Agrippa's Daughter (12 page)

Berenice sat silently, watching him.

“Against whom?” the Roman shouted.

“I hear you, Proconsul.”

“Claudius ordered him to stop. He disobeyed the emperor. Then I was instructed to inform him personally that if he laid one more stone on that damned wall it would mean war with Rome. Then he stopped, full of smiles and humble apologies. He was fortifying the wall against the Parthians, as he put it, in case it should enter their heads to travel a thousand miles and attack Jerusalem. He was building a bulwark for Rome. Lies. Pretenses. Everything except the truth—that he was no sooner king than he began to build for the day when he could challenge Rome. The Jewish disease, my dear lady—or is it the Jewish insanity?”

“That was almost four years ago,” Berenice replied evenly.

“Yes. And when one thing failed, another was attempted. Your father had an agile mind. A year or so ago I was informed that twelve princes and kings were either on their way to Tiberias or here already—twelve, every petty monarch in the area, the king of Seleucia and the prince of Antioch and the king of Sidon and the king of Cappadocia and the two supposed royal brothers of Sparta, who still pretend that they are a people and a nation and all the rest of your petty lords—here and with their noses in a heady Jewish brew they were cooking up. I came here alone. They were meeting here—in this room where we are sitting, and I pushed your guards aside and walked through that door and faced them and told them to go home. I came with no legions, no guards, just myself—and I told them there would be no conspiracies, no alliances against Rome. I told them to go home, and like whipped dogs, they went.”

Berenice sat in silence now.

“It was almost six months before I could go to Rome and discuss these matters with the emperor. While I was there, another matter came to my attention, and I brought it before the emperor. Your father, Agrippa, was hoarding money, hoarding it and collecting it and making loans wherever there was a Jewish community—from one end of the earth to the other. And do you know why?”

“He always loved money,” Berenice whispered.

“How wrong you are, my dear. He despised money. He spent millions in his youth. Money ran through his fingers like water. Do you know why he became a miser? Because he had decided to hire one hundred thousand mercenary troops for his war with Rome. He was a remarkable man. Single-minded. Give me a good man who gains power and becomes evil. That is both natural and inevitable, and it can be dealt with. But save me from the sinner who gains power and becomes a saint! The emperor and I discussed the matter, and it was his opinion that your father had overstepped the bounds of both wisdom and gratitude. But then he died, and the problem was solved.”

“What do you intend for my brother?” Berenice asked softly.

“The emperor is not ungenerous, and he remembers your father with warmth. Your brother will continue to be king over this city of Tiberias, and his domain will include a few hundred square miles of Galilee, roughly an area within ten miles of the lake. If he fulfills his duties loyally, the emperor will perhaps reward him additionally in the future. But so far as the Jews are concerned, the emperor is determined that your father shall be remembered as the last king. There will be no more Jewish kings over what you people call Israel and what we call Palestine. As far as that is concerned, the House of Herod and the House of Mattathias can look only to the past. Instead, the emperor has appointed a procurator over Judea. His name is Cuspius Fadus. He traveled with me from Rome, and he is now in Caesarea, organizing his government before he proceeds to Jerusalem.”

Somber, rigid, her green eyes hooded and withdrawn, Berenice sat without speaking. She was cold and numb inside, and her thoughts were slow, sluggish, and weary.

“It will take a little time to get used to this,” the Roman nodded. “I imagine it means a great disappointment for you—and even more so for your brother. But you are still the queen of Chalcis and Agrippa is still king—even if only of a small part of his father’s domain. Tiberias is a rich and beautiful city, and the countryside here is fertile and productive. Not all of us can be emperors. I advise you and your brother to make the best of what you have, and to consider yourselves fortunate. Honor Rome—and Rome will honor you.”

Berenice and Agrippa ate their dinner alone, the two of them silent for the most part. When they spoke, it was to no great point, and only once did Agrippa even mention the possibility of a difference with Rome’s opinion.

“War with Rome?” Berenice said. “But those who go to war with Rome are destroyed—”

“I know.” Miserably.

“We were told that our father was a saint. You and I—”

“I know.”

“We are not saints.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“In fact,” said Berenice, “I am not sure that anyone cares a great deal about us. There would be no great mourning in Israel if we were dead.”

Agrippa nodded.

“War? No one would go to war for us. Let’s face that, brother. That’s the plain truth of it. The fact of it is that a couple of enterprising Jews would just as soon put a knife in our backs and sell the remains to Rome. That makes more sense than war, and there’s a profit in it.”

“Still, I was king for a while—twenty-three days to be exact.”

“You are still king of Tiberias.”

Agrippa smiled plaintively. “You know the old man, Isaac Benabram?”

“The archon of the city?”

“Yes. I asked him whether he needed help. He smiled at me as if I was some sort of half-wit. I asked about a royal court. Don’t trouble yourself, my son, he said to me.”

“Still, it’s better than Chalcis,” Berenice said.

“Will you go back to Chalcis now?”

“What else can I do?” Berenice said. “Brother—the plain, rotten truth of it is that I am pregnant. And it’s his child—the child of that fat lout, sitting in his tent alongside the city. Where else do I go? I thought once that power and glory would solve everything. But the Roman removed our power and glory, and a war between Tiberias and Chalcis would not even be entertaining, much less plausible. I’ll go back to Chalcis, brother.”

