Martin sat in the dark corner of the room with his back pressed against the cold stone wall and his head in his hands. He only knew one thing for certain: They had not been rescued. They were prisoners.
A swath of candlelit floor lay between him and the door. He stared at the ceiling. The candlelight reflected from the stones like slips of foxfire. The room had no furniture, not even a chair, and sitting on the floor with the stones leaching cold into his legs and back had left him in agony.
He ought to be sleeping, to build up his strength, but given the number of soldiers, an escape attempt would be suicide.
Where’s Anna? Have they hurt her?
Martin frowned at the walls; they had to be ten or even twenty feet thick. No sounds penetrated from outside, except occasionally he heard one of the guards talking in the hallway beyond the massive antique door. The stones held the salty fragrance of the sea, so he suspected the water must be right outside. Which meant he was not being held in an interior chamber, but along the external wall of the fort. Not that such information did him any good. He just liked to think he’d concluded one valuable thing about where he was.
“Why haven’t they questioned me?” He thought about it. “They must be occupied with Anna and Hazor.”
By now, the soldiers had undoubtedly gone through Martin’s pack and found the jar. Did they open it? “Of course they did.”
Surely the military was smart enough to have opened it in a controlled environment so they wouldn’t contaminate the contents? Right?
“What did they find?” He’d give anything to know.
Martin was so wound up about the possibility of death, torture, and eternal damnation that he felt vaguely feverish—surely his imagination conjuring up the worst of the worst.
He got to his feet and started pacing as he always did when teaching a class. Across the room, a dark stain appeared in a crack between the stones and proceeded to spread outward, leaving black streaks as gravity pulled it toward the earth. Wind must be driving a torrent of rain into the wall. But he heard nothing.
Martin had the powerful urge to write a letter to someone, anyone. He longed to tell his mother where he was and what had happened to him. And he dearly wanted to announce to the world that he’d found the legendary Jesus Ointment. If only he knew for certain that he had found it.
He folded his arms over his chest and closed his eyes. If Anna were here he could nestle into her warmth and fall asleep smelling the fragrance of her hair. And if the Marham-i-Isa actually cured the plague, maybe next year they’d be lying in each other’s arms laughing about being heroes for saving humankind.
The room was so quiet.
He opened his eyes, aching at the realization that humanity was being wiped from the face of the earth, and he was dwelling on empty dreams of a future where his name was a communion wafer.
Feeling dejected, he went to the wall and slumped down again.
As he drew up his knees and propped his forearms on them, he wondered where Hazor had been taken. Given military protocols, they hadn’t executed him, had they?