddly irritated in that moment. Surely Judah could find his mystic after we were out of danger.

  “You want Phasa to find a way for me to find—”

  “Never! Herod has forbidden you to leave. But Phasa might go. On account of Saba.”

  “For Saba? Hers is but a passing fantasy! She would never go on his account.”

  “You could speak to Phasa. She might be swayed.”

  It was absurd. Judah was grasping for his stars. Perhaps I was bothered by the awareness that his obsession with finding his sage consumed him more than our present danger. His fixation on Yeshua seemed to have deepened here in the dungeon.

  “Speak to Phasa on this,” he said. “A way might be made, you understand. Perhaps Phasa would want to see Yeshua for herself. Do only this and I would find great comfort here in my cell.”

  I had promised Miriam that I would say nothing to Herod’s court of Yeshua. Judah had made the same promise. Still, his imploring eyes drew me.

  “And if she agreed, what would Phasa say to this sage?” I asked.

  He blinked. “She would tell him about me and my elders who came to him. She would ask him if I could be of any assistance.”

  “To join with him in overthrowing Rome? She is Herod’s wife. You ask the impossible.”

  “Then she might only see him and report for me. You say she is a friend to Jews and to you… ask her. Or perhaps she knows of another who will go on my behalf.”

  It was madness.

  Then again, Judah was Bedu. It is said that the greatest Bedu feed on madness, for it makes one strong enough to defeat the greatest enemy in the desert. Or perhaps his time alone in the dungeon had pushed him beyond reason.

  “I only ask that you speak to her about—”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Yes?”

  “Yes, I will speak to Phasa.”

  “You will, then?”

  “For you, I will find a way.”

  I was so taken with Judah’s passion for his king, and he was so engrossed in the prospect of gaining news of him, that neither of us heard the sound from the passage until it was upon us. Only the scrape of a sandal on the floor, but unmistakable.

  We turned as one, breath caught.

  At first I could not make sense of what my eyes saw. A guard, yes, but not just any guard. My heart crashed into my throat.

  For it was Brutus who stood in the passage, face like a stone.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  WHAT EVENTS had conspired to me pluck me from the heavens and thrust me into the deepest abyss? Perhaps I had been seen after all, and a report made to Brutus. Perhaps he had never left the palace, or had returned by chance. Perhaps my plotting with Phasa had been overheard.

  Any explanation for how Brutus came to be standing in the dungeons would do nothing to remove him.

  “Judah?” My voice came in a trembling whisper.

  “Say nothing.”

  No, for there was nothing to be said. Except by Brutus.

  “So.” His low voice sent dread through my bones. “The whore from the desert seeks misery.”

  Two guards approached from behind him, one of whom held a torch.

  A nightmare unfolded before me, too quickly and too slowly at once. And as in a dream, I was powerless to alter events.

  Even if I had been able to influence Brutus, he was beyond the place for words.

&nbs
p; Calmly withdrawing a knife from his side, he walked up to me, grabbed my hair, and pulled me against him, blade at my neck.

  Judah gripped the bars and his knuckles turned white. “She is under the protection of Herod!”

  Brutus ignored the warning. “Restrain the slave.”

  The guard with the torch set it in the wall and approached the cell, keys in hand.

  “If you resist, I will cut her,” Brutus said.

  With those words we both knew what Brutus intended. Judah looked into my eyes, offering me strength. But I knew then that it was he, not I, who would need it.

  My vision blurred. “Judah…” The blade pressed against my neck.

  “Do not resist him, Maviah,” Judah said. “He cannot hurt you.” The warrior in him hid any panic he might have felt. “Remember who I am.”

  He was Judah. Judah who would now suffer on my behalf.

  Brutus, breath heavy and thick with the scent of drink, said nothing as his men unlocked the cage and with swords drawn forced Judah to the far wall.

  “Remember, Maviah!”

  But I found no courage in the thought that Judah could withstand great suffering for his queen.

