HEAR
ME,
PILATE!

LeGETTE BLYTHE

HOLT, RINEHART AND WINSTON · NEW YORK

Published simultaneously in Canada by Holt, Rinehart and Winston of Canada, Limited.

First Edition

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 61-11599

Designer: Ernst Reichl

81003-0211

Printed in the United States of America

FOR ANNE AND JULIE

Rome

1

The capricious flame spattered darts of thin yellow light on walls and floor as the doors swung gently closed. Claudia turned from her tall, deeply tanned, uniformed escort to address the servant who had let them in.

“I won’t be needing you tonight, Tullia. You may go now. But wait ... before you leave, we shan’t be wanting all these lamps. Put out all but that one”—she pointed—“and then you may go to bed. Poor thing, I know you’re tired.” She peered beyond the wide archway opening onto the peristylium. “I see you left a lamp burning in my bedroom. Good. Well, then, just put these others out.

“I don’t know what I’d do without her,” Claudia said as the servant snuffed out the flame and, bowing to them, disappeared into the now darkened corridor. “She’s a treasure, Longinus, intelligent, faithful, and, most important, she’s utterly loyal. She would die before betraying me. She’s Phoebe’s daughter, and Phoebe, you know, hanged herself rather than be a witness against my mother. Tullia, I’m sure, would do the same thing for me.” She pointed toward the peristylium. “Let’s sit out there in the moonlight. It seems a little warm in here, doesn’t it?”

“It does,” he answered. “I was hoping you’d suggest that. It would be a shame to waste that moon, and the fountain and flowers.” He was glancing around the luxuriously furnished room. “By the gods, Claudia, you have a handsome place. It’s been a long time since I was here, but it seems more lavish. Did Aemilius have it redecorated?”

“Bona Dea, no. That insipid oaf? What has he ever done for me?” She acted mildly piqued but then smiled. “It has been redecorated, but I had it done. This apartment’s actually an extension of the Imperial Palace, you remember. My beloved stepfather, the great Emperor Tiberius,” she said sarcastically, “had it built for his little girls. When he moved them out to Capri with him—a new group, of course, for several of us were too old by then—he allowed me to stay here. But I moved away when I married Aemilius; we went out to Baiae. After we were divorced, though, I returned here, and that’s when I had it redecorated. But the place was built for the Emperor’s little girls.” She paused, leaned against a high-backed bronze chair. “You understand?”

“I’ve heard stories, yes.”

“Well, when poor Mother sent me to him from Pandateria—you know I was born on that dreadful island soon after Grandfather Augustus banished her there, and I really think she sent me to Tiberius to see that I got away from it. Anyway, he put me in here with the other little girls. This wing connects with his private quarters, or once did. There’s a wing very much like this one on the other side; that’s where he kept his boys.” She shrugged; he sensed that it was more a shudder. “Tiberius, thank the gods, spent more time over on the boys’ side. There’s a small passage-way—few persons probably know about it now—that opened from his quarters into my dressing room. It was all quite convenient. But when the old monster moved out to Capri, I had the door removed and the opening bricked up.”

“I’ve heard stories about the Emperor. Was he ... did he really ... I mean, you know, Claudia, did he actually do ... does he, I mean...?”

She laughed. “Yes, he did. And I presume he still does; they say old men are worse that way than young men. But he no longer bothers me and hasn’t for years. I’m much too old for him; he likes them very young, or did. He’s an old rake, all right, though he can’t be guilty of all the things they’ve charged him with. Out at Capri now I really think he’s more interested in his astrologers and philosophers than in his little girls and his painted pretty boys. But, well”—she shrugged—“there are things I do know about him, experiences I myself have had with him, and although I’m not close blood kin to him, my mother, poor thing, was his wife though she was that only because her father forced her to marry him.” They had crossed into the peristylium, and she paused to face him, smiling. “But let’s talk no more of the Emperor and me, Longinus; by the gods, there are pleasanter subjects.”

“I agree; there are pleasanter subjects than Tiberius.” They walked around a tall potted plant and sat down. Claudia leaned back against the plush cushions of the couch; she pushed her jewel-studded golden sandals out from beneath the folds of her white silk stola. The moonlight danced in the jeweled clasps that fastened the straps above her shoulders, while the gold mesh of her girdle glittered brightly. For a moment she silently studied the fountain. Then suddenly she sat forward.

“Forgive me, Longinus. Would you like some wine and perhaps a wafer? I have some excellent Campania, both Falernian and Surrentine, in the other room. Or perhaps you’re hungry....”

“No, no, Claudia, thank you. I made a pig of myself at Herod’s dinner tonight.”

“But it was a lavish banquet, wasn’t it?” Her smile indicated a sudden secret amusement. “I wonder what Sejanus will think of it.”

“Sejanus?” Then he smiled with her. “Oh, I see what you mean. He’s going to wonder where Herod got the money. And why Herod gave the dinner for Herodias.”

Claudia laughed. “Well, she’s his favorite niece, isn’t she?”

“She surely must be. But she’s also his half brother’s wife.” Longinus paused thoughtfully. “I hardly think, however, that Sejanus will be greatly concerned with the domestic affairs of the Herods.”

“As long as they keep the money flowing into his treasury, hmm?”

“Exactly. And you’re right. Tonight’s lavish feast may cause the Prefect to suspect that the flow is being partially diverted. Our friend Herod Antipas ought to have given a more modest affair. No doubt he was trying, though, to impress Herodias.”

“No doubt,” Claudia repeated. “But it was hardly necessary. She wants to marry him and be Tetrarchess.”

Longinus looked surprised. “Then you think Antipas will take her away from Philip?”

“I’m sure he will. He already has, in fact.”

“By the gods, that’s odd. That Arabian woman he left in Tiberias is much more beautiful. And so is that Jewish woman he brought along with him to Rome. What did you say her name was?”

“I noticed you had eyes for her all evening.” Claudia’s tone, he thought, was not altogether flippant, and that pleased him. “Her name’s Mary,” she continued, “and she lives at Magdala on the Sea of Galilee just above Tiberias. But of course you know where Tiberias is. And I suspect you might remember Mary.” Her smile was coy and slyly questioning. “Herodias says that this Mary is being pursued by half the wealthy men in Galilee for the artistry with which she performs her bedroom chores.”

“I must confess”—Longinus grinned—“that unfortunately I am numbered among the other half. But what does Herodias think of her beloved uncle’s amours? Isn’t she jealous?”

“Oh, I’m sure she is ... what woman wouldn’t be? But she knows that in such activities she must share him. Antipas, I understand, is a true Herod.”

“Yes, and I have a strong suspicion that in such activities, as you express it, Herodias is a Herod, too.” He sat forward, serious again. “But what puzzles me, Claudia, is how I happened to be one of Antipas’ guests tonight. It must have been entirely through your arranging, but why on earth are you involved in a social way with any of these Jews?”

Claudia laughed. “Herodias and I have long been friends. You see, after her grandfather, old Herod the Great they called him, had her father and her uncle, his own sons, killed”—she involuntarily shuddered—“Herodias and her brother Agrippa were virtually brought up at the Emperor’s court. Agrippa’s a spoiled, arrogant, worthless spendthrift. Old Herod sent his other sons to Rome, too, to be educated—Antipas and Philip, Herodias’ husband now, and still another Philip....” She broke off and gestured to indicate futility. “You see, Longinus, old Herod had ten wives and only the gods know how many children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Do you know much about the Herods? They’re older than we, of course.”

Longinus shook his head. “No, nor do I care to. I think maybe I have seen some of them a few times, including this Philip, but I happily surrender to you any share I may have in any Jew.”

“But, Longinus, the Herods aren’t orthodox Jews. They even say that some of them, including Herodias and her no-good brother, are more Roman than we Romans. They’ve all probably spent more time in Rome than in Palestine. Why, they have about as much regard for the Jewish religion as you and I have for our Roman gods. Actually, Longinus, the Herods are Idumaeans, and they’re quite different from the rest of the Jews. The Jews are strict in their religious observances.” Abruptly she stopped. “But why, Bona Dea, am I telling you about the Jews? You have lived out there in Palestine, and I’ve never set foot near it. Your father has vast properties in that region, while mine....” She lifted a knee to the couch as she twisted her body to face him, her dark eyes deadly serious in the silver brightness of the moon. “Longinus, do you know about my father?”

“No, Claudia, nothing.”

“Of course you don’t.” She smiled bitterly. “That was a silly question. I don’t even know myself. I’ve often wondered if Mother did. But haven’t you heard stories, Longinus?”

“I was rather young, remember, when you were born.” But immediately he was serious. “Gossip, Claudia, yes. I’ve heard people talk. But gossip has never interested me.” A sly grin lightened his expression. “I’m more interested in your father’s handiwork than in who he was.”

“Prettily said, Centurion.” She patted the back of his bronzed hand. “But surely you must have heard that my father was the son of Mark Antony and Cleopatra?”

“Well, yes, I believe I have. But why...?”

“And that my other grandfather, the Emperor Augustus, had him killed when he got Mother pregnant with me and then banished her to that damnably barren Pandateria?”

“I may have heard something about it, Claudia, but what of it? What difference does it make?”

“Do you mean to tell me that it makes no difference to you that I’m a bastard, Longinus, and the discarded plaything of a lecherous old man, even though that lecherous old man happens to be the second Emperor of Rome? Does it make no difference to a son of the distinguished Tullius clan...?”

“And isn’t your slave maid, too, a member of this distinguished Tullius clan?”

His quick parrying of the question amused her. “It’s funny,” she said, “I hadn’t thought of Tullia that way. Her grandfather belonged to one of the Tullii, no doubt. But Tullia is actually not Roman; she’s Jewish. Her grandfather was one of those Jews brought as slaves from Jerusalem by Pompey. Tullia is even faithful to the Jewish religion. But that’s her only fault, and it’s one I’m glad to overlook. Sometimes I allow her to go to one of the synagogues over in the Janiculum Hill section.”

Longinus reached for her hand. “Nevertheless, Claudia, you must know that many so-called distinguished Romans are legitimate only because their mothers happened to be married, though not to their fathers, when they were conceived?”

“Yes, I suppose so. No doubt you’ve heard the story of what Mother said to a friend who asked her one day how all five of the children she had during the time she was married to General Agrippa happened to look so much like him.”

“If I have, I don’t recall it. What was her answer?”

“‘I never take on a passenger unless the vessel is already full.’”

“I can see how that would be effective,” the centurion observed dryly. “But then how do you explain ... well, yourself?”

“After General Agrippa died, Augustus made Tiberius divorce his wife and marry Mother. But they were totally incompatible, and I can see how, under the circumstances, things turned out the way they did. Tiberius left Rome and went out to Rhodes to live. That pleased Mother; she was young and beautiful, and she was still the most sought-after of her set in Rome. So, after Tiberius hadn’t been near her bed for years and a succession of more interesting men had, it was discovered, to the horror of my conventional and publicly pious grandfather and the delight of Rome’s gossips, that I was expected. So the Emperor had the man who was supposed to be my father”—she smiled—“you know, I’ve always rather hoped he was—he had him executed, and he sent Mother off to Pandateria.” She threw out her hands, palms up. “That’s the story of Mother’s misfortune, me. But you must have heard about all this years ago?”

He ignored her question. “You her misfortune? Don’t be silly. You were rather, I’d say, her gift to Rome.”

“You do put things prettily, Longinus. Nevertheless, my mother was banished because of me.”

“But, by the gods, how could you help it, Claudia?” He caught her chin and turned her face around so that the moon shone full upon it. “Aren’t you still the granddaughter of the first Emperor of Rome on one side and a queen and triumvir on the other? Aren’t you still the stepdaughter of the Emperor Tiberius? Those are distinguished bloodlines, by Jove! What nobler heritage could anyone have? And aren’t you the most beautiful woman in Rome? What, by mighty Jupiter, Claudia, do you lack?”

“At the moment,” she answered, her serious air suddenly vanished, “a husband.”

“A situation you could quickly remedy.”

“A situation that Tiberius or Sejanus could quickly remedy, you mean, and may attempt to do soon, and not to my liking, I suspect. They may even pick another Aemilius for me, the gods forbid. Seriously, Longinus, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn right now that Sejanus has already arranged it. He and the Emperor are desperately afraid, I suspect, that I may scandalize Rome, as Mother did, if they don’t get me married quickly before I have a baby and no husband to blame it on.”

“But, Claudia....”

“By the Bountiful Mother, Longinus,” she laughed, “I’m not expecting, if that’s what you think. And what’s more, I don’t expect to be expecting ... any time soon. But I know Sejanus, and I know Tiberius. It’s all politics, Centurion. And politics must be served, just as it was served in my grandfather’s day and at every other time since man first knew the taste of power. The same hypocritical public behavior, the same affected virtues propped right alongside the same winked-at corruption.” She swung her legs around and stood up. “But enough of this speech-making. I’m going to bring us some of the Campania.”

She returned with the wine on a silver tray and handed him one of the two slender goblets. He held the glass up to the light and slowly revolved its gracefully thin stem between his thumb and forefinger.

“Don’t you like Campania?”

“Very much,” he answered. “But it’s the glass that interests me. This goblet comes from my father’s plant near Tyre.”

“Oh, really?” She smiled. “I’m glad. I knew they were made in Phoenicia, but I didn’t know they came from Senator Piso’s glassworks. Herodias gave me several pieces from a set Antipas brought her. They are lovely.” She lifted her own goblet and admired it in the moonlight. “Such beautiful craftsmanship. You know, I’ve never understood how they can be blown so perfectly. And I love the delicate coloring. Now that I know they come from your father’s factory, they’re all the more interesting to me, and valued.” She set the goblet down and sat quietly for a moment studying the resplendent full moon. “Longinus, I’m so glad you’re back in Rome,” she said at last. “It seems you’ve been away in Germania, and before that in Palestine, for such a long time. Did you ever think of me while you were away?”

“Yes. And did you ... of me?”

“Oh, yes, often, and very much. In spite of Aemilius.” She picked up the goblet, then set it down again on the tripod and leaned against his shoulder. “By the Bountiful Mother Ceres”—she bent forward, slipping her feet out of the sandals—“I can’t get comfortable, Longinus. I’m too warm. This stola’s heavy, and I’m so ... so laced.” She stood up. “Wait here; I’ll only be a minute.”

Diagonally across from them a thin sliver of lamplight shone through a crack in the doorway to Claudia’s bedroom. She stepped into her sandals, walked around the spraying fountain, and entered the room. “I won’t close the door entirely,” she called back, as she swung it three-fourths shut. “That way we can talk while I’m getting into something more comfortable.”

“I really should be going,” Longinus said. “I have early duty tomorrow.”

“Oh, not yet, please. Do wait. I’ll be out in a moment. Pour yourself some wine.”

He poured another glass, sipped from it, then set the goblet on the tray and settled back against the cushions. His gaze returned to the widened rectangle of light in her doorway. In the center of it there was a sudden movement. Surely, he thought, she isn’t going to change directly in front of the open door. Then he realized that he was looking into a long mirror on the wall at right angles to the doorway; he was seeing her image in the polished bronze. In stepping back from the door she had taken a position in the corner of the room just at the spot where the angle was right for the mirror to reflect her image to anyone seated on the couch outside.

“By all the gods!” Longinus sat forward.

But now she had disappeared. The mirror showed only a corner of her dressing table with its profusion of containers—vials of perfumes, oils, ointments, jars of creams—and scissors, tweezers, strigils, razors, he presumed them to be, though because of the distance from them and the table’s disarray he could not see them clearly. Now they were suddenly hidden behind the brightness of the stola as the young woman again came into view. She dropped a garment across a chair, then turned to face the dressing table and the mirror above it. The light shone full upon her back. Both stola and girdle behind were cut low, and the cold shimmering whiteness of the gown accentuated the smooth warmth of her flesh tones. Now her fingers were busy at the jeweled fastenings of the girdle; the light flashed in the stones of her rings. Quickly the girdle came off, and her hands went to one shoulder as her bracelets, their stones glimmering, slipped along her arms. The clasp gave; the strap fell to reveal warm flesh to her waist. She unfastened the other strap, and the stola slipped to the floor. Bending quickly, she picked up the voluminous garment and, turning, laid it with the girdle across the chair.

“Jove!” he exclaimed. “By all the great gods!” In the strong but flickering light of the wall lamp, Claudia stood divested now of all her clothing except for the sheer black silk of her scant undergarments.

“Are you still there, Longinus?” she called out. “And did I hear you say something?”

“I’m here,” he answered. “But really, Claudia, I should be going.” He hoped his voice did not betray his suddenly mounting tension.

“No, not yet. Just a minute. I’m coming now.”

She reached for a dressing robe and hurriedly swept it around her. Fastening the belt loosely about her waist, she turned toward the doorway and stepped quickly back into the peristylium. He stood up to meet her. Gently she pushed him to the couch and sat beside him.

“Please don’t go yet, Longinus. You’ve been away in Germania so long, and I couldn’t have you to myself at the banquet. There’s so much to talk about, to ask you about.” She leaned back and snuggled against him. Then she looked down at her knees, round and pink under the sheerness of the pale rose robe. “Bona Dea!” She clamped her knees together and doubled the robe over them. “I didn’t realize this robe was so transparent, Longinus. But it is comfortable, and there is only the moonlight out here.” She reached out, caught his hand, squeezed it, and released it. “And you can lean back and look only at the moon.”

“But in Germania we had the moon.”

“Yes, and women. I’ve heard much about the women of Germania, and seen them, too. Women with yellow hair and complexions like the bloom of the apricot or the skin of the pomegranate. And women free for the asking, eh, Centurion?”

“Not often for the asking. Sometimes for the taking.” He pulled her close and felt through his tunic the quick surge of her warmth against him. “But tonight is not Germania and women whose hair is the color of ripening grain, Claudia. Tonight is Rome and a woman with hair as black as a raven’s wing and skin fair and smooth and warm and greatly tempting.”

“A woman maybe for the asking, or the taking?” Quickly she twisted out from the arm about her waist, and her gay, impish laughter broke upon the fountain’s sleepy murmuring. “I didn’t know you were also a poet, Longinus.” She reached for the pitcher. “Wine to toast the weaver of beautiful words,” she said, filling the goblets; she handed him his, then held hers aloft. “I drink to the new Catullus. ‘Let us live, Lesbia mine, and love.’

“How did he say it...?

“And all the mumbling of harsh old men

“We shall reckon as a pennyworth.

“And then, well....

“Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred,

“Then another thousand, then a second hundred,

“And still another thousand, then a hundred.

“It goes on,” she added, “but that’s all I can repeat. Now drink with me to your own pretty words.”

Longinus laughed and sipped the wine. “Were his words quoted by you for me ... from you? Remember that Catullus later wrote of his Lesbia:

“A woman’s words to hungry lover said

“Should be upon the flowing winds inscribed,

“Upon swift streams engraved.”

She leaned out from the shadow into which the retreating moon had pushed them. “Maybe they were quoted to spur your asking, Longinus, or”—she paused and smiled demurely—“your taking.” Then quickly she sank back against him. “You think I’m a blatantly bold hussy, don’t you?”

“No, Claudia,” he smiled, “just experienced. And beautiful, and ... and very tempting.”

“Experienced, yes, but believe me, not promiscuous, Longinus. By the Bountiful Mother, I’m not that way, in spite of my experience.” The teasing was gone from her eyes. “In spite of everything, not that.”

She snuggled against his arm outstretched along the back of the couch, and gently he half turned her to let her head down upon his lap. Her eyes were wide, and in each he saw a luminous and trembling small, round moon; her mouth was open, and against his thigh he felt the quickened pounding of her heart. As he bent over her, she reached up and drew him, her hot palm cupping the back of his cropped head, down hard upon her lips tasting sweet of the Campania and desperately eager and burning.

He raised his face from hers and lifted her slightly to relieve the pressure of her body on his arm. She drew up her feet and, with knees bent, braced them against the end of the short couch. Her robe slipped open, and she lay still, her eyes closed, her lips apart.

His throat tightened, and he felt a prickling sensation moving up and down his spine, coursing outward to his arms and past tingling palms to his fingertips. Deftly he eased his legs from beneath her; lowering her head to the couch, he stood up.

“Oh, Longinus, please, not now,” she pleaded, her voice tense, her tone entreating. “Please don’t leave me now.”

For a moment he stood above her, silent, and then, bending down quickly, he lifted her from the couch and started toward the still open bedroom door. He was past the fountain when a sudden, loud knocking at the entrance doors shattered the silence.

“Oh, Longinus, put me down!” She swung her legs to the floor. “Bona Dea, who could be coming here at this hour! Of all the damnable luck!” She stared in dismay at her disarrayed and transparent robe. “By all the gods, I can’t go into the atrium dressed like this! Longinus, will you go? Tullia’s probably sound asleep.” With that, Claudia darted into the bedroom, while the pounding grew ever louder and more insistent.

Longinus started toward the door, but before he could reach it, Tullia had appeared from the corridor. She quickly opened the door, then backed away as the robust soldier stepped inside.

“I am seeking the Centurion Longinus. I was told ... ah, there you are!” he cried.

“Cornelius! What are you doing here?”

“Longinus! By Jove! I’ve been searching all Rome for you.”

“But I thought you were still in Palestine.”

“And I thought you were still in Germania!”—Cornelius laughed—“until today.”

“Come, sit down,” Longinus said. “When did you get back?”

“Only a week ago, and most of that time I’ve been out at Baiae with the family. I came into Rome today to report to the Prefect.”

“Jove! Is he going to name you Procurator of Judaea, Cornelius? I hear that Valerius Gratus is being recalled.”

“Me Procurator? Don’t be silly, man. No, but I have an idea it’s something concerned with Palestine that has him calling for you. I’ve got orders to find you and bring you to his palace immediately. So we’d best be going, Longinus.”

“To see Sejanus? At this hour?”

“Yes, he said it was urgent. He’s leaving early tomorrow morning for Capri, and he says he’s got to see you before he goes.”

“By the gods!” Longinus’ countenance was suddenly solemn. “What have I done?”

“Oh, I’m sure it’s nothing to be alarmed about. Probably some special assignment or other. I don’t know. But come, man, you know Sejanus doesn’t like to be kept waiting. Get your toga. I have a sedan chair outside.”

“In a minute, Cornelius. I must tell Claudia.”

“Couldn’t her maid explain...?”

But Longinus already was striding toward the peristylium. “Claudia,” he called through the crack in the doorway, “the Prefect has sent for me. I don’t know what he wants, but I’ve got to be going.”

“Bona Dea!” She was just inside the door. “Sejanus?”

