The Last Ember (48 page)

Emili stared straight ahead, frozen in terror. She could smell the smoke from the greased barrel only inches behind her head.

“Okay,” Salah ad-Din said, his tone almost relieved, “she doesn’t know.”

Within seconds, Salah ad-Din struck Emili on the back of her head with the butt of his gun. The pain was so intense it was visual, streaks of blackness raced across her vision until they swallowed the room and everything faded to darkness. Her last horrific vision was the blush makeup on the UN director’s cheek, bathing in a pool of blood on the table.

J
onathan hurried through the Forum’s exit turnstiles and found Orvieti standing along the Via dei Fori Imperali, beside a new glass tourist center. Jonathan handed him the scroll he had just found inside the arch’s pediment.

“I can’t open it,” Orvieti said, awestruck. “My hands are shaking.”

Jonathan unrolled the vellum scroll. The leather had stiffened and it cracked in two in his hands, but the pieces easily fit together and the ink had survived remarkably well. The classicist in Jonathan appreciated that the parchment had been abraded with pumice, which kept the ink dark even after centuries. It was another architectural sketch of the Colosseum. A quotation was written above the drawing. Jonathan recognized it immediately.

“It’s another line from Josephus,” Jonathan said. He stared at the parchment, his gaze fixed on the quotation. Orvieti looked not at the sketch, but at Jonathan, who looked whiter than a moment before. “Do you know what it means?” Orvieti asked.

Jonathan nodded. “It looks like a location

within the Colosseum: ‘The spot where the law of Rome executes those condemned.’” He stared back down at the sketch. “The seven branches of light must refer to the sunlight through the arches of the Colosseum’s upper tiers. They ‘forge’ at a place on the arena floor.” Jonathan pointed at the illustration. “Look, Valadier’s nineteenth-century sketch shows the light converging through the arches.

“So, Josephus’s line describes a location in the arena?”

“Right, but there was a problem. The western rim of the Colosseum had eroded long before the nineteenth century, so Valadier had to
reconstruct
the western arches in 1809 to allow the light to illuminate the exact location on the arena floor that Josephus was describing.” Jonathan spoke rapidly, as though hurrying to keep pace with the logical steps in his mind.

“But what could be so important about that spot in the arena?” Orvieti asked.

Jonathan fell silent and his eyes glazed.

“A trapdoor,” he whispered.

“A trapdoor?”

“Yes,” Jonathan said, shaking himself out of his daze. “Seven years ago, I saw an ancient fresco in a catacomb just before it collapsed. It was a painting of a man escaping from the Colosseum’s arena through a trapdoor.”

Jonathan took a deep breath.

He felt the
scriptio inferior
of his own past resurface again, but now old and new scripts were completing each other in a way he would rather not have seen. Seven years ago, he may have entered a tomb with a historical significance beyond his wildest imagination.
Salah ad-Din knows more than you can imagine,
Jonathan had just heard in Ostia.

“
Signore
, I think that trapdoor opens to a tunnel leading to the first Arch of Titus.”

“And you think it was Josephus who escaped?”

“Yes,
Signore
, which explains why the ancient historians wrote that Titus wept so bitterly when Josephus escaped. Josephus was no ordinary traitor to Titus. He was the one priest who could still keep the flame of the hidden menorah alive. Remember how Titus and his magicians feared the flame. The only way to extinguish it was to ensure there was no priest left to tend it. That is why the ancient Romans would kill all the male priests, hoping to stomp out its patrilineal descent.”

“Which has its consequences today,” Orvieti said somberly. “Among all of Roman Jewry, there are still almost no
kohanim
, no priests,” Orvieti said. “As a boy, I knew no others.”

“Others? So you are—”

Orvieti lifted his hand, slightly, but enough for Jonathan to detect his tormented faith.

“Whatever holiness I once had,” Orvieti said, “is gone.”

The sun had passed over the Palatine, but its yellow stream of light flowed down Via di San Gregorio, still catching the upper lip of the Colosseum. Orvieti looked at his watch.

“It’s three-fifteen,” he said. “The sun will set through those arches in less than twenty minutes.”

T
he evening’s Colosseum ceremony was to mark the invocation of the United Nations World Heritage Committee meeting in Rome and the two hundredth anniversary of the Colosseum’s first major restoration in 1809. Roman diplomats and press wearing authorization credentials on blue neck straps streamed into the Colosseum along a red carpet and through metal detectors. Parked black sedans with diplomatic plates fringed the Colosseum’s outer arches. Italian soldiers mixed with plainclothes carabinieri behind white police sawhorses cordoned off the Piazza del Colosseo.

The event’s corporate sponsorship had set up tables, with one national Italian bank advertising, “Like the Colosseum, Banco Roma is built to last.” Local camera crews interviewed Roman celebrities. A soccer goalie from Italy’s World Cup soccer team crouched between the arches, posing for the paparazzi, as though to block a kick.

Jonathan and Orvieti walked on the Via dei Fori Imperiali, along the edge of the Piazza del Colosseo. It was hard to believe he was here at the Colosseum only twenty-four hours before.
Yesterday, I came here as a tourist, and now I’m a fugitive.
Jonathan scanned the crowd, focusing on the carabinieri officers stationed at every entrance.

“How will you get in?” Orvieti asked. “You’ll have to be in the arena to see the sun’s rays.”

