The Queen's Handmaid (14 page)

Yes, the sand. It was everywhere. In the eyes, the ears, the mouth. Caked under fingernails and crusted on eyelashes. When they had first landed near Galilee and traveled through mountain passes and along verdant streams, the country had seemed more beautiful than even her native Alexandria. But here on the border between Judea and Idumea—the region of Herod’s birth—the relentless white-hot sky seared the spirit into something harder than any pot she’d ever fired. Perhaps it explained Herod’s seemingly indestructible nature. But at least they traveled on land, not another frightful ship.

“They are coming!” David’s voice shot through a gap in the tent flap along with a slice of sunlight. He dropped the flap at once, an ineffective barrier.

Lydia’s heart hammered. The tent preparations were unfinished. She looped the gauzy curtain’s purple embroidery over the bone hook extending from the upper tent seam and hurried with the others to stand outside the tent. She held a palm above her brow and peered across the endless orange-beige to where tiny explosions of sand and the occasional flare of sunlight on metal signaled an approach.

Herod had arrived at last with Silo, the Roman general ordered by Marc Antony to help Herod liberate Judea from the hands of the Parthian-sympathizer Antigonus.

They came from the east, with the cerulean-blue Salt Sea stretched out like a dead thing, broad and flat at their backs. Silo’s legions marched in the shadow of the lone mountain that held the reason for their coming.

Masada.

Lydia’s gaze strayed to the plateau atop the massif’s blood-red cliffs. From this distance it was impossible to see a single living soul, nor the defenses that made Masada the safest fortress that could hold the women of Herod’s family—his mother, his sister, and Mariamme, his betrothed.

But below it was a simple matter to see the spread forces of Antigonus, who had been laying siege to Masada for nearly a year. Herod’s tent was pitched at a careful distance from the Jewish troops, and the ragtag army of soldiers Herod had raised in Galilee camped behind them. When their ship landed in Ptolemais and they learned that Rome had not yet rescued Masada, Herod once again used his connections and support to rally together a willing band. In spite of his non-Jewish lineage, many powerful Jews were attracted to his cause. Some had suffered atrocities under Antigonus, and many saw the Jewish king’s alliance with the Parthians as betrayal.

They marched with him south along the coast, skirting Samaria, and took the critical seaport of Jaffa in Judea, then passed through Herod’s Idumea and subdued resistance there. Turning east they marched for Masada. Word came that Silo’s forces were coming down from Jerusalem as well but had been ambushed by Jewish nationalists, supporters of Antigonus.

Herod sent troops to join the Romans and put down the nationalists. It had been a long and uncertain four months, with Herod leading the troops and his staff still traveling with him. But
now at last, the Roman legions would join with Herod’s, and they would take Masada.

Lydia flexed her shoulders and dropped her hand. David had shouted his warning too far in advance. In the desert you could see a fire ant crawling across the horizon, and they would all surely turn to stone if they waited in this heat. Waves of it blurred the legions into a mass of iron and leather, the troops advancing like a horde of insects themselves, with helmets plumed in red to match the cliffs of Masada.

“I will be finishing in the tent.” She escaped the heat and continued her preparations, but the reinforcements arrived sooner than she thought possible.

Herod and Silo swept into the tent with a haze of grit clinging to them. “Water, girl.” Herod waved a hand at her, his voice etched with sand.

Silo sank to a couch, dropped his head back onto its rolled arm, and began unfastening the leather across his chest. “Tell me again why this land means more to you than a hill of dung.”

Herod swung on him, but Lydia placed the cup of tepid water into his hand before he could answer. In the enforced pause he seemed to collect himself. “You forget I was raised in a place much like this, Silo. Have you been privileged to see the Nabatean kingdom? To walk in the shadow of Petra’s magnificently carved cliffs?”

Silo grunted. “Give me the hills of Rome any day.”

“Or the hills of Jerusalem?”

Lydia crossed the tent to give water to Silo. He accepted the cup, his eyes narrowing at Herod’s insinuation.

“Do not lay the blame for Ventidius’s actions at my feet.”

