Avenger of Blood

by John Hagee

  “A wonderful idea,” Rebecca said. She surveyed the new addition to the warehouse with obvious delight, commenting occasionally as Quintus pointed out various items in the process of being rescued and repaired. Practical items such as iron implements, wooden utensils, copper and tin pots. Cracked and chipped pottery, and terra-cotta containers that were still usable. And even a few pieces of damaged-but-functional furniture and several water-damaged carpets.

  “Isn’t it perfect?” she asked Antony when Quintus finished showing them around and went back to work. “Things destined for the scrap heap will take on new life here—and bring new hope to families who have so little.”

  Antony couldn’t help smiling at the faraway gleam in her eyes. Rebecca had walked into a nondescript warehouse, looked around her at an odd assortment of discards waiting to be repaired, and had seen lives being reclaimed. This charitable work was important to her, he realized, and it was something she would want to continue even after they were married. That was perfectly acceptable to Antony. It would occupy much of her days, but she would find it fulfilling, and there was no reason it had to interfere with their private time together.

  He was doing it again—letting his mind run ahead to the future. And a pleasant future it would be, he thought. But first he had to talk to Rebecca. They were alone again, but this wasn’t the right place for the conversation; he did not want to declare his feelings for her here, in the middle of a warehouse. And besides, he needed to settle the matter of moving his mother first.

  “Rebecca, what we talked about earlier . . .” He watched her excitement fade and a wary look return. He hated to make her uncomfortable, but he needed to know what to do. “About Mother.”

  “Our disagreement is not important,” Rebecca said. “I’ll talk to her and ask her to stay. I just hope she’ll listen.”

  “I don’t mean to pry, but is the disagreement something I could help with? Maybe smooth things over?”

  Rebecca shook her head emphatically. “No.” She dropped her gaze, then squared her shoulders and looked him directly in the eyes. “But it’s something you should know about.”

  Her demeanor was so determined, it put Antony on his guard. He thought she might be trying to intimidate him, for a change. He never intentionally tried to intimidate Rebecca, of course; he just seemed to have that effect on her.

  “We should have a clear understanding,” she added, “since you’ll continue to spend a lot of time at the villa with Helena.”

  Not “with us,” but “with Helena.” There was something odd in the way Rebecca phrased that, as if he would be seeing only his mother when he visited. Just where would Rebecca be?

  “By all means,” he said. “We shouldn’t have any misunderstandings.” Antony looked around for a chair or stool, but there were no such amenities in the warehouse. It was a workspace, not an office. And it certainly wasn’t home. Not a comfortable place for conversation, but if they were going to have a talk now in order to reach whatever “understanding” Rebecca had in mind, then they might as well make themselves comfortable. He patted the top of an unopened barrel and started to help her up.

  She brushed aside the offer to sit. “This won’t take long.”

  “Go ahead, then.”

  “Your mother thinks I’m wrong about a decision I’ve made, but I’m very firm about it.” Rebecca appeared to choose her words carefully. “Helena took it personally because she had, I believe, some aspirations in that regard.”

  “And what is this decision that upset her?”

  “I’ve decided that I will never marry.” Her chin gave a slight lift as she made the announcement. “Never,” she emphasized when his startled movement tipped over a broken table that had been propped against the wall. “It’s God’s will for me.” She offered the statement with great finality, as if she had clarified the matter once and for all and decreed it off limits for discussion.

  Antony was so stunned, he didn’t know how to respond. What kind of idiotic deity requires a young woman to remain single? he wanted to ask. Especially a beautiful young woman who loved children and already had one of her own. He’d pictured Rebecca with a house full of children—his children. And Victor, of course. That was taken for granted. Surely she didn’t intend to raise the boy by herself. It didn’t make sense.

  His mind was still reeling with unanswered questions when Quintus poked his head back into the room. “Good, you two are still here. Peter wants to see you before you leave. He said it’s important.”

  “Tell him we’ll be right there,” Rebecca said.

