Avenger of Blood

by John Hagee

  “And just who are you?” Tullia demanded.

  Antony stepped inside the atrium, and Plautius and Sergius quickly entered after him. “I’m the child’s legal guardian,” Antony said. He watched a flicker of alarm cross Tullia’s face, and he took advantage of it to challenge her. “If you don’t want to get in trouble with the authorities,” he said, “I suggest you hand him over now.”

  He wasn’t exactly Victor’s guardian; that was stretching the truth. But Antony could legitimately be called the child’s legal representative, and he was more than willing to use whatever leverage he might have to get Tullia to turn Victor over to them.

  “You should be the ones worried about the authorities,” she said. “You’re trespassing.”

  Antony ignored the implied threat. Her defiance was a bluff, an attempt to distract them from the issue. “We know Damian is in Smyrna,” he said, “and that he brought the baby he kidnapped here.”

  “Kidnapped? But—”

  Antony watched Tullia’s mouth clamp shut almost as quickly as the question escaped her lips. She had known about Victor, all right, but she hadn’t known he’d been kidnapped. Even if she was telling the truth and Victor wasn’t here at the moment, odds were that he had been. Antony’s instincts told him that Tullia knew where the child was, and he pressed her for more information.

  “If Damian is here,” Antony said, a menacing tone in his voice, “you’re harboring a criminal.”

  “Damian is not here,” she said. “And he’s not a criminal. He’s a Roman tribune.”

  “He’s a kidnapper,” Antony countered.

  “Taking your son away from an unfit mother is not the same as kidnapping,” Tullia insisted. “That baby is Damian’s own flesh and blood.”

  “I thought you didn’t know anything about a child,” Sergius said. “You never could tell the truth, could you, Tullia?”

  “I never could abide you,” Tullia snapped. “And I can’t abide your presence in my house now.”

  Antony stepped between Sergius and Tullia. He didn’t want their personal animosity to overshadow the attempt to find Victor. “So Damian did bring the child to you,” Antony said to her. “Where is he now?”

  Tullia glared at Sergius without responding to Antony’s question.

  “Tell me,” the lawyer insisted. “I won’t leave until I know where Victor is.”

  The witch turned to face Antony, fire flashing in her eyes. “The child is not here.” She spoke slowly and with finality. “And you won’t ever find him.”

  Antony moved his hand toward the dagger stashed in his belt. Something about the sound of her voice unsettled him, not to mention the eerie light in her eyes. He had the feeling he was looking into the beautiful face of evil, and it frightened him.

  “I’ve cast a spell on the child’s family,” Tullia continued. “All of them will die or meet with grave injury.” Her mouth twisted into a malevolent smile and the facade of beauty vanished in the blink of an eye.

  “And it’s working,” she informed them. “One man is already dead, and you could be next.” She pointed at Antony, and he felt a wave of pure malice radiating from her.

  Antony did not pause to consider the implications of Tullia’s spell on Rebecca and her family; he responded instinctively to the personal threat. In a flash he removed his weapon, and at the same time Sergius grabbed Tullia, pinning her arms behind her.

  “Search the house,” Sergius shouted. “Quickly!”

  Plautius moved to help Sergius subdue the thrashing Tullia, who alternately screamed curses and invoked strange spirits.

  Dagger in hand, Antony went looking for Victor. It took only a few minutes to go from room to room in the small house. There was no sign of the child, no sign of Damian.

  He returned to the atrium and found the brothers holding Tullia. She was quieter now, but still furious.

  “Did you find him?” Sergius asked. He had a mark beside his right eye, where Tullia had evidently managed to land a blow before Plautius had come to his assistance.

  Antony shook his head. “No. Nothing,” he said.

  “I told you he wasn’t here,” Tullia said. “Now let me go.”

  Plautius stepped to one side, and Sergius reluctantly released his hold on Tullia. “You’ll not prosper in this wickedness,” he told her.

  Tullia smiled again, and the sight sickened Antony. “You think not?” she asked. “Remember what happened to Cornelia, dear cousin. For your own sake, I suggest you leave me alone.”

