He pushed forward, aware that all eyes - the eyes of every soldier, and the eyes of every Zealot in the cave – were upon him.
The wind whistled sharply, making Quentin feel very alone during his brief walk.
His father, with a sharply-etched granite face, seemed to be built of the rock he was standing upon. Legs spread, arms crossed, tunic flapping in the breeze, he waited solidly for his son’s approach.
There was no other sound but that of the wind.
Quentin drew near to his father. He did not expect a warm greeting. Roman soldiers did not show emotion.
“Father,” Quentin said. “I have brought shame upon you by stealing into your palace late at night.”
He braced himself for the words of punishment that were sure to follow.
“Son, there is no shame in our household. I arranged for your actions long ago. Had you done anything differently, this-” Marcus swept his arms to indicate his poised army “would have failed.”
Quentin nearly recoiled in amazement. His actions had been planned long ago? By his father?
“I…I do not understand.”
“You need not ask. These are the affairs of Rome. Stand aside. We must place the Zealot leaders in chains.”
As Marcus motioned his right arm forward, the legion of soldiers began marching to the cave entrance.
Quentin reeled. This had been planned long ago? He had been a simple pawn?
Images of the last few days filled his mind. Eli - gentle in betrayal. Pelagius - strong in guidance. Barabbas - bursting with rage. Amram - calmly wise. And Shel - determined to save him.
Shel! The soldiers must not mistreat her!
Quentin raced forward, sprinting past the cautiously advancing Roman soldiers. He ignored the command from his father to stop.
“Shel!” he shouted as he neared the cave entrance again. “Shelomith!”
The Zealots parted for him. Their attention was on the advancing soldiers.
Quentin found her in the rear of the first chamber of the cave.
“Shel,” he repeated as he fought for breath. “Stay by my side. You will not be harmed.”
She merely gave him a puzzled look. “It is over,” she said. “We have won. My own health does not matter.”
“Yes it does. You must stay beside-” Quentin stopped short. “You have won?”
She placed her hand over his. “We have both been brave. We have both won. That is all I can explain.”
His father’s words echoed in his mind. I arranged for your actions to be planned long ago. Had you done anything differently, this would have failed.
“Tell me,” Quentin said sharply, “how much of this did you know?”
She shook her head. “Roman boy, when we met, the last thing I wanted to do was help you in any way. I am a Zealot.” Shel smiled sadly, and in the dim light of the cave, Quentin saw her haunting eyes wet with slow tears. “I believe I love you. But we are on different sides.”
Soldiers swarmed the inside of the cave. Quentin had no further time to speak to her before they dragged her away.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Back in the sunlight, Quentin blinked his eyes at the brightness. He told himself it was the brightness that made him blink. He did not want to think it was caused by Shel’s last words.
Emotion overwhelmed Quentin as he recalled his escape from the Zealots. Bewilderment at his father’s words. Shel’s announcement of love. Yet he had one final rush of feelings to fight.
Eli.
“Your teacher wants words with you,” Marcus said gruffly to Quentin as the last of the Zealots were bound. “I had him brought along in case you were harmed. He was to die if his plan went any differently than he had promised me.”
“His plan? You knew of it? And approved?”
Marcus nodded.“Eli will be sent to Jerusalem with the rest of the Zealots. You will never speak to him again.”
The rest of the Zealots?
Quentin nearly groaned. How little he had known!
Yet, even as he groaned, the memories of years of gentle love under the old man’s patient tutoring made him long to see Eli’s face.
“Where is he, father? I will not talk to him long.”
Marcus pointed to a small circle of soldiers. “Beyond those men.”
Quentin walked slowly. He did not know how he would react to the man he had trusted so fully before the betrayal of kidnapping.
Eli was deep in conversation with Amram. Bound in heavy chains and facing Quentin, the old man’s sightless eyes flickered briefly at the sound of footsteps. Despite that, he did not warn Amram as the wind lifted his words to the boy.
“Yes,” Amram said, “they all knew, they all agreed to sacrifice themselves. All except for Barabbas. I could not tell him. The red-headed fool would never agree. And without his capture, the Romans would never have believed our scheme.”
Caught up in the conflict of love and hate inside him, Quentin ignored Amram and took two final strides closer.
“Quentin,” the blind man said softly over Amram’s shoulder. “Your footsteps always bring me joy.”
Amram turned, startled, then left the two of them alone together.
“My child,” Eli said in a breaking voice. “You are safe. I had such fears for you.”
Quentin reacted in a way he did not expect. He ached with love for his teacher, a tired old Jew. He wanted to explode in rage for an unthinkable betrayal. Anger won.
“There is nothing you can say to me.” As the words left his mouth, Quentin thought his tongue had turned to ash. There was everything for Eli to say.
“My child,” Eli called softly, “I am not asking forgiveness.”
Why had he reacted in sudden rage? Quentin wondered. He would never see Eli again.