“Yes. Cornelius says he wants to see me tonight, right now. I don’t have any idea what he could want, but tomorrow night, if I may see you then, I’ll explain everything.”

“What could that old devil be wanting with you, Longinus?” The question seemed addressed more to herself than to him. “Yes, of course, you must come. I’ll be anxious to know.”

The sound of his retreating steps echoed along the peristylium and across the mosaic floor of the atrium. Claudia listened until she heard Tullia shut the double doors, and then there was silence. She closed her own door and crossed to her still undisturbed bed; she flung herself upon it.

“Sejanus, the devil! The old devil!” With furious fists she pounded on the bed. “May Pluto’s mallet splatter his evil brains!”

2

“Centurion Longinus, how well do you know Pontius Pilate?”

The Prefect Sejanus sensed that the soldier was hardly prepared for the blunt question. He had only a moment ago entered the ornate chamber. But Sejanus added nothing to qualify the question. Instead, he seemed to enjoy Longinus’ momentary uneasiness. His small eyes reflected the light from the lamps flanking the heavy oak desk behind which he sat, while he waited for the centurion to answer.

“Sir,” Longinus at last began, “during our campaign in Germania he commanded the cohort of which my century was a unit, but I cannot say that I know him well.”

“Then you and Pontius Pilate”—the Prefect paused and smiled blandly—“could hardly be described as devoted friends or intimates?”

“That is true, sir, and I am not sure that Pilate....” He hesitated.

“Please speak frankly, Centurion.” The Prefect’s smile was disarmingly reassuring. “You were about to say, were you not, that you are not sure that Pilate has many intimate friends?”

“I was going to say, sir, that in my opinion Pilate is not the type of soldier who has many intimate friends. I may be doing him an injustice, but I have never considered him a particularly ... ah ... sociable fellow. I have the feeling that he is a very ambitious man, determined to advance his career....”

“And his private fortune?”

Longinus thought carefully before answering. “So far as that is concerned, sir, I really cannot say. I have no information whatever on which to base an opinion. Nor did I intend to indicate in any way that I thought Pilate was seeking advancement in the army in an improper manner.”

Sejanus sat back in his chair. His falcon-like eyes darted back and forth as they measured and appraised the young man. “Centurion,” he said, leaning forward and smiling ingratiatingly, “you are cautious, and you evidence a sense of loyalty to your superiors. Both qualities I admire, particularly in the soldier. This makes me all the more confident that you will be able to carry out the assignment I propose to give you.” He stared unblinkingly into the centurion’s eyes. “Longinus, no doubt you have been wondering why I sent for you, why I insisted you come at this late hour, and why we are closeted here alone.”

“Yes, sir, I have been wondering.”

“It is irregular, of course, even though it is with the son of Senator Marcus Tullius Piso that the Prefect is closeted.” The wry smile was gone now; the Prefect’s countenance was serious. “Longinus, you must be aware of the regard your father and I have for each other. You must know that we also understand each other, that we are colleagues in various enterprises widely scattered about the Empire.”

“I know, sir, that my father has a high regard for the Prefect, and I have known in a vague way of your association in certain business enterprises.”

“Yes, and they have been profitable to both of us, Longinus. Have you ever wondered, for instance, how it happens that whenever your father’s plants in Phoenicia begin to run low on slaves, a government ship always arrives with fresh ones?”

Longinus nodded. “Whenever such a vessel arrived, I always thought I knew why. But I never asked questions or ventured comments, sir. I just put the new slaves to work.”

“Excellent. You are discreet, indeed. There is nothing more valuable to me than an intelligent man who can keep his eyes open and his mouth closed.” Sejanus arose, came around the desk to sit in a chair at arm’s length from the centurion. “Longinus, the assignment I propose to give you is of immense importance. And it is highly confidential in nature.” His expression and voice were grave. “To accomplish it successfully, the man I choose will have to be always on the alert; he will have to have imagination and initiative; he will need to exercise great caution; and above all, he will have to be someone completely loyal to the Prefect.” For a long moment his quickly darting eyes appraised the soldier. “I know that you are intelligent, Longinus, and I am satisfied that you possess these other qualities.” He leaned forward and tapped the centurion on the knee. “I had a purpose in asking you if you knew Pontius Pilate well. Tomorrow Pilate is to see me. If everything goes as I expect, then we shall start for Capri to see the Emperor, and the Emperor will approve officially what I shall have done already.” He paused and smiled cynically. “You understand, of course?”

Longinus smiled. “I believe, sir, that you speak for the Emperor in such matters, do you not?”

“In all matters, Longinus. The Emperor no longer concerns himself with the affairs of the Empire.” His piggish eyes brightened. “He’s too busy with his astrologers and his philosophers and his”—he smiled with contempt—“his friends.” But suddenly the contemptuous smile was gone, and Sejanus sat back in his chair. “Longinus, Pontius Pilate is anxious to succeed Valerius Gratus as Procurator of Judaea.”

The centurion sensed that the Prefect was waiting for his reaction. But he said nothing. Sejanus leaned forward again. “I am speaking in complete frankness, Longinus. We must understand each other; you must likewise speak frankly to me. But what we say must go no further. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Now to get back to Pilate. He’s a man well suited to my purpose, I’m confident.” Once more the Prefect hesitated, as if seeking a way to proceed. “Some years ago, before you went out to Phoenicia, the Emperor’s nephew, General Germanicus, was fatally poisoned at Alexandria. It was rumored at the time that the Emperor had ordered it. Pilate, who served in Gaul under Germanicus, came stoutly to the Emperor’s defense with the story that the poisoning had been done by supporters of the Emperor but without his knowledge, because they had learned that the nephew was plotting the uncle’s downfall. Perhaps you heard something about this?”

“I believe I did hear something to that effect, sir. But that was about seven years ago, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, no doubt. Time passes so fast for me, Centurion. But let’s get back to Pontius Pilate. He’s ambitious, as you suggested, and as I said, he wants to be appointed Procurator in Judaea. So he should be amenable to ... ah, suggestions, eh, Centurion? And he should therefore be a perfect counterpart in Judaea to the Tetrarch Antipas in Galilee.” Sejanus suddenly was staring intently at the sober-faced young soldier. “How well, Longinus, do you know Herod Antipas?”

“I hardly know him at all, sir. I’ve seen him a few times; I used to go into Galilee and other parts of Palestine for our glassware plants; I tried once, I remember, to sell him glassware for the new palace he was building on the Sea of Galilee. But those were business trips, you see, and I rarely saw him even then. I was usually directed to speak with the Tetrarchess or Herod’s steward.”

“But you were a guest at the banquet he gave this evening, weren’t you?”

“I was, sir.” Longinus wondered, almost admiringly, how the Prefect managed to keep so well-informed of even the most private goings-on in Rome.

“It was a sumptuous feast, no doubt?”

“It was quite lavish, sir.”

“Hmmm. I must remember that.” The Prefect puckered his lips, and his forehead wrinkled into a frown. Leaning across the desk, he drew his lips tightly against his teeth. “Soon, Longinus, you will be having two to watch.” His eyes narrowed to a squint. “Three, in fact.”

“To watch, sir?”

“Yes, that is the assignment I have for you, Longinus. I am sending you out to Palestine, to be my eyes and ears in the land of those pestiferous Jews. At intervals you will report”—he held up his hand, palm out—“but only to me, understand. You will travel about the various areas—Caesarea, Jerusalem, Tiberias, to your father’s plants in Phoenicia, perhaps other places—ostensibly on routine tasks for the army. The details will be worked out later.” He leveled a forefinger at the centurion. “It will be your task, among the various duties you will have, Centurion, to report to me any suspicions that may be aroused in your mind concerning the flow of revenues into the Imperial treasury in accordance with the terms that I shall make with Pontius Pilate, and likewise with the revised schedules I shall”—he paused an instant, and his smile was sardonic—“suggest to the Tetrarch Antipas before he returns to Galilee.” He sat back, and his sharp small eyes studied Longinus.

“Then, sir, as I understand it, you are suspicious that both Pilate and Antipas may withhold for themselves money that should be going to Rome?”

“Let’s put it this way, Longinus.” The Prefect leaned toward the centurion and tapped the desk with the ends of his fingers. “I don’t trust them. I know the Tetrarch has been dipping his fat hand into the treasury, though not too heavily thus far, let us say. That white marble palace at the seaside, for example, and the gorgeous furnishings, including Phoenician glassware, eh?” He shot a quizzical straight glance into the centurion’s eyes, but quickly a smile tempered it. “We don’t object to his buying glass, do we, as long as it comes from your father’s plants?”

But just as quickly the Prefect was serious again. He sat back against the leather and put his hands together, fingertips to fingertips. “Herod Antipas wants to be a Herod the Great,” he declared. “But he hasn’t the character his father had. By character, Centurion, I mean courage, stamina, strength, and ability, yes. Old Herod was a villain, mean, blackhearted, cold-blooded, murderous. But he was an able man, strong, a great administrator, a brave and brilliant soldier, every inch a ruler. Beside him, his son is a weakling. Herodias, on the other hand, is more like her grandfather than Antipas is like his father. She’s ambitious, vain, demanding. She is continually pushing Antipas. She seeks advancement, more power, more of the trappings of royalty.” He lifted a forefinger and shook it before the centurion. “Herodias will likely bring ruin upon both of them.” Then he paused, thoughtful. “But so much for Antipas. Watch him, Longinus. If he”—his expression warmed with a disarming smile—“buys too much of that Phoenician glass, then let me know.”

“I will, sir.” Longinus was smiling, too. Then he was serious. “But, sir, you were speaking also of Pontius Pilate....”

“Yes. I think Pilate is the man I want for Judaea. But I don’t trust him either. I want him watched closely, Longinus. I suspect that his fingers will be itching, likewise, to dip too deeply into the till.”

“But, sir, if you can’t trust him....”

“Why then am I sending him out there?” The Prefect laughed cynically. Then he sobered. “It’s a proper question, my boy. We must be frank, as I said. I’ve told you that I believe Pilate will be amenable to suggestions. Like Antipas, he, too, is a weakling. He has a good record as a soldier, but always as a subordinate. I question whether he has the courage, the stamina, to lead and rule. He will be looking to Rome, I believe, for direction. And he will always be fearful of displeasing the Prefect. But at the same time, Longinus, I think he will be looking for ways of adding to his personal wealth. So he will bleed those Jews to get all Rome requires and some for his own pocket as well.” He paused, thoughtful for a moment. “Yes, I believe Pontius Pilate is the man I want. Certainly I shall give him a chance to prove himself.” Quickly he raised an emphatic finger. “But I want you to watch him, Longinus. I want you to ascertain whether any diversions are being made in the flow of the tax revenues to the Imperial treasury, and if so, to report it to me. Even if you have no proof, but only strong suspicions to go on, by all means report them too. I’ll work out a plan whereby you can make the reports confidentially and quickly.”

The Prefect paused, leaned back in his chair, and calmly studied the younger man. When Longinus ventured no comment, Sejanus continued with his instructions. “You will be transferred from your present cohort to the Second Italian. Your rank will remain the same; as a centurion you will be more useful to me, since you will be less observed and therefore less suspected in this lower grade. But you will be properly compensated, Longinus, with the extent of the compensation being governed in great part, let us say”—he puckered his lips again—“upon the degree of functioning of your eyes and ears.”

Sejanus arose, and Longinus stood with him. “You have made no comment, Centurion Longinus.”

“Sir, I am at the Prefect’s command. But may I ask when I am to be given further instructions and when I shall be sailing for Palestine?”

“Soon, Centurion, as quickly as I can arrange it. I would like you to go out ahead of Pilate and be there when he arrives at Caesarea. It will be important to observe how he takes over the duties of the post from the outset. I shall summon you when I am ready and give you full instructions.”

The audience with the Prefect was at an end. At the door, as he was about to step into the corridor, Longinus paused. “Sir, a moment ago you said there would be three for me to watch. You spoke of Pilate and Herod Antipas. Who is the third?”

Sejanus smiled blandly and rubbed his hands together. “The third, ah, yes.” His black small eyes danced. “And there will be others also. But you need not concern yourself with any of this detail at the moment. When I have completed my plans, as I’ve said, I shall summon you here and instruct you fully.”

3

Longinus sat up in bed, thrust forth an arm to peel back his side of the covering sheet, pulled up his feet, and twisted around to plant them evenly on the floor.

“Jove!” He craned his neck, blinked his still heavy eyelids, and strained to rub the cramped muscles at his shoulder blades. From the northeast, rolling down through the gentle depression dividing the mansion-studded slopes of the Viminal and Quirinal Hills, came the fading plaintively sweet notes of a trumpet. He glanced toward the window; the light was already beginning to sift through slits in the drawn draperies.

Claudia opened her eyes. She pushed herself up to a sitting position. “Are you going, Longinus? Must you be leaving so early?” She rubbed her eyes and squinted into the slowly brightening window. “Do you have to...?”

“The morning watch at Castra Praetoria,” he explained, nodding in the direction of the window. “It awakened me, luckily. I must be out there before the next call is sounded. Today I’m on early duty.”

“You always have to be going.” Her lips, the rouge smeared but still red, were pouting. “You hardly get here, and then you say you must be leaving.”

“But, by the gods, Claudia, I’ve been here all night, remember.” He pinched her chin. “I had dinner with you, and I haven’t left yet.”

“Oh, all right. But if you must go, you’d best be dressing. Although, really, Longinus, can’t you stay a few minutes longer, just a few? Please.” She slid back to lie in a stretched position, her figure clearly outlined beneath the light covering.

“Temptress! By the gods, I wish I could.” He bent down and kissed her smeared lips. “Well, at least it won’t be like this when we get to Palestine. Out there I’ll be able to arrange my own schedule, and there’ll be no early morning duty then. But by great Jove, I’ve got to be going now.” He stood up and walked to the chair on which his clothing lay. “Today I’ll begin getting preparations made so that we can be ready to sail when Sejanus gives me his final orders. And the preparations will include arrangements for our wedding,” he concluded, grinning.

Languidly she lay back and watched him as he dressed. “Longinus,” she said, as he finished latching his boots, “do you really believe that your father will be willing to let you marry me?” Her expression indicated concern. “I have no doubt but that my beloved stepfather will be quite willing, quite happy, in fact, because I’m sure he’s already anxious to be freed of the responsibility he has, or thinks he has, for me. But I do wonder about Senator Piso.”

“By the great and little gods, Claudia, it’s not the senator you’re marrying, remember? I’m the one,” he said, thumping his chest with stiffened thumb. “Me, understand?”

“Of course, silly man.” She sat up again and fluffed the pillow behind her. “But the senator might object, Longinus. He’s a proud man, proud of his name, his lineage. He’s not going to like the idea of his son’s marrying a bastard and a divorcee, even though she may be the granddaughter of the Emperor Augustus.”

“He won’t object, Claudia; I’m sure of it. But even if he should, I’d marry you anyway, despite him, despite Sejanus, despite even old Tiberius himself.” He adjusted his tunic, then came over to stand by the bed. “Remember that, Claudia.”

“Even in spite of last night?” She was smiling up at him, and she said it capriciously, but he thought he detected a note of seriousness in her voice. “You don’t think I’m terribly wanton, Longinus?”

“Last night makes me all the more determined.” He studied her for a long moment; her expression was coy, but radiant too, a little wistful and warmly affectionate, he saw. “Wanton? Of course not, my dear.” A mischievous grin slowly crossed his face. “Wanting, maybe. And wanted certainly, wanted by me. The most desirable woman I’ve ever known, the most wanted.” He bent down to her, his eyes aflame, and gently he pushed the outthrust chin to separate slightly the rouge-smudged lips raised hungrily to his. Greedily their lips met and held, and then as the girl lifted a hand to the back of his head to crush his face against hers, he grasped the protecting sheet from her fingers and flung it toward the foot of the bed.

“Oh, you beast!” she shrieked. “By all the silly little gods!”

Roaring, he darted for the peristylium. As he fled past the long mirror near the doorway, he caught in it a glimpse of the laughing Claudia struggling wildly to cover herself with the twisted sheet.

4

The magnificent villa of the Prefect Lucius Aelius Sejanus clung precariously to the precipitous slope high above the blue waters of the bay. The greater part of the mansion had been built some hundred years before in the days of Lucius Licinius Lucullus by one of the general’s fellow patricians. This man’s family had suffered the misfortune of having had the villa confiscated after the pater familias had been beheaded for making the wrong choice in a civil war of that era.

Sejanus had acquired the property—many Romans wondered how, but they were too discreet to inquire—and had added to it extensively, including a spacious peristylium with a great fountain that spouted water piped from higher on the slope and palms and flowers and oriental plants. But most interesting of his improvements was the spreading terrace pushed outward from the peristylium to the very edge of the precipice, paved in ornate mosaic with slabs of marble transported in government barges from quarries far distant—gray and red from Egypt, yellow in various shades and black from Numidia, green cipolin from Euboea—and bordered by a protecting balustrade of white Carrara.

This morning the Prefect and his guest, Pontius Pilate, a cohort commander lately returned from a campaign in Germania, sat on this terrace before a round bronze table whose legs were molded in the size and likeness of a lion’s foreleg. On the table were a pitcher and matching goblets. Pilate, large, broad-framed, with a round head and hair closely cropped, a heavy man and, in his early forties, perhaps a score of years younger than the Prefect, was eying the unusual pitcher. Sejanus motioned to it.

“You may be interested in glassware,” he said, as he reached over and with a fingernail tapped one of the delicate blue, blown goblets. “These pieces came from Phoenicia. No doubt you will have the opportunity while you’re in Judaea to visit the glassworks where they were blown. It’s situated near Tyre, up the coast from Caesarea and not far from Mount Carmel. One of Senator Piso’s enterprises.” He fastened his unblinking small eyes on Pilate’s florid face. “But of course you won’t be concerned with this operation. It’s not in Judaea anyway, and its affairs—so far as Rome is concerned—are being supervised from Rome.”

Pilate nodded. “I understand, sir.”

“Good. It’s important that you do understand fully. There should be no area, for example, in which your duties and responsibilities overlap those of Tetrarch Herod Antipas. I trust that you’ll always bear that in mind.”

“You can depend upon my doing so, sir.”

“Then is there anything else not entirely clear to you concerning your duties, powers, and functions as I’ve outlined them? Do you fully understand that as Procurator you will be required to keep the Jews in your province as quiet and contented as possible—and they are a cantankerous, fanatical, troublesome race, I warn you—even though you will be draining them of their revenues to the limit of their capacities?” He held up an admonishing forefinger. “And do you also understand that it is tremendously important for you, as Procurator of Judaea, to avoid becoming embroiled in any of the turmoils arising out of their foolish but zealously defended one-god system of religion?” Sejanus curled his lower lip to cover the upper and slowly pushed them both out into a rounded tight pucker; his eyes remained firmly fixed on the cohort commander’s face. “It is a difficult post, being Procurator in Judaea, Pilate.”

“It is a difficult assignment, sir, but it’s one that I’ve been hoping to obtain, and I appreciate the appointment. I understand what is required, and I shall make every effort to administer Judaea to the best of my ability and in accordance with your instructions.”

“Then you may consider yourself Procurator, Pilate. When the Emperor gives you your audience tomorrow, he will approve what I have actually already done.” A sly smile overspread the Prefect’s weasel face. “But there is one thing further that you must agree to do, Pilate, if you wish to become Procurator of Judaea.” He stood, and Pilate arose, remaining stiffly erect. Sejanus walked to the marble balustrade and looked down at the blue water far below. “But first, come here. I want to show you something.”

The cohort commander strode quickly to the Prefect’s side. Sejanus pointed toward the north. “Look,” he said, “Misenum there, and just beyond is Baiae. Over there”—he swept his arm in an arc—“is Puteoli. And in this half-moon of shore line fronting on the bay between here and Puteoli’s harbor, in those mansions scrambling up the slopes”—he drew a half circle in the air that ended with his forefinger pointing straight south—“in this lower district of Campania from here to Puteoli and Neapolis and around the rugged rim of the gulf, past Vesuvius and Herculaneum, Pompeii and Surrentum out to the end of Capri is embraced the very cream of the Empire’s aristocracy and wealth.” He turned to face north again. “There. That is the villa for which Lucullus paid ten million sesterces. You can see parts of the roof among the trees and flowering plants. They say that some of the cherry trees he introduced from Pontus are still bearing. Yes, they rightly call this the playground of the Empire. Look down there,” he said, pointing toward the gaily colored barges idling along the shore between Baiae and Puteoli. “There you will find beautiful women, Pilate, gorgeous creatures who are completely uninhibited, delightfully immoral. Beautiful Baiae, where husbands able to afford it can find happy respite from monogamy. Ah, Ovid, how you would sing of Baiae today!”

Silently for a moment now the Prefect contemplated the villa-filled slopes, the pleasure barges, the lazily lifting sulphurous fumes above Lake Avernus in the crater of an extinct volcano to the north, and the sleeping cone of Vesuvius looming magnificently in the west. Then he turned again to face Pilate, and a sly, malevolent smile crossed his narrow face. “You, too, Commander, some day can live in luxury out there on the slope above Baiae ... if you manage affairs in Judaea properly,” he paused, for emphasis, “by following explicitly the instructions you have received and will continue to receive from me.”

“I am ambitious, sir,” Pilate answered, “and I would take great pleasure some day in joining the equestrian class here. But whether I am able to achieve a villa at Baiae or not, I am determined to follow explicitly the Prefect’s instructions and desires.” His hand on the marble balustrade, Pilate studied the movement in the bay. Then he faced the Prefect. “But you said a moment ago, sir, that there was still one more provision?”

“Yes, Pilate.” Sejanus pointed to the chairs beside the lion-legged table. “But let’s sit down and have some more of the Falernian.”

As they took their seats, a slave who all the while had been hovering attentively near-by came forward quickly and filled the goblets. Sejanus sipped slowly. “Surely you have guessed that the Emperor and I confer at times on matters of particular intimacy, such as the problems of his household, even the affairs of members of his own Imperial family?”

“I can see, sir, how the Emperor would wish the Prefect’s counsel in matters of every kind.”

“That is true.” Sejanus toyed with the wine glass, then abruptly set it down. “This is the provision, Pilate, and I think it not unreasonable. In fact, I might explain that it was at my suggestion that Tiberius has included it. And were I in your position, Pilate”—his eyes brightened, and he flattened his lips against his teeth—“I would be delighted that such a provision had been made. She is a beautiful woman, young, possessed of every feminine appeal, and a woman to be earnestly desired and sought, at least in the opinion of one old man who”—he smiled—“can still look, appreciate, and imagine.”

