The Parchment (11 page)

“I do not know. It looks like the Romans are setting a tree on fire.”

“They may be preparing for an attack.”

Ben Hochba shook his head. “No Rabbi. The Romans know how to be patient. Before they attack, they make their enemies fear their power.”

“Look, David, now there are more fires — two, three, four. The Romans seem to light them along the ridge of the Mount of Olives.”

A hot breeze blew across the Valley of the Kedron from the Mount of Olives, bringing with it the smell of burning flesh. Yo-hannen turned away in horror. “They burn our kinsmen on crosses. There are eighteen fires. The Romans mock our belief in life.”

Crying out like a wounded lion, Ben Hochba lifted his sword to the sky.

“Yahweh, for what the Romans do to Your people, smite these idolators with Your right hand.”

In the morning, the Hebrews saw eighteen charred skeletons hanging from crosses. Titus was right. For those who stood on the Temple Mount that day, the number eighteen would never again be a symbol of life.

In the Temple, the High Priest opened to the Book of Lamentations. “Darkness covers the earth and thick clouds cover Thy people; but upon you, Zion, the Lord shines, and over you appears his glory.” When the High Priest finished reading the words of the prophets, tears were streaming down his face.

As the morning wore on, crows began to gather for their grisly feast.

David ben Hochba crept up the Mount of Olives with five of his Sicarii. The partisans hid behind some rocks near the edge of the Roman camp. As expected, the Romans had posted guards along the line of crosses.

“We must kill the sentries.” Ben Hochba unsheathed his dagger.

“David, the Romans have cleared a perimeter around the camp. Getting close to the sentries will not be easy.”

“I grew up playing here, Zacharias. I know every rock and tree on this hill. There is a culvert that will take us around to the back of where the sentries stand guard. Follow me.”

After dropping into the culvert, the Sicarii crept to within hearing distance of the sentries.

Suddenly ben Hochba signaled his men to lie flat on the ground. The sound of footsteps came along the culvert.

A man spoke to the sentries in Latin. “There is no moon tonight. Have there been problems?”

“No. General.”

Ben Hochba looked over the edge of the culvert. A white haired man stood talking to the sentries. Ben Hochba ducked back down into the culvert and spoke quietly, “It is Aemilius Varro — Titus's most trusted commander.”

Ben Hochba picked up a stone and threw it over the heads
of
the sentries. Momentarily distracted by the sound, the legionnaires turned their backs on the Sicarii. The partisans slipped out of the culvert, and ben Hochba whispered to his men. “Kill the others. Leave Varro to me!”

Before the Romans understood what was happening, the partisans were behind them. Ben Hochba grabbed Varro by the hair and pulled back his head. With one motion, he slit the general's throat from ear to ear. Wiping the blood from his dagger, Ben Hochba pointed toward the crosses. “Cut down our kinsmen before the Romans come looking for Varro.”

The Sicarii worked quickly. They stacked up rocks like a ladder and gently lifted each body down from a cross. Several Sicarii wept softly as they brought down the charred body of a friend or a neighbor. When the eighteen corpses lay on the ground, ben Hochba laid a small stone on each body as a symbolic burial and recited the beginning verses of the Kaddish. “‘Sanctified be the name of God throughout the world, which he has created according to his will.’ We have buried our kinsmen according to the laws of Moses and Jacob. The rest of you go back to the Temple Mount. I will come right behind you.”

Ben Hochba ran back to the sentry outpost. Varro lay face down on the ground. The Sicarius hacked off Varro's head. Crawling up to the edge of the Roman encampment, ben Hochba jumped to his feet and hurled the bloody projectile at the closest tent.

A centurion rushed outside to see what had hit the tent. When he looked down at the ground, he saw Varro's dead eyes staring up
at him. The centurion pulled off his robe and covered the gruesome sight.

Titus was quickly summoned to the tent. Seeing Varro's head made the blood drain from Titus's face. “Search every inch of this hill. Find who did this. He will curse the day he was born.”

In a fit of rage, Titus summoned his commanders. “Prepare the plans for the final assault. Varro was a second father to me. I will avenge his murder.”

David ben Hochba hid in a small cave in the wall of the culvert. When the Romans gave up searching for Varro's executioner, ben Hochba crawled down the side of the Mount of Olives and returned to the Temple Mount before dawn.

