Agrippa's Daughter (51 page)

Enough, she thought. Titus is dead, and I am alive.

Then she sent for Lucillus Juvan.

“Did you love him?” she asked.

“I loved him and he trusted me.”

“Did he have pain?”

“You know what fever is, madam. It burns—but no pain that one cannot endure easily. It brought him death, which is, I suppose, the worst pain of all.”

“Was it natural?” Berenice asked evenly. “Did he die of a natural fever, or was he poisoned?”

“They began to speak of poison the moment he took ill, and they will go on talking about it, but I know of no poison that could create such a fever. I was with him about five hours before he died, and he was like a furnace. No, madam, he was not poisoned. Who would want his death? It could only profit Domitian, his young brother—and the boy loved Titus Flavius—envied him, yes, but loved him too.”

“Did he speak to you of me?”

“Yes, madam—believe me.”

“What did he say?”

“What could he say? He could not give you money—he never solved the financial problems that beset him, and he knew you had all the money you could spend.”

“I don’t care about money!”

“And I knew he loved you—he knew that, and he told me to do whatever can be done for you—whatever you ask. The galley has been kept here. You may stay here—he gave you this villa—or go where you wish.”

“I want to go home to Galilee in Israel,” Berenice said. “That’s all I want now. So if you would have them make the galley ready for the sea trip, I will leave. Whenever they are provisioned. I have only one desire now—to go home.”

The captain of the galley was a Greek named Philo Menelae, an old sailor, a worldly man and aware of what went on in the world of the Mediterranean. He knew who Berenice was, and he did her the grace of leaving her alone and ordering his officers to respect her privacy. In any case, Berenice was not much of an attraction to them. They looked at her and saw a tall, painfully thin, aging woman who possessed at best the ravaged remains of what might once have been beauty. Only the red hair conformed to the legend of Berenice, and even that was changing rapidly.

One morning, daring to look at herself in her tiny pocket mirror, Berenice saw the white had spread through the roots of most of her hair. Now it would grow in, but it meant little and she cared little. She tried to remember her age—was it fifty-two or fifty-three years? Or fifty-four years? Why was it so hard to think, to remember?

Day after day she sat on the afterdeck of the galley, a striped awning over her head, and tried to remember the many things that one should remember. But it was not easy. She spoke to no one. Sometimes, for hours, she would stare at the shore line slipping by in the distance, for this was a swift, coasting galley, never out of sight of land; and then her sight would blur and she would develop a headache. Never in all her life had she known a real severe headache—and these frightened her. Seeing that at times she was discomforted, the Greek captain made overtures toward her. Could he help her? Was there anything that she needed? She would shake her head—and wonder what he meant. What could she possibly need that this Greek might provide?

He came to her one day to point out the white towers of Tyre in the distance, as they raised the Phoenician coast. “See the height of them, Queen Berenice. Even taller than the apartment houses of Rome, and better built, if the truth be told. One winter I had an apartment in Tyre, seven stories high, a great climb—but I was younger then—and the view from the window once you got there was something to talk about, you may be sure. And the climate—I tell you, Tyre has a beautiful climate. But who am I to be telling you that, Queen Berenice? You know Tyre better than I do.”

“A little, shipmaster—what little I remember.” But the sight of Tyre had set her heart to racing. She felt one of those flushes beginning—the flush of old age and the loss of womanhood, as they called it—yet she could not contain her excitement.

“It’s the weather of that coast that calls me. God save me from your Roman winter—ugh. It destroys. Now here—”

“Shipmaster?”

“Yes, my lady?”

“Can you put into Ptolemais instead of going on south to Caesarea? It’s hours nearer. Is there a dock there where you can tie up?”

“Of course, madam—of course. I have a cousin there—half Syrian, half Jewish, half Greek—three halves? Too much. Anyway, I have a cousin there who owns a dock.”

“And can you hire me a litter, a four-man litter? I don’t want to be in the town at all—but to stay here and go directly from the deck on the litter. I am very tired, I am afraid—very tired and not so well. My hair is turning white. Did you notice? It was red when I came on board—was it not?”