“A woman?”

“Yes, Pilate. The Emperor expects you to marry his stepdaughter.”

“Claudia!” Pilate said in amazement. “The granddaughter of Augustus?”

“Indeed.” Sejanus was eying him intently. “And of Antony, too, and Cleopatra, I’ve always understood.” A sly smile again crossed his face. “And, if I’m a capable judge, a woman possessed of everything Cleopatra had.”

Pilate seemed oblivious to the Prefect’s description. “But why should he want me, the son of a Spanish...?”

“But you will be Procurator of Judaea,” Sejanus interrupted. “Look, Pilate,” he went on, his face all seriousness now, “I’m sure you’ve heard the story of Claudia’s mother, the wife of Tiberius. Augustus was forced to banish her when her adulteries became notorious. It’s one of those paradoxes, Pilate, of Imperial life. The Emperor may indulge in any of the ordinarily forbidden delights, adultery, pederasty”—he smiled again, but this time his smile was a scarcely concealed sneer—“but his stepdaughter may not. Or she may not publicly, at any rate. And now that Claudia is divorced from Aemilius and has no husband to point to in the event that....” He paused and laid his hand on Pilate’s arm. “I dislike putting the matter so bluntly, Pilate, but there is no other way to explain the situation. The Emperor wishes to forestall any scandal. The best way to do so, he thinks, is to have his stepdaughter married and sent as far away as possible from Rome.”

“But, sir, doesn’t custom forbid the wives of generals and legates and procurators from journeying with them to their provincial posts?”

“Custom, yes. But custom is not always followed. Agrippina, for example, accompanied Germanicus on his campaign in the north. Caligula was born while she was away with the general.” He was watching Pilate closely. “But you have not said whether you accept the Emperor’s final provision.”

“Sir, I would be greatly honored and highly pleased to be the husband of the granddaughter of the great Augustus.”

Sejanus beamed. “Then, Pilate, you may consider yourself the Procurator of Judaea.”

“But....”

The Prefect held up his hand to interrupt. “The Emperor will speak to you about the necessity of your keeping your wife under firm authority. But I would like to emphasize something more important, Commander, and that is this: keep her happy, and keep her satisfied, in Judaea. I want no reports coming to me that the Emperor’s stepdaughter is being kept virtually a prisoner, that she is suffering banishment from Rome.” His eyes flamed again, and he licked his sensuous lips. “Do you understand, Pilate? Claudia is a modern woman. She’s accustomed to the ways of Rome’s equestrians. Keep her contented, Pilate; do nothing to add to her burden of living in a land that to her, no doubt, will be dull and even loathsome. If sometimes she strays into indiscretions, overlook them. Don’t attempt to make of her a Caesar’s wife.” His stern expression relaxed into a grin. “Besides, I believe it’s too late for anyone to accomplish that.” Then as quickly as it had come, the levity was gone. “But I interrupted you. You were going to ask something?”

“Yes.” Pilate stared thoughtfully at his hands. “I was wondering, sir, if Claudia has been apprised of the Emperor’s and your wishes. What has she to say about all this?”

“Say?” Sejanus smiled and rubbed his palms together. “My dear Procurator, Claudia has nothing to say in matters such as this. Tiberius speaks for his stepdaughter. And I speak for Tiberius.”

5

The next morning one of the fastest triremes of the Roman navy carried the Prefect Sejanus and Pontius Pilate from the harbor below the Prefect’s villa straight southward across the gulf toward the island of Capri.

When Sejanus finished discussing certain other matters of business with the Emperor, he had his aide summon Pilate into the Imperial chamber. The cohort commander was nervous as he entered the great hall. It was his first sight of Tiberius since the Emperor had allowed his crafty minister to bring all nine of the Praetorian Guard’s cohorts into the camp near the Viminal Gate, from which, on a moment’s notice, they could sally forth to enforce the Prefect’s will, even to giving orders to the Senate itself. A year ago the Emperor, melancholy, embittered, tired of rule, had left Rome and journeyed southward to Capri to seek on that island the privacy he had long craved. Since then, with the exception of the wily Prefect and a few others—the Emperor’s young girls and, according to Roman gossip, his powdered, painted, and perfumed young boys and the growing circle of poets and philosophers—Tiberius Claudius Nero Caesar had seen few visitors. Gradually he had relinquished affairs of state to the scheming Prefect Sejanus.

But now Pilate saw confronting him a man vastly changed from the tall, powerful, and thoroughly able general he had known earlier. The Emperor was noticeably stooped; his once broad forehead and now almost naked pate seemed to have shriveled into a narrowing expanse of wrinkled skull. Acne had inflamed and pocked his face, and the skin lay in folds around the stem of his neck like that of a vulture’s.

Tiberius greeted Pilate perfunctorily. “The Prefect tells me you’re petitioning us for appointment to the post of Procurator in Judaea. Is that true?”

“Sire, if it is the will of the Emperor that I serve in that capacity, I shall be happy to undertake the assignment and serve the Emperor and the Empire to the full extent of my ability.”

“That I would expect and demand,” Tiberius harshly replied. “It is a difficult post. The Jews are a stubborn and intractable people. They are fanatically religious, and they resent bitterly and will oppose even to the sacrifice of their lives all actions they consider offensive to their strange one-god religion. Their priests are diabolically clever, and they are determined to rule the people in accordance with the ancient religious laws and traditions of the land.” His cold eyes fastened upon the cohort commander’s countenance. “Pilate, I shall expect you to govern in that province. Foremost among your functions of office, in addition to maintaining at all times Roman law and order, will be the levying and collecting of ample taxes. That, in itself, will be a burdensome duty. In addition, I charge you to see to it that Rome is not embroiled in any great difficulty with these Jews. I warn you, it will be difficult. Do you think you are equal to such a task?”

“I am bold enough, Sire, to think so. Certainly I shall do everything within my power to demonstrate to the Emperor and his Prefect that I am.”

“We shall see.” The Emperor’s cold eyes bored into those of the officer standing before him. Suddenly his grimness relaxed into a thin smile. “Sejanus tells me also that you have ambitions to marry my stepdaughter Claudia.”

“To marry your stepdaughter, Sire, should it be the Emperor’s will, would bestow on me the highest honor and afford me the greatest happiness.”

“Evidently he knows little about her,” Tiberius observed wryly to Sejanus, “else he would not consider himself so fortunate.” But quickly his eyes were on Pilate again, and the malevolent smile was gone. “I grant my permission, Pilate. The dowry will be arranged, and I assure you it will be adequate. Sejanus will settle the details. Unfortunately I shall not be able to attend the festivities of the wedding.” Now he twisted his head to face the Prefect. “If there is nothing further, Sejanus?” He did not wait for an answer but arose. The Prefect and Pontius Pilate, bowing, were backing toward the doorway when Tiberius suddenly stopped them. “Wait. I wish to tell Pilate a story.

“Once a traveler stopped to aid a man lying wounded beside the road,” he began. “He started to brush away the flies clustered about the wound, when the injured man spoke out. ‘No, don’t drive away the flies,’ he said. ‘They have fed on me until now they are satisfied and no longer hurt me. But if you brush these off, then other, more hungry ones will come and feed on me until I am sucked dry of blood.’” A mirthless smile crinkled the corners of his mouth. “Pilate, I want no new thirsty fly settling after Valerius Gratus upon the Jews in Judaea. Nevertheless, from them I must be sent a sufficiency of blood. Do you understand?”

Pilate swallowed. “Sire, I understand.” He licked his heavy red lips.

As they were at the door, Tiberius raised his hand to stop them again. A sly grin, leering and sadistic, spread across his face. “Take Claudia with you to Judaea, Procurator. And rule her, man! Rule her!”

6

Languidly the Princess Herodias of the Maccabean branch of the Herod dynasty lay back in the warm, scented water so that only her head, framed in black hair held dry by a finely woven silk net, was exposed.

“More hot water, Neaera,” she commanded. “But be careful. I don’t want to look cooked for the Tetrarch.”

Quickly the slave maid turned the tap, and steaming water gushed from the ornate eagle’s-head faucet.

“That’s enough!” shouted Herodias after a minute. “By the gods, shut it off!” She sat upright in the tiled tub, and the water ran down from her neck and shoulders, leaving little islands of suds clinging to her glistening white body. “Now hand me the mirror.”

She extended a dripping arm and accepted the polished bronze. For a long moment she studied her image. “Neaera, tell me truthfully, am I showing my age too dreadfully?”

“But, Mistress, you are not old,” the maid protested.

“You’re a flatterer, Neaera. Salome, remember, is fourteen.”

“But you were married very young, Mistress.”

“And I was married a long time ago, too.” She peered again into the mirror. “Look. Already I can see tiny crow’s-foot lines around my eyes.”

“But unguents and a little eye shadowing....”

“More flattery.” Herodias shook a wet finger at the young woman’s nose. “But I love it; so don’t ever stop. But now”—she grasped the sides of the tub—“help me out. I mustn’t lie in this hot water any longer, or I’ll be as pink as a roast by the time the Tetrarch comes.” She grasped the maid’s arm to steady herself as she stepped from the tub to the tufted mat, and Neaera began to rub her down with a heavy towel. When the slave maid had finished drying her, Herodias turned to face the full-length minor, her body flushed and glowing from the brisk robbing. Palms on hips, she studied her own straight, still lithe frame. “Really, Neaera,” she asked, “how do I look?” With fingers spread she caressed the gently rounded smooth plane of her stomach and then lifted cupped palms to her firm, finely shaped breasts. “I haven’t lost my figure too badly, have I?”

“You haven’t lost it at all, Mistress,” the maid assured her, as she picked up a filmy undergarment from the bench. “It’s still youthful and still beautiful.” Herodias braced herself as the girl bent low to assist her into the black silk garment. Neaera leaned back and studied the older woman again. “You have the figure of a young woman, indeed, Mistress,” she said, “though fully matured and....”

“And what, Neaera? What were you going to say?”

“Well, Mistress, a figure to me more beautiful because of maturity, and more interesting.”

“And more alluring, more seductive, maybe?” Her smile was lightly wanton. “To the Tetrarch, perhaps? But the Herods, Neaera, and old Tiberius, too, I hear, like their women very young.” Her expression sobered. “I’m almost afraid he’ll be having eyes for Salome rather than for me. The child has matured remarkably, you know, in the last year.”

“I should think, though, Mistress, that the Tetrarch....”

A sharp knocking on the door interrupted her.

“By the gods, Neaera, it must be the Tetrarch, and I’m not ready. Tell Strabo to seat him in the peristylium and pour him wine and say that I shall be ready soon.”

But the visitor was not the Tetrarch of Galilee. Strabo announced that the Emperor’s stepdaughter was in the atrium.

“Claudia! How wonderful! Show her into the solarium, and tell her I’ll join her in a minute. Neaera, hurry and fetch me my robe. We can sit and talk while you do my hair.”

“I can’t stay for more than a few minutes,” the Emperor’s stepdaughter announced when, a moment later, Herodias greeted her in the solarium. “Longinus is going to take me out to the chariot races, and he may be waiting for me right now. But I wanted to tell you, Herodias....” She paused, her expression suddenly questioning. “Bona Dea, I’ll bet that the Tetrarch is taking you there, too, and I’ve caught you in the middle of getting dressed.”

“Yes, you’re right, but there’s no hurry, Claudia. I can finish quickly. And if I’m not ready when he comes, he can wait.”

“So,” Claudia laughed, “you already have the Tetrarch so entranced that he will wait patiently while you dress.”

“Not patiently, perhaps, but he’ll wait ... without protesting.”

“Then it won’t be long before you’ll be marrying him and leaving for Palestine.” She said it teasingly, but immediately her expression changed to reveal concern. “But, Herodias, when you do, what will his present wife say; how will she take it? And his subjects in Galilee? Doesn’t the Jewish religion forbid a man’s having more than one living wife?”

“The daughter of King Aretas will resent his bringing another wife to Tiberias, no doubt”—Herodias smiled coyly—“if I do marry him. And as for the religion of the Jews, well, my dear, you must know that neither Antipas nor I follow its tenets too closely.”

“Of course. But I wasn’t thinking of you or the Tetrarch as much as I was of how his present wife would react. And the people of Galilee, too, how will they feel about his having two living wives, one of whom is his niece. Won’t it offend them?”

“Yes, if we marry, it will offend a great many of them. But my grandfather, old King Herod, father of Philip and Antipas, had ten wives, remember, nine of them at the same time. The Jews didn’t like that, but what could they do? No, we aren’t too concerned about what the Jews will think. But Aretas’ daughter probably will try to cause trouble. Not because Antipas will be having a new bedfellow, but because she won’t any longer be Tetrarchess. Being replaced will make her furious. She cares not a fig for the Tetrarch’s bedding with other women; she even gave him a harem of Arabian women, Antipas told me.” She paused, smiling. “Claudia, you remember that black-haired woman at the banquet the other night, the one called Mary of Magdala?” Claudia nodded. “Well, Antipas told me that his wife not only knew that Mary was coming with him to Rome but actually suggested that he bring her. He said his wife and Mary were good friends even though the Tetrarchess knew quite well what the relationship was between him and Mary.”

“Maybe the Tetrarchess sent this Mary with Antipas to keep his eyes from straying to other women, like you, for example.”

“Keeping his eyes from straying would be an impossible task.”

“Do you think Mary is jealous of you now?”

“That woman!” Herodias tossed her head. “Of course not. Nor am I jealous of her. I really don’t care if he spends an occasional night in her bed. All I want is to be Tetrarchess. If he marries me, I shall insist, though, that he divorce that Arabian woman. No, our concern, Claudia”—she lowered her voice and glanced cautiously around the room, but Neaera had left the solarium—“is not what the Jews in Galilee, or his present wife, or this woman from Magdala will think, but rather what the Prefect himself will think. Sejanus could cause us much trouble. But now everything seems to be all right. Antipas assures me that we needn’t worry about it any longer. He says that he and Sejanus have reached an understanding.”

“And I have a good idea of what that understanding is based upon,” Claudia said. “But what about your husband, Herodias? What will Philip think?”

“Philip! Hah!” She sneered. “What Philip thinks is of no concern. I’ve never really cared for him anyway. It’s a little hard to feel romantic toward a man who’s your half uncle, you know.”

“But Antipas, too, is your half uncle, isn’t he? And he’s Philip’s half brother as well. Hmm.” She smiled mischievously. “That makes him both Salome’s half uncle and half great-uncle, doesn’t it? That is, if Philip’s her father.”

“Well, yes,” Herodias admitted. “I suppose he’s her father. Anyway, he thinks so. But he’s also an old man, a generation older than I.” She said it with evident sarcasm. “Antipas is old too, of course, but remember, my dear, he’s the Tetrarch of Galilee, while Philip is only a tiresome, fast aging, disowned son of a dead king, dependent for his very existence on the favor of a crotchety Emperor and a conniving Prefect. Antipas is old and fat, Claudia, but he has power and an opulence far in excess of Philip’s, and a title, too. And some day, perhaps not too far away, with my pushing him, who knows, he may be a king like his father was.” She shrugged. “As for romance, the world’s filled with younger men.”

Claudia studied the face of her Idumaean friend. “Herodias, you worship power, don’t you?”

“Why shouldn’t I?” Herodias replied tartly. “Power and wealth, you forget, are rightfully mine. I am the granddaughter of Mariamne, King Herod’s royal wife, daughter of the Maccabeans, while Philip’s mother was only a high priest’s daughter and the mother of Antipas was a Samaritan woman. I am descended from the true royalty in Israel.” Her irritation faded as quickly as it had come. “You say I worship power. What else, pray, is there for one to worship? Your pale, anemic Roman gods? Bah! You don’t worship them yourself. Why then should I? I’m not even a Roman. Silly superstition, your Roman gods, and well you know it, Claudia. And the gods of the Greeks are no better. Nor the Egyptians. If I had to embrace the superstition of any religion I would be inclined to worship the Yahweh of the Jews. He’s the only god who makes any sense at all to me, but even he is too fire-breathing and vindictive for my liking. But I’m not a Jew, Claudia, even though I am descended on one side from the royal Maccabeans. I’m a Herod, and the Herods are Idumaeans. The Jews call them pagans, and by the Jews’ standards, pagans we are.” For a moment she was thoughtful, and Claudia said nothing to break the silence. “But I suppose you’re right, Claudia,” she said at last. “If I have any god at all, he’s the two-headed god of power and money. And if the Tetrarch were your Longinus, well, my god would have a third head, pleasure. I envy you, Claudia! By the way,” she added, as she poured wine for her guest and herself, “may I be so bold, my dear, as to inquire how things between you and the centurion stand just now?”

“That’s why I came to see you, Herodias. I wanted to thank you for a most enjoyable evening too, but mainly I wanted to tell you that Longinus and I have—how did you express it—reached an understanding.”

“Wonderful!” Herodias beamed. “Are you going to marry him, Claudia, or are you...?” She hesitated, grinning.

“Am I going to marry him, or will we just continue as we are without the formality of marriage vows?” She laughed. “Yes, I’m planning to marry him. But this is what I wanted to tell you, Herodias. I’m going out with him to Palestine. He’s being sent there on some sort of special mission by the Prefect Sejanus.”

“By all the gods, that is wonderful, Claudia! Then we’ll be able to see each other out there. Where will you be stationed? At Caesarea? Jerusalem? Maybe even Tiberias?”

“He hasn’t received his detailed orders yet. But I’ll be able to visit you at the palace anyway. I hear it’s a magnificent place.”

“It must be. I’m anxious to see it myself; you know, I haven’t been near the place since it was finished. And it will be wonderful to have you and Longinus to visit us.” But suddenly her expression sobered. “Claudia, has the Emperor given his permission for you to marry Longinus? And does the Prefect approve?”

“Neither of them knows about it yet. But I’m sure they’ll both be glad to see me married and away from Rome. Longinus is going to speak to Sejanus about us.”

They heard voices in the atrium. Claudia stood up quickly. “That must be the Tetrarch. By Bona Dea, I didn’t realize I was staying this long; I must be going. Longinus will be waiting for me. Herodias, surely we’ll see one another again before either of us sails for Palestine?”

“Yes, we must. And when we do, we’ll both know more about our plans.”

Neaera entered. “Has the Tetrarch come?” Herodias asked.

“No, Mistress, it’s a soldier sent by the Prefect. He seeks the Lady Claudia. He awaits her in the atrium.”

The soldier, one of the Praetorian Guardsmen, announced that the Prefect Sejanus was at that moment waiting for Claudia in her own apartment at the Imperial Palace. He added that he hoped they might start immediately; he feared the Prefect might be getting impatient.

But when they reached her house and she entered the atrium to greet the Prefect of the Praetorian Guard, Sejanus bowed low and smiled reassuringly. “I come from an audience with your beloved stepfather, the Emperor, at Capri,” he said. “He commanded me to bear to you his esteem and fatherly love and to offer his congratulations upon the most excellent plans he has projected—with my warm approval, let me hasten to assure you—for your forthcoming marriage.”

“For my marriage? But, Prefect Sejanus....” Claudia paused, striving to maintain outward composure.

“I know it comes as quite a surprise to you. But the arrangements have been completed, and I’ve come here to tell you immediately on my return from Capri. You and your future husband are the only ones who are being informed now of the Emperor’s plans. But you will be married soon, even before you and your husband leave for his tour of duty in Palestine.”

“In Palestine!”

How could the Emperor have known about Longinus and me? The Prefect? Of course, that’s how. Sejanus knew that Longinus was with me at the banquet Antipas gave for Herodias; he knew that Longinus was at my house later that evening when he sent Cornelius out to fetch him, or he learned of it when they came afterward to his palace. Old Sejanus must not be so bad, after all. Nor is the Emperor, either. Perhaps I have been too severe in judging them. Perhaps they both have their good moments, their generous impulses....

“Yes, to Palestine.” The Prefect was speaking. “He has promised your hand in marriage to a Roman army officer who, if he follows my orders implicitly and remains completely loyal to me, may shortly be not only a man of wealth but also a leader of influence in the affairs of the Empire.”

Claudia was about to express her thanks to the Emperor and his most excellent Prefect and to ask when the wedding would be held. But some instinctive vein of caution restrained her from mentioning Longinus’ name. Now the Prefect was speaking again.

“Needless to say, I join the Emperor in praying the gods that you and the Procurator Pontius Pilate lead long lives and find great happiness with each other.”

“The Procurator Pontius Pilate! Then....” But again caution stopped her just in time.

Sejanus smiled. “You are surprised, my dear Claudia? And whom did you think the Emperor had chosen to be your husband?”

“But I ... I don’t even know this Pontius Pilate.” Claudia ignored the Prefect’s question. “He is to be Procurator in Palestine, succeeding Valerius Gratus?”

“Procurator of Judaea, with headquarters at Caesarea, yes.” His grin was sardonically beguiling. “But what were you about to say?”

“I was going to observe that then I would be spending the rest of my life away from Rome, living in a distant provincial army post,” she lied, not too convincingly, she suspected.

But Sejanus did not pursue his questioning. “Not if the Procurator conducts the affairs of his post in the manner that I have outlined to him.”

“Has he been informed of the Emperor’s plans for ... for us?”

“Yes. And he is tremendously happy and excited, as what man wouldn’t be, my dear Claudia?” His lips flattened bloodless across his teeth, and his little eyes flamed. “Even I, with my youth long fled, envy him!”

7

Claudia, striving to be courteously casual, walked with the Prefect to the doorway where two Praetorian Guardsmen awaited him. As they went out she closed the pivoted double doors behind them, but after a moment she cautiously drew one back and peered through the narrow slit.

The Prefect’s bearers and the guards who had remained outside were standing stiffly at attention, the bearers at the sedan-chair handles; one of the guards stepped forward quickly to open the door. Sejanus paused an instant and spoke to the man; then he stepped into the chair and, as the guard closed the door, pulled together the shielding curtains. The guard raised his hand, and the bearers moved off smartly.

Claudia saw, however, that the bodyguard did not march off with the Prefect’s procession; instead, he peered about furtively, cast a hurried glance toward her doorway, and then merged into the traffic pushing along the narrow, cobbled way. Momentarily she lost him but in the next instant discovered him idling in front of a shop diagonally across from her entrance. But not for long did he study the wares of the merchant; she saw that he had faced about and was staring intently at her own doorway.

