The Last Disciple (45 page)

“I know what you’ve told me before,” Vitas said to Ben-Aryeh. “But now that we are in Rome, surely you’ll reconsider.”

Ben-Aryeh sat on a bench in the outer courtyard of Vitas’s home. His eyes were closed. His face was tilted to catch the sun.

Vitas found himself admiring the lines on the older man’s face. Lines of character.

“You are speaking about Chayim,” Ben-Aryeh said.

“I can provide you a litter to go to the imperial palace,” Vitas said. “You’ll be safe, of course. Reports of the accusation against you in Jerusalem will not have reached Rome.”

“You’ve told me that repeatedly. And each time it emphasizes the fact that I am of so little importance that no one in Rome would care that I have escaped Jerusalem.”

“Except Chayim. Your son.”

“Congratulations,” Ben-Aryeh said. “I understand Sophia is with child.”

“Don’t try to change the subject.”

“When you are a father, perhaps you will understand how much it hurts to be estranged from your firstborn.”

“Don’t be stubborn,” Vitas urged. He and Ben-Aryeh had argued so much over the months that it was second nature for both of them to freely speak their minds. “Now is your chance to reconcile.”

“I will not go to the palace.”

“I can send for him to join you here,” Vitas said.

Ben-Aryeh finally opened his eyes. “So that I can tell him myself that I am a fugitive? That if I return to Jerusalem, I will be put to death by stoning? That I have abandoned my wife and his mother because I am too afraid of that fate?”

“I doubt it’s fear,” Vitas said. “I know you rage against the injustice of it. You are an innocent man. Your enemies are trying to destroy you.”

This was clear to Vitas. He remembered that morning with Queen Bernice, when the assistant named Olithar had lied about Ben-Aryeh. That had been enough proof of Ben-Aryeh’s innocence for Vitas to help when Ben-Aryeh had shown up at the royal palace, asking for safe-conduct out of the city. Vitas had had no regrets since—he was beginning to love the older man like a brother.

“
Trying
to destroy me?” Ben-Aryeh said. “I’m stuck here with a Roman family. In Rome. Don’t get me wrong. I’m extremely grateful, and someday I shall find a way to repay you. But my enemies have succeeded extremely well.”

“But they weren’t able to kill you.”

“You find that ironic, don’t you?” Ben-Aryeh said. “All your questions about this Jesus and how He accepted crucifixion despite His innocence. And here I am, a man of the law, breaking the law.”

“Shall I send for Chayim?”

“No,” Ben-Aryeh said. “If he has changed and is a Jew dutiful to God, I will only shame him. If he has not changed, he will shame me.”

Hora Duodecima

Late-afternoon sunshine warmed Damian as he walked through a small market area.

He did not look back to confirm that Jerome was shadowing him as he moved through the crowded market. That was a given. Always. They were a team. He assumed that Jerome remained because he was content with the monthly wage that Damian paid, but Damian never asked, assuming that every man and woman always did what each felt was in his or her best interest.

It was with this assumption that Damian hunted slaves, as he was doing this morning on his way to a pottery maker.

In his quiet moments—and for Damian there were many—he wasn’t afraid to contemplate the satisfaction it gave him to make a business of pursuing slaves. It allowed him a form of defiance against the status quo that had been thrust upon him, born as he was into a patrician family. And most of all, it satisfied his instinct to hunt.

For who else to match wits with than another human being? Especially a desperate human being, trying to avoid the torture and death that would come with capture.

It was not the prospect of their punishment that drove Damian. That was simply a fact of the Roman world, and slaves knew the consequences of disobedience or theft or murder, so he felt no pity for them once captured. No, it was the pursuit, often so challenging that after capturing an especially clever slave, Damian was tempted to release that slave again with a month’s worth of living expenses and a week’s head start.

The hunt!

Damian began with that assumption—that men always did what they felt was in their self-interest. But what added to the challenge was that he’d learned how widely varied one man’s self-interest could be from another’s. Many slaves were entirely predictable in their flight, and those he found quickly and with a sense of boredom. The others—the minority—presented him with a fascinating array of needs and desires, from the depraved to the sublime. These slaves—the unpredictable and intelligent—gave him the most satisfaction.

To hunt them, he’d learned to add another basic rule: Think like the prey.

Thus, again and again he would slip into the role, indeed the very psyche of those he pursued, spending hours—even days—in the household interviewing other slaves about the habits and friends and desires of the one escaped. Whatever distance the pursued gained while Damian patiently remained to ask those questions was quickly lost once Damian understood whom he pursued.

In a way, then, he was disappointed that today he expected to hear from the slave from the ex-governor’s household of a time and place that John would be captured. From all that Damian had learned about John, the man was intelligent. And John’s motives were difficult to discern, which made him all the more unpredictable as quarry. Damian had hoped for a battle of intellect against intellect in seeking John. It would be a shame that a betrayal might end any chance John had of remaining free.

Still, Damian was not going to assume the capture would end as expected. So this morning, he moved through the marketplace as if the pursuit would be protracted. On the chance that John did escape immediate capture, Damian wanted to peer into the man’s mind. And what better reflected the way a man thought than his writings?

There was more.

In hiring Damian, Helius had made a passing comment about the uselessness of rumors of a letter that this John had written to a growing circulation in Rome and Asia.

