Sebastianus scanned the desolate landscape, the flat valley and steep cliffs dotted with caves, and then brought his eyes back to his wife. Beautiful, strong, determined. How he loved and admired her! How she had used her spiritual gift at Daniel's Castle to save all those people.
After everyone had gotten down safely in the tunnels Ulrika had discovered, Sebastianus had pushed the stone back into place and then he had gone to confront the High Priest and explain that the citizens had dispersed and wished in no way to offend Marduk. The High Priest had watched Sebastianus with a keen eye and had asked but one question, "Do you intend to stay long in Babylon?"
"I leave for Rome in the morning."
The High Priest had swept his eyes over the scene, with its unoccupied tents, scattered bits of food, sputtering oil lamps—evidence of the recent and hasty departure of a large crowd. "Marduk watches over all," he said. "He hopes his people will return to the temple and the beneficence of his supreme power. Safe traveling, Sebastianus Gallus."
To Sebastianus's amazement, the priests and temple guards had turned and headed solemnly back in the direction of Babylon. Sebastianus realized what had happened. The priests were not going to make martyrs of Judah's followers, because it would give the followers public sympathy.
Sebastianus wondered if Judah's memory would survive. Although Ulrika had urged everyone to remember him, people would always need temples and idols and priests. He thought of the ancient altar in his homeland, in a place the Romans called Finisterre—"the end of the world." An ancestress named Gaia had built the altar many centuries ago, and there had been a time, Sebastianus was told, when people had come from all over to pay homage at the altar. From as far away as Gaul and the Rhineland, it was said, pilgrims would follow ancient routes in order to pray at the scallop-shell altar. But bandits and brigands had taken to lying in wait for the defenseless wayfarers, to rob them and even kill them, so that pilgrimages to the scallop-shell altar eventually stopped and Gaia's altar was forgotten.
Would the same happen in Babylon? Would the priests, like those long-ago bandits, succeed in frightening worshippers into abandoning Rabbi Judah?
PRIMO DREW HIS SWORD and raised it to deliver a swift death blow. But the woman rose to her feet, drew the veil back from her gray hair, and said softly, "I pray, noble sir, go in peace. I am not an enemy of Rome."
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."
PRIMO 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.