Agrippa's Daughter Read Free

thy brethren shalt thou make king over thee: thou mayest not set a stranger over thee, who is not thy brother—
    “Thou mayest not,” Agrippa sobbed.
    The first few ranks heard him. Perhaps a thousand heard him.
    “What is he saying?”
    “Why does he weep?”
    “Who can hear?”
    “What is he saying?”
    The half a million voices of the crowd telegraphed, crisscrossed, back and forth, through the courts, through the streets, even down to the Lower City where the slaves and the unclean were gathered, the bearers of burdens, the camel drivers, the garbage collectors, the gravediggers and the ulcerated and the leprous—all of them united in that bond of curiosity that transcends everything, all of them pleading.
    “What does the king say?”
    From high above, from far away, from inside the walls of the Holy of Holies, from such a place as served them with death did they even touch its wall with one finger.
    “He weeps.”
    That made no sense. “Why does the king weep?”
    “He is cursed with Idumean blood. He is cursed with the curse of Herod. So he weeps.”
    Of course, that did make sense, even below, where the Idumean gravediggers and dung gatherers were gathered. But above, in the temple courtyard, where the king stood upon his platform with the scroll of the Torah open before him, the Jews facing him were moved and touched, and they cried out,
    “No—no. You are our brother.”
    “I am not worthy,” Agrippa wept.
    “You are worthy. You are our brother.”
    And that cry was taken up, by rank after rank, until it swept across the whole city and even the unclean, a mile away, were screaming, until their throats ached,
    “You are our brother! You are our brother!”
    Praise God, a king and a saint!
    So had Berenice heard it told, when her father returned to his own city of Tiberias from Jerusalem, now not only king over Palestine but over the Jews as well.
    At the open archway to the breakfast room, two soldiers in brass, both of them tall, large-boned, dull-faced Galileans, took up their positions on either side the doorway as Agrippa entered. Berenice studied him carefully—uncertain as to what his reaction to her presence would be. They were seeing each other now for the first time in six weeks, and he would be surprised. He had not known that she had decided to come to Caesarea, and she had arrived and gone to bed the evening before without seeing him. There would be no great flush of greeting or outpouring of emotion, but he might decide to be angry.
    Berenice watched him for anger. She knew the signs. He was a large man, going to flesh and paunch in his middle years, a wide, heavy mouth under his small, trimmed beard, the nose red and swollen from too much wine and under his shaggy brows, the same translucent green eyes—implacable here—that were so extraordinary and captivating in Berenice. He swept the room with those eyes and they eliminated the priests as beyond notice or recognition, rested for a moment on his son, Agrippa, weighing him, accusing him, and then fixed on Berenice.
    “Good morning, daughter,” the king said.
    She smiled in greeting and bowed deeply—as they all were bowing and scraping. He was angry. His voice trembled, as always when rage began to mount in him—and in response, Berenice moved toward control. She was not alarmed. Once she would have been terribly alarmed, but not now.
    “You’re a long way from Chalcis, daughter,” the king said.
    “I had to come a long way to be with you,” she replied.
    “And how am I to take that?”
    “As a daughter’s love.”
    “Oh?” He bridled his anger, watching her. Now he would trap her, he decided, and get to the bottom of this, whatever the bottom was. “Oh? And how did you leave Chalcis?”
    “They talk of only one thing at Chalcis,” she shrugged.
    “Yes?”
    “Of the good and saintly king who rules over the Jews.”
    He stared at her, frowning, and then shook his head. More and more, he sensed the growing maturity