David studied the mercenary’s expression in these moments. Did he hear? How would he answer if he could? The youth too regarded the girl. What did Ruth hope for Telamon? For herself?
“So was I,” continued Timothy, “when I was brought, as little more than a boy, before the magistrates and charged as a habitual thief and cutpurse. So was I upon the cross. So was I when the Nazarene Michael took me down and bore me, himself, and others to safety in the Lavender Valley.”
David remarked Telamon’s lids fluttering in moments such as these. The child Ruth would rise to her feet then and take station between the mercenary and the man made of bees—her way of communicating that such converse must for the moment cease.
Timothy made clear to the children his intent to transport Telamon, as soon as the man-at-arms could travel, to sanctuary in the Lavender Valley. There the mercenary could be protected. There he could heal.
“How long will such healing take?” David asked.
“With no setbacks, eighteen months.”
The youth found himself glancing to Ruth.
“What, then, about the Apostle’s letter?”
“The letter,” said Timothy, “will find its own way to Corinth. Or it won’t. In any event, its further transmission, by any means and all, has become impossible now.”
− 35 −
A FACE BEHELD IN DARKNESS
THE MERCENARY BEGAN, BEFORE HE could even stand fully to his feet, to instruct the boy and girl, in earnest and with great urgency, in the practice of arms.
The physician Eryximachus commanded Telamon to discontinue this exercise at once. He forbade the mercenary to rise from his bed. He proscribed all toil, mental as well as physical, but specifically and with vehemence such exertion as instruction in combat.
Telamon would not hear this.
Timothy and the others of the party looked on in consternation as the man-at-arms, on his feet at the commencement of these sessions, then upon his knees when he could no longer sustain such exertion, led the girl and boy apart from the company into a site at the margins of the Reed Lands. The mercenary had located a copse of runt tamarisks whose boles would serve as Roman-style posts upon which the boy and girl could train.
Timothy confronted Telamon. “Have you gone mad? What can you intend by these preposterous exercises? You will cross the sea to Corinth? Take on the Romans?”
Telamon hobbled past Timothy to the site of instruction. The man made of bees stalked after him in exasperation.
“Two things you must hear and understand,” he said. “The Apostle, I have told you—and the Romans know this as well—has not dispatched only one transcription of the letter. His scribes have produced a dozen duplicates, perhaps more! For all we know, one, two, or ten have already reached the underground community in Corinth. Cease these exertions at arms! You will kill yourself, and these children, to no purpose.
“Nor is your proprietor Severus any less clever than his adversary. The villagers along the river report that he too has fashioned a ruse. The Romans have outfitted sham parties, costumed and accoutered to look like you and the girl and boy. He has put these counterfeits abroad in Pelusium, in Alexandria, and in every embarkation port in Egypt, seeking to draw into his snare any who would abet the Apostle in his errand. What chance do you have? Look at you. You can’t fight, and certainly these children cannot. Cease this madness. We will leave you if you don’t.”
The mercenary refused to listen.
He rehearsed the children over and over in the close-quarters assault of adversaries taller and stronger than they. He taught them to fight with the dolabra, with the dagger, and with weighted darts. Blows of the former and thrusts and volleys of the latter two, the man-at-arms instructed, were to be delivered upon the opponents’ lower extremities. He taught the children to attack in tandem. Boy and girl drilled to make rushes upon the foe’s thighs and calves and even his feet. The pair scurried again and again in patterns of “X” and “S,” as called out by the mercenary, all the while maintaining a ground-skimming crouch.
On the instance when one of the children—almost always the boy—disregarded or failed to follow the mercenary’s instructions and rushed in an upright or half-upright position, Telamon had him repeat the exercise with a heavy stone in his off-hand and, should this not succeed in achieving the desired end, he fashioned a rucksack for the boy and loaded it with rocks and sand. “Stay low! Go for the Achilles! Believe me,” the man-at-arms assured the children, “if you slice a man anywhere below the calf, you will get his full attention.”
Telamon blindfolded the children and made them dash repeatedly at the post from short range, slashing with the dolabra as they passed. He taught them to tumble and rise again. He made them parry blows in a shuffle side to side.
Timothy and the others observed these sessions with mounting alarm, as the mercenary, after each, discovered himself so unstrung with exertion that he could not even crawl back to camp but must be physically borne.
Again the doctor demanded that Telamon desist.
Again Telamon refused.
Eryx pleaded with the children. Boy and girl simply faced him, responding nothing.
“Do you want your man to die? Do you wish, yourselves, to be the engine of his end?”
After the meal that evening, Timothy sought the mercenary’s attendance man-to-man. “Sit with me, please.” He included the children. “All of you. Let me tell you a story.”
Telamon relented. The children took seats on either hand. The site was a fireless circle, at the hour approaching sunset, on a bank beside the steaming, silt-heavy river. The physician attended as well, along with two of the kvutzot.
“In my youth in Jerusalem,” Timothy began, “I made my way as a petty thief and cutpurse. My prey were pilgrims and other innocents freshly arrived in the holy city. This you know. Michael has told you, and I have made reference to it myself.
“The temple constables caught me many times. I could not, or would not, reform my ways. Finally the officers turned me over to the Romans. I was convicted and sentenced to death by crucifixion. This was some weeks before the rabbi from Nazareth met his end in this same fashion.
“My execution was to take place not upon Skull Hill as was his, but behind the ossuary on the slope beneath the Dung Gate, where the city’s garbage is burned each night. Four others, all guttersnipe criminals like me, were hung on crosses that dawn. Our perches were so close together we could talk to one another. None of us had families or, if we did, these kept apart from the site of our mortification out of shame or fear of further persecution. We hung in the sun all day. Three died.
“When the soldiers watching over the last two lost interest in our ordeal, Michael and several of his mates slipped in and cut me and the other fellow down. I did not know Michael. I had never met him. Nor was he acquainted with me or the other youth. Michael risked everything to rescue us, for, had he and his friends been apprehended, their fate would have been the same as ours. The other boy expired. But Michael saved me. He smuggled me out of Jerusalem in an oxcart, concealed beneath false flooring, to the Lavender Valley. He himself returned to the city.”
Telamon and the children listened with keen interest.
“In the valley I recovered,” said Timothy. “There I healed. There I have remained. I have made this site my home and husbandry of the bees my vocation.”