Devil's Island (28 page)

Now, standing on the deck of the
Mercury
, laughing into the wind, Naomi remembered the previous day's church service and her father's public confession. She filed that knowledge away, thinking it might come in handy someday.
I'll use it against him, if need be,
she thought. If she could find a way to tell the emperor that her father had recanted, there would not only be no release forthcoming for Jacob and Rebecca, her father would likely be imprisoned himself.

Naomi ran her hand over the smooth, highly polished railing of her father's private ship, bitterness rising like a bad taste in her mouth. He didn't want her to have the “indulgence” of riding in a litter, but he had splurged on this floating palace of luxury. It was necessary for his business, he'd always claimed.

But if he were in prison,
Naomi thought,
the business would be
mine to run—and so would this ship.

When John woke up the next morning, Marcellus was standing over him. “I brought you some food from the officers' quarters,” the army doctor said as he placed a bowl of stew—with chunks of meat in it, John saw—and a small round loaf of bread on the supply table.

John smiled at the sight of the metal spoon resting in the wooden bowl of stew. “Aren't you afraid I'll try to poke your eye out with that weapon?”

Marcellus grinned when he realized John was pointing at the spoon. “I think I can overpower you, if need be.” He went across the room and brought a stool back to the supply table so John could eat there. “While you eat your meal,” he said, “I'll go to the mess hall and see if I can find Rebecca.”

“Thank you,” John said, grateful both for the food and Marcellus's concern. The medical officer had been the one ray of hope in this aptly named place; it was the devil's own island, indeed. Although Marcellus was not a believer—at least not yet—John knew God had placed the military doctor there to be available in John's hour of need.

The stew was not a great culinary accomplishment, but it was a considerable improvement over the prisoners' fare, and John felt strengthened by the first substantial food he had had in days. Marcellus had not returned by the time he finished his meal, so John stood and stretched his legs, then walked around a bit.

The hospital ward was a long, rectangular room with two large windows on either side of the main door, which was squarely in the middle of one of the long walls. Twenty cots were evenly spaced across the length of the room, ten on either side of the entrance. The building was probably a standard army design, John reckoned as he paced the length of the room. Erected near a battlefield, such a hospital would need several of these wards to treat the wounded. Here, however, the beds were empty, although John vaguely remembered Marcellus treating another prisoner while he was dozing off and on the day before. The man's hand had been crushed when a heap of rocks fell on him. Marcellus must have released the prisoner after patching him up, because he had not spent the night there.

Walking seemed to strengthen John further, and he thanked God for sparing his life and asked his heavenly Father yet again to reveal the purpose for which he had been sent to Patmos. Perhaps it was merely to witness to Marcellus, and for John, that would be enough. Yet he felt there was another, even deeper purpose.
Be
patient,
the Apostle reminded himself.
That will come in time.

John also prayed for Rebecca, and for Marcellus's success in finding her. He had been gone longer than John had thought would be necessary, and that was troublesome.

When Marcellus finally returned, John could tell at a glance that the news was not good.

“She wasn't there,” Marcellus confirmed. “I stood just outside the mess hall and watched all the prisoners leave for the quarry; Rebecca wasn't among them.” The medical officer sat down on the stool while John returned to his cot. “Evidently my presence aroused suspicion,” he continued, “because one of Brutus's chief aides-decamp approached me and asked what I was doing. I did some quick thinking and told him I had been curious about a prisoner I'd seen in the hospital on Saturday. ‘The prisoner was injured,' I said, ‘but didn't return for treatment. I just wondered what happened.' Then I shrugged as if it really didn't matter.

“It wasn't a complete lie, you know,” Marcellus said sheepishly. “Rebecca
did
come to see me on Saturday, and she
was
injured— well, her hands and feet were bleeding and I doctored them. I could tell that her heart, more than her body, was battered and broken . . .”

