The Last Temple (17 page)

“You’ve come to taunt me?” Alypia croaked from her chair in the sun. “Go away.”

Quintus and Valeria had insisted that Vitas take them to the dying woman. He’d mentally measured the risk. Had Alypia sent word to Helius about his visit to her? If she had, would Helius have sent men to watch for his possible return?

He’d weighed the likelihood of those risks against the possible danger of Quintus and Valeria’s going unaccompanied to visit the woman who wanted them dead. When Valeria had informed Vitas that unless he chained them to the gates of Damian’s estate, they would find a way to visit Alypia with or without his permission, he’d realized he had little choice.

And now they were here, with Valeria and Quintus sitting across from her, Vitas standing watch at the entrance to the garden, within earshot of the conversation.

“We are not here to taunt you,” Valeria said quietly.

Vitas knew that even before the murder of Valeria’s father, she and Alypia had been two proud and spiteful women, each grating on the other in the confines of their household. With all he knew of Valeria’s past as the spoiled daughter of a rich man, he now marveled at the gentleness in her reply.

“I want to tell you about Jerusalem,” Quintus said in his usual earnest and straightforward manner. “When the Romans were forced out, I lived with an old woman—Malka. A Jew. With no money or any other family.”

“I hate the mention of Jerusalem,” Alypia spat. “Leave me. I want to be alone.”

Vitas had warned Quintus that Alypia might treat them with foulness. Quintus pressed forward anyway.

“She was a follower of the Christos,” Quintus said.

“Then throw her to the lions,” Alypia answered.

“There is something to these followers,” Valeria said. “You must listen.”

Alypia looked past them but said nothing to interrupt when Quintus began again.

“She taught me about the Christos,” Quintus said. “About his teachings. About his death on the cross. And how some alive today witnessed his resurrection. Malka said he was the long-awaited Messiah.”

Vitas thought of Titus and Vespasian, commanding their legions in a tumultuous land split by contention over this figure—the Messiah.

When Vespasian withdrew his legions from Jerusalem to await the outcome of the pending Roman civil war, the Jews who rejected the Christos as Messiah had proudly proclaimed this as evidence of God’s miraculous intervention to save Jerusalem and the Jews to ensure the coming of the Messiah he had promised.

The followers of the Christos had interpreted the action in the opposite way. They’d recounted one of the warnings of the Christos, when he’d proclaimed that during the Tribulation, the days would be shortened for the sake of the elect. Those on the housetop should not take anything from the house, and those in the field should not return to take clothes, but all should flee into the hills.

And believing that Jerusalem would face destruction for rejecting him as Messiah and crucifying him, the followers of the Christos had used the time of Vespasian’s retreat to flee the city, leaving behind their homes and much of their wealth.

If civil war killed the empire, Jerusalem was safe. But if the empire survived, it would return to Jerusalem, for it could not afford defiance from any province.

What Vitas knew for sure was the chill of the remainder of this prophecy, which Sophia had taught him. Immediately after the Tribulation of those days, the sun would be darkened and the moon would fail to give her light; the stars would fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens would be shaken. Then the sign of the Son of Man would appear in heaven, and all the tribes of the earth would mourn, and they would see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. The Christos had prophesied that this generation would not pass until all these things were fulfilled.

Were Jerusalem to be destroyed, Vitas realized, it would be a confirmation of this horrible prophecy. But this horror was impossible.

He was pulled from his thoughts by Alypia’s screeching nastiness. “Is there a purpose to all of this drivel?”

Valeria knelt at her feet and held one of Alypia’s hands, ignoring the festering wounds on the skin. “Quintus and I have become followers of the Christos,” Valeria said. “We know his teachings. And we know the hope that he offers.”

“We are here because we are your children,” Quintus said. “We are here because we want to help you and keep you company.”

“Is this a cruel joke?” Alypia said. “You don’t need to be nice to me to get this estate. I’m sure your lawyers have told you that it will be yours, no matter what I try to do to you.”

“It’s the farthest thing possible from a cruel joke,” Valeria answered. “Whatever has happened in the past doesn’t matter. Vitas told us that you are afraid to die. Learn about the Christos from us. Learn that he has prepared a room for you.”

“I don’t believe you,” Alypia said. “You must want something.”

Valeria straightened and smiled. She spoke to Quintus. “We need water. Warm water in a bowl. And a towel. Let’s start by washing her feet.”

At dusk, Vitas reclined across a table from Ruso as the senator gave thanks to God for the lavish spread of food in front of them. Vitas had bathed and been tended to by slaves, and he’d felt guilty about it, then felt vaguely un-Roman for this guilt.

