The Last Disciple (4 page)

“John.”

“John,” Vitas said, “you do not deserve to die for what you believe.”

Vitas leveraged his sword into John’s shackles until they separated. One by one, he released each of the other captives.

They made no move to flee.

Vitas turned to the first woman. Her bleeding had lessened. Vitas tore a strip from his toga and pressed it against her face. He lifted her hand until she held the cloth, then stepped away.

“Go to your children,” Vitas told her. “All of you. Go. Now is the time to make your escape. Before Nero again convinces himself he is god.”

Part II

Twelve Months after the Beginning of the Tribulation

AD 65

Rome

Capital of the Empire

Smyrna

Province of Asia

Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer. I tell you, the devil will put some of you in prison to test you, and you will suffer persecution for ten days. Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life.

—
R
EVELATION 2:10

Mercury

Hora Duodecima

At the end of the first day of the new games, the roars of animals and the howling of dying men and women inside the amphitheater were easily drowned out by the applause and cheering of tens of thousands of spectators.

Outside the amphitheater, these were the noises a young Jewish woman named Leah tried to block as she neared the main gates. Her brother was inside, but not one of the spectators.

She’d chosen nondescript clothing for this journey and tried not to look furtive. That was difficult for her. She’d lied to her beloved father to escape their apartment. It was the first time in her memory that she had deceived him. During every step toward the amphitheater, she’d felt as if every person along the way was aware of her vile crime against her father, as if the stain on her soul spread across her face like a disease.

Added to this discomfort was her fear that Gallus Sergius Vitas, a tall and quiet member of Nero’s inner circle, might be here. To sustain the courage to make this day’s journey, Leah had told herself again and again that even if Vitas was in the amphitheater, with the screaming thousands around him, it was unlikely he would notice her as she slipped past the main gates. Still, as much as she could convince herself of this on an intellectual level, she could not squelch her fear.

She remembered all too clearly the day Vitas had appeared at their home with soldiers to arrest her brother Nathan. Although weeks had passed since that horrible event, the vividness of Vitas’s alertness and the piercing quality of his total attention to the sights and sounds around him were still impressed in her memories. It had seemed when he looked at her, standing so relaxed and dignified as he reprimanded the soldiers for prodding Nathan with spears, that he was able to read her very thoughts.

Worse—as she allowed her mind to worry about the presence of Vitas—she realized that here, near the main gates, the street had long since emptied of spectators rushing for seats inside, and now Leah walked alone on the cobblestone street.

Yet hers was not a walk of solitude. Leah was acutely aware of the stares of nearby soldiers who guarded the men and women hanging above her, lining each side of the broad street that led to the entrance of the amphitheater. Alongside charred stumps of posts were new wooden lampposts spaced every ten paces. Men and women dangled from each post, their bound wrists hanging from spikes in the post above their heads, their entire body weight wrenching at their shoulder sockets. As Leah hurried past them, she realized they could only listen to the nearby thunderous cheering and contemplate their own fate.

The soldiers sweated profusely, even while sitting motionless in whatever shade they could find. When a soldier rose occasionally to splash water against his face from a nearby public fountain and groan at the relief, it was a sight and sound that most surely added to the agony of those hanging from the lampposts.

This heat was a form of torture, adding to the excruciating pain of arm sockets slowly pulling loose. But the prisoners could not cry out for water from those passing the fountain. Their lips had been sewn shut to prevent them from disturbing Roman citizens with pleas for help or with shrieks of agony.

Like Leah, who hated her inability to help these tortured men and women, the prisoners knew the purpose they would serve when darkness fell.

Each wore the
tunica molesta
—a tunic black and gleaming in the sunlight and saturated in tar. Leah could scarcely imagine the suffocating sensation of the thick, heavy garments, soaking up the heat of the sun and clinging to their bodies as the tar oozed against their skin.

Yet beyond the imagination of that agony was one worse.

The waiting.

At sundown, by the orders of Nero, the guards would ignite their tunics so these men and women—the Christians—would become human torches to light the street for the half-drunk Roman revelers returning home at the end of the games.

This was the Great Tribulation. Hell did exist on earth.

Leah’s worries about Gallus Vitas were groundless.

He was days and days of travel from Rome, roughly eight hundred miles away, across the mountains, across the Adriatic Sea, across Macedonia, and across the Aegean Sea in the center of an Asian port city called Smyrna. The afternoon had that late brightness that comes with the long rays of sun stretching across the aquamarine of the sea and bouncing up into the hills.

The tavern Vitas entered with Titus Flavius Vespasianus was so well shuttered that oil lamps were necessary for light, as if darkness, still an hour away, had already cloaked the city.