“I thought so,” she observed to Tullia, who had retreated into the shadowed narrow corridor as Sejanus was leaving. “The Prefect left one of his bodyguards to watch the house. He either wishes to know where I’ll be going or who will be coming here, perhaps both. I don’t know what he is scheming, Tullia”—the maid had come forward and secured the doors—“but whatever it is, I don’t like it. Longinus may endanger himself by coming. We must warn him. But how, Tullia? He is likely to be arriving any moment; he must have been delayed at Castra Praetoria, or he would have been here already.”

Quickly she told the maid the startling news the Prefect had brought.

“Anyone who leaves this house through these doors, Mistress, then is sure to be followed. But I could go out through the servant’s entrance on some contrived mission and perhaps be able to warn him.”

“Good, Tullia. You can be taking something to Senator Piso’s house and carry a message to Longinus. Talk with him if he is there and tell him what has happened, but say that I’ll arrange to meet him later, perhaps at the house of Herodias.”

“Or maybe, Mistress, at the shop of Stephanos.”

“Yes. Maybe the goldsmith’s would be better. But if the Prefect’s men should follow and ask you questions, Tullia, what will you say?”

“I could be bearing a small gift to Philo, Senator Piso’s old Greek slave who tutored his children. He’s quite ill and....”

“Wonderful! Tullia, you are indeed my treasure. Take the old man a jar of that honey from Samos; he would like that. And some wheat cakes and a bottle of the Falernian.” She was silent a moment, thoughtful. “By the Bountiful Mother! Tullia, I’ll help you get away by leading that soldier myself on a false chase. Fetch me my cloak and scarf. I’ll pretend to be disguising myself in order to slip away. Then he’ll follow me. Now find the things to take to old Philo, and get yourself ready. And do hurry.”

In a few minutes Tullia returned with the cloak and scarf. “The basket of food is ready,” she said. She helped her mistress put on the cloak and tie the scarf so that much of her face was concealed. “Leave the door ajar as I go out,” Claudia instructed her, “and when you see the soldier following me, close the door and slip away yourself through the servants’ entrance. And return the same way, as quickly as you can.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“And, Tullia, say to Longinus that I instructed you to tell him that what has happened changes nothing, that as far as I am concerned everything is just as it was with him and me. But say as little as you can to anyone else, Tullia, and nothing concerning the Prefect’s visit.”

Claudia walked to the entrance doors and turned to face her maid again. “You go out and look around furtively as though you were seeing that the way was clear for me. That will likely warn the guardsman that something is afoot, that we suspect someone may be watching the house. Then I’ll go out, and because I will not have my bearers summoned, he’ll surmise that I am trying to leave unnoticed.”

Then she puckered her rouged lips into a thoughtful bud. “But why is old Sejanus having us watched? Did he think that I would slip out to tell Longinus? Does he want me to tell the centurion and perhaps deliberately prejudice him against Pilate?” She shook her head slowly. “But how can he know about Longinus and me?”

“Perhaps, Mistress, he only suspects,” Tullia answered. “It may be that he is trying to find out just what your relationship is.”

“Maybe so. But little he’ll discover now, by the gods!” She opened the door and peered out. “Now.”

Tullia slipped through the doorway, looked up and down the narrow street, then stepped back into the atrium.

“Now I’ll go,” Claudia said. “Be careful, Tullia. And do guard your tongue.” Outside she readjusted her scarf and pulled her cloak more closely about her. Then she stepped into the cobble-stoned way and walked rapidly along it.

Tullia, peeping through the slit in the doorway, saw the Prefect’s man emerge from the shadows of a shop entrance and move off quickly to follow her. When the two had disappeared around the turn, Tullia closed the doors and hurriedly recrossed the atrium. A moment later she slipped out through the servants’ entrance. A freshly starched napkin covered the food in the basket she carried.

8

An unexpected assignment, fortunately, had delayed Longinus’ departure from Castra Praetoria, and he had just reached home when Tullia arrived at Senator Piso’s. Quickly she told him of the Prefect’s visit to her mistress.

He listened attentively, outwardly calm but inwardly with rage mounting as her story progressed. “Go back to your mistress, Tullia,” he said, when she finished, “and tell her that with me, too, nothing is changed. But warn her to make no attempt, until I tell her, to communicate with me. The Prefect is diabolically clever; he may suspect that we will try to thwart his plans. I don’t understand just what he’s scheming; we must be careful. But assure her that I will find some way of getting a message to her.”

“Centurion Longinus, if I may suggest, sir, should you send the message, or bear it yourself, to the shop of Stephanos in the Vicus Margaritarius....”

“I know that shop, Tullia, and the goldsmith, too.”

“Then, sir, from there I could take your message verbally to my mistress. Stephanos is the son of my father’s brother. He can be trusted, you may be assured, sir.”

“That’s a good arrangement, Tullia. And should your mistress wish to send me a message, you can leave it with the goldsmith. But do warn her to be careful. The Prefect may be setting a trap for us.”

The goldsmith Stephanos was, like his cousin Tullia, a Greek-speaking Jew who had been reared in the Jewish colony in Rome. Although a young man, he had already established a profitable business in the capital, and his customers numbered many of the equestrian class, including members of Senator Piso’s family. Consequently, Longinus, were he being watched, could go to the goldsmith’s shop without arousing suspicion.

Longinus discovered how fortunate they had been in taking such precautions when, a week after Tullia’s visit to him, he was again summoned to the palace of the Prefect.

Sejanus gave little time to the formalities of greeting the Senator’s son. “I am now prepared to hand you your orders, Centurion Longinus,” he said. “But before I do so I must ask you if you have any reservations whatsoever concerning this mission I propose to send you on.” The Prefect’s cold little eyes were studying him, Longinus realized, and he was determined that he would reveal neither fear nor surprise.

“None, sir. I’m a soldier, and I await the Prefect’s orders.”

But Sejanus was not satisfied. “When last I talked with you, you said that you were hardly acquainted with Pontius Pilate, that you were in no sense an intimate friend. But I ask you now, do you have any hostility toward him?” He leaned forward, and his eyes bored into the centurion’s bland countenance. “Has anything happened since then that would cause you to change your feeling toward him?”

“I know nothing that he has done, sir, that would cause me to feel hostility toward him. Has he, sir?”

The question seemed to surprise Sejanus. He leaned back against his chair. “He has done nothing. But something has been done that may have caused you to feel bitter toward him.” He was studying the centurion intently. “Bitterness toward the Procurator would render you unfit for the assignment I am proposing for you, just as close friendship for him would do the same.” He smiled, changing his stern tone to one of fatherly interest. “Frankly, Longinus, I had expected to find you bitter toward Pilate, the Emperor, and me.”

“But why, sir, should I be bitter?”

“I had thought that perhaps you would be jealous of him, resent his....”

“Jealous of Pilate?” Boldly Longinus ventured to interrupt. “But why, sir?”

“Pilate is going to marry the Emperor’s stepdaughter and take her out to Judaea when he goes there to begin his duties as Procurator. I had thought that you yourself might be planning to marry Claudia.”

“I, sir?” Longinus affected sudden surprise. “May I respectfully ask why you thought that?”

“You have been seeing her since your return from Germania. She accompanied you to the banquet Antipas gave for his brother’s wife.” Sejanus shrugged. “That suggested it to me.” His lips thinned into a feline grin. “Since I made known to her the Emperor’s plans I have had you both watched; if you have met or communicated with one another, it has escaped my men’s sharp eyes.” His piggish eyes brightened. “I want you to understand, Longinus, that I am not the protector of either Claudia or Pilate. I am not the least concerned with their private lives so long as what they do doesn’t harm me or the Empire. And let me add”—his eyes were dancing now—“I’m not concerned with your private life either. I am determined, however, that nothing be done to interfere with our plans for Pilate and Claudia. But if after they are married and gone out to Judaea, some evening in Caesarea or Jerusalem you should find yourself in Pilate’s bed when Pilate is away, that will be no concern of mine, nor shall I care one green fig’s worth.” Suddenly the lascivious gleam was gone from his eyes, and his countenance was grave. He raised a stern hand and leaned forward again. “But I’ll require of you a true and unbiased report on Pontius Pilate, Longinus. If you think you may be prejudiced against the man because he will have taken Claudia away from you, then I charge you to tell me now and I shall give you some other assignment.”

“I assure you, sir, that I have no hostility toward him. But I do wonder why Claudia is being required to marry him and be virtually exiled from Rome.”

Sejanus studied the senator’s son a long moment. “Longinus, I shall be entirely frank with you, as I shall require you to be with me,” he replied, lowering his voice, though there were no other ears to hear. “The Emperor and I want Claudia exiled, though we would never employ so harsh a word for her being sent away from Rome. Claudia’s the granddaughter of Augustus, remember, and also—it’s generally believed, at any rate—the granddaughter of Mark Antony and the Egyptian Cleopatra. She’s in direct descent from strong-willed, able—and in their day tremendously popular—forebears. Tiberius, on the other hand, is not. Nor does he have any strong following. As you know, Longinus”—he paused, and his small black eyes for an instant weighed the centurion’s expression—“in everything but name, I am the Emperor.”

“Indeed, sir, but were Rome to overthrow the Emperor, the gods forbid, would the people enthrone a woman? Surely, sir, they would never....”

“Of course not. It’s not likely, under any circumstances. But you don’t understand, Longinus.” The Prefect’s grim countenance relaxed a bit, but he kept his voice low as he sat back against his chair. “Claudia is no longer married. While she was married to that fop Aemilius there was no cause for concern. But now she’s divorced and in a position to marry again.” He smiled, and the wanton flame lighted once more. “And beautiful. Gods, what a figure!” He rolled his eyes. “If I were young again, with her I could be Emperor of Rome!” He was silent a moment. “But I am Emperor of Rome—in all but title.” Now Sejanus was suddenly grave, and old, and the flame was only of an innate cunning. He leaned toward the centurion. “Longinus, any man in Rome, any man, would be happy to marry Claudia. She’s beautiful, rich, highly intelligent, and the granddaughter of Rome’s greatest Emperor. Being that, she remains a threat to us as long as she is in Rome. What if some strong, ambitious general or senator, for example, should marry her and undertake to displace Tiberius?” He sat back and gestured with outspread palms. “Don’t you see, Centurion? And displacement of Tiberius—and me—would be disastrous for your father, of course, and for you. You and I must work together just as your father and I have been doing. So I shall look forward not only to your frequent reports of a military and administrative nature, particularly with respect to the collection of revenue, but now that Claudia is going out there, to tidbits of information concerning her and Pilate.” His sensual lips thinned across his teeth. “Claudia must be kept away from Rome, Longinus, but she must be kept happily away, too. So if you can help make her stay in Judaea pleasant, if you can help Pilate keep her satisfied, or if you can keep her satisfied,” he added with a leer, “you will be serving the Emperor and me, your father, and yourself. And I don’t care how you do it. Be careful to avoid scandal, though, that might reach Rome.” He grinned again. “I think you need have little fear of Pilate.” His lips were twisted in an evil smile. “Now have I answered your question, Longinus? Do I make myself entirely clear?”

“You do, sir.” Longinus’ countenance was impassive, he hoped, but his palm itched to be doubled into a fist that would smash the leer off the Prefect’s face.

“Then these are your orders. Three days hence the ‘Palmyra’ sails for Palestine. Aboard will be a maniple of troops to relieve two centuries of the Second Italian Cohort. You will command a century that will be stationed at Caesarea under Sergius Paulus. Centurion Cornelius will command the other. Also aboard will be Tetrarch Herod Antipas. You and your century will go ashore at Caesarea, but Cornelius and his will accompany Herod to Joppa. There they will land, and Cornelius will escort the Tetrarch to Jerusalem. Ostensibly Herod will be going up to the Temple to worship, but he will be bearing a message from me to old Annas, the former high priest.” He paused but did not explain further. “From Jerusalem,” he went on, “Cornelius will escort Herod to Tiberias, where the century will be stationed, with a garrison post at Capernaum supporting it. And now, to get back to you, Longinus, I have dispatched orders to Sergius Paulus that although you will command a century, you must be allowed leave any time you request it to undertake special missions. I indicated to him that these missions would be concerned primarily with the government’s interest in the operations of your father’s factories in Phoenicia. This work understandably could take you to the plants in Phoenicia and also to Tiberias, Jerusalem, and other regions in Palestine. The cohort commander must never suspect, nor anyone else, including Claudia, remember, that you are keeping sharp eyes and ears on Pilate and Herod Antipas. I’m sending you ahead on the ‘Palmyra,’ Longinus, so that you will be in Caesarea when Pilate and Claudia arrive there.” He studied the centurion. “Is everything understood, Centurion?”

“Yes, sir, I understand.” His forehead creased into small wrinkles. “When you talked with me before, sir, you said that I would be expected to keep watch on the activities of three persons, Pilate, Antipas, and....”

“Claudia, of course, was the third.” He twisted his vulture-like head to scan the large chamber, a habit developed during long years of caution. “Watch her, too. Know what she is doing, what she is thinking even, if you can.” He lowered his voice. “Be careful, Centurion. She’s a clever woman, with brains worthy of old Augustus. I am not concerned, as I said, with her morals, or Pilate’s, or yours. But be careful.” His little eyes fired again, and a wry grin twisted his face. “Don’t let Pilate catch you in bed with her. Such carelessness might destroy your effectiveness.”

Sejanus stood up, a signal that his business with the centurion was finished. Longinus arose quickly to stand at attention, concerned that even yet he might reveal in the Prefect’s presence the revulsion mounting within him.

“Send me reports as often and as regularly as you have valuable information to give, Longinus. Use great care to see that your messages are well-sealed and not likely to go astray. Watch those three. Let nothing of significance escape your notice, and let nothing be omitted from your reports. Keep Claudia under surveillance, but don’t get so occupied with her that you aren’t fully alive to everything that is happening. Watch her, regardless of what else you two may be doing!”

9

Longinus led his century from its quarters at Castra Praetoria westward through the Viminal Gate along the way that skirted the leveled-out northern extremity of Esqueline Hill.

At the point where this way joined Via Longa the procession entered the cobblestoned street and moved westward and then straight southward. Longinus glanced over his shoulder and had a glimpse, between shops that crowded the lower level of Quirinal Hill, of his father’s great house high on that elevation. But quickly he lost sight of it as his century became virtually submerged in the dense traffic fighting its way slowly along Via Longa. Fortunately, the legionaries were bearing only their lightest armor; the heavier gear had been sent ahead and put aboard the “Palmyra.” But even thus equipped, in the narrow, packed street, though it was one of Rome’s important thoroughfares, they were finding it increasingly difficult to maintain a steady march.

As the century began to pass north of the crowded Subura, that motley district of massed tenements, shops, taverns, and brothels already being pointed out as the birthplace more than a century ago of the great Julius Caesar, the press of the throng so increased that the soldiers were almost forced to fight their way forward. But progress became easier in the area below the Forum Augustus, and as the troops were pushing past it toward the Forum Romanum, Longinus glanced toward the summit of Palatine Hill crowned by the sprawling great Imperial Palace; his eyes went immediately to the northeast wing and to the window in Claudia’s bedroom through which he had heard, one recent morning, the rising trumpet call from the post.

Longinus had not seen the Emperor’s stepdaughter since the day the Prefect had visited her, though they had exchanged messages left with Stephanos the goldsmith at his shop in Vicus Margaritarius. Claudia’s last message had assured him that she would contrive some plan for seeing him immediately upon her arrival with Pilate at Caesarea; that shouldn’t be too difficult. Tullia had relayed Claudia’s message to Stephanos, and Longinus had received it verbally from the goldsmith. “We will have the Great Sea between the Emperor and Sejanus and us,” she had sent word to the centurion. “It will be much safer then; as for Pilate, I am little concerned with what he thinks or does; in fact, he’ll do nothing.”

Before the Forum Romanum Longinus led his troops straight southward. At the northwest end of Circus Maximus they veered westward and went along the way leading across the Tiber on the ancient Pons Sublicius, fashioned of great stones fitted together to span the swiftly flowing muddy water. Near the bridge entrance the column turned left and paralleled the stream to halt at the pier just below the Sublicius. Quickly the legionaries went aboard the “Palmyra.”

Longinus’ troops were the last to embark, and within an hour the “Palmyra” began slowly to shove its stern out into the stream. When the ship was safely away from the pier, the hortator gave a sharp command, and the long oars, manned by galley slaves chained to their three-tiered benches, rose and fell in perfect cadence, with the starboard oarsmen pushing forward and those on the port side pulling hard, so that the “Palmyra’s” bow came around; soon the vessel was moving steadily downstream.

Longinus and Cornelius, having stowed their gear, returned to the deck to stand together on the port side near the stern. By now the vessel was rounding the slight westward bend in the river and was passing the Aventine Hill. Cornelius, watching the yellow waters churning in the wake of the “Palmyra,” raised his eyes and pointed across the stern toward the Imperial Palace, the western front of which they could see jutting past the squared end of the Circus Maximus. The upper section of the great palace was visible above the race course. “Longinus, I’m surprised you’re leaving her in Rome. I thought that if you ever went back to Palestine, you’d be taking Claudia with you.”

Longinus wondered if by some chance Cornelius had learned of the Emperor’s plans for his stepdaughter and was trying now gently to probe further. “But the night you came to her house for me was the first time I’d seen her after returning from Germania,” he protested, laughing. “Wouldn’t that be a little fast? She’s the Emperor’s stepdaughter, you know.”

“Well, maybe I was imagining things.” Cornelius shrugged. “But she is a beautiful woman.”

“I agree, Cornelius. The Bountiful Mother was lavish with her gifts to the Lady Claudia.” He turned to lean against the rail. “What I’m wondering, though, is why Herod didn’t marry Herodias and bring her along.”

“Maybe he has married her. But I suspect that whether he has or not, he’ll be returning to Rome for her before many months. That is, after he’s made peace with the Tetrarchess and old King Aretas, her father.” He grinned. “I’d wager, too, that you’ll be coming back for Claudia.”

Longinus laughed but made no comment. His friend, he reasoned, did not know about Claudia and Pontius Pilate. Nor would he tell him yet.

Now the “Palmyra” was moving swiftly, its cadenced oars rising and falling rhythmically to propel the vessel much faster downstream than the current unaided would have borne it. They had come opposite the thousand-foot-long Emporium huddled on the Tiber’s eastern bank, its wharves crawling with slaves moving great casks and bales of merchandise into the warehouses or bringing them out to be loaded aboard ships preparing to slip down the Tiber and into the Great Sea at Ostia. Black Ethiopians and Nubians, their sweating bodies shining as though they had been rubbed with olive oil and naked except for brightly colored loincloths, straggled at their tasks. Blond warriors brought from Germania as part of some Roman general’s triumph, their skins now burnt to the color of old leather, and squat, swarthy men from Gaul and Dalmatia, from Macedonia and the Greek islands, captives of Roman legionaries ranging far from the Italian mainland, pulled and shoved to the roared commands of the overseers and the not infrequent angry uncoiling of long leather whips.

“Did you ever realize, Longinus, what a comprehensive view you get of Rome and the Empire from a ship going along the Tiber?” Cornelius nodded toward the stern. “Look at those marble-crowned hills back there, literally overrun with palaces, billions of sesterces spent in building them, hundreds, thousands of lives used up, sacrificed, raising them one above the other. The people in them, too, Longinus, and the rottenness—smug hypocrisy, adherence to convention, infidelity, unfairness, utter cruelty, depravity. Rome, great mistress of the world. Hah!” He half turned and pointed toward the Emporium. “Those sweating slaves over there would agree.” He gestured with opened hands. “Ride down the Tiber and see Rome, glorious Mother Rome, from Viminal’s crown to Emporium’s docks, eh?”

“You’re right,” Longinus smiled. “And it’s only because the gods have decreed for us a different fate that you and I are not over there heaving crates, or chained here pulling oars.” He leaned over the rail and studied the rhythmical rise and fall of the long, slim oars. “No doubt there are among these slaves several whose intelligence, education, and culture are considerably greater than the hortator’s, and I’m sure.... Look!”

Cornelius followed the direction of Longinus’ outstretched arm. One of the oars had come up beneath a floating object and sent it spinning and twisting in the churning muddy flood. Now another oar’s sharp blade struck the object, ripping apart its once carefully folded wrapping; as the oar cleared the surface, the wrapping unrolled, exposing the body of a tiny infant, chalk-white in the yellow water. It spun giddily for a moment, then sank.

“By the gods!” Cornelius shouted. “It’s an exposed baby girl!”

But now the small, lifeless body bobbed to the surface and for one unruffled moment lay on its back, eyes wide-open and fixed, staring upward unseeing toward the two centurions leaning over the ship’s rail. In that same instant the oars descended, and the knife-sharp edge of one near the stern sliced diagonally across the drowned infant; the oar shivered with the unexpected added burden, but it bore the mangled small corpse beneath the thick waters, and up through them rose a trickle of dark crimson.

“She wasn’t dead when she was thrown in,” Cornelius said, “and that wasn’t long ago. Perhaps from one of the bridges back there, or maybe a wharf. Or even a boat ahead.” His shoulders trembled in an involuntary shudder. “Longinus, I could kill a man in battle without blinking, but I couldn’t throw an infant into the Tiber. By the gods, how can any man do it?”

“Nevertheless, hundreds do it every year, Centurion. We were speaking of those slaves over there on the Emporium’s docks and these galley slaves rowing us. And this drowned baby, and countless others who simply lost when the gods rolled the dice. The fickle gods, my friend, the unfeeling, stonehearted gods.”

“Don’t blame the gods, Longinus. Blame rather Rome’s mounting vanity and greed, her selfishness, cruelty.”

“You know I’m not blaming the gods, Cornelius; I have no more faith than you have even in their existence. They are nothing but pale nobodies, fabrications in which not even intelligent children believe.”

“Fabrications, yes. Our gods are inventions, but they serve a purpose and are necessary.”

“Necessary?” The centurion’s face had twisted into a heavy scowl. “Why, Cornelius?”

“Because they fill a place, supply a need, Longinus. It’s the nature of man to look to some higher power, isn’t it, some greater intelligence? Else why would one invent these gods; why would primitive peoples carve them from wood and stone; why would we and the Greeks and the Egyptians raise great temples to them?”

“Do you contend then that people worship these carved sticks and stones as symbols of some higher intelligence and power rather than the carved objects themselves, even primitive peoples? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Some—many, in fact—have become confused, of course, and in seeking to worship this mysterious divinity they go through a form or ceremony of worshiping the symbol. But what I’m trying to say, Centurion, is that it is the nature of mankind to look to something higher, something more intelligent, more powerful, better, yes, than man himself, better even than such an exemplary man as our beloved”—now his tone was sarcastic—“Emperor, or his most worthy Prefect. And if man seeks such a being to worship—and all men, mind you, even savages, even those wild tree worshipers in Britannia do it—doesn’t it stand to reason that there should be such a being?”

