“No,” Jael said. “Not until you give me answers. If my family is involved in something, I need to know what to guard against.”
“I have no idea why your household was chosen either,” Vitas said.
“Your wrists are bound. You are delivered like a captive. Who were those four men? Where are you from?”
The little girls behind her legs had begun to edge out to get a better look at the strange man.
Vitas squatted. He rolled his eyeballs a few times and stuck out his tongue. They retreated and then giggled from the safe vantage point behind their mother.
“I was taken captive in Rome,” Vitas told Jael as he rose. “I was put on a ship to Alexandria and, as you can see, taken here.”
“Who put you on the ship?”
“Friends, I believe.”
“You believe . . .”
“I would have been killed by the emperor had I stayed in Rome. Enemies would have no reason to see that I was spared.”
The baby boy in her arms woke and began to cry softly. She rocked him and hummed until he fell asleep again.
“I would say none of this is believable. Yet you are here.”
“My hands,” Vitas said. “If you could. . .”
“You are a stranger. I must protect my girls.”
Vitas understood. They were in an apartment that was little more than a slum. Crowded as the top floor was with tiny compartments filled with large families, there was an isolation and intimacy here that would frighten any woman with any sense.
“If I go on the street like this,” Vitas said gently, “I am prey for any thief.”
“I have no reason to trust you or your intentions once you are released.”
“Call for a neighbor,” Vitas suggested.
She closed her eyes and shook her head. Tears seeped down her cheeks. “I’m forced to accept charity from the people who live around me. How could I explain to them a man alone with me? If they shun me, I will be forced to live on the streets.”
“I understand.” Vitas meant it. “I’ll wait for your husband to return.”
Yet to Vitas, that didn’t seem like a good alternative, either. What if the husband didn’t believe Vitas or his wife? This certainly was a strange situation. Vitas had visions of an angry Jew plunging a knife into his chest while his own hands were helpless behind his back.
The woman began to weep openly. “My husband will not be returning. That’s why I am forced to live on the charity of my neighbors.”
Her twin daughters began to sob.
“Mama? Mama?” one of the little girls asked. “Will this man take you away too?”
Their terror inspired Jael to force herself to stop weeping. She smiled and knelt to face her daughters, still cradling her son.
“No, no,” Jael said. “Mama was sad because she misses your papa too. I will never leave you.” Fierceness filled her eyes as she stood and faced Vitas again, her cheeks damp. “What choice do I have but to get you away from us?”
Vitas tried to smile kindly, hoping it would impress the woman.
“Turn around,” she said. “I warn you that if you try anything to harm my children, I will fight you to the death.”
Vitas did as directed. He felt her fumble awkwardly with the knots of twine that bound his wrists. It was difficult for her to work one-handed, as she had to hold her son with her other arm.
Five minutes later, Vitas was free. His first impulse was to leave as quickly as possible. He truly was free. Pavo had completed the task set upon him by the men in Rome. Vitas wanted to find a ship to get out of Alexandria.
At the doorway, however, he stopped. He stood just outside the cramped apartment, so that any neighbors watching would not be able to accuse him of impropriety.
“Your husband,” he asked Jael. “Why was he taken away?”
“More wine!” Lucullus roared. “If the dwarf is not in our hands, at least we can enjoy the fruits of his labor!”
A slave scurried from the dinner scene to fetch more wine, leaving behind a dozen guests reclined on couches, all of them drunk except for Lucullus, who had his reasons for pretending to be in the same condition.
“Most excellent pun,” an elderly man slurred. He was a former mayor of Smyrna, who had chosen exile on Patmos instead of facing a trial for strangling a young freewoman in the throes of passion. Broken veins on his nose served as evidence that too much alcohol was a frequent state for him. “Wine as the fruits of his labor. Hah!” The elderly man burped. “But I must implore you, Lucullus. If you find Strabo, don’t—”
“If I find him?” Lucullus said. “On an island this small, it’s a matter of when. Besides, he needs me. Who else will buy his wine and cheese in the quantities I do?”
