Agrippa's Daughter (48 page)

“Who?”

“Who do you think, foolish one? Titus.”

“Well, he must wait. Look at me—look at my hair! And this wretched robe! He must wait.”

“He won’t wait,” Titus said, from the door to the bath. “It is exactly four years since I first saw you—and I’ll wait no more.”

He strode across the floor of green marble tiles and then he took her in his arms. She didn’t resist now. She lay in the hard, wide cradle of his arms like a child come home.

To be touched by a man, stroked, caressed, awakened, brought back to life and awareness; this was more than she had ever dreamed could happen to her again. It cut through guilt and fear and wonder—and she was a woman, filled with all the knowledge of a woman, her body alive and full of music and fire and response. The touch of Titus’ hands, his fingers, his mouth, his tongue, and the pent-up need of his love, the rigid demand of it—all of this was terrifying in her want of it, her need of it, and the confrontation of herself that was unavoidable. In the pulsing joy and agony, the doubt washed out. “I love you,” she told him, calling upon God not to be her witness but her executioner. “May God destroy me, may my soul burn in all the fires of hell—but I love you, Titus—I love you more than life itself.” “And will your God punish you for this?” “My God is an angry God,” she wept, “and you came into His land with your sword and your torch and you burned His holy city—” “But you told me that all lands were His. And I will tell you something, Berenice—”

It waited, and he made love to her. He traced out her long, copper-skinned limbs, her wide hips, her wide shoulders, the beautiful, youthful curves into her groin—the carved planes and angles of her face, the great silken flood of her red hair, “This is such a woman as there is nowhere else—and I will love you forever, Berenice, and cherish you—” Passion flooded her. He lay by her, and she clutched his naked body, and he was child and man and necessity and the breath of life and being.

She slept for a little while. She opened her eyes, and he was there, and she asked him, “What were you going to tell me, my beloved?”

“Ah—let me remember. We spoke of God’s anger. Yaweh will not forgive me, but I made me a pledge to the God of your Hillel. I will be emperor some day, and I pledged to Him that when that day comes, I will make a garden of justice and beauty out of all the world that Rome rules. I will repay Him for giving me Berenice. I will repay in a world where fear and hunger have been banished, where all men live and work in peace, and where war is only a memory. I tell you, I will do this because with you beside me, I can do anything. Anything.”

Berenice smiled at him as she would have smiled at a child. He was a child—her own beautiful youth given to her to recreate her youth. He was filled with youth-strength, and he would pour this youth-strength into her. And between them, they would do anything, anything—

He was sleeping now, and she lay next to him and looked at him, and then she too slept. The first light of dawn was coming into the room when he awakened her, and again he touched her and awakened the wellspring of her life and being.

Lying back, her eyes closed, she heard his soft plea.

“Yes.”

“Speak it.”

“I love you, Titus Flavius.”

“And you will be my wife?”

“If you wish.”

“Have I ever wished otherwise?”

“Ever? Ever is too long.”

“Not for us, blessed Berenice. For us, it is ever and always—our own eternity.”

“You are so young, Titus Flavius—so young, and this city of yours is so young, and your people so young—”

“I will be as old as time for you.”

“Ah? And what will that solve?”

“There is nothing more for me to solve. I have you, my beloved. So I have everything. I have life and I have eternity.”

“You are really an amazing man,” Berenice said. “I have never known you to do a cruel thing or a thoughtless thing, or to speak a cruel word, and you are as gentle as any man I have ever known, and—”

“And yet I am a Roman,” Titus agreed.

“Yes.”

“And you are a Jew—and doesn’t your Hillel teach that God has a purpose and a plan? So we are Jew and Roman joined finally, and if it is true that your bloodlines go back three thousand years to time’s beginning, is it not highly proper that they should find their haven here in my arms?”

“Oh, what ego! What arrogance!”

“Yes—because we shall rule the whole world, you and me, Jew and Roman joined together finally for man’s golden age. Doesn’t this poor, beaten old world deserve it?”

“Your dreams are too beautiful for me to upset them.”

