“That’s plausible,” said Bryson.
“It would have been, except for your carrying on. From Caesarea to this spot is only a two-day walk. He quite naturally wondered why you would mourn so ardently over a man you had known for such a short time.”
“What did you tell him?” I asked.
“I made up some story about your grandfather owing his a great debt, but I don’t think he was convinced.”
That was plain enough.
“What do you think he’ll do?” I asked.
Lavon shook his head. “His own men are under control. If he’s going to keep this quiet, he only has a small group of other problems.”
I struggled not to cringe. Having a hardened killer — and that’s what a Roman centurion really was — view me as an inconvenient witness was not something to keep my stomach settled.
The others were a bit slower on the uptake, but I could tell by their collective shudders that they finally figured it out.
And there wasn’t a thing we could do.
I turned to Bryson and smiled. “I wouldn’t worry about it, Professor. I doubt they’ll kill us. They’ll probably just cut your tongue out.”
***
We stewed for another half hour as the Romans finished mopping up. The Zealots had gotten us into this fearful mess, and as it turned out, a Zealot saved us, though I’d expect that our health and good fortune were the last things on his mind.
The centurion started toward us with a gesture that could only be interpreted as unpleasant when we heard a piercing cry near the base of the hill. A wounded Zealot, barely clinging to life, had summoned his last reserves of strength and had lashed out at his tormentors with a knife.
This final act of defiance found its mark, and two stretcher bearers leaped off the supply wagon and ran to attend the injured soldier. I watched them rush back to the road, where a Roman medic struggled in vain to staunch the bleeding from the man’s thigh.
If, as I suspected, the blow had nicked the femoral artery, the soldier wouldn’t last long. The centurion had apparently reached the same conclusion. He spat on the ground and shook his head in helpless frustration.
I reached into my bag and pulled out a packet about four inches square and then I turned to Lavon.
“Ask him if I can help.”
Lavon did so, but the Roman only snapped, “What can you do?”
I held up the packet and pointed to the leg. The centurion stared at his medic for a brief instant — the man was obviously losing this battle — and then ordered him to back away.
It was the chance I needed, and I didn’t let it go to waste. I immediately knelt down beside the wounded Roman, ripped open the wrapping, and pressed the bandage into the gash. Thankfully, it worked as advertised. Within a couple of seconds, the bleeding came to a complete stop.
I then pressed the two sides of the wound together which had the effect of folding the back sides of the bandage onto themselves, where they quickly bonded together. I held everything in place for a few minutes and then took a strip of gauze tape out of my bag and wrapped the man’s leg several times.
Satisfied that the wound would not rip apart, I stood up and took a step back.
“Tell him that this soldier should live,” I instructed Lavon.
He did so, but the centurion didn’t move. He kept staring at the leg — waiting for the vessel to burst open again, I suppose. Finally, he seemed convinced that his man would be all right.
He turned back toward us and gestured in my direction. “Tell this man he has my gratitude,” he said to Lavon.
I nodded in acknowledgement. Then he spoke to Lavon again. Not surprisingly, this time his tone was friendly.
“I am Publius,” he said.
Lavon stated his own name, but the centurion struggled with the pronunciation when he tried to repeat it. Lavon introduced the rest of us, too, but our names were apparently even more incomprehensible. The officer shook his head, muttered a few words along with something like “Lavonius,” and headed toward the front of the assembling Roman column.
Lavon started laughing.
“Well, what did he say?” asked Markowitz.
“He said we had strange names.”
“That’s it?”
“No; the best part is that he insists that we accompany them to Jerusalem.”
“Why is that so funny?” asked Bryson.
Lavon chuckled again. “He said it’s not safe for us to stay here.”
Chapter 17
After the morning’s misadventures, I needed no convincing to move on. An army escort to the city would at least raise the odds that we would arrive in Jerusalem in one piece, though unless Bryson’s wife got that machine working again, I couldn’t say I had the greatest confidence that we would depart in the same condition.
A Roman medic helped Sharon into the wagon where she took her place on a side rail next to three of the wounded who were unable to make the journey under their own power.
Being men, it was assumed that rest of us would tag along on foot, despite the fact that Bryson only managed to squeeze in minimal cardio work while Bergfeld had run two triathlons in the past year.
To his credit, the Professor didn’t complain, and Sharon was prescient enough to take her luck where she could find it.
Publius by now had trotted up to the front of the column, leaving his second in command, who introduced himself as Decius, to supervise the rear. An optio, Lavon called him, just below a centurion in rank.
Decius struck me as a pleasant enough fellow — one who would remain so as long as we stayed out of his way and didn’t cause any trouble. He had the gruff but competent demeanor of a seasoned NCO, the soldiers who are the backbone of any army worthy of the name.
We stood aside as the optio made a few final checks and then signaled to Publius that the column was ready to proceed. Moments later, a trumpet sounded and we started forward.
As I expected, we had barely gone a quarter mile when the questions started. Lavon was quick-witted enough to mumble something to the soldiers about his Greek not being good enough for medical terminology, but this excuse wouldn’t work for our own party.
I explained that I had utilized the Army’s latest high tech bandage. A powder on one side became part of the clotting matrix, while an antibiotic-impregnated glue on the other held the sides of the wound together as securely as if they had been sutured.
It was, truly, a miracle of modern chemistry. US field hospitals are first-rate, but wounded soldiers still had to live long enough to get there. Bleeding out was one of the main reasons they didn’t.
“How do you remove it once the wound has healed?” asked Bryson.
“You don’t,” I replied. “That’s the best part. In a couple of weeks, the body’s own enzymes begin to dissolve the material. A few days later, it disappears entirely.”
Lavon glanced over to the injured Roman. “What are his chances, realistically?”
Fortunately for us, they were pretty good. Profuse bleeding often carries out the dirt, so the odds were at least reasonable that his wound would not get infected.
“He’s lost a lot of fluid, though,” I said. “I’d put in an IV drip, if I had one. A tetanus shot wouldn’t be a bad idea either.”
They all laughed, except Bryson, who had swung around to Juliet’s thinking on the issue and chided me for possibly changing history.
“I brought no weapons, Professor, but I sure as hell wasn’t coming back to a primitive world without a decent first aid kit.”
“That man would have died. Now he will live.”
For all his academic brilliance, Dr. Bryson didn’t have the best sense of priorities. “At the moment, I’m more concerned about us living,” I replied.
He frowned.
“Tell me how they could reverse engineer this sort of thing?” I said. “The wrapping is biodegradable, too. In a week or so, it will vanish completely. It’s especially designed to decay in this type of climate.”