“When you find him, don’t kill him. No one on the island makes better wine.” A burp. “But then, no one else on an island this desolate makes wine.”
Lucullus smiled indulgently, masking some anger at Strabo. The little man had taken a bribe to turn over the woman and old man as soon as they appeared. “Of course I won’t kill him. I like his wine too. A few candle flames applied to the bottom of his feet, I believe, will be sufficient punishment and persuasion to discover where he’s hidden his guests.”
Lucullus, a big, hairy man missing his two front teeth from a barroom fight long before his enlisted days, gave a nod to the three prostitutes sitting at the feet of the lone Jew in their midst.
“As I’ve told that handsome young man with you,” Lucullus said to the prostitutes, “Strabo lacks for courage. And pride. What other man would return week after week to serve the same soldiers who raped his wife?”
“Really!” one of the girls gasped. “Tell us more.”
The young Jew in their midst was as drunk as any of the other guests. “You don’t want to hear more,” he said, patting the girl’s thigh. “Lucullus has described it to me in graphic detail and you won’t find it pleasant. Like you, the girl was from Ephesus and occasionally came to Patmos to give well-paid comfort to lonely soldiers.”
“Are you calling us whores?” One of the other ones giggled. She leaned over and kissed him on the lips, then pulled away. “Maybe more of that will silence you.”
The other guests—three other prostitutes among wealthy exiles bored for entertainment—roared laughter and applauded. All hid well any resentment that Lucullus had ordered three of the six prostitutes who arrived on the supply ship to favor the young Jew.
“Silence?” Lucullus said. He’d been waiting for a reason to turn the conversation to the Jew. “We don’t want this young man silent.”
The slave returned with a large amphora of wine and began to refill all the goblets.
“Come now, Chayim,” Lucullus said as the slave moved from guest to guest. “Tell these beautiful women about your position in Nero’s inner court. They need to know how important you are.”
“Nero!” The first girl gasped, pushing herself harder against Chayim. “You’ve met Nero!”
Chayim slurped wine and grinned. “I live in his palace. Share his dinner parties.”
“Tell them how you got there,” Lucullus said. “I love the story.”
Chayim shrugged. “My father is one of the highest placed priests in Jerusalem, where I was raised. Apparently he was ashamed of how much I enjoyed a Roman’s life. Bernice, the queen of the Jews, made an arrangement to send me to Nero as a hostage of sorts.”
“Hostage?” echoed the second girl.
“As a way to ensure my father did as Bernice requested.”
“I don’t understand,” the second girl said.
“Nobody understands Jewish politics,” Chayim said. “But the best answer I can give you is this: Jewish royalty serves Rome, and Jewish religious leaders serve themselves. Bernice thought if Nero had the power of life and death over me, my father would have to obey her wishes.”
Lucullus laughed, wanting to encourage the young Jew. “Little did they know you would make such good friends with a god!
Far from being a prisoner, here you are, free and serving Nero.”
Chayim tried to look modest and failed.
“Tell them,” Lucullus said, “why and how you are here. It’s fascinating.”
Chayim gulped more wine. “There’s a woman—”
“Always a woman!” the elderly ex-mayor of Smyrna shouted and the others laughed.
When the laughter died, Lucullus looked at Chayim expectantly. Lucullus hoped this time, Chayim might reveal something that Lucullus hadn’t learned before.
“This woman’s husband attacked Nero at a dinner party,” Chayim said. “She was commanded to commit suicide but fled Rome.”
“And you’ve been sent to find her?” the first girl asked. “How terribly exciting.”
“Partly because I can recognize her face from that night at the dinner party,” Chayim said. “And partly because there are so few close to Nero that he can trust.”
All three girls nodded gravely. They were sitting beside a man who knew Nero!
“This woman’s husband actually attacked Nero?” asked the former mayor of Smyrna.
