The Barbarian (The Herod Chronicles Book 2) Read online

  The slaves tiptoed about as though navigating a snake pit. Her brother Gabriel and sister-in-law Talitha were doing their best to be polite, but Simeon's sharp tongue didn't make it easy. Elizabeth and her mother had placed Lydia between them to watch over her. Elizabeth gritted her teeth again over the miserable fate awaiting Lydia. A marriage to a foreigner, serving a foreign god, in a foreign land. What had tempted Simeon to sink so low?

  More frightening noises intruded. Sounds of men battling for control of Jerusalem. A chill of dread went down her spine.

  Her father frowned. "How much longer will the fighting last?"

  Simeon broke off a piece of bread from a rye loaf. "Stop fretting, Cousin. We are perfectly safe. Hasmond's soldiers won't come anywhere near us."

  "I would like to hear the details of this deal you've made with the devil," Gabriel said, making his disgust plain.

  Simeon dipped the chunk of rye bread into a small bowl of olive oil. "Once the Temple grounds are secure, Hasmond has promised to make me the Captain of the Temple." He pointed at her father. "You will be named the Temple Overseer. And Gabriel will become a Temple Treasurer."

  Her brother's brows rose. "Overseer? Treasurer? How many bags of coin did you give Hasmond?"

  Simeon pursed his mouth. "Don't be crass."

  "Crass?" Gabriel repeated incredulously. "You sold your daughter to a heathen king, and you have the gall to call me crass?"

  Elizabeth wanted to hug her brother.

  Simeon smoothed his resplendent robe. "King Solomon the Wise married foreign wives to secure his kingdom."

  Elizabeth rolled her eyes. Always as arrogant as he was obnoxious, Simeon's regard for himself had reached new heights.

  Gabriel choked on his wine. "King Solomon? Are you going to compare yourself to Abraham and Moses next?"

  "I won't join a harem," Lydia said softly but firmly.

  Simeon exhaled exaggeratedly. "Why did the good Lord give me fools for daughters?"

  Elizabeth wanted to stomp her ex-husband’s spotless robe into the mud.

  The self-satisfied man merely returned to nibbling his bread, then waved the remains at them. "The prince has hundreds of wives. Most he never looks at again after the wedding night. And he will soon have five hundred more wives, chosen from among Jerusalem's finest families."

  Elizabeth blinked. He couldn't be serious.

  Gabriel made a face. "Pacorus won't find five families willing to give their daughters over to a heathen, even if he is a prince."

  "They won't have a choice." Simeon dabbed a linen square to his oily lips. "Hasmond promised the Parthians the women, plus one thousand talents. A small price to pay to rid the country of the Idumean interlopers riding roughshod over John Hycranus."

  Her father looked skeptical. "Antipater is dead and his sons have very few supporters."

  Simeon put on his superior face, the one Elizabeth had learned to hate. "The only way Phasael and the ambitious Roman-lover Herod will go quietly back to Idumea is if they are carried home on their shields. Parthia was eager to overthrow the devils. Hasmond made his deal with King Orodes, and I have made mine. Lydia will marry the prince, and my new, young wife will teach her to pleasure her husband." Simeon narrowed his eyes at Lydia, who had turned deathly pale. "And you will make every effort to please Pacorus."

  Elizabeth's pity for the unhappy woman forced to call Simeon Onias "husband" warred with her anger and disgust. "Leave Lydia alone." All the fear, frustration, and helplessness from when she was under this dreadful man's power came back in a sickening, roaring wave. "You are a wicked, unprincipled man. I pray the Lord will strike you dead!"

  Simeon's brow knotted. "Hold your tongue, woman."

  Elizabeth's hands balled. "I won't hold my tongue. You have no say over me anymore!"

  Her family stared wide-eyed. Simeon's dark look warned her she'd earned an enemy. Good! Let him hate her.

  "Cousin," her father interjected in his best placating voice. "You married again?"

  Simeon looked away first, and she gloried in the small triumph.

  "I have married one of King Orodes's nieces," Simeon said, then pointed a finger at her brother. "When the battle is over I will send for my wife. And I expect you and James to marry Parthian princesses for the good of the family."

