The Last Disciple

by Hank Hanegraaff

  Death was not part of their world. Their world was safety, servants, luxury, petty squabbles between brother and sister. Had Valeria not seen the unexpected violence of the Roman soldiers the day before, she would not have believed Quintus.

  She squeezed his shoulders and kept trying to comfort him. She needed to calm him, to find out what had happened. “You came out of hiding and the servants were dead. And Mother?”

  Guilt overwhelmed her. Mother could not be dead. All they’d done over the last few months was quarrel. She needed to be able to tell Mother that she didn’t mean any of the horrible things she’d said.

  “Mother wasn’t there. Or Maglorius. But all the servants—”

  “I know, I know,” Valeria soothed. “You’re here. You’re safe. Tell me about Maglorius.”

  “Maglorius.” Quintus was suddenly savage. He set his jaw. It would have been a comical sight, with the tears so fresh on his face, except his eyes blazed. “I saw it myself. Mother, she called for me. She called for the servants. From Father’s study. He murdered our father. That’s why I’m going to kill him.”

  “Murder.” Valeria sat down. This was too much to comprehend. “Murder,” she repeated, barely able to breathe out the word.

  Quintus sat beside her. He placed the sword in his lap. His anger seemed to give him strength, and the tears dried on his face as he spoke with detached resolve. “Father was on the floor,” he said. “His head was toward the door. Maglorius was lying knocked out and crossways to him, across Father’s body. He was holding a knife.”

  “Father?”

  “Maglorius. He’d stabbed Father. Maglorius still had his hand on the knife. And the knife was in Father’s chest. There were pieces of clay everywhere.”

  “Clay?”

  “From a wine jug. Mother had walked into the study just as Maglorius stabbed Father. She grabbed the first thing she could and hit Maglorius across the head. When I got to the study she was on her knees. Screaming at Maglorius. Begging Father to live.”

  Quintus shuddered. “Father was dead. Mother saw the short sword in my hand, the one that Maglorius had given me in the courtyard. She told me to kill Maglorius.”

  Quintus lost his strength as suddenly as he’d found it. “I couldn’t do it. Not then. I would do it now. But then I couldn’t believe it. Maglorius woke up and saw me standing there. I looked into his eyes, and I couldn’t kill him. Mother tried to take the sword. She said she would kill him herself for taking away our father. That’s when the shouting reached us. The soldiers had broken into the courtyard. Mother screamed at me to run.”

  He fell silent. Drained.

  Valeria ached with love for her little brother. There would be time to grieve. Later.

  Now she had to do everything possible to protect him.

  The Eleventh Hour

  “I feel guilty about this,” Sophia told Vitas.

  “You had no choice. I would have forced you here by the point of a sword.”

  Sophia liked it, that Vitas had understood what she meant without asking for an explanation. On the journey from Smyrna to Rome, they’d spent countless hours in conversation, leaning on the railing of the ship, staring at the horizon. Then, as now, it seemed each could read the other’s mind.

  Now, however, they were not looking at the place where sea met sky. They were on a balcony of the royal palace. The moon had just risen and sat low on the horizon. It seemed within reach if she stretched a hand toward it. A breeze caressed her face, and she wished instead it was the gentle touch of the man with her.

  Vitas had taken her to the royal palace this afternoon, insisting it was the only refuge in Jerusalem. His words had been prophetic; when the slaughter began again, the streets had been blocked with soldiers and citizens in panic.

  It was this that brought her the tremendous guilt. She had survived. Too many others had not.

  “Listen,” he said, “if you could have done anything at all to stop the soldiers but didn’t, you would have the right to condemn yourself. But these events were set in motion by circumstances far beyond any one person’s control. What do you suggest? That you take up a sword and stand in the streets and die?”

  Vitas placed a hand on her shoulder. “Despite the logic of my argument, I feel the same way you do.” He smiled. Spoke softly. “Emotions don’t listen to facts.”