  Antony heard a note of triumph in her voice, and it angered him. “We’ll leave now,” he said before Sergius could reply. “But we won’t go back to Ephesus without Victor.”

  “We’ll be watching you,” Plautius said. “Watching and praying, Tullia.”

  The reference to prayer annoyed the witch. “Get out of my house this instant,” she yelled. “In the name of Artemis, I command you to leave!”

  Plautius responded, “In the name of Jesus Christ, and by His authority, I command you to leave this child and his family alone. The boy belongs to God, and you’ll not harm him.” He fixed an unflinching gaze on the nefarious woman as he spoke a word of prophecy: “Renounce your evil deeds,” he said, “or all your curses will come back on you.”

  Tullia laughed, but it was a hollow sound. She appeared shaken as the three men left her house.

  Outside, Antony sheathed his dagger and mounted his horse. He was relieved to be out of the place, but more concerned about Victor’s whereabouts than ever. Where had Damian taken him? Tullia had said they would never find the baby. She knew where he was, Antony was certain; but how were they supposed to find the hiding place?

  And what had happened to Marcellus and Verus? Antony suddenly realized they had never made it to Tullia’s. He and Plautius and Sergius hadn’t been inside the house for very long, yet it worried Antony that the others had not joined them. Were they still searching the woods?

  Antony thought of the riderless horse at the edge of the thicket, and a new apprehension welled up in him. Not only had they not found Victor, they also had not run into Jacob—and Antony knew Jacob had left for Tullia’s house a couple of hours before they had. Now Marcellus and Verus were unaccounted for as well. It was more than a little worrisome.

  They rode about a quarter-mile, to the point where the cutoff to Tullia’s house met the road they’d taken from the inn. Antony started to turn right and retrace their route, but Plautius called out for him to stop.

  Antony pulled on the reins to turn his horse around. “What is it?”

  Plautius looked thoughtful but didn’t speak.

  “Well?” Sergius prompted.

  “Follow me,” Plautius finally said. “I think I know where to find Victor.”

  Marcellus had taken only a few steps into the forest when he began to have the same eerie feeling Antony had tried to express—a feeling that some evil force lurked just ahead.

  An experienced hunter, Verus took the lead. He could tell which direction the unknown man had taken by spotting broken twigs and trampled grass, and the trail was definitely leading toward the back of Tullia’s house.

  They had made it almost to the edge of the woods—Marcellus could see a house beyond the trees—when Verus suddenly stopped. “Look at that,” he said.

  Marcellus strained to see what Verus was talking about.

  “Right here. The two ruts.” Verus followed the closely spaced ruts for a few paces. “Looks like something—or somebody—has been dragged through here.”

  “Maybe somebody killed a deer . . .” Marcellus said tentatively.

  Verus’s voice was grim. “The ruts are too big for hooves. A bear, maybe. But the hunters have killed them all off. Haven’t seen a bear in these woods since I was a kid.”

  If it wasn’t an animal that had been hauled through the woods, Marcellus thought, then it must have been a man. He could picture a man’s feet making the ruts as his body was dragged, and that image gave Marcellus a chill as
he followed close behind Verus.

  The trail led them into the clearing behind the house, and when the trail stopped, Marcellus’s sense of foreboding mushroomed. A fresh mound of dirt lay in front of them. Any idea that someone had been dragging an animal through the forest vanished from Marcellus’s mind. They wouldn’t have buried an animal, and this looked exactly like a hastily prepared grave.

  Verus reached the same conclusion. “The good news,” he said, “is that it’s much too big to be a child.”

  No, Marcellus agreed silently, the dirt mound was about the size of a six-foot man. A man the size of Jacob.

  Marcellus squatted on his haunches and touched the damp earth. He wondered if his friend had been killed in the woods, then dragged back here and buried. Antony had had a strong feeling that the abandoned horse had belonged to Jacob. Was the lawyer right? Was it Jacob’s body covered up here?

