Adam Palmer - The Boudicca Parchments

“Do you mean a skull?”

“No, just the hair… and no body or skeleton.”

Ted found this deeply puzzling.

“What does it mean?”

“Well one theory is that she was a foreign woman — possibly attached to the Roman encampment — who was captured when Masada was seized from the Romans at the start of the rebellion. There’s a passage in Deuteronomy that says that if a woman is captured in war, her head must be shaved and her captor must then wait a month before having sex with her. Presumably the idea was to make her less attractive and to discourage him from doing so. But later it became a general practice to cut the hair off female captives.”

“But why would they have a woman out here? Would she have already been a slave? A camp follower?”

“That’s anyone’s guess. But I’m just wondering if she could our enigmatic author of the Domus Aurea and Temple Mount Parchments… AKA Boudicca’s daughter.”

“Lanosea.”

“Exactly.”

They went outside and looked around a bit. Ted was looking at one of the inscribed metal plaques that offered explanations of the nearby features.

“You said before that the five survivors were found hiding in one of the cisterns.”

“Yes.”

“Well it says here that there was a major water cistern here. That water was collected below and brought up by donkey. There’s a Watergate down there. I think we need to check it out.”

“It’s a fascinating place to look at, but it’s at a lower level. That means a long walk down followed by an equally long walk up.”

“I think it’s worth it,” said Ted.

“Maybe later if we’ve got time.”

“But isn’t it possible that we might find something there… something that’ll fill in the last piece of the puzzle?”

“There’s a problem Ted. Of all the places at Masada, the Northern Palace is the one that’s been excavated the most. Followed by the Western Palace.”

“I know,” Ted replied. “I remember you saying that at your parents’ place.”

“My point is that we’re unlikely to find anything there — short of doing some seriously destructive digging that would get us arrested. And anyway, we haven’t got the equipment. Whatever was there to be found, has been found already.”

“So where do we go from here?”

“Well the southern side has been excavated to some extent. But the one area that’s been neglected so far, is the eastern side. Paradoxically that’s the side we came up on — the side with the cable car and the Snake Path.”

Daniel led Ted back, almost the way they came and past the entrance to the eastern side.

“What are those?”

Ted had stopped to look at some not particularly big holes in the ground that appeared to have some mini caverns leading off them like mini bus shelters carved into the stone. They were marked off from the area that could be entered by metal railings. By now, Ted was looking at the metal plaque that explained.

“Dwelling caves, used by anchorite monks in Byzantine age.”

“Yes. I was reading. Do you think there could be anything down there?”

“They don’t look big enough. And they don’t lead anywhere. What you see is what you get. And again, anything that could have been found probably has been.”

Daniel led on to another area nearby, a large roped off area including a wooden bridge. A warning sign read; “Danger! Under construction. No passage.”

“What’s this?” asked Ted, catching up.

“The eastern cistern. This is probably where the survivers hid. This is the sewage cistern, rather than a fresh water cistern. So it would be wider and thus more likely to accommodate people. It predates Herod and goes back to the Hasmonean dynasty, who built the original fortress before Herod developed it. But it was later renovated by the Byzantines.”

“So again, not much to be found.”

But this time, Daniel was not so dismissive.

“Here at least there would have been more room to hide something. And the Byzantines who came here were anchorite Christians like I said. They rejected worldly possessions — a bit like the Essenes were supposed to have done according to Josephus, Philo and Pliny.”

But he wasn’t looking at Ted when he said this. He was looking at a very large open hole and an opening that seemed to branch off sideways from that hole. Unlike the quarry, this opening looked big enough to admit the passage of people, as he had suggested before when discussing the sewage cistern. And apart from a warning sign and the possibility that they might be challenged, there appeared to be nothing to stop them taking a closer look.

“Masada,” the bus driver called out.

Shalom and Baruch Tikva looked nervously at each other as they stood up and got off the bus. There were only a handful of others getting off. Some of the bus passengers had got off earlier at the Dead Sea resorts of Ein Fashkha and Ein Gedi. Others were going on to the beach hotels at Ein Bokek. But about half a dozen were getting off here at Masada, so they would not be completely alone. They had just managed to get the eight O’clock bus and it was now 9:40, still relatively early.

“Do you think they are here yet?” asked Bar-Tikva.

“If so we will see them. And if not we will be waiting for them.”

Bar-Tikva smiled at his father’s reassuring wisdom.

In the heat of the sun, it was a long, tiring walk from the forecourt where the bus had stopped to the area they had to get to. Although they were taking the cable car from the tourist centre on the ground, they had to walk up a steep, paved slope and up some stairs, to get there.

When they got to the ticket office, they thought that it was rather expensive — especially for the cable car both ways. Shalom was even ready to walk. But his son realized that although he could climb the Snake Path, it would be a problem for his father. The Ramp Path on the side of the town of Arad would have been easier, but it was too late for that now. Without private transport, there was no way that they could get to it.

So they paid up, grumbling the whole time, and then waited until there were enough people for the operators to justify the use of the cable car. Some ten minutes later, they were atop the mountain fortress where pious Jews had made their last stand against the strangers who had sought to impose alien values and false Gods upon them.

They were the first through the entrance and the first thing they did when they got there was look around. In fact it was only Baruch Tikva, the son, who was looking. His father didn’t know what Daniel looked like… or Ted. Baruch had the advantage of height. But he saw no sign of them. They might not be here, or they might be out of sight. One couldn’t really see the whole of Masada from a single spot no matter how tall one was.

Aside from that, they might be in the bathhouse or they might have gone down to the lower terrace of the Northern Palace.

But then, as Bar-Tikva turned a full circle to make sure he hadn’t missed anything, he saw a man in his sixties climbing down into what looked like a roped off area. And the man didn’t look like a workman or a uniformed member of staff.

And the man himself had looked around furtively before disappearing from view.

Daniel had led the way, stepping over the rope at its lowest point and clambering down into the large ditch. Ted had followed, but more slowly. And to Daniel’s annoyance, he had rather foolishly looked around before doing so.

Daniel, although not trained or experienced in tradecraft, knew better than to advertise his clandestine intentions by looking around like that. But it was too late to do anything about it. He just hoped that no one had noticed. There were very few people about and staff were always very thin on the ground here. Added to that it was a large site, so the prospects of being seen were minimal. In any case, this was an area that was roped off for people’s own safety. They presumed that people would not take unnecessary risks. And no one had actually called out to Ted or asked him what he was doing. So there was nothing to worry about.