“Tried to kill him.” If Chayim was trying to hide his self-importance, he was doing a terrible job. The wine and the close attention of the women were making him careless, something that Lucullus noted with satisfaction. “Actually got his hands around Nero’s throat before the guards arrived. Trust me; I was there.”
“Attacked Nero at a dinner party?” the third girl asked, gasping. “Tell us more!”
“Does it matter why the man attacked?” Lucullus interrupted. “Chayim, tell them how you managed to get here to Patmos long before the woman you are chasing.”
Again, Chayim shrugged with false modesty. “I have a retinue of two dozen soldiers. And a letter from the emperor giving me full credit to spend what I need, when I need, where I need. Trust me; travel has not been an inconvenience.”
“Oh, my!” the first girl squeezed his thigh. “I think I’m falling in love.”
Laughter again, which irritated Lucullus. He wanted the young Jew as talkative as possible, without distractions. “At a wayside inn a few days’ travel outside Rome . . . , ” Lucullus coached Chayim.
“They were robbed,” Chayim said. “The woman and the old man traveling with her.”
“Old man?” the second girl said. “Who is the old man?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Chayim said. “He’ll die when I find the woman. No reason to take two prisoners back to Rome.”
“They were robbed . . . , ” Lucullus prompted.
“And when we arrived at that town a few days later,” Chayim obliged, “inquiring about a woman and an old man traveling together away from Rome, the thieves came forward. They offered to sell me a letter they’d stolen from the two. That letter directed them to Patmos. Instead of traveling overland like they did, I commandeered a navy ship and cruised here in ease to wait for them.”
“Why does Nero want the woman back in Rome?” the first girl asked, innocence in her voice. She glanced at Lucullus for approval. He winked, for he’d slipped her some gold ahead of the meal to ask this. “If Nero wanted her to commit suicide, why not kill her like the old man and save the effort of taking her back to Rome?”
Chayim looked in his near-empty goblet. He took a deep breath, as if he was about to answer.
Lucullus couldn’t help but lean forward. Here it was. If he could learn exactly why the woman was so important to Nero, it would be of great value. Enough to get him off this cursed island.
Chayim then grinned like a fox. “Well, if you want the answer to that, ask Helius, the one who sent me here on Nero’s behalf.”
Lucullus leaned back with a degree of satisfaction. He had learned something new. Nero didn’t want the woman. Helius did. This, Lucullus thought, was good. Very good.
When he had the woman captured, it would be a simple matter to have Chayim killed. In Chayim’s place, Lucullus would take the woman directly to Helius in Rome, not to Nero. It was obvious that the woman would be worth something to Helius. And undoubtedly it would be very profitable, given all the effort spent so far to find her.
It was a good plan indeed. And so close to completion.
“Wine!” Lucullus roared again for the slave. “More wine!”
Vitas saw a row of headless men laid neatly side by side by side. Some of the bodies were thin, muscled—obviously those of younger men. Others were fat-bellied, wrinkled, bowlegged. All, however, had the strange inertness and claylike appearance of the dead.
Vitas was in a marble hall, in the middle of the gardens that surrounded Alexandria’s library and medical school. The air was strangely cool, but he wondered if that was his imagination, a self-imposed chill that came with such an obvious reminder of mortality.
Vitas had learned to hate death. Most Romans gloried in military might, placed little value on human life except that of a Roman citizen. But for Vitas, memories of warfare only brought nightmares. And haunting questions.
He pushed his thoughts to the present.
At the far end of the hall, a young, dark-haired man was leaning over a table.
Vitas approached him. Closer now, Vitas saw that the man was stuffing the intestinal cavity of a cadaver with a fine salt. The man himself seemed to be about a decade younger than Vitas.
He looked up and nodded politely at Vitas, showing thick eyebrows and eyes that had lively curiosity. “This one is not ready yet,” the man said.
“Not ready,” Vitas echoed.