  Verus touched Marcellus’s shoulder. “Whoever it is,” he said, “there’s nothing we can do for him now.”

  Feeling helpless, Marcellus couldn’t resist scooping a few handfuls of dirt off the top of the grave. He and Verus could dig out the body . . .

  No, it would probably grow dark before they could finish the job, and what good would it do, anyway? It wouldn’t bring Jacob back if he were indeed dead.

  Marcellus thought about Rebecca and how she would take the news if Jacob had been killed trying to rescue Victor. It would be yet another staggering blow, and Marcellus couldn’t bear the thought of having to tell her.

  Maybe it’s not even him, Marcellus reminded himself. But his gut told him it was.

  He silently vowed to come back the next day and dig up the body; he had to know for sure. If it’s you, Jacob, I’ll take you back to Ephesus. I promise. Marcellus would make sure Jacob was buried in the family tomb with his parents. It was the least he could do for Rebecca.

  Verus was right: There was nothing they could do here now; they’d better join the others. And they’d better do whatever it took to get Victor back. That was the one thing that would soften the blow to Rebecca if something terrible had happened to Jacob.

  Marcellus was about to stand to his feet when the ground shifted slightly in front of him. It distracted him enough to look down. His first thought was that perhaps he had still been holding a handful of dirt and had dropped it without paying attention to what he was doing.

  He abandoned that thought when five fingers suddenly burst through the ground and a man’s hand reached for him.

  Antony and Sergius followed Plautius, who shielded his eyes against the late afternoon sun as he turned his horse to the left, heading away from the road they’d taken from town.

  Sergius immediately hazarded a guess as to their destination. “You figure they’re hiding the baby at the old mill.”

  “Makes sense, if you think about it,” Plautius said. “It’s close by, yet can’t be seen from Tullia’s if someone comes snooping around. And it’s isolated. Few people travel this road, and they wouldn’t stop at an abandoned mill if they did venture out this way.”

  It was isolated, all right, Antony thought. They hadn’t ridden far when the road narrowed. Actually, road was an optimistic term for what was now an unpaved, overgrown path. But someone had been here recently: Antony could see the tracks of a wheeled vehicle in the hard-packed ground.

  Sergius shook his head dismally. “Not a fit place for a child. The granary had all but crumbled to the ground last time I saw it, and that was several years ago.”

  The small milling operation had been abandoned almost two decades earlier, the brothers told Antony. In the larger cities, hardly anyone ground wheat for flour anymore; most people relied on large commercial bakeries for their bread. Those too poor to afford baked goods ate wheat porridge.

  Decrepit was the word that came to Antony’s mind when they reached the mill. The two round, flat millstones and the tall hourglass-shaped hoppers that sat on top of them were mostly intact, although badly cracked. The long wooden handles, which powered the mill when pushed by slaves or drawn by mules, now dangled uselessly from the sides of the stone hoppers. And as Sergius had said, the building where the grain had been stored was crumbling; one side of it, in fact, was nothing but rubble.

  There was no sign of life as they approached the ruins. No sounds of life, either. The place appeared not only abandoned but uninhabitable. Suddenly Antony caught a flutter of movement at the far edge of his vision. He turned in the saddle and stared at the half of the building that was still standing, and he saw it again. He couldn’t see the animal, but the motion he’d seen was the quick flick of a horse’s tail.

  Gesturing for the others to follow, Antony slowly led his horse around the side of the building. There they found a horse grazing in the weeds, and beyond the horse was a carriage. The horse was unyoked but loosely tethered to the vehicle’s axle.

  From the description Marcellus had given, this could be the carriage Damian had taken when he left Ephesus. The large four-wheeled coach would have to be drawn by two horses, however, and Antony could see only the one horse. But the animal was solid black, like the pair of stallions that had driven Damian’s carriage. And who else would park a fancy coach behind an abandoned mill? It had to be Damian.

  Antony’s heart began to pound as he realized they had found the hiding place, and his keen mind began to race. Was Victor inside the crumbling granary? Was Damian inside as well? Or had he ridden off on the second horse? Perhaps the other animal had gotten loose and was wandering nearby. Antony looked around but still did not see another horse.

