The Last Disciple Read Online Free PDF Page A

guard.”
    “By Tigellinus?” Helius asked, hoping the answer would be otherwise.
    “By Tigellinus.”
    If Tigellinus had handled it personally instead of ordering soldiers to watch the young Jew, this was as important as Helius feared. For, if Nero got wind of it, he would be unbearable. Everything that mattered to Helius depended on the whims of Nero, whose patience was already nearing an end because of the apparent powerlessness that Helius and Tigellinus had against the symbol on the back of the scroll.
    Helius forced his mind away from consequences. He was too familiar with the horrible ways that men and women who displeased Nero met their deaths.
    Helius sighed, as if the issue of the scroll was a mere irritation. “As I said, I am busy. Have Tigellinus deal with this matter.”
    Obviously conscious of the whipping that Tigellinus had promised, the slave persisted. “He instructed me that you must read the scroll.”
    “I am very occupied.” Helius needed to pretend that nothing about the scroll interested him. He paused, as if coming to a sudden thought. “You read it to me.”
    “Of course,” the slave said.
    “Wait. Are the contents of the scroll written in Greek? or Latin?”
    “Greek,” the slave answered as he unwound it. “Like the back of the scroll.”
    “Are you calling me stupid?” Helius said. His bad mood had worsened the instant he’d seen the single Greek word. Yes, the next weeks would be hellish if Nero discovered this.
    “No, I—”
    “I saw the back of the scroll. Telling me it is in Greek too is like telling me you think I’m too stupid to read Greek.”
    “I apologize,” the slave said, dropping to his knees and bowing.
    This humiliation pleased Helius. He hated ugliness.
    The teenage boy giggled at the slave’s apology. Since the boy was attractive, Helius decided not to reprimand him. “Go on, then,” Helius told the old slave. “Read me this letter as Tigellinus has insisted.”

    In Smyrna, less than a half mile from the tavern where Vitas and Titus were about to brawl, a man named Aristarchus heard screams on the other side of the blanket hung over the arch leading to the inner courtyard. With a fist already clenched, he punched the blanket, shook it off as it wrapped around his arm, and let it fall behind him onto the mosaic floor.
    Marching through the arch, he ignored the views afforded by the courtyard’s windows. To the west lay Smyrna’s port and the sea beyond, while the hilltops stretched to the azure sky in the east. He had long taken his wealth and the palatial estate for granted, and this day was no exception.
    He stalked toward the center of the courtyard, stepping into the long shadow that his body cast in the late afternoon. Directly ahead, a midwife and three other women were focused on his wife, Paulina, and did not notice Aristarchus until he was a few paces away. Their momentary shock at his breach of tradition nearly allowed him to reach Paulina, crouched on the birthing chair behind them. Paulina seemed unaware of his presence as she shut her eyes and screamed again, fighting the intense pain of a prolonged contraction.
    “Move aside,” he barked. But for the depth of his anger, his manner of expression would have been comical, for he was a small man with a high-pitched voice.
    “How dare you!” the midwife said, breaking out of her brief frozen shock. “Out!” She grabbed his arm and spun him back toward the archway.
    Normally, she would have prevailed. She was a large, wide woman and by nature, bad-tempered.
    Aristarchus, on the other hand, had become tamias , “treasurer,” of the town council of Smyrna, through cultivated deviousness, and rarely engaged in open confrontations. Today, however, his anger overpowered his instinctive political nature. He stiff-armed the midwife’s belly with the hand he had not yet unclenched. As she staggered back, he twisted loose and turned on the three other women, Paulina’s sisters, who had formed