The “Palmyra” had entered the smooth bending of the Tiber and was moving rapidly toward the river’s nearest approach to Janiculum Hill, Rome’s Jewish quarter on the west bank of the stream. Longinus pointed to the steep rise of the hill and the plane before it cluttered with the densely massed homes of thousands of Jews, many of them born in the capital, others newly settled there. “It seems to me, Centurion, that you’ve become an adherent of the Jewish one-god religion.”

His words amused Cornelius. “Other Romans at our post in Galilee have charged me with the same thing. It came about, I suppose, from my helping the Jews at Capernaum build their new synagogue.”

“Then surely you must be a member of their fellowship or synagogue ... whatever they call it?”

“No, I’m no convert to the Jews’ religion, Centurion. I don’t belong to the synagogue. I helped them, I told myself, in order to promote good relations between the Jews in Galilee and the members of our small Roman post. But maybe I had other reasons, too. There are many things about their one-god religion that seem sensible and right to me. But there are also practices among the Jews that I don’t approve of at all, practices that seem cruel and senseless. Their system of sacrifices, for instance. I can see no act of proper worship in slitting the throats of innumerable sheep and cattle to appease an angry god....”

“I agree. But we do the same thing. Doesn’t the Emperor dedicate the games by slitting the throats of oxen?”

“Exactly. But what is the good of such worship or ceremony or whatever you may choose to call it? If there is a god to whom the sacrifice is being made, what good does it do him, what pleasure could he possibly receive from it?”

“I see nothing to any of it, Cornelius. Roman, Greek, Egyptian, Jewish, forest worship in Britannia, whatever the system is; it’s all superstition, delusion....”

“I grant you, maybe it is. But, Longinus, don’t you feel deep down inside yourself that there must be some intelligence, some power, far above man’s very limited intelligence and power, that created the earth and the heavens and controls them? Else how did they get here in the first place?”

“I don’t know, Cornelius. You’ve gone ahead of me, my friend. I never gave much thought to matters like this.” The lines of his forehead wrinkled into a frown. “But even if you should feel that way, how could you ever know? Have you seen a god, Centurion? Have you ever felt one or heard one speak?”

“I’ve never seen one, Longinus. But I think I have felt and perhaps heard one. There have been times when I was confident that I was communicating with one.” Cornelius watched the spume thrown up by the flashing oars as they cut into the muddy waters. He turned back to face Longinus. “That’s the difficulty, you know, communication. How can one get a grip upon a god—the god, if there be but one, and the way I see it that is the only sensible answer—like those slaves down there grip the oar handles? How can one hear a god, see him, taste him? Obviously, one cannot, for this god, whether there be one or many, must be different from man; he must be a spiritual being rather than a physical one. But if he is a spirit, how can we of the physical world communicate with him and he with us? There, my friend, is the problem.”

Longinus shook his head. “You’ve got me, Cornelius. I cannot imagine a spirit, a being without a body, a something that is nothing.”

“Many persons can’t, Centurion. And that’s the main difficulty in accepting the Jews’ Yahweh, their one god. He is a spirit, they say, without physical form or substance. They believe in him, but how do they know him, how do they learn what he’s like? In a word, if he does exist, how can he be made comprehensible to man?”

Longinus smiled indulgently. “But you say you think you have felt one and maybe heard one. Why?”

“I don’t know if I can explain. Maybe it goes back to the fact that my first lessons were taught me by a Greek slave. He was purchased by my father from a lot brought to Rome after one of those early rebellions. This man was one of the wisest I have ever known. I shall never forget his teaching concerning the gods. When we would speak lightly of our Roman gods, old Pheidias would scold us. ‘Don’t speak disparagingly of the gods,’ he would say, even though he himself did not believe in them. I can still remember his words. ‘The gods,’ he said, ‘are symbols of man’s efforts to attain a higher life, a more noble plane of living. The good gods are the symbols of the good attributes in man; evil gods symbolize the base passions. Therefore, hold communion with the good gods, and seek to avoid contact with the evil ones.’”

“But how does that teaching explain what you feel?”

“Wait,” Cornelius smiled, then continued. “Sometimes Pheidias would confide in us and talk in more intimate terms of his own philosophy. At such times he would tell us that his own gods were merged into one omnipotent and omniscient good god, a spirit without a body, everywhere present. This one god was a synthesis of the good, the true, and the beautiful. And though he could not be felt, as I feel this rail here”—Cornelius ran his hand along the ship’s rail—“and though he was not to be seen or heard as one sees or hears another person, he was nevertheless even more real. ‘For the only things that are real,’ my tutor would say, ‘are the intangible things, and the only imperishable things are those that have no physical being. Truth, for example. Truth has no body. Who can hold truth in his hand? And yet truth is eternal, unchangeable, indestructible. And love? Who can destroy love; who can defeat it? Yet can you put love in a basket and carry it from the shop? And who can measure a modius of love or weigh out twelve unciae?’” Calmly he regarded Longinus. “And I ask you, my friend, who can? What, after all, is more indestructible, unchangeable, immortal than the intangible?”

The “Palmyra” was moving around the river’s bend now and gaining speed as it came into the straight stretch at a point even with the right-angled turning of the city’s south wall. “But forgive me, Longinus,” Cornelius said lightly. “I hadn’t meant to be giving you a lecture on the nature of the gods or the one god.”

“It has been entertaining and enlightening, my friend. And it has convinced me that you do hold with this one-god idea. Those Jews at Capernaum, cultivating the plant that came up from the seeds that old tutor sowed in your childhood, have brought it along to blooming.” He laughed and tapped the rail with the palm of his hand. “Well, perhaps it’s an advance—from the Roman gods to the Jews’ one god—in superstition.” But then the patronizing smile was gone, and he was serious. “I don’t know, Cornelius. This one-god scheme does have its merits, I can see. I would like to believe, and I wish I could, that such an all-powerful, all-wise, all-good being rules the universe. But”—he paused, and a heavy frown darkened his countenance—“Cornelius,” he began again, “I keep thinking of those slaves back there on the Emporium docks, countless slaves all over Rome and throughout the Empire, beaten, maimed, killed at the whims of their masters, yes, and that baby thrown into the Tiber, numberless unwanted babies exposed to die—drowned, thrown to the beasts, bashed against walls—and yet you say that one good god rules, one all-powerful and all-knowing god, one good god.” He thrust forth a quivering, challenging forefinger almost under his friend’s nose. “Then tell me, Cornelius, why does your good one god send all this ignorance, this stupidity, this cruelty, this despicable wickedness on the world? Tell me why; give me one logical, sensible reason, and I’ll fall down at the invisible and intangible feet of your great one god and worship him in utter subjection.”

“I can’t tell you, Longinus. That very question has troubled me, too. I have wondered, and I’ve tried to explain it for myself. I don’t know how old Pheidias explained it, or even if he did. I don’t recall our ever challenging him on that point. But it may be that this one god—if there be one, mind you—does not ordain all the things that happen in the world. It may be that he is even sorrowful, too, because babies are thrown into the Tiber, because men are cruel and heartless toward other men....”

“Then if he is all-powerful, Cornelius, why does he permit it? You say he doesn’t will it. Then why does he allow it?”

Cornelius looked across the deck to the shore line on the starboard side and for a long moment silently considered his friend’s question. “I cannot say, Centurion; it’s a mystery to me. Could it be, though, that the answer, if there be any answer, lies in this god’s determination to give man his freedom? Could it be that even though he is hurt when man abuses the freedom given him, he feels that his children must be free, nevertheless, to work out their destinies? Maybe some such reasoning might explain it. I don’t know.” He shook his head sadly. “What do you think?”

“I disagree, Cornelius. You say that this one god would not order an infant thrown into the river. I agree, but that is not enough. A good god would not permit it.” His grim expression relaxed, but he was still serious. “No, when one sees the condition in which countless men live, the utter unfairness of things, one cannot logically believe in the existence of such a god as you have described. Indeed, it is more logical to believe in our Roman gods than in the god of your old tutor or the Yahweh of the Jews, in our good ones contending with the evil ones”—he shrugged—“with the evil ones usually winning. But it is even more logical, Cornelius, to believe in no gods at all.”

“You have a good argument, Longinus. But it seems to me that we invariably come back to what I said when we started this gods discussion. If there is no higher intelligence, no supreme power, then how did all this”—he swept his arm in a wide arc—“how did we, the world, the sun and moon and stars, everything, how did it all come into existence in the first place? By accident? Bah! And if not by accident, how? Answer me that, Longinus.”

“I can’t answer you. But why should I? What difference does it make? If this good god does exist but does not rule, if he does not enforce a good way of living among men, if he does not protect helpless babies or captured peoples—and obviously he doesn’t—is the world any better off than if no gods existed in the first place?” He smiled complacently. “But, Cornelius, I have no quarrel with your attachment to your tutor’s strangely Yahweh-like god. Some day when I visit you in Capernaum I may go with you to the synagogue or even the Temple at Jerusalem. I may even,” he added with a grin, “offer a brace of doves for the sacrifices. Or would your Yahweh insist on my offering a young lamb?”

“My Yahweh? But I’m no Jew, Longinus. The god of old Pheidias has a greater appeal to me than Yahweh. Yahweh is too stern, too unbending, as they interpret him. But maybe they interpret him wrong, the priests who lead the worship, or maybe I interpret their interpretation wrong. It may be that the true one god”—he smiled—“if there be one, my friend, has never been properly interpreted to man. Maybe we just don’t know him, what he’s like.” He shrugged and stepped away from the rail. “But I think we’ve had enough of gods for one day, don’t you agree? Let’s go inside. I’ve got some work to do before we reach Ostia; you probably have some, too.”

As they started toward the cabin, Longinus turned to look back. Rome was entirely behind them now, off the port stern, but still clearly in sight. Above the city wall and the Aventine Hill beyond and now lifted clear of the Circus Maximus, the sprawling great Imperial Palace atop Palatine Hill flaunted itself in the sunshine.

Had Claudia arisen? Was she now in her bath or in the solarium having her hair dressed or her nails manicured? Was she in the peristylium or on the couch in the exedra? Was she making preparations, not too reluctantly perhaps, for her wedding with Pontius Pilate?

... Yes, and back there somewhere in that press of humanity were Pontius Pilate and the Prefect Sejanus, by all the gods. By all the gods, indeed. Good gods and evil gods, good to Pilate, evil to me....

Longinus abruptly faced about. Ahead, straight over the bow of the “Palmyra,” gaining momentum now in a channel clearing of the jam of traffic within the city’s walls, was Rome’s port of Ostia, where the great mainsail would be hoisted aloft to catch the winds that would help speed the vessel eastward. Ahead and many days and long Great Sea miles distant were the coasts of Palestine ... and Caesarea. Ahead, too, despite all the gods, real or fancied, and despite Sejanus and Pontius Pilate, was Claudia.

Palestine

10

Longinus and Cornelius strolled over to the port bow rail as the “Palmyra,” its mainsail sliding slowly down the mast behind them, swung around the end of the north breakwater and skimmed lightly across the harbor toward the docks at Ptolemaïs.

“I thought Caesarea would be our first stop.”

“We’re putting in here only long enough to drop some passengers and a quantity of goods Herod’s brought from Rome,” Cornelius revealed.

Longinus looked up in surprise. “Herod’s goods?” he asked.

“Furnishings for the palace at Tiberias—bronze tables, chairs, decorative pieces, of Herodias’ choosing, I suspect. In fact, some of it probably came from her house, favorite things to make her feel more at home in Tiberias. Putting those crates ashore here will save us the trouble of carrying them on to Joppa and Jerusalem.”

“But when the Tetrarchess discovers that Herodias had a hand in selecting the things....” Longinus grimaced, laughing. “Say, are you letting your men go ashore here?”

“Only for a few minutes, just to let them stretch their legs while the vessel’s unloading. Don’t worry, they’ve been told to stay in the wharf area. If they were to get near the taverns and brothels, we’d be here all night!”

Already the soldiers of the two centuries, impatient to get ashore ever since they had first spotted Mount Carmel towering above the promontory jutting out from the Phoenician coast, were lining the “Palmyra’s” rails. Cornelius beckoned to one of his legionaries.

“Decius, call out a detachment—twelve men should be enough—to be ready as soon as the ‘Palmyra’ docks to take charge of transporting the shipment of goods the Tetrarch Herod is sending to his palace at Tiberias. His steward Chuza will put several of the palace servants to unloading it and will arrange for obtaining carts and beasts to move it. You will be concerned only with guarding the caravan. But be on the alert every moment, Decius. See that you aren’t surprised by some lurking band of thieves lying in wait for you. If anything should happen to this shipment, by the gods, we’d never hear the end of it; word would get back to Rome and the Prefect himself would know about it.” Upon delivering the goods at the Tetrarch’s palace, he added, Decius should take the detachment to the garrison post and there await his arrival with the remainder of the century, which would be escorting Herod to Jerusalem and from there northward to his Galilean capital.

When some two hours later the unloading had been completed and the other legionaries had returned to the ship, Decius stood with his detachment beside the piled crates and casks and waved good-by to his comrades as the “Palmyra” moved slowly away from the wharf and then, gaining speed, headed on a straight course toward the harbor mouth. The next day the vessel cleared the long breakwater thrust far out into the Great Sea to provide a safe harbor at Caesarea, and Longinus and his century went ashore. While the legionaries were assembling their gear, Cornelius stood with him on the pier.

“Come visit us at Tiberias, Longinus. You can contrive some mission that will warrant your being sent, can’t you?” he asked, then added, “Herodias will probably be coming out from Rome before long. I suspect Herod will be going back for her as soon as he can arrange with the present Tetrarchess for her to be supplanted....”

“If he can—which I doubt.”

“Whether he can amicably or not, I’d wager that he’ll be bringing Herodias to Tiberias as Tetrarchess. Then Claudia can visit her and you can meet her there. And marry her and keep her out here until you’ve completed your tour of duty.” Cornelius winked and playfully nudged his friend with an elbow. “By the gods, maybe that’s what you and Claudia have planned all along. Is it, Longinus?”

“No, we haven’t planned any such thing.” Longinus stared thoughtfully out at the shore before them. “But I’ll contrive some reason for getting up to Tiberias. And we’re bound to meet in Jerusalem during one of the festivals; they bring in the troops then, you know. Or perhaps some mission will bring you to Caesarea; at Tiberias, after all, you’ll be nearer us than we will be to Jerusalem.” He clapped a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “My love, and the blessings of the gods—including your Yahweh—to your family.”

Cornelius stood at the “Palmyra’s” rail as the vessel slipped away from the wharf. When it was nearing the rounding of the breakwater, he heard Longinus’ sharp command, and the century moved off smartly. The tapping of the legionaries’ heavy boots in rhythmical, perfect cadence came clearly to him across the water. Longinus turned and lifted his arm high in salute; Cornelius returned it, as the century, swinging along the cobblestoned way, gained a street corner and turned, then began to be swallowed up into the maze of stone buildings beyond the piers.

The sun was dropping low into the Great Sea when the “Palmyra” sailed into the port at Joppa. Relieved and happy that the long voyage was safely ended, the passengers disembarked to seek refreshment and rest for the night. Early on the morrow Herod Antipas with Mary of Magdala and the others of his company, escorted by Centurion Cornelius and his century, would set out on the forty-mile journey southeastward to Jerusalem.

11

Centurion Cornelius pointed to a horseman hurrying toward them along the narrow road east of the river. “The advance guard must have run into trouble, maybe Bar Abbas and his gang or some other waylaying zealots.”

“Then you’d better send out a patrol to overtake and destroy them,” Herod Antipas scowled. “I have no patience with those rebel cutthroats.”

The caravan trudging up the deep trough of the Jordan had paused for the midday refreshment. Four days ago it had descended the Jericho road from Jerusalem to encamp for the night on the plain before the city. Horses had been provided for the Tetrarch and certain of his household, but the soldiers of the century, with the exception of the small advance and rear patrols, were on foot. Heavily loaded carts and donkeys transported the supplies, gear, and tents. The journey had been made without incident; another day of uninterrupted progress would bring the caravan to the Sea of Galilee, or, if they were lucky, perhaps even as far as Tiberias.

Cornelius stood up and signaled the approaching rider. The horseman rode straight up to him, reined in his mount, and saluted. “Centurion,” he reported, “up ahead at the river crossing there’s a motley crowd of about a hundred persons, most of them men. Judging by their appearance, they must have traveled a long way. They appear to be peaceful, but there’s a wild-looking, hairy fellow haranguing them, and they’re drinking in his every word; they hardly noticed me when I joined them.”

“What was the fellow saying, Lucilius?”

“I couldn’t understand him, Centurion. I’m not familiar with the speech of this region, which I presume it was. But I thought he might be one of those Galilean revolutionaries trying to incite the crowd against our Roman rule.”

“One of those zealots, you mean? No, hardly, Lucilius. Those rebels don’t stand up delivering speeches; their way is to thrust a knife between somebody’s ribs and then slink quickly away. More than likely this fellow’s a religious fanatic, and I would guess his language is Aramaic. There’s probably no harm in him, but you did well to report. I understand Aramaic; I’ll return with you and investigate.”

“I believe I know who the man is, Centurion,” the Tetrarch volunteered. “There was a desert fellow from the Wilderness country beginning to cause a stir here when I was leaving for Rome. I had reports then that he was thundering invectives against everything, even the Tetrarch and his house. He may be inciting the people against Rome. At any rate, I want to hear him, and perhaps you should, too.”

Mary of Magdala, seated near-by, had overheard. “I, too, would like to hear the strange prophet.”

“But surely even your irresistible charms would not tempt this mad Wilderness preacher.” Antipas winked at the centurion.

“I am not interested in charming him. But if this is the man you think he is I have heard much about him. I would like to observe him for myself.”

Cornelius turned back to Antipas. “If the Tetrarch wishes, I’ll send up a patrol to be near-by in case of any trouble. But I think, Sire, you should disguise yourself. Then you will be able to mingle safely with the throng, and the preacher, not knowing the Tetrarch is hearing him, will talk freely.”

Antipas, agreeing, quickly exchanged his purple mantle for the simple Galilean garment of one of his servants and wrapped about his Roman-style cropped head a bedraggled scarf to form an effectively concealing headdress. The servant cut a reed to serve as a walking staff. Mary, too, changed garments and veiled her face in the manner of a Galilean peasant woman.

Cornelius sent a patrol ahead. “Stop this side of the ford,” he instructed Lucilius, “and try to avoid being noticed by the throng down there. But keep on the alert for any commotion that might develop.” Then he, Antipas, and Mary all mounted horses and rode toward the place where the multitude had assembled. At a bend in the road some two hundred paces from the ford the three riders dismounted behind screening thick willows that came up from the river bank; from there they quietly made their way down to the ford and slipped unobtrusively into the crowd.

Every burning dark eye seemed to be focused on the gesticulating, fiercely intent preacher. He stood in the center of the circled throng on the river bank, and his words came to them clear and sharply challenging, angry and pleading, denunciatory and promising.

“You generation of vipers!” he thundered, shaking a gnarled fist in their teeth, “have I not warned you to escape from the wrath that is coming? Do you contend that because you are Abraham’s seed you are secure from the judgment of a righteous God?” He lowered his voice, strode two steps forward, and dramatically wheeled about. “What are Abraham’s descendants to God? Could he not raise up from these very stones”—he pointed toward the smoothly rounded small rocks lining the water’s edge—“children for Abraham? And is not the ax ready at the foot of the tree to cut down every one that does not bear fruit?”

Cornelius nudged a bent Jew, his face streaked with perspiration that ran down in soiled small beads into his grizzled beard, his whole frame seemingly so absorbed in the speaker’s thundering words that he had not even noticed the centurion’s arrival beside him. “That man, who is he?”

The old fellow turned incredulously to stare. “Soldier, you have been in Galilee long enough to speak our tongue, and yet you do not know him?”

“But for many weeks I have not set foot in Galilee,” Cornelius replied. “I am just now returning, by way of Jerusalem, from Rome.”

“He is the Prophet John, soldier, the one sent of God to warn Israel to repent and be baptized.” The old man turned back to give his attention for the moment to the preacher. Then, his face earnest, he confronted Cornelius again. “He is not concerned with Rome, soldier. He preaches only that men should cleanse their hearts of evil and walk in the way of our Yahweh.” Once more he turned to stare at the prophet whose eyes were wildly flaming in his burnt dark face; ignoring Cornelius, the old man leaned forward and raised a knotted hand to cup his ear.

John was tall, and his leathery leanness accentuated his height. The prophet, it was immediately evident to the centurion, was not a man of the cities and the synagogues; he was a son of the desert and the wastelands of Judaea, and the sun and wind had tanned his skin to the color and hardness of old harness. Nor did he appear any more afraid of the proud and opulent Pharisees and Sadducees who confronted him with their disdainful smiles than he must have been of the wild animals of his Wilderness haunts.

“Repent! I say unto you. And bring forth fruits worthy of repentance. Try not further the patience of God. Forswear evil and do good.”

“But what are for us fruits worthy of repentance? What must we do?”

The questioner, his countenance heavy with pain, stood at the river’s edge facing the prophet. His garb revealed him to be a man of means, but it was evident also that the thundering words of the baptizer had stirred him deeply and that he had asked the question in all humility.

John thrust forth a lean forefinger and shook it sternly. “You are of a calling unloved in Israel, and justly so. You have sold your birthright as a son of Israel to join your heel to the conqueror’s to grind Abraham’s seed into the earth. You are a publican; I know you, and I know the publican’s heart.” His voice was almost a hiss, and around the clearing beards nodded in agreement with the prophet’s harsh appraisal. “I call upon you to repent!”

“But what, Rab John, are the fruits of my repentance?” The perspiration was running freely down the man’s face and dripping into his beard. “What must I do?”

“Demand only that which is legally due you.”

“I swear that this I shall henceforth do, Yahweh being my helper. By the beard of the High Priest, I swear it.” The man sighed deeply, and from the fold of his robe pulled forth a kerchief with which he mopped his forehead, his whiskered cheeks, and the dampened long beard.

“But we are not great ones,” ventured a gnarled and grizzled fellow who leaned twisted on his staff, “neither are we publicans. We are the plain and the simple and the poor of Galilee. What shall we do worthy of repentance?”

“You have two coats, though they be worn and patched with much wearing? Then give one to him who has none. And you have food, though it be coarse and not plentiful? Share what you have with him who is hungry.”

