Devil's Island (18 page)

14

BEFORE HE OPENED HIS EYES, Abraham tasted the dust and grit of the cobblestones where he'd been lying since the soldiers had struck him down. His head was pounding and his ears ringing. His body was trembling so much, he felt as if someone was shaking him.

Someone
was
shaking him, he finally realized, trying to wake him up. He opened one eye and then the other. His vision was blurred, and the man's face swam in front of him, becoming two faces and then merging together again.

“Abraham,” the man said. “Abraham, can you hear me?”

He couldn't recognize the face, but the familiar voice was easily identified. “Quintus,” he mumbled, “is that you?”

“Yes, Abraham.” Quintus put a hand under his shoulder. “Can you sit up? You've been hurt.”

With Quintus's help, Abraham sat up slowly. He spit a pebble out of his mouth and brushed some of the dirt off his face.

“It's over,” Quintus said. “The soldiers have cleared out.”

Abraham gradually became aware of his surroundings, and then it hit him. “Elizabeth! Oh, God, please . . .” He crawled on his hands and knees toward his wife, trying to piece together the blurred images he recalled—Damian, the sword, Elizabeth falling. He'd seen it all in a haze and had thought—had desperately hoped—he was dreaming. Surely it was a nightmare, a delusion caused by his throbbing head.

But when he reached Elizabeth, he knew it was true: Damian had killed her. Abraham fell across his wife's body, sobbing.

“Pull yourself together.” Quintus's voice was unusually stern. “We need to get out of here.”

Abraham shook off the hand on his shoulder. “Leave me alone!” he cried.

Quintus persisted. “Come on, Abraham. We need to get Elizabeth home. We can't leave her body lying in the street.”

That truth pierced through his grief and shock. Abraham summoned his strength to stand and pick up his wife's body. When he stooped over to lift her, a pain shot through his head and he felt as if the top of his skull would explode.

“Let me help you,” Quintus said.

“I can do it,” Abraham replied. He was determined not to leave Elizabeth on the streets like an animal, and he would get her away from this pagan temple if it was the last thing he ever did.

Quintus steadied Abraham as he stood and balanced Elizabeth in his arms for the arduous trip home. The journey of just under a mile seemed to take forever. It was uphill all the way, and because of his injuries and his tears, Abraham had trouble seeing the road beneath his feet. Twice he had to set Elizabeth down, wipe the tears from his eyes, and catch his breath. He was too stubborn and proud to let Quintus help him.

Abraham managed to control his grief until they reached the top of the last hill and he caught sight of their villa, the beautiful sprawling home he had built for his bride and their young children. For the last hundred yards, Abraham wailed at the top of his lungs, and when they finally stepped over the broken door into the courtyard entrance of the house, he collapsed with Elizabeth still in his arms.

Naomi heard the loud lament and ran to the window. From her upstairs bedroom, she looked out and saw her father carrying her mother toward the house.

He's alive,
she thought.
Alive and brokenhearted.

She allowed herself a brief moment of sympathy for her father. She knew what it was like to bury the person you loved most in the world, and to bury your dreams along with your spouse. Naomi quickly forgot her father's grief, however, as she recalled her own. She'd been far too young to lose everything in life that had been dear to her. All she had now were her memories and two bands of solid gold she kept in a velvet-lined box made of teak.

Naomi took the box out of the chest where she kept it. The top was inlaid with a trefoil-shaped mosaic of delicate wood veneers. She seldom looked at the keepsake box anymore; she had not allowed herself the luxury of mourning for a long time now. Three years earlier, when her husband died, she had spent all her grief early on and then determined to go on with her life, throwing herself into a whirlwind of social activities.

She filled her days with trips to the baths, the hairdresser, the dressmaker, the theater, the games, dinner parties, and visits to friends. She spent her evenings planning how to fill the next day. And in the odd moment when she actually allowed herself to think, it was only about the future, never the past.

Now she ran a slim finger over the trefoil inlay and the circle of gold leaf that surrounded it. The symbol of eternity, like the wedding bands, inside.
Eternity? Nothing lasts forever,
she thought bitterly.