  They were both staring at the dark outline of the hills against the sky. The glittering of the stars. Because to look in another direction would show the glow of the fires of the temple portico. The Jews had destroyed it to keep the soldiers from entering the temple.

  “I should know,” he said a few moments later. “I’m here because I ignored the facts.”

  She turned to him. His face was lost in the darkness.

  “These are the facts,” Vitas said. “I met a woman, a slave in Smyrna. Stubborn. Intelligent. I guessed that she might even be beautiful, if a person could look past her distinctly un-Roman taste in clothing.”

  “Is that how you judge beauty?” Sophia shot back. “If so—”

  He laughed. “Quick tempered and quick to take insult too. Those are the facts.” He grew serious. “I decided that first night that I wanted to know you more. You were a slave. It was in my power to arrange your freedom. So I did.”

  He shrugged. “If my impulse was wrong and my heart would not be drawn to you, then you had the gift of that freedom. If, however, my heart was right, then when I pursued you, your response to me would be that of a free woman. I would never have to wonder if your interest in me was that of a slave with no choice.”

  Sophia was listening carefully.

  “Here is another fact. After days and days on the ship back to Rome, I realized that my heart truly had been drawn to you. But you know that. Because I asked if you would stay in Rome with Paulina so I could continue to court you.”

  Sophia knew that. It had been an agonizing choice. To say no to this man.

  “You left me,” he said. “You returned to Jerusalem. Your family was more important to you than the attention of a Roman citizen. Those are the facts.”

  “Vitas, I—”

  “If humans operated purely on logic, I would have forgotten about you. I tried to. But could not. You know that Maglorius sent me reports. When I discovered you could not find your family . . .” He sighed. “I could not ignore my heart. Even though it meant that I would once again give you the chance to say no to me.”

  “Vitas—”

  “Let me finish. Please. It was worth the risk. I’ve finally allowed myself to understand that a man cannot live life unless he is prepared to love. I’ve spent years in a cocoon, trying to pretend all I needed were the trappings of my life as a Roman from a good family with enough wealth to live comfortably. You changed that. So, whatever answer you give, I want to thank you.”

  He moved to the edge of the balcony and stared at the moon.

  Long moments passed.

  “No answer, then,” he said. “I suppose that in itself is an answer.”

  “Vitas,” she answered gently, “you didn’t ask a question.”

  “Oh. I assumed . . .”

  She laughed. “Assumptions can be dangerous. Especially when it comes to matters of the heart.”

  He drew a breath, as if seeking courage. He turned, kept his distance from her. “Will you return to Rome with me?”

  She still didn’t answer. She knew that Roman men were accustomed to procuring mistresses.

  “As my wife?” he asked.

  Her heart soared. She had abandoned him when the ship arrived in Rome, torn between her love for him and her duties to family. Now she had a second chance.

  At the same time, she could not speak her heart. She could not accept.

  “I am so glad you’re alive!” As she spoke, Amaris rose from a couch in the outer courtyard of the family’s upper-city mansion and rushed to Ben-Aryeh.

  Night had draped the city with merciful darkness. Oil torches flickered and burned. The ligh
t breeze across the mountaintop of Jerusalem did not reach this courtyard.

  Ben-Aryeh had passed by five temple police standing at the arched opening to the courtyard. Under normal circumstances, he would have been slightly embarrassed to have any witnesses to the long, tearful hug that Amaris gave him.

  These were not normal circumstances. Although he knew all five men were watching, he returned her hug with fervent love, stroking her hair, whispering endearments, kissing her forehead.

  The sun had set on the slaughter of hundreds more in the city, dead at the hands of Roman soldiers. Ben-Aryeh had been among those fighting near the temple. He was thankful and relieved—with the guilt of a survivor—to have returned home. And to have a home waiting.

  When Amaris relinquished her hold on him, Ben-Aryeh turned to the men at the archway. “We would like our privacy now.”

  These were temple police he’d sent to protect Amaris during the height of the fighting, an indication of his high political status that they would obey at that point. He saw no need for any other way to speak but as a curt command.