The next day, under Titus's command, the Roman army began a full-scale assault on the Temple Mount. At dawn, the Tenth Legion struck from the north and the Eighth from the east.

Ben Hochba and Zacharias watched as the legionnaires formed their ranks at the base of the escarpment. Weeks before, the Sicarii had destroyed the only road to the top of the plateau. To capture the Temple, the Roman infantry would have to climb up the sides of the cliff. As the heavily armed infantrymen tried to get footholds in the rock, the limestone broke off under their feet. Zacharias laughed as he saw legionnaire after legionnaire lose his balance and slide down the side of the escarpment. “The brittleness of the limestone proves to be our best weapon. With the road gone, Titus has no choice but to send his men up the sides of the cliff.”

“Don't be fooled, Zacharias.” Ben Hochba's voice was somber. “This is all a diversion. It is staged like a spectacle in the Roman Coliseum.”

“What do you mean?”

“Titus is too good a general to launch a frontal assault up the sides of the Temple Mount. There would be too many casualties. He is planning a surprise for us.”

As the two men talked, a loud cry went up from behind them.

“The Romans are on the Temple Mount.”

Incredulous, David and Zacharias looked over their shoulders. Roman light infantry were coming over the southern rim of the escarpment. Zacharias unsheathed his sword. “No army has ever scaled the south face. The Romans must have wings.”

Ben Hochba shouted at his friend. “Wings or not, they must be driven off the Temple Mount.”

Zacharias with a contingent of Sicarii behind him ran across the plateau to where the Romans were forming ranks. The sheer ferocity of the partisans' attack caught the Romans by surprise. Although the legionnaires fought bravely to keep a foothold on the plateau, they were pushed back to the edge of the escarpment. As the Roman perimeter shrank, Sicarii tackled legionnaires with their bare hands and jumped over the cliff, pulling them with them.

Black smoke now suddenly came billowing up from inside the Temple. When the Sicarii had attacked the legionnaires on the south rim, the Roman engineers pushed their catapults into range. After winching them back for loading, the engineers shot flaming balls of pitch at the Temple.

At the sight of the Temple in flames, the Sicarii threw down their weapons and ran to put out the fire.

“Stop them, Zacharias. The Romans must be driven off the Mount. The priests can contain the fire.”

“They will not listen. The Temple is the center of their lives.”

Once the Sicarii had deserted the battlefield, the legionnaires had time to regroup. The partisans' attack had decimated the Roman ranks but had not succeeded in pushing them off the plateau. More and more legionnaires reached the top of the Mount. When he saw the Romans hoist a battering ram over the south rim, Ben Hochba knew that the Temple could not be saved.

The shofar sounded. It was a signal that the Romans were on the Temple Mount. There was little time left.

When they heard the sound of the ram's horn, David and Zacharias ran to the easternmost courtyard where the women and children had gathered for safety. When they saw the Sicarii enter the
courtyard, the women wailed and hugged their children. Everyone knew what had to be done. Tears rolled down David's face, as he walked to where his wife Miriam and three-year old son Nathan sat. When Nathan saw his father, he ran to him and started rummaging through his pocket.

“Abba, you promised me a present if I was good.”

David threw his son up into the air as he did every day when he came home. When he put the child down, he pulled a brightly colored stone from his pocket. “I did not forget, Nathan.”

Miriam embraced her husband for the last time.

“Be brave, Miriam. This is the life we have chosen.”

“When it is over, David, put Nathan's hand in mine. He may be frightened when he sees Yahweh.”

Zacharias stood behind Miriam and unsheathed his knife. He looked at David and hesitated.

“It must be done, Zacharias.”

As he held his wife and son close, there was a flash of steel. David felt their bodies tighten and then go limp in his arms. He gently laid Miriam and Nathan on the ground and placed a stone on each of their bodies. As he brushed aside a lock of hair from his son's forehead, he put Nathan's tiny hand in his mother's.

His robe wet with the blood of his family, David walked mournfully to where Zacharias stood. The dead lay all around them. For a second the two men's eyes locked. Zacharias covered his wife's face as David took out his dagger. It was over in a second. Zacharias gently lowered his wife's body to the ground and closed her eyes with his hand.

A Roman tribune rode up to Titus as he watched the battle from the Mount of Olives. “There is still resistance, Imperator. The Jews fight so that you will not set foot in their Holy of Holies.”

