David found himself beside the man-at-arms’ kit, with its weapons collected about it. One of the legionaries must have hauled this down from up the slope. As if commanded by some inner voice, the youth picked up the gear and carrying pole and hoisted the whole bundle onto his shoulder.
The man himself, in chains now, was being dragged toward a cage wagon, which had at this moment rumbled up, drawn by four mules, a part of the Roman column. Three other miscreants resided already inside this mobile jail.
David’s eyes found those of the man-at-arms. His expression sought to say, I have your kit and weapons. I will keep them safe.
The man-at-arms perceived and acknowledged this.
David had taken two strides, seeking to get clear of the affray, when he felt a hand seize him from behind and cuff him violently across the back of the head.
A legionary sergeant hauled the youth about to face him.
“Who in hell’s name,” the trooper demanded in bad Hebrew, “are you?”
David held fast to the man-at-arms’ kit and weapons. He indicated the captive, chained now and being manhandled aboard the prison wagon.
“I’m with him, sir. I’m his apprentice.”
− 5 −
THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN PALESTINE
IN STRATEGIC TERMS, THE CITY of Jerusalem is a conundrum and a contradiction.
The site commands no port or harbor, bestrides no trade routes or arteries of commerce. Its occupation is necessary neither to secure the country militarily (that chore was accomplished from the governor’s seat at Caesarea on the seacoast) nor to interdict an invading force advancing from any direction save the east.
Jerusalem is vulnerable to siege. Despite its walls the city has been stormed and taken more than twenty times. It has been conquered by Jebusites, Philistines, Egyptians. Babylonia sacked it under Nebuchadnezzar. Cyrus the Great captured it for Persia. Alexander took it without a fight. The Jews made it their own ten centuries ago under their great king David but it has been captured and overrun many times since.
The land about Jerusalem is itself vexatious. The city perches high upon a sterile, stony crest. Teamsters grumble that all inbound freight must be trucked up. Grain and oil, indeed virtually all the necessities of life, must be brought in overland, as river or sea transport do not exist. The countryside roundabout will not sustain the grazing of livestock sufficient to feed a garrison of even cohort size, nor can it support the cultivation of grains or cereals on any scale beyond that of subsistence. Water cannot be brought to Jerusalem via aqueduct because of its lofty siting. Indeed, even the wealthiest families of the city supply their needs in the manner of their ancestors—via maids of the household drawing from wells and bearing this necessity home in earthen jars balanced atop their heads.
Jerusalem’s isolation creates even graver difficulties for the garrison or administrative commander charged with the city’s occupation and the subjugation of its restive populace. Supplies and ordnance carted or caravanned in from the coastal plain, Syria, or the Jordan Valley may be transported only at great expense and hazard over highways vulnerable to ambush and attack at innumerable places. Nothing can come from Egypt except by sea, as the wilderness of Sinai intervenes, and even such freight must be transported via vulnerable highways from the ports of Gaza, Jaffa, or Caesarea Maritima.
Yet Jerusalem remains for any conqueror the indispensable city of Judea. Here and nowhere else resides the religious and administrative capital of the Jewish people—the Great Temple of Solomon with its sanctuary, the Holy of Holies containing the Ark of the Covenant. Here and nowhere else may the secular and spiritual chieftains of the Jews be assembled, addressed, and reasoned with. These mulish, disputatious, stubborn fellows congregate in their milling, chattering masses. Their schemes and passions, of this world and the next, are as opaque to their Roman overlords as they are inextinguishable to all and every external influence.
And the Hebrews are multitudinous. At the season of the Passover, the city hosts no fewer than a million celebrants, half the Jewish population not only of Judea but of Syria, Egypt, Crete, Cyprus, and the cities of the eastern Aegean.
This at least was the assessment of the senior tribune Marcus Severus Pertinax, commander of the garrison at Jerusalem, serving under the procurator of Judea, Marcus Antonius Felix, himself headquartered at the provincial capital, Caesarea Maritima.
“Our position in this place,” declared this officer to his superior in a letter whose contents became widely circulated among the subject populace, “is like that of a lion seated upon an anthill. We may crush the Jews over and over, yet they remain up our ass and nothing we can do will dislodge them.”
Two days had passed since the arrest of the man-at-arms at the ambush site on the Jerusalem-Damascus highway. The mercenary had been transported via prison wagon to the legionary detention facility immediately inside the Essene Gate, also called Sha’ar Ha’ashpot or “Dung Gate” (from which all city garbage was hauled each night outside the walls to be burned), the most downslope of the seven gates in the walled city of Jerusalem. The prisoner was held in this establishment overnight, then transferred the following morning, upon arraignment, to the military lockup of the Antonia Fortress, the Roman administrative center of Judea and the largest stone edifice between Ephesus and Babylon.
Young David, struggling under the sixty-pound weight of the man-at-arms’ kit, armor, and weapons, had fallen behind the cavalry’s pace and required an additional half day to complete the forty-mile journey from the ambush site. He arrived at Jerusalem tardily, fearful that the man-at-arms had already been scourged and put to death. But a post sergeant outside the Damascus Gate informed the lad (after a half dozen others had sent him packing beneath kicks and cuffs) that the fellow yet lived and in fact had been summoned, only minutes earlier, to an interview with the garrison commander, Severus Pertinax.
“Pray, sir,” said David, “can you tell me the man-at-arms’ name?”
The sergeant eyed the youth dubiously. “You’re his apprentice, you say, yet you don’t know the man’s name?”
In chagrin David asked the sergeant where such an interview between the garrison commander and the man-at-arms might take place. The sergeant gave directions to a carpentry shop beneath the fortress’s northern wall. This establishment, with its high roof and open-air eaves, provided a hint of coolness in the infernal Judean forenoons. The garrison commander regularly took his luncheon there, declared the sergeant, and within its precinct frequently received petitioners and other supplicants.
David thanked the man and, hoisting again his cumbersome load, made to step off.
“Telamon,” said the sergeant. “That’s your master’s name. A mercenary from Arcadia in Greece.
“Follow the smell of pine shavings,” he added.
David obeyed, making his way within the city walls to the site of the carpentry works. The building was of mud-brick, washed white, with an open beam roof layered in planks and topped with red-brick tiles. Piles of wood shavings to the height of a man’s waist lay against the downslope wall. Local boys collected these as lamp chips and as bedding for livestock stalls. David prowled about the perimeter, feigning collection of this material, seeking to evade the notice of the many legionaries trooping in the lanes or lounging in the shaded porches.