Lydia moved to continue with the curtains. Several other
servants worked inside the tent as well. The two powerful men took no more notice of them than if they were deaf and mute. Little wonder servants sometimes knew more than the royals and heads of state whom they served. Lydia sat cross-legged with the tent fabric warming her back, stitching repairs into a leaf-green curtain’s hem and listening.

“Ventidius?” Herod was saying. “Tell me, is it only your general who has Antigonus’s coin lining his purse? Do not be modest, Silo. You can take a bribe as well as Ventidius.”

Silo fluttered a nonchalant hand and closed his eyes.

Herod strode to the couch and kicked at the man’s leg where it draped to the floor.

Silo shot up, scowling. “Do not forget who is the conqueror and who is the vassal, Herod.”

“And you should not forget who is the close friend of Marc Antony and has the favor of Caesar Octavian and the Roman Senate. The same Rome who ordered your legions to relieve my family.” He jabbed a thumb toward the unseen plateau hovering above their tent. “They have sent word that they are nearly dead of thirst up there. If the recent rains hadn’t added to the cisterns, their blood would be on your hands.”

Silo took a long drag from the water in his cup. A silent taunt but still effective.

Herod whirled away toward Lydia.

She bent her head to her stitching, forgotten in the heat of the conversation. The closer they had come to Masada, the more anxious Herod had grown. The charming politician of Rome had become the forlorn husband-to-be, desperate to see his beloved. The transformation had surprised Lydia.

Herod folded his arms and studied the pattern of one of her
elaborately embroidered curtains already hung, his gaze tracing the leafy detail as though it contained a map of battle strategy. The design seemed to calm him, thankfully.

“It is time to get them down from there, Silo. Time to bring the battle to Antigonus. I ran like a whipped dog a year ago, but I return with the strength of Galilean supporters at my back and the might of Rome at my side.” He turned to the general. “Masada is their last stronghold here in the south. We take this, and the Parthian-lover will have little but Jerusalem. The city will easily fall into our hands.”

Lydia met David’s gaze where he worked setting up food stores. His face lit with subdued excitement and he nodded once, a tiny movement, to acknowledge that he had heard. The boy wanted nothing more than to go to Jerusalem.

She shared his enthusiasm. These months of traveling the land around the capital city, with Samuel’s scrolls still in her sack and her mother’s mysterious pendant around her neck, had only strengthened Lydia’s desire to see Jerusalem, fulfill her destiny, and perhaps even find out who she was. Rome was a memory, and she had determined to leave off thoughts of love and focus on her work and her task.

She had plied David with questions continually about the history and prophecy of the land of Israel, especially those given by the prophet Daniel, from his place in the empires of Babylon and Persia. More important, she grew every day in her understanding of the One God who claimed Israel as His treasured possession and perhaps would one day claim her
,
if she would please Him by fulfilling her task. Only one month remained until the Day of Atonement, Yom HaKippurim. Would they all be safe inside the city by then?

“How many are up there?” Silo had joined Herod at a wooden table, and the two bent over a piece of Egyptian papyrus.

“My brother Joseph has about two hundred men. They tried to escape to Petra a few months ago, but Antigonus’s men held them off, so Joseph and his men are still there. And about five hundred women.”

“Five hundred!” Silo’s eyes widened. “By Jupiter, man, what did you need with five hundred women up there?”

Herod’s voice was tinged with amusement. “I took them from Antigonus when I fled Jerusalem. They were to be part of his payment to the Parthian king Orodes in exchange for his throne.”

Silo barked a laugh and clapped Herod on the back, hostilities apparently forgotten. “That must have incensed the old goat, eh?”

Herod shrugged a shoulder in false modesty. “The Parthians used it as an excuse to start looting Jerusalem.”

Silo shook his head. “When are these Jews going to realize their foolish insistence on retaining their independence is suicidal?” He jabbed a finger at the spread papyrus. “So. Five hundred women.”

“Only three of any importance, however.” Herod’s gaze lifted toward the front of the tent, as though he could already see them descending in safety. “My mother, Cypros. My sister, Salome, and Mariamme, my betrothed wife.” He shrugged. “And I suppose that witch Alexandra, Mariamme’s mother, ought to be saved if possible.”

