I couldn’t listen to any more of this nonsense. Besides my ear was starting to itch, so I popped the device out as I climbed up the steep incline toward the Reptile Garden. Though I had learned the facility’s true purpose, I couldn’t help calling it that.
Once there, I located my benefactor and dropped the handful of the coins Lavon had given me onto a table. I’m good for my debts as a matter of principle, and given the way things had transpired so far, I didn’t think it would hurt to have a few more friends, just in case.
The priest gestured as if he wanted me to stay, but I showed him Lavon’s missive and motioned that I needed to be moving on.
I had only a short jog to the Antonia. Lavon’s note worked as expected, and a few minutes later, I found myself escorted into the presence of Publius, who was conducting a final equipment inspection before he sent two squads out on patrol.
He eyeballed my bedraggled appearance with a look of surprise. Since my earpiece wasn’t in, I couldn’t understand a word he was saying, though the gist wasn’t too hard to figure out.
“Lestes,” I replied. It was the only Greek word I knew.
I suppose a story that I had been attacked by bandits was plausible enough. Fortunately he didn’t press the issue, since the last thing I wanted to mention was Markowitz’s venture into the Temple.
Instead, he directed my attention to a cluster of soldiers standing around a small canopy about twenty yards away.
I strode over to the group without looking back, dodging a pile of armor as I went. One of the soldiers glanced at Publius and then instructed the others to move out of my way. As they did so, it wasn’t hard to see why.
I wasn’t the only one having a really bad day.
Medics attended to two seriously wounded Romans lying on stretchers in the shade. I could see immediately that the man on the left wouldn’t last long. Blunt force trauma, from a club, probably, had caved in the side of his skull just behind his left eye. I was no expert, but even in a modern hospital, I would have rated his odds of survival no better than one in five.
I turned to Publius and shook my head before addressing the second case.
This man also faced grave peril. As the medics removed his blood-soaked tunic, I spotted a deep gash in his abdomen, and a closer inspection confirmed the worst: a small tear in the peritoneal sac surrounding his intestines.
I called for water as I considered what to do. The primary danger with this type of injury is infection, usually resulting from fragments of dirty clothing or intestinal material itself seeping into the abdominal cavity.
Army field protocol for such wounds calls for a soldier to press sterile gauze into the opening and then wrap the wound snugly, followed by a quick evacuation of the patient to a field hospital where physicians can clean out any foreign matter and administer the required antibiotics.
Today, though, I was on my own. I could only try and hope for the best.
As a servant placed a large bowl of water on the ground beside me, I reached into my bag and removed a small package of powdered iodine, which I dumped into the bowl and stirred until the solution was an even light brown.
The other soldiers watched curiously as I washed my hands in the iodine and then made a closer inspection of the wound. I used tweezers to pull several small fragments of the man’s tunic away from the opening before thoroughly cleaning the surrounding area with a patch of iodine soaked gauze.
Afterward, I clamped the opening with a couple of butterfly bandages and covered the area with an antibiotic laced compress. It was all I could do. He might not live, but he’d at least have a fighting chance.
To the extent that I could pantomime, I instructed the others to give the man only boiled water to drink and nothing to eat for at least a day, though I wasn’t sure how well I got my instructions across.
***
I had to wait for the soldiers’ attention to be diverted before I could slip my ear bud in once more. I tried first to reach Lavon, but for some reason, he didn’t respond.
A moment later, however, Sharon’s voice came through loud and clear.
“You wouldn’t believe this place,” she said.
She sounded as if she had entered a different world — which in fact, she had.
She explained that her litter had entered the palace about half an hour earlier and she had been unloaded, so to speak, in a verdant, sun-lit courtyard roughly the size of three football fields.
Deep channels crisscrossed lush, grassy lawns, carrying water to a remarkable assortment of shade trees and a stunning variety of flowering plants. An “oasis of serenity” she called it. Topping things off, hundreds of white doves flew back and forth between the trees.
I couldn’t help but laugh. “You sound like you’re writing ad copy for Donald Trump.”
“His resorts are a pigsty compared to this,” she said.
She didn’t add that Herod probably hadn’t filed for bankruptcy as many times, either.
“Who else is there with you now?” I asked.
In the background, I could hear what sounded like a dozen women frolicking in the water — teenage girls, by the pitch of their voices.
“Azariah sent me to join the others by the pool area,” she said.
“What about guards?”
She spotted a few pacing back and forth atop the fifty foot crenellated wall that ringed the palace complex to keep the riff-raff in their place, but otherwise, she couldn’t see any.
As I thought about it, this made sense. Based on her description so far, the palace didn’t sound like a place many people tried to escape.
Besides, an army of servants tended the grounds, and punishment of slaves in the Roman world was both brutal and collective. Everyone had an incentive to watch everyone else. If she tried to slip away, she wouldn’t get far.
I heard her sigh — a pleasurable sigh, from the sound of it. Part of me wanted to let her rest and enjoy the afternoon in the sun, but she could not afford to let her guard down. Herod’s palace might top even the most modern luxury resorts, but so did the price of admission.
Not that she had forgotten.
I explained to her what Lavon had told me about the bath treatments and that gave her an idea.
“Just be careful,” I said. “I’ll keep checking in when I can.”