The Last Disciple (18 page)

He tightened that noose, then cinched it farther so her hands were only inches apart. “Now on your stomach,” he ordered.

She rolled over a quarter turn, her full weight on her bound hands, her knuckles pushing into the softness of her belly.

Silently, he bound her feet in the same way, with prepared nooses of leather cord.

“What do you want?” She felt her voice trembling as she whispered the question.

Without answering, he picked her up and threw her over his shoulder.

Did he expect he could leave the palace with her? Guards swarmed the corridors. Yet, she reminded herself, somehow he had found his way this far into the palace. Perhaps he truly did intend to escape with her . . .

No.

He took several steps away from the bed, away from the entrance to her chamber. It seemed effortless for him, and his strength frightened her even more.

He moved her to the far wall of the chamber. He set her down, propping her in a sitting position, her back against the wall, her feet in front of her, arms in her lap. Small protrusions of the wall dug into her back.

“Are you comfortable?” he whispered. From the sound, she guessed he was squatting beside her.

“My back,” she said. “The wall hurts . . .”

“I will step across the room to get a pillow. But I say it again. If you call for help, I will kill you before the guards arrive. Understand?”

In the darkness, she nodded.

“I want to hear you say it,” he whispered. “Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

He rose. She felt the air move, a part of her mind amazed at her heightened senses. She heard the light clicking of the soles of his sandals. To the bed . . . and back.

“Lean forward,” he said.

She did.

One of his hands grasped her shoulder. The other slid the pillow behind her.

Who was this man, ready to kill her yet concerned about her comfort? Fear and morbid curiosity sent flushes of adrenaline through her body.

“I’m thirsty,” she pleaded. After years of facing the baser desires of men, she had the instinct of a seductress, an instinct that told her the more he aided her, the more sympathetic he would be toward her. “There is a small jug on a stand at my bed.”

“Your life depends on your silence,” he warned.

“You will have my silence.”

Again, the movement that was invisible but sensed. Again, the slapping of sandals. Again, his return.

In the darkness, he found her arm and slowly moved the jug down until it reached her hands.

Bernice drank. Her thirst had been very real, a thirst of fear.

She was tempted to hurl the jug forward instead of setting it down, hoping the sound of it smashing against the far wall would bring a guard. The temptation passed quickly. Hands bound, feet bound, she was helpless. It would take only a heartbeat for him to find her throat in the darkness and slash it open.

“Who are you?” she asked as he took the jug from her. “What do you want?”

“We will have ample time to discuss what we need to discuss.”

Ample time.

This meant he was acquainted with her habits well enough to know that she daily remained in bed for hours after dawn, shrouded from daylight by the covers over her window, demanding total privacy until she first opened the door of her chamber and called for a servant.

Frightening as this was, because he had made no attempt to harm her, some of her royal composure returned.

“And what shall we discuss?” she asked.

“Judgment. Upon you.”

When Simeon Ben-Aryeh finally saw the man who walked with a staff marked by a red rag tied to its crook, the man’s slow, confident manner of movement added to the instinctive dislike of Romans that had been simmering inside Ben-Aryeh since Queen Bernice had first directed Ben-Aryeh to wait for this man.

Gallus Sergius Vitas.

Ben-Aryeh sat on a blanket within a stone’s throw of the arched outer entrance that guarded Herod’s fortress. He’d arrived in Sebaste halfway through the morning before, wondering how many days it would take for the Roman to arrive; there was no sure prediction of when his ship would dock in Caesarea, no way of knowing in Sebaste when Vitas would receive the message directing him to look for Ben-Aryeh.

During his long wait for Vitas the day before, Ben-Aryeh had been utterly silent, for he did not want his accent to give him away as a Jew, not here in the stronghold of Samaria. Ben-Aryeh had watched for the man hour after hour—as the sun heated the day, as it brought the dry air to the point where it parched a man’s lungs with every breath, as it fell again, leaving behind a chill that demanded another blanket for his old bones.

It had been enough, with the movement of the sun marking Ben-Aryeh’s solitude among the crowds, for Ben-Aryeh to frequently set aside the simmering dislike and resentment for the joy of recalling the majestic poetry of God’s questions to Job:
“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you know so much. Do you know how its dimensions were determined and who did the surveying? What supports its foundations, and who laid its cornerstone as the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy? Have you ever commanded the morning to appear and caused the dawn to rise in the east? Have you ever told the daylight to spread to the ends of the earth, to bring an end to the night’s wickedness?”

It had been time enough to let those contemplations of the sun on its path direct Ben-Aryeh to the other glories of the one and true God. To glance past the walls of the city at the hills rising around it in all directions, patches of green dotted by the white fleece of distant sheep. To watch the activities at the nearby communal well and ponder that something so simple and common as water sustained all life. To follow the intricacies and vagaries of a sparrow in flight, and marvel as it moved without concern above the troubles and greed of the men who cheated and quarreled as they bartered without cease, dawn to dusk, at the markets beyond the well.

Each moment of contemplation of another aspect of creation was a moment of joy for Ben-Aryeh. The God of the Jews was a mighty God, and Ben-Aryeh had gladly given a lifetime of service to that God.