It took less than a minute for silence to settle upon the crowded tavern as, one by one, the patrons noticed the newcomers. The dice and knucklebones at the gaming counter stopped rattling, the prostitutes ended their chatter with the most promising drunks, and the lone singer near an oil lamp in the corner abruptly quit halfway through a verse.

“This is the trouble with visiting the slums,” Titus said out of the side of his mouth to Vitas. “One must dress down to fit in. But to do so risks fleas of the worst sort.”

Titus wore a spotless silk toga. Dim as the light was, it clearly showed his elegant handsome features. He’d been a best friend to Brittanicus, the son of Claudius, who had reigned as emperor before Nero. Titus’s time in the royal courts showed in the confident way he held himself, in the style of his haircut, and in his articulate manner of speaking.

“Perhaps you could say that louder,” Vitas answered. He wore a simple tunic and was slightly taller than Titus. Leaner. Vitas was nearing thirty, six years older than Titus. Each was obviously well muscled and healthy and showed a full set of teeth—ample evidence of their wealth and rank to the members of the underclass who filled this tavern. “Or perhaps you could repeat it for the few at the back who were unable to hear it the first time.”

Already, a few large men—stooped from years of hard labor—had begun to rise from their tables, knocking over cups of beer in their haste.

“Speciem illorum uberum suis non amo,”
Titus said in clear reference to the two approaching men, using formal grammar to emphasize the common insult.

Vitas shook his head sadly as two more men rose from their seats.
I don’t like the look of those sows’ udders
, Titus had just called out.

“Please,” Vitas said to the men, “no need to get up in greeting. We were told we might find Gallus Damian here.”

As the prostitutes eased out of the way, none of the four men slowed his approach.

“Notice how they come in pairs,” Titus declared loudly, calmly adjusting his toga so he could move freely in a fight. “It simply proves what I said. Sows’ udders.”

At that moment, deep in the emperor’s palace in Rome, the second most powerful man in the empire was about to discover a different kind of terror, hidden within a scroll with a broken seal.

“Leave me alone,” Helius said to the slave who had entered his chamber with the scroll. “I’m extremely busy.”

His sarcasm dripped with the authority of a man who’d once been a slave, now speaking to a subordinate. Because of his relationship to Nero, that meant nearly anyone else in the empire. The irritation Helius endured because of the summer heat was increased by the fact that he had always found this particular slave ugly.

“Tigellinus said—”

“I am occupied.” Helius interrupted the slave, spitting out each word.

Indeed, Helius was busy allowing two other slaves to tend to him. A woman was trimming his hair in the latest style, and a teenage boy was applying makeup to his face.

The slave with the scroll—a man in his forties with sparse gray hair—seemed miserable. “Tigellinus wants you to look at the graffiti,” he persisted. The slave only persisted because Tigellinus knew Helius was preparing for a night of debauchery with Nero and had foreseen that Helius would not be interested. Accordingly, Tigellinus had promised to have the slave severely whipped unless Helius read the scroll. And, since Tigellinus was the prefect of the Praetorian Guards, the emperor’s soldiers who policed the city, Tigellinus was one of the few men in Rome with power nearly equal to Helius’s.

“Graffiti?” Helius echoed. The first sensation of dread rumbled within his bowels. If this came from Tigellinus, it could only refer to certain graffiti that infuriated Nero. Nero’s nightmares had not lessened; tonight’s fun was intended to distract Nero from his demons.

“This . . . ,” the slave said as he began to unroll the scroll. The back of it—the side facing Helius—revealed a single three-letter Greek word, large enough to be visible at several paces.

Helius sucked in his breath as his guess about the graffiti was confirmed. He recovered quickly, hoping neither the woman behind him nor the boy applying his makeup had detected that quick intake of breath.

“This scroll comes from Tigellinus?” Helius said as casually as he could. “And where did he get it?”

“A young Jew stopped him in the streets and showed it to him. Tigellinus had him immediately arrested.”

“You were with Tigellinus and witnessed this?”

“I was there,” the old slave answered.

“Tigellinus read it?”

“Yes.”

“And the Jew that he arrested?”

“Tigellinus instructed me to tell you that the young Jew has been detained and is under guard.”

“By Tigellinus?” Helius asked, hoping the answer would be otherwise.

“By Tigellinus.”

If Tigellinus had handled it personally instead of ordering soldiers to watch the young Jew, this was as important as Helius feared. For, if Nero got wind of it, he would be unbearable. Everything that mattered to Helius depended on the whims of Nero, whose patience was already nearing an end because of the apparent powerlessness that Helius and Tigellinus had against the symbol on the back of the scroll.