  I guessed that Judah could have easily overpowered both guards, for he was a warrior unequaled and by appearance alone much stronger than either. Instead he turned willingly and lifted his hands to the posts jutting from the wall. With leather thongs they strapped one wrist to each post, then stepped back.

  Torchlight danced over scars from old battles on Judah’s bare back.

  “Make sure he bleeds,” Brutus said.

  The guard closest to me took a whip from his belt, stood back, and laid the leather strap across Judah’s back, grunting with the exertion.

  The crack of whip on muscled skin echoed through the chamber and I winced.

  Judah did not. He might have been made of stone.

  The guard drew his arm back and struck again, then again. The first two lashes drew welts. The third cut Judah’s flesh outright.

  Still he showed no sign of pain.

  I closed my eyes and stilled my breathing as Judah’s tormentor beat him without mercy. An eerie silence enveloped me but for the breath of Brutus in my ear, the grunting of the guard with each blow, and the crack of the whip.

  I did not count them, but the guard laid the whip across his back at least twenty times before Brutus stopped him.

  Perhaps if he’d taken less drink that night, the terror would have ended with the last blow. Perhaps if Judah had cried out, Brutus’s thirst for blood would have been satisfied. But neither was the case.

  “Now the whore,” Brutus said.

  I opened my eyes, not sure I’d heard correctly. Judah was sagging, his back a bloody mess. The guards were staring at Brutus, unsure.

  “Tie her to the bars.”

  “Sir—”

  “Do you question me?” I flinched at the voice that thundered in my ear.

  “No, sir.”

  Judah slowly straightened, but he did not speak.

  The guards feared Brutus as much as they feared the king, surely. Judah was restrained, and I was without the means to defend myself. Nothing could stop Herod’s beast.

  “Strap her up and bare her back,” Brutus said.

  Judah remained silent, but I could see his flesh trembling as he stood. Fear washed over me.

  Brutus shoved me toward his men, who grabbed me by the arms, spun me around, and shoved me against the cell door. They lifted my arms and began to tie me to the iron bars as ordered by Brutus.

  I could see Judah to my right, chest heaving, facing the wall. He knew that any objection would only gain both of us more suffering. He was powerless to save me.

  I realized that to resist in any way, even in my heart, would only offer me more pain. In this way too, Judah and I would share our lives. We would both leave Galilee with scarred backs. This was now our fate to accept.

  A strange calm settled over me.

  “Judah…” I whispered.

  His resolve broke then, as if my faint call had beckoned a jinn deep within him. One moment Judah stood still, strapped in silence to the wall inside the cell, and in the next he was twisting, baring all his strength, voicing his outrage with a thunderous roar.

  The leather restraints did not pull free; they simply snapped. Both of them, as if made of thread. And then Judah was in the air, mouth stretched wide, eyes on fire with hatred.

  It was his ferocity more than his boldness or strength that took my breath away. For in that moment, Judah was not the man I knew. He’d been transformed into a warrior the likes of which I had never seen, not even watching Johnin fight for his life as a gladiator in Egypt.

  I was restrained already, with my back to Brutus and his guards, so I saw only the first blow of Judah’s fist as it slammed into the side of the guard’s face like a hammer. The unmistakable crack of breaking bone cut off the man’s surprised cry.

  And then I saw nothing except the bars before me.

  But I heard. I heard the raging grunts of men fighting off death. I heard the heavy landing of fist on bone and the distinctive sound of a blade piercing a body. The slapping of flesh on a stone floor.

  And then I heard only the heavy breathing of one man.

  I twisted to see Judah standing over three dead Roman guards, staring down at his handiwork, stunned. The blade in his right fist dripped with blood.

  “Judah?”

  He straightened and looked up at me, as if only now remembering where he was.

  Judah rushed to me and sliced the blade through my restraints, freeing me in the space of two breaths. I would have thrown my arms around him but for the blood on his chest and the painful welts upon his back.

