The Last Temple Page 2

  “Let go,” Vitas repeated to Dolabella. “Now.”

  She must have seen the cold resolution in his eyes. Heard in his voice the iron of a man long accustomed to giving orders.

  She dropped the old woman’s wrist and glared at Vitas.

  This, Vitas realized later, became the moment where irritation overshadowed his military-trained watchfulness. Vitas had some coins hidden in his belt. He smiled at Dolabella as he dug out the coins. Easily a month’s wages for a laborer.

  Later, thinking about these events before he faced death for his role in them, Vitas would wonder if his impulse came from a sense of justice, from sympathy for the old woman built on the love he had for his dead wife—who had also suffered because of her Jewish identity—or from the satisfaction of defying Dolabella. Whatever the answer, later he would tell himself he should have been more aware of the impending danger.

  Somehow the mood in the market had shifted, quieted. While he noted it, he did not act upon it. Instead, he remained focused on what was directly in front of him. Vitas gave the coins to the old woman. “Hold on to your porcelain,” he said. “And may God be with you.”

  Dolabella slapped Vitas again. “On your knees,” she spat. She snarled at all of her bodyguard slaves. “Each of you. On your knees with him. A lesson will be taught here.”

  Still standing, Vitas glimpsed motion over Dolabella’s shoulder, and he looked past the woman.

  A transport man had been trying to move a herd of camels away from a silk vendor’s stall, each animal tethered to the next. But there was smoke. Of torches. And . . .

  Another slap across his face. “On your knees,” Dolabella shouted.

  Vitas felt a hand on his waist. Jerome, already kneeling, was trying to pull him down.

  But Vitas had greater concerns. Someone had thrown oil across the backs of the camels. Others, armed with the torches, were lighting the soaked camels, turning them into living firebrands. In seconds, the huge beasts had begun to plunge up and down in panic, breaking free of the tethers and crashing among the people of the crowded market.

  Hora Quinta

  Screams rose in reaction to the mayhem. Vitas pushed Dolabella backward, toward the market stalls.

  “You filthy—” Her hand rose in an arc to slap him yet again, but this time, Vitas lifted his own forearm in a lightning-swift move of self-defense and blocked the blow with his wrist, stunning her into silence. He rammed a shoulder into her belly and rose with her over his back, carrying her with his right arm.

  His path to safety, however, was blocked by the old Jewish woman. He crouched and grabbed the old woman’s wrist, pulling her to her feet. He was just about to attempt to lift her with his other arm when Jerome moved him aside and pulled the old woman into his arms. He rushed ahead of Vitas with the fragile woman and set her in a stall, beneath a table covered with copper pots and pans.

  Vitas rushed in the same direction with Dolabella and, with no effort at gentleness, tossed her beneath the table. As both men backed away from the table, Jerome grabbed the overhang of the stall and pulled it down, bringing the front half of the entire structure over the table. It was the best protection they could offer as they turned back to the market. Even with half a dozen soldiers, Gnaea Lartius Helva was vulnerable. Gone berserk, camels were nearly unstoppable.

  Yet that wasn’t the danger.

  Vitas was taller than most, and he saw it unfolding. Against the flow of the stampede of people fleeing the camels, men in long robes, perhaps twenty of them, advanced. Vitas saw a flash of steel in sunlight. A short dagger.

  Sicarii. A planned assassination.

  These extreme Jewish Zealots were known to conceal their sicae, or small daggers, beneath their cloaks to stab their enemies—Romans or Roman sympathizers, the Herodians, or wealthy Jews who embraced Roman rule—then lament with those around them to blend into the crowd.

  In Caesarea, because of the rebellion, no longer were crowds allowed to assemble for events or holidays. Lighting camels on fire was a brazen tactic, and they could have only one target in mind: Gnaea Lartius Helva, the fiscal procurator of Judea.

  Protecting Helva was more than duty for Vitas and Jerome and the other bodyguards. It was literally life or death—not only for Helva, but for his slaves. Allowing an owner to be murdered meant punishment by death for all the slaves in the household.

