The Last Sacrifice (5 page)

Without realizing it, Leah drew close to her father again.

As if sensing her fear, Hezron stepped in front of her, blocking her from Helius.

“You have nothing to fear,” Helius said. “For reasons that are obvious now that I see your daughter, this man wishes to purchase your freedom.”

Over Hezron’s shoulder, Leah saw Chayim bow his head then raise it again to quickly explain to her father. “I have only honorable intentions, Rabbi. I had hoped to discuss this with you in far better circumstances. And only if Leah gave me encouragement to do so.”

“You know this man?” Hezron said to her softly.

“I do,” Leah said.

“How long?”

Implicit in the question was another:
Why have you kept it hidden from me?

“Not long enough for her to understand my feelings for her,” Chayim answered. “But after I heard of her arrest, I knew there was no other choice but to approach Helius and—”

“My question was not directed at you.” In her father’s quiet voice, Leah heard the steel that had made him legendary among the Jews of Rome. “My daughter can and will speak for herself.”

Chayim bowed his head.

“How long?” Hezron asked her again.

“Only a few days,” Leah said.

“Where did you meet?”

Part of her marveled. The royal palace was a place as foreign to him as it was to her. Helius, the second most powerful man in the world, was only two steps away. Yet Hezron ignored his circumstance, his surroundings, and the man with the power of life and death as if he were at the synagogue, where dozens gathered to glean wisdom from his interpretations of the Law.

Where
did you meet?

Leah agonized. Chayim had been invited to a secret meeting of Christians. Soldiers had burst in to arrest all of them. Chayim had defied the soldiers, proving his trustworthiness to all the other Christians.

Yet to answer would be to let her father know that on that same evening, she had committed her heart and soul to the Christos. That she—like her brother Nathan, who had already died in the arena for his faith—believed that the promised Messiah had arrived and fulfilled the laws and promises of God’s covenant with Israel, thereby inaugurating the kingdom of God on earth.

Shortly after Nathan had died for his faith, Hezron had lost his eldest son, Caleb, because Caleb had tried to defend Nathan. Leah was Hezron’s only remaining child, and despite all that he had lost and despite how fully she knew and understood his pain because of losing his two sons, she had still chosen the Christos. How could she explain that to him? That she’d made her choice, even knowing that she, too, might lose her life on account of her faith in the Christos, and worse, that the Christos Himself had warned faith would turn family members against each other?

“Where did you meet?” Hezron repeated. “Was it when the Sabbath ended, the evening you told me you needed to visit a sick widow?”

“Yes,” Leah whispered, feeling great shame for the lie she’d told that night.

He turned and placed his hands on her shoulders. “Whatever happens here, know that I understand. I don’t condone it. But I understand that love between a man and a woman is a powerful force. I would have done the same to be with your mother.”

A tiny smile crossed his strong features, and she knew he was remembering her mother and their love. “In fact,” Hezron said, still smiling, “your mother did the same for me before we married.”

Again, he spoke as if they were alone. As if it were love for a man that had drawn her out of the house. He was unaware that she had betrayed him and his faith. Would he be this forgiving if he knew it had been a rejection of his teachings instead?

Hezron turned to Helius. “The Romans are men of law. While I am not a citizen, I have obeyed all your laws. We do not need our freedom purchased. I am formally requesting that you either release us or allow me to hire a lawyer to defend us against whatever charges have been laid against me.”

“Christians get no such privilege,” Helius said. “They are treasonous, and Caesar has made very plain the consequences for those who will not worship him.”

Hezron snorted. “If that is your accusation, let me bring forth the witnesses who will attest otherwise. I am a rabbi, well-known for my teachings against the Christians.”

“What about your daughter? Will witnesses clear her of the accusation too?”

Hezron drew an indignant breath, then released it slowly, as if finally understanding the sudden and unexplained arrest by soldiers.

He turned to Leah. “You? You too?” His voice was broken of the strength it had just contained.

Tears began to stream down Leah’s face at his obvious pain. She ached for her father to reach out and touch her face, to wipe her tears as he had done all her life.

Hands at his sides, he spoke. “It is true, isn’t it? You are a follower.”

Before she could utter the words that she feared might kill him, Chayim interrupted, speaking to Helius. “The charges are irrelevant. I’ve arranged for you to receive the amount agreed for you to release them. You said nothing about bringing them here. Or bringing me here, for that matter.”

“Things have changed,” Helius said, still staring at Leah and Hezron. “This was before I found out who the old man was.”

Hezron moved his gaze from Leah to Helius, who continued to speak.

“I began to wonder why anyone would pay such a large ransom to release you from the arena, so I made inquiries,” Helius said. “I discovered you are a great rabbi. Which is very convenient. I need your help interpreting a letter written by a Jew. Once you have done that for me, I will release you and your daughter.”

“Give me the letter now so that I can be done with it,” Hezron answered. Strength seemed to return to him, as if he’d made a decision. “I will do anything to save my daughter, no matter what faith she follows.”

Hezron lifted a hand and gently touched Leah’s cheek. He brushed away a tear, and she knew that he was giving her a silent message of love and acceptance.

“You will be provided the letter and a place to work,” Helius said. “See to it that you understand the letter well enough to explain everything in it to me.”

“This was not what we agreed!” Chayim said.

“Silence,” Helius said calmly. “Before I have your tongue removed.”

Chayim looked across at Leah. Their eyes met briefly. Then she dropped her head, torn with emotion.

One man, a man she might be able to love, had taken great risk to rescue her by bribing Helius. The other man, her father, had been put at great risk because of her and was still willing to rescue her at any cost. She felt as if she’d been placed between them, and she could find no words.

