ANCIENT BETRAYALS / Chapter 1

ANCIENT BETRAYALS CHAPTER 1 All cities are entered via their cemetries. As the road neared Caesarea it passed through the graveyards of the poor, broken stones marking the graves as if a giant hand had strewn them randomly across the desert wastes. High overhead clouds of vultures wheeled, then descended one by one to pick their way between the gravestones as if they could scent the ancient flesh beneath the sand.
      Nearer the city more vultures were gathered in evil clans around the city's rubbish piles, gaunt wings flapping like sinister black cloaks. Pie dogs yapped and snarled at Tolmai as he passed the ramshackle huts of the transients drawn by the city's wealth, but then slunk away when he came too close.
     Tolmai was hardly fourteen years old, and he felt very much alone as he trudged through the dismal graveyards and the rubbish fields and the squalid settlements. Directly in front of him the massive walls of the city were caught in the light of the dying sun. Caesarea blazoned its impregnability in an arrogance of blood-red stone.
     Burnished iron and bronze gleamed on the legionaries manning the gatehouse which protected Caesarea from the south. Tolmai's heart was pounding as he passed through the great doors of the gatehouse, his eyes trying not to look at the armed men lounging against the gatehouse walls.
     But they were watching for more dangerous foes than him. Tolmai hardly warranted a glance.


Nobody was interested in him in Caesarea - but they would take his money with alacrity.
     'Oh yes!' beamed a man at the market. 'I know where you can sleep.' An unctuous smile revealed a row of blackened teeth. 'I can probably get you a discount - for a small commission of course.'
     The man who ran the boarding house was less friendly. He expected two night's money in advance.
     'You have a job in Caesarea?'
     Tolmai shook his head. 'Not yet. But I've got a letter of introduction.'
     'Two nights,' said the man. 'Then out you go.'
     Tolmai unrolled his blanket. It would do. Better than sleeping on the streets in a strange town where anyone might rob you.
     'Just make sure you don't have lice,' muttered one of the men with whom he was to share the room.


The next day he sought out the merchant whose name he had been given. Everybody seemed to know Alexandros' name but no one appeared to want to admit they knew where he could be found.
     The replies were vague.
     Alexandros the merchant? I can't help you there. Possible you should try asking in the place of the corn merchants.' - or the fish merchants, or the goldsmiths, or the lamp makers.
     One reply was more abrupt. The man backed away hurriedly. 'I tell you I have never even heard of Alexandros!'
     Tolmai had walked at least twice around the city before he found someone who was prepared to tell him anything at all.
     Alexandros, he was informed as he was going precisely in the opposite direction, was to be found at the offices adjoining the warehouses at the harbour, and eventually after a long hot walk back across the city he found himself standing outside Alexandros' premises, his feet aching, and his spirits at their lowest ebb.
     Two men were playing dice at the entrance. They looked up without expression as Tolmai appeared.
     'I'm here to...' he started to say.
     'Don't mumble your Hebrew at me, boy.' said one of the men coldly. He was speaking Greek.
     Tolmai was confused. He didn't know any Hebrew. Presumably the man meant his Jerusalem accent. But no one at the boarding house had any difficulty in understanding him.
     He decided to try again in Greek.
     'I'm here to see Alexandros. I have a -'
     But once again he was interrupted.
     'Do you have an appointment?'
     An appointment? The idea had never occurrred to him.
     'No appointment, no entry,' said one of the men with a sneer. Then they went back to their dice.
     'Got it! - Venus!' one cried triumphantly. He scooped up the coins they had been playing for.
     The small metal object they had been flipping into the air had landed on its back, four rudimentary limbs protruded upwards, waggling suggestively.
     'Fuck you,' said the other sourly. 'Best I've had is fucking dog.'
     Tolmai shuffled his feet.
     'Er, you see, I have a letter for Alexandros...'
     'Oh, yes?' snarled the man who had lost. 'So why didn't you say so then?'
     He took the rolled up letter, glanced at the outside, and then passed it to the other man. 'Gods!' said the second man, looking at all the dirt the scroll had accumulated in its travels.
     Tolmai bit his lip. Perhaps he should have wiped it. He hadn't realised people could be so fastidious.
     'So how are we supposed to know it's for Alexandros?' on of the men was demanding.
     'Well, it says so,' said Tolmai puzzledly. He pointed at the scroll.
     Then he realized it didn't say any such thing. The addressees name was announced in an ornate flourish of writing - which would have looked very grand before it had been smeared with a patina of roadside dirt - but it didn't mention Alexandros. It merely said 'to whom it may concern'.
     'Well, you see that's the seal of Magdanax of Joppa,' Tolmai said hastily, doing his best to improvise as he stabbed his finger at a blob of misshapen wax. 'He was the man who wrote it and he told me to present it to Alexandros. It's a letter of introduction. It's all perfectly clear.'
     One of the men raised his eyebrows. 'Quite the little know-it-all, aren't we? Well, it won't do you much good here, Jew boy.'
     Then he thrust the scroll back.
     'You can give Alexandros your letter. But remember this - when he throws you out we will be waiting to help you on your way.'


