The Last Sacrifice

by Hank Hanegraaff

  Damian enjoyed it and disliked himself for it.

  “I’ve changed my mind.” He was brusque. A way to combat the desire she stirred.

  Alypia opened her eyes and slowly swung her face toward him. Her wide cheekbones were beautifully framed by her long, dark hair, unencumbered by the blonde wig she’d worn during their previous meeting in the litter.

  “Come closer, then. We have as much privacy as we need here.”

  “I’ve decided to look for your stepchildren.” Damian knew the balance of power had shifted because he’d returned to her. There was, however, a simple way to tilt it back toward him again. “But I’m going to need double what you’ve offered.”

  “Double?” She sat forward and tucked her legs beneath her, careless of how the tunic fell across her legs.

  “Otherwise I’d prefer to stay in Rome.”

  She examined him. “You’re bluffing. And it’s a pitiful bluff at that.”

  “If what you say about Maglorius is true, he’ll be a dangerous enemy in Jerusalem.”

  “You’re not afraid of him. Have you incurred more gambling debts?”

  Damian looked away, hoping she’d see it as a sign of weakness.

  She laughed. “You are far too easy to read. Too bad you aren’t that easy to seduce.”

  “Do we have an agreement?”

  “Of course. I’m not worried about money.”

  “Then let’s make the arrangements,” Damian said.

  “I’d love to,” Alypia said. She smiled and patted a place beside her. “Why don’t we take the rest of the day to make sure we’ve covered all the details?”

  “I’ll be sending one of my slaves,” Damian said, very tempted but doing his best to hide it. “Arrange to have half of the amount available. I’ll collect the other half when I return.”

  He forced himself to walk away without looking back.

  “We could have met at the forum,” Helius said, “but I don’t want people wondering what matter I have to discuss with you.”

  “I see,” Caius Sennius Ruso replied, gesturing at the opulence of the private chambers of Helius. “So we are here because you are concerned strictly about my reputation?”

  “You’d better be,” Helius said.

  “I have nothing to hide.”

  “Then tell me where you were the last three days,” Helius said, expecting Ruso to tell a lie. That would give Helius an immediate edge, including a sharp response to Ruso’s sarcastic insolence.

  “Yesterday I was at home,” Ruso said evenly.

  Evasion like this was no surprise to Helius. “And the day before that?”

  “With Gallus Sergius Damian,” Ruso said. “You’re familiar, of course, with his brother, Vitas, as you just had him executed in the arena.”

  Ruso was a senator, with his share of influence and power. But that power paled in comparison to the whims of Nero. Most senators, upon an invitation to a private audience with Helius, would show some degree of apprehension. Was Ruso responding with this arrogance because he truly had nothing to hide?

  “Did Damian treat you well?” Helius asked.

  “No,” Ruso said. “He had me bound and kept me in a shed without food or water.”

  Helius tilted his head slightly. This candor was startling.

  “Not the answer you expected?” Ruso asked, amused. When Helius remained silent, Ruso continued. “Let’s stop playing games, shall we? I’m sure you already know what happened. Either a spy in Damian’s household or mine told you. Otherwise, why invite me here?”

  Helius leaned forward. “You, a senator, captured and bound in broad daylight. Yet I haven’t heard any complaints or calls for the arrest of Damian. Something is strange about this.”

  “He was looking for a Jew named John,” Ruso said, “who has written some kind of treasonous letter.”

  “Damian told you this?”

  “No. He interrogated me as if I were that Jew. I presume you hired Damian.”

  Since Ruso had made that accurate presumption, Helius saw no harm in acknowledging it, especially if he could learn more about Damian’s intentions. “Did Damian tell you why he didn’t hand you over to me immediately?”

  “No,” Ruso said, still amused.

  “Why didn’t you tell him who you were?”

  “And risk my death?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Put yourself in my position. You are walking through a market when, without warning, you are gagged and kidnapped and thrown into a private litter. When you are finally taken out of the litter, you discover that the man who has captured you is a famous slave hunter who believes you to be a Jew sought by Nero. You are now isolated in this man’s complete power. What might he do if he discovers he has captured the wrong man? Perhaps kill you to make sure you don’t have a chance to let the world know of his mistake. So I remained silent, hoping that my own clients would somehow come to my rescue.”