  He told the men who had accompanied him what he was thinking. “We have to go inside,” Antony said quietly. “But we could be ambushed.”

  Plautius nodded somberly. “God will go with us.”

  Antony hoped the blacksmith was right. “I’ll go first,” he said. “I have a weapon.” He dismounted and quickly removed his dagger. It felt solidly reassuring in his hand, yet he knew that if Damian wielded a sword, the three of them would have a hard time overpowering him.

  The would-be rescuers stole back around to the front of the building and approached the entrance. The door had rotted off its hinges years ago and lay broken on the ground, apparently kicked to one side.

  Antony felt an acid wave of fear rise up in him as he stepped through the doorway into the darkened shell of a building. A single shaft of light penetrated the ruins. It came from a small window near the ceiling along the side wall to their left, the one complete wall that was still standing.

  He waited a long, breathless moment just inside the door, the two brothers close behind him. Gradually their eyes adjusted to the dim interior and they took a few steps forward, cautiously looking around.

  Surely if Damian were there he would have attacked them by now, Antony thought. It would have been the perfect opportunity to catch them off guard, while they were still unable to see enough to defend themselves adequately.

  Their progress was slow. Antony couldn’t see or hear anything that would lead him to believe Victor was hidden here in the ruins. But he has to be here, Antony’s mind screamed. We have to find him.

  “Over there,” Sergius finally whispered. “Against the back wall.” He made a slight motion with his hand.

  As Antony looked in that direction, he saw what appeared to be a small heap of rags in the farthest corner of the building. He approached with his dagger drawn and poised to strike. When he crouched beside the rag pile, it moved.

  “Please don’t hurt me,” a tremulous voice said. “Don’t hurt the baby. Please—I’ll do whatever you want.”

  “Victor!” Antony cried.

  “We don’t want to hurt you,” Plautius reassured the petrified woman. “We just want the baby.”

  “Who are you?” she asked, clutching the child to her bosom.

  “We’re friends of the child’s mother,” Antony replied. “We’re going to take him back to her.”

  “Take me with you,” she begged. “Pleas
e.” She looked imploringly at Sergius as he reached down and took the child from her arms. “He—he’ll kill me if he comes back here and finds the baby gone.”

  “Damian?” Antony asked.

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “Where is he?” Antony instinctively pivoted and looked around him.

  “He brought the baby back to me to nurse, then he left to get food for the horses.”

  Damian could be back any minute, Antony realized. They had to get out of there fast. “All right, we’ll take you with us,” he said. He reached out to help the woman to her feet, but she didn’t move.

  “I—I can’t walk,” she said. “My leg is fastened to the wall.”

  Antony swore. The barbaric tribune had chained the wet nurse who was keeping his own son alive. Antony knelt down and vigorously yanked on the large hook that fettered her ankle to the wall; nothing happened. The hook was firmly imbedded in the mortar and wouldn’t budge.

  He looked down at his dagger and wondered if he could pry open her shackles without slicing the woman.

  Plautius realized what he was thinking and stopped him. “Even if it fits, the dagger might break,” he said. “Use something else.”

  “But what?” Antony asked in frustration.

  “We’ll find something.” Plautius looked around until he discovered some rusty implements. The blacksmith took a long, slender tool of some kind and placed it into the space between the woman’s ankle and the circle of iron. The shackles had been designed for a large man, so there was space to work. He wedged a second tool in the circle and began to use the two iron implements as levers.

  The woman grimaced but kept quiet as Plautius tried to pry the shackles open. The iron circle finally bent but did not break.

  It’s not going to work, Antony thought, and Damian could be back any moment. “Hurry,” Antony urged the blacksmith, a note of desperation in his voice.

  Sergius held out the baby. “Take him and leave,” Sergius told Antony. “We’ll follow as soon as we free the woman.”

  Antony hesitated, but not for long. As he reached for Victor, he offered his dagger to Sergius. “Take this,” Antony said. “You may need it.”