Avenger of Blood

by John Hagee

  As Theodorus moved to take his place beside John, Rebecca looked at the congregation around her. She noticed Agatha blushing when Quintus looked her way. He smiled and then looked off.

  Galen was not there this morning, Rebecca saw, and she couldn’t help being glad for that. She’d felt sorry for Galen after she had rejected his attempt at reconciliation, but the following Sunday he had done something that had infuriated her. During the worship service, he had given out an emphatic message in tongues. Rebecca had felt uneasy during the message; she sensed something wasn’t quite right. Immediately afterward Galen gave the interpretation, and it was full of admonitions to “shun the very appearance of evil.” He rambled on, saying that righteousness has no part with unrighteousness, and that believers were not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers. Everything he had said was true and it all sounded very spiritual. Yet Rebecca knew that Galen had intended the public message to be a private warning to her.

  Evidently Theodorus, who had been in charge of the service, had sensed something inappropriate as well. Rebecca saw him speaking sternly to Galen afterward, and since then, Galen had not uttered a word in church.

  Rebecca refocused her attention on John as the elders of the church also came forward and joined him in laying hands on Theodorus. John anointed him with oil and prayed a prayer of dedication over Theodorus as the new pastor of the church. The elders had all taken turns serving in that capacity since John had first been banished to Devil’s Island, and now he was elevating Theodorus to the position on a permanent basis.

  After John dismissed the congregation, he stood and greeted the members as they filed out to leave. Marcellus stayed by his side, looking concerned and trying to get the Apostle to sit down. But John thrived on being with the people of God, and as long as anyone stayed to talk, he would not ignore them.

  Finally, when everyone had left, Marcellus and Rebecca helped John to the library. Peter was coughing and felt terrible, so he excused himself and went to his room to rest before lunch. Rebecca fetched a blanket for John, who stretched out on the long settee for a nap.

  Rebecca expected John to go right to sleep; he looked exhausted. Instead he said, “This was a disappointing day for me, and for the church.”

  “Why is that?” Rebecca asked. “I would think you would be happy to know the church has been blessed with strong leadership. Theodorus is a good man, very solid.”

  “Aye,” John said, “he is. Solid of build and solid of mind. Theodorus teaches sound doctrine, and he’ll do right by the people.” He raised up on one bony elbow and looked at Rebecca. “But I had hoped to anoint your brother as pastor of this congregation someday. Instead . . .” John paused as his voice faded momentarily, then he continued, “Jacob walked away from the call of God to pursue a fool’s errand. Now I don’t even know if I’ll live long enough to see him again. That boy is a bitter disappointment.”

  John lay back down on the settee and was asleep almost as soon as he closed his eyes. Rebecca and Marcellus conversed softly while the disappointed preacher dozed.

  “He’s not doing well,” Marcellus told Rebecca.

  “I noticed the tremor,” she said.

  “And his eyesight has dimmed. You can see the cloudiness if you look closely.”

  “That explains why I thought he might be having trouble recognizing people this morning. He usually greets the church members as ‘dear brother’ or ‘dear sister’ if he can’t recall someone’s name right away, but today he kept saying, ‘It’s so good to see you, dear child of God.’”

  Marcellus grinned. “John is so good at compensating for his physical limitations that few people notice the extent of his frailty.”

  “I wish we could get him to move in with us,” Rebecca said. “I worry about him so much.”

  “He needs the independence of living in his own house; he just doesn’t need to be alone. I’ve lined up someone to stay with him at all times . . .”

  “So, will you be leaving us, now that you’ve helped John deliver the letters to the churches?” Rebecca knew that Marcellus had never planned to stay long-term. His return to Ephesus with them had always been a temporary thing, a transition from his many years of military service into civilian life, and a favor to the man who had led him to the Lord.

  “I had intended to,” Marcellus said. “Now I’m not sure what God would have me do. I want so much to try and find my daughter, but I can’t help thinking that perhaps I’m supposed to stay with John. His spirit is still so strong, but his body is wearing out. He could live several more years, or he could be gone in a matter of months. Weeks, maybe.”