“There,” Jonathan said, pointing at the far side of the plaza, where catering trucks and staging equipment were backed up against the eastern arches of the circular ruin. Just to the left of the service area, Jonathan could see a gladiatorial troupe hired for the event, practicing their choreographed fight sequences. Two of the actors worked on their thrusts and lunges. An older performer, with some apparent fencing expertise, intervened, correcting their combat theatrics. Some of the actors were already in character, fully costumed, wearing their masks.

Other members of the gladiatorial troupe exited a trailer parked beside one of the arches.

“I have an idea,” Jonathan said.

Jonathan made his way through the throngs of onlookers and entered the empty trailer. Inside, the shelves were lined with classical-period swords, brass-plated breast armor, pleated leather skirts, arm guards, and gladiatorial helmets with bright red plumes made of cleaning bristles.

Jonathan quickly changed into an entire costume, complete with a sheathed dagger, which was nothing more than a cheap switchblade glued to a costume plastic handle, and jogged over to the troupe, with his suit and shoes rolled up under his arm. He was stopped midway by an American woman with a heavy southern accent: “Darlin’
,
” she said, “may we taykuh pichure wich’e?” A family from Texas with four different digital cameras encircled him.

Jonathan put on his tin helmet as the tourists took turns standing beside him.

In costume, Jonathan hurried past the UN security, overhearing the frantic staffers trying to locate Director Olivier to give the ceremony’s opening remarks. Inside the arches, service staff, also in Roman period costume, swarmed, rolling trays of appetizers up ramps into the Colosseum. Jonathan found the acting troupe and quickly blended in with other men dressed in full gladiatorial regalia. He managed to stuff his clothing behind a rack of appetizers.

“Are you new?” one of the acting troupe members asked Jonathan in Italian. He extended a hand, and as Jonathan went to shake it the man grabbed Jonathan’s forearm with a death grip. Jonathan knew this was the handshake of ancient Rome and he returned the gesture.
These guys really get into it.

“You’re the replacement,” the man stated, rather than asked, in Italian. “What sort of gladiator are you?”

“Sorry?”

“Your style of combat,” the man said in earnest.

“Of course,” Jonathan said, remembering the different gladiator types in ancient Rome. “A
hoplomachus,
” he said, naming the first kind of gladiator he could think of.

“Salve!”
the man said. “We have needed a
hoplomachus
! You’ll need a small round shield, of course, but you already knew that,” the man said, motioning to the prop master. “Those two men are
retiarii
, as you’ve probably guessed from their tridents and armor.” The two men waved lethargically. “And that man there”—he pointed to a man fastening on a visored helmet—“is a charioteer. Ah, your shield, here,” he said, handing Jonathan a thin metal replica Greek hoplite shield. He explained that as an adjunct professor of classics at a local college, he insisted all the swords the men use be real, making their choreography even more important to their safety. He launched into a lecture about the different weapons gladiators used, from spiked leather arms to weighted throw nets, but Jonathan’s mind was elsewhere. He looked up at the golden rays now catching the top portion of the arches.

It was only minutes until the rays would converge on a location on the arena floor.

“You should tape up your other sword,” the adjunct professor said. “Here,” he said, handing Jonathan some black rubberized tape. “We use gummy tape to soften the sword’s tip in case of accidental contact. You wouldn’t want to hurt someone.”

“No, of course not,” Jonathan said. His own voice sounded tinny beneath the helmet.

But before he could apply the tape, there was sudden movement, and a dramatic solemnity overtook the troupe as the actors moved into formation.

“To battle!” the adjunct professor said in Latin as they marched in step.

The first half of the troupe ran onto the arena floor. Jonathan could hear the crowd’s cheers, and through the archways he saw the actors artfully thrusting and lunging at one another in careful choreography on the arena’s sand.

Discreetly, Jonathan managed to break away from the group, walking along the radial corridor. His eyes fixated on the rays of sun filtering through the seven openings along the western lip of the arena.

He watched as seven discrete rays of light sloped down the architecture of the western side, the rim’s curvature bringing them closer together as the sun lowered with surprising speed. The rays now touched the arena floor.

“Get out there now!” one of the older actors prompted Jonathan, smacking the back of his helmet.

“I’m not part of the—” But Jonathan did not finish the sentence before he was pushed through the arch.

He stepped out into the arena and was dazzled by the ceremony’s elegant atmosphere. Five hundred people in formal attire mulled around the railing: well-dressed philanthropists, corporate executives, and the beautiful women who accompanied them.

The choreographed battles swirled around Jonathan and he navigated through them, trying to stay out of their way. Their routines kicked up large amounts of sand, and suddenly he could not even see the seven rays filtering through the western rim. He ran out of the dust cloud toward the arena’s center, where his view returned. The seven rays combed the floor, growing closer together.

“Watch your dramatic space!” grunted one of the gladiators as he rolled past Jonathan.

But Jonathan was too focused to respond. The rays of sunlight had forged on a single spot along the southeastern border of the arena. Mesmerized, Jonathan walked toward it, oblivious to the men somersaulting around him. Like a majestic architectural display, the seven rays formed three V’s, creating the shape of the menorah itself, spanning the size of the Colosseum.
The trapdoor was here,
Jonathan thought.
Josephus escaped through the arena floor here
.