“Red as fire, Queen Berenice. Why, the moment I saw you coming down to my ship, I remembered the hair. I saw the hair, and I said to myself, there is the beautiful queen of Chalcis. But you have so much luggage?”

“Send it to Tiberias—at your pleasure.” With a sudden gesture, she wrenched a gold crescent bracelet from her wrist. “Have this, shipmaster. You have been good and kind.”

“No, no, no”—holding up both hands in protest, shaking his head until his curly ringlets waved like small snakes. “No, you are too good. My ship is under hire to the Flavians, who pay me well.”

“I want you to have it, shipmaster.”

“If you insist, my lady,” he said, taking it and pressing it to his lips, “I will accept it, not as payment, but as something to remember you with and to give to my children, may your years be long and blessed and may your God, Yaweh, be merciful to you. I have great respect for Yaweh and Jews. I will hire you the best litter in Ptolemais.”

The galley master picked up the pace of the oars, and the ship raced forward. And three hours later, they rounded the point to Ptolemais, backed water, and floated gently in to the docks.

Berenice had imagined that the litter would give her a restful and gentle journey up through the hills into Tiberias; and she had even anticipated looking through her curtains at the countryside—now in the full flush and color of the October harvest, with the Galilean peasants waist-deep in their lakes of wheat and barley and the rosy-cheeked Jewish maidens singing the old harvest hymns as they plucked the fruit from the heavy trees. Never in all her life had Berenice seen a harvest time like this, the land so fat and fruitful, every corner, every foot of land bursting with crop, the hillsides terraced for additional acreage—and nowhere even a sign that war had ever passed this way. But war was many years in the past, and to the young Jewish boys and girls who worked in these fields, the great war with Rome, the great and futile rebellion of the Zealots and the Sicarii was as ancient as the battles the Bible narrated in Judges and Kings. Among the older ones were those who claimed to remember seeing the mighty Roman legions march past, but even their memories were uncertain and clouded.

Such was the land, and Berenice had anticipated the sight and the sweet smell of it; but the increasing pain of the headaches and the severity of the flushes drew a veil of agony between her and the countryside. In the midday heat, she threw the curtains of the litter aside, but no one who peered into it was moved in terms of recognition. The thin, pain-wracked woman whose hair was discolored and turning white brought no response of memory. So evident was this that Berenice thought of halting the litter and crying out,

“Stop and look at me! I am Berenice—the last queen in Israel! I am Berenice, whom kings adore for her beauty!”

But she did nothing of the kind. She wept a little out of pity for herself, but no more. Not even when they halted for the night at an inn did Berenice reveal herself. She remained in her litter, claiming that she was most comfortable there, and at her request the innkeeper brought her some hot milk and fresh-baked bread. He looked at her and saw nothing familiar—not even when she thanked him for the bread, telling him how good it was.

“Plain country bread.”

“The bread of my heart—the bread of my blood,” Berenice answered him.

“Well, if you wish, madam.” He shrugged and thanked her for the gold piece she gave him. If she desired to pay a hundred times what the bread was worth, it was her business.

She hardly slept that night, and at the break of day, in the first light of the dawn, she awakened her bearers, who had curled up in a corner of the landlord’s shed.

“Come, come,” she told them gently. “I must be on my way.”

They grumbled under their breath for her impatience. It was very well for the gentry to demand this and demand that, treating a litter slave no better than an animal; but for a slave it was another matter entirely. As if she read their thoughts, she opened her purse and counted her money. She had one hundred and twelve sesterces there, and she had the slaves stop the litter while she divided all this money among them. “Buy freedom—or what you will.” They were gold coins, each worth eleven of silver, and such a small fortune that the slaves knelt in the dust to her and wept and abased themselves, rubbing their foreheads in the dust.

“Enough, enough,” she said. “Only bear me quickly—”

The pain in her head was agonizing, but at the sight of their joy, the joy that a little bit of money could bring to degraded human beings, she began to weep; and then the pain left her, and she felt light and happy.

“I am home,” she said, “I am so happy to be home.”