  “I’ve killed Brutus,” he said, looking at the still body. A gash in the chief’s neck continued to bleed. I could summon no remorse for the beast.

  “You have.”

  “I wasn’t thinking.”

  Indeed. He had been acting only from his heart, I thought.

  “What have I done?”

  “You have saved your queen,” I said.

  Judah hesitated, then dipped his head. “Then it was my honor.”

  I knew then that I would always love Judah. He was the savior not only of my heart, but of my body. His eyes lingered on my face, and slowly his full senses returned. The brutal warrior in him retreated into the shadows as the more gentle part of him emerged.

  “We must free Saba,” he finally said.

  “And tell Phasa.”

  “You are sure?”

  “Perfectly.”

  PHASA PACED before us, glancing first at Saba, then at Judah, with equal parts awe and interest. To say that she was worried would be to lie outright. Although she’d feigned great concern over what Herod might think of such a dramatic turn of events, she could not hide her awareness of her own good fortune.

  Brutus, her enemy, was dead.

  We’d quickly freed Saba from his cell beyond the door using the guard’s keys. Saba had stared at Judah’s carnage without asking for an explanation, having heard enough. It had taken us only a few minutes to make our way unseen back up to Herod’s court and, from there, to Phasa’s chambers.

  She’d expressed shock at the appearance of both Saba and Judah, then insisted we clean Judah’s back and apply salve. Only when he was properly treated did she stand before us for a full accounting.

  “Now tell me,” she said, crossing her arms. “Whom did you kill?”

  I told her what had happened, precisely as it had. And when I finally explained that Brutus and two of his guards were now locked in the dungeons, robbed of life, a thin smile slowly replaced her initial shock.

  “So, then… it appears that the gods have finally come out of hiding.”

  “I see no gods,” Saba said. “Only trouble.”

  Phasa walked up to him with a twinkle in her eye. “Sometimes even trouble can bring the most pleasant surprises, my stallion,” she said, tracing h
is bare chest with her finger.

  I had not yet told her that Saba knew nothing of her message.

  “Do you think you can trust me? Can you lay that wild man at my feet and give me charge?”

  He glanced at me, taken off guard.

  “I ask you, not your queen,” Phasa said. “If I bite, it is only for your own pleasure as well, I can assure you.”

  This wasn’t the way of the Bedu, and though Saba was well traveled, I doubted he had experienced the sensuous ways of royal Nabataeans like Phasa.

  “Well?”

  “If I must,” he said.

  “But do you want to? If I could promise you the world, would you let me bend your ear?”

  His eyes flitted to Judah.

  “Not him either,” she said. “It is I who speak.”

  “Yes,” he finally said.

  “Good. It’s a beginning.”

  Phasa stepped away from him and faced us all.

  “Maviah, I know, will trust me. What about you, Judah? Will you?”

  I suspected that he too had been taken aback by Phasa’s brazen words, but he was quick to respond. “Yes.”

  “Good. Then wait for me in my bedchamber.” She faced Saba. “Both of you.”

  She turned her back and swept toward the outer door, gliding in her long gown as though on a cloud. “Your queen will remain here with me until I call for you. Make no sound.”

  “Go,” I whispered to Saba, who in particular still appeared unsure.

  They went without another word.

  Phasa pushed wide the heavy door that sealed her outer chamber. “Esther, my dear, please fetch Malcheus. Tell him that I must see him immediately on a matter of life and death.”

  “Yes, mistress.” I heard her feet pattering away in a hurry.

  When Phasa turned she was smiling. “That will get him here quickly.”

  And so it was that Malcheus, who was second only to Brutus among the palace guard, presented himself within minutes at Phasa’s door. He wore the dark armor of Jews in service to the Roman order.

  He stared between us, curious. “You called, my queen.”

  “I did. Thank you for coming so quickly.”

  “Of course.”

  She took his arm and led him in, which made him appear awkward, for this wasn’t the way of a queen with her guard.