“My dreams will be the hard facts of history. Only, don’t leave me, Berenice. Without you, I am nothing. I swear by all the gods that be that I am telling the truth—without you, I am nothing. But with you to support me, to love me, to caress me, to give me some worth in myself—with this, all things are possible. So promise me that you will never leave me.”

She didn’t answer for a while, and then she said, “For as long as you want me to remain with you, I will. I promise that.”

The following day, David Barona made no mention of Titus’ visit. The best part of the day was given over to discussions with the leading men of the Jewish community—and out of seventeen men who attended, twenty-two million sesterces were pledged, either as a gift or as a sum to be raised within sixty days. Not all of it would be raised in Rome, or even in Italy; certain men would embark immediately for Africa and for Spain; but the pledges were secure, and the money would be raised—and now, at last, the final step in the enormous financial effort was in sight. Here, too, Berenice found herself changed. She was not pleading for money. She was demanding it, quietly, gently, but demanding it nevertheless—with a kind of firmness she had never considered herself to be capable of, and the men responded to her.

That night, she dined with Barona and his family—and they were utterly charmed and captured by her directness, her simplicity, and her great beauty. To people raised in luxury in Rome, where every woman who could afford it painted her face, rouged her lips, powdered her cheeks, and framed her eyes in heavy gobs of red-black outline and shadow, the sight of this Galilean princess, unrouged and unpainted, was exciting and unbelievable—and in Italy, where most men were quite short and the women shorter, her height and breadth of shoulder marked her as one apart, foreign and mysterious. The children of the house worshiped her with their eyes; the little girls attempted to walk as she walked, to hold themselves as she held herself.

After dinner Barona took her aside and said, “I think, my dear, that there are one or two matters we must discuss. Not our visitor last night. That is not my concern and in any case, it is something that I have known about. But concerning the slaves, you must understand this: Vespasian, the emperor, took over a throne where not the least among a number of pressing problems was finance—in other words, the near bankruptcy of the Empire. No, don’t look so surprised—the Romans have only the most primitive concept of finance, and their scheme of balancing a budget is to balance enormous expenditures with equally enormous international looting. Eventually they will pay for this and pay an awful price, but for the moment they are able to step out of each crisis into the next. Now, when Titus began his siege of Jerusalem, Vespasian, at his wit’s end for money, pledged two hundred thousand Jewish slaves to the big dealers and took option money to the extent of five million sesterces. We want to preserve the lives of the captives until sufficient funds are raised, and the only way to do this, I think, is to satisfy the dealers that you will not bring undue pressure on Titus to ruin them. In other words, we must guarantee their options, and you yourself must, I think, meet with them. I hate to do this, my dear. These are not Jews or like the Jews you met here today. These are not even like Romans. These dealers are very wealthy, but they are the lowest of the low, the scum of the earth. So if you feel that you cannot—”

“I will meet them,” Berenice said.

The following day she met with these slave dealers in their common room at the slave market at one end of the Circus Maximus, gross men, wealthy men, but mixed breeds barred from citizenship and from the baths and unwashed as in protest, foul of smell and foul of tongue, addressing her as “Jew-woman,” though they knew well enough who she was. Barona watched her as she dealt with them, never for one moment losing her composure, controlling herself and talking to them firmly but without hostility, as if she were dealing with a group of truculent children. Gently and firmly she induced them to part with the options, and when the meeting was over each of them bowed to her. There were seven of them. They kissed her hand one by one.

In his litter on the way back to his house, Barona said to Berenice, “Do you know, my dear—I think you are the most remarkable woman I have ever known. Through the years, I have heard much about you, and none of it measured up to the fact of yourself. I am seventy-six years old, so I can say things that would be impermissible in another man; also I have a prior claim. For when your father lived in Rome and was in desperate need of funds, I gave him credit to the extent of eighty thousand sesterces—”

“I never knew that. I must repay you,” Berenice said.

“Child, child—the money was repaid these thirty years ago, and money is nothing, nothing at all. In the end there is only one thing that matters, and that is Israel and its destiny along the road that Hillel marked. May I talk frankly?”

“I think we should both talk frankly,” Berenice said.

“Exactly, for it seems to me that we need each other. Now it is common talk that Titus adores you—but tell me this, will you be content as his mistress?”

