He took her hand and looked at it. “I will have it,” he said, letting go of her.
Tears blurring her eyes, she twisted the ring until she was able to pull it from the little finger of her right hand. She watched him tuck it away with the earrings and pendant. “Follow me,” he said.
He left her in a purification chamber, where she was told to remove all her clothing. She had always been proud of her body. Now as this servant washed her, cleansing her body in preparation for entering the Sacred Well, she was ashamed and embarrassed. Revealed were the festering ulcers and strange purple-red bruises that were evidence of her mysterious, malignant disease. When the loose white garment was held out to her, she grasped it and drew it on quickly, covering herself from prying, curious eyes.
Julia entered the chamber that protected the Sacred Well and saw others waiting ahead of her. She looked away from a woman with mentagra, a terrible skin disorder. She fought a wave of repulsion at the ugly skin eruptions on the woman’s face and watched a man with swollen joints enter the sacred pool. He went into a spasm of violent coughing as the attendants began to lower him, and they had to wait for it to end.
The next to enter the pool was an obese woman who was trembling violently. Attendants sang ritual hymns and then repeated incantations as each applicant of the god’s favor went down the steps into the water. One after another, each with some disease or deformity, entered the pool.
When it came Julia’s turn, she couldn’t concentrate on the words being chanted or sung. All she could think about was the woman with mentagra entering the sacred waters just ahead of her. She had watched as the attendants lowered the woman until she was submerged in the murky pool. Now she was to enter the same water that had washed over those revolting eruptions.
The hands of the attendants took hold of hers firmly, helping her down the slippery steps. She fought panic as they leaned her back, the water cold against her back and creeping up around and over her, covering her face. She wanted to scream, but she held her panic inside, pressing her lips together, holding her breath. Down, down, she went into the cloudy water of the Sacred Well, sulfur burning her eyes even though they were closed.
She was lifted up again, and it took all her willpower not to shake free of the attendants and clamber frantically up the opposite steps and out of the polluted pool. She gave those helping her a false, tentative smile, but their attention was already focused on the man behind her, who was now entering the sacred waters.
Shivering, she entered the next chamber, where she discarded the sodden white smock and put on a loose white tunic. Another attendant led her down a long open corridor to the abaton, a sacred dormitory adjacent to the Asklepion, where she would be “incubated” for the night. In front of it was the sacred pit of snakes. Priests poured libations into the writhing mass of churning reptiles, chanting and praying aloud to the gods and spirits of the underworld.
Julia entered the abaton. Though she had no appetite, she ate the food and drank the wine they brought to her. Perhaps it had drugs in it that would bring on the healing dreams. She lay down upon the sleeping bench and prayed again. She knew if she dreamed that dogs licked her body or snakes crawled over her, it would be a sign that Asklepios had favored her and would heal her. So she prayed that the dogs and snakes would come to her, though the very thought of either terrified her.
Her eyelids felt heavy, her body weighted. She thought someone had entered the room, but was too tired to open her eyes and look. She heard a man’s voice, speaking softly, invoking the gods and spirits of the underworld to come to her, to heal her of her afflictions. Her body became heavier and heavier as she sank down into a dark pit. . . .
Snakes were beneath her, thousands of them in all sizes, squirming and twisting together in a terrifying mass. Boa constrictors and tiny asps, small harmless snakes she had seen in the villa garden in Rome, and poisonous cobras with their spreading capes. Their split tongues darted in and out, in and out, closer and closer, until they flicked against her flesh, each touch like fire until her body was being consumed by it.
She struggled, crying out, and awakened.
Someone was in the shadows of her small cell, speaking to her in a low voice. She strained to see who it was, but her vision was distorted, her thoughts clouded.
“Marcus?”
The form did not answer. Disoriented, she closed her eyes. Where was she? She breathed deeply and slowly until her mind cleared slightly, and she remembered. The abaton. She had come for healing.
