A.D. 30(60)

My vision blurred. “Judah…” The blade pressed against my neck.

“Do not resist him, Maviah,” Judah said. “He cannot hurt you.” The warrior in him hid any panic he might have felt. “Remember who I am.”

He was Judah. Judah who would now suffer on my behalf.

Brutus, breath heavy and thick with the scent of drink, said nothing as his men unlocked the cage and with swords drawn forced Judah to the far wall.

“Remember, Maviah!”

But I found no courage in the thought that Judah could withstand great suffering for his queen.

I guessed that Judah could have easily overpowered both guards, for he was a warrior unequaled and by appearance alone much stronger than either. Instead he turned willingly and lifted his hands to the posts jutting from the wall. With leather thongs they strapped one wrist to each post, then stepped back.

Torchlight danced over scars from old battles on Judah’s bare back.

“Make sure he bleeds,” Brutus said.

The guard closest to me took a whip from his belt, stood back, and laid the leather strap across Judah’s back, grunting with the exertion.

The crack of whip on muscled skin echoed through the chamber and I winced.

Judah did not. He might have been made of stone.

The guard drew his arm back and struck again, then again. The first two lashes drew welts. The third cut Judah’s flesh outright.

Still he showed no sign of pain.

I closed my eyes and stilled my breathing as Judah’s tormentor beat him without mercy. An eerie silence enveloped me but for the breath of Brutus in my ear, the grunting of the guard with each blow, and the crack of the whip.

I did not count them, but the guard laid the whip across his back at least twenty times before Brutus stopped him.

Perhaps if he’d taken less drink that night, the terror would have ended with the last blow. Perhaps if Judah had cried out, Brutus’s thirst for blood would have been satisfied. But neither was the case.

“Now the whore,” Brutus said.

I opened my eyes, not sure I’d heard correctly. Judah was sagging, his back a bloody mess. The guards were staring at Brutus, unsure.

“Tie her to the bars.”

“Sir—”

“Do you question me?” I flinched at the voice that thundered in my ear.

“No, sir.”

Judah slowly straightened, but he did not speak.

The guards feared Brutus as much as they feared the king, surely. Judah was restrained, and I was without the means to defend myself. Nothing could stop Herod’s beast.

“Strap her up and bare her back,” Brutus said.

Judah remained silent, but I could see his flesh trembling as he stood. Fear washed over me.

Brutus shoved me toward his men, who grabbed me by the arms, spun me around, and shoved me against the cell door. They lifted my arms and began to tie me to the iron bars as ordered by Brutus.

I could see Judah to my right, chest heaving, facing the wall. He knew that any objection would only gain both of us more suffering. He was powerless to save me.

I realized that to resist in any way, even in my heart, would only offer me more pain. In this way too, Judah and I would share our lives. We would both leave Galilee with scarred backs. This was now our fate to accept.

A strange calm settled over me.

“Judah…” I whispered.

His resolve broke then, as if my faint call had beckoned a jinn deep within him. One moment Judah stood still, strapped in silence to the wall inside the cell, and in the next he was twisting, baring all his strength, voicing his outrage with a thunderous roar.

The leather restraints did not pull free; they simply snapped. Both of them, as if made of thread. And then Judah was in the air, mouth stretched wide, eyes on fire with hatred.

It was his ferocity more than his boldness or strength that took my breath away. For in that moment, Judah was not the man I knew. He’d been transformed into a warrior the likes of which I had never seen, not even watching Johnin fight for his life as a gladiator in Egypt.

I was restrained already, with my back to Brutus and his guards, so I saw only the first blow of Judah’s fist as it slammed into the side of the guard’s face like a hammer. The unmistakable crack of breaking bone cut off the man’s surprised cry.

And then I saw nothing except the bars before me.

But I heard. I heard the raging grunts of men fighting off death. I heard the heavy landing of fist on bone and the distinctive sound of a blade piercing a body. The slapping of flesh on a stone floor.

And then I heard only the heavy breathing of one man.

I twisted to see Judah standing over three dead Roman guards, staring down at his handiwork, stunned. The blade in his right fist dripped with blood.

“Judah?”

He straightened and looked up at me, as if only now remembering where he was.