‘Then you must know that for many centuries, the site of the great martyrdom was lost to knowledge,’ Hillel said. ‘Masada was rediscovered in 1842, and it was not until 1963 that excavations began, led by an Israeli archaeologist called Yigael Yadin. Such a huge task required a very large workforce. They hired men by the truckload. One of them, a boy of sixteen who was willing to do the hardest work to help support his family.’ Hillel prodded his chest with his thumb. ‘Me. That is where my story begins.’
‘What is it you want to show us, Hillel?’
‘The same thing I showed to Wesley, and then later to Simeon and the Frenchman.’
The Land Cruiser followed the other traffic into a parking lot near to a cable car station, from which thick steel cables soared skywards towards the looming mountain. Along with a mixed handful of tourists, the rowdiest of which was a contingent of Italians, Ben, Jude and Hillel boarded the next cable car. There was a delay while a corpulent American family squeezed themselves aboard, adding drastically to the cable car’s payload. It was the size of a minibus, offering all-around views as it glided up the mountain on a track running parallel to a second cable car bringing visitors back down to earth.
Jude shivered. ‘You wouldn’t expect it to be so chilly in the desert.’
In SAS desert operations in the Gulf, Ben had seen sleet, snow and soldiers suffering from frostbite and hypothermia. It wasn’t a memory he wanted to share with a cable car-load of tourists.
Despite the cold, Masada evidently attracted its fair share of seasonal visitors. Hillel informed Ben and Jude, not without a measure of pride, that it was Israel’s most visited archaeological site. The tourists noisily expressed their appreciation as the cable car made its way up the side of the mountain. Even Ben was struck by the sight, realising for the first time the incredible scale of the Roman military operation to take such an inaccessible fortress.
As they climbed, the traces of the Roman military camps dotted around the base of the mountain were clearly visible. Ahead, the great russety-red sandstone mountain loomed closer and closer under the cloudy sky. They glided over the tiny matchstick figures of people ascending the mountain on foot via a winding path, like pilgrims from some bygone age.
The cable car neared the fragile-looking docking station precariously erected on the face of the cliff. Finally, and to Jude’s obvious relief, they made it all the way to the top without being brought crashing down to the rocks by the weight of the lardy American family.
‘Holy shit, get a load of this,’ Jude breathed when they stepped out on the wide flat summit of the mountain and the full panoramic breadth of the view opened up. They were so high above the sweeping vista of the desert and the hazy Dead Sea that it was like looking down from the windows of an aircraft.
Ben gazed around him at the extensive stone remains of the fortress and could see that the modern-day excavation work had been almost as massive in scale as the Romans’ attempts to destroy the place nearly two thousand years earlier.
‘It did not look like this back in 1963,’ Hillel said. ‘Then it was only a field of rubble, half erased by time and the hand of nature.’ He pointed out the black painted lines that were visible on many of the buildings, archways and columns. ‘Those mark where the original stonework ends and the reconstructions begin.’
‘It’s very impressive,’ Ben said. ‘But as you know, we didn’t come here to do the tourist thing.’
Hillel nodded. ‘This way,’ he said, leading them through the ruins. As he walked, he began to tell his story.
‘I was the eldest of ten children. My family were very poor. My mother worked in a factory where the conditions were very bad and the pay was even worse. My father worked as a stonemason, until one day, when I was thirteen years of age, he fell from a ladder and his legs were smashed. He never walked again and was always in great pain. With my poor father crippled and no longer able to earn any money, much responsibility fell on me. I worked delivering goods for Jerusalem merchants. I stole eggs and resold them. I even stole a chicken once. We struggled every day just to stay alive and pay the rent for a tiny hovel that was not fit for a dog to live in.’
Hillel paused to run his hand admiringly along a wall, as if he’d built it himself. ‘When I heard of the huge workforce that was being gathered for the excavation of the Masada site, I signed on. I was big and strong and already used to hard work. Now, follow me through this set of arches, and I will show you.’