She started to cry. She should be happy. The snakes had crawled over her in her dream. It was a sign from the gods that she would get well. And yet she couldn’t still the voice of doubt that echoed in her mind. What if the dream meant nothing? What if the gods were mocking her? Her chest ached as she tried to stop sobbing.
Turning her head, she saw the shadowy figure still standing in the dark corner of the cell. Had Asklepios come to her? “Who are you?” she whispered hoarsely, afraid, yet hopeful.
He began to speak in a low, strange voice, and she realized he was chanting. The voice droned on, the words making no sense to her. She grew drowsy again and struggled against sleep, not wanting to dream of the snake pit. But she could not withstand the effects of the drugs she had been given, and she sank into darkness. . . .
She heard dogs barking and moaned. They were coming closer, closer, faster and faster. She was running across a hot, rocky plain. When she looked back, she saw the dogs coming in a pack, racing across the ground toward her. She stumbled and fell, clambered back to her feet, panting, her lungs burning as she tried to run faster. They came on, barking wildly, fangs bared.
“Someone help me! Someone help—!”
She stumbled again, and before she could get up, they were on her, not licking her diseased flesh but tearing at it with their sharp fangs. Screaming, she fought them.
She awakened with a cry and sat up on the narrow bed. It was a moment before her breathing slowed down and she fully realized it had only been a dream. No shadowy figure loomed in the dark corner. She covered her face and cried, afraid to go back to sleep again. And so she waited through the long, cold hours until darkness began lifting.
A temple warden came to her at daybreak and asked what she had dreamed. She told him in as much detail as she could remember and saw he looked troubled.
“What’s wrong? Is it a bad omen? Won’t I get well?” she asked breathlessly, near tears again. Her stomach quivered, warning of near hysteria. Clenching her hands, she fought against it.
“Asklepios has sent a good sign,” the warden assured her calmly, his face once again devoid of emotion. “Many snakes, many dogs. It is unusual. Your prayers have found great favor with our most high god.”
Julia felt vaguely uncomfortable with his interpretation. She had seen something in his eyes, something terrible and unsettling. She was certain that now he was telling her what she longed to hear. Still, she couldn’t help but ask, “Then I will be well again?”
He nodded. “In time, Asklepios will restore your health.”
“In time,” she said bleakly. “How much time?”
“You must show more faith, woman.”
And then she knew. “How do I show Asklepios that I have enough faith for him to heal me?” she said, trying to keep the bitter cynicism out of her voice. She knew what was coming. She had heard it often enough from the priests of half a dozen other gods whose favor she had sought and failed to secure.
The warden raised his head slightly, his eyes narrowing. “In vigils, in prayer, in meditation, and in votive offerings. And when you are well, you must show the proper gratitude in worthy gifts.”
She looked away from him and closed her eyes. She had no strength for lengthy vigils and no heart for prayer and meditation. The wealth she had once thought enough to keep her in luxury for a lifetime had dwindled to almost nothing, siphoned off by Primus. He had stripped her of most of her estate and then vanished from Ephesus. Perhaps, like Calaba
h, he had simply boarded a ship and sailed away to Rome, where he would find a far more exciting life than watching her die slowly of some unnamed illness.
She had learned only a few days ago that she had barely enough money left to live in simple comfort. She could spare little for the kind of votive offerings to which the warden alluded: gold replicas of the internal organs that pained her. It wasn’t pain as much as it was a spreading weakness . . . the constant fevers, the nausea and sweats, spells of trembling, and the oozing sores in her secret places all drained her to the point of exhaustion.
“Why don’t you kill yourself and have done with it?” Primus had said during what she later realized was their last conversation before he abandoned her. “Put yourself out of misery.”
But she wanted to live! She didn’t want to die and be in darkness for the rest of eternity. She didn’t want to die and face whatever unknown horror awaited her.
She was afraid.
“I have very little money,” she said, looking back at the warden, who sat silently waiting for her to say something. “My husband has taken most of my estate and left me. I haven’t enough to have votive offerings made of gold or silver or even brass.”
