Prologue
A.D. 79
The guard of the lower dungeon threw the bolt and led the way. The sound of the Roman’s hobnailed sandals sent Atretes back to Capua. As he followed the guard, the smell of cold stone and human fear made the sweat break out on his skin. Someone cried out from behind a locked door. Others moaned in despair. Then, as they kept walking, Atretes heard something coming from the far end of the dank environs—a sound so sweet that it drew him. Somewhere in the darkness a woman was singing.
The guard slowed, tilting his head slightly. “Have you ever heard a voice like that in all your life?” he said. The singing stopped, and the guard walked more briskly. “She’s been in here for months, yet it doesn’t seem to affect her. Not like it does the others. A pity she’s going to die with the rest of them tomorrow,” he said. He paused before a heavy door, then threw the bolt.
Atretes stood on the threshold and looked from face to face inside the dim room. A single torch flickered in the mount on the sidewall, but the huddled forms in back were cast in shadows. Most of the prisoners were women and children. There were less than half a dozen old bearded men. Atretes wasn’t surprised. The younger men would have been saved for fighting in the arena.
Someone said his name and he saw a thin woman in rags rise from the mass of filthy captives.
Hadassah.
“Is that the one?” the guard said.
“Yes.”
“The singer,” he said. “You there! Come out!”
Atretes watched her as she picked her way across the room. People reached up to touch her. Some took her hand, and she smiled and whispered a word of encouragement before she passed by. When she reached the open doorway, she peered up at him with luminous eyes. “What are you doing here, Atretes?”
Unwilling to say anything in front of the Roman guard, he took her arm and drew her out into the corridor. The guard closed the door and set the bolt. He opened another door across the corridor and lit the torch, then went to stand at the end of the corridor.
As Atretes followed Hadassah into the room the guard had opened, he listened to the sound of the hobnailed sandals on stone and clenched his fist. He had vowed never to enter a place like this again, yet here he was—and by his own choice.
Hadassah turned to him and saw his torment. “You must hate this place,” she said softly. “What brought you here to me?”
“I’ve had a dream. I don’t know what it means.”
She felt his desperation and prayed God would give her the answers he needed. “Sit with me and tell me,” she said, weak from confinement and days without food. “I may not know the answers, but God does.”
“I’m walking through blackness, a blackness so heavy I can feel it pressing against my body. All I can see are my hands. I walk for a long time, not feeling anything, searching for what seems forever, and then I see a sculptor. And before him is his work, a statue of me. It’s one like those they sell in the shops around the arena, only this one is so real it seems to breathe. The man takes a hammer and I know what he’s going to do. I cry out for him not to do it, but he strikes the image once and it shatters into a million pieces.”
Shaking, Atretes rose. “I feel pain, pain like I’ve never felt before. I can’t move. Around me I see the forest of my homeland and I’m sinking into the bog. Everyone is standing around me, my father, my mother, my wife, friends long dead. I cry out, but they all just stare at me as I’m being sucked down. The bog presses around me like the blackness. And then a man is there, holding out both hands to me. His palms are bleeding.”
Hadassah watched Atretes sink wearily down against the stone wall on the other side of the cell. “Do you take his hand?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said bleakly. “I can’t remember.”
“You awaken?”
“No.” He breathed in slowly, struggling to keep his voice steady. “Not yet.” He shut his eyes and swallowed convulsively. “I hear a baby crying. He’s lying naked on the rocks by the sea. I see a wave coming in from the sea and know it’ll sweep him away. I try to get to him, but the wave goes over him. Then I awaken.”
Hadassah closed her eyes.
Atretes leaned his head back. “So tell me. What does it all mean?”
Hadassah prayed the Lord would give her wisdom. She sat for a long time, her head bowed. Then she raised her head again. “I’m not a seer,” she said. “Only God can interpret dreams. But I do know certain things to be true, Atretes.”
“What things?”
“The man holding his hands out to you is Jesus. I told you how he died, nailed to a cross, and how he arose again. He’s reaching out to you with both hands. Take hold and hang on. Your salvation is at hand.” She hesitated. “And the child . . .”