The Last Temple Read online

  The senator had been listening intently without interrupting and indicated with an impatient flick of his hand for Vitas to continue.

  “When the city fell,” Vitas said, “Ben-Matthias managed to escape into an empty water cistern, where forty other prominent citizens had fled. Suicide, to them, would be a sin against God. So it was decided that each would kill another, and they drew lots to determine the order. One man would be drawn to die first, a second drawn to kill him, then a third man to kill the second man, and so on. Ben-Matthias was one of the last two men. He convinced the other man that enough blood had been spilled and neither should turn on the other.”

  “He is alive then.”

  “According to him, it’s because he was chosen by God to deliver a prophecy to Vespasian. And this is where secrecy is crucial.”

  Another impatient wave by Ruso.

  “Upon surrender, Ben-Matthias was brought to Vespasian,” Vitas said. “All were curious to see the man who had caused them so much trouble. Vespasian wanted to send Ben-Matthias to Nero to be paraded in Rome before death, but Ben-Matthias asked for a private audience to deliver his prophecy.”

  Now Vitas paused because of the significance of what he was about to say. “Ben-Matthias told Vespasian that the God of the Jews had destined Vespasian to be the ruler of land and sea and the whole human race. Titus entreated Vespasian to spare Ben-Matthias’s life.”

  Vitas watched Ruso carefully and was surprised to see no surprise. Neither at the prophecy nor at the intervention of Titus. Much could be speculated about the extent to which Titus had been motivated by Bernice to ensure Ben-Matthias’s safety.

  Instead, Ruso spoke softly. “The fall of Jotapata was nearly a year ago, wasn’t it.”

  This amount of time was significant. In a year, Ben-Matthias’s prediction had not reached Rome or Nero. But this wasn’t the most significant factor.

  Vitas thought of that night when Ben-Matthias appeared and gave him the token. Only a matter of months later had Ben-Matthias surrendered to Vespasian. “Yes. Almost a year. Ben-Matthias made this prediction long before Vindex and Galba.”

  This was the crux of why Vitas was in Rome now. Nero’s reign was tottering. If Nero survived a revolt, his reign of terror would continue. But Titus and Vespasian wanted Vitas in Rome to help nudge the revolt to completion.

  “‘This calls for a mind with wisdom,’” Ruso said, almost in a whisper, looking at the ground. “‘The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits. They are also seven kings. Five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come; but when he does come, he must remain for a little while. The beast who once was, and now is not, is an eighth king. He belongs to the seven and is going to his destruction.’”

  Ruso lifted his head and offered an explanation for his cryptic words. “The head of the Beast will be severed. From the vision of the last disciple, the Revelation. You know the kings referenced in this prophecy, don’t you?”

  As would any person in the world. Over a century earlier, by crossing the Rubicon with his army and taking leadership of the republic, Julius Caesar had become the de facto first ruler of the new empire, followed by the formally acknowledged emperors Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, and Claudius. These five kings had ruled from the seven hills of Rome, including the Capitoline, where Ruso’s estate overlooked the Tiber. Nero was obviously the sixth king, clearly identified in the Revelation by the number of the Beast. And if a king was yet to come, then Nero must first die.

  “To the Jews, our Nero is the Beast, and thus our empire is the Beast—as is any king that follows.” Vitas spoke softly. “The seventh king. Vespasian?”

  “Or the eighth,” Ruso said. “I suspect Vespasian wants to see what unfolds with the other generals. But if he believes the prophecy of this Jew, surely he does have ambitions.”

  “Then you and I have arrived in conversation at our true business,” Vitas said. “The final days, perhaps, of Nero. Tell me, then, what you expect of me.”

  Ruso became even more intense. “Understand what is at stake. The longer Nero lives, the greater the danger to those who follow the Christos, who as a whole are a tiny sapling, persecuted by Rome on one hand and by the religious establishment of Jerusalem on the other. The Revelation was written as a letter of hope to them, a promise that they would survive the tribulation upon them. The longer Nero is alive, the greater the chance that this tiny sapling will be uprooted and destroyed. If this generation of followers is destroyed, the hope of the Christos will not be shared beyond this lifetime.”

