As Valerius held the baby close, the crying stopped. The baby boy’s face and trembling mouth touched his heart. He had to take care of him, get him back to his mother.
Had the baby been abandoned? Maybe the Syrians simply found it, and fled for fear of being accused of kidnapping. Yet he doubted it. Male babies were seldom deserted. They were prized, because males could work and earn.
He knew that somewhere in the city, some woman was beside herself for the loss of her son. He was sure this baby had been kidnapped.
The crowd drew back, some of them casting hard stares at him and his Roman armor. Several of the women still stood there, waiting to take this child. He would be relieved of responsibility if he let them. He would never hear anything more about it.
Yet could he trust these women to return the infant to his rightful mother?
What am I doing? This was the second tiny child he’d tried to save in a day’s time, and he’d never cared that much for children, having never had any of his own. They made him uncomfortable with their helplessness. “Flavius,” he shouted, awkwardly carrying the baby through the crowd. “Where are you?”
“Sir!” Flavius stared at Valerius and the baby in his arms.
Valerius said, “You might want to stop gaping at me, and take your men to look for a group of four suspicious Syrian men who probably kidnapped this baby. Scour the area! If you in them, bring them to me at the garrison.”
Flavius said, “Is it really the best use of our time to look for unknown men who might not have even done anything wrong?”
“Just do as I command!”
Carrying the baby, Valerius rushed down a narrow street that led to a gated archway into the fort. Standing guard was a legionary, armed and armored. The man saluted, jaw dropping to see Valerius striding along on foot without his helmet, holding a crying infant. “Just open the gate, Legionary.”
Inside the fortress, Valerius went to his quarters and placed the infant in the arms of an astonished Rufus. “Go, Rufus,” Valerius ordered. “Find some Hebrew women – nurses or midwives – to care for this boy-child until I can locate the mother.”
“Yes, sir. Is he Arab or Hebrew or what? Is he circumcised?”
“Not circumcised, yet he may be Hebrew despite it. The swaddling is Hebrew.”
Rufus took the baby to the garrison’s kitchen and lined a large brass grain-scoop with layers of cloth. He gingerly laid the infant in the scoop while he made up several bottles of goat’s milk and stuffed them with cloth sops for nursing.
Taking the child in his arms, one of the bottles in his hand, he circulated through the troops in the garrison, barking out, “Which of you has raised a child? Come forward, anyone who has.”
Rufus soon located an unwilling soldier who admitted to being a father. Rufus thrust the baby into his arms with a milk bottle, and rushed out of the garrison in search of midwives.
Valerius, meanwhile, sent a dozen of his soldiers to patrol Jerusalem with the announcement that a boy-child, healthy, about a month old, had been found, and that the mother should come to the garrison to claim him.
Soon Flavius and his men who had been reluctantly searching for the four Syrians returned empty-handed. Valerius was angry because the scoundrels who’d left this child on the pavement were slipping through his fingers. They should be called to account.
Valerius summoned Rufus.
“How is the baby?”
“Quite well, sir. I’ve brought some midwives, as you asked.”
Rounding the corner into the garrison’s guest quarters, Valerius saw the baby in the arms of a tall, lean woman with a Hebrew head shawl. He met the baby’s alert, shining brown eyes and was startled by the directness of his gaze.
“I am Zipporah,” the woman smiled. “Thank you for saving this boy.”
“Is the infant in good health?” he asked. She nodded.
“Do you have any idea to whom he might belong?”
“No,” she replied, “but I have friends who are asking throughout the city. I’m sure you know that there are Syrians in Jerusalem who kidnap children, selling them as slaves in Palmyra.”
Briskly walking back to his chambers, Valerius was deeply troubled about the kidnappers Zipporah spoke of, and about what he had taken on by rescuing the child. Although he’d never have abandoned the infant to an uncertain fate, he didn’t look forward to dealing with false claimants, maybe powerful and influential ones. To families that had only daughters, a boy child was a valuable commodity.
He said to Rufus, “The midwife Zipporah thinks the Syrians were taking the child to the slave market. This is one of those vile practices I’m no longer going to ignore as much as I have.”
“No offense, sir, yet you Romans never seem to mind taking male babies as the spoils of war.”
The criticism of Rome angered him. It always did. “‘You Romans,’ you say, Rufus? You’re a Roman yourself.”
“A slave, sir. Not a Roman by choice.”
“Yet when you’re free, you shall be a citizen.”
“And when might that be, sir?”
“Never mind.”
“Am I right, sir,” Rufus went on, “that kidnapping is vile, whether done by wicked Syrians or virtuous Romans?”
“It would be wise if you don’t push me any further, Rufus.”
“Sir, begging your pardon, but that’s twice this week you’ve rescued a child, and this time no woman came and snatched him away from you. I wonder, sir, are you trying to become a father without acquaintance with a mother? Are we perhaps going to be raising this boy ourselves?”
Valerius gave Rufus a steely glare that made him recoil. “All right, all right, master, so you’re not the type to adopt a child.”
“I will not tolerate any more of your nonsense, Rufus. I have more pressing issues on my mind.”
He couldn’t shake his concerns about the possibility of a very short life span for himself. He would soon need to satisfy the factions of Jerusalem while under the close scrutiny of those who could determine his life or death. He was feeling the weight and mass of Rome’s machinery clanking and churning and roaring all around him