Marcellus was leaning forward on the stool, his forearms resting on his knees, as he talked to John. He dropped his head and fell silent for a moment. John wanted to prompt him to continue but felt checked; Marcellus was either remembering something or thinking things through, and John felt he should give him some time.

“Anyway, the aide wasn't convinced that my interest was merely casual. He demanded to know the prisoner's name, and I reluctantly told him. We walked over to the roll-call station and checked the records.” He raised his head and looked at John again. “Rebecca didn't report for work yesterday or today.”

John felt sick at heart. The apprehension he'd felt the previous night swept over him anew.
Something is terribly wrong.

Marcellus stood and fiddled with the supplies on the table, glancing out the window. In a moment he turned back to John. “The aide was furious that Rebecca had been absent for two days. ‘I know who she is,' he told me. ‘Her brother is that troublemaker Brutus got rid of yesterday. These Christians are going to be nothing but problems,' he yelled.” Marcellus shot John an apologetic look to signal his disagreement with the aide's assessment.

“The aide said they would send out a search party immediately. ‘We'll find her,' he told me emphatically.” Marcellus hesitated, looking out the window again. “And when they do . . .”

“What will they do to her?” John coaxed Marcellus to continue, almost afraid to hear the answer.

“He said that if she's dead, they'll bury her. And if she's alive, they'll punish her.” Marcellus closed his eyes momentarily, as if pained by the thought. “A severe flogging—up to thirty-nine stripes—is the usual punishment. They have to set an example for the other prisoners.”

“We have to find her first,” John said, rising from his cot. “No,” he corrected himself. “
I
have to find her. I can't prevail upon your kindness any further. You could get in serious trouble for helping me.”

Marcellus nodded. “Yes, I could. But I can't let you go off looking for her on your own. You've improved remarkably fast for a man your age, but you're not recovered, by any means.”

“God will give me the strength to do what I need to do,” John replied firmly. “You could help me, though, by finding me some clothes to put on.”

Marcellus walked through the door opposite the main entrance into another room.
That must be his office or private quarters,
John surmised. The medical officer returned in a moment, carrying the tunic John had been wearing when he arrived. It was clean and neatly folded.

“About the only luxury that's part of this assignment,” Marcellus said, “is having someone to do my laundry. Most of the prisoners here die on the job, but occasionally some grow too old and feeble to work in the quarries. Then they're reassigned to menial jobs around the camp,” he explained. “I sent your tunic to be cleaned with some of my uniforms.”

Marcellus quickly examined John's back before he donned the tunic. “Very nice,” he muttered. “The wounds are already beginning to close.”

Thank God I was wearing an old tunic,
John thought as he pulled the garment over his head. New fabric would have felt rough on his raw back, but this tunic had been washed so many times that it was soft as well as faded.

When he had dressed, John extended his hand to Marcellus, to thank him and wish him farewell. Marcellus looked at him a long time without taking his hand. Finally, he said, “I may be going out on a limb here, but I want to help you find Rebecca. You don't know your way around, and you're not supposed to be walking around the camp by yourself anyway.”

“I don't think she's anywhere in the camp,” John said slowly. “I have a feeling she went back to our cave. That's where I want to look first. I think she's either too frightened, or perhaps too sick, to come out.”

“Then let me go find her. You shouldn't do a lot of climbing— and if she is in the cave, and she's sick, you couldn't get her back here without help.”

“Are you sure you want to do this? Why?”

“Yes, to the first question. And I'll answer the second question when I get back.”

“You can answer it on the way,” John said. “I'll go with you to show you where the cave is. You'd never find it on your own.” He smiled ruefully. “I don't know what possessed me at the time, but we went in the opposite direction from everyone else when we went looking for our new home. We walked quite a ways up the mountain too, before we found a cave. It has a spectacular view and is quite isolated, which makes it very private. I thought that would be nicer for Rebecca and Jacob rather than being crowded in with all the riffraff.”