  As Vitas sprinted forward, he saw one soldier go down. Then another. And another. The Sicarii swarmed in deadly precision, taking down the ring of men around Helva.

  A camel plunged toward Vitas. He dodged, feeling the bulk of the camel’s body brush against him and the heat of the unquenchable fire on the camel’s hide.

  When he looked again, Helva was down.

  Knowing Jerome was beside him and knowing the mute’s intelligence and ability to assess a situation, Vitas stopped and held up a commanding hand, for a moment becoming the Vitas of old. This sense of authority was second nature to him, something he’d had to set aside after the copper band had been put on his wrist and the mark on his forehead.

  “Too late,” Vitas said tersely to Jerome. “We’ve failed.”

  Vitas understood too well the implications. They had not only failed, but failed spectacularly. As fiscal procurator of Judea, now including Galilee and Samaria, Gnaea Lartius Helva had been one of the highest-ranking officials in the province, with only the procurator Marcus Antonius Julianus—governor of Judea—having more authority. Even so, Helva did not report to Julianus but directly to Nero. That the second-highest official in the land had been assassinated was disastrous enough. To give the triumph to the Jews was double disaster. It would only add to their sense of invulnerability that had grown in the weeks after routing Gaius Cestius Gallus and chasing him and his army back to Syria.

  Vitas put his hand on Jerome’s shoulder. The man had a blocky head with ragged hair and could not speak, his tongue having been cut out in his childhood. Vitas knew this because Jerome, too, had been sold by Damian to Helva.

  “My friend,” Vitas said, looking upward into the large man’s face, “we should take care of ourselves now. We need to run and find a place to hide until Damian returns tomorrow to vouch for us. In this chaos, it’s our opportunity. Follow me.”

  He turned, expecting Jerome to instantly obey. But Jerome spun him around with a hand on his shoulder. As Vitas stumbled off balance, Jerome hammered him in the forehead with an elbow. An ox would stagger under a blow like this from Jerome; Vitas had no chance. He fell flat onto his back.

  With fleeing people streaming around them as if they were boulders in the center of a river, Jerome dropped on top of Vitas, sitting across his chest, pinning both of Vitas’s arms with his knees.

  Vitas was too dazed to speak. Against the glare of the sun, he saw Jerome’s arm rise, then slowly descend. Vitas felt a bite on his throat. He knew what it was. The sharpened edge of steel. He’d seen the knife in Jerome’s hand.

  It was an incomprehensible turn of events. Jerome had been Damian’s slave for years. To turn against the master’s brother was beyond belief.

  Yet it was happening. And Vitas was powerless.

  He closed his eyes, seeing the face of his dead wife, Sophia. If he was going to die, that was what he wanted to take with him. In this moment, he didn’t need to pray that he would see her on the other side. That had been his prayer every night before sleep and every morning before rising from bed. If those pleas had not been heard in all the months since her death, a prayer in the confusion of the market stampede would not be heard either.

  The pressure of the knife against his throat increased. Then stopped.

  Vitas opened his eyes.

  Jerome’s face was expressionless.

  This time, Vitas did not close his eyes. He would show no fear, let his steady gaze of silent condemnation be the last thing Jerome would see of him alive.

  Again, the pressure of a sharp blade against his skin.

  And again, just as suddenly, the pres
sure relieved.

  Abruptly, Jerome slid off Vitas’s chest. He reached down, grabbed Vitas by a wrist, and pulled him up as effortlessly as if Vitas were the old woman Jerome had just rescued.

  With the noise and confusion around them, it seemed to Vitas as though the two of them were in a bubble of silence.

  Vitas touched his neck, then pulled away his fingers. A brief glance showed blood.

  Jerome reached forward and extended the knife, handle first. He pressed it into Vitas’s hands. Then, with both of his large hands wrapped around the hands of Vitas, he pulled the knife forward so the point pressed into the softness just below Jerome’s ribs.

  Tears filled the eyes of the mute slave. He nodded. Death. This was the punishment for a slave who turned against his master.

  In the silent space, Vitas could again find no comprehension for what was happening.

