The Last Disciple (58 page)

Then Vitas snorted. “Yesterday someone beat my face beyond recognition. Yours seems to be untouched. No one would confuse you for me.”

“Soon enough they will. Please. Open the jars.”

Vitas stared at Jonathan.

“There is a ship on the Tiber,” Jonathan said. “Your passage has been paid. You need to arrive there before dark. It will sail tonight.”

Vitas continued to stare, beginning to comprehend what was happening. The wooden dowel wrapped with leather . . .

Jonathan described where to find the ship. “There’s more,” he said. “You’ll need to give them the words that will identify you. ‘These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb and made them white.’ Repeat this so I know you understand.”

Vitas was hesitant, only because this was so strange.

“Repeat it,” Jonathan said.

“‘These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb and made them white.’” Vitas frowned. “What kind of code language is this?”

“Language to save your life and get you away from Rome.”

“You are telling me,” Vitas said, “that I am going to walk away from this prison? Today? Alive?”

“I was sent here to make that possible.”

“But you will . . .”

“Remain here in your place,” Jonathan finished.

“No. I cannot let you die for me.”

“Please,” the man said, “remember the comfort I find in my faith. And remember something else. I will die knowing that it has allowed me to save my family. For that was my bargain. If I take your place, they will be spared.”

“Who arranged this?” Vitas leaned forward and pulled at the clothing on the man’s chest. “Who sent you?”

“Can’t say.”

“Won’t?”

“Won’t. Can’t. I had my instructions. That is all.” Jonathan slurred his words. “Don’t you think I’d be happy to tell you right now?”

“Sophia!” Vitas said.

“Sophia?”

“My wife. She—”

“No!” Jonathan’s voice was sharp. “If she finds out you are alive, she will be killed. I was told to tell you that. If you aren’t on the ship, she is assassinated. Those are the terms.”

“If I don’t accept them?”

“Please. My family has already been taken from the arena. If you don’t make it to the ship, they will be returned and sent to the lions.”

Vitas felt like his head was spinning. Who had organized this? Why? Why couldn’t he go to Sophia? “Where is the ship going?”

“I’ve told you all I can. I am begging you to go. The hood will cover your face until you are well away from the arena. There is a litter waiting outside the amphitheater to take you to the ship. You’ll know it is for you because all the slaves carrying it are bald.”

Jonathan took the second wineskin and tilted it. He squeezed it, looking for more. “May I have your wine?” he said to Vitas apologetically. “I’m afraid I’ll still feel too much.”

Vitas let the man take the other wineskin, understanding why Jonathan felt the need to gird himself.

Vitas picked up the wooden dowel wrapped with leather. Now he understood why the blows yesterday had not cut him open. There were no sharp edges on the wood. Whoever had arranged for this meant to make his face unrecognizable. So that when Jonathan—the same size and same build—stepped into the arena, all who saw from the stands would believe it was Vitas dying.

“I am sorry for my cowardly behavior,” Jonathan said. “When the soldiers at the cross offered my Savior wine mixed with myrrh, He had the courage to refuse it. And what He faced was a death much worse than mine.”

“I don’t think I can do it,” Vitas said. The wooden dowel felt heavy in his hand.

“You have no choice. Should both of us die? And my family, too?”

Vitas felt anguish and guilt. Yet offered a reprieve from death, he could not escape sudden joy. It would give him a chance to return somehow to Sophia.

“I will do it.” Vitas raised the wooden dowel in preparation of the first blow to the man’s face.

“Please,” Jonathan said, “extinguish the torch. I don’t want to see the blows coming.”

Vespera

After his men had captured John and after Damian had sent the slave Cornelius on his way, Damian had been in no hurry to speak to his prisoner. Instead, he’d given his men instructions on where to deliver John. Damian had no intention of delivering his captive to Helius immediately.

First of all, Damian suspected that Helius might find it convenient for Damian to die a sudden and mysterious death once John had been delivered to the imperial grounds, and Damian needed to make some arrangements to prevent that.

Second, Damian wanted to learn as much as he could from John. Knowledge, of course, was power. And third, Damian was truly curious about John’s vision and hoped that John would answer questions more fully than either of the two rabbis had been able to do.

So it wasn’t until evening that Damian first met with the man he had captured.

The safe house where he’d hidden John was a shed on the estate grounds of Damian’s father. Years earlier it had been used to hold cattle, and it still smelled faintly of long-dried manure. For Damian, it was not an unpleasant smell. He had many happy childhood memories of running free on the estate.

He unbolted the door and stepped inside the shed, holding a lamp. He gave a brief nod of satisfaction. He’d held other captives here, and the usual arrangements had been made.

The man inside was tethered to the wall by iron bands around his wrists and legs, with long chains that gave him room to move comfortably. Damian had no interest in inflicting more pain than necessary on his captives, and he took pride in handing them over to their owners in the healthiest shape possible.