A few yards on, Hillel stopped to contemplate a section of the thick, craggy rampart wall. Beyond it was a sheer drop protected by a modern-day steel railing, and the dizzying view for miles towards Jerusalem. He crouched down low and delicately brushed some sand away from a crevice near the foot of the wall. ‘This is the place,’ he said, twisting his head up to look at Ben. ‘Come. See.’
The crevice was a horizontal gap in the ancient masonry where stones of uneven size had been used to build the wall. It was about four feet long and only just wide enough for a man to insert his fist.
‘It was June, 1963. I was assigned to this section with two other workers,’ Hillel said. ‘We were dying in the heat, tired and thirsty, while our foreman, a man called Samir, gulped water from his canteen and shouted at us whenever we stopped. I remember how much I hated him.’ Hillel scraped a small handful of sand and stones from the crevice and let it slip through his fingers.
‘Each man had his own piece of wall to work on. Mine was almost buried. I was digging away sand and stone with my bare hands when I found the hole and, deep inside it, something wrapped in a bundle of cloth. We had orders to report any find immediately to the foremen. I turned towards Samir and was about to call him when I saw that he was swallowing more water from his canteen, drinking like a hog so that it was pouring from his mouth and splashing on the ground. I was so thirsty, and so angry, that I did not call him. Instead, I pulled out the bundle and, careful to let nobody see me, I unwrapped it.’
‘And it was a sword,’ Ben said.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Hillel stood up and dusted the sand off his hands. ‘Yes. A very beautiful sword. Its handle was made of bronze that shone like gold in the sun, the blade shaped like this, and so long.’ He traced a curved line through the air, then spaced his palms a distance apart. Ben saw that his measurement estimate from Fabrice Lalique’s sketch had been more or less right, about three and a half feet overall.
‘I could see it was very, very old,’ Hillel went on, ‘and that it must have been hidden here for longer than time itself. I knew nothing of history, but this was surely an object of great value. Again I turned to Samir, but he was now standing talking to another foreman, sharing a joke and smoking cigarettes. I looked at Samir’s fat belly, and thought of my poor crippled father at home, and my mother working like a slave in the factory.’
‘You decided to keep it for yourself,’ Jude said.
‘When times are hard and you have a family to care for, you are sometimes forced to do things that you may know are wrong,’ Hillel said. ‘Yes, I wrapped the sword back in its bundle and replaced it where I had found it. For the rest of the day I was terrified that another worker would find it. But they did not, and as the day came to an end I managed to bring it onto the lorry that was taking the workers back to Jerusalem. There were so many of us that the foremen did not take notice of what one boy was doing.
‘Returning to the city, I went straight to Ali the pawnbroker on Jaffa Road. He examined the sword and asked me where I had found it. I told him some lie that I do not remember now. We haggled over its value, and then Ali told me I was a son of a baboon and tossed me a handful of coins, enough to feed my family for a week and buy medicine to ease the pain in my father’s legs. I remember how proud I was, for a long time afterwards. Samir and the other foremen never knew my secret.’
‘So you no longer had the sword,’ Ben said, trying to understand.
‘No, I never saw it again. My life went on. I grew up and became a taxi driver in Jerusalem. My father died, and soon afterwards my poor mother too. I married Ayala. One by one, my brothers and sisters all went their own ways. Many years went by and my family grew. I worked hard to ensure that they never had to suffer the poverty I had known in my childhood. Eighteen hours a day. Everybody in Jerusalem knew me. When I was not driving around the city, I was learning to speak English so that I could talk to the rich foreigners who got in my taxi. I dreamed of having a business of my own, that I could pass on to my children. But my dream never happened.’ Hillel paused, gazing across the desert as he replayed his life’s events inside his head.
Ben was growing impatient with the story and could sense Jude’s increasing restlessness, too. ‘Is any of this
