Cota cocked her ear, and her eyes narrowed. Her lips formed a thin, grim line, and she marched to the wall and pushed something that opened it to reveal another room behind it.
Now the voices were loud and clear—a young woman’s and a man’s, presumably Cota’s husband. There was a definite slap, then the girl’s voice cried out: “Stop it, Vibius. You know I am only trying to help the vineyard.”
Vibius said, “I will help the vineyard, and you will do what I want.”
“I know what you want, Vibius, and you’ll never get it with me.”
“You little whore,” he said. “You’ve given yourself to every rat in the streets. Now you want to get holy with me? I think not.”
“Vibius!” Cota screamed, and Athanasius followed her inside to see her husband threatening this girl with long dark hair, her hand at her face where it had been struck.
Vibius turned and looked at his wife and the stranger with rage. “What do you want?”
“This is Samuel Ben-Deker. Your father wants you to put him to work.”
Athanasius could feel Vibius’s stare. “Are you sure you haven’t already, Cota?”
“Vibius!” she screamed again, so that all inside and outside the winery could hear.
But Vibius was unmoved. “Take this one to suitable quarters tonight and see if you have any use for him tomorrow,” he ordered the girl, who half-turned her face to reveal a ghastly split cheek that made Cota gasp.
“Yes, sir,” she said and in defiance gave Vibius a mock Roman salute.
He brought up his hand to strike her again but thought better of it when Cota sternly repeated to him, “Vibius, your father.”
“We’ll go out the back way,” said the badly beaten girl, and walked through an archway into the Angel’s Vault toward the secondary vault doors that led to the caves deep inside the mountain.
Athanasius turned to Cota. “I’m to follow her into that?”
“Where else for you, Ben-Deker?” Vibius said. “Now leave us.”
Feeling very strange, as if he had been to this place before, Athanasius followed the girl and her long, black hair into a stone cave that led only to darkness. The long shafts of light from the sunset that had streamed across the floors of the winery office began to disappear as the vault door closed behind him.
“The Dovilins order the wine vaults sealed off every night from the inside as well as the outside,” the girl explained and turned to face him. “Don’t worry about the dark. I know the way. By the way, Samuel Ben-Deker, my name is Gabrielle.”
Suddenly he stopped, watching the last shaft of light touch her bleeding face and illuminate it like a halo of light, before the vault door plunged them into darkness.
It was the girl from his dreams back in Rome.
That evening Dovilin thought he had better see how things went with the new Jew and sent Brutus to find Vibius. It was Cota who showed up in the courtyard.
“Where’s my son?” Dovilin asked her.
“You know you should be asking one of the Sweet Grapes girls if you want to know what my husband does at night, Father,” she replied flatly.
Dovilin had neither the energy nor time to reply. His son’s marriage was what it was. For himself, he would have gladly taken care of Cota’s needs were it not for his firm belief, more stoic than Christian, that feelings of eros were better channeled into business and accumulating wealth. It was a lesson he had somehow failed to pass on to his son, as Cota was quick to remind him all too often. “Just tell me about Ben-Deker. How did things go?”
“Fine,” she said, although Dovilin knew there was more that she was holding back. “Vibius didn’t like him, of course, but he didn’t stop your little whore from taking him to the caves for the night to sleep with all your other slaves.”
Dovilin thought he understood now. “I don’t like Gabrielle either, Cota. None of us do. But the vineyard needs her. The family can master the science of wine production, but the creation of great grapes is an art. She understands the soil, the sun, the wind and water like nobody else.”
“She has help with that, Father, you know it,” Cota said darkly. “Deep down in the caves.”
He nodded. “Perhaps. But it is her tongue that saves us in the Angel’s Vault, during the final fermentation. Hers is the last tongue to taste our wine before it is sealed and shipped and then opened before even Caesar. It’s never let us down.”
“Or never let you or Vibius down, Father?” Cota replied, insinuating rumors that Cota knew were utterly false but which Dovilin did not refute, if only to make Gabrielle an outcast not only among the employees of the Dovilin Winery but the Christians of the underground church in the caves.
Dovilin was ready to send her away. “Is there anything else you wish to tell me about Ben-Deker?”
“What makes you say that?”
“His Star of David is something a man like him would never wear for himself. It has one of those Tears of Joy inside.”
Dovilin stiffened. “Tear of Joy, you say?”
“It’s a crystal of some kind.”
“What color?” Dovilin pressed.
“I think it’s a sapphire. For a man like Samuel, it must be his most priceless possession. He’ll have to watch himself in the caves.”
“Yes, yes,” Dovilin said and waved her off. “You can go.”
He cursed, pulled a cord and waited impatiently for Brutus to appear. He felt a dribble on his forehead and wiped off a rare drop of perspiration. His slave appeared in the courtyard and said, “Master.”
“Brutus,” said Dovilin, scribbling a coded text on a small strip of papyrus, rolling it up and slipping it into the stylus with which it was penned. “I need a Mercury courier and horse immediately to deliver this message to Rome: We have Athanasius.”
TO BE CONTINUED…
From New York Times bestselling author
THOMAS GREANIAS
The Stunning Conclusion…
Book III
RULE OF GOD
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THE CHIRON CONFESSION
Book II
WRATH OF ROME
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Wrath of Rome (Book Two of the Dominium Dei Trilogy) Page 9