The Parchment Read online

  The lights had long since been turned off, so the pope shone the flashlight on the tomb. “When I have a difficult decision to make, I often come here and speak to Peter. We have a good relationship.” Barbo saw tears well up in Benedict's eyes. “Francesco, pray with me.”

  The two men, pope and cardinal, knelt on the ground and recited the fifteen decades of the Rosary, each focusing on some aspect of the life of Christ and Mary His mother. When they had finished, Benedict stood up and looked at Barbo.

  “Francesco, leave me alone for a few minutes. I have something to tell Peter.” Barbo saw Benedict place his hand on Peter's tomb and kiss the stone. After a few minutes, the Holy Father walked back to where Barbo was standing. The pope put his hand on Barbo's shoulder. “Francesco, I have decided to abdicate my position as Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church. It must be done quickly. Help me see this through.”

  “Holiness, I understand your fear of Alzheimer's, but there must be another way.”

  “Francesco, we have been friends for many years. You know as well as I there is no other way. My bouts of forgetfulness will grow longer and increasingly severe. Peter has given me the strength to make the decision.”

  “Please reconsider, Holy Father. Your abdication would be unprecedented.”

  “Perhaps in modern times but we both know Celestine V abdicated in 1294. He simply couldn't govern the Church.”

  “Yes, but Dante put him in hell for what he did.”

  “Dante's assessment was not the final word. Ten years after his abdication, the Church canonized Celestine. His feast day is May nineteenth.”

  “But your abdication will create dissension in the Church.”

  “No more so than my death, Francesco.”

  “Who is ready to take your place?”

  “Perhaps it will be you, Francesco.”

  Barbo's face grew pale.

  Shaken by Pope Benedict's decision to abdicate, Barbo returned to his apartment. After showering and putting on a change of clothes, he called Cardinal Calvaux in the Domus Sanctae Marthae.

  “I hope you had a chance to get some sleep, Jean.”

  “Yes, I did. When is my audience with Pope Benedict?”

  “The Holy Father will not be able to see you today as he had planned. Perhaps you could join me for breakfast. I'd like to hear about your family legend.”

  “My pleasure.”

  “There's a wonderful pasticceria near Borgo Santo Spirito. It opens early to accommodate the clerical traffic. Come to my office at eight thirty.”

  Cardinal Barbo was a frequent customer at Pasticceria di San Paolo. Before the two cardinals were seated, a splendid array of brioche and pastries magically appeared on the table.

  “Try the pastries. They rival those made in your country, Jean.”

  Calvaux put his hands in the air defensively. “I'll stick with toast and jam.”

  “I understand you went to the Gregorian University for theology.”

  “Yes, the Jesuits were superb teachers.”

  “And your dissertation was on the massacre of the Cathars at Montsegur?”

  Calvaux was impressed that Barbo had gone to the trouble of studying his resume. “Yes, it's left me with a passion for fourteenth-century French history.”

  “It's curious. My dissertation at the ‘Greg’ was on the Knights Templar.”

  Calvaux signaled the waiter for another espresso. “Both groups got pretty shabby treatment from the papacy and the French monarchy.”

  “We have some time, Jean. Tell me your family legend.”

  “About Gerard de Montelambert?”

  “Yes and his discovery of the census records.”

  Calvaux thought for a moment. “The Montelambert legend actually begins centuries before Gerard was born. It starts in first-century Palestine with one of our ancestors — a wine merchant from Gaul named Evardus.”

  Barbo leaned forward and cupped his chin in his right hand. “Start where you will, Jean.”

  CHAPTER VI

  THE DEATH F A RABBI

  TITUS FLAVIUS SABINUS, son of the Roman Emperor Vespasian and commander of the Roman Legions in Asia, stood on the Mount of Olives looking out over the Valley of the Kedron to the walls of Jerusalem. At thirty-one, Titus was in the prime of his life. Although shorter than the average Roman, he was a feared opponent, whether on the battlefield or in the gladiatorial arena. With his brawny arms and broad shoulders, he could crack the neck of a man like a dried twig. With his olive complexion and curly hair, Titus exuded the animal magnetism of a stallion in search of a female to mount. Women found him irresistible. He reciprocated with feats of sexual prowess that exhausted even the most lecherous courtesan. Titus boasted that during one imperial banquet, he seduced the wives of four Senators and then took to bed his lover—a sixteen-year-old male slave. “The people call me a god. They want to see me act like one. The great Alexander could not have done better.”

