Rebel Daughter Read online

  This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2021 by Lori Banov Kaufmann

  Historical note © 2021 by Jonathan J. Price

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 9780593125816 (trade) — ISBN 9780593125847 (lib. bdg.) — ebook ISBN 9780593125823

  Cover photograph by Stephen Mulcahey/Arcangel Images Limited

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  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Foreword

  Part One

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Part Two

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Part Three

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Part Four

  Chapter XIX

  Chapter XX

  Chapter XXI

  Chapter XXII

  Chapter XXIII

  Part Five

  Chapter XXIV

  Chapter XXV

  Chapter XXVI

  Chapter XXVII

  Chapter XXVIII

  Chapter XXIX

  Part Six

  Chapter XXX

  Chapter XXXI

  Chapter XXXII

  Chapter XXXIII

  Chapter XXXIV

  Chapter XXXV

  Chapter XXXVI

  Chapter XXXVII

  Chapter XXXVIII

  Part Seven

  Chapter XXXIX

  Chapter XL

  Chapter XLI

  Chapter XLII

  Chapter XLIII

  Chapter XLIV

  Chapter XLV

  Chapter XLVI

  Part Eight

  Chapter XLVII

  Chapter XLVIII

  Chapter XLIX

  Chapter L

  Chapter LI

  Chapter LII

  Part Nine

  Chapter LIII

  Chapter LIV

  Chapter LV

  Chapter LVI

  Part Ten

  Chapter LVII

  Chapter LVIII

  Chapter LIX

  Chapter LX

  Chapter LXI

  Part Eleven

  Chapter LXII

  Chapter LXIII

  Chapter LXIV

  Chapter LXV

  Chapter LXVI

  Chapter LXVII

  Part Twelve

  Chapter LXVIII

  Chapter LXIX

  Chapter LXX

  Chapter LXXI

  Chapter LXXII

  Chapter LXXIII

  Chapter LXXIV

  Part Thirteen

  Chapter LXXV

  Chapter LXXVI

  Chapter LXXVII

  Chapter LXXVIII

  Chapter LXXIX

  Chapter LXXX

  Chapter LXXXI

  Chapter LXXXII

  Part Fourteen

  Chapter LXXXIII

  Chapter LXXXIV

  Chapter LXXXV

  Chapter LXXXVI

  Chapter LXXXVII

  Chapter LXXXVIII

  Chapter LXXXIX

  Chapter XC

  Chapter XCI

  Chapter XCII

  Chapter XCIII

  Part Fifteen

  Chapter XCIV

  Chapter XCV

  Chapter XCVI

  Author’s Note

  Historical Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  To my father, Dr. Charles Banov, who reads people like others read books. He taught me that everyone has a story.

  FOREWORD

  In the first century, the Roman emperor ruled the lands from Britain and Europe all the way to Africa, controlling his empire with legions of well-trained and fearsome soldiers. The Romans boasted that they had brought lasting peace and security to the entire world; the seas were free of pirates, and trade flourished. Any hint of opposition to Rome’s rule was crushed immediately, without mercy.

  Yet in 66 CE, Jewish people in a small, remote province on the eastern edge of the empire rebelled and established their own state, with Jerusalem as its capital. The war of the Jews against the Romans, as the ancient historian Flavius Josephus called it, lasted four grueling, blood-soaked years. At stake was the survival of the Jewish people.

  Rebel Daughter is based on the unlikely but true story of a woman and a man who lived through this momentous time. The woman’s two-thousand-year-old gravestone, the earliest archaeological evidence of the Jewish captives brought to Italy after the war, was discovered near the Bay of Naples. In the epitaph, the man begs the living to take care of the remains of the woman he loved.

  This was an era when war, torture, genocide, and famine were commonplace; when women were subjugated and slavery was ubiquitous; when knowledge about the natural world was limited and people sought answers in magic, spirits, and demons.

  The beliefs a nd customs of that society were quite different from ours today—but in many ways, people were the same. They questioned how God could allow evil to flourish. They wanted to protect their families, to live their lives in freedom and with dignity, and to find love. Just like us.

  PART ONE

  JULY 65 CE

  TAMUZ 3825

  Daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my beloved, what will you tell him? Tell him I am faint with love.

  Song of Songs 5:8

  CHAPTER I

  Esther held her breath as the priest stroked the lamb and whispered into its ears. It was a moment in and out of time, between life and death, between creation and destruction. The fulfillment of God’s sacred commandment.

  Ever since she’d been little, Esther had climbed the staircase to the balcony above the Gates of Nicanor to watch the Tamid ceremony. From here, she had an unobstructed view of the bloodstained altar blackened with ash. The guard, a portly man with a large key dangling from his belt, was a friend of her father’s, and he winked when he saw her. They both knew that at fourteen, she should have been down below with the crowd in the Temple courtyard.

  Another priest raised his knife. The blade, honed to slice a single hair in midair, glinted in the rising sun. The lamb bleated and its legs twitched. Esther wondered if the lamb knew its fate. The day before, it had probably nuzzled its face in its mother’s warm, soft belly. Now, with a smooth, swift stroke, the priest cut its throat.

  Esther tucked unruly strands of her long hair under her scarf. Sometimes she wished she could tuck her whole self underneath it. Almost overnight, she had gone from being invisible to attracting attention she didn’t want. Her sister-in-law Miriam said it was because of her eyes; they were even darker than her hair, the color of carob pods left out too long in the sun, with a ring of gold around her pupils.

  But Miriam was wrong. Men weren’t looking at her eyes, or even her face. It was her body they were looking at, a body with curves that she hardly recognized.