Damian believed this was one of the few mistakes Helius had made over the last few years. Helius, as the second most powerful man in the empire, had great political acumen. Helius should have known his comment would not deter Damian but spur him to investigate the letter further.

If, for some reason, Helius did not want Damian learning more about the letter, Damian wanted to know the reason. Even if John was soon captured and delivered to Helius as promised.

For in Rome, political knowledge was power. As were secrets.

The dimly lit shop was cramped and had the comforting smell of damp clay. An unfinished pot sat on a nearby wheel, draped with a wet cloth. On a bench were other large squares of clay, equally protected from the heat by damp cloths.

The owner of the shop was Darda, a tiny old bearded Jew who sat in the doorway on a stool. He ignored the passersby and squinted at a scroll with intense concentration.

“What is it you want to know?” the old Jew asked when he finished.

“Some of it makes perfect sense,” Damian said. “And some of it is obviously symbolism.”

Darda nodded, keeping his watery blue eyes directly on Damian’s face. “And?”

“I am paying you to interpret it,” Damian replied. “Am I not? So begin.”

“Have I seen your money? Is it in my hand?”

Damian sighed theatrically, hoping to amuse the old Jew. “I simply don’t understand how the Romans rule the Jews instead of the opposite.”

That earned the slightest of smiles. Or perhaps the twitch around the old Jew’s mouth was Damian’s imagination.

“Besides,” Darda said, “there is one who could make much better sense of this for you. But I’m not sure you would have enough gold for him. He hates the empire and he hates the Christians because he lost his sons to both.”

Darda scratched his beard. “And you would have to find him first. He is one of our greatest rabbis, but he has hidden himself and his daughters because he fears Nero.”

“Tell me his name,” Damian said. There was no such thing as information that could not be used in some manner. And the letter intrigued him.

“Hezron, son of Onam. The sons who died were Caleb and Nathan. He has one daughter named Leah. The other, her name slips my memory.”

“Do I owe you for this precious knowledge?” Damian wasn’t afraid of sarcasm.

Darda shook his head.

“But for you to interpret what you can of this . . .”

Darda named an amount.

“That’s outrageous,” Damian said. Without heat. For what Helius was prepared to pay for the capture of John, the sesterces involved here were meaningless. Besides, Damian liked to cultivate the reputation of one who wouldn’t hesitate to pay handsomely for deserving information—knowledge and secrets, after all, were power.

“Would you rather waste time trying to find another rabbi willing to help a hated Roman?”

Damian cocked his head and regarded Darda. “You don’t strike me as a man who is willing to compromise for money.”

Darda finally smiled. “This letter, it is dangerous. I enjoy the chance to cause a little confusion and grief for Nero by spreading its message among your people.”

Dangerous. For Nero.
Damian hid his reaction. But perhaps his instincts were right. Perhaps Helius truly was afraid.

“And, of course,” Damian said, “it is all the more satisfying to be paid by a Roman for this.”

“Of course.”

“You shall be paid,” Damian grunted. “Now tell me what you can.”

“The money first.”

Damian made a show of disgust, but it was merely a show. He had not expected anything else from the old man.

Darda took the money and disappeared inside his shop to hide it in a safe place.

“Don’t trust me?” Damian said upon his return.

“Not the slightest. In fact, I’m afraid that Nero himself sent you. I will tell you what I can, answer what I can, except for one question.”

“That was not part of our deal.”

“I’ll return your money,” the old man said, rising.

Damian motioned for him to sit. “Tell me what you can.”

Chayim was conscious of the perfume that clung to the silk sheets rumpled around him on the bed.

He inhaled. And tried to find enjoyment in a moment. Normally, he would freely admit that he found no shame in his circumstances, that pleasure, luxury, and wealth intoxicated him.

Just as he would freely admit that his father’s God was not his God. His expensive education in Rome had convinced him that the Jewish religion was superstition, and he’d readily rejected it. But he’d truly rejected it years earlier, while living in Jerusalem.

So when his grim-faced father, Ben-Aryeh, had informed him that he was to be sent to the emperor’s court as an envoy, Chayim had immediately seen it as a gift of freedom—even after Ben-Aryeh explained that Chayim’s life in the court depended on a continued harmonious relationship between the Jewish royalty, the temple priesthood, and the powers of Rome.

Until the meeting with Helius and Tigellinus, nothing had altered Chayim’s optimistic view of his new life. He’d dropped his Jewish mannerisms and immediately entered the life of riotous rich living, pretending to be just another prince among the half dozen held as de facto hostages to ensure that their fathers in various kingdoms did not begin revolts against Rome.

At the meeting with Helius and Tigellinus, however, the skeletal fingers of palace intrigue had first clutched him and had brought him a new realization.

It seemed that his pleasures did have a price.

“Wine?” a woman’s voice called. She appeared in a robe at the doorway, holding an ornate clay jug and a goblet.

This was Litas. A slave from Parthia. Tall, dark-haired. She had a wide smile and sensuous eyes. Chayim was intrigued by her appearance and had not yet tired of her. As a gift from the emperor, she had no choice in what Chayim chose to do with her, but she was never unwilling.

“No.”

She frowned at the sharpness in his voice.

He realized his mistake. And in that moment, he knew he was more his father’s son than he’d have guessed until this first danger. Chayim’s political instincts, untested until the order given him by Helius, surfaced. Litas was a gift from the emperor; who was to say that she was not also a spy.