“A pity,” he said without feeling. He rose. “Your clothing is on the shelf. Please leave the tunic behind.”
She was stunned by his indifference.
Alone again, she sat on the couch, too tired and despondent to feel anything. She rose after a long time, removed the white garment she had been given, and put on her own fine blue linen tunic. She touched her earlobes and throat where her last pieces of gold jewelry had been and let her hands drop to her sides. She took up her blue shawl with the elegant, expensive, embroidered flower trim and draped it over her head and shoulders.
Tipping her chin slightly, she walked out into the corridor. Several attendants stopped her and asked how her night had gone, if the gods had answered her prayer. Smiling, she lied and said she was healed of her affliction.
“Asklepios be praised!” they said one after another.
She walked quickly across the courtyard and through the propylon to the people-thronged street beyond. She wanted to be home. Not in her villa here in Ephesus. She wanted to be back in the villa in Rome, a child again. She wanted to return to the times when her whole life stretched out ahead of her, brilliant and beautiful as the colors of dawn, fresh and new, full of potential, full of opportunities.
She wanted to start over. If only she could, how differently she would do things, how differently things would have turned out!
She had thought Asklepios would give her that. She had thought her offerings, her vigils, her prayers would earn that for her. And he had sent the snakes. He had sent the dogs.
And yet she knew, deep within, that it was all for naught. Helpless rage filled her. “Stone! That’s all you are! You can’t heal anyone! You’re nothing but cold, dead stone!” She bumped into someone.
“A curse on you, woman! Watch where you’re going!”
Bursting into tears, Julia ran.
11
The Minerva landed in Caesarea Maritima at the beginning of the warming of spring. Though the city was built by a Jewish king, Marcus found it as Roman, both in appearance and atmosphere, as the Eternal City in which he’d been reared. Four centuries before, this same site had been settled by Phoenicians who built a small, fortified anchorage called Strato’s Tower, honoring one of their kings. The anchorage had been expanded and modernized by Herod the Great, and he named his new city in honor of Emperor Caesar Augustus. Caesarea had become one of the most important seaports in the Empire and the seat for Roman prefects governing Palestine.
Herod had rebuilt the city with his eyes on Rome, borrowing mightily from the conquered Greeks. Hellenistic influence showed strongly in the amphitheater, hippodrome, baths, and aqueducts. There was also the temple honoring Augustus, as well as the statues to various Roman and Greek gods that continued to so enrage righteous Jews.
Marcus was well aware that conflicts had often arisen between the Jewish and Greek people of the city. The last bloody rebellion had been sparked ten years before, only to be crushed by Vespasian and his son Titus before they had marched on against Jerusalem, the heart of Judea. Vespasian had been pronounced emperor here in Caesarea and had promptly elevated the city to a Roman colony.
Despite the iron grip of Rome upon the city, Marcus sensed that unrest remained an undercurrent as he walked through the narrow streets. Satyros warned him against entering certain sections of the city, and it was to those very sections that Marcus went. These were Hadassah’s people. He wanted to know what made them so stubborn and determined in their faith.
He wasted no time in contemplating the violence that might befall him at the hands of zealots or sicarii. He was on a quest to find Hadassah’s god, and he wouldn’t find him in the Roman baths and arenas or in the homes of fellow Roman merchants. The information he needed lay in the minds of these Jewish patriots who had the same stubbornness he had sensed in Hadassah.
Within three days of his arrival, Marcus had purchased a strong desert horse, supplies for his overland journey, and an itinerary showing roads, stationes, and civitates, all with distances between. After a day of studying the map, he rode away from Caesarea and headed southeast for Sebaste, in the district of Samaria.
Marcus reached the city early in the afternoon on the second day. He had been told beforehand that the ancient Jewish city vied in grandeur with Jerusalem before the destruction. He spotted it long before he reached it, for it was high on a hill. From his conversations with Satyros while sailing from Ephesus on the Minerva, Marcus knew Sebaste to be the only city the ancient Hebrews founded. Built by King Omri over nine hundred years before, Samaria—as it had previously been called—had served as a capital for the kingdom of Israel, while Jerusalem was capital for the kingdom of Judah.
