Avenger of Blood by John Hagee Read Free Book Online Page B

story.” She stood and put a hand on his shoulder. “Will you stay for dinner? We can talk again afterward.”
    He nodded morosely. “Of course.”
    As customary, the main meal of the day had been served at mid-afternoon. For Rebecca, who had been eating all her meals seated on the hard ground in front of an open fire, it now seemed extraordinary to recline on comfortable sofas while servants scurried around the triclinium waiting on the family and their guests.
    That day the diners had tried to maintain an air of celebration, yet the atmosphere was strained. Jacob and Peter had been glad to see each other yesterday but were already at odds twenty-four hours after their reunion. Marcellus was a stranger to everyone except Rebecca, but he managed to make polite conversation with Quintus, the second-in-command at the shipping business—not an easy feat, as Quintus was a man of few words. He was, however, a man of great appetite, something no one would guess from his long, lean build.
    Galen, who had positioned himself on the sofa to her right, was subdued. He had never been a brilliant conversationalist, and now it was almost impossible to draw him out, even though Quintus made a vain attempt. Rebecca had such butterflies in her stomach, she found it difficult to eat.
    After dinner Rebecca and Galen went for a walk, and without really intending to, she gravitated toward the grassy knoll just west of the villa. It was a pleasant spot with several large shade trees and an elliptical-shaped structure that had been set into the hillside, its outer facade of polished Italian marble extending in a wide arc.
    â€œI haven’t been to the mausoleum since I got back,” Rebecca had said. “Do you mind?” She motioned toward the heavy vaulted doors, and Galen propped them open.
    Entering the family tomb, Rebecca did not feel uneasy as she once would have. Instead, she felt oddly comforted.
    It was dim inside, but enough light filtered in through the open doors that her eyes gradually adjusted. In that aspect, it was not unlike the cave she had lived in for the past year. The mausoleum was much more luxurious, of course, with its smooth, gleaming walls. And much more fragrant. The aroma of spices permeated the thick air.
    She walked over to the matching pair of carved limestone ossuaries that bore the names of her mother and father. The one marked Elizabeth contained her mother’s bones. Peter had moved her remains from the funeral bier, which had been placed in a niche in the inner wall, to the ossuary just the previous week.
    â€œIf I’d had any idea you would be coming home, I would have waited,” he’d told Rebecca earlier.
    But he couldn’t have known, and it had been time to complete the burial process. Most of the Empire had adopted the Roman practice of cremation. But the Christians, following the Jewish custom, prepared the body of the deceased for burial and placed it in a crypt. After a year, when the body had decomposed, the bones were gathered and stored in an ossuary, a rectangular box about three feet long.
    Rebecca touched the cool stone and whispered brokenly, “Goodbye, Mother.” She had witnessed her mother’s murder but not her funeral; by the time Elizabeth was buried, Rebecca was on Patmos. Now, she blinked once but didn’t cry. The sadness was not as overwhelming as she had expected, perhaps because she had had a year to grieve. Or perhaps because Galen was with her now. Rebecca reached for his hand and he twined his fingers through hers.
    Lifting her free hand, Rebecca lightly ran her fingers over the raised letters of her father’s name. His ossuary, she knew, was empty. Because he had been killed as part of a grand public entertainment at the Colosseum in Rome, his friends had not been allowed to reclaim his mutilated body; it had been dumped in the Tiber River. Even though there had been no body to bury, no funeral with friends and