Part 13 (1/2)

He smiled, his head against the side of the wagon. ”They will come.”

And so she knocked with trembling fingers on the door of this wealthy home, and waited for a servant to answer the late-night summons.

When the door opened, a bulky Persian stared down on her with dark and suspicious eyes. She stepped aside to reveal her cargo. ”He is hurt. I have brought him to his family.”

The Persian flicked a glance over the wagon, then his eyebrows shot up. ”Rabbi!” He pulled the door wide. ”Can he walk?”

Ariella shook her head. Rabbi? The servant opened the other wide door, then helped her navigate the cart over the threshold and into the entry hall of the grand house. Ariella caught a glimpse of the expansive courtyard in the center, with moonlight playing over flowering bushes. And somewhere, deep within the house, she heard the sound of singing.

The house still hummed with activity, even at this late hour. The Persian left them in the atrium to fetch someone else, and she eyed the comings and goings of the staff, carrying platters of food and bulky cus.h.i.+ons toward one of the entertaining chambers off the central garden. So taken was she with the evidence of a late-night party that she missed the entrance of a woman until the matron of the house was upon them, her worried voice calling out to Jeremiah where he still lay in the cart.

Her hand was on his forehead at once, and she looked Ariella over, a question in her eyes. She was dressed in a scarlet stola and heavily jeweled, but there was no arrogance in her look, only a concern that seemed to extend to them both.

”I am one of the gladiators.” Ariella dropped her eyes. ”It is his hip. I fear it is broken. He-he told me to bring him here.” Uncertainty at her course faltered her voice, but the woman patted her arm and smiled. Ariella found herself drawn to her warmth.

Within moments, others had been summoned, and Jeremiah had been carried to the triclinium, where a large group a.s.sembled, and laid on cus.h.i.+ons. Ariella stood beside him at the wall, uncertain of whether she should stay. But Jeremiah's hand found hers and did not let go.

She could make no sense of this family of his. The size of the house, its abundant statuary and elaborate frescoes, spoke of great wealth. People of all ages filled the room, men and women, peasant and n.o.ble, even foreigners. Fires burned in braziers at the corners of the warm room, and the table was laden with an abundance of food and drink. Her muscles relaxed, as though she were coming untied within, and she sank to the cus.h.i.+on beside Jeremiah. ”You are a rabbi?” She felt her face flame with embarra.s.sment. She had thought of him as only a slave, but of course he had another life, before. Just as she did. He smiled sadly. ”I once was. In happier days.”

A physician had been summoned, but while they waited, the group focused its concern on the two newcomers. The n.o.blewoman, Europa, brought her a dish heaped with lentils and urged her to eat. Ariella shook her head, embarra.s.sed further to be treated thus, but Europa took Ariella's hands and wrapped them around the warm bowl. ”You are Jeremiah's friend”-she put an arm around Ariella's shoulder-”and so you are also our friend.”

The light touch of the woman, so like a mother, dissolved her, and she bent to the dish of lentils to hide her misty eyes. She should be getting back to the barracks before her absence was noted. Instead she inhaled the spicy scent of the food, her eyes closed in pleasure.

Jeremiah whispered to Europa. ”Do not let me keep you from your meeting. Please, go on.”

Europa started to object, but then seemed to sense something unspoken from Jeremiah, and nodded. She circled the benches set before the three tables and bent to speak into the ear of a man, presumably her husband. A young girl leaned against him and looked to Europa with the devotion of a daughter, but when she stood and crossed the room to bring Jeremiah a woolen blanket, Ariella saw that the girl's foot was deformed and twisted inward, and she had an impossibly loping gait, as though she struggled to maintain her balance.

All of this Ariella watched with great interest, even as the comfort of the room and the warmth of the people seemed to woo her into a kind of stupor. She ate the lentils, only half-aware that the food was richer than any she'd tasted since leaving the frightful home of Valerius in Rome.

Europa's husband stood and began to speak, and Ariella's attention was captured at once, for he spoke like a rabbi himself, quoting from the Torah, of the wickedness of man becoming great in the earth, with every imagination of his heart becoming evil continually. It shocked her, to hear this Roman speak of Hashem, quote from her Torah, even to condemn the evil so rampant in his world. He spoke with heaviness of their fallen friends.