A bucket for the man’s wastes had been provided, along with fresh straw and clean blankets for bedding. Fresh water was nearby and a basket with bread.

Damian noted with more satisfaction that much of the food had been eaten. This was a good sign. If a captive did not eat, it was an indication of the depths of despair.

“Good evening,” Damian said in a pleasant voice. “I’m sorry to keep you this way, but I don’t want to complicate things by posting guards outside. I hope you understand.”

His face glowing in the lamplight, John looked up at him and smiled but said nothing.

This is strange,
Damian thought. He’d had sullen prisoners before who refused to speak, but this man’s silence came with a friendly smile.

“I won’t hide this fact from you,” Damian said. “I’m a slave hunter. A man of great power sent me to find you. But before I deliver you to him, I’d like to ask you some questions about your vision.”

More silence. Same gentle smile. But more silence.

Damian thought he understood. “I can’t give you back your freedom if you speak to me, but I can promise you I will do everything possible to make your captivity comfortable. Is that a fair exchange? Comfort for answers?”

His captive shifted slightly, and the chains that held him to the wall rattled.

Damian knelt. “Come on,” he said. “What is it going to take to get you to talk to me?”

The man in chains said nothing.

“You must speak the truth to me.” Sophia’s words broke a long silence between her and Ben-Aryeh.

Earlier, as night fell, Ben-Aryeh had led them up from the Via Appia into a small ravine well away from the road. He had hobbled the horses and then shared fruit and cheese with Sophia.

No fire. It was too dangerous.

No inn.

They had enough gold; Ben-Aryeh had made sure of that before they’d abandoned Vitas’s mansion. But there was still too much risk that someone might recognize them.

To the world—and more importantly, to Nero—Sophia was dead. If word reached Tigellinus or Helius that she had not committed suicide, Sophia and Ben-Aryeh would be fleeing to the corners of the empire, always wondering whether capture and death might be only a day away.

So they rested near the horses. Each in a blanket.

“I have not lied to you,” Ben-Aryeh replied.

“Nor have you been your usual self. No caustic remarks. No sarcasm. Not even any complaints about the Romans.”

“Think of our day,” Ben-Aryeh said.

“No.” Sophia was firm. She did not want to know. But she needed to know. “You have learned something about Vitas. I can sense it.”

“It is true,” he said. “I have not told you everything. This morning, even before we made our plans, a messenger arrived with a strange letter. In this scroll, I was instructed to flee Rome with you immediately and that the remainder of the letter would direct us where to go once we were safely away from Nero. Yet . . .”

“Yet?”

“The letter uses such symbolic language that it is obviously coded. I haven’t been able to give it much thought since. Only to wonder at who delivered it and why.”

“You haven’t answered my question about Vitas.” Ben-Aryeh did not speak, and that confirmed it for her. “Tell me,” she said. “Everything.”

“My child,” he began slowly, “the soldier told me that Vitas was to face the lions in the arena today.”

Sophia pulled her knees closer into her body. She pretended her heart was stone. Vitas . . . gone.

“Sophia?”

“Let me rest,” she told Ben-Aryeh. “Weren’t you the one who insisted that the next days must be filled with long travel?”

“Sophia.”

“Enough,” she said. “Please.”

He gave her peace.

But she could not turn her heart to stone.

The child of Vitas was within her. She must live for that.

She closed her eyes against the night. Tears fell as she began to pray. She knew that without her faith, her future would be without hope.

The man in chains said nothing as he faced Damian.

For good reason.

Damian did not know it, of course, but the man in chains was not John, but John’s friend Ruso.

Ruso knew that the moment he opened his mouth, his accent would betray the fact that Damian had captured the wrong person. Would betray the fact that Ruso had had John captured and sent away to safety, then continued himself down the alley toward Damian, where as planned earlier, Cornelius had identified him to the slave hunter as John.

The longer Ruso remained silent, the farther away John would be from Rome.

And only Ruso knew John’s final destination.

In the dark of night Vitas boarded a small ship on the Tiber, calling out the password when requested: “‘These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb and made them white
.
’”

A man whose face was indistinguishable led him wordlessly to a cabin in the belly of the ship. It launched only minutes after his arrival, slipping downstream on the black, silent currents of the river.

It took Vitas out into the night.

But he was leaving Sophia behind.

The cabin was oppressive. Smelled of fish and vinegar. He moved onto the deck. Wanted to watch the outline of the hills of Rome.

Noise from the city taunted him, calling him back. Only at night were commercial wagons allowed into the city. Reaching him was the grinding squeal of wooden wheels on wooden axles of thousands of carts, the bellowing of oxen, the cursing of the drivers trying to find room on the crowded streets.