The Centurion by Ken Gire

Author:Ken Gire
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Moody Publishers

34

The fire was not a respecter of persons or of religions: rich, poor, young, old, pagan, Christian, Jew: all were made equal by the fire.

When people returned to the city, they walked the streets half-dazed, as if their spirits had left them. Now and then could be heard the sounds of weeping. For the most part, though, everyone’s tears had been spent.

Mary and several of her friends walked toward their neighborhood, stepping carefully around the broken bricks, the chunks of concrete, the fallen façades. She came to the remains of what was once her home, their home. She paused a moment to collect herself, bringing her hand to her face, covering her mouth.

She approached a neighbor who was sitting on a pile of stones, exhausted, his face sooty and streaked with tears. “Their bodies, have you seen them?”

The man looked up, confused. “What?”

“Joshua’s, Anna’s. Where are their bodies?”

He nodded. “Wagons. They’re in wagons. Firemen came, carted off their bodies.”

“Where did they take them?”

“A mass grave, outside the city.”

Mary lowered herself onto the pile of stones and sat beside him, weeping. The other women came to her side and sat with her, just sat. When her tears had run their course, Mary stood. She walked slowly, mindlessly, and soon began stooping, rummaging through the layers of debris, finding bits of broken things, pieces of other things melded together by the heat. But nothing whole or intact. And certainly nothing salvageable.

Then she saw it.

The box of letters. Or what was left of it.

She bent down for a closer look. The only tangible evidence of her relationship with Lucius was reduced to black, brittle layers of … of what? She had no word to describe it. And she had no word to label the loss she felt. She picked up what little remained of her relationship with Lucius. As she did, the charred pages crumbled in her trembling hands.

It was for her a loss too many, and she ran from it, from all of it, bolting from the remains. Two of the women with her glanced at each other, puzzled, and ran after her.

She ran to another street where bodies of the dead had yet to be claimed, and there stumbled upon the body of a woman, a baby under her. The sight of them stopped her. She knelt with a dim hope and turned the body over, but the baby was dead. The moment felt like pressed fingers pinching her last flicker of hope. She sat on the ground beside them. Her heart sank, yet again. How much more could it take? How much further could it sink?

The women knelt beside her, neither speaking. Mary’s eyes fell on the body of a man nearby, a rabbi from the looks of it. He, too, had something under him for which he had given his life to protect. She rolled him over. It was not a baby. It was a scroll. A large scroll of pale parchment, burned at its edges.

A copy of the Torah.

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