Maglorius nodded. “You have the seal?”
“I do.” Hephzibah had watched Bernice warm the wax and press the royal symbol upon it. Hephzibah passed it to Maglorius.
“So you are one she trusts?” he said.
“I am.” Hephzibah pushed aside a tinge of guilt. The queen had been betrayed by many in her life—men, other servants, even her brother. It was to Hephzibah that the queen often confided those broken trusts, yet if the queen knew how Hephzibah had once been disloyal, no longer would that trust exist.
An image flashed in her head. Of the queen weeping in the days after an intruder had nearly killed her. Hephzibah felt her stomach tighten and hoped the man in front of her did not notice her pang of guilt.
“This intrigue,” he murmured, absently shifting the seal from one hand to another, “I am tired of it. I wish we lived in a world without spies. Or the need for spies. Even the Master Himself in this city faced intrigue in His last days. . . .” He stopped.
“Go on,” Hephzibah said. The Master? Dare she hope that Maglorius shared her faith?
Maglorius stared across the pool in silence, so Hephzibah, who much preferred to listen than speak, took a chance. “It was Passover,” she said to encourage Maglorius. “To ensure that no one, especially Judas, knew ahead of time where He had arranged for the disciples to have supper, the Master sent them to look for a man carrying water, a servant of the owner of the house who was providing a room for the Master that night.”
Maglorius turned his head sharply, a grimace obvious in the tightening of his lips.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Did I offend you?”
He rubbed the back of his head. “No. It hurts to move quickly.” A smile from him. “You’ve read the letters passed among the believers?”
“I have,” Hephzibah said. “So often that much of it I have memorized.”
“Does Queen Bernice know of your faith?”
“She does not. Someday, when it is right, I hope to share my belief with her.”
And then, Hephzibah thought, she would also confess that Matthias was her brother. Confess how she had helped him into the palace.
“I believe she hungers for it,” Maglorius said. “Her soul has a deep need for love.”
Hephzibah nodded. She grieved her brother’s death. Had not known he intended it. The last day had been horrible. Dealing with his death. Dealing with the aftermath of the riots. It was only through prayer and faith that she’d been able to find hope in this tribulation.
Noises from the upper city reached them. The crowd must have gathered already.
“Time is short,” Maglorius said. “Let me tell you what I request of the queen. But first remind her of her promise to me. She will understand.”
The wailing of great lamentations echoed through the city. The force of it startled nearby pigeons, and in a blur they rose from the cobblestones where they had been pecking for food.
“She regrets she cannot meet you herself.” The queen had emphasized this to Hephzibah, that she must tell this to the man. “In any other situation, she would arrange to see you herself.”
“I would not want to put her in danger.”
“She barely survived yesterday,” Hephzibah said.
“What!”
“You haven’t heard?”
“I was . . .” He stopped and rubbed the back of his head again. When he brought his hand down, Hephzibah saw that his fingers were flecked with dried blood. “No, I had not heard. Please tell me.”
“Are you in pain?” she asked.
“Tell me about the queen and Florus.”
He listened intently as Hephzibah did. The backdrop to her stories was the shouting that reached them, and the name Florus was audible here in the lower city.
“He is a treacherous man,” he said when she finished. “He sends trouble into every life in Jerusalem. And that is why I need any help that the queen can give. There is a lost boy. From the Bellator household. If the queen can arrange to send as many people as possible into the city to look for him, I would be in her debt. The boy’s name is Quintus.”
“The boy’s parents?”
Maglorius closed his eyes. “Dead.”
“I am sorry.”
“It was the soldiers sent by Florus. The boy escaped. At least, I pray he escaped. I’ve left one servant at the mansion, waiting should he return.”
“Among all the people in the city,” Hephzibah said gently, “and in the time of these riots, it may not be simple to find him.”
“He will be wearing a signet ring. He is a Roman citizen. And as the rightful heir, a wealthy citizen. He must be found.”