  Esther immediately spotted her father, Hanan, in a line of priests carrying jugs of olive oil, pots of incense, and baskets of flour toward the altar. Each wore a white robe covered with a vest woven with purple, scarlet, and blue threads. Their heads were wrapped with silk turbans, and their feet were bare. He wouldn’t look up—his every movement was prescribed—but he knew, of course, that she was there.

  Even though she had three brothers, Esther was the one he’d asked to walk home with him and carry their share of meat left over from the offerings.

  * * *

  —

  After the Tamid, Esther followed her father through the throng of people on the Temple Mount. He lifted the hem of his robe, sidestepping the sludge on the ground. She held the reed basket close to her chest, hoping the street dogs wouldn’t smell the singed lamb necks inside.

  People moved aside and bowed their heads when her father passed. Hanan was a senior priest with an office in the Royal Portico, where there were one hundred and sixty-two marble columns so large that even when Esther and her brothers joined hands, they couldn’t encircle one.

  Esther saw them first—Roman soldiers. One, with an iron helmet atop his head and a short red skirt, stuck out his foot. Hanan stumbled and fell to the ground. The soldier planted his muddy boot on her father’s back and held him down as he struggled to get up.

  “Look, the Jew is kneeling before us,” he sneered. “Now you’re in the correct position, holy man, to pay homage to the great Roman empire.” He thrust a large wooden shield with a picture of a wild boar into her father’s face. “Kiss it!”

  Her father turned away. There was a gash on his forehead, and blood ran down his face.

  “Kiss it! I command you!”

  Hanan lay motionless. People averted their eyes and scurried away. Her father’s white robe, woven from fine linen imported specially from Alexandria, was covered in filth and dung. His scrolls lay scattered, and his wax tablet had been smashed.

  Esther’s eyes widened as two soldiers grabbed her father under his arms and yanked him up. Still, he remained impassive and refused to look at them. They shouted, but he didn’t respond.

  “Dirty Jew! You and your scraggly beards and barbaric superstitions! You’d cut your son’s cock, but you won’t kill a pig? Is that right?”

  “Let him go!” Esther demanded, dropping the basket and running toward her father. The soldiers laughed.

  “Look at the little she-wolf who comes to the rescue!”

  One stepped on a scroll while another snatched the basket. A soldier with feathers on his helmet pulled her arms behind her back.

  “If he won’t kiss the shield, make him kiss the ass of the ass!” another one said. Laughing, they pushed her father toward a donkey tied to a low branch of a nearby tree.

  “You Jews don’t like graven images?” the tall one asked. “You won’t kiss it? Then kiss the real thing instead!”

  Esther struggled to break free.

  “Kiss the ass and we’ll let her go.”

  She sucked in her breath. Kiss it? An unclean ass? Her father wouldn’t do that! He was pure, a priest. God would intervene and strike down these vile tormenters. What was He waiting for?

  The donkey, startled by the noise, flung his head back, flapped his large ears, and brayed.

  “Stop screeching!” another soldier yelled as he brought the side of his gladius down on the donkey’s neck. “You sound like a woman!”

  The animal’s hind leg shot straight back and grazed her father. The soldiers laughed again.

  She looked at her father for reassurance, for a sign that this would soon end. She wanted him to stand straight, to break free, to be a warrior like Samson or Gideon and take her home. She willed him to look at her, but he wouldn’t; it was as if he were trying to shield her from his shame.

  “What are you waiting for, Jew?”

  Esther’s palms were wet with sweat. Hanan took a deep breath and stepped toward the donkey. He bent toward the beast, closed his eyes, and quickly touched his lips to the donkey’s haunches.

  The soldiers cheered and gave her a forceful shove. The entertainment was over, and they had already lost interest. Her father grabbed her hand. He limped but still moved so fast that she could hardly feel her feet on the road. She didn’t dare look back to see if the soldiers were following them.

  Her father pulled her into the dark alleyway under the arches, below the aqueduct. His face and beard were caked with clumps of mud and dried blood. She wanted him to bring her close and comfort her, but he closed his eyes, and his hands hung by his sides.

  “We will forget this ever happened,” he said.

  Esther clenched her fists. She hated the Romans. Every last one.

  CHAPTER II

  After the incident with the Roman soldiers, her father seemed to age years. The cut on his face healed, but he now walked with a cane. Slow, tentative steps replaced his once-brisk stride. They used to learn together in the early evenings—her favorite part of the day—but no more. He was too tired, he’d say. She missed his small, dark study, its shelves stacked with rolled parchment scrolls, its smell of the wax tablets.

  The lessons had started when Esther was a little girl. Initially Hanan had tried to teach her older brothers, Yehuda and Shimon, the words of the prophets and the law. Yehuda had quickly outgrown their father’s teachings and gone to the study house to learn with Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai, the renowned scholar. Shimon made shadow pictures on the wall every time Hanan bent over the scrolls. She couldn’t understand how Shimon was bored by the same stories she found so exciting: Cain killing his brother, Abraham lifting the blade to his own son, and Joseph languishing in prison. Esther would sit on the floor in the corner, hugging her knees to her chest, hanging on to every word.

  Sarah, her mother, would peer into the study and cast a disapproving glance. One eye, half -shaded by a drooping, pink eyelid, seemed to see right inside Esther. There was no hiding Esther’s greed for learning; her mother knew everything.

  “Why are you filling the girl’s head with Torah stories?” her mother asked. “Will this help her suckle a child or knead dough? Will this teach her the laws of purity?”

  “She thirsts for knowledge,” Hanan explained. “And her mind is like a plastered cistern that doesn’t lose a drop. Besides, what else should she be doing?”

  Sarah placed her hands on her hips. “The Gamaliel girls are spinning flax on their roof. They’re eking out the last little bit of moonlight to be productive.”