“I am asking you to seek the hiding spot we used many years ago,” Eli said, “the hiding spot we fooled your nurses with. That is all.”
The dignity of the old man, his weathered face strong in defeat, almost totally broke down the defenses of the son of the legion commander.
For a moment, Quentin wanted to run forward and hold the old man, to tell him he was forgiven. For in that moment, Quentin knew how deep the foundation of love could be. He understood fully that it went beyond the affairs of two races of men fighting for the same land.
In that moment, too, Quentin realized the responsibility of being the son of a legion commander in a foreign land. His father’s soldiers were watching. Any sign of emotion would be seen as weakness.
Quentin turned his back on Eli for the final time and walked away without replying.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Upon his safe return, Quentin did not approach his father with questions. In the affairs of Rome, as they were called, not even the son of a legion commander was foolish enough to let curiosity win over discretion.
Moreover, Quentin loathed how he had seen people used as the men around him pursued causes. Zealots versus Romans. Even his own father had used him as a pawn. Eli had been no different. Quentin feared the worst betrayal of all - finding that Eli did not have a good reason for letting him be kidnapped.
Quentin knew the answer lay in an old hiding spot that he and Eli had shared so long ago in days of innocence.
Every day for three weeks, Quentin had awoken with a vow that it was time to seek the answer. And every day for three weeks, he found an excuse not to. The storm of emotions and unexpected events that had changed his life so completely was still too raw. He preferred the numbness that came in the safety of the palace, away from the rest of the world. He did not want to be reminded of Shelomith or Eli. He did not want to be reminded of angels or a foreign God of love.
Yet one morning, Quentin saw a hoopoe bird chattering and hopping about the garden. He knew he could no longer ignore what had happened.
With dread, he found a loose brick in an upper chamber of the palace. This was the hiding spot Eli had shown Quentin sometime before his fourth birthday, the day after a fat,
waddling nurse had taken away his favorite pretty stone, fearing Quentin would put it in his mouth. The hiding spot had become a shared secret between the two, another thing to keep them close.
In the niche in the wall, Quentin found a scroll marked with Eli’s tiny, clear writing.
He held it, still closed, and stared at the nothingness of the blue sky outside the window for many minutes before finally opening the words of the old man.
My Dear Child,
You have been sent to the depths of misery and back by two people who care about you deeply: Your father. And me.
In so doing, we both gambled on your life.
Your father was under extreme pressure from Rome to rid this land of the Zealots. I wanted to prevent a revolution. The stakes, as you probably know by now, were enormous.
It would have been necessary for your father to begin open warfare against the Jews in his search for the Zealots. He knew too well it would have united this entire nation in resistance.
There would have been increasing retaliations on both sides. Men like Barabbas would have heedlessly sacrificed thousands of innocents in their pursuit of freedom. Your father would have struck back with the full force of Rome. Who would have won in the end hardly matters. By then, too many would have died.
I told you about my own family on our last afternoon together. That kind of death is an evil that has too great a price to pay. I joined the Zealots and worked as a spy in your father’s palace, but not for the reasons either would believe. Peace has always been my goal.
When the news of Rome’s order’s reached me - because of Urbal the Wise, news often reached me even before it reached your father - I knew I had to do everything possible to prevent a full-scale revolution.
So I approached your father and told him I was a Zealot spy, dooming myself to prison.
I agreed to deliver to him all the leaders of the Zealots if he would agree that capturing them was enough of a prize to leave alone the persecution of innocent people in the land.
You see, if the plan worked, we would both win. He would have his Zealots, and I would have my peace.
You were the only person who could make that plan work.
Why?
The Zealots are obsessed with secrecy. It has allowed them to survive for this long. Amram, who was my ally among the Zealots, was the only one among them I could trust to bring back the location. But as a senior general he could not leave, and certainly could not instruct a messenger to lead your father’s men to the cave. That is why it was decided that you would be the decoy sent into the meeting, much like the Romans at Troy sent in a large wooden horse filled with soldiers.
I arranged for you to be kidnapped. Barabbas thought I had planned it myself, never suspecting I had your father’s full blessing.
Barabbas also did not suspect Amram. Without Amram’s love for peace, and his willingness to sacrifice his freedom to save us from bloodshed, it never would have worked.
Amram knew he had to convince the Zealots to let you return the sacred goblets to us. It was the excuse we needed to send you back to the palace. We knew that the only way the Zealots would let you go and believe in your return was through the slow-acting poison and its antidote as a guarantee. I met Shelomith shortly before you were kidnapped and instructed her, as I gave her the pills.
She is a fine, courageous woman who did not know that the pills were merely the powder of ground bone, baked into tablets. (I would not allow real poison to be used on you. I half-feared you would be too angry and stubborn to accept the antidote once she had fooled you.)
I prepared Shel for the argument she was to use. She saw its wisdom and pledged to help sway Barabbas into letting you go.
