Wings of Refuge (38 page)

His moves were as smooth as oil, too smooth for Leah’s taste. He had shown a great deal of interest in her since learning that she was a wealthy widow and had tried to impress her during dinner by bragging about his travels to Rome. Gideon had warned her to bar her bedroom door tonight.

“That’s kind of you to be concerned for me, Commander,” Leah said. “But my refuge is in God, not in a fortress.”

Commander Joseph ben Mattathias left early the next morning to continue the inspection tour of Galilee’s defenses. Leah left Degania with her brother Gideon and most of the remaining villagers a week later for Gamla. The refugees and Zealots stripped Degania of every scrap of food before leaving, hauling a mountain of supplies with them to the fortress. While Rabbi Eliezer, Reb Nahum, and many of the others wept over the loss of their synagogue and their homes, tearing their robes and tossing the dust of Degania’s streets onto their heads in mourning, Leah refused to look back. The only thing of value she took with her was the earthenware jar containing Reuben’s documents.

“There it is. That’s Gamla,” Gideon said when they finally glimpsed the fortress from the top of an adjacent hill. “What do you think of it?”

“I can see how it got its name,” Leah said.

The green hump of land on which Gamla was built resembled the back of a resting camel. The city itself seemed suspended in air, the houses clinging to the steep sides of the camel’s back like saddlebags. Built like steps, the roof of one house served as the balcony of the next. Steep ravines guarded the fortress on three sides so that the only approach was by way of a narrow neck of land connecting the city to the neighboring hill. Workers had begun digging a trench across this land bridge so it could also be severed if necessary. Leah followed the others down the narrow path and through the city gate, built into a massive wall of black basalt boulders. A round lookout tower on the wall commanded the crest of the hill.

Inside, Gamla’s streets were a maze of narrow alleyways, twisting along the steep ridge of land, opening suddenly onto small paved squares or turning sharply into steps. It would take Leah several weeks to finally learn her way around all of them. The highest point in the city was called the citadel, the southernmost peak at the very top of the camel’s hump. Below it was the deepest ravine.

Gamla’s synagogue perched along the edge of city, just inside the wall, and was built of the same black stones. It was larger than Degania’s synagogue, with four rows of stone columns supporting its roof instead of three, and smooth tiers of black stone benches lining its walls. Like Degania’s synagogue, its doors also faced Jerusalem. The villagers used it for Sabbath services or town meetings whenever necessary, even though it was still under construction, the stone floor paving still unfinished.

“Before the revolution started,” Gideon told her, “Gamla was a prosperous city, a central processing center for the olive oil industry.” As one of the Zealot leaders, Gideon appropriated a house for his family in the wealthiest quarter of the city, just below the citadel. Leah and her elderly parents, along with her brothers Saul and Matthew and their families, crowded into the house with Gideon and the former owners. By the time King Agrippa and his forces besieged Gamla a few months later, more than ten thousand people had packed into the fortress along with them.

All her life Leah had been criticized for being outspoken, but now her frankness became a gift that she used to persuade others that Yeshua was indeed the promised Messiah. It was as if all that had come before in her life—learning to read, studying Reuben’s scrolls, listening to Nathaniel’s preaching—had been in preparation for such a time as this. She worked tirelessly for the next several months, sharing her faith and caring for the elderly and the ill who were the first to die as the city slowly starved.

Leah’s mother was the first of her family to believe, and she was also the first to die as disease ravaged the weakened community. They buried Matthew’s two children a week later and one of Saul’s daughters the following week. Abba also asked to be baptized, using just a few drops of Gamla’s precious water supply. Then he quietly gave away his rations to his children and grandchildren until he also died. Leah herself had grown as thin as Mistress Ruth as the siege entered its seventh month. Yet she continued to pray, as she had taught the others to pray, “Thy will be done . . . give us what we need for this day . . .”

King Agrippa’s men called out to them from the neighboring hill each day, trying to persuade Gamla to surrender. That’s how they heard the news that city after city and village after village in Galilee had fallen to the Roman forces. But it was when they received word that the fortress of Jotapata had fallen and that Commander Joseph ben Mattathias had surrendered and been taken captive that morale in Gamla fell to its lowest point.

