I removed the earpiece and slipped it under my tunic; then I climbed up toward the city until I got within about a hundred feet of the main road.
Once there, I sat down on a rock next to one of the ubiquitous olive trees and watched. I figured if anyone questioned what I was doing, I’d do my best to pretend that I was a slave waiting for his master, as ordered, by the gate.
I needn’t have worried. In an era without reliable timekeeping, slaves occasionally had to wait for days. Lavon explained later that this was common practice.
By the look of it, the Romans had outsourced security in this section of town to the local constabulary. Black helmeted sentries, in uniforms resembling those I had seen on the Temple police, paced the walls, while a half dozen or so of their colleagues manned their stations at ground level.
Occasionally, they pulled travelers aside and inspected their cargo, but otherwise they made little effort to stop the flow of people and animals into the city. Given the nature of the crowd, I’m not sure they could have, even if they had wanted to.
About one in every five itinerants either rode a donkey or led one laden with provisions, and I was reminded of what the world must have smelled like before the widespread adoption of the internal combustion engine.
Not every donkey was as eager as its owner to go inside, either. I watched one heavily burdened animal sit down on a flat stretch of road and simply refuse to take another step. Its owner cursed and swore, flogging the poor creature with a thin piece of cane.
It never so much as budged.
The passers-by just laughed. One of them must have made a snide comment, for suddenly the owner launched into an even greater frenzy, until the unfortunate beast rolled over as best it could under its load. Whether it had died or was just resting, I never got close enough to tell.
***
I had waited for about half an hour, soaking in the scene, when I finally spotted Lavon.
That wasn’t as hard as I had initially feared. As it turned out, the average man in first century Judea measured less than five foot six, so each of my fellow travelers stood head and shoulders above the rest.
All three appeared to be going strong. Their eyes, though, were so focused on the city walls and the crowd at the gate that none of them saw me slip into the file of travelers behind them.
“Does anyone have spare change for a poor mendicant beggar?” I said.
They all turned, but it took a moment for the English words to register, and a moment longer for them to realize the person behind them was me.
“What are you doing here?” said Markowitz.
We stepped off to the side of the main road and they appraised me from top to bottom.
“You look like hell,” said Bryson.
I didn’t think it was that bad, especially since my rescuers at the sanatorium had let me take a dip in their pool, but my throbbing head must have diverted my mind from other damage.
Markowitz noted a darkening welt growing at the side of my left eye, and I explained what had happened as best I could. Lavon burst out laughing when I got to the part about the snakes.
“You saw that, too?” I asked.
“We were so close that I couldn’t bear to walk past without having a peek inside. That building is an asclepion — a healing center dedicated to Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine. Once again, my thesis advisor was wrong. He didn’t think the site served that purpose until the second century.”
“Why the snakes?”
“Snakes were sacred to Asclepius.”
I cast him a dubious glance.
“You should pay more attention the next time you go to the doctor,” he chided. “The snake wrapped around the pole, the symbol of modern medicine, that’s where it comes from.”
Of course. I knew that.
“What about the mob scene at the pool?” I described the raw pandemonium I had witnessed.
“You saw that?” he asked, incredulous. Apparently, nothing remotely similar had happened during their visit.
“Why was it so important?” I asked.
“Rise, take up your mat and walk,” he replied.
I stared at him blankly.
“Evidently, some sort of geological phenomenon causes the underlying spring to bubble up every now and then. The people here, in the first century, believe that it’s an angel stirring the waters. Whenever that happens, the first one in gets cured of what ails him.”
That explained the mad rush, though not the rest of the story.
“What did you mean with the bit about the mat?” I asked.
“John’s gospel records it as one of Christ’s first miracles. An invalid had been lying there beside the pool for 38 years when Jesus walked up and asked him if he wanted to get well. Rather than say yes, the man launched into a litany of excuses about how someone always beat him into the water. Christ healed him and told him to go home.”
“Does this spring still exist, in our time?”
“Not really. The Church of St. Anne rests over the site now, but that’s a twelfth century Crusader structure, renovated in the late 1800s. We think the current building replaced a Byzantine church, but before that, who knows. Like I keep saying, Jerusalem has been scraped and rebuilt many times. Exactly where things were is a matter of conjecture.”
“Why allow a Greek temple there?” asked Markowitz.
“I’m not really sure,” admitted Lavon. “My guess is that the Jewish priests didn’t have any better answers to medical problems. I suppose it gave people hope.”
“Or provided a good place to shuffle off grandpa,” said Bryson. “You could dump a sick relative there and not feel bad about it.”
***
I encouraged the others to continue this line of discussion, but despite my best efforts, I couldn’t evade the inevitable question.
“Where’s Sharon?” asked Lavon.
I explained what little I knew.
Once I had done so, Bryson and Markowitz immediately began arguing about the best way to rescue her. Their schemes, though, struck me only as efficient ways to commit suicide. None would have done Sharon any good at all.
Lavon didn’t seem to think so, either, but he stepped away from us for a moment, lost in thought.
“I think she’ll be OK,” he finally said,
“We can’t just abandon her!” said Markowitz. “You know what they’re going to do.”
He nodded. “Yes, but we have a little while to work out a plan. Ancient documents describe a regimen of baths and beauty treatments to be completed before a girl was deemed fit for the king. This will take time.”
“How much time?” I asked.
“At least a day,” said Lavon. “Possibly two or three.”
“Today’s Wednesday, right?” I asked.
They nodded.
“Then we have until tomorrow night at least,” I said, “Friday if we’re lucky.”
I didn’t have to add that we hadn’t exactly had the best of luck so far.
“This is my fault,” said Lavon. “Kings sent retainers to round up pretty girls all the time. I just thought we’d be safe in the Antonia, in addition to the story of her being royalty.”
“Obviously they didn’t believe that,” said Bryson.
“That was my fault, too. We all slept in the same bed last night. If she had been a real princess, she would have had the bed to herself and the rest of us would have spent the night on the floor. I just got carried away watching everything else; it slipped my mind.”
“What do you think they really take us for?” asked Bryson.
“Our hands, even yours Bill, are not the rough hands of manual laborers, and our clothes are too well made to be peasant garments. I’m guessing they see us as prosperous merchants.”
“Exactly what we started out pretending to be,” said Bryson.
Lavon nodded. “Ironically, whoever did this might even think they’re doing us a favor. If she pleases the king, she could open up profitable trading opportunities.”
“I can’t imagine her feeling very good about that,” said Bryson.
“No,” said Lavon, “but this is the first century; she is a woman. Her feelings are of no consideration at all.”