Judas (4 page)
“This is where you get off,” the ship’s captain growled. With that, our baggage was scooped up and thrown off, disappearing into the night high above our heads. The ship, which had carried us away from Caesarea, rocked and bumped against wooden bolsters beside a high, stone wall.
“Off, off,” he said, waving his hands vaguely toward the wall.
“Is this Corinth?” Mother asked.
“It’s as close as you will get, woman. Now get off.”
Off? All we could see was the wall that rose two or three cubits over our head. Stone outcroppings were set into it, which served as steps. We climbed up and onto a rough paved street. The night enfolded us, moonless, and except for a few torches guttering every hundred paces or so, pitch black.
“Where are we?”
“Cenchrea.” The captain had followed us up the steps and moved off to speak to a man I took to be the harbor master.
“You said Corinth. We paid for passage to Corinth.”
“Corinth is that way, inland.” He pointed into the night and added, “Woman, you are lucky I did not throw you and your brats overboard. I do not know what trouble you stirred up back there, but you brought it onto my ship. I am sure the authorities here would be more than happy to hold you until they found out why you left Caesarea in a hurry.”
We gathered our bundles, shuffled a few steps into the darkness, and paused, hopeless and helpless, our few pitiful belongings at our feet. Dinah clung to Mother’s leg. I drew my knife and huddled close to her as well. We had no idea where we were, where we should go, or what to do. The torches made uncertain pools of light along the length of the street. People drifted through them on their way to places we could not see. I made out thin lines of light seeping from under doorsills and around lintels. Mist drifted in from the harbor, blurring the light, intensifying the dark.
To our right, barely visible in the torchlight, a group of four women stood wraithlike, watching us, waiting. One of them studied us like she would a melon or a loaf of bread— should she buy or not? A door burst open and light and men poured out onto the street like water from an overturned pail. The men rolled about pummeling and cursing. As the door slapped shut, I thought I saw the glint of a knife blade. In the darkness that followed I heard a cry, then another, and then the sound of feet running away. There was a moan and then silence. I guessed one of the ships would be short a man in the morning.
Shadowy figures rose up near us, then drifted away. We wanted to run, but which way and where? We were lost and alone in a strange city on what seemed to be the darkest night of the year. Our ship poled away from the wall and disappeared into an inky harbor. I thought after all our efforts to escape certain death at the hands of Roman officials, we would end up murdered in the dark by some anonymous thief for our few meager possessions.
The woman said something to the others with her and they faded into the night. She waved at someone behind us and I heard the scurry of feet. She walked up to Mother and the two of them stepped away speaking in low voices. Mother seemed to think about whatever she said and then nodded. She came back to us, picked up Dinah, and said, “Come. We are going with this woman.”
Her name was Darcas.
***
Darcas exuded energy. A small, dark woman—not pretty like Mother—but her dress and carriage prompted men to look twice. Women in her profession sometimes acquire a wary, furtive look. Her long, thin face and her pointed nose reminded me of the wharf rats that scurried about near the harbor. She wore a lot of jangling bracelets and anklets. In fact, you could hear her coming long before you saw her. That turned out to be a blessing for Dinah and me. We decided, well actually, I decided—Dinah did not speak—that it would be wise to stay away from her, a good decision, as it turned out. Even though I knew, if it had not been for her, we might have been killed or sold into slavery the night we arrived, I also knew that Darcas could not be trusted.
Darcas put us into a cramped windowless room where Dinah and I slept at night, Mother during the day. The room was half the size of our back room in Caesarea. It lacked the sunny backcourt, the street filled with excitement, the scent of oils and spices, grunting camels, and the promise of adventure. It opened, instead, on a dim corridor ending in steps leading down to the atrium and the street. It did have a small hearth, which provided our only light and a place to warm our food. We paid for food and lodgings out of what Mother earned. Darcas took five tenths of that as her fee. The rest was spent on charges Darcas made for the food and rent. We struggled this way for a year.