And then, as though the very room had lifted from this place and floated to the heart of Jerusalem itself, someone in the flickering shadows of the corner began to speak in her native tongue, her beloved Hebrew.

Ariella's jaw slackened to hear it, and she hung on each word as the young man spoke from the prophet Isaiah's writings. ”The Creator's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, neither is His ear heavy, that it cannot hear.”

He paused and someone else, across the room, repeated his words in Latin, translating for the rest of the crowd. And then he spoke again, wrapping Ariella in the rhythm of his words, carrying her backward to home and family: ”But your iniquities have separated between you and your G.o.d, and your sins have hid His face from you that He will not hear.”

Again, someone translated, and when he had finished, Ariella slumped against the cus.h.i.+ons, drained as though she had faced an opponent in the arena.

”This was for you,” Jeremiah whispered.

”Where is he from?” Perhaps she had known him as a child in Judea.

But Jeremiah shook his head. ”He is Roman. He does not know Hebrew.”

Ariella frowned. ”He speaks with the tongue of a native.”

”A gift. A sign for you.”

She understood none of this. ”For me?”

The teaching seemed to have ended, and as the people conversed, Jeremiah spoke to her alone. He nodded toward the girl with the deformed foot. ”Flora was born in Rome, to parents who believed themselves cursed.”

Ariella studied the woman, Europa. ”She is not their daughter?”

Jeremiah's eyes on the girl held fondness. ”They found her beside the river. Her father had exercised his right to expose her. Deformed children are seen as useless or cursed, and rarely spared.”

Ariella gritted her teeth. One more evidence that the Roman conquerors were swine.

”But as the prophet Isaiah says, we are all twisted, deformed by sin, destined for destruction.”

Ariella s.h.i.+fted, uncomfortable on the couch. ”But for this, we have the Day of Atonement.” Yet even as she said it, the memory of the burning Temple filled her mind.

”No sacrifice, no altar. No Temple.” Jeremiah shook his head. ”And the Law and Prophets tell us that Hashem will not hear the prayers without the atonement.”

”What are we to do, then?” She did not know why she asked. She had given up caring what Hashem thought of her many angry years ago.

Jeremiah patted her hand and smiled at Flora. ”Thank the Creator for making our adoption possible.”

The man spoke in riddles. She opened her mouth to question, but the room had quieted, and attention had turned to a slave at the doorway.

”The physician?” Europa asked.

The slave shook his head. ”Two n.o.blemen. Unknown to me. They are asking for you.”

At this a hush fell over the group, as though they feared this intrusion, and even Jeremiah's grip tightened on hers.

Ariella cursed her thoughtlessness. She had risked much in coming here, and had stayed too long. And now, perhaps, she would have to pay for such foolishness.

CHAPTER 20.

Thirty days until the election. Thirty days until Cato could see Maius's smug face tossed into a cell to await trial for his crimes. Thirty days until he could free Portia from her bonds.

Too short to mount a successful campaign, and too unbearably long to leave Portia locked in a cell beneath the magisterial offices. Before he could begin meeting with the guilds, before he would even declare himself a candidate, he must find a way to ensure Portia was well.

In the early morning hours, the coolness of his bedchamber drove him to the atrium to seek the uncertain warmth of the watery sunlight that filtered past the Cyprus trees in patches on the walkways. He took his meal of bread and grapes in the garden, nodding acknowledgment to one of the newly acquired slaves.

Octavia soon appeared, and it seemed to Cato that she had aged a decade overnight. ”Any word?” She twisted her hands together at her waist.

Cato shook his head. ”I have sent inquiries. But no one knows exactly where she is, nor do we have any disloyal to Maius who have access to the cells.”

From the doorway, a steely voice joined the conversation. ”I know of some.”

Portia's husband, Lucius, stood framed in the still-shadowed double doors to the street. His tight jaw and dark-circled eyes spoke of a sleepless night.

Octavia held out welcoming hands, and Lucius strode across the atrium and embraced her, his voice m.u.f.fled against Octavia's dark hair. ”She thinks I disbelieved her.”