Berenice sent for her husband. Instead of Herod’s response in person, a messenger from him appeared, bearing a note which said, “My loyal and faithful wife: I am here in my tent, and I shall await your arrival with pleasure and eagerness. If you are not here in twenty-four hours, a messenger will go to Chalcis, with orders for my entire army to join me here. The army of Chalcis is neither very large nor particularly frightening, but I believe it is sufficient to cope with Tiberias. And since more of my soldiers are not Jewish than Jewish, they will no doubt take pleasure in spelling out, on the streets, buildings, and people of Tiberias, an understandable resentment and envy which they display toward Jews. This would be regrettable to us, who as Jews should express no desire for a massacre of our own people; but hardly regrettable to my good friends and allies, the Romans. Vibius Marsus, who was kind enough to repeat to me the substance of his instructions to you, has already indicated that if I were forced to undertake a just attack upon Tiberias, in defense of my rights and honor, he would be pleased to supply me with sufficient siege engines to break down your walls. So, my good wife, knowing your reputation for clear thinking and logical action, I shall expect you at my tent. And soon.”

Berenice showed the message to Agrippa, who began to tremble with anger as he read it. “The bastard!” he cried. “The lousy, rotten, degraded bastard! Some day I will gut him! By the Holy Name of God, I swear that! I’ll cut open that fat belly of his while he’s alive and feeling and pull out his guts with my own hands—”

“Easy, brother—easy,” Berenice begged him. “He is merely displaying a proper Herodian attitude—”

“What will you do?”

“Do I have a choice? I will go to him, of course.”

“Suppose we called his bluff. Would he dare? Would he actually attack Tiberias?”

“He would—and the proconsul would help him.”

“And no one would come to our aid?”

“Who? Who, brother? They would say, Let the Herodian dogs destroy each other. And they would be right. Anyway, the days are gone when nations went to war over a woman’s desire to avoid her husband. This is not Troy, and my glutton of a husband is no Agamemnon, and Jews do not make war unless their pride or their religion is offended. No, Agrippa. I will go.”

And with that, Berenice sought out Gabo and put her to packing the three enormous chests that held her wardrobe. A few hours later, she was ready to leave. Tiberias was not a large city, and word had already gotten around that Berenice was returning to the fat Herod of Chalcis. It was also commonly known by now that the Emperor Claudius had shattered the great Jewish kingdom and reconstituted it as a group of minor Roman provinces. A new procurator was on his way to Judea in the south, and as for Agrippa Benagrippa, their seventeen-year-old monarch, he was king of Tiberias and no more than that. So when Berenice emerged from the palace, followed by Gabo, a dozen men of arms assigned by her brother to accompany her, and slaves bearing her great clothes chests, the streets were crowded with men, women, and children; for there is nothing more delightful than to see the mighty come a cropper. Some were silent out of a decent respect for the daughter of the dead Agrippa; but others could not resist the temptation to hoot, whistle, and spit in contempt. As one old woman put it, “Whore—go to your husband instead of your brother!” If they could have devised a worse charge than incest, they would have hurled it at her. Some did, considering patricide the deadlier of the two sins. But there were others who watched her silently as she walked by—she would not be carried in a litter or hide her face—and said to themselves that never before had a woman of such beauty or such grace walked on the soil of old Israel.

Herod, her husband, waited for her inside his tent. He stood there, enveloped head to foot in a long robe of white and gold, his face murderously grim, nor did he say anything as she entered and faced him. He had rehearsed his response a hundred times, and he knew that if she made one single, simple gesture of contrition, his anger would melt away. But she did not. She only regarded him silently and steadily, her green eyes fixed on his face, her mouth moving in the slightest gesture of contempt—yet enough to explode his hair-trigger wrath.

The blow he struck caught her on the side of her head and felled her the way the slaughterer fells an ox. First Herod feared he had killed her. Then he saw her move.

Her head exploding with pain, her mind reeling, bleeding from both nostrils, Berenice forced herself to her feet, stood swaying a moment, and then stepped back from her husband as he came to offer his hand.

“You struck your blow, Herod,” she managed to say.

He was shaking himself now, and he began to plead an apology.

“Be quiet,” she whispered.

The force of her personality as she stood there, her face and dress splotched with the blood that ran from her nostrils, was such as to meet him physically. He recoiled from her. He reached out his hands, as if to touch and help her, but lacked the courage to make the physical contact, and as he stood there like that Berenice whispered,

“If you strike me again, ever, Herod, I will kill you. Do you understand?”

Her green eyes commanded the situation. He tried to face her look, and could not.

“Do you understand me, Herod?”

Miserably, he nodded.

“I go to my own tent now,” she said, “and I will not be disturbed again tonight.”

So she had won. How she had won, Herod did not know. He still had the soldiers, the support of Rome, the power and the clenched fist, but the contest was to Berenice. He had nothing.

Part Two

In the forty-eighth year of our era, four years after Berenice had walked out of the gates of Tiberias and into the tent of her husband, Herod of Chalcis, she wrote a long letter to her brother, King Agrippa of Tiberias, and dispatched it to him by messenger.

Greetings and respect to you, my brother Agrippa, she wrote, Tetrarch of Galilee and King of Tiberias—I bow to you and wish you good health and peace. I send you this message because there is no one here for me to turn to; and out of the emptiness in my heart, I turn to you.