Thus, even now, by contemplating God’s glory to endure the waiting and to fulfill the task set upon him, he was serving his magnificent God, and that eased—only somewhat—the resentment and dislike for a man he did not know.

As for this man he finally spotted, the Roman who carried a walking staff with a red rag tied upon it to identify himself? Could such a heathen—bound by the pleasures of eating and drinking and the pursuit of the flesh that Romans put before matters of the soul—even dimly understand that every breath a man took was a breath granted by God?

Ben-Aryeh knew the man would be looking for him but saw no reason to get up from his blanket. He had the advantage and would use it to learn what he could about the man.

Where was the man’s retinue? Ben-Aryeh wondered. Surely a man of his importance would not travel without one of substantial size. Another man, much shorter and obviously Jewish, followed closely behind, holding the reins of two donkeys. Was this all? And had the Roman actually chosen to travel from Caesarea on something as humble as a donkey?

Yet there appeared to be no one else. No bodyguards. No bearers of chests of luggage. No slaves or sycophants dogging his footsteps.

He was a man in a simple tunic, wearing no obvious jewelry. He seemed relaxed as he moved through strangers in a strange city in a strange land. A good observer would notice, however, that he held the walking staff not as an aid to plod forward but in such a manner that he could swing it suddenly with ease, either as a protective block or an aggressive thrust. Although his manner of dress was not what Ben-Aryeh had expected from a Roman with political power, the manner of readiness was indeed what Ben-Aryeh would expect of a man who’d once been a military hero.

The man moved past the well that was the focal point of the city, modestly averting his eyes when the women glanced up at him. When he passed, several of the women exchanged glances and comments.

Yes, Ben-Aryeh grudgingly agreed, he is a handsome man too, with close-cropped dark hair that spoke of one who didn’t give much attention to appearance or the fact of his attractiveness, a man with a calm, dignified presence that would draw the attention of the fairer sex. Ben-Aryeh had no doubt the man took advantage of this at every opportunity.

A small boy dressed in rags chased another, each laughing loudly. The boy in front turned to shout and ran squarely into the man’s thighs; he fell backward and began to sob. While the second boy backed away nervously, the man knelt, set his staff on the ground, helped the boy up with both hands, and dusted him off. Then the man picked up his staff and walked away without looking back. The boy opened his small hand and shouted with delight, then ran to find his friend to show him. A gift from the Roman? A coin?

The man was much closer now. He scanned the middle-aged men who stood and gossiped in small groups near the walls around Herod’s fortress.

Ben-Aryeh knew what the man searched for, of course. Another man with a red rag tied to a walking staff. His own staff was on the ground, the crook of it deliberately hidden by the edge of the blanket he sat upon.

Ben-Aryeh sighed and pulled the walking staff out from the blanket. He used it to get to his feet.

The man saw the red rag tied to Ben-Aryeh’s staff and paused.

Didn’t smile.

Didn’t frown.

Just paused and waited. And watched with dark eyes as Ben-Aryeh approached.

Ben-Aryeh had his share of enemies, but only one who hated him so much that he was now contemplating the satisfaction of hearing stones thud into Ben-Aryeh’s body at a formal execution.

This was Annas the Younger—former high priest, named as such because he was as famous and feared in Jerusalem as his father, Annas.

At the moment Ben-Aryeh rose to greet Vitas in Sebaste, Annas, the enemy who wanted Ben-Aryeh dead, was in humble clothing, riding a donkey in open countryside, gradually descending on the road from Jerusalem to Caesarea.

Annas had put Jerusalem’s gates behind him a few miles before, and in that short amount of travel, the foliage had turned from faded reds and browns to vibrant greens. The soil had become less rocky, the cliffs along the road less steep and abrupt, until Annas neared the town of Givat Shaul, where the road to Caesarea split to the road going north to Sebaste.

Ben-Aryeh had been looking for a red cloth on a man’s walking staff; Annas scanned his surroundings intently for three piles of rocks, side by side by side in a discreet triangle.

Annas was extremely conscious of his clothing, made from a poor man’s rough hemp. It itched him in the heat, but what bothered him more was that he’d forsaken the prestigious outer garments of priesthood that would at least mark him as a man of consequence to passing strangers.

Pride was an integral part of his psyche, and Annas had no problem admitting it. For example, Annas was a handsome man and knew it. He had a face that shone warmth when he smiled and intimidated when he scowled. This, too, he knew and enjoyed. Yet, among all that he loved about himself, Annas was also proud that he could set aside pride for the sake of expediency. Today, it was more important that he appear as merely another traveler of many on this road.

When he saw the triangle of piled stones, Annas jerked the donkey’s halter to force it to stop. All along, he’d been trying to decide what he should do when he saw the piles that marked this section of the road, and he still had his hesitations.

He looked at the crooked gully with high walls that led down to the road here. Noted that within fifty yards the gully twisted out of sight. Noted that this part of the road was lost in a dip, so it was invisible to travelers a half mile ahead or a half mile behind.

It
was
a good place for an ambush. He felt watching eyes on him and wondered if it was his imagination. He twisted on the donkey’s back, looking in all directions for a sentry who might alert highway thieves waiting to kill a traveler here.