The Hidden Flame (4 page)

"You're their uncle?"

"In a manner of speaking. Their father was a mate of mine. His ship went out three winters back and never returned. I have been adopted by them. As have half the men who work under me. They are delightful one moment and rascals the next."

Linux leaned forward so as to watch as they raced to where an old sailor repaired a fishing net. The shorter of the two boys took up one of the arrow-shaped shuttles. The ancient mariner fitted his large hand around the smaller one and helped him weave the rough twine as the other child watched silently. On some unseen cue, the two boys started singing about fishing on a summer's dawn and the ladies who waited back home, clearly a song taught to them by seafaring men around the harbor. The sailor leaned back and laughed out loud, the sound rusty with disuse.

Linux suddenly asked, "Have you ever thought of marrying, Horus?"

Horus turned from the wall toward the stone hut. "Women and the sea are like oil and water. They do not mix."

Linux fell into step beside him. "I have heard the same of soldiers and wives."

Horus's eyes grew wide in obvious alarm. "Don't tell me your heart has been stolen by a lass back in Rome."

"In Umbria," Linux confessed. "Two of them. My brother's daughters. They laugh like those two there."

"Can they cause the same mountain of mischief when they have a mind?"

"No doubt." Linux looked back at the boys, his heart twisted by the memory of his last day with his brother's twins. He had entered their room to find the girls arguing over a tiny carved wooden doll. He had gently teased them into reconciliation, bringing laughter to their eyes. It did not last long. They had wept inconsolably when Linux had told them he was leaving for Rome.

Linux kicked at a small stone with his scuffed sandal, shrugging to hide his deep emotion, and dared to murmur to the sun and the hot summer wind, "I do miss them."

Two days later, Linux left Caesarea for Jerusalem in the company of a mounted troop. He had not planned to travel so. But orders had been issued from Bruno Aetius, tribune of the Jerusalem garrison. Without a governor in place, the tribune commanded all Roman troops in Judea, and Bruno Aetius's order was that all Roman soldiers taking to Judea's roads must travel in strength. So Linux attached himself to a troop assigned guard detail and set forth.

He was not sorry to see the back of Caesarea, which was very odd, for it was the only truly Roman city in the entire province. And Linux held no love for Jerusalem, none whatever. But perhaps at the moment Jerusalem was preferable. Caesarea, the Roman capital of Judea, was at present a boiling pot. Rumors swirled, and the people fretted. And the news from Rome ... Linux shook his head.

Their first night on the road, they camped in the very same ruined village where Linux two years past had escaped a late-season rain in the company of a stranger who became a friend.

Around the fire that night, Linux asked the troop's commander, "Did you know the centurion Alban?"

"Knew of him." The officer was a hard-bitten man of middle years named Cyrus, suggesting someone from a far-flung province still holding to the Greek ways. "He was a friend of yours?"

"Perhaps the best it has ever been my good fortune to know."

Cyrus took no ease by the fire. He did not sit in the camp chair so much as crouch at its edge. His eyes constantly surveyed the perimeter, out where light from the soldiers' three fires was swallowed by the night. "Is it true what they say, the centurion went native?"

"He married a Judean. He gave up his commission. That much is true."

"I meant no offense, sir."

"None taken. And on the road, I am Linux." He studied the officer across the fire from him. Linux would have expected a more relaxed demeanor at a campfire after a decent enough meal, especially with a double guard posted. "Do you expect trouble?"

"On these roads, always. Much has changed while you've been away.

"I thought it bad enough before I left."

"Bad then-now worse."

Linux nodded.

"I'm not talking about changes at the top," Cyrus said. "Governors come, they rule for a time, and they go. My concern remains with the men under my command."

"My friend Alban might have voiced the very same words." When the other officer continued to study the night, Linux went on, "Pilate had planned to banish the centurion for failing him in a duty. Though in truth Alban failed no one. He merely reported news that Pilate did not wish to hear. But before he was to depart for his new posting, Alban-"

Linux stopped when Cyrus leapt to his feet. Linux rose and gripped his sword, listening intently, but he heard nothing. The night was utterly still, without a breath of wind. Their fire crackled, sending cinders flying up to join the stars overhead. "What is it?"

"Perhaps nothing." Cyrus replaced the sword Linux had not even seen him draw and gradually lowered himself to his seat. "What was the news your friend brought back to the prelate?"

"That the Judean prophet known as Jesus of Nazareth, the one who was crucified, was . . . alive."

The officer focused fully upon Linux. "I have heard this rumor. His followers are growing like a wildfire."

"Alban is one of them."

A high-pitched shriek pierced the darkness, and a soldier just on the edge of the nearest campfire collapsed into the dust. Cyrus leapt forward, hollering, "To arms!"

The night was suddenly filled with a whirring sound. Linux rolled and came up beneath his shield as arrows rained down upon the campground. Two hammered into the wood of his shield. Linux crouched more tightly, drawing his head down to where it almost rested on his knees. Around him, he saw that even the legionnaires who had been fast asleep now hunkered behind their shields. Clearly these men had been attacked before.

Once again arrows hammered against his shield, one thumping down within inches of his shin. Another soldier shouted in pain. Cyrus shouted, "They're hidden in the rocks to the west! Attack!"

Linux roared with the others. He unsheathed his sword and raced for the rocks.

He leapt upon the stone to the left of Cyrus. But all they found was empty sand turned silver in the starlight.