He knew the source of his guilt. It had begun in the previous months in Alexandria, where he and Sophia had lived a very simple life in a small circle that included only Jerome, Arella, Quintus and Valeria, Ben-Aryeh, and their own son.

Many hours Vitas and Sophia had discussed faith and what it meant to be a follower of the Christos, with Sophia fully committed and Vitas curious but still reserved.

The teachings of the Christos were radical. To follow him, one had to crucify oneself. “It is no longer I who live,” Sophia had once told Vitas, “but the Christos who lives in me.”

Vitas knew that Sophia ached for her husband to share her faith. She’d told him that one must give up not just part but all of oneself. One could no longer be a rugged individualist. Following the Christos involved being baptized into a body of believers who considered everyone equal—indeed, as fellow slaves of the Christos, each was to consider others better than himself. Sophia explained with crystal clarity that there was no room for compromise on this central point. She had quoted the apostle Paul’s writing in a letter to the church in Philippi: “‘Make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.’”

Vitas had freely admitted to Sophia that he too ached for the freedom that came with this kind of submission but said that every time he came close to it, something within him balked at the notion.

“Well,” Ruso said, breaking into Vitas’s thoughts. “I presume the day was eventful?”

“I had a conversation with Alypia. Her health is poor. All her strivings, it appears, will be of no use to her.”

Ruso nodded. “A castle of sand. Washed away by rain. We need always remember the surest foundation and where our efforts should be directed.”

It almost felt like Ruso was lecturing Vitas, and it mildly irritated him, so he abruptly changed the subject.

“I was followed,” Vitas said.

“What?” Ruso lost his relaxed pose and sat upright, shifting his weight onto his feet, ready to rise. “Who? Where?”

Both understood the terrible consequences of discovery. The key to Vitas’s activities in Rome was that he not be found by Nero or by Nero’s closest men, Helius and Tigellinus. Not only would it end Vitas’s life; Ruso would be ordered to commit suicide, and his property would be confiscated by Nero.

Vitas waved him back. “I was not followed here. It was near the tavern. You can trust that I took as many evasive steps as possible to lose any other followers before returning here. Jerome is always behind me. He’s the one who first let me know about the young man who pursued me to Alypia’s villa, and he helped me trap the follower.”

“You don’t know who sent the man?”

“I have no guesses.” Which wasn’t true. But the stakes were too high to speak candidly. “It wasn’t Nerva.”

“How can you be certain?”

“I was followed long before going to the tavern. If Nerva were involved, he would have had someone waiting when I picked up the letter.”

Ruso leaned forward again. “Nerva has sent you a message.”

“He has chosen a place and time for me to meet tonight with those who oppose Nero, to deliver what Vespasian has instructed me. There could not be a better chance than this. I have the scroll from the archives.”

This time, Ruso did stand in a swift move of excitement that could not be contained. “Where?”

“I have hidden it again,” Vitas said. “Tonight, at the meeting, I’ll have it with me.”

“What does the scroll hold?”

“I haven’t broken the seal. Not until the meeting with Nerva and Vespasian’s supporters. Tomorrow, it is yours, I promise, for I understand your curiosity.”

Ruso began to pace. “Of course. Of course.” He stopped. “Tonight. I’ll send you with a retinue of my slaves as protection.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Vitas said. “I’ll have Jerome.”

“You understand, don’t you, how dangerous this is? Helius and Tigellinus.”

Though Nero was emperor, Helius and Tigellinus were the two men who made sure each of Nero’s whims was immediately granted, from hiring assassins to supplying young men and women for Nero’s depravities. Their continued power depended on Nero’s.

When Vitas nodded, Ruso continued. “Helius and Tigellinus, it is rumored, have promised freedom and immense reward to any slave who alerts them to a gathering of seditious men. If Helius and Tigellinus can imprison in one fell swoop those they can prove are conspiring against Nero, the revolt is over. Galba commits suicide, and the generals at the heads of other legions will once again meekly do Rome’s bidding.”

“If I travel with Jerome, there is far less chance that I will draw attention to myself.”

“You must be careful. Helius and Tigellinus would give half a kingdom for the capture of the conspirators and another half a kingdom for that scroll.” Ruso finished with a grim smile. “And they want you dead too.”

Full moon. An evening still and hot, with sheet lightning flickering above the seven hills of Rome.

The thickness of the air and sense of a gathering storm brought Vitas back to the night when he’d first defied Nero and begun the chain of events that had expelled him from Nero’s inner circle.

Two and a half years earlier, Vitas had stalked Nero on a night just like this, following the emperor through the royal gardens. Nero was wearing an elaborate costume made of skins pieced together from animals imported to the arenas: leopard skin over his body; arms and legs covered by skin from a bear’s legs, complete with claws at his feet and hands; two pairs of eagle’s wings sewn onto the back; and a lion’s head covering Nero’s own.