His intensity alarmed her. “Yes,” she said quickly. “I will tell all of this to the queen. But come with me. A woman named Sophia arrived at the palace, looking for you.”
As she fought to suffocate her tiny son, a voice reached Alypia from the courtyard below.
“Hello? Hello?”
Alypia cursed the gods and lifted the cushion. Sabinus began to wail with fright. Alypia ignored him and looked down into the courtyard. A man was calling, a man she recognized from her time in Rome.
Gallus Sergius Vitas.
She whispered a prayer of gratitude to her household gods. Who better to help her claim the fortune that she was owed as a widow than Gallus Sergius Vitas, a man she knew from different functions in Rome, where she had attended as the subservient and nearly invisible wife of Bellator?
Stepping away from the window, she yanked down the left shoulder of her dress to expose enough skin to verge on the point of indecency. It wasn’t difficult; hours earlier, at the first light of dawn, she’d already cut and ripped the dress in several places and trampled it to add smudges of dirt. She took a breath and pretended she was trying to compose herself in the way a woman would after surviving the assault of soldiers and an ex-gladiator.
Then she was ready.
She left Sabinus behind to wail alone and walked down to the courtyard. “Hello?” she said with the correct tone of fearful hesitation. “Hello?”
The man in the courtyard reacted immediately to the sound of her voice. He turned away from his inspection of the bodies of slaves and servants sprawled haphazardly where Roman soldiers had slaughtered them the afternoon before.
The peace of midmorning sunshine and the songs of the birds from the rooftop garden were a horrible juxtaposition against the obscenity of the aftermath of that violence. Yet all was not the illusion of peace.
Alypia knew she had the man’s attention. She swayed slightly, as if she were on the verge of fainting, ignoring Sabinus’s wailing from the mansion.
He moved quickly toward her. She pretended slight alarm and moved backward.
“I’m a Roman citizen,” he called to her softly. “I mean no harm.”
“Thank the gods.” Alypia found a bench and collapsed on it. “After yesterday, I’ve been so afraid. I’m alone with no one to help! My husband was killed!”
Cautiously, the man moved even closer. She watched his eyes carefully, waiting for them to be drawn to the exposure of her upper body. A seduction now would be very convenient, especially given this man’s family background and his power in Rome. Although she was disappointed that his eyes remained steadily on her face, she knew it was only a temporary setback. It was just the two of them here in the upper-city mansion, and she was a vulnerable woman appealing to a man’s protection. And she’d already let him know she was without a husband.
He looked briefly past her as the baby wailed again, as if seeking the source of the cries. “You are Alypia,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I am Vitas.” He sat on the bench but kept his distance from her. “Gallus Sergius Vitas.”
“Not the same who serves as one of Nero’s trusted advisers in Rome?” she asked, knowing the answer.
He nodded.
“Here in Jerusalem? Why?” This she did not know. Still, it was a gift from the gods. The only bad thing about his a
rrival was that he had heard the cries of the baby. Now she could no longer claim that soldiers had killed Sabinus.
“Yes, I am from Rome. To meet with your husband. On behalf of Nero.”
“You are—” Alypia’s voice caught in her throat—“one day too late.”
Vitas allowed her the silence of grief.
She milked it, annoyed that Sabinus’s renewed crying was a distraction from the portrait she wanted to present. She hoped Vitas would put an arm of comfort around her shoulder.
“The soldiers,” he said. He put his cloak around her, but to her irritation, discreetly kept his distance. “Did they attack you when they killed your husband?”
“No!” Alypia gave an outburst of anger.
This seemed to startle him.
“He was murdered by one of this very household.”
She had his full attention and enjoyed it. She turned to face him directly and bit on her knuckles. “An ex-gladiator named Maglorius. I’m afraid if he comes back . . .” She reached across, putting a hand on his forearm. It was important to touch him. “You do have a sword, don’t you?”
“Maglorius?”