  The thought of losing John sobered Rebecca, but so did the prospect of Marcellus’s departure. John had always been a fixture in her life, and for almost a year the Apostle and the medical officer had been the only people she had seen. She would miss Marcellus terribly when he left; selfishly, she wished he wouldn’t. After a long pause she asked, “Do you know where your daughter is?”

  “When she was born,” he said, “I was stationed almost at the eastern edge of the Empire. My wife’s family was from that area, so that’s where I would start looking. Even if my wife and daughter are not there anymore, surely there would be some relatives who would know what happened to them.”

  Marcellus talked about his daughter for a few minutes, then he said, “I still have a few weeks to decide what to do. The winters in the East are severe, so I couldn’t begin to travel until it warms up. I’ll see how John is faring when spring arrives.”

  He turned the conversation toward Rebecca. She hadn’t intended to say anything about it, but she found herself talking about Galen’s attempt to get back together and Antony’s proposal, which had occurred the same evening. Marcellus listened with keen interest, offering a reassuring word now and then as she told him what had transpired. It was like talking to her father, Rebecca thought, and she felt better when she had poured her heart out.

  “I just want so much to do the right thing,” she said. “But it’s so difficult. Antony is a good person even though he’s not a believer. Sometimes I wonder, would it really be so bad to marry him? His mother’s a good Christian . . .”

  Marcellus reached over and gave her hand a paternal squeeze. “I can’t tell you what to do, Rebecca—”

  “I can.” The voice coming from the settee was surprisingly strong. John grumbled as he struggled to sit up. There were no arms on the settee for him to grasp, so Marcellus quickly moved to help him.

  “We thought you were sleeping,” Rebecca said.

  “I was,” the Apostle replied with a wan smile when he was upright again. “But I sleep lightly. And the Spirit always seems to wake me when I need to hear something important.”

  John’s eyes were indeed cloudy now, Rebecca noticed, yet they still possessed a liveliness that belied his advanced age. “So what should I do?” she asked.

  Without hesitation John said, “Be faithful to God. He has someone for you, Rebecca—a godly man. You must be patient and let God work.”

  Rebecca pondered the Apostle’s words while he turned to address Marcellus. She wanted to believe that what John said was true, that God did have someone special for her. At the moment she couldn’t get beyond the thought that she wanted that someone to be Antony, and she was afraid God might have other plans. How long would she have to be patient?

  “God has something special in store for you too,” John told Marcellus. “He will reward your faithful service to this most ancient servant of His—me—by bringing your daughter back. You will not have to search far and wide to find her. She will come to you.”

  He said it with such emphasis that Rebecca wondered if the statement were actually a prophecy. She hoped so. That would mean Marcellus would not have to leave her, or John. And that would please her immensely.

  Even if the utterance had been prophetic, John’s spiritual statement quickly turned into a physical complaint. “Surely that cook has had time to prepare lunch by now,” John
said. “Why doesn’t somebody go find out?”

  Rebecca rose, suppressing a laugh. “I’ll see what the delay is,” she said. There was no delay, of course. It was barely past midmorning. But John was always hungry when he woke up from a nap, and she would see to it that he got something to eat now.

  As she left the library Rebecca heard John mumbling, “The wealthiest home in town, but an old person could starve to death around here.”

  23

  LIVIA STOPPED HAMMERING the thin sheet of copper and glared at Jacob. “You’re doing it again!”

  “What?” He stepped back, startled.

  “Standing in my light.” She tucked her hair behind her ears and leaned back over the workbench, which was positioned to take advantage of the morning light streaming through the window carved into the tufa.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, moving away. “I got caught up watching you work.”