  “Nero is also a danger to the empire,” Vitas said dryly. “You need not convince me that his lunacy and depravities must be stopped. What is it you want from me?”

  “We need to find something in the archives,” Ruso said. “Something of great danger to Nero and therefore of great value to us.”

  So the circle was complete for Vitas. Ruso had initiated the message Vitas received in the dungeons of the arena. “The archives have decades and decades of gathered scrolls,” Vitas said. “It is not enough just to walk into the Tabularium and begin to search.”

  “You will meet someone,” Ruso answered. “He’s one of the most learned Jewish scholars in Rome and a friend of Joseph Ben-Matthias. An old man named Hezron.”

  “Hezron!”

  “You know him?” Ruso asked.

  “Only by reputation. A friend of mine—another respected Jew in Jerusalem—sent his son here to Rome a few years ago on behalf of Queen Bernice and wants to be reassured that his son is well. I have a letter from this friend to present to Hezron to inquire about his son.”

  “The circles are small,” Ruso said. “I will send word to Hezron to expect you. Listen to his story, and when you return, you and I will continue this conversation.”

  Hora Septina

  Hezron, the old man across from Vitas, had two dull caves—long healed with wrinkled flesh—where his eyes used to be. The man’s blindness had not been an accident; parallel thin white scars at the tops and bottoms of each eye socket showed where a knife had cut away the eyelids before his eyes had been gouged.

  The man leaned on a cane at the base of a rickety tenement in one of the slums of Rome. His other hand rested on the shoulder of a small boy, maybe six or seven years old, of ferret-like thinness and with dark hair specked with lice eggs.

  “Greetings from Ben-Aryeh,” Vitas said. “He inquires about his son, Chayim.”

  “Tell me what you see,” Hezron prompted the boy, speaking Greek in a thick accent that betrayed his Jewish roots.

  “He looks like a soldier, but he is wearing a toga,” the boy said.

  Vitas lifted his right hand and opened it to show the boy.

  “And he has a marking on his palm,” the boy continued. “The symbol.”

  At Ruso’s instructions, Vitas had permitted a slave to use a quill to inscribe his palm with a mixture of soot and octopus ink. The symbol consisted of three Greek letters. The first letter was the initial letter of the name Christos. The last letter was the one that began the Greek word for “cross”—stauros. The middle letter, with the appearance of a writhing serpent, represented its hissing sound.

  The symbol of the Beast. Six hundred and sixty-six. It was not meant here as an indication that Vitas served Nero, but simply as an identifier for Hezron, for the followers of the Christos well knew what it meant.

  “Thank you,” Hezron said to the boy. “He is the one I am expecting. Go to the other side of the street and wait until he leaves.”

  “He is a good man,” the boy told Vitas in a fierce voice. “If anything happens to him because of you, I will find you in the night and cut your throat as you sleep. I’ll pull your tongue through the hole in your throat and—”

  “Enough,” the old man said. “Leave us now.”

  Still glaring, the boy retreated.

  “No parents and no family,” Hezron said. “I need him to lead me, and he needs me because all boys need someone to love them and disciplin
e them. Forgive him for worrying about me.”

  “Forgiven.”

  They were standing near the wall, giving passersby plenty of room. It would have been conspicuous if anyone stopped. This place gave no risk of the conversation being overheard.

  “I’m aware of your friendship with Ben-Aryeh,” Hezron said. “He is an old friend. It is with sadness that I tell you his son Chayim was murdered by pirates.”

  Vitas closed his eyes and dropped his head. It would break Ben-Aryeh to hear of this. Chayim was reckless, and his lifestyle in Rome had scandalized Ben-Aryeh in his priestly circles in Jerusalem, but the young man was still Ben-Aryeh’s son.

  “You seek something in the Senate archives,” Hezron said, unable to see Vitas’s reaction.

  “I do. Ruso told me to come to you.”