Cornelius had noticed, standing not far from the prophet but somewhat withdrawn from the throng as if to avoid contamination with these men of earth such as the one who had just questioned John, a knot of resplendently robed Israelites, their beards oiled and combed and carefully braided, their fingers heavily ringed. Now one of these men, his hands clasped in front of his rounded, sagging paunch, stepped forward a pace and bowed. “Rabbi, we are priests and Levites sent by the rulers in Jerusalem to hear and observe your teaching. We perceive that you speak with great authority. Tell us, Rabbi”—his smile was as unctuous as his beard was oiled—“are you that great One for whom we are looking?”

“I am not the Messiah,” John answered evenly.

“Are you then the Prophet Elijah returned to us?”

“I am not he.”

“Then, Rabbi, who are you? We have been instructed to come and see and carry back our report to the Temple rulers. What then shall we say of you, who you are?”

“Say that I am:

“The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness,

“Prepare ye the way of the Lord,

“Make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

“Every valley shall be exalted,

“And every mountain and hill shall be made low:

“And the crooked shall be made straight,

“And the rough places plain:

“And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,

“And all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.”

“You speak the words of the great Isaiah,” the pompous questioner declared.

“Yes,” John agreed. “And other words he said also.

“The voice said, ‘Cry,’

“And he said, ‘What shall I cry?

“‘All flesh is grass,

“‘And all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field.

“‘The grass withereth, the flower fadeth....

“‘But the word of our God shall stand forever.’”

“Then you, like we, yet look for the coming of the Messiah of God?”

John raised a lean and burnt arm and the haircloth robe slid down along it to his shoulder. He pointed a darting forefinger toward the Temple’s emissary, and his countenance was solemn. “I tell you, that One is now among us, though you have not recognized him as the Messiah of God. And though he comes after me in time, he ranks before me; indeed, I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose his sandal straps. I baptize you with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire!”

“Then, Rabbi, why do you baptize with water?” The unctuous one smiled broadly and, pleased with his cleverness, looked from one member of the delegation to another.

“It is a sign that those who enter upon it have repented and been cleansed in their hearts.” He looked the man in the eyes. “Have you repented, my brother? Is your heart changed? Are you ready for the coming of Him of Whom I have this moment spoken?” John whirled about, and his lean arm described an arc that embraced the multitude. “Repent, ye men of Israel! Ye who dwell in great houses, repent! Ye men of earth who know not where your next mouthful will be found, repent. For the clean in heart do not all dwell in palaces or attend upon the Temple worship, nor do they all go about hungry and naked and shelterless.”

As the prophet paused, he looked toward the centurion and the disguised Tetrarch, who stood beside Mary and within a few paces of the portly questioner from Jerusalem. Cornelius wondered what Herod was thinking of this strange Wilderness preacher, this fiery denouncer of evildoers. But in that same moment John resumed his discourse. “No, sin and wickedness abide in the high places; evil reigns even in the great marble pile built above the graves at Tiberias where the Idumaean pawn of the conqueror despoils and seduces the people of Israel! He, too, my brothers, even he must repent his wicked ways; he must seek the Lord while yet He may be found, or he and his evil associates will be cast into outer darkness!”

The fleeting thought came suddenly to the centurion that the prophet had recognized the large man in the soiled Galilean robe, and perhaps the notorious woman of Magdala as well. But then would he have dared utter such a denunciation? Was the desert preacher really a man of dedication and courage, as people said? Perhaps. Cornelius scrutinized Herod’s face. The Tetrarch’s normally pale complexion had turned an ugly shade of red beneath the twisted turban, while beads of perspiration ran down his heavy jowls. But Mary, though little of her face showed because of the veil, appeared more amused than angered.

The prophet’s interrogator from Jerusalem was still unsatisfied. “But, Rabbi,” he began again, “you say that the Messiah of God is already among us. Why then has he not declared himself, why has he not consumed with holy fire the Edomite who possesses us and tramples into the dust of utter subjection our ancient land?”

John’s eyes flashed angrily, but he controlled his tongue. When he spoke his voice was calm. “It is not for me to explain or defend the will and works of the Messiah. I am but His messenger who goes ahead to announce His coming, to call upon His people Israel to repent that their eyes might be whole to see Him when He comes, that their hearts might be clean to know Him!” With bronzed fist he smote the palm of his left hand, his ardor mounting. “You leaders of the people”—he stabbed a lean forefinger toward the haughty group from Jerusalem—“cleanse your own hearts; let fall from your eyes the scabs of greed and hypocrisy so that when He comes you may recognize Him!”

Cornelius felt a gentle tug on his arm; it was Mary. “The Tetrarch is going back,” she whispered. “He’s furious at the man’s denunciation of him. If it hadn’t been for the fact that he would have had to reveal his identity in doing it, Antipas would have had him arrested. But he didn’t want those puffed toads”—she inclined her head to indicate the Jewish delegation—“carrying stories back, and he wished to avoid provoking a commotion; so he overlooked the....”

“Behold, the Lamb of God!”

Cornelius and the woman, her report to him startlingly interrupted by the prophet’s ejaculation, faced about quickly to look in the direction toward which he was pointing. In that instant the others had whirled about, too. Cornelius and Mary strained forward, trying to see above the heads of the multitude.

“He is the One of Whom I have been speaking!” shouted John. “Behold, the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. Yonder is the Messiah of God!”

They saw coming along the path that led down from the road above the river, walking with long, easy stride as he descended the grade toward the clearing at the ford, a tall, sunburned young man, well-muscled but lithe, broad of shoulders, erect. He wore a plain, brown, homespun robe, belted at the waist with a length of rope, and coarse, heavy sandals. He was bareheaded; his reddish brown hair fell away from a part in the center of his head in locks that curled almost to his shoulders. In his right hand he gripped a long staff cut from a sapling. As he strode down the pathway and across the open space toward the prophet, he seemed deep in thought, almost insensible to the throng about him. He walked straight up to John. Cornelius and Mary could see the two talking in subdued tones, but they could understand nothing of what was being said by either man.

“What are they saying?” It was the bent old Jew; he still stood near-by, and he had cupped his palm to an ear lost in grizzled earlocks. “Soldier, can you hear them?”

“No, not a word,” Cornelius answered. “They aren’t talking loudly enough for us up here.”

At that moment a youth who had been down at the water’s edge standing a few feet away from the prophet approached them. He heard the old man’s question. “They are arguing about baptizing the tall one,” he explained. “He wants the desert preacher to baptize him, but the preacher claims it should be the other way around; he says he isn’t worthy to baptize the Messiah.”

“The Messiah!” The old man had been peering intently at the tall young man standing calmly beside the prophet. “Is that the one the prophet called the Lamb of God, the one long expected of Israel?”

“Yes, the tall one.”

“Why do you ask?” Cornelius inquired of the bent one. “Do you know the man?”

“Do I know him?” The old man chuckled. “Soldier, I come from Nazareth. Many’s the day I have worked with Joseph, that boy’s father, planing one end of a beam while he was shaping the other end. But Joseph’s dead now, been dead a long time. That boy there lives with his mother, the widow Mary.”

“What does he do?”

“He’s a carpenter, too, like his father before him. And he’s a good boy and a hard-working boy, soldier. But Jesus ben Joseph the Messiah of Israel....” The old fellow, both hands braced on his gnarled stick, shook his head incredulously. “Soldier, my faith in that John the Baptizer is weakening. He must be”—he removed one hand from the stick and with bent forefinger tapped his forehead—“a little touched.”

Cornelius laughed. “I don’t know much about this Messiah business, but, I agree, he must be.” Then he turned to Mary. “Are you ready to go? I mustn’t let Herod get too far ahead. I’m responsible for his arriving in Tiberias, you know.”

They started retracing their way along the path to the road; where it joined the broader way, they turned southward. When a moment later they came out from behind a clump of shrubs grown up in an outcropping of small boulders, Cornelius glanced over his shoulder toward the ford and the throng. He caught Mary’s arm and pointed.

The haircloth mantle and the brown homespun robe had been thrown across small bushes at the river’s edge. In the center of the little stream, with the water up to their loincloths and their faces lifted heavenward, stood the gaunt Wilderness prophet and the tall bronzed young man from Nazareth.

12

The Procurator’s Palace sat high on a promontory overlooking the harbor at Caesarea. A marble-paved esplanade led from the cobblestoned street up to the palace, and on its west side facing the Great Sea an immense terrace of colored, polished stones went out from the peristylium.

In the days when King Herod, father of Antipas, determined to build here on the Palestinian coast a fabulous port city to honor his patron, the Emperor Augustus, the place was an insignificant town called by the unusual name of Strato’s Towers. Then there was virtually no harbor. But at tremendous cost in the lives of slaves and artisans and money wrung in taxes from his already poor subjects, Herod built of huge stones sunk in twenty fathoms of often rough water a tremendous mole that went out and around like a protecting arm to form a safe shelter for countless ships of every type.

Quickly old Herod had transformed Strato’s Towers into a beautiful and busy city more Roman than Jewish. A stranger unfamiliar with the region and just landed from a trireme in the harbor at Caesarea, in fact, would hardly realize that he was in a Palestinian city. Not only were its great public buildings and lavish homes Roman—its Procurator’s Palace, its immense hippodrome for athletic sports and gladiatorial combats, its theater, its gleaming marble temples to pagan gods—but Roman, too, were many of its people. Its population actually was of varied nationalities—Roman, Greek, Syrian, Idumaean, Ethiopian, and many others; there were countless slaves from conquered provinces—Germania, Gaul, Dalmatia, even here and there one from Britannia—a motley multitude from every region on the rim of the Great Sea and even from lands farther away. Caesarea was a metropolitan city set down upon the coast of this ancient homeland of the Samaritans and their more peculiarly Hebrew cousins the Judaeans.

Today the newly arrived Procurator Pontius Pilate and his wife sat in the warming sunshine on the terrace and looked down upon the busy harbor and the Great Sea stretching westward into the blue haze. Obliquely facing them, so that he could see both the harbor and a portion of the maze of buildings pushing one upon the other from it, sat their guest, the Centurion Longinus.

Claudia pointed to a large merchant ship being tied up at one of the docks below. “This is a tremendous harbor, rivaling Ostia’s, isn’t it? Look at all those vessels, and that one that has just sailed in. Judging by its size, I’d say it was an Alexandrian grain ship.”

“It is a great harbor, and wonderfully protected. In fact, I was amazed to find Caesarea such a modern city.” Pilate smiled broadly. “I had feared that it would be another typical provincial outpost.”

“On the contrary, Excellency, it’s quite a metropolis,” Longinus observed. “You’ll discover people here from every part of the world, and far fewer Jews, I suspect, than you had anticipated finding. Of course, you’ve hardly had time yet to learn much about the city.”

Pilate laughed, but with little humor. “The fewer Jews the better. I’m glad the capital of the province is here rather than at Jerusalem; it would be galling, I suspect, to be forced to spend most of one’s time in that nest of Jews. Speaking of Jerusalem, Centurion, I plan to visit the city shortly and have a straight talk with that High Priest. I wish it known at the very beginning of my Procuratorship that I intend to demonstrate clearly and forcefully, if that be necessary, that Rome cannot be trifled with by these obstinate and pestiferous Jews. You, of course, have been to Jerusalem?”

“Not since I came out this time. But on many occasions previously, including visits during the festivals. If you go there during Passover week, you’ll see Jews from every part of the world.”

“I have already seen enough of them for a lifetime,” Pilate said, scowling. But quickly he smiled again. “Centurion, I am going to the cohort’s headquarters; I wish to talk with Sergius Paulus.” He clapped his hands, and a slave came running. “Summon my sedan bearers,” he commanded. “May I take you to your quarters,” he asked Longinus, “or will you stay longer and entertain Claudia?” He turned to his wife and smiled warmly. “A familiar face, and a Roman one, is particularly welcome in this strange outpost of the Empire, isn’t it, my dear Claudia?”

“Yes, indeed, Pilate.” She reached over and put her hand lightly on the centurion’s arm. “Longinus, do stay and talk. You can give me instructions on how to act out here in this strange region, strange to Pilate and me, at any rate.”

In a few minutes the servant announced that the sedan bearers were awaiting him, and Pilate excused himself. When he was gone, Longinus moved his chair nearer Claudia. “I wonder why he invited me to stay,” he said. “Does he suspect us, do you suppose? Or,” he added with a wry smile, “is there no longer any occasion for his doing that?”

“I don’t think he suspects us, although I haven’t yet learned how to weigh his words or actions. But what if he does?” She shrugged. “With me everything is just as it was before you left Rome. But maybe”—coyly she looked up at him from beneath her long lashes—“you have discovered some woman out here....”

“No. And I haven’t looked. But I wonder how much he knows or suspects.” He told her of his last conversation with the Prefect, of the determination of Sejanus to keep her happily away from Rome, of that wily rascal’s invitation—in fact, almost command—to do whatever might be necessary, including the invasion of the Procurator’s bed, to detain her in contented exile. “But I don’t think he suspected then that we were planning to get married almost immediately. And I’m sure Pilate didn’t.” His forehead wrinkled in deep study. “By any chance, Claudia, have you let slip...?”

“About us, to him? Of course not.”

“To anyone... Herodias maybe, the gods forbid. I wouldn’t trust that woman as far as I could throw that grain ship over there. Could you, without realizing it, have let slip...?”

“Yes, I did tell Herodias. She does know that you and I were planning to marry and come out to Palestine. But I’m sure neither she nor Antipas has said anything to Pilate about it ... if they’ve even seen him since. And certainly they haven’t talked with Sejanus.”

“Anyway, Claudia, we must be doubly careful. So long as Sejanus thinks I’m simply keeping you ... satisfied, he called it, it’s all right. But should he get the notion that I might be planning to take you away from Pilate and back to Rome ...” he broke off, scowling. “And here there’ll be other eyes and ears watching and listening, too. But when Pilate goes to Jerusalem, can’t we arrange...?”

“I’ll be going, too,” she interrupted. “And so must you. We can contrive some excuse for your accompanying us.” Her eyes were bright with smoldering fires, he saw, and her lips warm, he knew, and red and eager, and he remembered the taste of the Falernian upon them. But adamantly he turned his eyes away to look toward the great harbor. “And in Jerusalem, Longinus, beloved”—her hand had caught his arm and was squeezing hard—“we’ll find some way.”

13

Sergius Paulus, who commanded the legionaries escorting Procurator Pontius Pilate and his party to Jerusalem, halted his column several hundred paces west of the great market square outside the Joppa Gate.

“Sheathe the cohort’s emblems!” he commanded, and quickly down the line of march the soldiers began covering the banners of the Second Italian—the likenesses of the Emperor Tiberius, the screaming eagles, the fasces with their bundled arrows and axes, everything that flaunted the proud victories of this cohort of Rome’s conquering armies.

“But Commander Sergius,” Pilate began to protest, “by whose orders must Rome thus bow to these haughty Jews? Is this, by any chance, your scheme for forestalling possible disorder?”

“No, Excellency, the sheathing of the emblems in Jerusalem is not of my devising; it follows a long established custom, started, I believe, by the Emperor Augustus as a result of a pact with the Jewish leaders and continued by the Emperor Tiberius through orders transmitted to us by the Prefect Sejanus.” His smile was coldly professional. “I assure you, sir, covering our emblems before the gates of Jerusalem is as distasteful to me as it must be to the Procurator, but this is an order I dare not violate.”

The round face of the helmeted Procurator reddened with fury. He shook his head angrily and banged his heavy fist against the apron of the chariot in which he stood beside his wife. “I am not accustomed to seeing Rome display humility—abject humility—which is what this action seems to me to be. But I shall not countermand the order you have given, though to me it is both humiliating and exasperating that our legionaries are forced thus to yield to these outrageous Jews.” He raised his hand to signal. “When you are ready, Commander, let us proceed into the city.” Then he turned to address Longinus, who had halted near the Procurator. “Centurion, will you exchange places with my driver? Claudia and I are entering Jerusalem for the first time; would you be our guide and point out the principal places of interest?”

Quickly the exchange was accomplished, and the detachment, its emblems shielded now from view, resumed its march. Crossing the market place at the gate, a suddenly stilled large square that a moment before the Romans’ arrival had been a hubbub of shouts and shrill cries of bargaining, the procession moved through the gateway to enter a narrow cobblestoned street also strangely deserted.

“But where are the people to welcome us?” Pilate inquired, his balding high forehead creased in anger and consternation. “Why this unnatural calm?”

“They have retreated inside their shops and houses and closed the shutters; right now they are peering at us through lattices and from the roof tops, Excellency. This is the way they show their scorn for their conquerors. It will be our good fortune if we are not pelted with rotten vegetables and fruit thrown from the house tops, or even tiles from the roofs.” He smiled, not too happily. “The Jews, Excellency, don’t have much affection for us Romans.”

The veins in the Procurator’s neck swelled as though they might burst, and his countenance was livid. “In every province in which I have formerly entered with our troops,” he declared, “the populace has welcomed us thunderously, often with flowers and branches of trees thrown in our way, and many times they have even prostrated themselves before us.” He knotted his fist again. “By all the gods, I shall teach these Jews better manners. Nor shall I delay long in setting them to their lessons!”

Claudia laid a soothing hand on her husband’s arm; with the other she pointed to the right. “Those huge buildings! Longinus, they appear to be towers. And what tremendous stones. I didn’t know these Jews were capable of raising such structures.”

“Yes, on the contrary, the Jews are good artisans, and old Herod, who built many great edifices here as well as at Caesarea and other cities, also employed many foreign workers of great skill. He evidently wished to emulate Augustus in raising magnificent public buildings.” They were coming now to a great square tower, one of those to which Claudia had pointed. “This first one is the Hippicus Tower, named, I have heard, for a friend of Herod. The next one, in the middle, is Phasael, called that in honor of Herod’s brother. But that one”—he pointed in the direction of a third—“is the most famous, perhaps because he built it to the memory of the only wife he really loved. It’s called the Mariamne Tower, after the one he had killed. They say that the old reprobate almost went insane with grief after he’d executed her. Claudia, this Mariamne was the grandmother of Herodias and her spendthrift brother Agrippa. Mariamne was a member of the ancient Hasmonean line of Israelite rulers. Very soon now we’ll be passing the old Hasmonean Palace; it’s over near the viaduct that connects Zion Hill with the Temple.”

“But, Longinus, where is the Procurator’s Palace?”

“Yes, Centurion, I’d be interested in seeing it.”

“It’s behind that wall joining the three towers, sir. And it’s a tremendous place, too, with fountains and flowers and grass and trees—you will love it, Claudia—it serves as headquarters of the Procurator when he visits Jerusalem, though it’s called Herod’s Palace. When the Tetrarch is in Jerusalem, especially if the Procurator is here at the same time—for instance, during Passover feasts—the Tetrarch usually stays at the Hasmonean Palace. Excellency”—he faced the Procurator again, for he had been busy with the reins in an attempt to dodge a heavily loaded cart being pulled by a trudging donkey—“do you plan to stop here at Herod’s Palace, or will you stay in the Procurator’s quarters at the Tower of Antonia?”

“What was the custom of Valerius Gratus? Where did he stay?”

“He usually lodged here, I believe. It’s more comfortable, of course, and perhaps will be quieter than the quarters at Antonia.”

“Perhaps”—Pilate faced Claudia, his expression questioning—“then we should stay at Herod’s Palace. But, pray the gods, why should it be called Herod’s Palace now? The Herods no longer have authority in Judaea.”

“It was built by old Herod, sir, and the name persists. Things change slowly out here; tradition and custom rule in Judaea. I’m sure you’ll realize that more the longer you remain in Palestine.” They were nearing a gate in the high wall that gave admittance to the palace. Several guards at the gate, seeing the procession of Roman troops, straightened and raised their arms in salute. Longinus lifted the reins to halt the chariot.

“No, not yet,” Pilate said. “Claudia wishes to see the Temple and Antonia Tower before we stop. Don’t you, my dear?”

“I do. Then, after I’ve had a look at them, we can return, can’t we? And if the Procurator is kept at Antonia Tower longer than he expects to be, perhaps the centurion would fetch me back here?”

Longinus smiled. “Of course,” he murmured, then turned to Pilate. “But, sir, you won’t be able to proceed far with the chariots. You’ll have to change to horseback or be borne in a sedan chair. These Jerusalem streets are very narrow, and many of them ascend and descend stairs that a chariot could scarcely manage.”

Pilate nodded. “Thank you, Centurion. In that case we’ll leave the chariots here, and I’ll ride horseback. Claudia can take a sedan chair.” He looked toward his wife, and his eyes were questioning. “That is, if she still wishes to go on to Antonia.”

“Yes, I’d particularly like to see the Temple; I’ve heard stories of what a marvelous structure it is. I’ll go on, and Longinus can bring me back.” She smiled. “Would you?”

“As you wish,” he said.

Pilate nodded. “If you will, Centurion. Or I can send someone to bring you here, Claudia, if the centurion finds that he cannot get away from his duties. I’ll probably be detained for some time at the Tower. I am determined to see the High Priest before the sun sets. I had planned to call on him at his palace, but now, after the reception Jerusalem has given me, by all the gods”—his face was reddening again—“I shall summon him to come to me!”

So the column was halted along the narrow way in front of the sprawling Herod’s Palace. The chariots were driven inside the palace grounds and left there, and a sedan chair was brought out by bearers quickly recruited from the palace’s staff of servants.

“Centurion, if you will ride in the sedan chair with Claudia,” the Procurator said, “you can point out to her the places of importance in this nest of obstinate Jewry.” He mounted a gaily caparisoned horse and rode forward to the head of the column.

“Perhaps, Excellency, it would be best for me to go ahead with the advance guard”—Sergius Paulus smiled grimly as Pilate came abreast of him—“to absorb the stones that may be hurled at the new Procurator, not that there is any personal animosity toward you, sir, but because you are a symbol of Rome’s dominion....”

“No! I’m not afraid of them!” the Procurator angrily interrupted. “And, by great Jove, I’ll teach them to respect the dominion of Rome!” He spurred his horse several paces ahead of the cohort commander.

Meanwhile Claudia and Longinus had settled themselves in the sedan chair. As it moved off, they did not draw the curtains. “It isn’t because I am afraid to draw them,” Claudia said to him. “I’m not afraid of Pilate, nor am I afraid of the people out there. It’s because I want to see Jerusalem.”

“You don’t think Pilate might become suspicious, do you, or even jealous?”