Dinah remained mute and withdrawn. I had hoped the sea air, a change in the way we lived, anything, would bring back her sunny disposition. Nothing changed. As she grew, she showed signs of her womanhood. Not much, just the beginning of bumps under her tunic.
“I am worried about Dinah. She is not getting any better,” I said early one afternoon while Mother fussed with her paints. She was due to go back to the atrium. She looked pale and drawn, and her hands shook as she struggled to paint her face.
“There is nothing wrong with Dinah. She will be fine once we are settled.”
“It has been a year, Mother. This is as settled as we are likely to get.”
“Judas, be a good boy and bring me my ointment, the one that smells of myrrh.”
I handed her the pot. “She just sits and stares. She never talks, never smiles.”
“Judas, please. I cannot do any more than I am already. I suffered worse things, and here I am. Dinah, pay attention to Mummy, you can’t just mope about.”
“Mother, she is only ten. They hurt her and…she didn’t know…”
“Judas, this is about what women do. You have no idea. Dinah, speak up. Say something.”
She never spoke.
There were other children like Dinah and me in the House of Darcas. Most of them were part of what the house offered in the atrium, competing with the women. Apparently, I was too ugly to be of much use, but Darcas wanted Dinah. She pestered Mother constantly for her to join the other children in the atrium.
“She would be very popular, because of her eastern looks and that golden hair. I could get a very good price for her,” Darcas said and eyed Dinah with one of her shall-I-buy-or-not looks.
We needed the money. Darcas repeatedly increased her rents and what she charged for food. Some of the women could not pay, and were forced to leave or, if they wished to stay, indentured themselves. Most of them were simple country girls from the hills—girls whose parents or lovers left them to fend for themselves. They did not know enough to survive. Most of them did not even know their way home. Off and on, Darcas had a dozen slaves, which were very profitable for her. Some she worked to death, some she sold. I think Darcas had in mind to make slaves of us, too.
Our lot grew worse when the agents sent by the House of Leonides arrived. I saw the men speaking to Darcas, big men with eyes of ice, men who exuded power and confidence. I could see her talking and gesticulating the way she did when she was excited. They had followed our trail from Caesarea. Someone told them a woman and her children, a prostitute and her brood, was the way it was put, had sailed for Corinth. They scoured the waterfront and then the brothels. They planned to bring us their own form of justice. Leonides, it seemed, told us the truth about his family. I suppose Darcas found the reward too meager to give us up. But, from that day on, she owned us.
***
Once, Darcas brought a man to our room.
“You, boy,” she said, “I need you to go to the herbalist and bring back a package for me.” She handed me a coin and gave me a shove toward the door.
I did not go. I hid in the shadows in the corridor. When Dinah screamed, I ran back into the room. She was curled up in as small a ball as she could make, her arms wrapped around her head. The man was very angry and hitting and yelling in a tongue I did not understand. He yanked at her legs and arms. Darcas reached toward Dinah. The expression on her rat-face frightened me. She tried to pinion Dinah’s arms. I drew my knife and stepped toward the man.
“Never mind,” Darcas said, catching her breath and looking at me and then at my knife. Whether she thought I would use it or not, I do not know, but the thought of bloodshed in her house seemed enough to stop her.
“I have another girl who is a virgin and who will fight you, too,” she said to the man, scowling at me.
They left, he complaining and she wheedling and apologizing.
I shook all over. So did Dinah. I held her in my arms until Mother came back to our room in the morning.
“Darcas will never do it again. She has promised,” Mother said later.
“I don’t believe her. We have to do something. We have to get away from here.”
“And just how do you plan to do that?”
I did not have an answer for her.
***
The city of Corinth is located on a thin peninsula that separates the Ionian Sea from the Saronic Gulf. It is really three cities, Cenchrea, its southern or eastern port, Lechaeum, its northwestern port, and the city that bears its name, which lies between the two, but closer to Lechaeum. Connecting all three and dividing the peninsula in half is a broad paved road, the Diolkos, a tramway that joins the two seas. The Diolkos is a miracle of engineering, as wonderful as anything in the empire, they say. Many years ago an attempt was made to dig a canal from one coast to the other but abandoned.
