Ariella took a step toward him, sword arm raised, but Jeremiah stepped between them, his palms up. “No need for this, men. Floronius, my apologies for both my speed and my clumsiness. Forgive an old man who has served too long.”
But Floronius had his eyes on Ariella, and it would not end with Jeremiah’s undeserved humiliation. “If you have served too long, then, old man, perhaps it is time you were relieved of your duties.” He shoved the dull end of his sword against Jeremiah’s shoulder, pushing him back.
“Stop.” Ariella tried to push Jeremiah behind her, but Floronius seemed to seize on her weakness for the old man and use it as a deadlier weapon than a sword. He shoved Jeremiah again before Ariella could intervene.
She saw the man stumble, saw his feet catch under him, but could do nothing to stop the fall.
His eyes widened and his arms spread wide, and then he pitched backward and fell against the palus.
Ariella felt more than heard a horrifying crack, like the snapping of a brittle tree branch. Torn between a blinding haze of fury at Floronius that prompted her to rush at the brute with her fists and a flush of concern for Jeremiah, she chose to race to the older man’s side where he lay in the dirt, panting.
“What is it, Jeremiah? Where is the pain?”
Jeremiah’s face paled, and he reached to grip her arm with a strength that belied his age. She tried to absorb his pain through that grip, but he looked faint.
He licked dry lips and rasped out, “My hip.”
Floronius’s derisive laughter echoed. “So we shall be looking for a new slave after all.”
Ariella ignored him. For now. There would be time for retribution later. She ran a hand over the man’s hip but could feel no disjoint. Broken, then, most likely. “Do not move, Jeremiah. I will get Drusus.”
He nodded slightly, eyes closed.
Ariella found Drusus in the portico at the end of the barracks’ large training yard, sharpening a lancea. She pointed to the distant figure of Jeremiah, still on the ground. Floronius had vanished.
Drusus huffed in annoyance. “Well, I did not pay much for him, so the loss is not too great. It was time for a younger man anyway.”
“He needs a physician, Drusus! His hip is out of place, or broken. It must be set.”
Drusus shrugged and returned to his sharpening. “A slave his age? He will not live to recover. Why bother?”
Ariella kicked at the lancea, knocking it from Drusus’s hand. “Because he is a good man! Unlike the rest of the monsters in this place, including yourself.”
Drusus stood, fire in his eyes, but Ariella did not care. “Prove me wrong, then, Drusus. Let me care for him.”
“Take him to your own cell, then, if you wish. I care not what you do with him.”
Ariella fumed at the cruelty but said nothing more. She returned to Jeremiah with a few comforting words, then sought out Celadus to help her move Jeremiah as gently as they could manage. Once in her cell, she bathed his forehead with cool water and promised to find a way to relieve his pain.
But Jeremiah shook his gray head. “If it is my time, then I am only glad I have you to ease the passage.”
Ariella’s heart warmed with the words of affection, but she would not give him so quickly to the afterlife. “Do you have family here, Jeremiah? Anyone I can find to help you?” Why had she never asked him such a question?
His eyes misted. “Family, yes. I have family here.”
“I will take you to them.”
With whispered instructions he told her where his family lived. She would bide her time until nightfall, then somehow get him out.
Through the evening meal, while the other fighters laughed and told their ribald stories as usual, with no thought to the faithful slave suffering in her cell, Ariella choked down Jeremiah’s fish stew and waited for her chance. When the time came for her nightly chains, she convinced Drusus to leave her free for the night, to care for Jeremiah. Her earlier words must have penetrated to some degree, for he said nothing but left without locking her in shackles.
She sat beside Jeremiah on the ground, singing soft songs from home, while he dozed in snatches and groaned in his sleep. When the chill convinced her that night had fallen, Ariella slipped from the cell, found the wobbly wooden cart Jeremiah used to bring his purchases from the Macellum, and rolled it through the damp grass, as near to her cell as possible.
It would not do to involve Celadus in this effort. She did not trust him so fully.