  “That sounds rehearsed,” Helius said.

  “Of course it is,” Ruso snapped. “You call me for a private audience the day after I’m released. I would be an idiot not to expect your questions.”

  “Why were you released?”

  “Somehow, it didn’t seem like a question to ask. I was happy for my freedom.”

  “And now that you are free, why haven’t you had Damian—” Helius stopped as a small slave entered the courtyard, bowed, and waited to be acknowledged or given permission to speak.

  Helius sighed. “What is it?”

  “The emperor wishes to see you,” the slave said. “Immediately.” Without waiting for Helius to respond, the slave bowed again and trotted from the courtyard.

  Helius felt the familiar spasm of his bowels, and it took all his effort to remain composed. Nero? What had the emperor discovered? Was this it? Would he be sent to the arena?

  “You were asking why I haven’t had Damian arrested,” Ruso said. “What good would it do? He won’t make that mistake again. And I know that he knows my identity. That alone should keep him away from me in the future.”

  Helius blinked, forcing himself to remain in the present. “You know that he knows . . .”

  “The slave who released me followed me to my estate. It was pitiful, actually, his efforts to remain hidden.”

  “I see.” Helius had hoped to find some leverage on Ruso and at the same time learn more about Damian. He’d failed in both and succeeded in letting Ruso know that he was indeed in pursuit of the Jew who had written the troublesome letter.

  “I’m finished with you,” Helius said. He gave Ruso a tiny wave of the hand, suggesting that his brief audience with him was finished and barely of consequence anyway. With legs that hardly wanted to obey him, he escorted Ruso to the hallway and immediately turned the opposite direction.

  Nero hated to be kept waiting.

  Earlier Pavo had made a decision not to lower the sails, hoping the steering oar would be fixed so soon that it would be more efficient to tack westward than to waste the time it would take to raise the sails again.

  He’d lost his gamble.

  Even with the wind pushing the sails at an angle instead of from behind, the ship’s speed had been enough to send it dangerously close to the eastern edge of the large island looming ahead.

  He and the pilot had also misjudged the tidal currents between the Tyrrhenian Sea to the north of Sicily and the Ionian Sea to the south. At the beginning of the straits, the distance between Sicily and the mainland was under two miles, with a sea bottom so deep it had never been charted. As water rushed between the rising hills on each side, it created a series of whirlpools, the largest of which formed a dangerous vortex beneath the mainland cliff of Scylla.

  Charybdis.

  This was the giant whirlpool that Ulysses had faced in his great odyssey, with the opposing cliff of Scylla like a monster ready to destroy any vessel that escaped Charybdis.

  “Drop the sails!” roared Pavo. “Drop the sails!”

  Men scu
rried to follow his orders.

  Although still a half mile away, the sucking and gurgling of the tidal currents at Scylla were easily heard above the screaming of seagulls and the shouting of the crew.

  Vitas was mesmerized by the sight of large pieces of jetsam bobbing into the vortex and disappearing. Intellectually, he knew the whirlpool wasn’t as strong as legend suggested; it could not pull down a ship like this. But without a steering oar or sails, he had no doubt it could spin the ship and dash it into the cliffs of Scylla, where the white splash of waves against sharp rocks was easily visible at this distance.

  “May the gods be with us,” he breathed.

  “May God be with us,” he heard John say.

  Vitas turned to John and marveled at the serenity on the older man’s face. His eyes were closed. Vitas didn’t want to intrude on John’s private moment.

  He moved closer to Pavo and overheard Betto say, “You should have let us sacrifice the Jew.”

  “We’ll deal with that later,” Pavo snapped. “Right now I have a ship to save.”

  “Without sails, we’re at the mercy of the current. And you can feel it gaining speed.”

  “We’ll drop the sea anchors,” Pavo said. “We won’t drag bottom, of course, but perhaps it will slow us.”