  Every morning for the past six weeks the stranger her uncle had taken in had visited her workshop. Most of the time Livia didn’t mind, as long as he kept quiet and didn’t get in her way. Sometimes she even put him to work; yesterday he had ground cakes of enamel into fine powder with a pestle and mortar while she dipped thin sheets of metal into an acid-and-water bath. When they dried, the metal sheets would be ready for the application of the colored enamel paste. Jacob had saved her a half-day’s work by pulverizing the hard enamel.

  Today, however, Jacob’s presence irritated Livia. She wasn’t sure why, and she didn’t want to stop to puzzle through it. She just wanted to work. “Go bother Gregory for a while,” she snapped.

  Jacob folded his arms across his chest. “Gregory has gone into town,” he said stubbornly.

  “Then why don’t you go chase that evil man you’re after and leave me alone?” She knew that would make Jacob mad. They’d had many discussions about his “mission,” as he called it; when Jacob wasn’t loitering around her workshop, he was in Caesarea scouting around the army post for any sign of Damian. So far Jacob had been unsuccessful at gaining entrance to the camp—he had no legitimate business to conduct there—and he had never seen Damian leave the premises, even though Jacob had managed to verify that the tribune was indeed there.

  Livia knew a couple of people with access to the post, but she wasn’t going to tell Jacob. Even after Gregory’s prophecy, Jacob had not given up pursuing his enemy; she wanted no part of it, however.

  As expected, Jacob’s good humor completely vanished at the reference to Damian. “Fine. I’ll be happy to leave you alone.” He squared his shoulders, then turned and marched out of the room.

  Livia went back to hammering the copper while she listened to Jacob go down the stairs to the main part of the house. But her concentration had been shattered, and her enthusiasm for the piece was now lost. She sighed and dropped her tools, then stood up and walked over to the window just in time to see Jacob reach the bottom of the ladder outside the entrance below. He was wearing the fur-lined coat and high felt hat she had helped him purchase at the marketplace in Caesarea.

  With a long, angry stride Jacob started walking toward the city, and Livia chided herself for managing to spread her nasty mood to him. He didn’t deserve that kind of treatment. The only thing Jacob had done was to be himself. And that, Livia thought, was what had her stewing.

  She enjoyed his company, at least when she wasn’t working. Because she was rarely around people her own age, his friendship was especially satisfying. He was easy to talk to—and easy to look at too. Sometimes she wished she were a sculptor so she could capture in stone the square set of his stubborn jaw and the warm humor in his eyes. But her attraction to Jacob involved more than that. He was intelligent, well mannered, and well traveled. He had been places— the kind of places she had only dreamed about.

  For the first time in her life, Livia longed to be more like other women. She’d always been different, and most of the time it didn’t bother her. Lately it had.

  She knew she didn’t look very feminine. It’s not that she was unattractive; her features were pleasant enough, she supposed. But not only was she taller than most men, she also earned her own living and cherished her independence. Not a very womanly thing to do, but something Livia did not want to relinquish.

  In two months she would be twenty-four years old, long past the age to be married. She’d had one serious marriage proposal—well, not directly; it had come through Gregory. Her uncle had told Livia about the widower with four children who had asked to marry her. A month shy of eighteen, she had talked Gregory out of it. Her parents had been dead for two years by then, and Gregory was worried about her future; but Livia could not imagine becoming an instant mother to four children and wife to a man she barely knew, a man more than twice her age. She didn’t regret her decision even though she had come to realize it might be the only proposal she ever received.

  Livia sighed again and returned to the workbench; she couldn’t afford to waste the sunlight. She was just different, that’s all there was to it. What made her hope that Jacob would find her attractive? And even if by some miracle he did, he wouldn’t be around for very long. He was terribly restless, and when spring came, he would probably return to Ephesus. Either that, or the fool would get himself killed trying to catch Damian.

  Gregory had tried talking to Jacob about it once or twice since they’d taken him in, but Jacob remained fixated on his pursuit of vengeance. “You can’t change a man’s mind for him,” Gregory had told Livia. “Just leave him be, and pray that God will change his heart.”