"Squads of three! Spread out! Search every defile!"

But Cyrus sheathed his sword and motioned for Linux to follow him back into the camp. As Linux helped him tend to the pair of wounded men, he asked, "Should I search with your scouts?"

"My men won't find anything, but I gave the order to be safe. These attacks never vary. They come with the night, they strike in stealth, they slip away and vanish." Cyrus patted one of the soldiers. "These are just flesh wounds. We'll bathe and bind them. You'll both ride tomorrow. The surgeons will leave you with some scars for the ladies to admire."

Cyrus lifted his head and called his men back. They returned facing outward, a tactic so ingrained their officer needed to give them no instructions. Linux knew none would sleep again that night.

"Who were the marauders?" Linux wondered.

"We know nothing for certain."

"What, you have not captured any?"

"Not in eight months of such attacks."

Linux recalled the troubles with bandits he and Alban had faced. "Parthians?"

"Not this far west. Though we hear they have grown bolder on the Damascus Road. No, this is trouble that has grown up here in Judea."

"Do they have a name?"

Cyrus swept the night with his gaze. "They call themselves Zealots."

C H A P T E R

THREE

EZRA ALWAYS FELT A VAGUE SENSE OF ENVY when visiting Gamaliel in Jerusalem's Temple Quarter. A broad avenue ran from the Temple to the citadel, from one center of Judean power to the other. Most priests who served on the Sanhedrin, the Temple Council, lived along this road. But it was not Gamaliel's position among the Temple priesthood and the larger Judean community that sparked Ezra's jealousy. It was something else.

"Welcome, old friend. Welcome." Gamaliel, elder Pharisee and long-time mentor to Ezra, received his childhood friend in the main room overlooking the courtyard. A central fountain cast rainbows that were being scattered by the afternoon wind. "How was Alexandria?" Gamaliel waved Ezra toward chairs adjoining a small carved table.

Ezra sighed and nodded as he seated himself. "Filled with chaos and confusion, like the rest of the empire." He was a senior merchant, whose trading empire had stretched out from Jerusalem as far as Damascus on the east and Rome to the west. He nodded his thanks as a servant washed his hands and feet in the traditional manner. He accepted a silver goblet and tasted the fruit-flavored water. The priest certainly lived well, Ezra noted as he gazed around the large room. "What is new in Jerusalem?"

"So much has happened. . . ." Gamaliel's voice faded at the sound of footsteps hurrying down the side passage. Both men turned toward the arched opening.

"Ezra!" The woman moved quickly across the room, almost tripping in her haste and joy. "How dare you stay away so long!"

"There were difficulties, Miriam. I do apologize."

"Your son and daughter are well?" She sat down on a wooden bench situated near the chairs.

"They seemed to thrive upon the journey, unlike their weary father."

"They are young. They are free of tutors and boundaries, off on an adventure with their beloved father. How could they not enjoy such a trip? Our own son wailed inconsolably when he learned you had taken the children."

"Next time he may come as well."

She waved her finger. "If you even dare mention such a thing, I will give you-"

"Shah, Miriam," her husband chided, though he smiled. "Shame."

Ezra listened to the woman discuss her and Gamaliel's children, then join in with her husband to describe the changes in Jerusalem-the dismissal of Pilate and the awaited arrival of the new governor, Marcellus. Then there were the rumors that the tribune of the Judean garrison, Bruno Aetius, was to be sent back to Damascus. Some of the news Ezra had heard in Alexandria. Other items were new. He tried hard to pay attention, for these were two well-connected, intelligent and trusted friends. But his envy formed a cloud of pain and remorse in his mind and heart, such that it was difficult to follow the conversation at all.

Miriam and Ezra's late wife had been best friends. Miriam and Gamaliel's two children were almost the exact same age as his own, four and six. Yet their home was complete and full of the constancy of love. While his own had been torn to shreds.

Two years earlier, his beloved young wife had slipped on a wet tile floor and fallen. It had seemed like nothing-a bruise on her elbow, another above her temple. A bit of pain, but not so much as to cause alarm. That night, however, she had said she had a headache, felt a bit dizzy.

By morning, she was gone.

Ezra's inner agony had lessened over time. He had found some healing for the deep sorrow as he turned to the needs of his two small children. But his heart still ached for all that he had lost. And he felt it nowhere as keenly as here. In the peaceful home of his oldest friend.

The children were brought in, their excited questions answered, and his heart felt the loss more keenly still. Finally Miriam left with them and the maids, and Gamaliel ordered the other servants to leave and shut the doors. The room was enclosed in shadows as thick as the priest's sudden scowl. "There is trouble."

"The Zealots?" Ezra asked.

"No. Well, yes. Them too."

"I have heard their attacks have grown impossibly daring."

"The attacks-yes, they are a scourge. But what is worse is their popularity among the common folk."

"I heard songs about them around the caravanserai campfires," Ezra recalled. "One was very appealing, in a simple fashion. Something about a new Judean David fighting the Roman Goliath. My son has taken to singing it as he plays."

"The people are oppressed, and they seek heroes," Gamaliel said. "It is a natural enough reaction."

This was one of the man's most remarkable traits. Ezra knew that most men, as they rose to positions of genuine power, became increasingly rigid in their opinions. Their ability to question themselves or see another's point of view became lost. Gamaliel, however, was a mediator. He calmed the waters by truly seeking to understand what motivated another. It was a gift, this skill of listening and studying and respecting someone else's perspective.