“That leads to our little problem,” Helius said. “I’ve heard rumors of a new letter circulating among followers of the Truth. A revelation, they call it, with a leader described in the letter as holding seven stars in his right hand. Certainly a treasonous letter, wouldn’t you agree?”
Helius gave a catlike smile, as if he had actually licked his whiskers. “Had you been a follower, Tigellinus and I would have ordered your torture to learn more about those claims. It would have saved us some time. And, of course, offered amusement. Nero himself would have watched. Not everyone, you know, is privileged to provide Nero with entertainment.”
“I am not a follower,” Chayim said vehemently.
“So you’ve informed me.” Helius seemed to be enjoying himself. “And you can rest assured that neither am I. Nor Tigellinus. But that leads to another difficulty. We are Nero’s protectors. At his orders we must find out all we can about this matter. I have obtained a copy of the letter, and although I understand the language, as it is written in Greek, believe me, the letter is not always clear.”
Chayim felt his brow furrow in puzzlement, something Helius caught immediately.
“There are many parts of it,” Helius said, “that need interpretation. I believe, however, that a full understanding of the letter will provide Nero another legitimate reason for his persecutions of the Christians.”
“I see.”
“Afraid of our ruthlessness?” Helius asked.
“Yes.”
“Terrified?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” Helius stood and began to pace slowly. “This is your opportunity, Chayim. I want —”
“My Greek is not strong,” Chayim said. “I’ll do my best to interpret but—”
“You should not speak until I am finished. Apologize. Kneel and apologize.”
Burning with humiliation, Chayim lowered himself. “I am sorry for offending you.”
“Think nothing of it. Remain on your knees and listen.” Helius continued as if the brief incident had not occurred. “Now is the opportunity to repay Nero for your life of ease in the palace.”
“How—” Chayim snapped his mouth shut, very conscious of his recent apology and the fact that he was still kneeling.
“You learn fast,” Helius said. “I will finish. You see, if I have followers of the Truth tortured and questioned about this letter instead of being merely tortured and killed, it will appear to Rome that we actually fear their treason. No, I want it done discreetly. And that is how you can serve Nero.” He paused. “Unless you aren’t interested.”
Chayim’s tongue felt like a chunk of wood. “I would be delighted to help.”
“Good, good. You are wise to what happens to those who reject Nero.” Helius extended his hand to Chayim to help him to his feet. “Now that you are Nero’s friend,” Helius said, “join us tonight at an intimate dinner party. I’m sure you will find it amusing to see the fate that awaits Vitas.”
Chayim bowed his acceptance of the invitation.
“Oh yes,” Helius said, “about this matter of the seven stars.”
Chayim lifted his head. Found the catlike eyes staring into his.
“We need a spy, an infiltrator, a Jew to move among other Jews to get us a full interpretation of the letter,” Helius said. “You, my friend, are going to pose as a follower of the Truth.”
“If the reward is great enough, I can tell you where to find the one you now hunt.”
At those words, Damian glanced up from the uninteresting view of sweat dripping onto his knees from his forehead. He sat on a bench in the public bath, dressed only in a towel wrapped around his waist. Standing behind him, Jerome, a large slave with a shaved head, kneaded Damian’s shoulders. And now, directly in front of him, the stranger who had approached moments earlier.
“The one I hunt,” Damian repeated to this stranger, affecting disinterest. It was midmorning, and the baths were quiet at this time. This was why Damian came, because he could be found easier in the steam now than later in the day when the bath was crowded.
“Yesterday,” the man began to answer, “you visited the master of my household and asked him about—”
“Move toward me,” Damian ordered. Through the wisps of steam, he had seen what might be a scar across the man’s forehead.
Without question, the man complied, the second indication that he might be a slave, accustomed to taking orders from a Roman.
Damian stood from the bench for a closer view of the man to confirm his guess about the stranger’s identity. “Are you here with the permission of Barbatus?” Damian said.
“I didn’t tell you that my master was—”
“Don’t take me for a fool,” Damian growled at the slave. “His mark is plain across your forehead.”
The slave was much shorter than Damian. He had a lean face, and if Damian had to guess further, he would have presumed the man was an administrator or physician, because he was not muscular. Aside from the scar of the hot-iron brand—a triangle with a circle in the center—that had once been pressed against his forehead to mark him, there were no apparent healed wounds that would indicate a life of hard physical labor.
If Damian was an expert on anything, it was on slaves. Offhand, he could probably identify hundreds of brands of different patrician Roman families. The pattern of a triangle with a circle in the center belonged to Secundus Nigilius Barbatus, who had once held the prestigious post of governor of Greece.
As the man hesitated, Damian spoke again. “Don’t lie to me. If Barbatus wanted to deliver a message, he would have sent a litter for me and given it to me himself.”
Jerome stopped massaging Damian’s back and placed another towel across his shoulders. Damian didn’t acknowledge this; slaves did not expect courtesy.
“Already you are at a disadvantage,” Damian said to the slave in front of him. “If I report to Barbatus that you left the household as you did, he will consider you an escaped slave.”