The tension was broken by the appearance of a large man stepping through the archway of the courtyard. He had a well-scarred face and a savage smile. He carried a sack in one hand. Tigellinus, prefect of the emperor’s soldiers.

Gaius Ofonius Tigellinus had become friends with Nero when Nero was still a teenager, and had always encouraged Nero’s excesses. It was Tigellinus who had revived the hated treason courts, and Nero used this new power with ruthlessness, taking property and life with mere accusations.

Tigellinus caught Helius’s eye and lifted the sack high, as if it were significant.

“Go now,” Helius immediately told Leah, Hezron, and Chayim. He waved at the slaves standing at the far side of the courtyard. “These slaves will ensure each of you is placed under guard in separate quarters.”

“Me!” Chayim said. “You have no right to do this to me. Not after what I’ve paid for this.”

“Of course I do,” Helius said. He turned his attention to Tigellinus, who was nearing them. Red liquid seeped from the seams of the sack.

“If you want to make an issue of this,” Helius told Chayim, “we could always have Tigellinus here add your head to the one he carries now.”

Vitas was tempted to let himself fall back into unconsciousness. The swaying of the ship would make it very easy. But he needed to find the scroll!

Before Vitas could rise, however, he sensed, rather than felt, a presence beside him.

“Drink,” a soft voice said. “Your body needs it after your fever.”

A hand cradled the back of his head and helped him sit completely upright. It hurt Vitas to turn his head sideways.

The man helping him was dressed in a simple tunic, a covering that left only his arms exposed, showing corded muscle. Vitas guessed him to be in his fifties, but he could have been older, for his face showed no softness that came with easy living. His hair matched his beard—gray hairs far outnumbering the remainder of black.

Vitas knew this man. He was a Jew. He’d been on the same riverboat from Rome to Ostia and had introduced himself as John, son of Zebedee.

Vitas groaned. Not from recognition but from renewed hopelessness. Both had been placed on this ship as prisoners; neither had known why or where the ship was headed.

Would the scroll have answers to these questions too?

John responded to the groan by lifting a ladle of water and helping Vitas drink.

“How long?” Vitas said after gulping the water.

“Your fever?”

Vitas nodded.

“The first night,” John said. “All of yesterday. And last night.”

Vitas blinked. A full day and a half on the water. A full day and a half of travel from Rome. From Sophia.

“Do you know why we are here?” Vitas asked.

The older man smiled. “The will of God.”

“Our destination?” Vitas asked, impatient with the man’s vague answer. Regardless of what the scroll might tell him, Vitas needed to get back to Rome. To find Sophia. “Did you find out from any of the crew?”

“Alexandria.”

“Alexandria!”

Vitas was not a naval man, but he knew the route to grain ports of Alexandria. Depending on winds, the ship would reach the Straits of Messana on the third or fourth day. He could leave the ship when it stopped there.

Vitas lurched, trying to get to his feet. He was first and foremost a man of action. He’d find the magister and convince him that he needed to get off the ship at the first port.

The sudden effort was too taxing. A wave of nausea knocked Vitas to his knees. Then came the convulsions of his stomach. He’d eaten so little in the past hours that he was only capable of dry retching.

John had a damp cloth and gently wiped Vitas’s face.

It was an odd sensation for Vitas, to be cared for as if he were a child. More fragments of memory returned. Vitas had not been alone during the fever. He’d woken occasionally, dimly aware of that same damp cloth during the worst of it.

“That was you,” Vitas said. He struggled again to his feet. “The blanket. Lifting me onto the deck. With me all through the fever.”

John nodded.

Vitas wanted to ask if John knew anything about the scroll, but caution tempered him. Perhaps what was inside the scroll was too valuable to let anyone know of it. Vitas, after all, had no reason to trust this Jew. The man was a stranger to him; all Vitas knew was that the Jew had defied Nero and had once been exiled for it.

Vitas tried a step and nearly fell.

John reached to steady him, but Vitas pushed away his hand. “Enough. I am well now.”

The gray-haired man appeared to take no offense. “Of course.”

Vitas moved a step past him. The search for the scroll could wait. First, he needed to find the captain.

Vitas glanced around the deck. The ship was a
corbita,
a common merchant ship. Over a hundred feet long, if the ship was going to Alexandria, it would be carrying exports from Rome. In Alexandria, it would pick up grain for its return. But perhaps not for months. Too soon the winter winds would stop all travel back across the Mediterranean.

Vitas could not wait months. He knew the commander of the legion stationed in Sicily. News of events in Rome would not have reached Sicily yet, and Vitas could plead his case to the commander. Sicily was far enough from Rome to be safe, yet close enough that he could return to Rome within days, not weeks or months.

Vitas surveyed the crew, searching unsuccessfully for the captain. There were a dozen crew members in sight, engaged in the various activities necessary for sailing a ship this size. Vitas had spent months on similar ships, transporting his soldiers to Britannia and back to Italy, so the activities were familiar to him.

There was the
gubernator
—the pilot—guiding the ship with the tiller bar that controlled the enormous steering bars on each quarter. A couple of crewmen were adjusting the lines of the huge square rig, the mainsail. Another couple worked the foresail. Several more were engaged in the tedious, unending task of bailing buckets of bilge water up from the hold. At the far end, the ship’s carpenter and two assistants moved two heavy beams of lumber. Beside the carpenter, on the floor of the deck, was a large triangular frame of wood, with tools scattered beside it. It looked as if the carpenter had set aside that task to move the beams.

Vitas frowned.

No passengers.

Without fail, merchant ships carried passengers and their servants, men and women who would spend idle time in card games, dice, or commenting on the crew around them. A ship this size could be expected to have dozens of passengers.