The Last Temple (12 page)

Capital of the Empire

I watched as he opened the sixth seal. There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red, and the stars in the sky fell to earth, as late figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind. The sky receded like a scroll, rolling up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place.

REVELATION 6:12-14

From the Revelation, given to John on the island of Patmos in AD 63

Twenty-two months earlier, Vitas had been aboard a ship on the Tiber River to flee Rome in the middle of the night, sent by men he did not know, for reasons he did not know, to a destination he did not know—for twenty-two months earlier, Nero wanted Vitas dead.

Fleeing Nero, Vitas had given up everything that mattered. His pregnant wife, his freedom, his land, his honor.

Fleeing Nero, Vitas had journeyed to Alexandria, then Caesarea, and back to Alexandria.

In those twenty-two months, Rome’s legions under Vespasian and Titus had officially entered into war with the Jews, crushing city after city, slaughtering Jews, and closing in on Jerusalem.

Jerusalem’s political factions had begun to rebel against each other, fighting a separate war within the safety of the city walls, slaughtering tens of thousands more.

In Greece, Nero had continued to make the rounds of festivals, indulging his every whim in a fashion that suggested he was either oblivious to the growing discontent in Rome or determined to make himself oblivious. His personal degradations were so commonplace now that rarely did people find them scandalous, but in one of his more outrageous whims, he’d demanded a canal dug across the Corinthian isthmus. If completed, such a project would be a boon to shipping, but no other Caesar had attempted this impossible task. Nero believed, however, that for him as a god, nothing was impossible, and he began draining the imperial treasury at an even more alarming rate than before.

The empire had come perilously close to rebellion during Vitas’s time of respite. In that twenty-two months, Vitas had been reunited with his wife, celebrated the birth of a son at the estate of Queen Bernice, and spent an anonymous idyllic year devoted to his small family. What had made their experience feel all the more idyllic was the fact that the rest of the world had been in turmoil.

In that twenty-two months, Vitas had enjoyed all that truly mattered—his wife and their newborn child, his freedom. Vitas did not need his land and wealth—Titus and Vespasian were his patrons. As for honor, there was no shame in having Nero as an enemy. In fact, given Nero’s unstoppable megalomania, it was a matter of great shame to have him as a friend.

Vitas truly had all that a man needed on this earth. Of greater importance, he was fully aware that he had all he needed. He knew many restless men who believed that happiness was always around the next corner. Few men would have thought less of him for remaining in Alexandria with his family.

But few men were like Vitas, and the pangs of injustice gnawed at him.

Which was why Vitas was on the Tiber again, traveling upstream this time, returning to Rome, knowing that if Nero discovered he was still alive, he would once again lose all.

In a small boat behind him were two children he’d vowed to protect, and part of that protection meant they could not travel with him.

His dead brother’s slave, Jerome, sat beside Vitas in the center of the craft, swaying as the water rippled beneath them.

From Alexandria, a ship carrying grain had taken them to Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber. Centuries of sediment had made passage up the Tiber impossible for larger crafts, so they now traveled on a ferry to go as far as the wharves lining the riverbank at the great city’s Campus Martius.

Vitas was on the Tiber again because to stay in the safety of Alexandria as the empire crumbled would have been unbearable for him. His duty to Rome and his friendship with Titus bound Vitas to this task, just as his heart was bound to his family in Alexandria. Even if Vitas died in the next week in Rome, he’d been given nearly two more years of life, including the best and happiest year he’d experienced.

Risking his own life now for Titus was a small price to pay. Especially if it gave Vitas the one thing he did not possess—justice for the crimes Nero had committed against Vitas and Sophia, and justice upon Helius, the man who had plotted with Nero to condemn Vitas.

His intense desire for revenge was something he’d hidden from Sophia, and he felt no guilt about deceiving her. Vitas was not driven by rage at what Nero had done to him, but at what Nero had inflicted on Sophia.

All Vitas needed to do was remember the dinner party where Nero had beckoned for Sophia, determined not only to conquer her physically but to return to describe it. All Vitas needed to do was remember how Sophia had bowed her head, prepared to sacrifice herself to save Vitas. All Vitas needed to do was remember how he’d leaped at Nero in front of the horrified guests, ready to crush the emperor’s windpipe with his bare hands.

If this wasn’t enough to demand justice, there was Nero’s command the next day for Sophia to commit suicide—and all that Sophia had been forced to endure in escaping Nero.

Yes, Vitas was in Rome. And either he would die. Or Nero would die.

It was definitely something he had hidden from his wife.

Vitas remembered it well, delivering to the woman he loved the words he’d dreaded, though he knew he would eventually have to say them.

What made the recollection more poignant for him was the peace he recalled feeling in the garden in Alexandria, the perfume of the orange blossoms, the dappled shade of the leaves.

Tutillus was a precocious athlete. At fifteen months, he preferred running to walking, and he laughed in delight as he chased a butterfly, stumbling in a way that made it seem like every step would send him plunging into the soft grass.