“If you’ve heard his name in Rome, it is the same man.” She left her hand on his arm. “Once famed in the arenas.”
“Maglorius.”
“He was half dead after a sword gutted him in Asia, and when he arrived in Rome, too weak to return to the arenas, he was set free. Surely you heard that gossip.”
Vitas was watching her closely.
“He joined our family as a bodyguard.” Alypia wondered if Vitas had heard any rumors and decided to proceed as if he had not. No sense admitting to her affair with Maglorius until forced to. Especially now that it was so completely finished. What an impetuous period that had been in her life. But no longer would she allow love to affect her. It was only money and power that she wanted from men. “He traveled with us here to Jerusalem as part of his employment. And yesterday, after the soldiers were gone, he . . . he—” she sobbed—“it was terrible!”
“You are saying that he killed Bellator?”
“Yesterday afternoon. Just after the soldiers left. I’m sure he thought they would be blamed for it. But I saw it and—”
Alypia threw herself onto Vitas. “He murdered my husband! Help me. I’m the one who witnessed it. He’ll want me dead, too. I think he believes he can plunder this mansion and our wealth if we are both gone.”
“Was he by himself?” Vitas asked.
Alypia was not so lost in her acting that she was oblivious to the muscle of the man’s arms or the solidness of his chest. Vitas was a rich man. A powerful man. And extremely attractive. What a pleasure he could be after years with Bellator, who’d been a rich and powerful man but old and extremely unattractive.
“What kind of question is that?” Alypia said, beginning to stroke one of his biceps. “Who else would be with him?”
Vitas extracted himself. Stood in front of the bench. Then knelt to look directly in her face. “I will make sure you are protected.”
There it was again. The irritating cry of Sabinus.
She caught the look of concern in the glance that Vitas gave toward the sound again.
She knew the baby boy was frightened. The baby, however, was much more of a problem—a distraction to Vitas, whom she desired to seduce.
Now that Quintus had disappeared or been murdered, Sabinus alone stood in the way of Alypia inheriting the bulk of Bellator’s wealth. It wasn’t the fact that the boy was her son and only child that had prevented her from suffocating him during the night. She’d never been maternal anyway, and with her hatred for Maglorius added to the idea of the wealth she would gain with the murder of Sabinus, she would have had no hesitation blaming the boy’s death on the soldiers who had ransacked the mansion.
Now, too, she didn’t want the baby to be an impediment to any romance she would entice Vitas to consider. Most men did not want a woman who brought with her the baggage of a previous marriage.
Then, as the baby’s cries grew louder, a thought popped into her head that could be nothing short of inspiration. “The baby of one of the dead servants,” she said.
Yes, that was it! Not her baby but one that belonged to a servant. She’d been so focused on creating the story about Maglorius and the murder of her husband, anticipating questions and ensuring it would stand up against any doubts, she’d not given the baby’s situation the thought it needed. But this story worked too! For after yesterday afternoon’s attack of the mansion by Florus’s soldiers, she had ample choice of dead servant girls unable to deny motherhood.
“I don’t know what to do,” she continued. “I hold it but it just keeps crying. What will happen to the child now?”
“And your children,” Vitas said. “What of them? Valeria and Quintus.”
“Not my children,” she said quickly. “Stepchildren. They belong to Bellator and his previous wife.”
She wasn’t going to explain that those children, like the baby boy, carried only Bellator’s name not his blood. They had been fathered by someone else, for as she well knew, Bellator had been incapable of siring children.
And she certainly wasn’t going to explain her plans to ensure that Quintus did not survive the next week in Jerusalem. It was a blessing, in a way, that the boy had fled believing his hero Maglorius to be a murderer. If Quintus returned, she would find a way to take care of him. And the same for Valeria, the little witch, if she’d actually survived the attack in the marketplace.
“Where is Maglorius now?” Vitas asked.
Couldn’t this man see what was in front of him? A beautiful, impassioned woman.