  Talitha gasped and a shadow crossed her beautiful face. "Gabriel promised he would never take more wives." Marrying multiple wives was a fairly common practice among Sadducees, but the ancient custom was slowly falling out of favor.

  Gabriel patted his wife's hand and glared at Simeon. "I don't want anything to do with your grasping schemes."

  Simeon smiled.

  All too familiar with that knowing grin, Elizabeth shuddered.

  "Your father might say differently, won't you, Nehonya?" Simeon purred.

  Looking miserable, her father shifted in his seat. "Gabriel, we will talk about this later."

  "Father, send Simeon away," Elizabeth begged, at a loss to understand why her father hadn’t put a stop to Simeon’s bullying. "He's nothing but an evil, poisonous man."

  Simeon reached across the table and slapped her hard across the face. "Silence, woman."

  She cried out, flinched back, and rubbed at her stinging cheek.

  Gabriel leaped off his couch. "You damnable man!" He rounded the table, and stood over Simeon. "Leave before I throw you out!"

  Unperturbed, Simeon folded his hands. "Control your children, Cousin."

  Her father looked ill. "Gabriel sit down. Libi, please be silent."

  Elizabeth's heart broke. Why? Why was her father permitting this travesty?

  Gabriel pointed a warning finger at Simeon. "If you ever strike my sister or Lydia or another woman of my acquaintance again, I will break every bone in your body." She'd never seen her brother so angry. He usually treated Father and his elders with the utmost respect.

  Simeon exhaled heavily. "You disappointment me, Gabriel."

  Gabriel touched his hand to Elizabeth's shoulder. "Good. I plan to make a habit of it."

  Simeon rose and tugged his robe into place. "I will give you one week to get your house in order, Cousin. I plan to bring my son back under my control, and you would be advised do the same with yours."

  Elizabeth smiled wide, sure James's mule-headed stubbornness would stymie Simeon's best-laid plans.

  Simeon narrowed his eyes at her. "You always were a proud, disrespectful shrew. Your defilement brings shame to your father's house and to our family. I refuse to suffer your presence any longer." He turned to her father. "Cousin, you will send your daughter away. I don't care where she goes, so long as I never have to look at her face again."

  Trembling from head to toe, Elizabeth waited for her father to rebuke his cousin.

  Her father's shoulders slumped and his face caved in on itself, aging him before her eyes.

  Her breath burned in her lungs with the dawning truth. Simeon would prevail. Whatever secret he held over her kind, gentle father was awful enough to give her father no choice but to turn her out.

  "Father," Gabriel pleaded. "Why aren't you telling Cousin Simeon to go to Hades?"

  Ashen-faced, her father appeared on the verge of collapse.

  "I want to go away," Elizabeth said hurriedly, anxious to ease her father's suffering. "I'm ready for a change." It was half true. Part of her hated the idea of leaving her home and family, but the other part wanted to run far, far away from her father’s terrible secret.

  "I can't do it any longer," her father choked out. "I can't keep lying."

  Simeon heaved a large sigh and dropped back down onto his couch. "Confess already, if you must."

  Father ordered the slaves out of the room. Elizabeth gripped her seat, dread eating a hole in her stomach.

  Father's face was laced with the taut pain of a man stretched upon on a cross. "When I take my regular trips to our farm in Galilee, I also stop in Samaria. I visit a woman. Her name is Anina. We have two children."

  A ro
aring sound filled Elizabeth's ears. Another woman? Her father wouldn't do this to them, to her mother.

  "Two daughters," Simeon crowed.

  Elizabeth flinched. Girls. But she was supposed to be her father's beloved, lone daughter.

  Gabriel curled in on himself and covered his head with his arms. Talitha patted his back, comforting him. Tears streamed down her beautiful face.

  Unmindful of the cup dangling from her hands, her mother looked as fragile as a flower gone to seed, ready to shred into a thousand pieces. "Was I a bad wife?"

  "No, my dear," her father said with the same warm affection he always used. "This is all my fault."

  "Who is she?" Mother whispered.

  Father swallowed. "Anina is a widow. She runs an inn, and I came to love her. I love you both."

  "Tell them the girls are the same ages as your two youngest boys," Simeon added with glee.

