The Last Disciple (50 page)

Rikka accepted the food, but made no effort to eat it. “You bought my freedom?” Her tone was full of disbelief. When Chayim did not disagree, her face became animated. “Thank you! Thank you!”

“You should not thank me,” Chayim said. “I follow one who suffered far worse on our behalf. When I serve you, I serve Him.”

Rikka stared directly into Chayim’s eyes. “You mean . . . you mean . . .”

“He was and is the Christos,” Chayim said. He knew enough about the Christians to fool this woman. “Today I have bought your freedom as a slave, but at the Cross He bought freedom for all of us.”

“You are a follower! So am I!”

Chayim looked around the grove of olive trees. He smiled. “I believe it would serve both of us if you spoke softer. It is a dangerous thing to be a follower.”

“You are a follower,” she said, almost whispering. “And sought to bring me to the faith . . .”

“There is danger in that,” Chayim said. “But I hoped you would not betray me after . . .”

“. . . after all that you’ve done for me. No. And to discover that we are both believers!”

“Yes. To find fellowship in these times of persecution.” Chayim shook his head. “There are days that I feel so alone.”

“Please,” Rikka said. “There are some I gather with. At night. And in secret, away from the eyes of Nero. If you want to join us . . .”

Chayim lifted her hands so she would be aware of the food she held. “Join with some believers?” He smiled again. Success had been as simple as he had planned. “Now it is my turn to be grateful to you.”

Hora Sexta

“I know very little about Jews,” Damian had said to begin the conversation. “Will you tell me how one becomes a rabbi?”

Seated on a cushion, Damian was looking across a table set with exquisitely prepared food that seemed to come straight from a Roman banquet—from sea urchins to broiled chicken to turnips cut in long strips like anchovies. His host was a fat man, a prominent moneylender and a respected rabbi.

Damian’s question came because of the contrast with his memories of visiting Darda’s plain but functional pottery shop. There, they’d sat on a stool at the edge of the marketplace. Here, Damian and the Jew named Azariah, who was dressed in bright silks, were in the shade of a courtyard set in the center of an opulent mansion and being attended to by anxious servants.

“You ask because of your visit with Darda.” It was a statement from Azariah, not a question.

Damian raised an eyebrow.

“You are not the only one who has a habit of asking questions,” Azariah said with a chuckle. “And I can promise you that as large as Rome is, the Jews tend to know the business of other Jews. And rabbis are well familiar with other rabbis.”

“I visited Darda,” Damian said.

Azariah had a flyswatter made of peacock feathers. He waved it over the table, then reached for a marinated olive and popped it into his mouth. He worked it in his right cheek as he spoke. “What you really mean to ask is why one rabbi works clay while another rabbi like myself works servants.”

No sense in denying it,
Damian thought. He nodded.

“We are not priests,” Azariah answered. “We are not supported by a temple in any formal manner, something I suppose you expect as a Roman familiar with so many different gods and temples.”

Azariah made a show of savoring the flavor of the olive before swallowing it. “A rabbi is a learned teacher, one who interprets Scripture and passes on traditional laws and lore. One does not become a rabbi without coming from a previously established rabbi, a school so to speak. I follow the school of Hillel, who was among our greatest rabbis. But rabbis must support themselves, and I simply happen to have a talent for making money.”

Azariah picked up a chicken drumstick and waved it at Damian. “A very good talent. But I tithe diligently and have no guilt about my wealth.”

“Tithe?”

“Ten percent of what I earn goes to God through donations to the temple in Jerusalem.”

Damian nodded. “Ten percent of what you earn before it is taxed by Rome or after?”

Azariah laughed. “Please, eat.”

Damian noticed that the man did not answer the question about taxes. “I just came from a large meal,” Damian apologized. “And I am going to compound my rudeness by crassly offering double our original arrangement if you can satisfy my questions about the letter.”

Although some wealthy people liked to pretend they were above affairs of money, Damian was confident that Azariah would not see his offer as crass. And unlike Darda, Azariah did strike Damian as someone who would compromise himself if the price was right.

“Double.” Azariah stopped chewing. His eyeballs rolled upward slightly in what seemed to be a quick mental calculation. “And will I have to commit a criminal act too?”

“It seems the letter might be dangerous, and I simply have questions about its meaning.”

“
Might
be dangerous?” Azariah snorted. “There are some in power who might find it so treasonous that possession of it is worthy of death.”

“You understand it then?” Damian asked, acting as if Azariah’s warning meant nothing.
Treason! No wonder Helius placed such value on the letter.

“Of course I understand it. Yet I must confess, there is one who has far more knowledge than I do. Hezron, son of Onam. If you can find him, he could tell you the significance of every word in this letter.”

Damian shook his head. “After the way he suffered with the loss of his sons Caleb and Nathan? No, Hezron is wise to protect himself by remaining invisible to the Romans.”

Azariah’s eyes bulged in surprise, something that gave Damian enjoyment. This was one of his favorite tactics. Parlaying a single piece of information—given to him in this case the day before by Darda—into the appearance of knowing much more. Here, Damian guessed by speaking with pretended familiarity about Hezron, it would serve him well if Azariah believed that Damian was extremely knowledgeable about some things in the Jewish community.

“I must watch my step around you,” Azariah said in confirmation of Damian’s hunch, shaking a finger at him.

