But she wanted to live! She didn’t want to die and be in darkness for the rest of eternity. She didn’t want to die and face whatever unknown horror awaited her.
She was afraid.
“I have very little money,” she said, looking back at the warden, who sat silently waiting for her to say something. “My husband has taken most of my estate and left me. I haven’t enough to have votive offerings made of gold or silver or even brass.”
“A pity,” he said without feeling. He rose. “Your clothing is on the shelf. Please leave the tunic behind.”
She was stunned by his indifference.
Alone again, she sat on the couch, too tired and despondent to feel anything. She rose after a long time, removed the white garment she had been given, and put on her own fine blue linen tunic. She touched her earlobes and throat where her last pieces of gold jewelry had been and let her hands drop to her sides. She took up her blue shawl with the elegant, expensive, embroidered flower trim and draped it over her head and shoulders.
Tipping her chin slightly, she walked out into the corridor. Several attendants stopped her and asked how her night had gone, if the gods had answered her prayer. Smiling, she lied and said she was healed of her affliction.
“Asklepios be praised!” they said one after another.
She walked quickly across the courtyard and through the propylon to the people-thronged street beyond. She wanted to be home. Not in her villa here in Ephesus. She wanted to be back in the villa in Rome, a child again. She wanted to return to the times when her whole life stretched out ahead of her, brilliant and beautiful as the colors of dawn, fresh and new, full of potential, full of opportunities.
She wanted to start over. If only she could, how differently she would do things, how differently things would have turned out!
She had thought Asklepios would give her that. She had thought her offerings, her vigils, her prayers would earn that for her. And he had sent the snakes. He had sent the dogs.
And yet she knew, deep within, that it was all for naught. Helpless rage filled her. “Stone! That’s all you are! You can’t heal anyone! You’re nothing but cold, dead stone!” She bumped into someone.
“A curse on you, woman! Watch where you’re going!”
Bursting into tears, Julia ran.
11
The Minerva landed in Caesarea Maritima at the beginning of the warming of spring. Though the city was built by a Jewish king, Marcus found it as Roman, both in appearance and atmosphere, as the Eternal City in which he’d been reared. Four centuries before, this same site had been settled by Phoenicians who built a small, fortified anchorage called Strato’s Tower, honoring one of their kings. The anchorage had been expanded and modernized by Herod the Great, and he named his new city in honor of Emperor Caesar Augustus. Caesarea had become one of the most important seaports in the Empire and the seat for Roman prefects governing Palestine.
Herod had rebuilt the city with his eyes on Rome, borrowing mightily from the conquered Greeks. Hellenistic influence showed strongly in the amphitheater, hippodrome, baths, and aqueducts. There was also the temple honoring Augustus, as well as the statues to various Roman and Greek gods that continued to so enrage righteous Jews.
Marcus was well aware that conflicts had often arisen between the Jewish and Greek people of the city. The last bloody rebellion had been sparked ten years before, only to be crushed by Vespasian and his son Titus before they had marched on against Jerusalem, the heart of Judea. Vespasian had been pronounced emperor here in Caesarea and had promptly elevated the city to a Roman colony.
Despite the iron grip of Rome upon the city, Marcus sensed that unrest remained an undercurrent as he walked through the narrow streets. Satyros warned him against entering certain sections of the city, and it was to those very sections that Marcus went. These were Hadassah’s people. He wanted to know what made them so stubborn and determined in their faith.
He wasted no time in contemplating the violence that might befall him at the hands of zealots or sicarii. He was on a quest to find Hadassah’s god, and he wouldn’t find him in the Roman baths and arenas or in the homes of fellow Roman merchants. The information he needed lay in the minds of these Jewish patriots who had the same stubbornness he had sensed in Hadassah.
Within three days of his arrival, Marcus had purchased a strong desert horse, supplies for his overland journey, and an itinerary showing roads, stationes, and civitates, all with distances between. After a day of studying the map, he rode away from Caesarea and headed southeast for Sebaste, in the district of Samaria.
Marcus reached the city early in the afternoon on the second day. He had been told beforehand that the ancient Jewish city vied in grandeur with Jerusalem before the destruction. He spotted it long before he reached it, for it was high on a hill. From his conversations with Satyros while sailing from Ephesus on the Minerva, Marcus knew Sebaste to be the only city the ancient Hebrews founded. Built by King Omri over nine hundred years before, Samaria—as it had previously been called—had served as a capital for the kingdom of Israel, while Jerusalem was capital for the kingdom of Judah.