For a while she had held on to the belief that she would be reunited with Crispin, but eventually she had discarded any belief in the afterlife—whether the Elysian fields of Roman mythology or the celestial heaven of the Christians—along with her faith.

The sound of her father's mournful sobs carried upstairs from the courtyard below. Naomi wished he would stop wailing. It was getting on her nerves. She put away the keepsake box and finished dressing, trying to muster enthusiasm for attending the games with Julia, but she was not able to shake her dark reflections.

There had been a time, she remembered, when her father was the person Naomi had loved most in the world. She was his little princess, whom he nicknamed Tyranna. He had doted on her, and she doted on being the center of his world.

Then, when she was almost five, the twins were born. It had been a difficult delivery and her mother had almost died. When she was older, Naomi had learned that the firstborn, Peter, had been in the breech position; he came into the world feet first, and one of his legs was twisted as a result. All his life Peter had been smaller and weaker than his younger twin, Jacob, and the birth injury had left him lame.

All Naomi knew then was that her mother was sick for a very long time. A nurse took care of the newborns, and Abraham started taking Naomi to the harbor with him every day. She played in her father's office, and in the afternoons Quintus taught her to add on the abacus and to scratch the alphabet on a clay tablet. Her father taught her to swim and even took her sailing with him. She grew up loving the harbor, the big ships, and everything about her father's booming business.

After Rebecca was born, two years after the twins, Abraham had built the big villa on the hill and hired a schoolmaster to teach Naomi. Her father still let her come to his office, though, after her lessons each day. But more and more, she noticed, he turned his attention away from her and toward her brothers. Her mother, preoccupied with the new baby and managing a large household, had little time for Naomi. Then when Peter and Jacob began their formal education at age seven, Abraham had started letting them come to the harbor every afternoon, and Naomi was told she had to stay home.

She was crushed. “But why? Why do I have to stay home just because Peter and Jacob are old enough to learn the business now? It's not fair!”

“It may not be fair,” her father had said, “but that's the way it's going to be. After all, the boys will inherit the business one day. And besides, the harbor is not a proper place for a young girl, Naomi. Your mother has always frowned on it.”

“Why isn't it proper? I like the office, and I've got a good head for business. I can copy the shipping manifests from your notes, and I've helped Quintus record the inventory. I can calculate as fast as he can! Well, almost. Anyway—”

Her father interrupted her. “The business world is a man's domain, and I've done you a disservice by letting you tag along with me into that world. It's time you learned to be a lady, Naomi. You're almost twelve, and in a few years you'll be married.”

Naomi had been so disappointed, she cried for days. Gradually her tears had turned into hot anger, and her affection for her father had cooled and hardened into bitterness.

As she fastened a gold chain around her neck, Naomi looked in the mirror.
I became a lady, Father. Just as you insisted.
She pinned her long curls into a fashionable sweep.
A beautiful lady with many
admirers.

Naomi shut the door on her memories as she shut the bedroom door behind her. She allowed herself one final thought of the past before leaving for the games in honor of the emperor's birthday.
I'll
never forgive you for shutting me out, Father. Never.

Quintus went to the back of the house while Abraham remained seated on the tile floor of the atrium, cradling Elizabeth in his arms. He wept until his tears drenched his wife's blood-spattered tunic.

He finally stopped sobbing, but his voice wavered as he said, “What a fool I've been, Elizabeth. What a fool.” Spent and bereft, he leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. The pain in his head was nothing compared to the pain in his heart. How could his well-ordered life have disintegrated so suddenly?

After resting a while, Abraham struggled to his feet and carried his beloved wife, the mother of his children, his reason for living, up the stairs. He laid her on the bed where they had shared so many intimate conversations and spoke to her for the final time, pouring out his innermost thoughts to the only one he'd ever loved enough to reveal that much of himself.

“I'm sorry, Elizabeth,” he continued in a tremulous voice. “I stupidly thought I could save my fortune and somehow save my family. Instead, I've lost you, and I've lost my soul.”