“Hardly,” Damian said. He intended to be abrupt, hoping to jolt Azariah. “Tell me about a certain matter in the letter. In one way the author of the letter seems to identify him clearly. And in another, not clearly. Simply put, who is the Beast?”

Azariah’s reaction was much different than Darda’s had been a day earlier. “‘Let the one who has understanding solve the number of the Beast,’” Azariah said, smiling as he quoted from the letter. He wiped a greasy finger against his leg. “That is what you want to know for the exorbitant price you offer?”

“Yes.”

“Darda didn’t want to speak about it, did he?” Again, Azariah made it sound like a statement, not a question.

If Damian had needed a reminder about the cleverness of the man opposite him, here was a plain one.

Azariah continued. “Darda fears the authorities much more than I do. Of course, they don’t owe him as much money as they owe me. Unlike him, I’m not afraid that discussing it will be seen as treason.”

Treason.

Again, another hint of the danger of the letter. Somehow Darda had decided that the letter spoke against the emperor, an offense punishable by immediate death. But Damian had given the number of the Beast much consideration and thought otherwise. “How could it possibly be treason?” Damian asked. “The number of the Beast is not given by Nero’s name.”

“No?” Azariah smiled indulgently. “Pretend I know nothing about gematria. Pretend I am a little boy, just learning to read.”

“Every letter in our alphabet corresponds to a number,” Damian said with a touch of impatience, because the use of gematria to convert words and names into numbers was indeed something every literate person understood from the first days of formal education. “The first ten letters are the numbers 1 through 10, the eleventh letter represents 20, the twelfth letter 30, and so on until 100. The twentieth letter is 200, and each new letter represents an additional hundred.”

Mock applause from Azariah. “Thus,” Azariah said, “the famous verse of poetry that Nero hates: ‘Count the numerical values of the letters in Nero’s name, and in
murdered his own mother,
and you will find their sum is the same.’”

Damian nodded. In Greek, the numbers of all the letters in Nero’s name totaled 1,005. As did the numbers in the phrase
murdered his own mother.
It was a clever verse and a clever piece of gematria, reflecting the widespread knowledge that indeed Nero had killed his mother Agrippina. The fact that the verse appeared everywhere in public places and was widely understood for its slyness also reflected the universal use and acceptance of gematria.

“So you are puzzled about the reference to the number 666.”

“Yes,” Damian said. “Of course.”

“To the Jewish people,” Azariah said, “it is more than a number. It, like much of the rest of the letter, is also a symbol. For the Hebrews, it is a fearful sign of a king and a kingdom in the image of the Dragon—the fallen angel who opposes God.”

Azariah continued, obviously aware of Damian’s lack of comprehension. “To the Hebrews, 6 is a number of incompleteness, one short of 7, which stands for completeness. The triple 6 that much more so. But it’s a fascinating number and mathematically almost a riddle in and of itself, a code of multiple variations. I could spend hours expounding on this, and believe me, I have given the number much thought since studying the letter for you.”

Azariah had an empty scroll beside him. He picked it up and made some quick markings.

“This, as you know, is a triangular,” Azariah said. “A simple example. It’s the triangular 21, which forms two triangles with an inner triangle of 6 and an outer of 15, in a total of 6 lines. As the triangular 21, the total number of 21 is the sum of all the numbers from 1 to 6. If you extend this pattern all the way out to 36 lines, adding up all the numbers from 1 to 36, you form the triangular 666. I won’t bore you with the calculations; trust me when I say that the triangular 666 is the ‘fulfillment’ of 105, a 12-fold triangle with a periphery of 30 x 3, a reckoning that also adds up to the fatally limited reign of 1,260 days that the letter prophesies for the Beast. Incredible code. Astounding, actually.”

Azariah shook his head in awe. “It’s even eerie, especially when you understand the name of the Beast.”

Damian was impressed at the rabbi’s reaction of wonder and admiration, yet was too impatient to want more discussion of the matter. “I have far less interest in your calculations than in the name of the Beast,” Damian said.

“But these numerical relationships are very significant,” Azariah protested. “You came to me because—”

“The name of the Beast,” Damian interrupted. “That’s what’s important to me. It seems to me that John is plainly saying that I should be able to identify the Beast by its number. Except I can’t.”

“You are not Hebrew.” Azariah gave Damian a broad grin. “Which, of course, is why you came to me.”

“You are saying you have the answer?”

“It is as plain to me as it would be to any other Jew reading it.”

Scraping of iron against iron.

Vitas must have dozed, because it wasn’t until the prison cell door was completely shut again and he heard rustling in the straw that he realized he wasn’t alone.

“Hello?” he croaked. The cell was so dark he couldn’t even make out the figure of the person who had stepped inside.

“Helius will arrive in the next couple of hours,” the voice answered. “We have little time.”

“Who are you?”

“Drink this.” A hand touched his shoulder, then followed his arm down to his hand. When something cold touched it, Vitas realized it was the smooth side of a clay jar.

Vitas lifted it. With greed, he gulped a few swallows, then recoiled at the liquid’s bitterness. “What is this?” Vitas gasped.

“You will thank me for it later.”

“Who are you?”

“Drink again.”

Vitas was so thirsty, he gulped a few more swallows. “Surely you can tell me who you are.”

“I cannot.” A pause. “If it ever reaches Nero’s ear that I was here, I will die in the same way he intends for you to die. Now drink until it is empty.”