We scurried behind Naomi through a confusing labyrinth of passageways and had gone about two hundred paces when she stopped suddenly and raised her hand.
By instinct, I pressed myself flat against the wall and listened. I held a finger up to my lips to warn the others, but my caution proved unnecessary. The others understood, and were doing their best imitation of wallpaper as well.
We heard voices and the noise of large objects being thrown, but at that moment, I couldn’t place the sound. The conversation’s tone seemed casual, though, and after a few minutes, whoever these people were headed the other way.
Naomi’s face didn’t reflect any real anxiety, so whatever had just happened must have been normal. She listened for another brief moment and then finally gave the all-clear signal, directing us forward once more.
We rounded a corner about thirty feet away and entered an open chamber about the size of the transit room back in Boston. Stacked against one wall were piles of split logs, which proved to be our exit ticket from the palace.
I hadn’t given the matter any thought when I had taken my bath in the Antonia, but it finally dawned on me that a furnace capable of heating the equivalent of my hometown Y’s swimming pool consumed enormous quantities of fuel.
In the first century, this fuel was wood, which meant that a facility the size of Herod’s employed an army of timber cutters to keep it supplied.
Naomi knew their routines. At dawn each morning, the lumbermen fanned out across the hills to the west. Typically, these men spent their entire day in the field, and though they occasionally dispatched a heavily laden wagon back to the palace in the early afternoon, she had never seen one return before noon.
“What did we just hear, then?” I whispered
“She says that a few workers stay behind to stoke the furnace,” Lavon replied.
This gave us a window of opportunity. We reached another tunnel, this one a broad sloping incline, and we scrambled up until we came to another stack of freshly split logs.
“They dry here,” Naomi explained.
I looked beyond the pile and could see daylight for the first time. As it turned out, we had already passed through an opening in the main wall.
Except for Lavon, this surprised the others, who had always imagined a city’s fortifications as being a single monolithic block.
“They could seal these small gaps very quickly if they needed to,” he explained,” just like the sewer drains. But in the meantime, servants and craftsmen who needed to go inside could pass through without interfering with the regular palace business at the main gates.”
This wasn’t as odd as we had first thought.
In the twenty-first century, few realized that even as recently as a hundred years before, one of the most common US occupations had been that of household servant. These workers used one entrance; the family used another. Their paths only occasionally crossed.
“Herod wants his creature comforts,” Lavon said, “but he doesn’t have the slightest interest in the mundane details of how those comforts are provided.”
***
The structure in which we found ourselves had begun its existence as a temporary storage shed leaning against the city’s main wall. Over time, the workers had expanded it into the present facility. Aside from the piles of cut timber, a motley collection of axes and saws leaned against the opposite wall.
Naomi crept around the firewood toward the outside entrance. Once there, she watched carefully for a few minutes and then signaled for us to follow.
After we had caught up, she first wrapped her scarf around Sharon’s hair. Once she was satisfied that the blonde tresses were properly concealed, Naomi whispered to Lavon, who in turn signaled Markowitz.
The two of them each grabbed one end of a long cross-cut saw and sauntered outside. I watched them go about fifty yards before they disappeared into a brushy ravine.
The rest of us understood what to do next. We each grabbed a tool and followed the others into the scrub.
Once we had reunited, we continued south for another quarter mile until we found a collapsed limestone overhang partially concealed in a tangle of dense brush.
Out of force of habit acquired during many years of service, I did a quick head count and set up an observation post. From there, I stared back at the city, half expecting to see Herod’s thugs charging down the slope after us.
But no one followed, to my great relief.
“I can’t believe we got out that easily,” said Markowitz.
Quite frankly, I couldn’t either, though after Naomi explained, it made perfect sense.
The city confronted no significant external threats, and the common peasants knew that nothing good could come from sneaking inside the palace; so they didn’t try. During daylight hours, at least, sentries weren’t really necessary.
I also suspected that those who were stationed near the wood shop would be as bored, and as drunk, as the ones Sharon had slipped past on the wall.
***
As I assessed our situation, my instinct was to strike out to the west and put as much distance between ourselves and the city, as fast as we could. With the full moon, we could even push on through the night.
“They have no way to call ahead,” I argued.
Lavon initially was inclined to agree.
Once we reached the more cosmopolitan coast, our appearances would be less likely to stand out. Plus, he admitted later that he was grasping for an excuse to see Caesarea. Some of that city’s ruins had survived into modern times and the original was supposedly an architectural gem.
On the other hand, when pressed, he couldn’t guarantee that we wouldn’t encounter robbers, or worse, the Zealots — some of whom might even recognize us from the ambush a few days earlier.
Bryson started to join the debate, but he soon fell silent. Rather than argue, he got up and began to hobble, as if he had a sprained ankle.
“I can’t make it that far anyway,” he said. “We don’t even have water.”
I suspected he was faking the injury, but decided not to challenge him. We couldn’t afford to waste our energy squabbling amongst ourselves. Besides, his second point was correct.
“All right, then,” I said, “we’ll stay in the area. How long do we have before all hell breaks loose?”
Lavon glanced up to the sun and guessed that it was about 9:00. Since we had rescued Sharon an hour earlier, he estimated that we had another hour, perhaps two, before the king finished with his bath.
“The servants already know I’m missing, though,” said Sharon.
That they did, and the bath attendants were undoubtedly scrambling to find her that very instant. But from what Naomi told us, they would do so as quietly as possible. Word of Herod’s dark mood had surely spread.
Naomi also reminded us that Azariah had assembled every slave in the palace to witness Sharon’s guard being flogged.
“No one will dare admit to losing the king’s woman a second time,” she said. “Until the servants can be certain that they themselves can escape blame, they will obfuscate and delay as long as they can.”
“Eventually, they’ll have to fess up, though,” I said.
“Yes. When the king returns from his bath, he will call for her.”
“What then?” I asked.
“They’ll keep stalling as long as possible,” said Naomi. “They’ll ask the king to be patient, say she is not quite ready …”
“If Herod is as angry as he sounded, that won’t last long.”
“No; half an hour at most. Then the steward will be forced to confess to Azariah that they cannot locate her. Azariah will conduct a brief inquiry, but once he realizes no one has answers, he will have no choice but to inform the king.”
“And then?”
“They will turn the palace inside out.”