  Elizabeth's stomach rolled. Her father had been carrying on with another woman for over fourteen years? But that would mean— No, no, no! Father wouldn't have, couldn't have. But she saw the truth in Simeon's gloating smile. To protect his dark secret, her father had abandoned her to a painful marriage to the most wretched man to walk the streets of Jerusalem.

  The room whirled. Her mother's soft weeping mixed with her father's desperate pleas for forgiveness. Elizabeth dropped her face into her hands and rocked in place.

  ***

  James slipped past the tense guards in defiance of Phasael's order that the entire household go to the royal palace and remain there. The battle for Jerusalem had been going on for hours. The reports were grim. He couldn't stand waiting any longer. Wanting to see how matters stood, he climbed the stairs leading to the fortress-like wall surrounding the palace, went straight to the chest-high stone parapet with spectacular views of the Temple compound, and surveyed the battlefield.

  Soldier fought soldier outside the citadel situated at the far end of the Temple complex. Smoke from the daily sacrifice hovered over dead bodies strewn across the sacred ground. White-robed priests scurried about.

  James had been five years old the last time war came to Jerusalem, but had no real memory of it. The old priest who lived next door shared grim stories with James and the other boys about the bloody battles. Terrible sadness would overcome the frail man while he recited the names of fellow priests who'd been slaughtered as they were going about their sacred duties.

  James would have said the Temple, the priesthood, and Jerusalem meant nothing to him. But the sight of the hallowed ground under siege flayed open his heart, exposing the truth. He cared about his people, his home, and his God. He cared very deeply.

  A piercing scream close at hand made him jump. Recognizing the sound of a man dying, James swallowed back the bitter acid taste filling his mouth. A fierce battle raged in the market down below. A soldier put his foot on a blood-soaked body and yanked his sword out of the dead man's chest.

  Herod entered the fray at the head of a large band of men. A golden-haired soldier stood out from his dark-headed companions. Kadar. Wearing battle armor and carrying heavy shield and sword, the giant looked as though he'd crashed his way out of a fable. Fighting side by side, Herod and Kadar cut down enemy soldier after enemy soldier.

  More of Herod's men arrived and joined the fight. They slowly pushed the Parthians back to the oldest of the city's walls, the First Wall. The Hasmonean palace and a third of the city were enclosed behind the First Wall. If Herod couldn't retake and hold that line, all would be lost.

  James agonized over whether to join the fight. Swords and shields lay beside dead men, there for the taking. He licked his lips. Kadar, a barbarian heathen, was risking his life for the city, yet here he stood, hiding behind a wall, praying others would save his sorry neck.

  A flash of movement caught his eye. A half dozen enemy soldiers crept along the base of the wall, making their way to an ancient, narrow gate leading to the bowels of the palace. The men assigned to guard the little-used entrance had either deserted their post or been killed.

  James searched about, ready to shout out a warning, but no one was close enough to hear. A stack of building stones for a construction project sat nearby. He ran, fetched two stones, and took up a spot above the grated metal gate. The soldiers closed in cautiously. A patch-eyed man led them. James's heart jumped. Lazarz. Antipater's murderer was back, and trying to sneak into the palace.

  Hands shaking, James set one stone atop the wall. He raised the other stone high above his head and held his breath. A loud roaring filled his head. Lazarz stepped into his line of fire. James flung the stone down. "Die, you brute!" The block whizzed by Lazarz's head, grazed his leather cuirass, and crashed uselessly to the ground.

  Lazarz spun around, peered upward and bared his teeth. James ducked out of sight, then thumped his palm against his forehead. What a quivering, gutless, coward. Was he afraid Lazarz would stare him to death? James hopped to his feet, plucked up the second stone, and hurled it. The heavy block clipped a helmeted head. The soldier cursed and shook his fist at James.

  Feet pounded up the stairs at James's back. He swung around. Red-headed Niv and a handful of stable boys surged onto the landing. "What's happening?" Niv asked more excited than afraid.

  James exhaled a relieved breath. "Hurry. Come help." He picked up two more stones. "Lazarz is trying to break through a gate into the palace." He peered back over the wall.

  The soldiers kicked and heaved against the locked metal gate. James pitched another block, and struck Lazarz's forearm.

  The patch-eyed man yelped and grabbed his arm. "I'm going to kill you," he yelled, black anger blazing in his eyes.