  “Ruso has sent you on a wasted journey, unless you have something that I seek too. You understand that?”

  “I do.”

  Hezron held out a hand expectantly.

  Vitas reached inside his clothing for the heavy token that hung from a silver chain—the token that Ben-Matthias had given him that night in Caesarea, telling him that someday, someone would show him a matching token and call upon Vitas to repay a debt. The token was like a coin, except larger and heavier, with symbols that Vitas had studied for hours with no closer understanding of their meaning.

  He placed it upon Hezron’s hand.

  The old man felt the coin on both sides until he was satisfied, then handed it back to Vitas. He put it around his neck again.

  “You have great responsibility,” Hezron said. “Don’t lose it.”

  Vitas expected Hezron to show him an identical one. When the old man cocked his head and waited for an answer, Vitas could not help but ask, “You have the other?”

  Hezron’s sharp laugh was like a bark. “No! You are far from the day and place when the person sent by Ben-Matthias will reach out to you with its twin.”

  “Who sent Ben-Matthias to me with the token?” This question was something Vitas pondered often. Ben-Matthias, it seemed, had merely been a messenger.

  Another sharp laugh. “Your curiosity is natural. When Ben-Matthias was in Rome, we discussed how best to use the tokens. But I did not choose you. Nor did Ben-Matthias.”

  “You have conspired with Ben-Matthias and another Jew, placing me in the center of your plans.”

  “You are in a unique position, Vitas. You are trusted by men with power in Rome, and you are a friend to the Jews. It has been foreseen that someday you might be able to help us, but I pray that someday it won’t be necessary.”

  “You won’t tell me how?”

  “If the need doesn’t arrive, it is much better that you don’t know. It is my prayer, and that of Ben-Matthias, that you will never see the matching token.”

  “I’m weary of cryptic answers,” Vitas said.

  “I’ve lost my sons and had my eyes taken from me,” Hezron said. “My people face destruction at the hands of Rome. How badly do you think I’d prefer to have cryptic answers along with my vision and my family?”

  Vitas took a deep, deep breath. So frustrating to be at the center of a web—Titus and Bernice and Ben-Matthias and now this old man, Hezron—that felt more like a labyrinth.

  “You have no matching token,” Vitas said. “But you will tell me about a certain scroll in the archives.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why will you tell me?” Vitas said. “Why not Ruso?”

  “For the same reason you have been given the token and Ruso was not. You are in a unique position, trusted by men with power in Rome and by us.”

  “You do not trust Ruso?”

  “He did not marry into the Jews as you did.”

  Vitas exhaled noisily. “Send me to the scroll in the archives, then.”

  “Without learning about its importance?”

  “Why ask questions when the answers are riddles within riddles?” Vitas said. “Unless you are prepared to speak without riddles.”

  “I am,” Hezron said. “So listen. I have a daughter, but both of my sons are dead. Nathan became a follower of the Christos. He died in the arena.”

  It was said calmly, but the old man’s face was contorted with pain.

  “The scroll in the archives,” Vitas prompted the man gently. “What can you tell me about it?”

  “Caleb was employed in the Tabularium. He found it by accident and immediately knew its significance. He moved it to a spot where he knew it would not be easily found.”

  “Do you know why it was significant?”

  “Only that it would undermine Nero when the time was right.” Again, the old man’s face twisted with pain. “Helius murdered Caleb to keep the scroll and its contents from reaching Nero. Then, to learn more about the scroll, he imprisoned my daughter to force me to help in not only the search for the scroll, but to interpret a seditious letter that has been circulating among followers of the Christos.”

  Vitas nodded. “The revelation of the last disciple.”

  “Yes,” Hezron said. “You would know of it.”

