The Cardo Maximus

In “The Guest”, a story in The Deadliest Deceptions, Gershon explains to Miriam that he has an old friend staying with him, a man he once knew in Caesarea. Did she remember Lucius from when she’d dropped Gershon off there?

“I remember the white stone houses near the harbor and our turning north onto the Cardo Maximus where he lived. And I remember marveling at his perfectly proportioned, marble mansion enclosed by that hedge of rosemary, but his hound-faced doorkeeper claimed you before I had a chance to see, let alone meet him.”

“Oh my, that was more than twenty years ago.”

“Fourteen to be exact.”

“Yes, twenty. Well, he arrived yesterday—maybe the day before. He’s my guest while his house is being renovated.”

A cardo was a north-south street, and the Cardo Maximus was the main (meaning heart ) or most central of the north-south streets in a Roman city.

Miriam was right. It was 14 not 20 years earlier in The Deadliest Hate when she encountered her father’s friend Gershon aboard the Orion and walked with him from the harbor to his friend, Lucius’s house. At that time, she recalled the garden fronting the mansion:

The garden was furnished with teak benches flanked by cages of trilling songbirds. In the center of the garden, a stone fountain sprayed its iridescent shower into a pool of water lilies while statues peered from behind mulberry trees.

Whether in The Deadliest Deceptions, to be released this November, or in The Deadliest Hate, available now, you can accompany Miriam along Caesarea’s Cardo Maximus. To enjoy the date palms tossing their arching shadows onto its alabaster walkway, click here.