Marcellus shook his head appreciatively as John continued, “But the drawback is that if she is in the cave, and if she's sick or injured, there would be no one to call for help. She would be all alone.”

“We'd better go quickly,” Marcellus said. “Are you sure you can make it?”

“No, but I'm determined to try. And with God's help—and yours—I'll do so.”

With work having started in the quarries, the main part of the camp was almost deserted. The Apostle and the medical officer walked through the camp without any observers, and when they had passed the mess hall, John pointed up the southern slope. “That direction,” he said.

They had not climbed very far up the path when John stopped and looked around. “Are you all right?” Marcellus asked.

“Yes, but it was a lot easier when I had a walking stick. Jacob found it for me the first day, and I don't know what happened to it—got left in the quarry, I guess.”

“I'll look around for something,” Marcellus said.

“No, let's keep going,” John said. “But keep your eyes open for a long sturdy branch.”

“You sure are a tough old bird—a lot of pluck left in you,” Marcellus said admiringly as they started up the hillside again.

John's wrinkled face lit up. “Aye, there is. A lot of pluck,” he said with a chuckle.

About halfway up the mountain, they stopped to rest and let John catch his breath. His back had started stinging again with the exertion, and the Apostle knew that supernatural strength was the only reason he was able to climb the mountain at all; he never would have made it otherwise—no matter how much pluck he still had left.

While John sat down to rest, Marcellus found a thick branch suitable for another walking stick. As he pulled small twigs and leaves off the branch, he said, “About that second question you asked . . .”

“I was wondering when you would get to that.”

“I have a daughter,” he said, studying the branch in his hand. “She would be about Rebecca's age, I guess.”

“Where is she?” John asked.

Marcellus shook his head. “I don't know. I haven't seen her since she was six years old.” He went back to working on the branch, concentrating as carefully as if he were operating on a patient. When he had finished, he handed the stick to John and leaned back against a tree. “I didn't intend to get married and have a family. It's not really compatible with a soldier's life. But I fell in love with a girl when I was stationed in Cappadocia, and she became pregnant, so we got married. Then I got sent off to war, and my daughter was almost a year old before I saw her for the first time. What a beautiful little thing she was,” he said wistfully.

John saw on Marcellus's face the emotional impact of his memories. “What happened to your family?” the Apostle asked gently.

“The army happened. My wife couldn't handle the long absences. I was away much more than I was home, and eventually there wasn't a home to come back to. Just after Livia—my daughter—turned four, I was sent to another battlefront. When I got back to Cappadocia, more than two years later, she was calling another man ‘Papa.' My wife had divorced me and married someone else while I was off fighting for the glory of the Empire.

“I can't really blame her,” Marcellus said sadly. “I couldn't be there for her, and I couldn't be a father to Livia. That's what I regretted the most, not seeing my little girl grow up.”

“You never saw her again?”

“No, I thought I should let them get on with their lives, and I requested another assignment. Before I knew it, I was in another part of the world, and I've never been back.” Marcellus pushed away from the tree and reached out to help John up. “It's been a long time, and I don't think about it much anymore,” he said. “But something about Rebecca reminded me. She looked up at me with those big brown eyes, her lip quivering as she tried not to cry, and insisted that she had to find her brother. I could tell he was extremely important to her.

“I could also tell she was from a fine home, and I couldn't help wondering about her family. Then I thought about my own daughter being in an infernal place like this . . .” Marcellus left his thought unfinished as he gestured angrily toward the camp. As he turned and started up the mountain path, he said, “Anyway, you asked why I would risk getting involved. That's the answer: for Livia.”

The two men climbed in silence. There was a deep wound in his new friend's heart, John realized, and Marcellus had honored him by revealing it.

It took John longer to make the climb than it had a few days earlier, and he was weak and trembling by the time they reached the cave. He sat down at the mouth of the cave, panting, while Marcellus went inside and quickly came back. “Nobody's in there,” he reported.