Silo nodded. “Four, then, among five hundred. Though if the battle goes to the heights, the trouble will be finding the correct four. Women all look alike to me.”

“If the battle goes to the heights.”
Lydia spread another carpet, lifted two table legs to unroll it farther, then the other two. Were
her hands trembling? She had not feared the encounter in Jaffa, nor the skirmishes in Idumea. Why now, for the first time, was the thought of battle frightening?

Because it was the true beginning. The start of Herod’s war on Antigonus. There would be no retreat. If they were defeated here at the foot of Masada, the Judean troops would annihilate them down to the last slave. How long would it take their blood to evaporate in this heat? How long until the scrolls would lie buried forever under drifting sand?

She shook off the black thoughts. Death and chaos might reign outside, but inside the tent she would create beauty and order, and with it bring peace to at least her small part of the huge and terrifying world.

And indeed, outside the tent when the sun rose the next morning, red and angry on the far side of Masada, death was on the horizon with it.

The hostile forces clashed early. Untrained Galileans and well-disciplined Romans fought side by side, advancing against the entrenched troops of Antigonus, whose long siege, if Fortuna blessed, had perhaps weakened their resilience.

Lydia watched from the front of Herod’s tent, the rest of the staff ranged across the sand with her. The battle made allies of them all, and even Riva stood in companionable silence beside Lydia.

Or perhaps Riva’s silence was born of something else. Herod’s attention toward her had decreased the nearer they came to Masada, and it was Mariamme’s name that was often on his lips.

The clang of sword on sword reverberated across the desert, but the cursed sand obscured their view. Even here, far from the fighting, all smelled of sand and sweat and blood. Lydia forced her hands to her sides, but they were back at her waist in
a moment—tight, grasping fingers that flinched with each battle cry. She tasted nothing but salt, and could not remember when last she ate.

“They are pushing forward!” David’s voice held the excitement of a boy who wished to be on the front lines.

How could he possibly know? Lydia stifled an irritated reply. They were all on edge. No need to take it out on him. She had barely slept last night, and her fatigued senses were tighter than the tent lacings.

But then she
could
see. Could see that David was wrong.

Soldiers were crisscrossing up the red cliff, taking one of the three winding paths that led to the plateau. It was too soon for it to be Herod’s men or Roman legionaries taking the fortress. The Judeans had sent soldiers upward, no doubt to put an end finally to those who had forestalled them for a year. Could they hold out long enough?

Already, the desert was littered with carnage. Impossible to tell who had lost more. The battle spread wide along the base of Masada, condensed to a funnel, then spread wide again.

The sun rose, hot and deadly, and with it a scorching wind, tangling Lydia’s hair. She dashed it away from her eyes and mouth. Behind them the tent flaps snapped in the wind, sharp cracks that echoed the battle sounds.

What was happening? The sand and the sun conspired to keep them all in uncertainty. Lydia ran to one of the wagons and climbed atop its bed. Would the height provide a better vantage point?

The Judeans had advanced. They had pushed much farther from the cliff’s base than their camp. They were closing the gap. If they swarmed forward, taking the plain, how long until they reached Herod’s camp to ensure no survivors?

Lydia clutched the wagon’s splintered front bench, a wave of dizziness like the undulation of desert heat roaring from her toes to her head.

Would it end here? Before Jerusalem? Before she learned of her mother and delivered Samuel’s scrolls? Her fear of failure somehow matched her fear of death. It was like sailing across the sea to reach a destination and instead falling off the horizon into nothing. She felt as though she were falling now, pitching forward into obscurity and nothingness. Her vision spotted with the blackness of it.

“Lydia!”

David’s voice sounded far off, concerned. Had the battle reached them so soon?

It was not enemy soldiers, but the desert that rose up to meet her—hard-packed sand that had been trying to kill them all since they began this ill-fated journey.

Fifteen

S
houts and running footsteps. The brutal clang of pikes against shields. War cries sounding from a thousand angry throats.

Lydia blinked and shot up from where she lay.

“Whoa, slow down.” David’s worried face hovered. His hands pushed her shoulders gently back to the cushion.