The bit of completed canal shallows out abruptly. Smaller boats maneuver right up to the Diolkos and onto rollers and marvelous machinery, and then onto land still completely laden. Enormous teams of oxen are brought, hitched up, and the ship and all of its trappings are transported the four and a half miles to the other coast. Ships too large for the rollers transfer their cargo onto pack animals and send it to Corinth or northward to the opposite coast where it is loaded onto another ship headed west. Of course, large ships, heavy merchantmen, and ships of war sail around the Pelopennisos, but small coastal trading ships can be carried overland. It is a dry land canal complete with walls, which keep the way clear for boat traffic. They say the Diolkos in Corinth determines the size and shape of all the trading boats in this part of the world, so profitable is this shortcut.
***
During the day, I wandered about the marketplace, the agora, looking for ways to get us free. One day while out exploring, I met Gaius. His mother worked in a house a short distance from ours.
“Why are you on the streets?” I asked. “You could work in the atrium.” He was certainly handsome enough.
“Not me, not anymore. No more fat, sweaty men are going to have me that way ever again,” he said, eyes flashing. “Besides, there is more money to be made on the streets than in the atrium.” He showed me a fistful of coins.
“Where?” I wanted to see this gold mine of his. He motioned me to follow and we crossed the Diolkos and walked to the agora.
Cenchrea’s agora is splashed across the width of the city beside the Diolkos. It is a grand sight with hundreds of gaily canvassed stalls and thousands of people moving about, bumping into one another, buying and selling. People bargain with their hands and voices, especially with their voices, yelling at each other at the top of their lungs. When the yelling reaches its shrillest, the sale is made.
“Watch,” Gaius said, and slipped into the crowd.
I watched. He made his way toward a man shopping alone. Most people who regularly shopped in the agora knew it was best to come in twos and threes. But there were always a few who believed they could take care of themselves and a few who simply did not know any better and shopped alone.
Gaius, his knife tucked up his sleeve, sidled up to the man. In one quick motion, he cut the purse strings at the man’s belt. As it fell, he grabbed it, and darted into the crowd. He was lucky. No one tried to stop him. A few moments later he was back at my side. He had more money in his hand than I had seen since the morning I lifted the sculptor’s purse. He was right about one thing—more money could be made in the streets than in the House of Darcas.
“You should try it,” he said. His face was flushed and I could see his heart racing.
“How many times have you done that?”
“Five or six.”
“I will think about it,” I said, tempted.
“Suit yourself, but thinking won’t make you rich.”
I stayed in the market to see if anyone else had discovered Gaius’ secret. I saw dozens of boys like me, like Gaius, slipping through the crowd. All of them had indeed discovered his path to riches. I decided to study them. I would go to school, the school of the streets.
This is what I learned: All of those boys had dangerous cuts and bruises on their heads, arms, and legs from the near misses, the beatings they endured when they failed in their attempts at robbery, or when they slipped, trying to avoid their victim’s staffs, cudgels, and kicks. The wounds were dangerous because the filth that collected in the city where we lived made it only a matter of time before the wounds festered and, perhaps, killed with the green poison.
Gaius had been lucky, either a genius at picking his victims, or his gods smiled on him. As for the rest, I watched as one boy edged up to a man bargaining for some sandals. Just as he stretched out his hand to cut loose a fat purse, its owner brought the hard knob of his staff across the boy’s wrist. Unless I missed something, that boy had a broken wrist to go with his cuts and bruises. The people laughed at his shrieking. The man who struck him aimed a kick at his backside and sent him sprawling in the dirt. I would look elsewhere.
For children without families, position, or influence, work in the atria is safer. There you would grow old in a hurry, even succumb to one of the diseases that come with that life, but you would not die bleeding, shivering, and alone in an alley, to be thrown on a dung heap and hauled off like so much manure before your sixteenth year.
On the east end of the Diolkos, the empire was not so bright, not so grand.