Sophia, standing beside Vitas, had squeezed his hand as they shared the joy of watching their son. No words were needed. To any mother or father, there was nothing ordinary about the ordinary. Love swelled a soul, and love was unique, beyond comparison to anything of value in a man’s life. Love for his woman, love for his children. This was what made life worth living.

Yet this great love and purpose, for Vitas, was always tinged with greater sorrow. Like the life of the butterfly that fluttered just beyond the reach of his laughing son, the love Vitas savored was doomed to be only a brief heartbeat against eternity. Vitas pondered what meaning could be found in lives that flitted away so easily.

Sophia squeezed Vitas’s hand again, taking him away from the bittersweet reverie. “Tell me what you must tell me,” she said. “I’d rather stroll this garden beside you without the clouds that darken your face.”

He was startled, and she shook her head as if he were a naughty child.

“You think I can’t tell when something troubles you?” Then a sad smile. “Of course, there is the fact that a letter arrived for you from Rome a few days ago. I’ve been waiting for you to tell me about it, and your silence has been worrying me. I’d rather hear now so we can enjoy the moments we have together.”

“Titus needs my help.” Vitas watched her face, waiting for a protest. For there were many, and all of them legitimate. Vitas had served the empire well. What more should be required of him?

“Our life here was and is not possible without Titus,” Sophia said softly. She let go of his hand and reached up to stroke his face with the tips of her fingers. “When I think of what we almost lost, it brings me to the point of tears.”

She pointed at Tutillus. “Without Titus, our baby would never have been born.”

“Helping Titus will take me to Rome. Need I point out the risk?”

She shook her head. “Do what you must. Without those who helped us, we would have never had this year together. But this is more than bartering for time, choosing a death later for some time together now.”

“You understand, then.”

Another sad smile. “Yes, I understand. You live by a code, Vitas. It’s a code held by men like Titus and Vespasian and the soldiers who served you. To turn your back now would be like fleeing in battle, and you could not live with yourself if that happened. Nor, I suppose, could you live long with me, for Tutillus and I would be a constant reminder that you had broken your code and diminished yourself.” She drew Vitas toward her and placed her head on his chest.

Vitas allowed tears to fall on his cheeks. He’d wept at the birth of Tutillus. Joy. Now sorrow.

“I pray not for your safe return,” Sophia said. “God’s will shall be done.”

He could tell by the sound of her voice that she was weeping too.

“Instead,” she told him, “I pray that you, too, will someday trust in the Christos.”

Boat traffic grew busier as they approached the city. Vitas saw first the colonnades of the Porticus Argonautarum, commemorating Rome’s naval victories a century earlier. Then the Pantheon, the temple for all the gods of Rome.

Vitas smiled sardonically to himself. Such a magnificent structure, the Pantheon. Yet he was beginning to understand that the true God had no need for this kind of show. Daily, he’d witnessed Sophia beneath a tree in the garden with her head bowed in prayer, reaching out to the God of the Jews through the Christos, whom Sophia explained had given her freedom from temples and sacrifices by dying himself on a cross.

A sudden bump against the front of the boat took Vitas from his thoughts. He glanced down at the muddy water to see a floating corpse among all the other debris.

His smile and gentle memories of Sophia disappeared.

The body was that of an executed criminal—no doubt one who had been bound and strangled at the infamous Gemonian stairs of central Rome. Corpses were often left on the staircase for days in open view of the forum, scavenged by dogs, until eventually thrown into the Tiber. There was no method of death more dreadful or dishonorable for a Roman.

As the bloated body rolled under the boat, Vitas was fully aware of the likelihood that his return to Rome might result in that exact fate for him.

Vitas instructed Jerome to wait in a tavern near the forum. Walking with the giant of a man drew too much attention, and Vitas needed anonymity for a while.

Vitas was not worried that Jerome might flee. In general, all slaves understood the folly of this, as a runaway slave would eventually be hunted down and executed, and his wife and children would suffer the same penalty.

Since that day in the marketplace of Caesarea, Vitas had every reason to believe he could trust Jerome with even his own life. Moreover, Jerome had been separated from his family for nearly two years and would not jeopardize a reunion with them.

Vitas kept his head down as he moved through the crowd. In numbers, there was safety. Rome held men from all parts of the world, and the tan that Vitas had acquired in Alexandria gave him the air of a foreigner.

Within minutes, he had reached the Curia Julia, where the Senate met, near the forum and the temple of Jupiter. He eased himself against a tavern wall and let the crowd flow around him as he waited for the senators to finish the day’s business.

Huge buttresses adorned the Curia Julia. Its front wall was decorated with slabs of marble, but only the lower portion. The upper part was covered with stucco to imitate white marble blocks.

Vitas well knew the austere interior of the hall, brightened only by the opus sectile of the floor, a Roman art technique with materials cut and inlaid into the floor to make pictures or patterns. The squares were interlaid with images of cornucopias, all in reds and greens and purples. In contrast, the walls were veneered with marble that went two-thirds of the way up. Aside from the Altar of Victory, there was not much else except three broad steps that fitted five rows of chairs to accommodate about three hundred senators.