Scott Mariani - The Sacred Sword

The Fortress of Masada

Roman Province of Judea, The Holy Land

73 a.d.

‘They will soon be upon us,’ said the young man called John, turning around from the battlements with fear in his eyes.

His commander, Eleazar ben Yair, made no reply. Leaning out over the craggy, sandy fortress wall he shielded his eyes from the blazing sun and scanned the scene below. Far beneath them, swarming like a gigantic colony of ants around the foot of the mountain as they laboured in the dust and the choking desert heat, the teeming masses of the Roman Tenth Legion were close to finishing the construction of the enormous stone siege ramp.

Eleazar knew in his heart that John was right. The siege would soon be over. Within a matter of hours, there’d be nothing to do except watch helplessly as column after column of soldiers marched up the ramp and stormed the battlements, the sun glinting off their armour and massed spear heads. Nothing to do but wait for the slaughter to begin.

Had they really thought that a rag-tag handful of defenders, many of them women and young children, could hold out indefinitely against the crushing might of Rome? Had they really believed that the fortress of Masada would prove impregnable?

Eleazar himself had seen what his sworn enemies were capable of. Three years earlier, he’d been one of the few Jewish rebels who’d managed to escape from the carnage that the Roman army had inflicted on his home city of Jerusalem, razing it to the ground and claiming a million innocent lives in retaliation against the Jews who dared to defy Caesar’s rule. The army now encamped around the mountaintop fortress of Masada, commanded by Lucius Flavius Silva, the Governor of Judea himself, had been sent to destroy the final pocket of resistance. Silva’s forces had built an impassable siege wall that stretched for seven miles around the base of the mountain, ensuring that no rebel could escape and nobody could come to their aid. Along the wall’s perimeter stood the Romans’ siege towers and giant catapults. They were terrifying, but nothing struck fear into the rebels’ hearts like the assault ramp and the promise of what was to come.

‘Nobody can resist such an army,’ John quavered. ‘The Romans will rape our women, slaughter our children in front of us and make slaves of us all.’

Eleazar closed his eyes in sadness. He already knew what had to be done. Over nine hundred people. As their leader, he had no choice but to make the fateful decision himself. He turned away from the battlements to face the young man. ‘I would rather die a free man than submit to that,’ he said softly.

‘Then what shall we do?’

‘We shall deliver our souls to God,’ Eleazar replied. ‘All of us. The Romans will find none alive.’

But before addressing the grim task that lay before him, he had to ensure that one special duty was taken care of.

He reached down to his belt and drew out the glittering sword that he’d carried with him from Jerusalem. Reverently clutching the bronze hilt with both hands, he raised the blade to his mouth and kissed the cool steel.

‘The sword must be hidden,’ he said. ‘Whatever happens, it cannot fall into the hands of the Romans.’

They prayed.

And then the final plans were begun.

Near Millau, Midi-Pyrenees, Southern France

December 2nd

The present day

It was as Father Fabrice Lalique was driving home through the dark, misty night that he saw the car behind him again.

Up until then, the fifty-three-year-old priest had been reflecting on the hours he’d just spent with his parishioners Pierre and Madeleine Robichon in the nearby village of Briande, trying to quell the latest bitter dispute between the couple. It was his duty to minister to the social and family problems of his diocese; and God knew that the turbulent Robichons had more than their fair share of those. He’d eventually left them settled and in peace, hands clasped across the kitchen table, but the reconciliation had had to be painfully, exhaustingly coaxed out of them and he’d been at it far longer than intended.

The Volkswagen Passat’s dashboard clock read almost eleven. A heavy blanket of fog hung over the whole Tarn valley, and as Father Lalique headed back along the deserted country roads away from Millau he had to blink and strain to see where he was going. He couldn’t wait to get back to the warm, cosy little rural retreat on the edge of the village of Saint-Christophe where he’d lived alone these many years, pour himself a much-needed glass of Armagnac and go to bed. A nip of brandy might help him forget his own problems, and the worry that had been haunting him for the last several days.

Fabrice sighed. It was probably just a figment of his imagination. Maybe the responsibility of his job was getting to him at last. Perhaps Doctor Bachelard’s advice about early retirement was worth taking after all — when an overtired brain began cooking up ideas that you were being followed and watched, it could be a sign that it was time to take things a bit easier.

‘That’s all it is,’ he thought to himself, taking a hand off the wheel to rub his chin. ‘Foolish to imagine otherw-’

The sudden dazzle of headlights behind him seemed to fill the interior of the Volkswagen. The priest’s heart skipped a beat and then began to thump wildly as all the anxiety came instantly flooding back. He narrowed his eyes at the rear-view mirror, trying to make out the shape of the lights.

Was it the Mercedes again? The same Mercedes he’d been sure was tailing him yesterday on his way home from the church in Saint-Affrique? And the day before, and last Tuesday as well…? He stared so long into the mirror that he almost missed the bend ahead and had to swerve to avoid the verge.

‘Damn this fog,’ he muttered. But he’d been driving these roads for over a third of a century and knew every inch of them. He’d soon see if he was being followed. Any second now… wait for it… yes, there it was. He swung the car hard right as the junction came up and accelerated as hard as he dared down the narrow lane that would take him the long way round towards Saint-Christophe. He glanced back at the rear-view mirror. Nothing. He felt the heart palpitations begin to subside. There. See? You’re an idiot.

Then the lights reappeared in his mirror and his mouth went dry. He hung another sharp right, then a left, taking him deeper into the web of country lanes. The lights stayed right there in his mirror.

Terrified to go any faster, Fabrice clenched the steering wheel tightly and willed the night to clear. The trees loomed out of the mist. Man and boy he’d roamed in these woods, but now they seemed filled with a sinister life of their own, as if closing in on him, reaching out to grab him in their claws.

He fumbled for his phone and dialled a familiar number. No reply. At the prompt to leave a message, he spoke urgently and breathlessly, his English faltering in his panic: ‘Simeon — it’s me, Fabrice. The thing I told you about; I am sure it is happening again. Just now, tonight. I think someone is after me. Please call me as soon as you can.’

The lights were still there, closer now, white and dazzling through the fog. Now what? Fabrice thought of calling Bernard, the local chief of police — he had his home number on his phone. But Bernard would be deep into a bottle by this time of night, if not passed out in front of the TV.

Then Fabrice thought of his old friend Jacques Rabier, whose farm was just a kilometre away beyond the woods. Groaning in panic, he hit the gas. A heart-stopping series of blind crests and hairpin bends later, he slewed the car through Jacques’ familiar rickety gate and went bumping wildly up the long track towards the farmhouse.