The Last Temple (9 page)

The market brought the mixed smell of spices and offal, the sounds of grunting camels and shouted bartering.

Vitas found himself amazed at the vividness of each smell and sound. It was as if he had been freshly born and was rediscovering his world.

He knew it was joy. He did feel like a new man. Sophia—alive!

His elation was tempered, of course, by urgency . . . and also by a tinge of self-disgust.

Earlier, he had wrestled with the morality of sacrificing a criminal Greek as a scapegoat to save the families of Jews who were to be slaughtered as retribution for Helva’s death. Now, when it was his own family at stake, he had to wonder: If he failed in his efforts today, would he let that innocent man die simply to save Sophia?

He tried to justify it.

Wouldn’t any man—faced with choosing the death of his own son or daughter—give nod to a stranger’s death if that would save the child?

Did nations not choose their finest young men and send them out in battle as soldiers so that the deaths of a few might preserve many?

As he moved through the bustle of the market, another thought occurred to him.

Despite the logic that a person should die to save many, could he as a father give up his own child to save a nation?

It led him to think of the Christos.

One to save many.

The Greek was not pure by any means and probably deserved death for any number of other reasons. Yet the Christos—according to reliable accounts by followers who knew him during his life and shared their knowledge through word and letter—had truly been not only an innocent man, but a man of love. A man who healed with a touch. If any man should ever have been lifted to a throne, not a cross, it should have been the Christos—who was also reported to have risen from the dead. But to Vitas, the one obviously flawed prediction by the Christos made everything else a lie. The Temple was not going to fall.

Vitas growled at himself. He needed a clear head to save Sophia, not one muddled with conundrums of philosophy.

Bucco glanced toward him. “Yes?”

Vitas realized his growl had been heard. “A pebble inside my sandal.” He shook his foot as if to kick it loose.

“The smallest things,” Bucco said, “are the ones that can trouble us the most.”

More philosophy. Vitas did not need this.

He needed to find the camel driver, and one man could lead him there. The silk vendor who had bartered with the caravan, with a table out near some stacked amphorae filled with wine.

Now it was a matter of finding a way to force that man to give answers.

So Vitas told Bucco what was needed.

Bucco stood in front of the silk vendor. His legs were spread and braced, his arms crossed, an aggressive stance that appeared ridiculous from such a small man. Ridiculous, but all the more intimidating for its ridiculousness.

Only a small man backed by Roman soldiers would assume this stance, and the swords of the soldiers behind Bucco gleamed in the sunlight.

The silk vendor remained behind his table stacked with rolls of the fine cloth.

“I am here on the governor’s business,” Bucco barked. “Out from behind there.”

Vitas stood at a respectful distance from Bucco, head bowed and pretending disinterest. Yet he strained to hear the conversation above the noise of the market.

“You were here when the fiscal procurator was assassinated?” Bucco asked.

“I know nothing about it,” the vendor said. He was tall and thin but had hunched in an impossible effort to make himself invisible.

“Of course you do,” Bucco snapped. “Everybody does.”

“What I meant was that I know nothing about the men involved.”

“You presume that was to be my question?” Bucco studied the man. “To me, that alone suggests guilt.”

“No!” A pause, then a rush to speak. “No! The governor’s men have already questioned us. Again and again. To see if we could identify any of the attackers. So I presumed that once more he has sent someone for information.” The vendor straightened slightly. “It was, of course, the Jews. As a Greek, I have no quarrel with Rome. I pay my temple fees and worship at the statue of Nero.”

Bucco said nothing. Vitas was impressed. It was an intelligent way to get a man to speak, by letting him fill the silence.

“And aren’t the Jews to pay?” the vendor asked. He reached beside him and nervously smoothed out the wrinkles in a roll of fabric on the table. “Just as well. They are troublemakers. The fewer of them the better. And who knows how many are spies for the rebels in the provinces.”

“What I want from you,” Bucco said, “is the name of the camel driver.”

“Camel driver?”

“Who owned the camels that were sent stampeding through the market?”

All over again, Vitas saw it vividly in his mind: the great plunging beasts with oil on their hides, flames and black smoke rising to blue sky. He heard the screams of the camels, smelled the burning flesh.

“Do I have to explain?” Bucco said, then answered his own question. “A train of camels was passing through the market. Where is the owner now?”

“That is all you want to know? About the Nabataean?”

“Instead of wasting my time with a question, give me the answer. Who is the Nabataean, and where do I find him?”

Vitas found himself leaning forward. It was a slim hope, but all he had. He’d had hours to think about the assassination and how it had been planned. In the end, he believed it came down to one crucial starting point: the camels. If he was correct and this starting point could lead to an ending point, the local Jewish families would be spared impending slaughter. Bernice, too, would be spared execution. If his hunch was correct, upon Damian’s return, Vitas would be freed from his role as a slave and reunited with Sophia. As for the mysterious visitor to his jail cell and the amulet that he was given, that would no longer matter. If Vitas survived this, he had no intention of involving himself in anything but a quiet domestic life with wife and child in a place far from Rome and Nero’s spies.

The vendor’s reply, however, crushed this small hope.

“I don’t know the Nabataean’s name,” the vendor said. “And it doesn’t matter. He is dead. Killed during the confusion in the market.”

“Back to the queen of the Jews,” Bucco said with a shrug. He had little stake in the fate of the families who awaited death.