  They slipped out through the archway toward the dark street.

  Ben-Aryeh led Amaris to the couch and sat beside her.

  “My love,” she said, “the noise that reached me here in the afternoon! What has been happening?”

  He held her hands as he explained. How Florus had told them to send a crowd out of the city to greet and salute the soldiers to prove that they could remain at peace. How the soldiers had refused to acknowledge the salutes. How they’d struck with no warning as a single troublemaker shouted an insult.

  From there, the riot had grown so quickly it was difficult to comprehend. From horseback, armed with clubs and swords, the soldiers had begun to kill without discrimination. Many died by the soldiers’ swords, many from the horses that tramped them, and many more as those in the crowds panicked and fought each other to escape into the city.

  At the city gates, it worsened. The great crowd jammed at the narrow opening. Dozens suffocated under the weight of those pressing from behind. Dozens more were crushed so badly that their bodies were beyond recognition.

  The soldiers pursued them into the city, and when Florus brought his other garrisons out of Antonia Fortress, it became obvious that the attack had been well planned, and that the soldiers meant to seize the temple.

  The citizens rallied. In the narrow streets, the soldiers lost any advantage that horses and organized fighting gave them in the open. With the streets blocked and many citizens throwing a hail of darts, pottery, and stone blocks from the rooftops, the soldiers were forced to retreat.

  At this point Ben-Aryeh left the tunnels beneath the temple. He first dispatched bodyguards to his mansion, then joined those who had begun tearing down the cloisters that connected the temple to Antonia Fortress.

  Darkness had fallen as the fighting finally ended. But the wailing had just begun, as once more, relatives went into the streets with lit torches to search for those who had not returned home.

  When he finished relaying all of this to Amaris, Ben-Aryeh kissed her forehead again. “I fear,” he said, “for the city. By deceiving us into greeting the new cohorts today instead of protesting their arrival, Florus now has enough soldiers within the city gates to begin a measured and deliberate war, quarter by quarter. In short, we have let the enemy inside, and the temple will eventually be taken.”

  “Something can be done. Surely.”

  “Our own resistance was in the heat of panic. Emotions can only sustain our fight so long. Florus is no fool. He will most surely begin to go from one household to the next to eliminate resistance. When that is finished, the temple and its treasury are his.”

  “What about us?” she whispered.

  “I will do everything in my power to see that nothing harms us. The city will always be here. So shall we.”

  “And if something is out of your power?”

  “Wealth and connections,” Ben-Aryeh said. “Unless there is more rioting, we will not suffer. Again, I reassure you. Now that Florus has enough military power in the city, he will proceed in a way that will keep him in control.”

  “But what if you lose your wealth and connections? If—”

  “Nothing will harm us!” In his determination to quell her fears, he missed the pleading edge in her voice.

  “Please tell me,” she said, “that you have done nothing to betray me.”

  “What?”

  “You love me and have always been faithful to me. That is what I need to hear. Not about your money and your politics. All I really want is you and your love.”

  Ben-Aryeh stood. “I have never betrayed you. Nor ever contemplated it!”

  “Never?”

  For a moment, he again considered telling her about the brigand attack, about the woman he had rescued, about fleeing her at the city gates. The evening before, here on the same couch in the same courtyard, he’d come very close. Yet Amaris had been so happy that he’d returned from Sebaste and survived the first day’s riots that he had not wanted to dampen her relief, especially since it seemed unlikely that his false accuser would ever be able to identify him after his successful escape.

  If he told her now, she would wonder why he’d kept it secret a day earlier, and whatever he said would be tinged by her suspicions, unjustified as they might be.

  And circumstances had changed since the woman had almost seen him at the temple earlier in the day. The city was once again in great confusion. Chances were she’d been killed in the riot. If not, the next few days promised a systematic war that would reduce further the likelihood that he would be seen by her, let alone accused again.