  Jerome had taken perfect advantage of the chaos. As if he’d been waiting for a moment to kill Vitas. With one swipe of the knife, he could have left Vitas on the ground, life force gushing into the dirt. Jerome could have melted into the crowd, leaving Vitas behind as if Vitas were another victim of the Sicarii. For Jerome, escape would have been simple with so many ships in the harbor where a strong man could find employment and passage to a foreign country. A murder without any chance of recrimination.

  Yet now, Jerome was offering his life. Waiting for Vitas to plunge the knife forward.

  They stared at each other.

  Then the bubble of silence was broken as Roman soldiers finally appeared and Dolabella began to screech for help. Within seconds, Vitas and Jerome had been arrested.

  Hora Nonana

  Hours had passed since the mayhem in the market, and Vitas was alone in a garrison cell. Dirt floor. Rough stone walls. The smell of urine. He and Jerome had been seized immediately along with two other slaves, then thrown into separate cells.

  He understood it was a standard interrogation technique. But he had not been interrogated yet. His only interruption was the delivery of a message from a scribe Damian had hired before leaving for Jerusalem.

  The employment of this scribe was the one condition Vitas had set for agreeing to help Damian as a spy in the Helva household. Each Sabbath since his arrival in Caesarea the previous fall, Vitas had gone to the local Jewish synagogue. Although it had been destroyed during the riots and was now merely a shell of broken walls, duty and curiosity compelled Vitas to wait each Sabbath at what had once been the entrance.

  All because of a portion of a letter that he’d found in his clothing during his escape from Rome and Nero, a letter in Hebrew, given to him by unknown benefactors.

  You know the beast you must escape; the one with understanding will solve the number of this beast, for it is the number of a man. His number is 666. You have fled the city of this beast; from the sea it came and on the sea you go. North and west of the city of the second beast, find the first of five kings who have fallen. (The sixth now reigns, and the seventh is yet to come.) There will be two witnesses, killed yet brought alive. Find them and rejoice with them; then take what is given.

  Then go to the woman clothed in finest purple and scarlet linens, decked out with gold and precious stones and pearls. She is the one who slaughtered God’s people all over the world. Find the Synagogue of Satan, at the end of the Sabbath, and stand at the gate closest to the den of robbers. Persevere and you will find your reward.

  Much of the coded letter—written in ambiguous Hebrew to ensure Vitas’s protectors would remain safe from Nero if the letter fell into the wrong hands—did not make sense to Vitas. However, he was in Caesarea because of what he had learned from a man named John, the last surviving disciple of the person many claimed was the Jewish Messiah, who had been crucified and, if his followers were to be believed, had risen from the dead.

  John had been on the ship with Vitas, also escaping Rome. It was said he’d been among twelve who witnessed miracles done by the Christos and attested to the Resurrection. John had translated the Hebrew and explained much of the ambiguity, proving to Vitas it was no coincidence he and John had been put on the same ship.

  Nero was the first beast; Jerusalem was the second. North and west of Jerusalem was Caesarea, built by Herod the Great and named after Caesar Augustus. But Augustus himself had taken the name of Caesar from the first king of Rome, Julius Caesar. Nero, the sixth, now ruled the Roman world.

  What Vitas could not make sense of was the reference in the letter to two witnesses, “killed yet brought alive.”

  He understood, again with assistance from John, that in the Revelation, the mention of the two witnesses was a figurative reference to the long-dead Jewish prophets Moses and Elijah—who represented the law and the prophets and ultimately the Christos, who John had explained was the perfect Prophet and High Priest. As literary figures, these witnesses represented the entire line of Hebrew history testifying against Israel and warning of God’s imminent judgment on Jerusalem.

  Vitas had kept silent during John’s explanation of this. He didn’t want to become argumentative by challenging John, but Vitas could not accept that the Christos had risen from the dead, and he found it impossible to believe that Jerusalem would fall, as predicted by the Christos and in John’s revelation. For Vitas, as a military man, had spent time in Jerusalem. It was such a secure fortress, not even the mighty Romans could ever take it down. Therefore, to Vitas, if that prophecy was wrong, anything else said about and by the Christos must be suspect.