  “No,” Betto answered. “We’re going to lose all maneuverability with the sails down. If we get sucked into Charybdis, the last thing we want is something that would prevent us from being spat out again.”

  “What do we do?”

  “Send me down to the steering oar,” Betto said.

  “What!”

  “Lower me by rope. Let me see if I can do anything to fix it.”

  “We don’t have time.”

  “We don’t have a choice.”

  Vitas watched Pavo’s face and saw the flickering of a decision.

  “Go,” Pavo said.

  Three palace guards escorted Helius down a corridor toward Nero’s inner chambers. Helius racked his brain, struggling to find a reason for this summons other than a death sentence. But he of all people knew that when Nero wanted to see someone “immediately,” the prospects for a long life were dim indeed. So Helius contemplated his death, and he discovered something he had suspected all along: he had no courage.

  A man can wonder, he realized, but not until the test arrives can he actually know. On occasion, he’d been with soldiers when Christians were arrested and found himself astounded as the mousiest of women became lions of resolve. More often, however, he witnessed this same courage in the arenas as those Christians endured the savagery of the beasts, and he would force himself to ignore traces of jealousy.

  As for himself, immediately after the summons, he’d retreated to a lavatory. After vomiting, he lost control of his bowels, too.

  His terror was the arena. If he believed in the gods, he would have prayed for the mercy of an invitation from Nero to empty his veins instead.

  The arenas. How ironic, Helius thought, that after all he’d helped Nero inflict upon Christians, he’d now learn for himself the horrors of their tribulation.

  In the lavatory, preparing to meet with Nero, an image had flashed through Helius’s mind. Of a lawyer found guilty of embezzling from a client and sent to the arena. Rather than face the lions, the lawyer had used a sponge on a stick—the same sponge used for personal hygiene in the lavatory—and shoved the sponge so far down his throat that he successfully committed suicide by asphyxiation.

  In his own lavatory, Helius had contemplated immediate suicide, but with the guard outside and no way of getting to a knife to slit his wrists, he found he didn’t have enough courage to force a sponge down his throat.

  This contrast, too, seemed ironic. He was one of the most powerful men in the empire, yet he did not possess the courage and defiance in the face of gruesome death owned by the most penniless of Christians in the arena.

  After washing, he’d meekly gone toward his audience with Nero, telling himself he would talk his way out of trouble, rehearsing his plea.

  Yes, I deserve execution. But with me dead, Vitas will surely escape. And what will serve you better? Punishment, just as it is, meted out to me? Or the capture of Vitas to end any threats of a plot against you?

  Helius knew this was Nero’s biggest terror. A plot to assassinate him. He would carefully capitalize on Nero’s fear and hope for the best.

  Helius continued to rehearse his arguments as he passed the expensive tapestries hanging on the walls, the sculptures and busts. To think he would no longer enjoy these beautiful luxuries as if they were his.

  It was a consolation of sorts that if he was killed, he’d still have his revenge on Vitas. For if the escape of Vitas had led to this—a death sentence from Nero—then at least Helius had started a chain of events that would kill Vitas. Vitas would pay for what happened today.

  When Helius reached Nero, his legs were trembling. He was glad that his toga draped most of his body.

  Worse, Sporus sat on a nearby cushion to witness whatever nightmare Nero would decree on him. Helius took no satisfaction in the boy’s pallor and obvious pain. If Nero could castrate someone as an act of love, it was unimaginable what he might unleash in rage; except Helius knew too well by now what to imagine.

  “Helius,” Nero said in a hearty voice.

  Faked camaraderie?

  Helius remembered how he himself had stroked the face of Sporus before pronouncing the boy’s fate, knowing that pretended affection would accentuate the horror about to be inflicted. Was Nero playing the same game?

  “I sent the guards because I wanted you here immediately,” Nero said. He frowned as he examined Helius. “Are you feeling well?”

  “Indigestion,” Helius lied.

  “Find the cook responsible and feed him to the lions.” Nero laughed at his own joke. “Let him spoil their digestion in place of those unpalatable Christians.”