Unspoken, because it didn’t need to be said, was that Barbatus could have the fugitive slave immediately killed or, worse, sent to the arena.
“I’m a trusted administrator,” the slave answered, showing a flash of pride. “I come and go as I please.”
“So he knows you are approaching me for the reward I offered yesterday?”
“Of course not,” the slave said.
“I doubt Barbatus would appreciate this act of secrecy. And he is known for harshly punishing those who disobey him. Tell me what I need to know or face his wrath.”
“If you have me punished,” the slave answered, “would any other slave ever seek you out here again?”
Damian grinned. At the man’s unexpected show of resolve. And at the new deduction this allowed Damian. The slave obviously knew enough about Damian’s methods and reputation to have approached with such confidence.
“Well, then,” Damian said, “at least tell me your name.”
“Cornelius,” the slave answered.
“Obviously, you know about the reward. Do you know where I can find the fugitive from the island?”
Strictly speaking, the man whom Damian now hunted, a Jew named John, was not a fugitive from the barren island off the coast of Greece, where he had been exiled. The man had not escaped but had been released. He was only a fugitive now because Helius, Nero’s secretary, had hired Damian to find him. And rumors had placed the Jew here in Rome.
As for his captivity on Patmos, John had been released because a group of wealthy and influential men had approached Barbatus during his governorship of Asia. Within his jurisdiction were Greece and the islands off the coast. Damian had had no problem securing the names of those men from Barbatus, who knew Damian now owed him a political favor. After getting the names, Damian had made a point to delay his departure and stop in the gardens of the estate to talk at length with one of the slaves tending a hillside of olives. This, for Damian, was a customary tactic. Slaves formed the majority of the population and provi
ded an incredible network of hidden information.
“That reward is not enough,” Cornelius said.
“The reward I offered yesterday is ample,” Damian said. In truth, he would have paid ten times the amount, but to offer that would have shown how important the fugitive was. And that had the potential to lead others to ask too many questions about the Jew. Helius had stressed that Damian must keep his quest secret; if word ever leaked out that Helius had hired Damian, not even Damian’s family status could protect him from imperial punishment.
“Without my help, it might take you months to find the Jew,” Cornelius said. “I know where he is and enough about him that I can help you place an ambush.”
“When?” Damian demanded abruptly.
“I can make the arrangements tomorrow and report back to you. John will be yours by sundown of the day after. That should be worth enough for you to buy my freedom from Barbatus.”
“Your freedom for another man’s death,” Damian said.
Cornelius shrugged. “Whatever he did to cause a man of your reputation to begin the hunt probably means he deserves whatever fate befalls him.”
“So you know of my reputation.”
“What slave doesn’t? And what slave doesn’t fear the day you might begin pursuit of him?”
“I will buy your freedom,” Damian said. “After I have this man captured.”
“Before his capture,” Cornelius said firmly. “John is a popular man among many slaves. I want to be away from the estate of Barbatus before word spreads that I betrayed him.”
“Today, then, you will be a free man. You know my reputation, but I warn you anyway. If you don’t return tomorrow with the promised information, I will hunt you as relentlessly as I have hunted all the others.”
Damian glanced back at the large bald man who had resumed massaging his shoulders. There was another reason that Damian let it be known that informers could find him here at the baths every morning at this time. In the baths, men could not conceal knives or short swords. And in unarmed combat, there wasn’t a man alive who could compete against Damian’s slave.
“Jerome,” Damian said, “show this man a sample of the consequences if he disappoints me.”
With phenomenal agility and speed, the large man sidestepped Damian and clamped Cornelius by the throat. With a single massive arm, he lifted the slave completely off the ground.
“If you are lying,” Damian said to Cornelius, “if you don’t make the arrangements for me to capture the fugitive, or if you try to run from Rome after I’ve purchased your freedom, Jerome will rip your head off your shoulders. That mark on your forehead would make it impossible for you to live openly ever again if you become a fugitive. Do you understand?”
Cornelius made a high-pitched squeal that sounded like agreement.
“Good,” Damian said. He motioned for Jerome to set Cornelius down, who instantly heaved and gagged for air.
“Leave now,” Damian told the slave. “Tomorrow, at the same time and place, I fully expect you to tell me how and where to find this John.”
“I know what you’ve told me before,” Vitas said to Ben-Aryeh. “But now that we are in Rome, surely you’ll reconsider.”
Ben-Aryeh sat on a bench in the outer courtyard of Vitas’s home. His eyes were closed. His face was tilted to catch the sun.
Vitas found himself admiring the lines on the older man’s face. Lines of character.
“You are speaking about Chayim,” Ben-Aryeh said.
“I can provide you a litter to go to the imperial palace,” Vitas said. “You’ll be safe, of course. Reports of the accusation against you in Jerusalem will not have reached Rome.”
“You’ve told me that repeatedly. And each time it emphasizes the fact that I am of so little importance that no one in Rome would care that I have escaped Jerusalem.”
“Except Chayim. Your son.”
“Congratulations,” Ben-Aryeh said. “I understand Sophia is with child.”
“Don’t try to change the subject.”
“When you are a father, perhaps you will understand how much it hurts to be estranged from your firstborn.”