  Why then, Ben-Aryeh told himself, should he worry his beloved Amaris with the story? Despite the fact that keeping silent was a form of falsehood, he was an innocent man and had not been unfaithful to her. That was what was important.

  Ben-Aryeh knelt beside her. “You are my one true love. Nothing will change that. I have never been unfaithful to you. I would never consider it. I would rather rip my eyes from my head than look at another woman with lust in my heart.”

  She stared at him for several moments. In the torchlight, her face was serious as she searched his eyes. Finally, she sighed. “I believe you.”

  “Very touching.” The voice came from behind them. A voice from the entrance that led to an inner courtyard and the mansion beyond. “Very touching indeed.”

  Ben-Aryeh recognized that voice.

  He stood and whirled. “Leave this home!” Ben-Aryeh commanded. “You have no right to be here.”

  “No?” Annas the Younger’s voice was silky. As if filled with pleasure. “Guards!” he barked.

  Immediately, the temple police that Ben-Aryeh had dismissed from the outer archway stepped into sight. They’d been waiting.

  “Ben-Aryeh,” Annas said, “these men are here to place you under arrest.”

  “I have committed no crimes.”

  “The Sanhedrin will judge otherwise, I am sure,” Annas said. “Perhaps you are missing this necklace?” He dangled it from his fingers.

  Even in the dim light given by the torches, Ben-Aryeh knew. Without thinking, he reached for his neck where it had hung for years.

  “Yes,” Annas said, “I see that you are. It was given to me by a woman. She took it from you as she was clawing to escape your grasp.”

  “No!”

  “No? I’m sure she’d like to tell her story to the Sanhedrin. Unless, of course, you are not the one. But why don’t we ask her?”

  From the inner courtyard and into the torchlight stepped the woman whom Ben-Aryeh had rescued from the brigands the day before.

  “Yes,” she said without hesitation, pointing directly at Ben-Aryeh, “this is the man who robbed me of my purity outside the city gates.”

  As soldiers escorted Queen Bernice and her attendants onto a south-side balcony of Antonia Fortress, she was highly aware of the fist-sized rock pressing hard into her belly. />
  She wished it were a tent peg. She remembered one of the stories of her people’s history. In the time of the Judges. The Israelites had been oppressed for twenty years by Jabin of Hazor, a Canaanite king. The commander of his army, Sisera, had thousands of soldiers and nine hundred iron chariots. On the day that the Lord gave the Israelites victory over Sisera, he fled and came to the tent of Jael, wife of Heber the Kenite. She offered him shelter, gave him milk to drink, and covered him with a blanket. As the milk began to digest and sent him into sleep from exhaustion, she crept up with a hammer and a tent peg and drove the peg through his temple into the ground. From that time on, Bernice remembered from the story, Israel became stronger and eventually overthrew the power of King Jabin.

  For this meeting with Florus, she’d allowed slaves to help her bathe, perfume, and wind her hair into fashionable braids. She’d uncharacteristically dismissed them, however, before dressing in her undergarments. She wanted no witnesses to the girdle that held the rock in place, no one to suspect after Florus was dead that she had found a way to murder him.

  “Queen Bernice.” Florus greeted her in a flat, almost unwelcoming voice as he turned from the balcony. He leaned against it, the top edge reaching his waist. Below was a drop of forty feet, into a courtyard paved with rounded stones. This, too, was something Bernice was aware of with the same intensity that she was conscious of the rock she intended to smash into his skull as soon as he was too drunk to realize her intent.

  “Frankly,” he said, “I’m surprised that you requested this visit. Especially after how you fled from me yesterday.” Again, his tone was flat.

  She knew that stance and posture. It was of a man trying to appear uninterested in her. But it was a lie; she’d attended too many banquets where she’d caught him staring at her from across the room.

  She also knew how to play such men. “I much prefer choosing my man instead of having a man choose me.”

  The last of the evening’s sun was full on his face, and she caught the slight widening of his eyes. He shifted slightly toward her, and that told her enough.