The Divining (51 page)

     Suddenly, the Judean wilderness vanished and the years rolled back. Primo was in that small village in Galilee once again, surrounded by angry men determined to tear him apart. It was not her face he recognized, but her voice, the accent of her dialect, the very words she used.

     He gasped. It was not
she
—not that young mother of the village long ago. But so very like her ...

     Primo froze, suddenly held by two beseeching eyes, dark and liquid. A strand of hair escaped her veil and fluttered across her cheek. A memory from long ago fluttered across his mind, like that strand of hair: his mother, drawing a comb through her rich tresses, while her son Fidus watched. She was crying. Her shoulders were freshly bruised. The comb was made of wood, some of the teeth were missing. Fidus wished he could buy her an ivory comb. He wished he could kill the men who used her.

     His body shook—not then, when he was nine years old, but now, in the Judean wilderness—as a truth came to him. His mother had done what she needed to survive, as this woman named Rachel was doing. His mother, uneducated, without family, giving her little boy a dog's name, not knowing, in her naïveté, the life of cruelty it would bring to him.

     She had loved him in her way, and he had worshipped her in return.

     Primo nearly cried out as he felt the years roll away, the aches and pains leaving his joints, making him feel robust and virile again. He left the rat-infested room he had shared with his mother and came forward to the springtime of his life, when a young woman had interceded on a stranger's behalf. And now the memory of that kind gesture—combined with a fresh new tenderness for his mother—began to melt the stone wall that guarded
his heart. Because of his ugliness and how women reacted to it, Primo had always thought he could never be loved. But the sight of this soft-spoken woman, and how she reminded him of a mother's love long ago, made him realize he had been wrong.

     In an instant, his whole life came into question. His military career. Perhaps it is easier to blindly follow orders than to question them. It was easier to betray a master than a Caesar. Easier to hate women than to yearn for their love.

     He lowered his sword.

     "We are here to rescue you, if you are Rachel, the widow of Jacob."

     "Rescue!"

     "A woman named Ulrika, and her husband, myself, and a few soldiers."

     Rachel frowned. "Ulrika? That name is familiar. Yes, I remember. Years ago, a young woman stayed with me for a while. Her name was Ulrika."

     Primo nodded. "That is the one."

     Her eyes widened. "She is
here?"

     "We have come to take you to a safe place."

     "A safe place ..."

     "You have nothing to fear from me," Primo said, sheathing his sword in its scabbard, feeling his throat constrict with emotion. He held out his hand. "I swear by the sacred blood of Mithras, dear lady, that I will let no harm come to you."

     They found Ulrika and Sebastianus in a nearby canyon, and the two women embraced in a tearful reunion. They took Rachel to the campfire Sebastianus's slaves had built, and gave her some water, bread, and dates, which she ate delicately despite the fact that it was obvious she was very hungry. Questions flew: "Did you reach Babylon?"

     "Why did you not go with the families when they left the oasis?"

     "How can you stay here now, all alone, with Almah gone?"

     Finally, as shadows crept across the valley and all questions were answered, Ulrika told Rachel about her focused meditation, the answers that came to her in Shalamandar, her search for the Venerable Ones. She told her about Miriam and Judah, and the miracle at Daniel's Castle. "I believe your husband Jacob is a Venerable One, and his remains must be protected."

     "How?"

     "I suggest," Sebastianus interjected, "that you come to Rome with us."

     "I cannot go to Rome. We must be here when the master returns. And it will be soon, for Yeshua promised he would come back in our lifetime. This is why I did not leave with the others."

     Ulrika said, "Many of your faith are now in Rome. Miriam told me of a man named Simon Peter, whom she knew in Galilee, and she said he is there, as head of the congregation in Rome. We will take you to him."

     Rachel's eyes grew big. "Simon is in Rome? I will think about this and pray for guidance."

     P
RIMO COULD NOT SLEEP.

     Rolling onto his back, he looked up at the stars and saw by the position of the moon that dawn was near. He threw off his blanket and rose to his feet. The others slept on in silence—Sebastianus and Ulrika in their tent, Rachel in a tent she shared with no one, the slaves and soldiers under the stars.

     Primo looked out at the cold and barren desert, and realized he had changed. He was no longer the man he had been hours earlier.

     Rachel. So like that village mother of long ago ...

     The oasis had several ponds. At sunset, Rachel and Ulrika had bathed in one behind protective screening. As Primo had stood guard with his back to the women, he had heard the soft whispering of water, delicate splashes, gentle trickles, and he had imagined the feminine skin and curves down which the water cascaded. In that moment Primo had understood why Sebastianus had acted the way he had all these months. He was simply a man in love.

     Primo strode across the cold sand to the place where Rachel had said her husband was buried. The grave was unmarked. Ulrika had convinced Rachel that her husband's remains were no longer safe here but would be protected by the congregation in Rome.