“Don’t be stubborn,” Vitas urged. He and Ben-Aryeh had argued so much over the months that it was second nature for both of them to freely speak their minds. “Now is your chance to reconcile.”
“I will not go to the palace.”
“I can send for him to join you here,” Vitas said.
Ben-Aryeh finally opened his eyes. “So that I can tell him myself that I am a fugitive? That if I return to Jerusalem, I will be put to death by stoning? That I have abandoned my wife and his mother because I am too afraid of that fate?”
“I doubt it’s fear,” Vitas said. “I know you rage against the injustice of it. You are an innocent man. Your enemies are trying to destroy you.”
This was clear to Vitas. He remembered that morning with Queen Bernice, when the assistant named Olithar had lied about Ben-Aryeh. That had been enough proof of Ben-Aryeh’s innocence for Vitas to help when Ben-Aryeh had shown up at the royal palace, asking for safe-conduct out of the city. Vitas had had no regrets since—he was beginning to love the older man like a brother.
“Trying to destroy me?” Ben-Aryeh said. “I’m stuck here with a Roman family. In Rome. Don’t get me wrong. I’m extremely grateful, and someday I shall find a way to repay you. But my enemies have succeeded extremely well.”
“But they weren’t able to kill you.”
“You find that ironic, don’t you?” Ben-Aryeh said. “All your questions about this Jesus and how He accepted crucifixion despite His innocence. And here I am, a man of the law, breaking the law.”
“Shall I send for Chayim?”
“No,” Ben-Aryeh said. “If he has changed and is a Jew dutiful to God, I will only shame him. If he has not changed, he will shame me.”
Hora Duodecima
Late-afternoon sunshine warmed Damian as he walked through a small market area.
He did not look back to confirm that Jerome was shadowing him as he moved through the crowded market. That was a given. Always. They were a team. He assumed that Jerome remained because he was content with the monthly wage that Damian paid, but Damian never asked, assuming that every man and woman always did what each felt was in his or her best interest.
It was with this assumption that Damian hunted slaves, as he was doing this morning on his way to a pottery maker.
In his quiet moments—and for Damian there were many—he wasn’t afraid to contemplate the satisfaction it gave him to make a business of pursuing slaves. It allowed him a form of defiance against the status quo that had been thrust upon him, born as he was into a patrician family. And most of all, it satisfied his instinct to hunt.
For who else to match wits with than another human being? Especially a desperate human being, trying to avoid the torture and death that would come with capture.
It was not the prospect of their punishment that drove Damian. That was simply a fact of the Roman world, and slaves knew the consequences of disobedience or theft or murder, so he felt no pity for them once captured. No, it was the pursuit, often so challenging that after capturing an especially clever slave, Damian was tempted to release that slave again with a month’s worth of living expenses and a week’s head start.
The hunt!
Damian began with that assumption—that men always did what they felt was in their self-interest. But what added to the challenge was that he’d learned how widely varied one man’s self-interest could be from another’s. Many slaves were entirely predictable in their flight, and those he found quickly and with a sense of boredom. The others—the minority—presented him with a fascinating array of needs and desires, from the depraved to the sublime. These slaves—the unpredictable and intelligent—gave him the most satisfaction.
To hunt them, he’d learned to add another basic rule: Think like the prey.
Thus, again and again he would slip into the role, inde
ed the very psyche of those he pursued, spending hours—even days—in the household interviewing other slaves about the habits and friends and desires of the one escaped. Whatever distance the pursued gained while Damian patiently remained to ask those questions was quickly lost once Damian understood whom he pursued.
In a way, then, he was disappointed that today he expected to hear from the slave from the ex-governor’s household of a time and place that John would be captured. From all that Damian had learned about John, the man was intelligent. And John’s motives were difficult to discern, which made him all the more unpredictable as quarry. Damian had hoped for a battle of intellect against intellect in seeking John. It would be a shame that a betrayal might end any chance John had of remaining free.
Still, Damian was not going to assume the capture would end as expected. So this morning, he moved through the marketplace as if the pursuit would be protracted. On the chance that John did escape immediate capture, Damian wanted to peer into the man’s mind. And what better reflected the way a man thought than his writings?
There was more.
In hiring Damian, Helius had made a passing comment about the uselessness of rumors of a letter that this John had written to a growing circulation in Rome and Asia.
Damian believed this was one of the few mistakes Helius had made over the last few years. Helius, as the second most powerful man in the empire, had great political acumen. Helius should have known his comment would not deter Damian but spur him to investigate the letter further.
If, for some reason, Helius did not want Damian learning more about the letter, Damian wanted to know the reason. Even if John was soon captured and delivered to Helius as promised.
For in Rome, political knowledge was power. As were secrets.
The dimly lit shop was cramped and had the comforting smell of damp clay. An unfinished pot sat on a nearby wheel, draped with a wet cloth. On a bench were other large squares of clay, equally protected from the heat by damp cloths.
The owner of the shop was Darda, a tiny old bearded Jew who sat in the doorway on a stool. He ignored the passersby and squinted at a scroll with intense concentration.
The Last Disciple Page 30