11/27/2023 0 Comments Ralphus bring out the gimpShe had assumed the leadership of the community. Grumio had been killed when Aelia was 21, cut down by a Roman as he defended one of the narrow passes up the mountain. Occasionally the Romans sent soldiers to try to flush them out, but the settlement was well hidden and easy to defend, and with the Jews in the city always querulous, they weren't really a priority. They hunted and gather what meager provisions the dusty landscape offered, but they had to steal from farms – and then, from Romans on the roads. At first they'd lived in caves but now they'd built small huts. Understandably, those who evaded Lepidus also fled into the hills. Some were sold to other masters, some were flogged, some were tortured to see if they knew where Grumio might have taken her. The authorities set about rounding up their slaves and other staff. The family's property had been confiscated and a bounty placed on Aelia's head. It wasn't entirely clear what had happened to her but it seemed she'd committed suicide by eating hot coals after being raped. Grumio had grabbed her and fled with half a dozen slaves, riding out into the hills. Soldiers and bailiffs and that despicable official Lepidus, crashing through the gardens, smashing statues. Her father's old steward, Grumio, who had taught her to ride and to handle a sword, treating her like the son neither he nor her father had ever had, tried to disguise how grave things had become, but she'd known something very serious was going on.Īnd then, when she'd been 16, they'd come to repossess the house. Aelia saw their avaricious glances, the way they looked at the house and the grounds, at her mother, who was still a beautiful woman, and even at her. Creditors appeared claiming her father had owed them money. The priests were the worst, constantly demanding donations as if they were an easy touch. Her own people were suspicious of her, thinking her a Roman pawn. For two years she suffered humiliation after humiliation as the Romans first ignored her and then began to exploit her. Her mother had tried to maintain the family in the style it was used to, but she had no influence. Given how things had turned out, she wondered now whether they really had been bandits. They'd lived in a fine house just outside the city but then, when she was 13, her father had died, killed by bandits on the road to Jericho. Her mother had been a local noblewoman, a cousin of the puppet king. Her father had been a Roman, high-born, a patrician, an official in the imperial command of Judea. And after what had happened to her, she was keen enough to do that. They needed it to survive, to finance the small settlement they'd established in the hills above Jerusalem, and taking it from the Romans helped maintain morale, a sense that they were plucking their noses. Not that the loot was really the point of it all. Two soldiers killed, another dozen or so injured and, most importantly, a bag of gold and some jewelry stolen. It had been almost too simple: a broken wheel on a wagon to block the road, a woman sobbing in supposed fear and then, when they'd broken rank to investigate, a swift assault from both sides of the valley: three dozen bandits overwhelming the party. It was astonishing how arrogant the Romans were, as if they still couldn't quite get into their heads the possibility that they might be attacked. It had been their most daring raid yet, and brilliantly successful. She ran a hand through her dark hair, still a little damp with sweat.
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