She did not know several things. She did not know your return with the sacred goblets was useless in the face of your father’s orders from Roman. She also did not know you were to be a decoy, bringing your father in like a fox following blood. Had she known that, she would never have agreed to protect you.
To Amram, I gave the hardest task. Should he ever think you were to die by Barabbas’s hands, he was to offer you a painless death.
Despite what could have gone wrong, this desperate plan looked like it would succeed. Then there was the matter of your unexpected escape. It terrified me. Without you among the Zealots, there was no hope of stopping the revolution. How Urbal the Wise managed to convince you to return is something for which I will always thank Our Lord.
If you are reading this letter, you know the rest. If you are reading this letter, it means that you have lived, that Amram has convinced Barabbas to exchange your life for all the lives inside the cave.
You see, that was my final wager - your life against mine. If you live, so do I. If you die, I die, too. But I also die a thousand deaths of heartbreak.
If you would ever take advice from an old man who loved you and betrayed you, Quentin, it is this - be true to your heart.
With deep love,
Eli.
Quentin rolled the parchment tight and replaced it behind the brick. He resumed his stare at the nothingness of the blue sky.
Angel Blog
Roughly a year has passed since that time.
During that time, I was sent elsewhere by Our Father. Elsewhere, but still nearby. Judea was the center of this great battle, and all of history was riding on the outcome.
You may have forgotten by now about that lone rebel, but I did not, could not, and never would forget.
Especially his final days.
The men of hatred had finally found a way to get revenge for the showdown in the synagogue – the one about the man with the withered hand. They paid one of his best friends to deliver the rebel to them in the dead of night.
That night and the next morning were horrible for all of us around him as he faced an illegal trial and was condemned to death, despite his innocence.
Yet, Our Father restrained us. And the rebel did not call for our help, although with a simple command he could have had legions of angels deliver him from his troubles. This rebel had made a choice to be obedient to Our Father.
We shared Our Father’s sorrow as the whips scourged the rebel just after dawn broke. It was like the entire universe had paused. All we could do was endure the pain we saw inflicted upon the rebel, his shudders sending shudders through all of us.
It was with a grim heart that I returned to Quentin that very morning at Our Father’s command.
Quentin would be permitted to learn the real truth behind the events of his kidnapping. I was to show him how and why his task for Our Father had been fulfilled…
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“It has been a year now, and you still pray to Jehovah.”
Quentin spun around with joy at the familiar voice.
“Pelagius!”
“Yes,” I smiled as I stepped out from behind an olive tree. Grim as I felt, I would not let my sorrow overshadow my joy at seeing Quentin again.
The garden of the palace bloomed around us. As was his custom, Quentin spent the early hours of the morning outside in prayer. It was two hours past dawn, and I needed to walk with him the five hours it would take to arrive in Jerusalem from this garden retreat.
He was taller now, more muscled. His face showed a wise determination that already set him apart from others his age.
“I think of you often,” Quentin said quietly.
“Yes,” I replied again. “I know.”
“My father is dying. It is a slow disease, and the physicians do not know how to stop it. I pray for his soul every day.”
“Yes. I know.” I spoke softly, hoping it would give him comfort.
In the moments that we surveyed each other, small birds called lightly from across the garden. It was a magic that neither of us wanted to break.
Finally, I took another step forward. “I have been sent to prophesy to you.”
Quentin grinned. “As an angel did to Abram’s wife, Hagar? As an angel did to Gideon?”
I grinned back. “Yes, child, I also know that you have studied with the Jewish scholars.” My grin became a smile of contemplation. “When you are given responsibility, as you most surely will be by the Roman government, you will be a good leader, Quentin.”
More silence.
I laughed. “And you have developed patience, too!”
Quentin bowed his head slightly, waiting.
“This is the prophecy I am to deliver to you,” I said. “You shall marry Shelomith.”
“Shelomith! I dream of her every night!”
“Shelomith,” I said firmly. “But it will have a price. She will remain a dedicated Zealot all her life, and you will never be anything but a Roman soldier.”
“Your words shake me, Pelagius. I cannot understand how - ”
“The Zealots are a growing cause. When the two of you marry, you shall be able to work together - secretly - and keep the peace for this generation.”
Quentin took a deep breath. “Pelagius, I want to believe you, but I cannot. My own father destroyed the Zealots two years ago. That was the entire reason I was kidnapped. Remember?”
“The Zealot leaders are far from gone.” I shook my head. “In fact, all of them still live in hiding. Remember, my friend, the last words Amram spoke to Eli as you approached that morning.”
Clarity struck Quentin, and he heard those words as if he were there again.
Yes, Eli, they all knew, they all agreed to sacrifice themselves. All except for Barabbas. I could not tell him. The red-headed fool would never agree. And without his capture, the Romans would never have believed our scheme.
Quentin closed his eyes in amazement as a wave of knowledge flooded through him. “They were decoys! All of the Zealots we captured were simple men, prepared to give their lives for the cause. The real leaders were elsewhere, weren’t they?”
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