Tolmai had never been in an office before. The room seemed to be in a turmoil. Clerks were hunched over desks, scratching away at tablets or rummaging through piles of documents, while other men paced the floor, gesticulating angrily as they argued with the clerks. Tolmai was completely ignored.
     He tried drawing the attention of one of the clerks by giving a loud cough, but he was irritably waved away.
     He tried another, this time tapping the clerk's arm.
     'What?' said the startled clerk as he looked up, his stylus slipping and making a gouge in the wax.
     'I'm here to see Alexandros,' said Tolmai in his best Greek. It wouldn't do to make the same mistake twice.
     The clerk's face was flushed with anger as he began to smooth out the surface of the wax. 'In the back! In the back! That's where you'll find Alexandros!'
     At the rear of the room was a doorway with a crowd of men jostling to get through. A man was barring the way. He looked extremely bored as if this was an everyday event.
     Tolmai began to ease his way through the crush. He must have jostled somebody for a pair of mean eyes were turned his way. A short fat man with a sweaty face was staring at him venemously.
     'Who do you think you are? wait your turn, boy!'
     'I'm here to...' started Tolmai.
     'I don't care what you're here for! Just don't push in!'
     Tolmai's patience was evaporating. He stared angrily at his accuser. Why should he let this fat Caesarean push him around? Especially as the man was no taller than himself!
     He elbowed his way through determinedly, waving his letter at the man at the door.
     'I'm here to see Alexandros! I have a letter from Magdanax of Joppa!'
     The man guarding the door took the letter with the same bored expression on his face. But that quickly changed. 'Where has this been? Up a camel's arse?'
     The fat man was still protesting. He was there first! Someone should do something! It shouldn't be allowed!
     'Oh shut up, Diotrephes,' said the doorkeeper irritably. 'You were never going to be allowed in anyway.'
     Tolmai was waved inside.
     'See the man at the table and state your business,' said the doorkeeper. 'And please don't waste anybody's time.'


Tolmai was in an antechamber. Along one wall was a bench on which a line of men were sitting, and at the end of the room a man was seated at a table. Behind him was an archway leading into a private office where another man was seated at a desk. Presumably that was Alexandros.
     The man at the table took the scroll and glanced at it briefly. He handed it back and indicated a space at the far end of the bench.
     Tolmai tried to explain. 'I have come to see Alexandros...'
     The man waved his hand at the men sitting on the bench.
     'They all have.'
     No one smiled.
     Tolmai sat down and waited. It was a very long wait. One by one men would leave Alexandros' office and another would go in. Everyone shuffled along the bench, slowly getting closer to the man at the table controlling the flow of people visiting Alexandros.
     From the scraps of conversation he could overhear coming from the office, all of Alexandros' visitors were addressing him in Greek - and freqently quite bad Greek, far worse than his own. It was clear that to speak Greek was the expected thing in Alexandros' estblishment.
     Occasionally someone would be let in from outside and would join the queue on the bench. At one time a tall, affluent-looking man entered, and the man at the table rose to greet him which was something he had never done before. Then the affluent-looking man was being ushered to the end of the bench nearest Alexandros' office and everyone had to shuffle back a place.
     'Let's hope Alexandros doesn't decide to go for fucking lunch,' muttered Tolmai's neighbour on the bench.
     'I agree with that,' said Tolmai, as he surreptitiously rubbed the letter against his sleeve in an attempt to remove the worst of the dirt.
     'I wasn't talking to you,' said his neighbour on the bench.
     Eventually the outer door was shut. No more would be admitted that day.
     Sometimes Alexandros' eyes would sweep the bench to see how many visitors were left, but his eyes always seemed to pause when they came to Tolmai.
     Tolmai felt distinctly uncomfortable. The others on the bench were businessmen, supplicants who had come to petition Alexandros, or Alexandros' clients who owed him patronage and had come to pay their respects. Some of them wore clothes that were the worse for wear, but the clothes all followed a pattern, identifying their occupants as men of trade - his certainly did not identify him as that.
     His attempt to get a job wasn't turning out at all as he had expected. It had all seemed very simple when he had acquired the letter. But he hadn't expected Alexandros' establishment to be so grand. He had never been anywhere like this before.
     He had envisaged Alexandros to have been a small merchant in one of the markets. After all, that was what Magdanax was. Despite the rather grand name with its Hellenic overtones which graced the emporium of Magdanax, he was in fact a Jew with a stall in Joppa market where he sold religious souvenirs and trinkets manufactured by a cousin in Jerusalem.
     That was the sort of person he had expected Alexandros to be. Someone who might need help laying out the stall in the mornings, or giving the place a sweep out from time to time, and who wouldn't be too particular about who they employed provided he was cheap.
     At least that was the impression he had got from the man who had sold him the letter.