     As a chill breeze blew through his thinning hair, Primo thought about his report to Quintus Publius, which the imperial courier would deliver
to Emperor Nero long before they themselves reached Rome. Nero would want to know about the witch who had cast evil spells on Sebastianus. He would be particularly interested in the treasure Primo had mentioned. Nero would most likely be anticipating the legendary secret hoard of gold supposedly spirited away from the Temple in Jerusalem before it was destroyed by Babylonians.

     Caesar had become obsessed with money. When their small party had stopped at oases and caravanserais, they had heard stories of the emperor's increasing instability and irrational behavior. He trumped up charges of treason against men of wealth, had them executed so he could seize their estates.

     When he reads my report, Primo thought, he will think that I am bringing fabulous treasure to him. Instead, they are the bones of an executed criminal. He will have the bones destroyed. I cannot allow that to happen. Rachel gave up her life to protect them.

     Primo drew in a deep, sharp breath and felt his heart come to life. It expanded in his chest like a bird expanding its wings until his heart was normal-sized again, beating with passion, full of life and feeling. Suddenly Primo no longer saw the world in black and white but in shades and hues of all the colors of the rainbow. Because Primo, who had lived his life by a code of honor and duty, now knew that there was a higher duty than that to master and emperor—a duty to love.

     U
LRIKA WOKE SUDDENLY WITH
a vision: a papyrus document rolled up and sealed with red wax. Primo affixing his ring to the wax.

     
He is the one I sensed as the betrayer in Sebastianus's midst.

     Slipping into her cloak, she went into the cold pre-dawn in search of him, and found Primo sitting at the campfire, staring into black coals.

     "I had a vision of you back in Antioch," she said. "I saw you betraying Sebastianus. And yet you did not."

     He looked at her with the eyes of a man who had not slept. In a voice curiously soft for so rugged a man, he told Ulrika an amazing tale of oaths
and emperors, spies and secret reports—and when he was done she thought for a long moment, taking in the deformed nose and scarred face, and said, "You are a man of honor, Primo, and also one of great strength. You have been burdened with a moral dilemma since the day we left Rome, and you kept it to yourself. I believe now that what I saw in that vision back in Antioch was not a traitor but a man who feared he would betray his own loyalties. I misjudged you."

     "And I, you," he said softly. "From the moment I first met you, I thought you were going to bring harm to my master. But I know now that you have in fact been good for him, that you helped him to tap his own strength. We should have been friends, all this time. I am sorry now that we were not."

     "I, too," she said with a smile. "And now we must tell Sebastianus the truth about Nero."

     Ulrika roused the slaves, ordering them to build a fire. Then she woke Sebastianus, who immediately threw on his cloak and stepped out into the biting air. Wakened by voices, Rachel looked out and, seeing her companions gathering at the fire, wrapped herself in her cloak and joined them.

     "Noble Gallus," Primo began, startling Sebastianus with such formality, making him wonder what extraordinary confession they were about to hear. "I have always been loyal to you, but as a soldier I thought my first loyalty was to my emperor. I became caught between these two loyalties, and in my desperate attempt to serve both masters—that is, to satisfy Caesar and yet save you from charges of treason—I laid the blame on Ulrika and sent it in a report. I told Caesar that you are under a witch's spell."

     "A witch's spell!" Sebastianus said.

     "I accused Ulrika of being a witch."

     She stared at him in shock. And then her blood ran cold.

     In Rome, it was legal for a husband to force his wife to undergo abortion if he suspected the child was not his, or even if he did not want the child. But it was illegal for a woman to procure an abortion for any reason. And so such women sought the help of those who knew the secrets of ending conception. Midwives, wise women, female physicians, and herbalists were all suspected of being abortionists. When their deeds were found out, they were called witches and the punishment was death by stoning.

     Primo looked at Ulrika and said, "I am so sorry."

     "You had your reasons," she heard herself say, but she had suddenly gone numb with fear. Was that how her life was going to end? Before she was even thirty years old, tied to a post in the Great Circus, while gladiators hurled rocks at her until she was dead?

     "Master, we must take a ship to Alexandria," Primo said quickly, "and find a place that is beyond the emperor's reach. I will protect all of you, upon my oath as a soldier."

     But Sebastianus shook his head. "I must go to Rome to clear my name, my family's name. But you will take the women to Alexandria."

     Ulrika placed her hand on Sebastianus's and said, "I will not let you face Nero alone, my love. Besides, I must clear my name as well. It is not just for my sake, but for my mother's. Wherever she is in this world, she is an honorable healer whose reputation is unblemished. If her daughter is condemned for witchcraft, and executed, it could have disastrous consequences for her."

     Rachel then spoke up, saying, "And I have been in hiding long enough. It is time I joined my own kind. I will join the congregation under Simon Peter."

     Finally Sebastianus said to Primo, "Then save yourself, old friend, for now you are party to treason and you have broken your oath to Caesar." But even as he said it, Sebastianus knew Primo would return to Rome with them.

     As the first golden rays of dawn broke over the distant cliffs in the east, and the four at the campfire felt the promise of the day's warmth, each pondered the fate that awaited them in Rome.