“I can’t believe that coward surrendered!” Gideon raged. “He’s a traitor to his people! All his men were willing to die fighting—why wasn’t he?”

“Joseph was a failure as a military commander,” the other Zealots agreed. “He wasted more time and energy trying to win support for himself than he did fighting the Romans.”

“God is still on our side!” Gideon insisted. “We’re not defeated yet! His Kingdom
will
be established!”

“I agree that His Kingdom will come,” Leah said quietly. “But, Gideon, you’re fighting for the wrong kingdom.”

CHAPTER 16

THE FORTRESS OF GAMLA—OCTOBER 12,
A.D
. 67

T
he Roman forces have arrived,” Gideon announced. “Thousands of them.”

Leah’s empty stomach sank as if she’d swallowed a heavy stone. Gideon had hurried home from guard duty in the round tower after serving the first watch of the day. His voice betrayed fear for the first time since they’d come to Gamla.

“The Romans are building a fortified camp on the hill up there, overlooking the city,” he said. “They’ve already put men to work filling in the divide we made so they can move their siege machines across the neck of land to Gamla. Come up to the citadel with me and see.”

He was talking to Saul, but Leah grabbed her shawl and followed along behind them. From the top of the citadel, the Roman camp was an anthill of activity. Leah saw flashes of red from their capes, the glint of metal from their weapons. Whenever the Jews took aim to stop the workers on the land bridge, the Romans launched a hail of stones from their catapults, forcing the Jews to take cover.

“Look! They’re down there, too!” Saul pointed to the base of the mountain where hundreds of soldiers tramped through the brush, peering up the slopes.

“If they try that approach they won’t get far,” Gideon said. “We have boulders piled at the top of all the trails, ready to roll down on them.”

But over the next few days it became apparent that the Romans weren’t trying to scale the slopes. Instead, they had posted armed sentries around the base of the mountain to capture anyone who attempted to escape from the fortress. After seven months of siege, the Romans must have guessed that the defenders were low on supplies. The city leaders called for a meeting in the synagogue just after dawn a week later. Leah crowded in beside Gideon and Saul.

“King Agrippa has been asking for our terms of surrender for months,” one of the elders began. “Perhaps we should consider negotiating with him, for the sake of the women and children.”

“I’ll never place my wife and children in Roman hands!” one of the Zealots cried. “I’d sooner place them in the grave.”

There was a huge cheer of support, but when the noise died down, someone said, “That’s where they’ll be before long. We’re nearly out of food.”

“Listen,” Gideon said, “Gamla is impregnable. The Romans will grow tired of besieging such a small prize and move on to more important cities, like Jerusalem. We know that Jerusalem is still in the hands of the Zealots and—”

An immense rumbling sound interrupted his words, a sound that could be felt in the trembling ground as well as heard.

“To arms!” Gideon shouted. He and his men quickly pushed their way through the crowd and ran from the building before most of the city elders had a chance to react.

“What is it, Saul?” Leah asked as she followed him and the slower moving mass of people toward the door. “What’s that sound?”

“Roman siege machines. They must have finished the land bridge. Get home and take cover before—”

A thunderous explosion sounded above their heads as a hail of ballista stones the size of a man’s head came hurtling through the roof of the synagogue, raining down on them. Screams of panic mingled with the cries of the injured as the crowd stampeded from the building. Saul crouched down and shielded Leah with his body as the mob trampled past them, then he hustled her through the doorway when it was finally clear.

“No, don’t look!” he warned as she tried to glimpse the carnage behind them. “Get up to the citadel—run!”

But Leah was too weak from hunger to run for very long, nor did she have the strength to climb to the top of the citadel. She went home instead and climbed to the rooftop with the other women and children where she had a view of the battle below.

Under a covering of ballista fire from the catapults, the Romans were transporting three monstrous battering rams on log rollers across the land bridge toward the city wall. Each time the defenders tried to fire on them, the Romans launched a shower of stones that drove them back. The wall was as much as twenty feet thick in places, but Leah and the others watched in horror as the machines took aim at three of the wall’s weakest points.