  She had prayed, but she still couldn’t quite leave it alone. Talking to Jacob about his “mission,” however, was like arguing with a fence post. So they had gradually reached a tacit agreement not to discuss it. Instead, they talked about other things, especially their families. Livia understood Jacob’s loss. Both her parents had died during an epidemic that had killed a quarter of the population in the surrounding area. Gregory, who was her mother’s brother, had also lost his wife and their two children to the plague. Livia missed them all. Her cousin Marcia, just two years younger than Livia, had been her closest friend. How she wished for a confidante like Marcia now. Marcia would know exactly how to get Jacob’s attention.

  Recently Gregory had told Livia that God had brought Jacob to them for a purpose, and Livia believed that. She thought the purpose was to persuade him to abandon his quest for revenge; she couldn’t dare to hope God’s purpose would involve something more personal between her and Jacob. Could she?

  Rebecca smiled as she watched Quintus coo and make faces at the two babies. She’d forgotten he could be so lighthearted and unbusinesslike, and she was glad she had asked Agatha to accompany her to the warehouse today. They’d brought Victor and Aurora, escorted by the ever-present bodyguard; after two months of constant supervision, Rebecca was finally getting used to having a guard around.

  “I didn’t know you enjoyed babies so much, Quintus.” Rebecca couldn’t resist teasing him just a bit.

  “Then you have a short memory,” he replied.

  “Oh?” Rebecca looked up from the bolt of cloth she and Agatha were unrolling and inspecting. Most of it was ruined, but whatever remnants of the woolen fabric could be salvaged would be cut and sewn into tunics and cloaks for several members of the congregation who had inadequate clothing for the winter.

  “When you were a wee thing and your father brought you with him to the harbor, the moment you saw me you would raise your hands and say, ‘Ride, Quintus, ride!’”

  “And you would hoist me on your back and run up and down the wharf.”

  “As I recall,” he said, “you wouldn’t let me stop. Whenever I slowed down, you threatened to tell your father that I wasn’t doing my job.”

  The memory made Rebecca laugh. “I suppose I thought you were my personal pony in those days.”

  Quintus extracted a long finger from the clutches of Victor’s chubby little hand. “And I imagine this one will think the same thing in a couple of
years. The difference is that I won’t be running up and down the wharf quite so fast.” He stood and held the long wooden spindle while the two women removed the last of the cloth.

  “I wish I had ten times this much wool,” Rebecca said with a sigh.

  Agatha hurried to offer consolation. “I’m sure it will be more than enough for what we need. And it will be very much appreciated.”

  Quintus dragged his gaze away from Agatha for a moment. “What would you do with more cloth?” he asked Rebecca.

  Her reply was immediate and forceful. “Make blankets and ship them to Devil’s Island.” She closed her eyes against a sudden memory, then explained in a soft voice, “It’s so cold in the caves this time of year. I could never get warm. It’s something I won’t ever forget.”

  Quintus thought for a moment. “We could seek permission to send a ship to Patmos this spring, if we had the goods to send, that is.”

  “I’ll find the goods,” Rebecca vowed, suddenly filled with determination to be bold in asking for donations. She told Agatha how Peter and Quintus had gotten permission from the military authorities to send a shipload of food and used clothing to the prisoners on Devil’s Island the previous spring.

  “You can’t imagine what it was like when Marcellus showed up at our cave with extra blankets and clothing,” Rebecca said. “I had worn the same tunic until it was rotten, not just threadbare. John, too. It’s a miracle we didn’t die of exposure.”

  And the irony, she thought, was that it had been Naomi’s expensive clothes Peter had gathered up to send. Rebecca had recognized some of them. In fact, she had been wearing her sister’s brilliant peacock-blue tunic the day Jacob had arrived to bring them home, and from a distance he had thought Naomi was there on Devil’s Island.

  Rebecca smiled at the memory of Jacob’s confusion, but her amusement vanished as she thought about her brother. They hadn’t heard a word from Jacob in two months. She was worried about him and angry with him, all at the same time.