  Niv and the stable boys started hurling stones. The soldiers covered their heads and cursed. The boys laughed and heaved block after block. Disgusted and defeated, the soldiers moved out of range, only to run into two palace guardsmen. Swords clashed. James held his breath, praying Lazarz would be cut down. But he and a companion retreated to safety.

  James leaned heavily against the wall. Niv joined him. They watched the battle unwind. Herod, Kadar, and the palace guard pushed the last of the enemy soldiers back behind the First Wall.

  Niv rested his plump, freckled cheeks in his hands. "Herod is the best soldier who ever lived. I wish I was a soldier."

  James tried to imagine wielding a sword in battle. "Soldiers die by the dozens."

  "I'd rather die fighting than die of boredom serving wine and food at banquets. If Lazarz doesn't kill me first."

  James gave the boy a nudge. "I almost soiled my clothes when I spotted him. How about you?"

  "I kill rats all the time. I hardly ever miss, but I didn't come close to hitting One-Eye."

  The stable boys gathered around. "We won," one of them announced in awe. The feat was impressive. Herod's few hundred men had held off a much larger foe.

  "We won this battle," James said.

  Niv's eyes widened.

  James pointed toward the Temple, then north and south. "Herod holds the First Wall, but the Parthians have overrun the rest of the city. They'll be returning in force." And James would be at the mercy of his father and Lazarz.

  The boys buzzed with speculation and swapped stories about the blood they'd seen spilled.

  Half listening, James watched Herod organize and encourage his men. Though outwardly calm and collected, Herod kept glancing at the antiquated walls. Walls that wouldn't keep the enemy out for long. He could guess Herod's thoughts, because they were his own. Trapped. Trapped like a cornered rat.

  ***

  Simeon Onias swept down the stairs outside Cousin Nehonya's house in a swirl of blue robes, leaving behind a wake of destruction as deadly as a flood, fire, or earthquake.

  Lydia was torn between wanting to stay to give her cousins what comfort she could and wanting to distance herself from the pain filling every crevice of the lovely old home.

  Brynhild scanned the area. "You'd never know the city was overrun by an army."

 
; The morning-long battle had ended, the street was quiet and deserted. Lydia looped her arm through Bryn's and prayed for the hundredth time that James and Kadar were safe and well.

  Escorted by two dozen soldiers, her father's triumphal march home drew cautious stares from those courageous enough to peek out their doors.

  Bryn's hand pressed against Lydia's elbow. "Someone needs to wipe that pleased look off your father's smug face."

  "Shhh. He'll hear. "

  "I don't care if he hears."

  "You don't know what he's capable of."

  Bryn tossed her thick, flaxen braids off her shoulders. "The man has no idea what he's up against. I can't be pushed around as easily as that soft-bellied eunuch."

  "Bryn, promise me you won't talk back."

  "Your foul father will have to step over my dead body to take you to Parthia."

  Lydia's steps slowed outside her father's palatial house. The gray, weathered stones waiting to entomb her looked the same as the day her father fled to Egypt. "The thought of disappearing into a harem makes me remember...you know."

  Raiders swarming. Blood and terror. Damp caves. Dark degradations. Deep, deep despair. A chill went through her. "Last time I was weak. I gave in, resigned myself to my fate." Afterward she'd escaped into herself. Covered herself in blessed numbness. "I have to stay strong, for little James, or I might never see my baby again."

  Gripping Bryn's arm tightly, Lydia followed her father inside. The cold and damp of the house wrapped around her.

  Father halted in the middle of the large, barren atrium. "Goda, go gather your belongings and leave my house."

  Goda's shoulders hitched. "You're letting me go because of the barbarian?"

  "I won't do business with a man I can't trust."

  "How can you do this, after all I've done in your service?" Goda begged.

  "Service?" Father frowned. "I should have you flayed."

  Taking Bryn's hand, Lydia headed for the stairs, relieved her father was raging at the deceitful eunuch instead of her. She led Bryn to her bedchamber, crossed the room, threw open the shutters, and rested her face against the cool latticework. Priests and soldiers scurried about the outer courts of the Temple. The smell of the incense and burnt sacrifices was surprising, and gave her a new appreciation for the faithfulness of the Lord's priests.