Vitas had followed Nero that evening because back then, Vitas was the single man in Nero’s inner circle whom the Senate trusted, and he felt like a thin string holding the Senate and the emperor together. Vitas had to know what the emperor was doing in the garden.

As Nero began attacking prisoners in the guise of this beast, Vitas could endure the emperor’s madness no more. He’d stepped in to stop it, and the only thing that had saved Vitas from the emperor’s wrath that night was a miraculous earthquake.

Since then, Nero’s evils had worsened on a scale unseen by the Romans, even after enduring Caligula. Nero, the man who had slept with his own mother and then assassinated her, who had castrated a slave because the boy reminded him of the wife he had kicked to death and in a public ceremony had then wed the boy. In the arenas, he’d tortured thousands of followers of the Christos, clapping in glee at their horrible deaths. He’d ordered statues of himself placed in temples across the empire, commanding his citizens to treat him as a god.

Tonight, in a way, Vitas again stalked the emperor. With the same tension in the heat of a similar evening, Vitas was completing another circle. If things went wrong, however, he doubted an earthquake would save him this time.

He felt the way he did just before battle. Coiled. The difference was that here he needed to compress the rage that boiled inside of him when he thought of Nero and all that Nero had inflicted on Sophia. If Vitas allowed his emotion to reign, he would lose his effectiveness as a warrior.

Still, he could not escape the thought. Vitas was in Rome. Either Nero would die. Or Vitas would die.

Jerome walked beside him through the streets that led to a mansion only hundreds of yards away from the royal gardens. And Vitas, holding a scroll that Helius feared could undermine the emperor, was to meet the small circle of men who would determine Nero’s fate.

And the fate of an empire.

At the ten-foot-high wall that surrounded the grounds of the mansion, Jerome pushed at a gate. It opened on silent hinges.

Any other night, the gate would have been locked and guarded. Tonight, those invited inside the walls had been told it would be open for a specific period of time.

Vitas followed Jerome inside. They walked down a path between shrubs, lit by torches set strategically along either side.

Almost as if materializing from the darkness, soldiers stepped out from the shrubs in full armor, swords drawn, completely surrounding Vitas and Jerome.

Vitas drew his own sword. With a massive blow, Jerome knocked it loose from his hand.

“Stop!” a voice barked from behind the soldiers. The man who had given the command stepped through and tossed a rope toward Jerome.

“Search him for the scroll,” the man said. “And bind his hands.”

Vitas well knew who spoke.

Helius. The man who had ruled Rome while Nero was in Greece. The man who had gone to Greece to bring Nero back to keep power. The man who hated Vitas with as much depth as the ocean.

Daylight would have shown the feminine features of a face as sleek as a leopard’s, the almost-orange eyes, and the twisted smile of a man in love with himself. Torchlight threw his face into shadows but could not conceal the gleam of the triumphant smile.

Lightning flickered, briefly filling the far sky.

None of the soldiers moved forward to obey Helius’s command.

Instead, Jerome patted Vitas until he found the scroll and tossed it to Helius. Jerome spun Vitas and quickly wrapped the rope around his wrists, tying his hands behind his back.

When that was complete, Helius nodded at the soldiers nearest him; they swarmed Jerome and knocked him to the ground unconscious, then used more rope to bind the giant.

When this was complete and there was no danger for Helius, he stepped toward Vitas and used the side of a dagger to stroke his enemy’s cheek.

“Usually I don’t enjoy blood on my hands,” Helius said. “But I’m going to make an exception for you, Vitas.”

“Could you share the pleasure with me?” This came from another man stepping into the torchlight, with the wolfish grin that had for years terrified all but the richest and most powerful in Rome.

Tigellinus closed the distance to Vitas and savagely kicked him in the belly. Vitas fell to the ground, retching.

“Enough,” Helius spoke to Tigellinus. “We had agreed that it would serve our purpose to butcher him alive in front of those inside. Once they see how we deal with him, they’ll fight each other to be the first to name all the others who support their cause.”

“I know, I know,” Tigellinus said, breathing heavily. “But sometimes a man needs to give in to temptation. You of all people would understand.”

Helius laughed softly.

Vitas was still on the ground, trying to wipe the edges of his mouth on his shoulder. He expected another brutal kick, but there was a commotion instead at the rear of the soldiers.

“Found another!” one soldier reported. “He sneaked in through the gate behind them.”

There was a dragging sound.

“Who is this?” Helius demanded.

Vitas took another kick in the ribs and realized the question had been directed at him.