“How could they know where to attack?” Matthew’s wife, Rebeccah, cried.

Leah didn’t answer, but she recalled how Joseph ben Mat-tathias had boasted about designing Gamla’s defenses. Had he turned traitor?

The rhythmic boom of the rams echoed from the surrounding mountains as they pounded against the wall. From a distance, Leah could see the structure trembling and shaking beneath their force. When it became apparent that the first section of wall was about to crumble, the defenders backed away so the wall wouldn’t tumble in on them and set up their line of defense in the street, ready to repel the invaders. But even with every man in Gamla standing ready, they seemed pitifully few against the horde of Roman soldiers that swarmed across the land bridge, preparing to storm the breach.

With a rumble like thunder, a section of wall finally collapsed as one of the rams broke through. For a long moment, the scene was blocked by an enormous cloud of dust, but Leah knew by the loud trumpet blasts, the sound of clashing swords, and the terrifying shrieks of the Roman battle cries that the enemy had broken through.

“We need to get to higher ground,” Leah cried. “Up to the citadel!” Saul’s wife seemed frozen in shock, unable to tear her eyes away from the battle. Leah and Rebeccah had to push her back from the parapet and force her down the stairs and out of the house. Herding the older children ahead of them and carrying the younger ones on their hips, the three women staggered up the rocky slope to the top of the citadel.

From there they saw through the thinning dust that the Zealots had stood their ground, battling in the narrow streets below. But as more and more Romans streamed through the breach like a tidal wave, Gideon’s men were forced by overpowering numbers to retreat to the upper city, higher up on the camel’s hump. Leah searched for her brothers in the swirling mass of bodies and spotted Saul standing a head taller than the others, fighting beside his two young sons. Gideon fought near the front lines, bravely trying to halt the flood of Romans. There was no sign of Matthew.

As the defenders reached the higher ground of the upper city, they saw that the enemy attack had lost momentum. Roman soldiers wandered in confusion through the narrow, unfamiliar streets. Gideon quickly rallied his men for a counterattack, charging down the hill toward the startled Romans with a barrage of slashing swords. The suddenness and ferocity of the attack drove the Romans who were on the front lines back on top of the others as they began a panicked retreat. With no place to go and the streets too narrow for the trampling mob, the first soldiers to reach the cliffs on the edge of town began leaping onto the roofs of the houses below, stepping down from rooftop to rooftop as the hordes gradually pushed them back.

Then, with a powerful rumble, the roofs suddenly began to collapse beneath the weight as too many soldiers crowded onto them. Houses toppled down upon each other, caving in, one after the next, as they avalanched down the steep slope. Hundreds of Roman soldiers fell buried beneath the ruins, and hundreds more suffocated in the billowing dust, unable to find their way out of the choking cloud. Leah stopped her ears against the screams and moans of those still alive who lay pinned in the rubble.

The Zealots gave a mighty cheer as if God Himself had intervened. They continued to press their attack against their retreating enemies, taking Roman weapons from among the dead as they battled forward. But Leah could see that too many Zealots were dying as well. When the main body of Romans finally managed to regroup and turned to link shields in order to halt the Zealot advance, they were too many for the remaining defenders. Gideon’s men were forced back once again.

As the battle ended, the Romans completed theiir retreat through the breached wall. Gamla remained in the hands of the Zealots.

Gideon and Saul staggered up the hill with the others, trembling with exhaustion from the battle. While daylight remained, Leah combed the streets with the women and children, gathering weapons from those who had fallen, searching for the bodies of their loved ones. She found her brother Matthew lying dead near the breach in the wall, among those who were killed in the first assault. She helped his wife, Rebec-cah, dig a shallow grave beside Matthew’s two children, and they buried him beneath a pile of stones. They were both too weak to dig a deeper hole. Too numb for tears, Leah knelt to pray, reciting Ezekiel’s prophecy over her brother’s grave.

“‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: O my people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them.’”