A new wave of tears gushed out of eyes he had been certain were bone-dry. “I will love you forever, Elizabeth. There will never be another.” He picked up a pale hand and kissed it. “I know you are in heaven listening to me, and I fear God will not forgive my treason. But I will beg God's forgiveness every day of my life so I can join you in heaven someday.”

Slowly and reverently Abraham removed his wife's clothing, weeping with every tug of her blood-soaked tunic. The one who had brought warmth and sunshine to his life now lay on the bed, her bare skin as cold and smooth as alabaster. Touching her eyelids, he silently vowed he would give his fortune ten times over if he could see the sparkle in those lively green eyes just one more time.

Abraham washed her body in a final baptism, then anointed her with aromatic oils. When he had finished preparing Elizabeth for burial, he wrapped her in white linen.

Then Abraham cleaned himself up, changed clothes, and went outside to the grassy knoll where he had constructed a private mausoleum when the villa was first built. Rufus, Elizabeth's father, was buried there, as was Crispin, Naomi's husband. Elizabeth would be laid to rest in one of the niches carved into the hillside, then after a year, when the body had decomposed, her bones would be gathered and placed in a carved limestone ossuary engraved with her name.

Quintus had already opened the heavy door and was standing inside the crypt. “I was looking for this,” he said, indicating the stretcher he had just picked up. “We'll need it to carry the body.” The stretcher, made of heavy canvas covering two wooden poles, would be used as a funeral bier.

“There won't be much of a funeral,” Abraham said brokenly. “Not with Jacob and Rebecca gone. And John.” He paused. “John married us, you know.”

“Yes, I was there,” Quintus replied.

Abraham nodded, as if remembering. “I thought we'd bury the Apostle long before he had a chance to bury one of us. Now she's gone, and he's not here to do the funeral.”

Quintus placed a hand on Abraham's shoulder. “I'm so sorry. Elizabeth was the kindest woman I've ever known.”

“Help me bring her down, Quintus. I want to bury her before sunset.”

They turned to go back into the house, but Abraham staggered dizzily and almost fainted. Quintus helped him inside. “When have you eaten anything?” he asked.

Abraham thought for a moment. “Night before last, I think.”

“You need something in your stomach,” Quintus said as they walked into the kitchen. “I'll find you something to eat.”

“No, I want to bury Elizabeth first.”

“You won't have the strength if you don't eat.” In a reversal of roles, Quintus ordered his boss to sit down. He pulled a rough wooden stool up to the chopping block where the cook prepared the family's meals. A set of well-used pots and pans hung over the brick fireplace, but with no one to tend it, the fire had gone out and the coals were cold. The room was chilly.

Abraham watched silently as Quintus loaded two plates with an odd assortment from the pantry and filled a carafe with wine. “You couldn't exactly call this a meal,” Quintus said as he sat across from Abraham, “but I didn't want to take time to cook you something.”

“You can cook?” Abraham was surprised.

“Enough to keep from starving. You have to make do when you live alone.”

Abraham had no appetite, but he forced down a few bites of bread and some dried figs. As they ate, Quintus told him about watching the morning's unbearable events unfold.

“The only reason I wasn't required to pledge my loyalty to Caesar with the rest of you,” he said, “was the fact that I'd been out looking for you most of the night. If the soldiers came looking for me, which they probably did, I wasn't there. Servius had rousted me out of bed when you didn't come home. I searched the harbor area and across the city, and I felt sure you had been arrested, but didn't think it wise to pay a visit to the Roman camp alone, in the middle of the night, to verify that.”

Abraham agreed with a nod of his head, a move he instantly regretted. He was feeling nauseated from the pain. “It would have served no purpose if you'd been arrested too,” he said.

“Just before daybreak I finally gave up and headed here to say that I couldn't find you. I arrived as the soldiers were dragging everyone out of the house.”

Abraham shuddered at the mental image that conjured up.

“I surmised they would be going to the Temple of Domitian,” Quintus continued, “so I followed at a distance. I should have been with them, I kept telling myself. I felt responsible, as if there were something I could have done to prevent it, or something I could do to stop it; yet I knew there wasn't anything to be done. So I just watched, trying to mingle in with the crowd so I wouldn't be discovered. I felt like a coward.”