  Titus's prowess was not confined to the bedroom. He was a shrewd and cunning negotiator, with an instinctive sense of timing. He knew exactly when to act and when to hold back. His resourcefulness had recently been proven to his father. While Vespasian was commander of the legions of Asia and Titus was his second in command, a disastrous fire broke out in Rome. Although Emperor Nero accused a religious sect called Christians of starting the conflagration, the Senate blamed Nero. Convinced that the emperor had caused the fire, three officers of the Praetorian Guard—the troops assigned to protect Rome — broke into Nero's bed chamber, pulled him off his wife and stabbed him repeatedly in the chest. Nero's murder set off an immediate struggle for power, one group in the Senate vying against another. As the military force closest to Rome, the Praetorian Guard had much to say in choosing the next emperor. When no senatorial faction could win the Guard's allegiance, however, the governor of Spain, Servius Galba, proclaimed himself emperor and marched on Rome to claim the prize. The Praetorian Guard put up no resistance.

  Once Galba had solidified his power, he wasted no time in summoning Vespasian to Italy. “Having the general who commands our legions in Asia come to Rome,” Galba wrote, “would be a sign of unity in the Empire.”

  When Galba's letter arrived, Vespasian read it and handed it to Titus. “Galba must take me for a fool. If I return to Rome, he will have me killed. I am his only rival.”

  “Father, send me in your place.”

  “What excuse would I give Galba for sending you?”

  Titus thought for a moment. “The Jews are your excuse. They defeated the Twelfth Legion and captured its eagles. Until the Jews are crushed and the eagles restored to Rome, you cannot leave Palestine.”

  “But if you take my place, he will kill you.”

  “When you fear the lion, Father, you are careful not to harm the cub. Killing me would only lead to war, and at the moment that is the last thing Galba wants. No, he will accept my vows of loyalty—particularly when I wrap them in flights of birds and showers of meteors.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Galba is no fool, but he is superstitious. Let me invent a dream, Father. One night while asleep, you saw a golden eagle land on the steps of the Capitoline Hill. The eagle slowly scratched the letter ‘G’ on the ground. When you awoke, you consulted your soothsayers. The dream, they said, foretold that Galba would become emperor and that his reign would usher in a second golden age for the empire.”

  “Who would believe such a ridiculous story?” asked Vespasian.

  Titus pulled a sheet over his shoulders and ran around his father's tent flapping his arms like a bird. “Galba would. He believes that birds bring messages from the gods.”

  “Titus, I am glad you are my son and not my enemy. Go to Rome and tell Galba about my dream.”

  Titus bowed to his father. “The next time you are called to Rome, Father, it will be as emperor.”

  Titus traveled to Italy in April of the year 69 A.D. Although initially suspicious of his adversary's son, Galba was gradually wo
n over by Titus's charm and diplomatic skills. But there was a side to Titus that Galba did not see. Although he would praise and flatter Galba during the day, Titus sowed seeds of discontent at night. At dinners with prominent members of the senate, he would hint that Galba was thinking of disbanding that institution. When drinking in out-of-the-way tavernas with officers of the Praetorian Guard, he would toast his father's loyalty to the gods of Rome. Galba, he said, had failed to worship at the Temple of Jupiter when he had first entered Rome at the head of his legions.

  After four months as emperor, Galba made a fatal mistake. To flatter his vanity, he decreed that all senators should bow their heads before addressing him. In full view of a horrified senate, Aurelius Minicius, a curmudgeonly old senator, furious at Galba's high-handedness, stabbed the emperor through the heart. A rumor quickly spread that the night before the murder, Titus had been seen leaving Minicius's house with the commander of the Praetorian Guard. Within hours after Galba's death, the Praetorian Guard hailed Vespasian as the new emperor. A day later, Aurelius Minicius's body was found in a ditch along the road to the seaport of Ostia.