  And it was irrelevant to Vitas. He wanted to know what the “two witnesses” represented not in John’s revelation but in the coded Hebrew letter that had been left with him before his escape.

  But nothing in the months since had helped him understand the puzzle. What two witnesses, once dead, would be alive to him?

  Nor did Vitas know why he needed to find the woman in finest purple—who John had explained was Jerusalem, given that the slaughter of God’s people all over the known world had resulted from the Jewish religious establishment’s years of persecuting followers of the Christos.

  Vitas was uncertain whether the letter directed him to wait at the synagogue of Caesarea or the synagogue of Jerusalem, and he suspected this vagueness was deliberate, to protect the writer of the letter from Nero if the emperor ever found the letter. As was common with writings of this kind, the arrangement of the instructions did not necessarily have to be followed in a linear fashion.

  With Jerusalem in the hands of rebels—something Damian was willing to risk because he intended to be there for only a matter of days—Vitas had employed someone in the city to go to the synagogue every Sabbath and make note of anything unusual at the end of the day.

  Here in Caesarea, Vitas had initially gone himself every week. Once he knew he would be in the Helva household, Vitas had insisted that Damian send someone else every Sabbath—someone who believed Vitas was a slave named Novellus and who was instructed to bring any news directly to him.

  The messenger had brought some writing on a scroll for Vitas in his jail cell, and he had been pondering it since.

  An old man, a Jew, arrived and waited the entire Sabbath at the ruin of the synagogue. At dusk at the end of the Sabbath, I approached him to ask if he’d been given a message to go to the synagogue. He refused to identify himself and was agitated when I would not divulge why I had been waiting too.

  What had Damian promised before leaving for Jerusalem? “Don’t worry, Brother. If nothing has happened yet on any of the previous Sabbaths, why would it happen now? Besides, it will only be a matter of days for you as Helva’s slave. What else do you have to do here? Continue moping? Why not make yourself useful. We could use the money, after all, and my client is a fat goose waiting to be plucked.”

  Damian’s prediction had been proven wrong. It did happen now. An old man arrived and waited the entire Sabbath. A man Vitas could only believe had been looking for him.

  Vitas had been banished from Rome, owing his life to a mys
tery he could not explain. Someone had put him on the boat with a coded letter to send him to Caesarea. Who had done this? Why?

  The old man who had been at the synagogue might have the answers. But Vitas was in prison.

  He heard a woman’s voice as the far door to the hallway began to open.

  Dolabella.

  Vitas guessed his prospects were about to get worse.

  Hora Decima

  “This is the slave. Novellus.” Safe on the other side of the bars that held Vitas prisoner, Dolabella gave a theatrical shudder as she addressed the magistrate, a balding, skinny man wrapped in a toga. “He attacked me in the market. And the big mute one. They both assaulted me. The others failed in their duty to protect their master.”

  “As I have promised, the interrogator will see the mute next,” the magistrate said. “No need to worry about it. You have so much else to deal with right now.”

  He spoke with the solicitousness owed to a very recently widowed woman who had inherited a large estate. He grasped Dolabella lightly by the elbow and turned her away as if the matter were complete.

  “I am guilty,” Vitas called out. “I assaulted this woman. I failed to protect her husband as a result.”

  The magistrate paused and frowned at the obviously unexpected statement. As a slave, Vitas’s confession of assault against his owner was essentially a self-imposed death sentence.

  “The other slaves,” Vitas continued, “had been ordered to remain behind with the master’s wife as he continued through the market. Furthermore, she had commanded them to get on their knees. They could not see the attack on the master nor get there in time. They are not responsible for his death.”

  “You think I can’t see through your lies?” the magistrate said. “Your answer does not spare the others.”

  It was commonly believed in a case like this—when the slaves and their families would be held responsible for the death of a master—that slaves would lie to protect themselves. Therefore, an interrogator would only be satisfied with an answer if it came after hours of torture.