She gave Jeremiah a rag to bite down on, then half carried, half dragged him to the cart. He collapsed in relief.
A few quick turns took them through the bumpy streets of Pompeii, each rut another injury to the dear man. The night air wrapped chilly fingers around her and squeezed. The shadowy streets quickened her pace.
“Are you certain they will be awake?” She rolled the cart to a stop in front of a large set of double doors.
“They will come.”
Ariella took in the size of the doors. This was no poor relation. “Your family lives here?”
He smiled, his head against the side of the wagon. “They will come.”
And so she knocked with trembling fingers on the door of this wealthy home and waited for a servant to answer the late-night summons.
When the door opened, a bulky Persian stared down on her with dark and suspicious eyes. She stepped aside to reveal her cargo. “He is hurt. I have brought him to his family.”
The Persian flicked a glance over the wagon, then his eyebrows shot up. “Rabbi!” He pulled the door wide. “Can he walk?”
Ariella shook her head. Rabbi?
The servant opened the other wide door, then helped her navigate the cart over the threshold and into the entry hall of the grand house. Ariella caught a glimpse of the expansive courtyard in the center, with moonlight playing over flowering bushes. And somewhere, deep within the house, she heard the sound of singing.
The house still hummed with activity, even at this late hour. The Persian left them in the atrium to fetch someone else, and she eyed the comings and goings of the staff, carrying platters of food and bulky cushions toward one of the entertaining chambers off the central garden. So taken was she with the evidence of a late-night party that she missed the entrance of a woman until the matron of the house was upon them, her worried voice calling out to Jeremiah where he still lay in the cart.
Her hand was on his forehead at once, and she looked Ariella over, a question in her eyes. She was dressed in a scarlet stola and heavily jeweled, but there was no arrogance in her look, only a concern that seemed to extend to them both.
“I am one of the gladiators.” Ariella dropped her eyes. “It is his hip. I fear it is broken. He—he told me to bring him here.” Uncertainty at her course faltered her voice, but the woman patted her arm and smiled. Ariella found herself drawn to her warmth.
Within moments, others had been summoned, and Jeremiah had been carried to the triclinium where a large group assembled and lay on cushions.
Ariella stood beside him at the wall, uncertain of whether she should stay. But Jeremiah’s hand found hers and did not let go.
She could make no sense of this family of his. The size of the house, its abundant statuary and elaborate frescoes, spoke of great wealth. People of all ages filled the room, men and women, peasant and noble, even foreigners. Fires burned in braziers at the corners of the warm room, and the table was laden with an abundance of food and drink. Her muscles relaxed, as though she were coming untied within, and she sank to the cushion beside Jeremiah. “You are a rabbi?” She felt her face flame with embarrassment. She had thought of him as only a slave, but of course he had another life, before. Just as she did.
He smiled sadly. “I once was. In happier days.”
A physician had been summoned, but while they waited, the group focused its concern on the two newcomers. The noblewoman, Europa, brought her a dish heaped with lentils and urged her to eat. Ariella shook her head, embarrassed further to
be treated thus, but Europa took Ariella’s hands and wrapped them around the warm bowl. “You are Jeremiah’s friend”—she put an arm around Ariella’s shoulder—“and so you are also our friend.”
The light touch of the woman, so like a mother, dissolved her, and she bent to the dish of lentils to hide her misty eyes. She should be getting back to the barracks before her absence was noted. Instead, she inhaled the spicy scent of the food, her eyes closed in pleasure.
Jeremiah whispered to Europa, “Do not let me keep you from your meeting. Please, go on.”
Europa started to object, but then seemed to sense something unspoken from Jeremiah and nodded. She circled the benches set before the three tables and bent to speak into the ear of a man, presumably her husband.
A young girl leaned against him and looked to Europa with the devotion of a daughter. She stood and crossed the room to bring Jeremiah a woolen blanket. Her foot was deformed and twisted inward, and she had an impossibly loping gait, as though she struggled to maintain her balance.