  Was Nero setting up a terrible punch line?

  “Excellent plan, as always,” Helius managed to say.

  “That’s why you’re here,” Nero said.

  It was like Nero had reached out to squeeze Helius’s heart.

  “Excellent planning?” Helius uttered in a choked voice.

  “Indeed. It’s about my trip to Greece.”

  Greece. This was the first ray of hope for Helius. Greece?

  “I may be gone for months,” Nero said. “As you know, I am their favorite god.”

  What Helius knew was that Nero lavished money on Greek cities willing to put up temples for the purpose of worshiping him.

  “You are their only god,” Helius said. “As is just and fair and right.”

  Nero nodded. “While I cannot leave Sporus behind,” he said, “I’m afraid I won’t be able to take you with me. I hope you’ll understand.”

  “Of course,” Helius said. His mood had gone from terrified self-preservation to rage at the unfairness of it. He’d been totally replaced by Sporus. A boy with no manhood!

  “After all,” Nero continued, “you are the one person I trust to handle all the affairs of Rome in my absence.”

  Rage died. Had Helius heard right?

  “You will accept this responsibility, won’t you?”

  All of the affairs of Rome? Helius would become de facto emperor!

  “Helius?”

  He realized he’d been so stunned by this unexpected offer that he had not replied to Nero.

  “You are pleased, aren’t you?” Nero sounded anxious.

  Helius smiled broadly at his emperor.

  “Pleased?” Helius answered. “Beyond anything you could imagine.”

  The ship was now five hundred yards away from Charybdis. Between the landmasses, the wind had funneled and blew hard. Three crewmen were holding a rope that had been used to lower Betto at the stern of the boat.

  Finally, Vitas heard the words that gave him relief.

  “Sails up!” Betto shouted. “Put a man on the steering oar!”

  As the t
hree crew members pulled Betto back onto the ship, the other crewmen began hoisting rope to pull up the square rig and topsail.

  Four hundred yards to Charybdis. It seemed the ship was still gaining speed in the tidal current.

  A gust of wind caught the square rig and tilted the ship dangerously. A cacophony of curses burst from the crew as they tried to trim the sails.

  Three hundred yards.

  Vitas saw more debris pulled into the vortex and sucked out of sight. The dashing of waves on the rocks of the cliff behind the whirlpool threw spray at least thirty feet into the air. If the ship spun into Charybdis, it would certainly spin out again into the sharp rocks.

  Two hundred yards.

  Betto was on deck again. He dashed to the steering oar and leaned into it.The ship seemed to groan. The mainmast creaked. Again the ship tilted, throwing Vitas off balance.

  Then slowly, surely, the ship began to turn away from the giant whirlpool.

  A hundred yards.

  Would the steering oar hold under the tremendous pressure against wind and current?

  Fifty yards.

  Vitas ran across the pitching deck toward John. “Rope,” Vitas said tersely. He was angry at himself for not thinking of it earlier. “We’ve got time to rope ourselves to the railing.”

  But Vitas was wrong.

  What seemed like seconds later, the hull of the ship touched the edge of the vortex.

  Vitas prepared himself for the violence of a plunging, swirling ship.

  But the weight of the ship was too great, and the wind in the sail too strong. The ship continued through the edge, untouched by the whirlpool. The cliffs of Scylla began to recede.

  Pavo approached. “Ahead is Messana,” he growled at Vitas. “It’s obvious we’re going to have to stop in the harbor to repair the steering oar.”

  Messana. With a nearby legion. Surely among the soldiers was someone who knew of Vitas. He could stay here, send for Sophia, find a way to—

  “I’m going to have to place you in chains until we leave harbor again,” Pavo said. “So don’t entertain any thoughts of escape.”

  Before Vitas could protest, Pavo pointed at John. “You’ll be in chains as well. I don’t like the two of you together. It makes me wonder what you’re plotting, and it makes the crew nervous. So you’ll each stay in those chains, kept well apart until just before we arrive in Alexandria.”