“Pilate thinks only of Pilate and how he can advance his own fortune. He’s ambitious and egotistical; he craves authority, and he covets riches. He’ll do nothing to displease me, not because of affection for me, but because I’m the stepdaughter of the Emperor and because our marriage was arranged by the Prefect. If he’s ever jealous of me—and I think he never will be—I’m quite certain he will make every effort not to show it.”

“Which means?”

“That it should not be difficult for us to contrive to see each other....”

“Tonight?”

Claudia laughed. “Are you, I hope, that eager?”

“I’ve been that eager for many weeks, Claudia.” He leaned across to take her hand. She drew it back.

“Not now, Centurion. The soldiers, you know....”

“Then you are afraid of the Procurator’s knowing....”

“Not afraid, Longinus. Say, rather, discreet.”

Now they were being borne down a flight of stone steps. The hoofs of the horses in front of and behind them clattered and slipped, and sometimes an animal would go to its knees, though the heavily burdened donkeys coming up the stairs and keeping close to the buildings managed to scramble forward on nimble, sure feet. Sometimes a swaying load piled high on a donkey’s back would be overbalanced and topple as its containing straps burst, and in a moment the merchandise would be trampled to bits by the soldiers’ steeds.

When they reached the bottom of the steps and began to move along a level portion of the street where there was an open space between the buildings on the right, Claudia suddenly pointed. “That must be the old Hasmonean Palace where the ancestors of Herodias’ mother lived.”

“Yes.”

She scowled. “It’s a stern and forbidding pile of stones.”

“You’ll find that most Jewish public buildings are that way, the palaces especially. But once you get inside them, you’re bound to find them enchanting. Herod’s Palace has a sumptuous array of grass and flowers and fountains; you should enjoy your stay there.”

“Perhaps.” She smiled coyly. “It depends.” Then she pointed. “What on earth is that next building? It, too, looks like a fortress.”

“That place is called the Xystus; it’s a Roman-style gymnasium built by King Herod, who also constructed down this way”—he pointed off toward the south—“an open-air theatre and”—he nodded in the opposite direction—“northeast of the Temple area a large hippodrome where he held games and gladiatorial sports modeled after ours at home. But the orthodox Jews will have nothing to do with any of these things; they won’t even go near the places. To do so would violate some of their religious laws.”

The sound of the horses’ hoofs pounding ahead suddenly changed.

“Are we on a bridge?” Claudia asked, as she leaned out left. She rode facing forward, while Longinus sat opposite her, his back to the streets unwinding ahead of them. “Yes, I see we are,” she answered her own question. “And it’s a high one. Look, Longinus, by the Bountiful Mother! That structure across there! It’s ... it’s unbelievable!”

“That’s the Temple,” he announced. “It’s the Jews’ temple to their Yahweh. And it is one of the most gorgeous—if that’s the proper word, Claudia—and costliest buildings in the world. It’s made of white marble, the finest cedarwood, and untold bronze and other materials of the most extravagant quality, and trimmed with sheet gold and precious gems. You’ll see when we cross the bridge and enter its walls.” Their sedan chair was nearing the middle of the viaduct now. “See, it’s a high bridge. It connects Zion Hill, which we’ve just left, with the Temple region. Over there”—he twisted about to point to the Temple on his right and behind him—“is Mount Moriah. Between the two hills is this sharp drop called the Tyropoeon Valley; some call it the Valley of the Cheesemongers. In festival times these hillsides swarm with pilgrims coming from all over the world to worship at the Temple, which they consider the residing place of their Yahweh.” He laughed, then gestured with outflung hands. “But we should have Cornelius here to be your guide. He knows far more about the religious customs and beliefs of the Jews than I do; in fact, we had quite a talk about it on the boat coming out, and I charged him with being a worshiper of the Jews’ god himself.”

Near the end of the towering viaduct the procession stopped, and the soldiers dismounted. Quickly a litter was provided for the Procurator, and then the marching column, with Pilate’s sedan chair in the vanguard and Longinus and Claudia some paces behind him, moved off the viaduct and passed beneath a great arch.

“This is called the Gate Shalleketh,” Longinus told her. “It’s the main gate into the Temple area from the Zion section of the city.”

“I’m amazed that you know so much about Jerusalem,” Claudia began, then suddenly stopped as, startled, she caught sight of a veritable forest of marble columns, gigantic, reaching upward out of her range of vision from within the constricting sedan chair. “Bona Dea! Longinus, this is unbelievable! What a majestic structure! And look how far it extends! It’s mammoth, breath-taking!”

“And that’s only one of the porches, as they call it,” Longinus hastened to explain. “This one is styled the Royal Portico of Herod. Its marble columns, as you can see, are more than a hundred feet high. And look, Claudia”—he pointed behind, over his shoulder—“the colonnade itself runs almost a thousand feet. Have you ever seen anything so fantastic?”

“No, and I’m sure the High Priest couldn’t be a bit more effective than you in singing the Temple’s praises,” Claudia declared, laughing. “But it really is a marvelous structure these Jews have built to their superstition.”

“Yes, I agree. And that’s exactly what I told Cornelius.”

The procession turned squarely to the left and started to emerge from beneath the great roofed colonnade into the strong sunlight of an immense open square.

“This is called the Court of the Gentiles,” Longinus explained. “And over there is the Temple proper. Inside it is a place they call the Holy of Holies. Only the High Priest himself, they say, is permitted to enter it, and then only on a feast day, maybe once a year.”

“I’ve heard that inside that room there’s a golden head of an ass and that the Jews actually worship this ass’s head.”

Longinus smiled. It was an old story he had heard many times, he explained, though never from a Jew. Perhaps it started, so far as Rome was concerned at any rate, with the time that Pompey, searching for treasure, invaded the holy shrine of the Jews. “But he found no golden head of an ass. He found only an empty chamber, severe and forbidding, with nothing in it but a few golden vessels and some furniture that was probably used as an altar. That’s the story the Jews tell, anyway.”

“But this one god, Longinus, what did you say they call him?”

“Yahweh, or Jehovah.”

“Yes, I remember. But where is he? Don’t they have any statues of him somewhere in the Temple, Centurion?”

“No, according to what I’ve heard from the Jews themselves and from what Cornelius has told me—and he knows far more about their religious customs and beliefs than I do—statues are one thing they definitely do not have. They declare that their god is a spirit without body and to them any sort of representation in physical form—whether it be statues, carvings, or whatnot—would be sacrilege. That’s why they were so violently opposed to our bringing in unsheathed emblems. They have the strange belief that our army emblems are what they call ‘graven images,’ and their laws expressly forbid any such thing. They won’t even engrave the head of a man or an animal on any of their coins.” He shook his head, as though scarcely able to believe his own words. “Strange, these Jews. But you will discover that for yourself before you’ve been out here many weeks.”

They were coming opposite the eastern face of the Temple proper. “Look at that gate, or door!” Claudia pointed again. “Whatever it is, it’s tremendous! And it shines as though it were gold!”

“They call it the Beautiful Gate. It’s made of Corinthian brass and plates of gold, and it’s so heavy it takes a score of strong men to open and close it. They say it was given by a rich foreign Jew. It must have cost many a sesterce, don’t you think?”

“I’m sure it did.” Her eyes were wide with disbelief. “The whole place is magnificent; why I’ve never seen anything like....” Suddenly she clamped a hand to her nose. “By all the gods, Longinus, what an odor!” She leaned her head out. “Bona Dea, all that cattle. No wonder that awful stench. What on earth are cattle and sheep doing in this beautiful place, Longinus? Can it be for sacrificing, by all the great and little gods!”

“Yes, it’s for sacrificing.” Longinus grimaced. “The Jews think that slitting an animal’s throat and throwing the blood on that great altar somehow cleanses them of their sins. I don’t understand how it could....”

The young woman’s laugh was derisive. “Bringing all those poor animals in here to befoul this beautiful place, these gorgeous mosaics, to pollute the very air, and they call that cleansing themselves. Bona Dea, their Yahweh, if he demands this sort of worship, must be a bloodthirsty god. It just goes to prove, Centurion, that this one-god religion has less sense to it than even our silly superstitions.”

“That’s what I told Cornelius. I see no efficacy in slitting the throats of poor beasts and slaughtering countless doves and pigeons in order to serve some god. Of course, so far as the priests are concerned, it’s a highly profitable business. But, of course, why should we criticize the Jews when we do it in Rome, too, though not on such a grand scale?”

A few paces farther on, the procession turned squarely to the left again and proceeded along a third side of the Temple enclosure, past the stalls of the lowing, frightened cattle and the cages of birds and the money-changers seated behind their tables. From the long portico the marchers pivoted to the right, then ascended steps that led to a wide, paved esplanade.

“This is the platform before the Tower of Antonia. We’re coming to it now.” He motioned behind him. “It’s the Roman military headquarters in Jerusalem. But Pilate must have told you all about it.”

She leaned out and looked westward along the platform. “Pilate tells me very little,” she answered. “By the gods, it’s a tall structure and a grim-looking one. Doubtless overrun with soldiers, too, even in the Procurator’s private apartments.” She winked and smiled. “I’m glad Pilate decided to stop at the Herod Palace during our visit to Jerusalem. He’ll probably be here at Antonia much of the time. It should be easier then to arrange things over there.”

“Things?”

“Well”—her tone was playful, her eyelids fluttered teasingly—“yes, things for people to do ... two people.”

14

It was past midnight when Longinus returned at last to the now quiet Tower of Antonia. Before leaving Caesarea he had arranged with Sergius Paulus to have little more than token duty during the stay in Jerusalem. In the weeks since his arrival in Palestine, he and the cohort commander had come to an understanding; although Sergius knew little of the centurion’s reasons for being in this far eastern province, he did know that Longinus had been sent out by the Prefect Sejanus, and Sergius was not disposed to challenge, or even question actions of the Prefect.

Pontius Pilate had not returned to the palace; presumably he had eaten his evening meal at the tower with the officers there. At any rate, Longinus and Claudia had not been disturbed.

But when Longinus was admitted by the guards at the tower’s outer gate, he deliberately walked past the stairs leading to the southwest tower, where the administrative offices, including the Procurator’s quarters, were situated. Going by the southeast tower would take him a bit out of his way, Longinus reasoned, but he would be less likely to run into the Procurator at this late and embarrassing hour.

The centurion had been assigned quarters in the officers’ section on a floor level with a great gallery along the Temple side of Antonia; a protective rampart ran the length of this gallery, and a door opened onto the gallery from each officer’s quarters.

The air in the small chamber was musty and warm, and Longinus, too, was warm from the exertion of his walk back to the tower. He sat on the side of his bed for a moment, then stood up and opened the outer door. When the draft of fresh air swept in, he stepped out onto the gallery to wait there until his chamber had cooled.

As he stood leaning on the rampart, Longinus heard a door open behind him. Turning, he saw a soldier coming out. Another man too warm to fall asleep, he thought, as he turned back to stare at the still and almost deserted Temple enclosure. Fires smoldered on the great altar, and flickering lamplight from the region of the cattle and sheep stalls gave a look of eeriness to a scene that just a few hours before had been a bedlam of sound and movement.

The other soldier halted near him to look down also on the somnolent Temple. The man pointed over the parapet. “Still an amazing picture, even in the nighttime, isn’t it?”

“Cornelius!” Longinus said, recognizing the voice and whirling around to face the other. “By all the gods, man, I thought you were in Galilee!” He clapped a heavy hand on his friend’s shoulder. “But I’m glad to see you, Centurion.”

“And I had no idea you were in Jerusalem, Longinus!” Cornelius responded with a shoulder-shaking slap. “How long have you been here? Did you come today with the Procurator?”

“Yes, we arrived here a little past midday; we marched out of Caesarea at daybreak day before yesterday. But, by Jove”—he pointed to a stone bench set against the rampart—“let’s sit down, Cornelius. I’ve had a hard day, and I’m sure you have, too. When did you get into Jerusalem, and did you bring your century?”

“We came only an hour before sunset. Yes, I had orders from the new Procurator to meet him here with my century.”

“But why, pray Jove? It’s no festival occasion. Can Pilate be expecting trouble? He didn’t indicate any such thing to me.”

“There’s no reason why he should be anticipating any trouble, so far as I can see ... unless he’s planning to provoke it himself.”

“But why would he do that? He must know that Tiberius and Sejanus are determined to keep our conquered dominions at peace, if for no other reason than to insure the uninterrupted flow of revenue. But”—Longinus shrugged—“maybe Pilate wants to make a show of force in the hope of increasing that very flow—with the increase going into his own pockets, of course—which might be why he’s been conferring at such length with Caiaphas and old Annas.” He pointed toward a lighted window high in the southwestern tower. “Look, they’re still up there. Pilate didn’t even go to the Herod Palace for the evening meal with his new wife.”

“New wife? I didn’t know Pilate was married.”

“Yes. Since we left Rome. And you’ll be surprised to learn who she is.”

“Who?”

“Claudia.”

“By all the great gods! Longinus, I thought you would be marrying Claudia.”

“We had planned to be married.” Longinus paused. “But Tiberius and Sejanus made this other arrangement.”

Cornelius shook his head. “But what does Claudia say about it?”

“What can she say? To them, I mean. But to me she declares that nothing has changed between us. And judging by this afternoon and tonight—I’ve been with her ever since we reached Jerusalem until a few minutes ago—nothing has.”

“But couldn’t that be dangerous for you two?”

Longinus shook his head. “I hardly think so. Their marriage was an entirely arranged one, and furthermore, I’m convinced Pilate would do nothing to offend Claudia.”

“Tell me”—Cornelius leaned forward and tapped his friend’s knee—“you knew before we left Rome that this arrangement had been made?”

“Yes, but I couldn’t say anything about it then, Cornelius.”

“I understand. You were in some kind of cross fire, weren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And you have an understanding or arrangement with Sejanus, don’t you—I don’t mean about Claudia? Wait....” He held up his hand. “Don’t answer that. But I do want you to remember, Longinus, that regardless of what may happen, I’m on your side ... yours and Claudia’s.”

“I know that, my friend. And I’m on your side ... regardless. And it may be that sometime we’ll need one another’s support. With old Tiberius and crafty Sejanus on the one hand and this vain and ambitious Pilate on the other, and perhaps Herod Antipas....” With mention of the Tetrarch’s name, he paused. “I assume you got him delivered to Tiberias in safety. What did his Arabian Tetrarchess say about Herodias?”

“She had heard about it before we reached Tiberias, perhaps from some of that fellow Chuza’s servants, the ones who fetched the furnishings from Ptolemaïs, you remember. But that was only the beginning. Now they’re wondering at the palace what she’ll do when Antipas gets back with his new wife; he’s already left for Rome, they say, to fetch her, and when Herodias arrives, she’ll probably be taking over as Tetrarchess.”

They sat for a long time in the coolness of the gallery high above the sleeping Temple, and Cornelius related his experiences in escorting the Tetrarch up the narrow defile of the Jordan River and their encounter that day with the strange Wilderness preacher. He described the man’s bitter denunciation of Herod and his sudden and dramatic pointing out of a tall young Galilean carpenter as the Jews’ long looked for Messiah, the man foretold by the ancient Israelite prophets as he who would redeem their historic homeland from its bondage.

“As we were leaving the place, I turned and looked back,” Cornelius added. “The strange prophet and the tall Galilean were standing in the river with the water up to their loincloths; the tall one had asked to receive something they call baptism, a symbolic cleansing of one’s sins, as I understand it.” Cornelius paused and stared thoughtfully at his hands. “I shall never forget the look on that man’s face, Longinus. Ever since that day I have been wondering about him. The Jewish Messiah.” He said it slowly, as though he were talking more to himself than to his friend. “Do you remember that day on the ‘Palmyra’ when we were talking about this Yahweh of the Jews, this one-god spirit? You said then that you would never be able to imagine a being without a body.”

“Yes, I remember it quite clearly. But what are you going to say,” Longinus demanded, “that this tall fellow might have been a god turned into a man? By all the gods, Cornelius, you don’t mean to tell me you think this Galilean could be the Messiah of the Jews? Their Messiah, if I understand it correctly, will be a great military leader who will drive us pagan Romans out of Palestine and re-establish the ancient Israelite kingdom. Even the Jews don’t believe he’ll be a god, do they?”

“I don’t know, Longinus. I think most Jews believe he’ll be a great earthly king, as you say. But listening to that wild fellow and seeing the look on that young man’s face”—he paused, then ventured a hesitant grin—“well, those strange words, the prophet’s evident sincerity, his intense manner....”

“Jewish gibberish.” Longinus shook his head and scowled. “This superstition has captured you, my friend. This eastern mysticism that comes to a head in that cruel and extravagant circus down there.” He pointed toward the great Temple, whose gold-plated roof shone brilliantly in the light of the moon now emerging from behind a cloud. “A carpenter from Galilee to overthrow imperial Rome! What with, pray great Jove! A hammer and a chisel and a flat-headed adz?”

15

For two days after his long meeting with the High Priest Caiaphas and the former High Priest Annas, father-in-law of Caiaphas, the Procurator Pontius Pilate was in a sullen mood. He said little and kept close to his quarters in the Antonia Tower. Now and then he would walk out onto the gallery overlooking the Temple enclosure and, leaning upon the parapet, would stare balefully at the magnificent structure and the stir of life within and around it.

The orderly movements of the priests, set through the long years into an inexorable pattern as they followed the prescribed routine of their duties, seemed almost to infuriate him. “Look at them, Centurion!” he snapped to Longinus on one of these occasions when the centurion happened to be sunning himself on the gallery. “See how smugly they go about their mummery, as if it were the most important thing in the world. They seem studiously to ignore our all-powerful Rome and lavish every attention upon their Yahweh.” He doubled his fist and banged it upon the parapet. “Yet one lone Roman century ordered into that hive of impudent, arrogant busy bees could send them all flying, one Roman century, Longinus. And by the great Jove, I’m tempted to dispatch soldiers down there to clean out that insubordinate, traitorous nest!”

Fortunately, though, the Procurator issued no such order, and the day passed without the Romans’ becoming involved in the religious ceremonies of the Jews. The next morning, however, Pilate called together all his officers on duty in Jerusalem, including Longinus and Cornelius. Immediately it was evident that the Procurator’s hostility toward the Temple leadership had not diminished.

“We are in a war of wits with these obstinate, proud Jews,” he declared, “and I cannot defeat them by remaining on the defensive. It’s been a war of words and gestures thus far, but I have been forced to the opinion that we can have no victory over them until we have had some blood.” His blue eyes swept coldly over the unsmiling faces before him. “So I have determined upon a bold plan in which we shall take the offensive.”

Pilate revealed that Caiaphas and Annas had rebuffed, though with unctuous smiles and sugared words, his every effort even to discuss the possibility of using Temple funds for the improvement of Jerusalem, particularly the health of its residents, through the construction of facilities to enlarge and improve the city’s water supply.

“They insist that this money has been dedicated to their god and belongs to him and that for me to use one denarius of it, even in promoting their welfare, would be a profanation and a sacrilege. Old Annas, may Pluto burn him, even suggested that the people—he emphasized the fact that he was not himself suggesting it—might even believe that I had seized the money for my own use.” Pilate’s anger had turned his face an ugly crimson. His voice rose to a shout. “A profanation indeed! To these insufferable Jews everything they do not wish to do or to have done is a profanation. Yet their priestly caste is sucking the very lifeblood of the people in the name of religion.” He paused for a moment, then continued more calmly. “So I have determined to initiate a bold new plan. I shall have these Temple leaders crawling to me, and on their bellies, cringing!”

When it was clear that Pilate had, at least temporarily, finished, Sergius Paulus ventured to speak. “But, Excellency, do you plan to raid their Temple’s treasury, to commandeer the gold the Jews have stored there? Such a course, you must realize, might provoke the wrath of the Emperor and the Prefect, since they have made a compact with....”

“No, Commander, I am planning no raid on their treasury,” Pilate interrupted. “On the contrary, they will bring their treasure to me and urge me to use it in providing a new water supply for Jerusalem. In so doing they will admit to me and, more importantly, to their fellow religionists that Rome is master and that their puny Yahweh is a lesser god than our Emperor.”

Quickly and more calmly the Procurator unfolded his plan. When three days ago he had come into Jerusalem at the head of the troops, he reminded them, he had suffered the humiliation, for the first time in his military career, of marching with the proud ensigns of Rome all sheathed. This was done, he pointed out, to appease the Jews, to mollify their Yahweh.

“You recall the stony silence with which we were greeted, even the hostile looks of the people peering from behind their screens or down from their housetops; you remember the hatred in their eyes as we crossed through the Temple court on our way here, the taunting remarks flung at us. Rome has lost prestige in Palestine. We must recover it, and this I am determined to do.” The trace of a malevolent smile spread across his round Roman face. “The Emperor must not be made to yield to Yahweh; our eagles and our fasces must no longer be hidden from view as though we were ashamed of them.”

Longinus was watching Sergius Paulus. He saw the commander’s face blanch, but Sergius said nothing. And Pilate continued outlining his plan.

“On top of this tower”—Pilate pointed upward—“is a perpetual flame that burns while the vestments of the High Priest are held safe here in Antonia. Rome therefore is providing and tending a flame that, to my mind, is a memorial of Rome’s yielding. No ensign with the Roman eagle flies above the fortress or hangs from its ramparts. A further testimony to our surrender to the stubborn Jews and their jealous god.” A humorless smile wrote thin lines at the corners of his mouth. “Of course I am telling you what you who are stationed in Jerusalem already know. Perhaps to me it is more galling because it is new.” He paused, as if to consider carefully his next words. “Tomorrow, with Centurion Longinus and his century escorting my party,” he began again, “I shall leave Jerusalem on my return to Caesarea. Centurion Cornelius with his century from Galilee will remain here until after my departure; how long he will stay will be determined by the situation.” His thin smile blossomed into a baleful grin. “During the night, after I have left, the troops stationed here at Antonia will extinguish the flame atop the tower and hang out from the ramparts the ensigns of Rome, including the eagles, the fasces, and the likenesses of the Emperor.”

“But, Excellency”—Sergius’ face was pale, and his expression mirrored alarm—“do you realize how this action will provoke the Jews, how it will inflame them against us, lead perhaps even to bloodshed...?”

“I fully realize that, Commander. That is why I am ordering it. I wish to provoke them. It is only by provoking them that we can demonstrate forcefully to them that Rome is master.”

“But, sir, the Emperor and the Prefect....”

“Are you not aware that since my arrival at Caesarea I represent the Emperor and the Prefect Sejanus in Judaea?” The words were almost a snarl. “If you wish to dispute my authority or my judgment....”

“But I do not, Excellency. The Procurator’s commands to me naturally will be carried out fully.”