Finally it was his turn. Alexandros was offering him his hand, a brief formality.
     Tolmai's heart was in his mouth as Alexandros broke the seal and unrolled the letter.
     Alexandros' eyes swept down the letter as if he could gather the gist without bothering to read the actual words. Then he casually threw it to one side.
     'I have never heard of Magdanax.'
     It was what Tolmai had least expected. Almost with relief he realised the ordeal was over. Who wanted Alexandros' job anyway?
     Alexandros flicked the letter with an elegant finger. His hand glittered with rings.
     'It would seem from the barbarous Greek with which the author of this letter has chosen to address me, that he is a man of meagre education. Or perhaps - to be charitable - that Greek is not his mother tongue.'
     'Actually, he's a Jew,' said Tolmai uncertainly.
     'You do surprise me,' said Alexandros, his eyes fixed on Tolmai.
     He tapped the letter again.
     'It would seem that he has incorrectly rendered your name - although his appalling orthography might explain that.'
     'Sir?'
     Tolmai was baffled. Orthography? What was Alexandros talking about?
     'You see it states here your name is Shimon, and that you are the son of a certain Binyamin, and in fact a member of that eponymous tribe. Furthermore it would appear that you excell above all others in your understanding and application of the Torah.'
     Alexandros' eyes were raised in polite enquiry.
     'And yet, Shimon bar Binyamin, to my ears you speak quite reasonable Greek. In fact once one disregards your attire, which does have a certain appearance betraying its Judaean origins - and of course disregarding all the dirt you have acquired - one might even say you had the features of a Greek. Perhaps you can explain this intriguing discrepancy?'
     Alexandros was regarding him impassively. It was quite clear that Alexandros thought he had stolen the letter.
     For a moment Tolmai was completely at a loss. The man who had sold him the letter hadn't told him anything about a name! The letter was supposed to introduce him as the 'bearer', not Shimon bar Binyamin!
     But Tolmai's natural ability quickly returned. He was never going to get a job with Alexandros if he was thought to be a Jew.
     'My parents were Greek, Sir,' he said swiftly. 'Magdanax must have made a mistake. My name is Simon, you see. Not Shimon.
     'Yes, of course, that would explain it,' said Alexandros smoothly. 'Although it does nothing to address the writer's hyperbole concerning your eternal contemplation of the sacred writings. However putting that to one side, Simon who is now a Greek and yet hails from Jerusalem, tell me - where was your father from?'
     Where was his father from? Obviously somewhere distinctively Greek would be best.
     'I believe he came from Athens,' said Tolmai, reeling off the name of the only Greek city he knew.
     For an instant a hint of a smile appeared on Alexandros face, but it was gone so quickly Tolmai could not be sure it had ever been there at all.
     'And no doubt if I pressed further, a direct descendant of the great Perikles himself. One sometimes wonders how a single city could ever produce so many progeny.' He shook his head pensively. 'But no matter. Lack of imgination is no crime.'
     Then his manner changed as if he had become aware of the passing time, his voice becoming brisk and business-like.
     'So, you can write?'
     'Yes, I can write!' said Tolmai quickly, although he wondered uneasily what sort of standard Alexandros' question inferred.
     'And counting? Are you good at counting?'
     'Oh yes, Sir! I can count!'
     At least that question was easy. Counting money was something at which he excelled! Not that he ever saw much of it, of course.
     'And I understand you can take care of yourself. Is that correct?'
     Take care of himself? Then it dawned on Tolmai that Alexandros was referring to the incident at the door. Nothing seemed to escape Alexandros.
     'Yes, Sir! I think so!' said Tolmai, trying to put more confidence into the words than he actually felt.
     Alexandros leaned back in his chair. He studied Tolmai for a moment, and then he called to the man who sat at the table outside the door. The man bustled in with alacrity.
     'Have Demetrius try him out on tally work.'
     With a wave of Alexandros' hand Tolmai was dismissed and Alexandros' eyes returned to his desk.
     He was not offered Alexandros' hand to kiss like Alexandros' other visitors on their departure, He was no longer a supplicant but a potential employee, and Alexandros obviously did not offer his hand to mere employees.
     Tolmai began to leave, backing away and bowing as the situation seemed to demand. But then Alexandros' voice was addressing him again.
     'Make sure that you do not steal anything of mine.'