  When he returned to Italy in September of 69, Vespasian sent Titus to command the Roman legions in Asia. Titus's first priority was to complete what his father had begun — the suppression of the Hebrew insurgency in Palestine. Vespasian had already pacified Galilee using the tactics he understood best. Towns and villages were reduced to rubble, and Galilean men, women, and children were butchered by the thousands. Vespasian's legionnaires joked that the only peace he knew was the peace of the grave. Adopting his father's brutal tactics, Titus moved south through Samaria and Judea, systematically destroying everything in his path.

  Despite his well-trained army, however, Titus did not underestimate the Hebrews. Several years before, Jewish zealots had ambushed his father's army as Vespasian marched on the Judean town of Emmaus. In the ambush, Hebrew partisans slaughtered more than five thousand Roman soldiers and captured the eagles of the Twelfth Legion. To lose a legion's battle standards brings not only shame and ignominy on a Roman general but on his family as well. A day hardly passed when Titus did not dream of recapturing the eagles and returning them triumphantly to his father in Rome. On a more selfish note—with his support among the Praetorian Guards, returning the eagles of the Twelfth Legion to Rome would almost certainly cement Titus's claim to be emperor after his father's death. A new imperial dynasty would be born that would rival that of Caesar Augustus and his descendants.

  In February of the year 70, Titus reached the gates of Jerusalem, the holy city of the Jews and the last stronghold of Hebrew resistance in Palestine. For six long months, his army laid siege to the city. Although the Jews fought bravely, the Roman juggernaut was unstoppable. The Eighth Legion had breached the outermost wall of Jerusalem a month earlier, and now the battering rams of the Tenth Legion were about to do the same to the inner wall. Once that wall was breached, all that remained in Jewish hands was the Temple Mount—the plateau on which King Herod had rebuilt the ancient Temple of Solomon. The prize that had eluded Titus for so long was about to be his.

  The strokes of the goldsmith's hammer rang out through the night. “Give me the eagles, Avram.”

  The young apprentice nervously handed the goldsmith the battle standards of the Twelfth Legion. With one blow of his hammer, the goldsmith broke the eagle off the first standard. With another blow, he snapped the Senatorial symbol — the letters “SPQR”—off the top of the second. Almost matter-of-factly, he threw the gold emblems into a clay bowl and, with iron pincers, placed the bowl inside the glowing kiln. When the gold had melted, the goldsmith poured the molten liquid into a clay mold in the shape of a menorah.

  “Avram, run to the temple and ask the high priest to bring the original. We must compare the two.” The young boy sped off into the darkness.

  The air in the sanctuary was incandescent. David ben Hochba, the commander of the Jewish Sicarii, or Knife Wielders, could feel Yahweh's presence in every part of the room. He watched the high priest Hezekiah lift the branched candlestick off the altar and wrap it in his shawl. Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, had commanded the Jewish people to fashion the golden menorah as a sign of their fidelity to him. The menorah had been with them on their wanderings in the Sinai and during their exile in Babylon. When they returned from exile, Yahweh had ordered the Jews to place the menorah on the altar of the sanctuary—a location it had never left until tonight.

  Ben Hochba followed the high priest out of the sanctuary. The menorah was the last of the temple vessels to be copied. Forging the copy of the menorah from the eagles of the Twelfth Legion had been ben Hochba's idea. As a soldier, he knew that the Romans would appreciate the ingenuity of the substitution. When they thought they were desecrating the temple vessels, the Romans would be desecrating the eagles of their own Twelfth Legion.

  When the high priest arrived at the goldsmith's kiln, he set the menorah next to the clay mold. The mold was cracked open and the copy of the menorah taken out. The high priest compared the replica with the original.

  “Goldsmith, I commend you. No one could tell them apart.”

  The high priest handed the original menorah to ben Hochba.

  “David, take it through the tunnel tonight. I will put the copy back on the altar in the sanctuary.”

  The high priest turned to a tall rabbi who stood next to him. “Rabbi Yohannen, what about the temple records?”