  The old man tilted his face briefly to the sunshine that managed to squeeze through a gap in the buildings on the opposite side of the street. Strangely, he smiled before resuming. “Nathan died because he was a follower of the Christos. His unshakable faith led my daughter, Leah, to faith, which in turn led to her imprisonment. For that alone, I hated the very mention of the Christos. And as a Jew, I found it ridiculous that anyone would claim he was the long-awaited Messiah. Can you imagine what it would take for me to become a follower myself? Yet the chain of events that has put my family into such suffering has led me to become a follower myself, for as I interpreted the Revelation for Helius, I marveled that the prophecies within were being fulfilled, and I had no choice but to accept the Revelation as divine. And if divine, then so was the Christos.”

  “You told this to Helius?”

  Hezron touched his empty eye sockets. “Yes. His rage when I informed him that it foretold the death of Nero led to this. For if Nero dies, the enemies that Helius has made will tear him apart. It does not serve his purposes to kill me or my daughter, but Helius made sure I would never see her again.”

  Another smile, this one sad. “Yet Helius cannot rob me of my memories of her face, so I see her every day, even though she is imprisoned. Nor can he rob me of the hope that sustains me because of the Christos.”

  He lost his smile, and his jaw tightened. “It is time for Nero’s reign to end. A year ago, no amount of pushing would have toppled it. But now—as he totters and threatens to regain control, as the men of influence in this city decide his fate—now is the time to reveal the scroll that Caleb was killed to keep hidden.”

  “Where is it?” Vitas asked.

  “Only my daughter knows. Since she’s been taken prisoner, she’s not been allowed any visitors.” The old man shook his head. “Worse, Helius has hidden her somewhere in the imperial palace.”

  Hora Nonana

  Vitas faced a young male slave at the entrance of a large villa, well up in the hills and away from the stench and noise of the slums where he’d left Hezron.

  “No,” the slave said. “Alypia will not see you.”

  The slave balanced a cudgel in his hands. He was obviously a bodyguard, meant to deter visitors.

  “So she is here.”

  “I have been instructed that she is taking no visitors, no matter how urgent their business.” The slave kept his face placid. He was Parthian, probably captured in battle and sold at an auction.

  Alypia had a reputation for enjoying her male slaves in all manners, and Vitas guessed this one, too, had been purchased for his youth and appearance.

  “No visitors at all?”

  The slave did not answer, sending a clear message that Vitas had been given all the information allowed.

  Vitas had come to Rome on more than one errand, each of varying importance. He had taken an hour to walk here and would spend another hou
r returning to the core of Rome.

  Vitas clenched and unclenched his fists in a vain effort to force himself to relax. He did not have the luxury of moving at a slow pace. What if Nerva decided the political odds would be bettered by informing Nero of Vitas’s return to Rome? What if a passerby had recognized him and sent for imperial guards? At any time, he could be arrested.

  “Tomorrow perhaps?” Vitas asked.

  “I have been instructed that she is taking no visitors, no matter how urgent their business.”

  Vitas was acutely aware of the pressures of time for another reason. Any moment, Nero might regain enough support and once again feel safe to travel from the imperial palace and resume duties in the Senate. If that happened, Vitas and his family would be destroyed, for if Nero regained the upper hand, Nerva would sacrifice Vitas to restore whatever favor he might have lost by not fully backing Nero during these dangerous times. And if Vespasian ever had to choose between keeping Nero happy and giving up Vitas, Vitas was practical enough to understand that Vespasian would invite Vitas to suicide.

  Vitas also understood that in hushed chambers and quiet gardens all across the city, men of wealth and influence were discussing a decision between two evils—the continued reign of Nero or accepting a general in the provinces ambitious enough to declare himself emperor. All of the empire groaned under the capricious rule of Nero, the immense tax burdens placed upon citizens by his debauched lifestyle and personal spending, and the all-too-frequent murders that Nero ordered to confiscate estates. Yet if precedent were set—that a new emperor could be declared outside of Rome—the implications and long-term consequences could well be worse for Rome than all the horrors of Nero. If it were established that the general with the most might could take the throne at any time, then Rome would always be holding a snake with a poisonous bite at either end. Keeping generals weak to preserve the throne left Rome open to attack. Giving a general enough power to shield Rome would also give the general enough power to attack Rome.