  “We’ll finish this discussion later,” Antony told her. He didn’t know where she’d come up with this idea, but he was already thinking of ways to talk her out of it.

  “There’s nothing to discuss,” she insisted. “I simply wanted you to know my decision so you’ll . . . so we’ll have a clear understanding.” Rebecca turned and started toward Peter’s office next door, and Antony followed. If she thought the topic was closed, she was sadly mistaken. Here he’d gone and fallen in love with her, and now she was vowing to never get married? There would be plenty of discussion about that, Antony decided.

  They found Peter sitting at one of the harbor office’s twin desks, his expression somber. He dispensed with the formalities and got right to the point. “I received a letter,” he said, “from Marcellus.”

  “Is it John?” Rebecca asked. “Is he all right?”

  “John is fine. Overdoing it but enjoying himself thoroughly, according to Marcellus.”

  “Then what is it?” Rebecca took the chair across from Peter and Antony leaned against the floor-to-ceiling cabinet that housed the company’s financial records in its myriad of pigeonholes.

  Peter picked up the letter and scanned it. He found the passage he was looking for and began to read:

  “I thought you should know that we haven’t seen Jacob since the day after Rebecca and the others left for home. I talked to him briefly that day, as he was leaving to find Damian. It’s something he feels he has to do, and I realized it was futile to try and stop him.

  “I waited several days before writing you, thinking Jacob might return to Polycarp’s house at any time, but now we’re ready to leave for Pergamum so I’m sending this on to you. I don’t know if Jacob is still in Smyrna, or if perhaps Damian has left and Jacob has gone after him. I’ve asked around, with little success. Tullia’s brother said the two of them scuffled outside his inn that same night. Then they rode off, and he hasn’t seen either one of them since.

  “John is very concerned, of course, and we pray for Jacob’s safety daily. If Jacob has returned to Ephesus, perhaps you could get word to us through one of the churches.”

  Peter let the letter roll closed and placed it to one side. For a moment, no one spoke.

  “When Jacob didn’t come back right away,” Antony finally said, “I thought he must have decided to travel with John and Marcellus. They wanted him to go with them.”

  “We all thought that,” Peter said.

  “We all wanted to think that.” Rebecca looked crestfallen, and she twisted her hands in her lap. “But from the moment we left Devil’s Island, I knew he might do something like this.”

  Antony instinctively moved toward Rebecca and put a hand on her shoulder. She sent him a frosty look, which he ignored. But he settled for a quick squeeze of her shoulder, then let his hand rest at the back of her chair.

  After all his family had been through, why would Jacob do this? Antony wondered. “Something he feels he has to do,” Marcellus had said in his letter. Antony knew that Jacob carried a heavy load of guilt for not protecting his sister from Damian.

  Looking down at Rebecca now, Antony thought about someone trying to hurt her and suddenly wondered if he would be tempted to take the law into his own hands to get justice? Probably. He would certainly want to.

  He silently vowed that no one would ever hurt the woman he was going to marry—and he would marry her, no matter what she
said.

  19

  JACOB SCRATCHED HIS SCRAGGLY CHIN as the horse plodded along the mountain road toward Caesarea Mazaca, the capital of Cappadocia. The fact that he might have lost Damian’s trail nagged at him even more than the itching stubble of his beard.

  When Jacob had chased him out of Smyrna two weeks ago, Damian had headed east, into the interior of Anatolia. They traveled toward Cappadocia, with Jacob following Damian closely, playing a cat-and-mouse game, periodically closing the distance between them and then falling back. Jacob could tell the game irritated Damian, and that had made it even more satisfying.

  He stopped only when Damian did. In Sardis Damian had bought supplies; Jacob did likewise, selecting dried fruits and nuts, a leather wine flagon, which he filled with water, and two extra blankets to use as a bedroll and cover. At sunset each evening, when Damian had made camp, so did Jacob. He tried to keep a bit of distance between them yet remain within eyesight. And, knowing his voice would carry in the still night air, Jacob sang. He lay on his bedroll and serenaded Damian with improvised songs about an avenger of blood pursuing and killing his enemy.