  “These are the last, Hezekiah. They are from the time Caiphas was high priest and Pontius Pilate, the Roman procurator. They cover Barrabas's revolt and the cults of Jesus the Nazarene and John the Baptizer.”

  Ben Hochba looked angrily at Yohannen. “Rabbi, a Sicarius will gladly risk his life to smuggle the temple vessels out of Jerusalem. They link us to our past in the Sinai and in Babylon. But these lists of births and marriages! Of what use are they to anyone?”

  “Yahweh has made a covenant with us, David. We are His chosen people. These records of births and marriages show who we are as a people.”

  Ben Hochba shrugged in exasperation.

  Ben Hochba and Zacharias, the deputy commander of the Sicarii, crawled through the tunnel that led from the Temple Mount under the northern walls of Jerusalem. After emerging from the passageway, the two partisans hurried to the northeast to find the Jericho road.

  Ben Hochba stopped when they reached the road. He listened for a moment and whispered to Zacharias in a warning voice. “Hide behind these rocks. Soldiers are coming.”

  A Roman patrol walked along the road. A young Jewish boy, his hands tied behind his back, was being pulled behind them with a rope. A legionnaire stopped to adjust his sandal.

  “Better a Hebrew girl than this circumcised boy.”

  “Maybe we will capture one tomorrow. But for tonight's pleasure, the boy will have to do.” The infantrymen laughed as they continued along the road.

  When he heard the bantering of the soldiers, Zacharias became furious and pulled out his knife. Ben Hochba put his hand on Zacharias's arm.

  “There are too many of them. We must go to the cave.”

  When the patrol had passed, the two Sicarii followed the Jericho road until they reached the Oasis of the Red Waters. The oasis was empty – eerily so. For fear of encountering Roman patrols, they stayed hidden in the oasis during daylight. As it grew dark, ben Hochba and Zacharias left the oasis and continued along the road to Jericho. After several hours of walking, the outline of three hills began to appear on the right side of the road.

  “Here we are, Zacharias.”

  The two men climbed up the middle hill until they reached a narrow path that wound its way around a stone outcropping. They walked along the path until they saw the cave.

  Lighting a torch, ben Hochba and Zacharias entered the dark passageway. At the sound of the two men, thousands of bats stirred on the ceiling.

  “They will not bother us, Zacharias. They fear the light.”

  A large pile
of rocks lay on the ground about twenty paces inside the cave. After removing their shoulder bags, the two Sicarii lifted the rocks off the pile. Underneath the rocks was a wooden plank covering a large pit. Ben Hochba held the torch low to the ground while Zacharias pushed the plank aside. Surprised by the light, a lizard scampered out of the hole. Zacharias reached down into the opening and laid the menorah and census records next to the other items already in the pit. Zacharias pushed the wooden plank back over the opening.

  Ben Hochba put out the torch. “We have finished what we came to do. Yahweh is blessed.”

  The two men left the cave and followed the road back to the Oasis of the Red Waters.

  It was an hour after dawn when ben Hochba and Zacharias reached the oasis again. Roman supply wagons had stopped at the well to take on water. The two partisans watched from the reeds until the carts rumbled off toward Jerusalem.

  “There may be more Romans, Zacharias. Ge some sleep. I will stand guard.”

  The day passed uneventfully. The only visitors to the Oasis were a group of Samaritans. They stopped at the well to draw water and quickly moved on. When the sun began to set, ben Hochba woke his companion. “We must leave soon. You know you will die if you return to Jerusalem.”

  “Yes.”

  “You could escape to Jericho and save your life.”

  “Without my family, what would I live for?”

  Ben Hochba put an approving hand on Zacharias's shoulder. “We must reach Jerusalem by dawn.”

  A tribune rode up the Mount of Olives to where Titus and several of his commanders were watching the battle.

  “Will the Hebrews surrender? We have the Temple Mount surrounded.”

  “They will not, Imperator. They would rather die for their God than submit to our yoke.”

  “Then they will have their wish! What do they call this God of theirs?”

  “Yahweh.”

  “I will show these Jews how much Rome fears him. Tribune, when do these Hebrews make sacrifice to this Yahweh?”