At first, there was a ground mist lying in the holes and in the valleys, but they mounted a hill, and from the top of it, they saw the whole lay and sweep of the lovely land of Galilee, with the silver glint of the lake in the distance. Or was that her imagination, and no more than a lay of mist in the valley?

“Do you know Galilee?” she asked the slaves.

Ah yes, they did. They knew it well. Again and again their master hired them out over the roads and traces of Galilee.

“Do you know where the House of Hillel is?”

Ah, they did, they did. Who was there in all of Galilee—no, in all of Israel who did not know where the House of Hillel was? It lay blessed in a valley of benediction, and it was a place where they could pause and rest on their way back from Tiberias, because a slave was treated like a man there. And there would be food for them, and in the heat of the summer sun, shelter in the shade of the great terebinth tree.

“Then bear me there quickly,” Berenice said, “and we will reach there by noontime and you can lie and rest in the shade of the terebinth tree. But quickly!”

“With winged feet,” they replied, and at a steady trot the bearers carried her on.

They were good men, she decided, and when the good man ran, not even the Angel of Death could run faster. How light-hearted she felt, and so happy that she wept a little with her pleasure.

And at last they were there, and they measured the breast of the hill and came down into the valley, where the old, sprawling Galilean farmhouse lay in the noonday sun. At the gates Berenice stopped them.

“I must walk in,” she said. “I must not be carried in.”

They helped her out of the litter, but when she tried to stand erect her knees bent, and she would have fallen had not the bearers leaped to help her. “Forgive us for touching you,” they pleaded, and she told them, “You are my brothers.”

Leaning on their shoulders, she walked with them toward the terebinth tree, where servants were setting up the long tables for the midday meal. They saw her coming. The children saw her coming. Hillel, Shimeon’s brother, saw her coming, and he knew her. His wife, Deborah, saw her coming and recognized her. And the old, old mother of Shimeon, still alive, saw Berenice coming.

They ran to her, but Shimeon’s brother reached her first and embraced her, weeping—and the others gathered around, weeping. But for Berenice, the pain began again, and she managed only to whisper,

“I think, brother, that I am dying. All the way from Italy, I fled the Angel of Death, but I am home. I must lie down, not inside, but under the tree. And then you must send for Agrippa.”

“I will send for him, but you will not die,” Hillel said.

Each time she opened her eyes, her vision was too blurred for her to comprehend what she saw, and the pain was very intense. But then as before, the pain departed, leaving her very weak, and her vision cleared and she saw the man bending over her. Time was trying to trick her, she thought. His face was lined, his hair and beard gray, but she knew immediately that it was Agrippa; and when he touched her face, she seized his hand, kissed it and clung to it.

“Brother—brother—”

“Now you are home, sister mine, and you will rest and become well—and all the old times, the lake and the forest, and then we’ll sit at night and listen to the fishermen sing—”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“You were away too long.”

“Too long, and I found nothing—and then I did not know what I sought.”

“You will tire yourself.”

“No, I am not tired any more, brother.” She felt a tiny motion of his hand. He is leaving, she thought. “Don’t go away—”

“I stay here now, sister. Always. We will grow old together, and talk about all the things we have seen—”

“Poor brother. He’s angry—such childish, foolish anger.”

“Who?”

“Yaweh—because they drove Him from the high place. But I don’t care. Brother, I don’t care any more, because there’s no meaning and no purpose, only the senseless, childish anger. And I hate this cold, wretched place—and the peasants with their smell, and the centurions.”

“Sister—”

“Where am I?”

“In the House of Hillel, under the terebinth tree.”

“That’s a good place to be,” she agreed, as simply and gently as a child. “I am tired now, and I want to sleep.”

That night Berenice Basagrippa died—in her fifty-fourth year. They buried her on the hillside next to her husband, Shimeon Bengamaliel, the grandson of the sage who is remembered as Hillel the Good. In time the gravestone was carried away or sank into the ground, and so the grave was unmarked and became one with the ancient soil of Galilee in Israel.

LIST OF PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

Berenice Basagrippa
Princess of Galilee (later queen of Chalcis)