All of this Ariella watched with great interest, even as the comfort of the room and the warmth of the people seemed to woo her into a kind of stupor. She ate the lentils, only half-aware that the food was richer than any she’d tasted since leaving the frightful home of Valerius in Rome.
Europa’s husband stood and began to speak, and Ariella’s attention was captured at once, for he spoke like a rabbi himself, quoting from the Torah, of the wickedness of man becoming great in the earth, with every imagination of his heart becoming evil continually. It shocked her, to hear this Roman speak of HaShem, quote from her Torah, even to condemn the evil so rampant in his world. He spoke with heaviness of their fallen friends.
And then, as though the very room had lifted from this place and floated to the heart of Jerusalem itself, someone in the flickering shadows of the corner began to speak in her native tongue, her beloved Hebrew.
Ariella’s jaw slackened to hear it, and she hung on each word as the young man spoke from the prophet Isaiah’s writings. “The Creator’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save. His ear is not heavy, that it cannot hear.”
He paused and someone else across the room repeated his words in Latin, translating for the rest of the crowd. And then he spoke again, wrapping Ariella in the rhythm of his words, carrying her backward to home and family: “But your iniquities have separated you from your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He will not hear.”
Again someone translated, and when he had finished, Ariella slumped against the cushions, drained as though she had faced an opponent in the arena.
“This was for you,” Jeremiah whispered.
“Where is he from?” Perhaps she had known him as a child in Judea.
But Jeremiah shook his head. “He is Roman. He does not know Hebrew.”
Ariella frowned. “He speaks with the tongue of a native.”
“A gift. A sign for you.”
She understood none of this. “For me?”
The teaching seemed to have ended, and as the people conversed, Jeremiah spoke to her alone. He nodded toward the girl with the deformed foot. “Flora was born in Rome, to parents who believed themselves cursed.”
Ariella studied the woman, Europa. “She is not their daughter?”
Jeremiah’s eyes on the girl held fondness. “They found her beside the river. Her father had exercised his right to expose her. Deformed children are seen as useless or cursed, and are rarely spared.”
Ariella gritted her teeth. More evidence that the Roman conquerors were swine.
“But as the prophet Isaiah says, we are all twisted, deformed by sin, destined for destruction.”
Ariella shifted, uncomfortable on the couch. “But for this, we have the Day of Atonement.” Yet even as she said it, the memory of the burning Temple filled her mind.
“No sacrifice, no altar. No Temple.” Jeremiah shook his head. “And the Law and Prophets tell us that HaShem will not hear the prayers without the atonement.”
“What are we to do, then?” She did not know why she asked. She had given up caring what HaShem thought of her many angry years ago.
Jeremiah patted her hand and smiled at Flora. “Thank the Creator for making our adoption possible.”
The man spoke in riddles. She opened her mouth to question, but the room had quieted, and attention had turned to a slave at the doorway.
“The physician?” Europa asked.
The slave shook his head. “Two noblemen. Unknown to me. They are asking for you.”
At this a hush fell over the group, as though they feared this intrusion, and even Jeremiah’s grip tightened on hers.
Ariella cursed her thoughtlessness. She had risked much in coming here and had stayed too long. And now, perhaps, she would have to pay for such foolishness.
20
Thirty days until the election. Thirty days until Cato could see Maius’s smug face tossed into a cell to await trial for his crimes. Thirty days until he could free Portia from her bonds.
Too short to mount a successful campaign, and too unbearably long to leave Portia locked in a cell beneath the magisterial offices. Before he could begin meeting with the guilds, before he would even declare himself a candidate, he must find a way to ensure Portia was well.
In the early morning hours, the coolness of his bedchamber drove him to the atrium to seek the uncertain warmth of the watery sunlight that filtered past the Cyprus trees in patches on the walkways. He took his meal of bread and grapes in the garden, nodding acknowledgment to one of the newly acquired slaves.