“No, I will not,” Berenice answered flatly.

“Good, good,” he nodded, rubbing his hands together with pleasure. “I am glad you said that. As sure as the Almighty is, my child—this is ordained. Have no regrets, for this is no ordinary man—this Titus. I think I know as much about him as anyone, and you see that he comes and goes freely in my house. I tell you, he is sober and wise and just, and when he puts on the purple, there will be a new era for the world. Now answer me straightly—did he ask you to marry him?”

“Yes.”

“And you agreed?”

“Yes—and no. I need more time.”

“Well, nothing is simple. I don’t think he can marry you before he becomes emperor.”

“Why?”

“Isn’t it plain? Because we are Jews, my dear—and because the hatred of Jews is becoming both a fashion and a passion in Rome.”

“But why?” Berenice asked. “I lived here as a child—and there was no hatred of Jews then. I don’t think the people here had any real notion of what a Jew was.”

“Well, they do now. A great deal has changed since then, and they know very well what a Jew is now—a Jew being someone who is apart from the dole, who lives quietly and decently, who remains sober and manages to eat with such restraint that he is not obligated to vomit up his excess food each evening, who does not destroy his children at birth—and who most dangerously converts Romans. Over the last five years, here in Rome, we have had eight hundred converts from Roman families—from the best families, if I may say so—and the men endure all the pain and indignity of circumcision to become Jews. And each year the number increases. Rest assured, my dear, we are envied and feared and hated, and that too increases constantly. I don’t think that Titus could marry you without risking the throne—I don’t think that he should until the throne is his.”

“Isn’t that for Titus to decide?”

“Now you are angry at me. But I am trying to make you understand what Vespasian will decide—and Titus will obey him. You see, my dear Berenice, a man loves a woman, a woman loves a man—this is within a framework, and the framework is the world. We are playing for the largest stakes in all time—for I tell you this: if ever Rome and Israel were joined together, then a new age would begin for mankind. Yes, I have dreamed of that—but until now, there has been no possibility. Now it is at least possible. Only don’t press him. Let it be in his own good time.”

To this, Berenice was silent, absorbed in her own thoughts and suddenly desperately lonely for Galilee.

But it was to be a long time before she saw Galilee again. The vast effort in which the Jews of all the world had joined was now coming to fruition. The gigantic sum of money was being raised, and in every important city of the Mediterranean basin, agents were quietly bidding for and purchasing Jewish slaves. But in Rome the slaves were most numerous, the effort largest; and here, too, was located the central bank, to where the major part of the money was directed and from whence it was dispensed. Jacobar Hacohen and Gideon Benharmish—his House of Shlomo had a warehouse at Ostia and ships based there—joined Berenice in Rome, bringing with them Phineas Hacohen. He had been recorded as among the dead in Jerusalem, but had turned up subsequently in the slave market at Antioch and had been purchased for a token fee of twenty sesterces, being then almost dead with hunger and disease. Now, four months later, he was still thin, slow in his step, and humble at the fact that twenty sesterces had been his price in the markets of men. While his own fortune was gone, he was the last survivor of the ancient House of Hakedron and the grandson of the legendary Ba’as Hacohen and therefore a potent force in the effort. It was at his urging that Spain was chosen as the destination for most of the manumitted captives.

Not only were the Palestinian members of the syndicate uneasy at the prospect of thousands of Zealots and Sicarii bought out of slavery and returned to Judea to nurse their hate and their dreams of revenge, but the Romans let it be known that at the first sign of substantial numbers of able-bodied men being returned to Judea, they would intervene and halt the traffic entirely. At the moment, because of Titus’ support, the Roman authorities were standing aside, allowing the manumission to continue as a private process between the Jews and the slave dealers. For this reason, it was decided to ship as many of the Jews as possible, that is, adult men and women and their families, to Spain and to southern France—spreading the orphans and widowed women among the Italian, Greek, and Galilean Jewish communities. In Spain there was no trace of anti-Semitism; Jewish synagogues and communities had flourished in the coastal communities for hundreds of years; and thousands of Spaniards had been converted to Judaism.