  For the first time in ages, Jacob had felt free and unhindered. He was in control; there was no one to tell him what to do. No family members with conflicting opinions. No prison guards with whips and chains. No warship captains or oarsmasters. He was his own man, and he was a man with a mission.

  Now that mission was in jeopardy, and he had no one to blame but himself. Yesterday afternoon Jacob had let Damian get too far ahead of him, and before he could catch up, a flock of sheep had crossed the road, delaying him even further. Jacob had yelled at the shepherd in frustration, but to no avail. The herd of woolly animals bleated as they slowly ambled across the road under the watchful eye of the shepherd, who was either unwilling or unable to hurry the process along. When the path was finally clear, Jacob had lost sight of Damian. By nightfall Jacob still hadn’t found him.

  Jacob had been riding all morning and hadn’t caught up with his enemy yet, and it worried him. He’d come to no major crossroads; however, Damian must still be traveling toward Caesarea. There was a large military outpost there, which was probably why Damian had headed in that direction in the first place.

  A light snow had fallen overnight and fresh powder dusted the road. It wasn’t enough to seriously hinder travel, but a few heavy snowfalls would render these mountain roads impassable. Jacob realized he would be spending the winter somewhere besides home, and that thought made him still angrier with himself.

  Why hadn’t he killed Damian when he’d had the opportunity? Jacob repeadedly asked himself that question as he meandered through the surreal scenery of Cappadocia. Everywhere he looked, huge cone-shaped formations of multicolored tufa, a soft volcanic rock, jutted from the ground—towering obelisks of terra-cotta pink, mustard yellow, sandy beige, and eggshell white. Some of the unusual formations were topped with heavy basalt pillows that appeared ready to tumble from their lofty heights but had perched there for centuries as the wind and water had sculpted the rocky wonderland.

  Some of the larger towers and cones had a series of windowlike openings, and from a distance they looked like giant pigeon cotes. It finally dawned on Jacob that these were troglodyte homes: many of the people here were cave dwellers. For centuries they had carved their living spaces out of the soft volcanic rock.

  The more Jacob looked at the strange shapes, the more it appeared as if an audience had lined either side of the road. Some of the smaller tufa structures looked like animals or people. One outcropping looked like a man with his arms raised to the sky. Jacob had the strange sensation that the rocks were mocking him, deriding him for his failure: “Avenger of blood? Hah haaaaah!”

  As he topped a hill Jacob realized that the sound he thought he’d imagined from the rocks was actually a camel braying. There were three camels, in fact, and the heavily laden animals, along with a couple of donkeys and a handful of men, were completely blocking the road ahead of Jacob.

  He wasn’t surprised to encounter a trade caravan. Asia and Anatolia formed a land bridge between the Roman Empire and the East, and there was active trade along the so-called Silk Route. The emperors had long imported exquisite fabrics and jewels from the farthest reaches of the world, and caravans from India and China crossed through this region on their way to the Mediterranean.

  But he was surprised to encounter a trade caravan stopped in the middle of the road. Usually they set up shop on the side of a road just outside a large town. Why had they stopped in the road itself? And why here, in the middle of nowhere?

  Not exactly nowhere, Jacob realized as he glanced up. A decent-sized city loomed in the background. Could it be Caesarea already? It must be. The region was sparsely populated, and a city of that size had to be the capital. Jacob had traveled farther than he’d thought, and he rejoiced to be so close to his destination—his enemy’s destination.

  So close . . . and yet he couldn’t move.

  Jacob studied the scene. One of the humpbacked beasts had sat down, squarely in the middle of the road, and did not appear to be interested in moving anytime soon. A wiry man in a striped broadcloth coat leaned leisurely against the seated camel while three other traders kept a wary eye on the other camels and the pair of donkeys.