Octavia soon appeared, and it seemed to Cato that she had aged a decade overnight.
“Any word?” She twisted her hands together at her waist.
Cato shook his head. “I have sent inquiries. But no one knows exactly where she is, nor do we have any disloyal to Maius who have access to the cells.”
From the doorway, a steely voice joined the conversation. “I know of some.”
Portia’s husband, Lucius, stood framed in the still-shadowed double doors to the street. His tight jaw and dark-circled eyes spoke of a sleepless night.
Octavia held out welcoming hands, and Lucius strode across the atrium and embraced her, his voice muffled against Octavia’s dark hair. “She thinks I disbelieved her.”
“She knows your love. It will sustain her.”
Cato clapped his sister’s husband on the back. “You know some who could help?”
He pulled away, raked a hand through his hair, and nodded. “There is a group of people who care for those in prison. They’ve been given special permission to enter the cells, to bring food, clothing. Perhaps messages.” His voice broke on the last word.
Cato reached across to squeeze his upper arm in sympathy. “Who are they?”
“I do not know. I have heard tell of them over the years, but they seem to be a mysterious sect of some kind.”
Cato eyed Octavia. Did her thoughts travel in the same direction, to her brother in Rome?
She glanced sideways at him but said nothing.
“You can find them?”
Lucius nodded. “I will make inquiries. I will find them.”
By nightfall, Lucius had made good on his promise. He returned to the house, where Cato had stationed himself in the tablinum, the reading room off the courtyard, poring over some public records of Pompeii he had borrowed and trying to find an answer to the riddle of unseating Nigidius Maius. At Lucius’s footfall he jumped to his feet. “Yes?”
Lucius nodded, breathing heavily. “If we go now, we will perhaps find them meeting together.”
Cato rolled the records and secured them with a string, then tossed them to the table. “Then let us go.”
They crossed the city in silence, Lucius leading the way. The night held a damp chill, and Cato shivered a bit at both the night air and the mystery of the errand. Soon enough they reached a home across the town from his own, but matched in affluence, if the ornate carving of the
doorway spoke truth.
A dark-skinned, muscled slave answered their summons, then bid them wait while he carried their message. He returned a moment later and bid them enter, then glided through the courtyard.
Lucius looked at Cato and shrugged, and the two followed the bulky slave to the doorway of a large triclinium.
Cato stood in the door, taking in the crowded room, the faces upturned with wide, frightened eyes. Were these truly the fearless people who ventured beneath the Forum into the cells?
Lucius spoke first, uncharacteristically. “A friend, Septimus, sent me.” His words were for the room at large, for no one had yet stepped forward to greet them. “He said you could help my wife.”
Movement then, from the back of the room, and a large woman pushed through the group to stand before them.
Cato took her measure. She was wealthy, but also interested in their message.
“Who is your wife? And how do you think we can be of help?”
Lucius opened his mouth to speak, but emotion choked his words.
Cato stepped to his side. “My sister.” The woman nodded for him to continue. “She has been falsely accused by a powerful man and committed to the cells until her trial. We fear for her safety and her health. We were told—are hoping—that there are some here who might help.”
He surveyed the group again, making eye contact with many. Young and old, rich and peasant. His eyes widened when he saw the large man who had subdued the madman in the Forum sitting in the back of the room. And was that the wild man himself, seated nearby, dressed and clean-shaven?
To the man’s right, an old man lay outstretched on a cushion, and beside him, head bent and face hidden, a familiar shorn head and gladiator’s leather. A strange mixture of feeling rushed through Cato, concern and fear, surprise and pleasure.
“Ari?” He was careful not to use her real name, and she lifted stricken eyes without raising her head. He longed to ask if she was again trying to escape, taking refuge with this compassionate group, but dared not endanger her by revealing anything.
Their hostess seemed unsurprised that Cato had spoken to Ariella. “I am Europa.” She patted Lucius’s arm. “Please, you must sit and take food or drink.” She indicated the cushions and several guests slipped from their places to make room.
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