“Maglorius,” she almost snapped. “Hopefully the soldiers killed him after he fled here. If not, maybe he died somewhere in the city during the night.”
Vitas stared past Alypia. Again, that look of concern for the crying baby.
“What can I do?” she said, wanting the man’s full attention. “I’m now a widow. This city is full of danger. You can’t leave me alone here.”
“Florus will be—”
“Florus? He undoubtedly sent his soldiers here. He’s hated Bellator since our arrival.”
“As I was about to say,” Vitas said calmly, “Florus will be no protection. I’ve been a guest at the royal palace. I was safe there last night. I have no doubt you will be welcome there too.”
That explained it, Alypia thought with a flash of jealousy. Queen Bernice was notorious for being a man-eater. And the attentions of a Roman of the status that Vitas held would be of great value to her. That explained the lack of attention that Vitas was giving Alypia at this moment. He undoubtedly was more than a guest at the royal palace.
“I don’t even trust that,” she said. Alypia had no intention of going into the palace and competing with Bernice there. “Who knows if Florus might send spies into the palace to get to me?” She drew herself up. “All I need is a way to leave the city,” she said, wanting Vitas to insist on staying with her.
His reply was not what she’d expected.
“I don’t think the danger is as grave as you might believe. Bernice is urging the high priest to take the necessary steps to keep Florus happy. And Maglorius—”
“You must protect me from him. Have him arrested. Immediately crucified.”
Vitas hesitated for a moment, then finally nodded. “Yes, I will take care of him.”
The Fifth Hour
“Be prepared for the worst,” Maglorius told Sophia when they reached the upper city. One of the queen’s servants had found him for her, and she was very grateful for it. “Florus sent his soldiers this far too. And the Bellator household did not escape.”
Be prepared for the worst.
It did not take much for Sophia to imagine the sights and sounds of soldiers here in the upper city. The bricked streets were wider than the ones leading from the market area to the poor parts of the lower city; the walls that hid the households from the streets much higher and th
icker. Still, the clanging of swords, the screams of the victims, and the shouts of pursuit would have rung along these streets no differently than the horrors of what she’d heard the day before.
“You were here then before . . .” Sophia didn’t have to finish her sentence. In the short time they had walked together from the royal palace to this point, Maglorius had explained that he’d spent the night looking for Quintus. But this was only after Sophia had reassured him that Valeria was still waiting for him beneath the city where he had directed them to safety during the height of the slaughter.
“I was there.” Maglorius had a heaviness in his voice, as if holding an untold story. “Too late to do much except comfort the dying.”
Directly ahead of them was an archway that led to the outer courtyard of the Bellator household. The iron bars were broken and twisted, evidence of the recent violent attack of soldiers.
“And the mistress of the household,” Sophia said. “Alypia. She was not hurt.”
For a moment, Maglorius looked away. As if hiding something. “I would expect you to find her there,” he finally answered. “And, of course, Vitas, as we were told at the palace.”
“Surely she will want to hear about Quintus. Yet you will not enter with me. Vitas will want to see you too.”
“No.” Maglorius spoke without hesitation. “I need to keep searching for Quintus. You deliver the news.”
“Where will we find you later?” Sophia asked.
“I will find you,” he answered.
“Maglorius, you are troubled.”
“Alypia will have with her a baby boy,” he said. “His name is Sabinus. Please ensure that the baby is doing well. I’m afraid that Alypia’s maternal instincts aren’t strong. Without servants to help her with him . . .” Maglorius let out a deep breath. “At any rate, that is the one favor I would ask of you. Look after Sabinus. Even volunteer to stay with Alypia until she can find another servant to help with the boy.”
“Come in with me,” Sophia invited gently.
“Make me that promise. Please.”
“I do. Come in with me.”
“I cannot,” he said. “Soon enough you’ll find out why. And when you do, remember you have made the promise.”
The Last Disciple Page 23