The city had a long and bloody history. It was here that a Jewish prophet named Elijah had slaughtered two hundred Baal priests. Later the dynasty of King Ahab and his Phoenician wife, Jezebel, was overthrown by a man named Jehu, who slaughtered the worshipers of Baal and then turned the god’s temple into a latrine. But the bloodshed had not ended there.
Over the centuries, Samaria was conquered by the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, and Macedonians. Finally, a Hasmonean leader by the name of John Hyrcanus I made the city part of a Jewish kingdom again. But less than two centuries later, Pompey took the city for Rome. Caesar Augustus gave Samaria to Herod the Great as a gift, and the Jewish king promptly renamed it “Sebaste,” Greek for “Augustus.”
As Marcus rode through the gates into the city, he saw again the heavy stamp of Roman and Greek influence. The populace was a mingling of races: Roman, Greek, Arab, and Jew. He found an inn near the marketplace, or what was called an inn. Actually, it was little more than a protected courtyard with booths along the inner walls and a fire in the center. Still, it was shelter.
After a visit to the baths, he returned to the inn and asked questions of the proprietor, a thin, shrewd-eyed Greek named Malchus.
“You’re wasting your time looking for the Jews’ god. Even they dispute among themselves as to which mountain is the holy mount. Those in Sebaste say Mount Gerizim is where Abraham took his son to be sacrificed.”
“What do you mean ‘sacrificed’?”
“The race of Jews began with a man named Abraham, who was told by their god to sacrifice his only son, a son he had in his old age and who was promised him by this same god,” Malchus said, pouring wine into Marcus’ goblet.
Marcus gave a mirthless laugh. “So he killed his own from the beginning.”
“They don’t see it that way. The Jews believe their god was testing their patriarch’s faith. Would this Abraham choose to love God more than his only son? He passed the test, and his son was spared. It’s considered one of the most crucial events in their religious history. Abraham’s obedience to his god is what made his descendants ‘the chosen people.’ Yo
u’d think they’d know where it happened, but somewhere along the line the location came into dispute. It’s either Moriah to the south or Gerizim within walking distance of here. It didn’t help matters that the Jews in Jerusalem look upon those here in Samaria as a tainted race.”
“Tainted by what?”
“Intermarriage with Gentiles. You and I are Gentiles, my lord. In fact, anyone not born a direct descendant of this Abraham is a Gentile. They’re adamant about it. Even those who embrace their religion aren’t considered true Jews, not even after they’ve been circumcised.”
Marcus winced. He’d heard what circumcision entailed. “What man in full possession of his senses would agree to such a barbaric practice?”
“Anyone who wants to adhere to the Jewish Law,” Malchus said. “The problem is the Jews can’t even agree among themselves. And they hold grudges longer than any Roman. The Jews in the districts of Judea and Galilee hate those here in Samaria, and it’s got to do with whatever happened centuries ago,” he said. “There was a temple here once, but it was destroyed by a Hasmonean Jew named John Hyrcanus. The Samaritans haven’t forgotten that, either. They’ve got long memories. There’s a lot of bad blood between them, and the rift between them grows wider as time goes by.”
“I’d think worshiping one god would unite a people.”
“Ha! Jews are splintered into all kinds of factions and sects. You’ve got the Essenes, the Zealots, the Pharisees, and the Sadducees. You’ve got Samaritans, who proclaim Mount Gerizim the holy mountain, and Jews in Judea who’re still praying at what remains of their temple walls. Then you’ve got new sects cropping up all the time. These Christians, for example. They’ve lasted longer than most, though the Jews have driven almost all of them out of Palestine. There are still a few determined to stay and save the rest. I’ll tell you, where there are Christians in Palestine, you can be sure there’ll be a riot and someone will get stoned.”