Pompeii: City on Fire (17 page)

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 cushions 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 assembled, and laid on cushions. 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 noble, 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 cushion beside Jeremiah. "You are a rabbi?" She felt her face flame with embarrassment. 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 noblewoman, Europa, brought her a dish heaped with lentils and urged her to eat. Ariella shook her head, embarrassed 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 God, 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 cushions, 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 shifted, 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 noblemen. 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 muffled against Octavia's dark hair. "She thinks I disbelieved her."

"She knows your love. It will sustain her."

Cato clapped his sister's husband on the back. "You know some who could help?"

He pulled away, raked a hand through his hair, and nodded. "There is a group of people who care for those in prison. They've been given special permission to enter the cells, to bring food, clothing. Perhaps messages." His voice broke on the last word, and Cato reached across to squeeze his upper arm in sympathy. "Who are they?"

"I do not know. I have heard tell of them over the years, but they seem to be a mysterious sect of some kind."

Cato eyed Octavia. Did her thoughts travel in the same direction? She glanced sideways at him, but said nothing.

"You can find them?"

Lucius nodded. "I will make inquiries. I will find them."

By nightfall, Lucius had made good on his promise. He returned to the house, where Cato had stationed himself in the
tablinum,
the reading room off the courtyard, poring over some public records of Pompeii he had borrowed, and trying to find an answer to the riddle of unseating Nigidius Maius. At Lucius's footfall he jumped to his feet. "Yes?"

Lucius nodded, breathing heavily. "If we go now, we will perhaps find them meeting together."

Cato rolled the records and secured them with a string, then tossed them to the table. "Then let us go."

They crossed the city in silence, Lucius leading the way. The night held a damp chill, and Cato shivered a bit at both the night air and the mystery of the errand. Soon enough they reached a home across the town from his own, but matched in affluence if the ornate carving of the doorway spoke truth.

A dark-skinned, muscled slave answered their summons, then bid them wait while he carried their message. He returned a moment later and bid them enter, then glided through the courtyard.

Lucius looked at Cato and shrugged, and the two followed the bulky slave to the doorway of a large triclinium.

Cato stood in the door, taking in the crowded room, the faces upturned with wide, frightened eyes. Were these truly the fearless people who ventured beneath the Forum, into the cells?

Lucius spoke first, uncharacteristically. "Septimus sent me." His words were for the room at large, for no one had yet stepped forward to greet them. "He said you could help my wife."

Movement then, from the back of the room, and a large woman pushed through the group to stand before them. Cato took her measure. She was wealthy, but also interested in their message.

"Who is your wife? And how do you think we can be of help?"

Lucius opened his mouth to speak, but emotion choked his words. Cato stepped to his side. "My sister." The woman nodded for him to continue. "She has been falsely accused by a powerful man and committed to the cells until her trial. We fear for her safety and her health. We were told—are hoping—that there are some here who might help."

He surveyed the group again, making eye contact with many. Young and old, rich and peasant. His eyes widened when he saw the large man who had subdued the madman in the Forum sitting in the back of the room. And was that the wild man himself, seated nearby, dressed and clean-shaven?

To the man's right, an old man lay outstretched on a cushion, and beside him, head bent and face hidden, a familiar shorn head and gladiator's leather. A strange mixture of feeling rushed through Cato, concern and fear, surprise and pleasure.

"Ari?" He was careful not to use her real name, and she lifted stricken eyes without raising her head. He longed to ask if she was again trying to escape, taking refuge with this compassionate group, but dared not endanger her by revealing anything.

Their hostess seemed unsurprised that Cato had spoken to Ariella. "I am Europa." She patted Lucius's arm. "Please, you must sit and take food or drink." She indicated the cushions and several slipped from their places to make room. Cato crossed the dining chamber to squeeze into a space beside Ariella. She did not meet his gaze.

Lucius spoke with Europa now, earnest and intense, leaving Cato to address the gladiator beside him. It was the first he had seen Ariella this close since discovering her escaping in the streets near the Forum, when the shock of her gender was still fresh. Now he had the chance to study her as the woman she was. To see the stunning beauty, despite the brutally chopped hair. How had he been so blind when they had first spoken in the training barracks?

She shivered beside him, though the room was warm.

He leaned in to speak into her ear. "You are safe?"

She nodded once, a brief, clipped movement as though she feared to speak with him. The chamber soon filled with the quiet buzz of conversation, and with Lucius and Europa too far to hear, Cato was free to draw her out. She held the hand of the old man who lay beside her, and he began there.

"Is he injured?"

She swallowed and still did not meet his eyes. "Yes. His hip is out of joint, or perhaps broken. I have brought him here, to his—to his family." She trailed off, as if aware that the word did not seem to fit. But Cato had already formed an opinion of the strange and varied group that reclined around the dining tables.

"You broke away from the barracks?"

"Yes. I must return soon, though. Before I am missed."

The old man patted her leg and nodded, then closed his eyes.

What would she look like dressed in silk robes, draped with jewels? The thought danced across his mind unbidden, and Cato shook his head to clear it. He would speak of other things, more ordinary things, with her, but his tongue seemed thick, the way it sometimes did before he had to speak in a council meeting in Rome.