The young man must have misunderstood Vitas’s lack of comprehension. “I’m assuming you want the entire body, of course,” he said, his hands deep in the cadaver. “I suppose if you just need an arm or a leg you could take it. I’ll need a few minutes to get the saw.”
Vitas finally understood. “I’m not a physician. I’m looking for Issachar.”
The young man smiled. “I’m impressed you found me.”
Vitas smiled in return. “You were the only one moving in the hall.”
“No,” Issachar said. He finally removed his hands and wiped them on a nearby cloth. “I’m impressed that you were allowed here. You must be a high-ranking Roman.”
Vitas frowned.
“Your accent,” Issachar said. “Difficult to disguise. Nothing Greek about it.” He explained further. “Romans aren’t popular in this city. Especially at this library. It’s been over a hundred years, and they still talk about Julius Caesar as if it were yesterday when he burned half of the library’s scrolls.”
Vitas knew his history, of course. When Julius Caesar pursued Pompey into Egypt, Caesar found himself outnumbered and trapped in enemy territory because an Egyptian fleet had blockaded him in Alexandria. He ordered the ships in the harbor to be set on fire, destroying the Egyptian fleet, but the fire also spread into the city to the Great Library.
But it was more than that. Romans idealized the ancient Greeks—their art, their methods of learning, the mathematics and science that had changed the world. But Romans held near contempt for the Greek world that had peaked in military might with Alexander the Great, then slowly fragmented until the Romans had, in essence, conquered them.
Here in Alexandria, still the pinnacle of the Greek world despite its location at the mouth of the Nile, the Greeks held themselves in high esteem, still mourning Cleopatra’s defeat with Mark Antony. If only the battle at Actium had swung the other way, they believed, Cleopatra’s descendants would be ruling the world, instead of Octavian’s.
“So who are you?” Issachar asked with another smile.
Vitas had expected a broken man, perhaps bitter that his family and wealth had been taken away from him. Not a cheerful man with no apparent guile.
“As you guessed,” Vitas said, “I’m from Rome. What I’d like to know is who sent me from Rome to see you.”
Issachar’s puzzled expression looked genuine to Vitas. Issachar lifted a hand to rub his face as he thought about Vitas’s question, but then pulled it away, as if remembe
ring where he’d just had his hands.
“What a strange question,” Issachar said. “Why wouldn’t you know who sent you?”
“Truthfully, I’m in no mood to explain. I’ve already told my story to your wife.”
“My wife!” Instantly, the carefree attitude of the young man disappeared. “You spoke to her?”
“She told me I would find you here.”
“Tell me everything. How is she? How are my children? Did she seem in good spirits?”
“She sends her love,” Vitas said. Vitas understood too well the pain that this man was feeling.
All the vitality seemed to drain from Issachar.
“She didn’t tell me anything else, however,” Vitas said. “She said if you wanted to explain why you had been taken from the family, you would.”
“How I love that woman,” Issachar said softly. He raised his hands toward his face again, caught himself again, and sighed.
Vitas was curious about the circumstances that had forced Issachar into such debt he had to sell himself as a slave but would not press the man for it. If he wanted to keep it his business, that was his right.
“‘He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead,’” Issachar said, pressing his lips in frustration as he paused. “‘So that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name.’”
“Six hundred and sixty-six,” Vitas said without thinking.
“You?” Issachar’s eyes widened. “You, too, are familiar with the Revelation?”
“Only the number of the Beast. That, too, is a long story.” This was not the time or place to talk about John.
“The Jewish leaders in Alexandria have boycotted all of the other Jews who follow the Christos,” Issachar said. “I am a follower. First I was barred from the guild of silversmiths. Then barred from any dealings with anyone in the Jewish community. I could not buy or sell. It drove my family into poverty and then, finally, total desolation.”
Vitas remembered something else John had said to him, on their first night on the boat leaving Rome. “All of us marked by the Lamb are hated by those marked by the Beast.”
The Last Sacrifice Page 29