Six months passed. At times, the house was so cold that the water froze in the pitchers. They saved any bugs trapped in the ice and ate those too. Knowing that people would steal from their garden, Esther planted radishes in pots on the roof. They grew quickly and helped stave off starvation.
Every so often, Esther would find herself daydreaming, planning an escape—by herself. She would map out a route to the desert in the south, or to Sepphoris in the north. She even thought about surrendering to the Romans in Caesarea. But she knew she would never abandon her family.
During those long, dark months, Esther hardly left the courtyard. She couldn’t bear to see what had become of her city. The dead were piled up in abandoned houses, or had been thrown over the walls. Those still alive shuffled through the streets like walking corpses.
During Hanukkah, one rebel group distributed small quantities of oil from the Temple supplies. Another group staged a pageant, with speeches about the coming defeat of the Romans. They promised a new Jerusalem. She didn’t want a new Jerusalem. She wanted the old one, the one the rebels had destroyed.
Just when it seemed that spring would never come, it did. The blue of the sky and the gold of the sun poured into the day. It was the first night of Passover.
Esther and Miriam were foraging for herbs in the field behind the launderers’ quarter, or rather, what used to be the launderers’ quarter. It had been a long time since anyone had cared about bleaching their wool clothes. The area didn’t even stink anymore.
“It’s hard to believe this is our fourth Passover since the war started,” Esther said.
Miriam nodded. “Remember last year, when we scraped together enough money to buy a neck, and it cost as much as the whole lamb used to?”
“And now, we couldn’t get that—even if we had bags of gold.”
On the way home, they stopped to look at the thousands of Roman soldiers camped on the Mount of Olives and on Mount Scopus. After a hiatus of more than two years the Romans had finally returned, but this time with a new general. Vespasian, who had commanded the Roman troops at the start of the revolt, was now emperor, so he’d sent his son Titus to finish what he’d started. Titus had arrived with four legions to defeat the Jewish rebels once and for all and to restore Roman control over Judea.
The rebels shot arrows at the Roman siege towers positioned just outside the city walls, but the arrows caromed harmlessly off the massive iron-plated structures, like drops of water in a hot pan. Two rebels, so young that their chins were smooth, struggled to set up a catapult launcher, captured from the Romans years before. It was obvious to Esther that the boys had no idea how to operate the machine.
Mule-pulled wagons distributed skins of water to the Roman soldiers training in full view of the Jews on the wall. The soldiers shot at targets, practiced with drawn swords, and marched in tortoise formations with overlapping shields above their heads. Centurions barked out commands. The Jews shouted curses at the Romans, reminding Esther of the last time she’d seen the Roman army outside the wall, four years before. The Jews had taunted the Romans then too, but with much more confidence. Now they knew better.
As Esther and Miriam passed the house of Simeon the physician, Miriam slowed down, crept closer, and peered into a half-covered pot in the garden. She pulled out a small sack, probably something the family had hidden from the rebels. Miriam looked at Esther, but before Esther could respond, Miriam thrust it under her robe. They tore off, and ran the whole way home.
When they reached the courtyard, Miriam opened the sack. It was flour, rancid, with a sharp sour smell and a crumbly texture. She wrinkled her nose. Esther tried to block out what her father would have said about stealing.
That afternoon, Miriam mixed the flour with water and made matzo, the ritual flatbread. Esther set the table with their holiday dishes. The plates, once piled high with sweet dates and apples, carrots with cumin, and succulent roasted lamb, were now empty. Indeed, this night would be different from all other nights.
“We’re lucky,” Esther said, surveying the table.
Miriam wrinkled her brow. “Lucky?”
“Well, maybe not lucky,” Esther said, “but still better off than a lot of people.” It was true. Many had nothing. Some people had bartered their entire possessions for whatever food they could find—a scattering of moldy grains or a fistful of figs.
Peering into the cooking pot, Matti scrunched up his nose. “What is it? Hay soup?” The pot was filled with water and a few brown flakes that floated to the top. Esther had made a thin soup from an old turnip and some chaff they’d found in an abandoned stable.
“It’s lamb stew,” Esther said. “You just can’t see the lamb.”
“Or the stew,” added Matti.
“What’s for dessert?” Miriam asked. “Nut cakes with no almonds?”
“No, that’s for tomorrow.” Esther forced a smile, mostly for Matti’s sake. She tried to keep his spirits up, but it was hard. She tried to remember the holidays of years past, when their plates had been full and the city had been noisy and joyous.
“I don’t remember if I used to be happy,” Esther said. “I only remember that I was always worried, but now I don’t know why. I had a full belly and parents who worried for me.”
That night, the city was silent. People huddled in their houses, fearful of the future. Esther couldn’t get the picture of the Roman army out of her mind. Maybe this was how the Israelites had felt the night before they’d fled from Egypt. The Israelite dwellings had been marked with blood, and theirs would be too, once the Romans attacked. They read the story from Deuteronomy, but Esther couldn’t bring herself to utter the biblical words “You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt.” She didn’t want to think about slavery, about what could happen to her and her family when those battering rams started to pound the walls and the Roman soldiers began fighting for real.
Instead she focused her thoughts on a different part of the story: how Miriam, Moses’s sister, cared for him. She looked over at Matti, seemingly content as he sucked on the hard, dried matzo, and she vowed to protect her little brother.
Eight days later, just as the Passover holiday drew to a close, the assault began. The warring rebel factions banded together again, as if they hadn’t spent the previous two years tearing the city apart with their fighting. The Romans showered the top of the new wall with arrows and catapulted huge stones into the city. One broke through the roof of a house, and another landed on a woman in her garden, crushing her to death.
The Roman battering rams emerged from the siege towers and began to pummel the wall. The ground shook as if it were splitting apart, and the din was as loud as thunder. The rebels laid wooden boards reinforced with metal over the wall to absorb the impact of the blows, but even that didn’t help. The relentless clamor of the battering rams seemed to penetrate the marrow in Esther’s bones.
For fifteen days, the tumult continued. On the seventh of Iyar, the earth convulsed as the wall crumbled. Matti flew into Esther’s arms.
“What happened?” he cried.
“The Romans broke through the new wall,” Esther said. “But it doesn’t matter. There are two more.”
“Are we going to die?” Matti asked in a small voice.
She hugged him close. “I’m here. I’m here with you.” It was all she could say.
Nine days later, the second wall collapsed. A sinister silence followed. Now there was only one wall left, the city’s last line of defense.
The clamor had stopped, but the ringing in Esther’s ears continued. At least she could talk again without shouting, but she knew it wouldn’t be for much longer. If the last wall fell, the only thing left between them and the Romans would be the Temple Mount. All she could do was hope for another miracle.