  The caravan itself blocked the road, but the main event was transpiring off to the side. Apparently a couple of locals had flagged the traders down en route. Two men appeared to be arguing with one of the sellers. The shorter of the two locals was an older man with a shock of silvery-gray hair that fell below his cap. The other was younger, perhaps an apprentice. Tall and slender, the lad kept his hands tucked inside the sleeves of his coat.

  It had been several hundred years since the Persians had ruled here; then the region had come under the dominion of Greece and finally Rome. But the local people had yet to adopt modern dress or customs, and the two men now arguing with the traders wore the traditional Persian costume: trousers under their tunics, coats with long sleeves, and felt hats.

  And it did appear to be more than typical haggling. From the yelling and gesturing going on, a deal had gone sour and the two customers were very unhappy. More than once Jacob heard the word worthless emanating from the heated discussion as the men shouted in a mixture of heavily accented Greek and Latin.

  So far no one had noticed him. He was afraid to get off the road and try to go around the caravan. With the fresh snowfall it was not easy to see where the ground slipped away, and Jacob was afraid his horse might stumble.

  Jacob watched the dispute progress for a minute, then dismounted. He intended to ask one of the men to move the camels enough to allow him to pass through. Jacob figured he might have to buy something, but perhaps the traders had some inexpensive trinket that would catch Rebecca’s eye.

  The wiry man in the striped coat noticed Jacob approaching and straightened up, then he moved to stand between Jacob and the merchandise. The trader looked as if he had slept with the camels, with bits of straw still clinging to his clothes. Jacob started to speak when, just to his right, the quarrel erupted again between the locals and the chief trader. The two men had started to walk away, then the younger man whirled around, evidently demanding the last word.

  Jacob was suddenly worried that the men were about to come to blows, and he did not want to get in the middle of a full-fledged fight. The older man put out a hand to restrain the younger, who was gesturing wildly and shouting, “You’re a thief! It was everything I had in the world, and you robbed me!”

  The voice and gestures were a bit effeminate, and Jacob felt sorry for the gangly lad, who had been fleeced out of what little he had by an unscrupulous trader. Jacob knew what it was like to feel helpless and cheated out of something precious, and perhaps that empathy with the unknown young man was what determined his next move.

  With a final cry of “Thief!” the apprentice flung a small pouch to the ground. The older man had tried to stop him, so the toss went astray. The
pouch landed between the chief trader and Jacob, and without really thinking, Jacob moved to reach down for it. So did the chief trader, and the two of them collided; but when he righted himself, Jacob had the pouch in his hand.

  He intended to hand it back to the apprentice; perhaps it was not as worthless as the boy had implied with the gesture of defiance. The traders had not refunded his money, so the distraught young man was walking away with nothing. But before he could move, Jacob suddenly realized that while he had been distracted, he had dropped the reins. Jacob looked up to see the unkempt trader in the striped coat mount Jacob’s horse and ride off.

  “Stop!” Jacob yelled. “That’s my horse!” He started to run after the wiry man who’d stolen his horse, but the chief trader was coming after Jacob with a furious gleam in his eye.

  “You won’t get away with this!” the man shouted as he tried to grab Jacob.

  Get away with what? What had he done? Jacob was thoroughly confused with no time to figure it out. One trader had stolen his horse, the man who was apparently their chief was fighting him, and the three remaining traders were running toward the disturbance. They must intend to rob me, Jacob thought. These men aren’t just unscrupulous traders but outright thieves.

  Jacob still had a considerable amount of money stashed on him, and he wasn’t about to lose it. With a swift movement he deposited the apprentice’s pouch in his belt and drew out his dagger. The threat of a weapon made the new attackers hesitate just long enough for Jacob to move. He used the opportunity to sidestep the chief trader and flee.

  He ran hard, quickly catching up with the two locals, who had headed back toward town. When they saw the chief trader chasing Jacob, they began running too, their long coats billowing around them. The three of them sprinted down the road, their arms pumping as fast as their legs. Fortunately, the old trader was overweight and out of shape, and they were able to outpace their pursuer.