“They are brave, these Jewish dogs. I will honor their wish. I will not set my foot in their holy place.”

When Rabbi Yohannen heard the sound of the shofer, he hurried to the sanctuary. High Priest Hezekiah was waiting for him. The priest took out a copper scroll from the folds of his robe.

“Yohannen, here is the map to the cave and a list of what we have buried there. Show it to the chief rabbis of Jaffa and Antioch so they will know what we have done.”

“Hezekiah, the plan must be changed. Roman soldiers are everywhere. If David and I are captured trying to escape through the tunnel, Titus will have the scroll. All our planning will have been for nothing.”

“What else can we do?” The High Priest asked Yohannen.

“Bury the scroll under the Temple. If David and I escape Jerusalem, we will not need the scroll to speak with the rabbis.”

“And if you are captured?”

“Yahweh has made an everlasting covenant with the Jewish people. We must trust in Him, just as our fathers Moses and Jacob did. The scroll will be discovered according to Yahweh's plan.”

“Where will you bury it?” asked Hezechiah.

“The Romans mocked our belief in life when they crucified eighteen of our people. We must reaffirm that belief, or our covenant with Yahweh will be at an end. Ben Hochba has hollowed out a stone under the Holies of Holies and marked it with the
‘chai. ’
I will put the scroll inside it. Someone with the eyes to see will find it.”

“Who will have the eyes to see?”

“That will be Yahweh's decision.”

Hezekiah looked off into the distance as if searching for guidance.

“Do as you must, Yohannen. We have no choice but to trust in Yahweh.”

Rabbi Yohannen and Ben Hochba hurried down a staircase behind the sanctuary. After several minutes, the staircase flattened into level ground.

“Here it is, Rabbi.” Ben Hochba pointed to a small
“chai”
chiseled into the face of an oblong stone along the right wall of the passageway. Ben Hochba took out his knife and pried the stone loose. The center of the stone had been hollowed into a cavity.

“Rabbi, put the scroll inside the stone. I will seal it up.”

Yohannen touched the scroll to his forehead and laid it reverentially in the hollow cavity. Ben Hochba quickly took a rock plug and, like a vintner re-corking a wine bottle, pushed the plug into the hole in the stone. Once he was satisfied that the plug fit tightly, ben Hochba pushed the stone back into its place in the wall.

The sound of fighting could be heard in the courtyard directly above them. Ben Hochba pointed down the passageway. “Rabbi, we must escape through the tunnel before the Romans find us.”

The two men hastened along the passageway until they came to a small stream that flowed under the Temple Mount. Once they had crossed the rivulet, ben Hochba counted off thirty paces. A flat slab of stone lay on the ground. Ben Hochba whispered to the Rabbi. “Help me move it.”

The Sicarius and the rabbi pushed the stone slab aside, revealing a dark hole underneath. The clanging of Roman armor was heard coming down the staircase.

Ben Hochba motioned Yohannen to enter the tunnel. “Rabbi, you must go alone. The Romans are too close. I will push the slab back in place.”

Yohannen knew that ben Hochba was right. As the Rabbi climbed down into the tunnel, ben Hochba handed Yohannen a small Star of David. “May Yahweh walk beside you.” Their eyes brimming with emotion, the two men embraced. The Rabbi turned and disappeared into the tunnel.

Once the slab had been pushed back over the tunnel entrance, ben Hochba unsheathed his sword and ran back toward the staircase. The sound of Roman armor grew closer. When he came to the edge of the rivulet, ben Hochba stood and waited for the Roman legionnaires.

Titus rode across the plateau to Herod's Temple. “Tribune, show me this place the Jews call their Holy of Holies.”

“There, Imperator.” The Tribune pointed to an open door at the far end of the courtyard.

Titus rode slowly up to the door. He stopped for a moment and peered inside. Smoke from the burning roof of the Temple filled the room. With a loud cry, Titus spurred his horse through the entrance way. From out of the smoke, the robed figure of the high priest Hezekiah ran out in front of Titus's horse.

“Heathen! You desecrate this holy place. No Gentile can enter Yahweh's sanctuary.” With both his hands, Hezekiah held the Torah high above his head like some Old Testament prophet. Frightened by the sudden appearance of the high priest, Titus's horse reared up and struck Hezekiah with his front hooves. The Torah fell from the priest's hands. As Hezekiah bent down to pick it up, Titus drove his short sword into the priest's back.