“Who is this?” Helius hissed, leaning down toward Vitas. He grabbed Vitas by the hair and twisted his head to look at the man captured by the soldiers.

A soldier was holding a torch near the face of the new prisoner. Vitas saw clearly it was the same man who had followed him into the alley by the tavern. The stranger’s face showed no fear, only resolution.

“Ask him yourself,” Vitas said.

“We’ll see how long your defiance lasts when I begin to open you with a knife,” Helius said, then turned to Tigellinus. “Take all of them with you to make the arrests.” He pointed at the intruder. “Keep him with you too. We’ll get all of them in one room to watch what happens to Vitas. By dawn, Rome will be Nero’s again.”

Tigellinus waved the soldiers to follow him, and even before the sound of their footsteps had receded, Helius knelt beside the unconscious Jerome. A flash of lightning showed the dagger in his hand.

“Sideways through the ribs,” Helius said. “Straight into the heart. You’ll wish you died this quickly.”

“Let him live.” On his feet, Vitas pulled his hands out from behind his back and withdrew the short sword he’d concealed under his toga. “And I promise you’ll make it through the night too.”

If Helius was surprised that Vitas had loosened his bonds, he didn’t show it. Instead, Helius countered by placing the point of the dagger beneath Jerome’s chin. “Step closer, and I’ll drive this into the roof of his mouth.”

“You are safe as long as he is safe,” Vitas said.

“And I only need to stay safe until Tigellinus returns with the soldiers,” Helius responded. “Run while you can.”

“You held Jerome’s family hostage,” Vitas said. “You told him to find me and kill me and return with my insignia, or his family would be dead. I’m guessing only you and Tigellinus and Jerome have knowledge of this. So ask yourself, which one passed it along to me? Either way, this evening is not going to end as you expected.”

Helius continued kneeling, holding the dagger loosely under Jerome’s throat. “I’ll humor you,” he said. “Let’s continue this conversation.”

Another sheet of lightning flickered silently above the hills. The approaching storm was so distant that the rumbling would barely reach them in the next thirty seconds.

“You pretend it’s about amusement,” Vitas said. “But you are asking yourself right now: Which one told? If Tigellinus, then how else has he betrayed you? If Jerome, then what else do I know?”

“Tigellinus has as much to lose as I do if Nero is deposed. He betrays me, he betrays himself.”

“But,” Vitas said, “Jerome is mute. How could he tell anyone? And wasn’t that the beauty of threatening to kill his family? Ask yourself, though. Why would I care to protect him from your knife if I believed he had betrayed me?”

Helius glanced backward, obviously waiting for Tigellinus and his soldiers to appear.

“You won’t be rescued,” Vitas said. “You’ll find the scroll to be nothing but empty parchment. And the men in togas you watched enter this garden to meet inside? Tigellinus is about to attempt to arrest hand-chosen soldiers, loyal not to Nero but to the empire. The meeting you are trying to prevent is taking place halfway across the city.”

“Liar.” But the word rang with a hint of desperation.

“How do you get a mute to talk?” Vitas said. “You give him a voice.”

Vitas had spent a lot of time in contemplation over this. His heart had ached for Jerome, who so obviously loved his family but had only the simplest of gestures to respond to his children.

“The man does not speak,” Helius said.

“But he writes,” Vitas said.

In the months in Alexandria, Vitas had found a way to give purpose to Arella and solve the mystery of why Jerome had nearly murdered him in the market in the aftermath of the camel stampede.

When at last Jerome learned to write, he’d put into letter what he could not speak aloud, describing how his children had been kidnapped and how Helius had threatened the entire family if Jerome did not find a way to kill Vitas.

But Helius and Tigellinus had not counted on the anguish Jerome faced at the prospect, and that when finally given the chance, Jerome would be unable to betray his masters but would choose instead for Vitas to kill him.

“I came to Rome,” Vitas said, “knowing that once Jerome returned to his family, you would seize the opportunity to again get at me through him. I expected you here tonight because he let me know how he’d led you here earlier and, through gestures, given you an idea of what was happening tonight.”

The storm was closer now, and the rumbling of distant thunder louder.

Vitas looked over his own shoulder, then back to Helius, and raised his voice to be heard clearly. “You would be wise to drop that dagger,” Vitas said. “See the torches coming onto the grounds? Soldiers from the Praetorian Guard. It means they’ve abandoned the palace because Nero’s fate has been decided. He no longer rules the empire. Galba has been declared.”

Helius shrieked rage.

“Drop the knife or die,” Vitas said. “Drop the knife and take your chances that Galba lets you live.”

Helius didn’t hesitate.

Coward that he was, he dropped the knife.