They were out of the market now. Vitas had not spoken a word in the five minutes since leaving the vendor.

“Not yet,” Vitas answered.

“You order me?”

Eleven months ago—when Vitas had been among those in the emperor’s inner circle, before Nero had taken his property and his wife and ordered his execution in the arena—the answer would have been yes.

In recent months—when Vitas believed all that was important to him had been taken away—he would have been too lethargic to bother caring.

Two days earlier, he’d been ready to accept suicide on the cross by drinking a potion.

But this morning, his life had been given back to him. Sophia was alive. And in danger of execution.

So Vitas had to stifle a natural impulse to behave as a landed Roman citizen with wealth and political power; he had to pretend he was merely a slave named Novellus, a disgraced Roman sold as punishment for a crime.

“I merely ask,” Vitas said, “whether you have your eye set upon a greater role in Caesarea and perhaps someday back in Rome.”

No answer. But Vitas didn’t need it. Everything about this man screamed of the type of political worm Vitas knew too well.

“What harm is there in spending another half hour for an opportunity to position yourself solidly in the governor’s favor?” Vitas asked. “Keep in mind that if the governor returns to Rome in good standing with Nero, it can only benefit the man who helped the governor quell an uprising in a difficult situation.”

“Half an hour?” Bucco said. The bait had been taken and the hook set.

“Half an hour,” Vitas repeated. He decided a little flattery would not hurt as a way to disguise the hook even more. “You can be a terrifying man when you desire, and I wonder if there are yet some people who might have an answer that you need.”

It was not difficult to find the Nabataeans, the tribal people who were slowly becoming less nomadic because of the protection of Rome. Over a century earlier, when Damascus had been the stage of a long struggle between warring Greek generals and the invading Roman forces, the citizens of that city had invited a Nabataean ruler, Aretas III, to be their protector, in essence making him king and slowly changing the status of Nabataeans from lowly caravan drivers who had roamed the desert to merchants, though still tribal in culture. In Damascus, where the Nabataeans poured their wealth into sumptuous houses, their lifestyles were opulent. But in the desert, they still lived in tents with divided walls as they skillfully navigated the cantankerous beasts of the desert along ancient caravan routes, depending on a water collection system known only to themselves.

The walk was a short one to the outskirts of Caesarea, where tents of the nomads billowed in the breeze that was growing with the rising heat of the day. Camels were staked to the ground, goats tethered to ropes.

Three robed men—short and stocky, with faces almost black from exposure to sun—stopped them at the camp’s entrance.

“I’ve been sent by the governor,” Bucco said with arrogance. “I am here to see the widow of the man who died in the market during the stampede of the camels.”

“She is grieving, protected by her sons,” the man in the middle answered. The two others shifted to stand closer, presenting a united front.

“That doesn’t matter to the governor,” Bucco snorted. “Send her to me. Or escort me there.”

“It matters to us.”

Vitas leaned down to whisper to Bucco. “Nothing is of more importance to men of a tribe like this than honor. Nothing is worse to them than shame. It is how they’ve survived the desert. They will accept slaughter at Roman swords before the shame they would wear if they did not protect a brother’s widow from the governor.”

“What leverage do I have if I cannot threaten them with the governor’s might?” Bucco growled, keeping a close eye on the men in front of him.

“Use their own swords against them,” Vitas said.

“I don’t understand.”

“Perhaps I should speak with them.”

“I thought you said I could be a terrifying man when needed.”

“That is not what is needed now.”

“You knew that all along, I suppose,” Bucco said, not amused.

“We could walk back and report to the governor that you let a few Nabataeans stop you from rescuing him from this dire political situation,” Vitas said quietly, keeping the conversation between himself and Bucco. “Or you could establish that you are still in authority and slap me across the back of the head, order me to my knees, and command me to speak to them.”

“Happily,” Bucco said.

Bucco’s blow was as hard as Vitas had expected, and with pretended humiliation, he lowered himself to his knees, knowing how he appeared to the Nabataeans, with the rope around his wrists and ankles. He was a slave, a man of no value. The humiliation, however, was pretended because Vitas felt he had some control, and he was going to use it to full advantage to protect the woman—and the child—he loved.

From his knees, he spoke to the man in the middle.

“Your brother’s death in the market was no accident,” Vitas said. Whether or not the camel driver who had died was related by blood or by tribe, to the Nabataeans, the man was a brother. Either was of equal importance to these people. “The man who hired him gave orders to have your brother murdered. He’s the same man who arranged for the camels to be set on fire.”

In one sense, his accusation against the unknown man was a complete assumption. Vitas had no compunction about this degree of deceit, however. Not with what was at stake. But in another sense, Vitas spoke the truth. There could be no other explanation for the chain of events that had led to the assassination of Helva. It was no accident that the camels had been lit on fire and, undoubtedly, no accident that the one man able to identify who had hired him had died in the panic that followed.

Vitas also knew his accusation against the unknown man who had hired the camel driver now meant the man would be hunted without remorse and hunted until he was found, even if it took decades. There was a saying about these people. “I against my brother; my brothers and I against my cousins; then my cousins and I against strangers.” Bringing the man to justice meant honor. Letting him escape meant shame.

“Ask among yourselves,” Vitas said. “Find his identity and give it to us. It will put you in favor with Rome.”

The man in the middle did not have to glance at his companions before answering with grim determination. “Wait here. It will be done.”