Jacobus: A Eunuch's Faith: Book I: The Apprentice

In the first century Roman Empire at fourteen the legal age of manhood Jacobus father in Valencia Spain contracted him out to relatives in Sicily as an apprentice learning his Jewish familys shipping business. Being what the Greeks called a natural eunuch he found himself living in the hold of a ship with two cut eunuch Carthaginian cargo slaves who eventually became his lovers. While docked in the Greek port of Corinth he and his Carthaginians are savagely attacked leaving Jacobus wounded and one of his slaves killed. As his apprenticeship progressed the family recognized that his natural leadership abilities surpassed his age. By sixteen he developed a strategy and contacts to enter the Indian trade through Egypt which succeeded beyond all expectations. He also became the second spouse of his cousin the director of Aetna Shipping.While hearing of a mysterious Jewish prophet while in the port of Caesarea he meets Thomas a friend of the prophet. Preparing for his first trip to South India everything in his life is changed when his brother-in-law Simon from the Greek city of Cyrene was awoken one night by a frightening vision causing some of the family with their Judeo-Indian partners to take Simon to Jerusalem for Passover.