“I expected as much, Commander. You will have charge of our forces in Jerusalem in carrying out my orders. If it comes to bloodshed, do not hesitate to shed Jewish blood if the Jews assail you; your only concern will be to prevent the shedding by them of Roman blood. I am confident that they will yield before offering violence to Rome; I think they haven’t the courage to challenge us. What they will do”—his cold, calculating smile overspread his florid face—“is send their priests, including old Annas no doubt, whining to me at Caesarea and imploring me to rescind my orders. Then I will have a lever with which to move them. And thereafter, you may be sure, the legionaries and their ensigns will be respected by the Jews as they are respected by all other conquered peoples. Our Emperor, as he rightfully should, will then take his place, even in Jerusalem, above their vengeful and jealous Yahweh.”

He dismissed the group with instructions to begin at once their preparations for putting his orders into effect.

16

For five days the roads into Caesarea from Jerusalem and central Judaea were clogged with a motley throng of Jews pushing relentlessly toward the Procurator’s Palace. Here and there in the multitude rode a man or woman on a donkey, but countless hundreds trudged on foot, dust-covered and weary in every bone but more outraged in spirit.

Then the dam that was Caesarea’s gates was inundated, and the flood of disgruntled Jewry, sweating, travel-soiled, frightened but still undaunted in its anger despite the long and tiresome journey, poured through the city to fill its market squares and surge upward toward Pilate’s house. The angry flood had burst upon the port city hardly two days behind the messengers sent by Sergius Paulus to warn the Procurator of the multitude’s approach.

The Jews, the messengers informed Pilate, were swarming toward Caesarea to protest with all the vigor they could command his profanation, they called it, of their holy city through the display at the Tower of Antonia of the Roman army’s ensigns, including even the likenesses of the Emperor Tiberius. The morning after the Procurator’s departure, they revealed, the Jews had awakened to behold with horror the flaunted banners. But their vehement protests to the commander of the fortress had been unavailing. Sergius Paulus had told them with firmness that only a command of Pilate could restore the flame above the tower and once again sheathe the offending ensigns.

So, alternately beating their breasts with loud lamentations and angrily calling down their Yahweh’s curses upon the invading Edomites, as they termed the Romans, they had surged into the roads and pushed northwestward to demand of the Procurator himself an end to the profanation of their Jerusalem.

Five days ago these Jews had arrived at Caesarea, but five days of protesting, of threatening, of pleading, and of threatening again had not moved Pontius Pilate. “Rome is master,” declared the stubborn and proud Procurator to the Jews’ spokesmen; “the emblems of Rome’s mastery will not be removed or sheathed. My orders stand.”

But the sons of Israel, too, were unyielding in their demands. “Your Emperor Augustus, your Emperor Tiberius”—Pilate took notice that they did not say “our” Emperor—“have respected our laws, which forbid the display of such emblems, and have been strict in honoring our religion,” the spokesman insisted. “Your Emperor Tiberius cannot but be angered by the refusal of the Procurator to respect in the same manner our ancient traditions.”

“Go home!” Pilate ordered. “Get you back to Jerusalem. I, not you, speak for Tiberius. I was sent out by him to govern this province, and by the great Jove, I will govern it!”

But the Jews did not go home. Hungry, discouraged, exhausted, they were not defeated. They swarmed about Pilate’s palace, they fell in their tracks on the marble of the esplanades to sleep fitfully when sheer exhaustion overtook them; they crowded the market places, they slept in rich men’s doorways. But they would not turn their backs on Caesarea.

On the morning of the sixth day, Pilate called Longinus to the Palace. “Centurion,” he said, his face livid with anger, “since Sergius Paulus continues at Jerusalem, I wish you to take command of the troops here and put into execution the orders I am about to give you. Send out couriers to summon these Jews to come together in the Hippodrome; say that I will meet them there. In the meantime, disguise a sufficient number of your soldiers and place them about the amphitheater in advantageous positions so that should disorder arise among the Jews, you will be ready immediately to put it down.”

Claudia had been listening to her husband. “But, Pilate, aren’t you creating a situation that will produce fighting between our troops and these Jews?”

“And if there is bloodshed?” Pilate’s eyes flashed sudden anger. “Haven’t I been patient with these obstinate rebels? If they choose to get themselves run through with swords, isn’t it their own doing?” Then quickly he recovered his poise. “Claudia,” he said quietly, “I have given them every opportunity to return peaceably to Jerusalem. Have I not?”

“Yes. But you have not agreed to have the ensigns sheathed. And until you do....”

He turned upon her, his countenance flaming, his mood changed completely. “Do you stand with these stubborn provincials against Rome? Are you with them, or are you with me?”

“Before you interrupted me, Procurator,” Claudia’s voice was as cold as her smile, “I was going to observe that in displaying the army’s emblems, you are really breaking a tradition, so far as I have been able to understand it, and this tradition may very well be a long-standing order of the Emperor and, indeed, of Augustus before him. I care not a fig about these Jews. Nor do I care about their High Priest or their Yahweh. I am concerned only with what will be the attitude of the Emperor and the Prefect Sejanus toward the Procurator as a result of this unprecedented breach of the established order.” She turned away, her head high. Pilate seemed taken aback; he looked at her somewhat sheepishly and licked his lips as though he were about to speak. But he said nothing. Instead, he turned abruptly to Longinus. “I take responsibility for the orders I give,” he said tersely. “My orders to you are unchanged.”

Longinus saluted, then without a word turned on his heel and withdrew.

By early afternoon the great concourse had filled with excited, chattering Jews. Their determined stand, they felt confident, had defeated the Procurator; their reminder that the Emperors had honored the Jews and their Yahweh and that Tiberius might not approve a course taken in defiance of the long-established tradition had frightened Pilate. He was calling them together, wasn’t he, to announce that he was withdrawing the hated emblems and to ask them to return home victors?

But they had judged the Procurator wrongly. And they discovered their mistake as soon as he began to address the throng from his box high in the stands of the great oval.

“For five days, and this is now the sixth, you have kept our Caesarea in turmoil. You have been obstinate and insubordinate and have shown little respect to the Procurator, who represents the Emperor and in this province personifies the power and majesty of the Empire. You have threatened him with reprisal, saying that he has flouted the orders of our Emperor. You were not only inhospitable in refusing to welcome the Procurator to Jerusalem, you were actually hostile. In being hostile to us, you have shown yourselves contemptuous of Rome and enemies of our Empire; in being stubbornly hateful to me, you have shown yourselves no friends of the Emperor.”

Pilate paused, his face suffused with color as his anger grew with his listing of their offenses. Then he stood back on his heels, squared his shoulders, and held up his tightly clenched fist. “Now hear me, men of Judaea!” he shouted. “I have asked you to disperse and return to your homes. Stubbornly you have refused to heed my command. I am asking you again to abandon this unreasonable, senseless, and ill-advised effort and get yourselves outside the gates of Caesarea and on the roads that lead homeward. Hear me, by great Jove! This is my last command to you.” He leveled a shaking forefinger toward the multitude. “I have stationed my soldiers in disguise among you, and they are heavily armed. They have been instructed, upon my next command, to spring upon you and run you through with their swords.”

But in the vast oval of the colosseum not an Israelite moved to obey him. Stolidly, calmly, they faced the Procurator; silence was heavy upon the great throng.

Pilate’s face was twisted with wrath. “Then I must give the order, men of Judaea?” He shouted the question.

Not a man moved.

Then from the ranks nearest Pilate a man stepped forward a pace and held up his hand to speak. By his dress it was evident that he was one of the Temple leaders. “O noble Procurator,” he said in a loud voice, “though your soldiers run us through with swords until each of us has perished, we cannot submit to the profanation of God’s holy Temple; we cannot countenance without protest the treading into the dust of our God’s commandments. Before we agree to Rome’s profanation of our holy places and her flouting of our God’s laws, O Procurator, we will bow our necks to the Procurator’s soldiers. We will die, and gladly, for our God!”

“Profanation! Profanation! All I hear is Rome’s profanation of your traditions. By all the gods, in every other land our Emperor is honored, his banners and his emblems, his likenesses paraded on our staffs, all these are hailed with shouts and acclamations! And yet you Jews....”

Suddenly Pilate paused. The priestly leader who had just addressed him had fallen on his face in the dust of the great stadium, and beside him and behind him others now were prostrating themselves. Within moments every Jew in the place was lying face down upon the ground before the Procurator of Judaea. Mouth open, eyes darting from one area of the great concourse to another, aghast, Pilate stood silent. Then quietly he spoke to Longinus, who was standing near him. “Centurion, I cannot order men on their faces ran through with swords. It would be massacre.”

“So it would be, Excellency, on their faces or standing, since they are defenseless.”

Pilate turned back to face the prostrated multitude. “Stand on your feet!” he commanded. “I shall withhold for the moment at least my command to the soldiers.”

Without a word being said, without a change of countenance even, the Jews rose to their feet and faced the Procurator. “Now send me your High Priest and his father-in-law the former High Priest Annas,” Pilate commanded. “No harm will be done them; this I swear by the great Jove.”

Hours later Caiaphas and Annas returned from the conference with the Procurator at the palace. Mounting the rostrum from which Pilate had previously addressed them, Caiaphas held up his hand for silence. “Men of Israel, we have just concluded our meeting with the Procurator Pilate,” he announced. “An agreement has been reached. Now you may return in peace to your homes. The offensive emblems of Rome, the Procurator has assured us, will be removed so that they will no longer profane our holy places. The God of Israel, He is One!”

“The God of Israel, He is One!” The multitude of suddenly exultant Jews echoed his words in a great chorus, and a hosanna of shouts swept wave upon wave across the immense arena. Then, laughing and chattering, the people began pushing toward the Hippodrome’s exits.

And in all the throng not a man ventured to inquire of the High Priest what the terms of the agreement with Pilate had been.

17

An hour before the “Actium” was to sail out of the harbor at Caesarea on the return voyage to Rome, Centurion Longinus went aboard and handed the captain a heavily sealed communication addressed to the Prefect Sejanus.

“This is an army message of great importance,” he announced. “It must be delivered in person to the Prefect. He is expecting it, and if it is not delivered immediately after the docking of your ship, he will begin to inquire why he has not received it.” Actually, the centurion knew that Sejanus was not expecting a message from him on the returning “Actium,” but telling the captain so would insure the message’s getting quickly into the hands of the Prefect. The captain might well think that the centurion’s letter was in reply to a message brought him from Sejanus by the Tetrarch Herod Antipas.

The “Actium” two days before had brought the Tetrarch and his new wife Herodias and her daughter Salome to Caesarea, and from the wharf they had been escorted by Longinus and a detachment of his century to the Procurator’s Palace to be guests of Pilate and Claudia while resting a few days after the long voyage out from Rome. From Caesarea they planned a short visit to Jerusalem, and then they would travel northward through the Jordan Valley to the Tetrarch’s gleaming white marble palace at Tiberias.

It was when Longinus learned that the “Actium” would be returning directly to Rome that he decided to dispatch a report to the Prefect. The report related in considerable detail the events of the Procurator’s recent visit to Jerusalem, his flaunting, in disregard of Sergius Paulus’ warning, of the cohort’s banners from the Antonia ramparts, the subsequent storming of Caesarea by the irate Jews, and Pilate’s yielding to them, after a conference with Caiaphas and Annas. Longinus advanced no suggestion concerning the probable terms of the agreement between the Procurator and the Temple leaders. The centurion was confident, however, that the astute and suspicious Sejanus would infer from what he had left unwritten that Pilate had profited handsomely. Longinus concluded the message with an avowal that the report was factual and uncolored.

From the “Actium” Longinus returned to the headquarters of the cohort and that evening was a guest, along with Sergius Paulus, of the Procurator and his wife at a small, informal dinner honoring the Tetrarch, his wife, and her daughter. When they had finished the meal, Herodias and her hostess retired to Claudia’s apartment, and Salome went to her chamber. The four men remained reclining at the table, where after a while, as they drank wine and nibbled grapes and figs, the inhibitions of Pilate and Antipas, each vain and domineering and jealous of the other’s authority, began slowly to disappear. Gently at first Antipas chided the Procurator for his profanation of Jerusalem by flaunting the ensigns of Imperial Rome from the Tower of Antonia.

“Profanation! Profanation! All I hear in this contentious province is profanation. I am sick of the word.” Pilate wiggled a forefinger at the Tetrarch. “Do you consider Rome’s display of her honored emblems profanation of Jerusalem and this province, I ask you, Tetrarch?”

Antipas studied the fig he held between finger and thumb. “I don’t consider it profanation, nor do the Emperor and the Prefect, but I do agree with the Emperor and the Prefect that it is a wise course not to offend unnecessarily the people of Israel who do so hold.” It was a clever answer, and Antipas, knowing it, pressed the point. “It would be politic if the new Procurator learned to uphold the traditions of this land,” he continued, “so long, of course, as they do not seriously conflict with the interests of the Empire and certainly”—he smiled—“so long as the Emperor and the Prefect uphold them.”

Pilate was quick to strike back. “I was sent out to this province to rule it,” he declared, his eyes flashing indignation. “I was not sent here to cower and truckle, to lower Rome’s ensigns at the demands of your obstinate, cantankerous Jews,” he hissed. “I came to rule....”

“But you did lower Rome’s ensigns when those obstinate—Jews bared their necks to your swordsmen and refused to obey your command to return home,” Antipas interrupted. Then suddenly, as though seeking a truce, he changed his tone. “But I don’t blame you, Procurator. In fact, I admire you; you’re a very intelligent man. Living in this province must be trying to one who has never lived here before, and of course it’s unrewarding unless there are ... ah ... extra benefits, shall we say ... not provided by Rome. And there is much gold in the Temple’s coffers, I am told. It seems that no matter how much is withdrawn, a great deal still remains for the use of the Temple leaders, hmm?” He smiled appreciatively. “And no doubt the Prefect will approve, too, provided....” Grinning, he left the observation unfinished. “And with no Jewish blood shed by your soldiers, there will be nothing to explain to Tiberius, Excellency.”

Pilate glared, mouth open. But he did not deny the Tetrarch’s thinly veiled charge. “Profanations! Violated traditions!” He hurled across the room the grape he had selected from the silver dish of piled fruit and pointed a quaking finger at the Tetrarch. “And how dare you, Antipas, speak of my violating the traditions and offending the religion of the Jews, when you have just taken to bed your brother’s wife! Is that not a heinous offense for a Jew himself...?”

“Excellency!” Sergius Paulus, palpably fearful of what the exchange might quickly be leading to, jumped to his feet. “The hour is growing late, and the Centurion Longinus and I must be getting back to headquarters. Please excuse us, sir. We’ve enjoyed your hospitality, and we beg you to express our thanks to your wife.” He glanced toward Longinus, who nodded agreement. “And I thought, Excellency, that the Tetrarch perhaps might honor us by going with us—we have a sedan chair at the door—to inspect our cohort headquarters, should you, sir, be willing to excuse him.” He looked questioningly toward the Procurator and then the Tetrarch.

“Should the Tetrarch wish....”

“I shall be happy to accompany you,” Antipas interrupted. Carefully he pulled the stem from the fig. “It will be a change of air.” But he was smiling, and his manner was jovial; the tension of the moment had been dispelled.

“When you have finished with him, Sergius”—Pilate had calmed, too, and no rancor was revealed in his tone—“have him brought back, properly attended. He and the Tetrarchess are always welcome at the Procurator’s Palace.”

But Longinus knew, as the three prepared to leave the great dining hall, that relations between the Tetrarch and the Procurator were still strained; he suspected that they would remain so. The temperaments of the two men, coupled with the situations in which they had been placed, would demand it. In his own dealings with them, in his observation and appraisal of them and their activities, he told himself, he must bear this always in mind.

Meanwhile, lounging comfortably on Claudia’s large couch, pillows at their backs, the two women had been exchanging news of their own activities since they had last seen one another in Rome, and, more interesting to Claudia, Herodias had been revealing tidbits of gossip involving the more lively set in the Empire’s capital city. But soon the discussion narrowed to their own changed circumstances. Claudia was frank. “Yes, it’s just as I told you it would be that day you came to return my call. I said marrying Pilate would make no difference. Remember? Well, it hasn’t.” A cloud passed across her countenance. “Of course, we will have to be patient, though, and wait for things to work out.”

“But until they do, must you never...?” Herodias paused.

“No, it isn’t that bad,” Claudia hastened to reply, smiling. “We can see each other and we can be together ... more and more hereafter, I hope. We have been together already, for hours, in fact, both here at Caesarea and in Jerusalem at the Herod’s Palace, while Pilate conveniently, I do believe, busied himself at the Antonia Tower.” She shook her head. “Really, Herodias, I don’t know whether the man is stupid, quite wise, or just indifferent. But whatever he is, his being the way he is will help Longinus and me to arrange things.”

Herodias’ large dark eyes were bright now with scheming. “My dear, you have never been in Galilee, have you? It’s a beautiful land, especially now that spring is beginning to break, so much more interesting than this barren Judaea. We have so many flowers, and willows and oleanders and bright-blooming shrubs along the watercourses. I remember Galilee in the spring from my childhood days and on occasional visits since. So”—her eyes were dancing now—“you must go with us to Tiberias. We can contrive to have Longinus escort us. And in the Palace there”—her voice dropped to an intimate whisper—“you will have no one to disturb you.”

“But Antipas’ other wife? What would she say if I should go with you?”

“I am the Tetrarchess of Galilee and Peraea,” she said evenly. “As soon as we get there, Antipas is going to divorce her and send her back to old Aretas.”

18

Before they reached the bend in the road roughly paralleling the Jordan, whose banks were beginning to color now with the awakening of willows and oleanders to advancing spring, the Tetrarch recognized the voice.

“By the beard of the venerable High Priest!” Antipas exclaimed. “This isn’t the place where he was making his stand when I came this way before, but it’s the same fellow, that mad prophet of the Wilderness. I’d know his haranguing anywhere.”

Longinus was riding beside the Tetrarch. Herodias and Claudia, with lively Salome a few paces back, were following in the narrow column, and just behind them rode Neaera, Tullia, and several other servants of the two households. Soldiers were in the vanguard and at the rear.

Antipas turned to Longinus. “Centurion, I wonder if we shouldn’t go another way and avoid encountering this fellow. I’d rather not see him or hear more of his ranting.”

“But I want to see him.” Herodias had ridden abreast of the Tetrarch. “He must be the one I’ve just been hearing so much about in Jerusalem. Everybody was talking of his ability to sway the multitudes and his fearlessness in denouncing the Temple priests.”

“Yes, he’s the one. But, my dear Herodias,” the Tetrarch began to protest, “he’s likely to say something that will offend you, too. The fellow has no respect for the Tetrarch’s office or authority and no bridle on his loose tongue.”

“By the gods, then, that’s all the more reason I want to hear him.” She laughed gaily, then quickly grew sober. “And certainly the Tetrarch should be concerned,” she added, “if the man flouts the Tetrarch’s authority.” She signaled to Longinus to resume the march. “Let’s ride down and join his audience. After the boredom of our journey, this should at least provide a diversion.”

Antipas shook his head grudgingly but offered no further protest. “She’ll regret it as soon as she hears him, by the gods,” he muttered to the centurion as they started. “But I warned her.”

At the bottom of the slope the group dismounted, and on Longinus’ summons, soldiers came up to hold the horses. The servants remained behind with them except for Neaera and Tullia who followed their mistresses as the Tetrarch’s party quietly slipped around a screening clump of willows to join the throng about the gaunt and weathered speaker. To Antipas, John seemed little changed since that day when they had come upon him at the ford farther up the Jordan. His clothes looked the same; fleetingly the Tetrarch wondered if the haircloth mantle had ever been cleaned since he had last seen it.

Although the Tetrarch’s group had slipped unobtrusively into the rim of the crowd, Antipas was quickly recognized, and soon a murmur moved through the multitude and heads began to nod as intent black eyes shifted from the fiery prophet to study the newly arrived ruler of Galilee and Peraea.

“It’s old Herod,” Longinus heard a beak-nosed, thin Jew whisper to the man beside him. “And that woman, she must be the new wife he’s fetched from Rome, the one he took away from his brother, and that must be the brother’s daughter beside her.” Both men turned to stare, then smile. “I wonder what John will say to that!” one said to the other as they turned back to peer again at the thundering prophet.

John, too, had recognized the Tetrarch, Longinus was sure; yet the prophet made no immediate reference to his presence. Instead, he continued preaching on the necessity of repentance and on the use of baptism as a sign of Yahweh’s forgiveness. The man was a powerful speaker; he had native ability, Longinus immediately perceived, to command attention and sway his hearers. The crowd listened, entranced, to his every word; now and then one would step forward and, crying loudly in repentance, ask for baptism.

Sometimes a man would interrupt the prophet to seek an answer to some deeply perplexing problem. But no one yet had spoken openly of the Tetrarch’s presence among them.

Then a tall, narrow-faced Jew, unkempt, ill-clothed, evidently a man of the earth, stepped forward and held up his hand. “This repentance of which you speak,” he questioned, “is it necessary for the rich man in the same manner as it is for the poor and dispossessed, for the man of authority as well as for the servant? I ask you, does the measuring rod measure the same for all men, or is there one rule for one man and another rule for another?”

“Repentance is necessary for all men, my brother,” John replied calmly. “The same measuring rod measures for both the man of authority and the servant who serves him, for both the rich man and the man of earth.”

John paused. Then slowly his dark eyes moved from the face of his questioner to that of the Tetrarch. “The same measuring rod measures for the Tetrarch of Galilee, my brother, that measures for you, and it is the same for even the lowliest servant in that iniquitous marble pile above the graveyard in Tiberias!” The prophet’s eyes were blazing now, and he raised his gaunt, sun-bronzed arm to point a lean forefinger directly at Herod Antipas. “Repent, O Tetrarch, repent!” His voice was thunderous now, and the finger darted forward like the tongue of a serpent. “Repent while yet there is time! Repent of the evil you have done, and seek in true penitence the forgiveness of our God Whom you have scorned and despised!”

Antipas stood silent and stared straight ahead, looking as though suddenly he had been turned to stone. But Herodias, though amazed, had not been rendered speechless by the torrent of the prophet’s denunciation. Calmly she turned to her husband. “Do you intend to stand here and allow this madman to vilify you? Are you going to stand patiently while...?”

“And you! You evil woman!” John’s shout interrupted her. Now the angry hand was pointed directly at her. “You call me a madman,” he said. “Yes, I am a madman. I am a madman for our God. And I call upon you, too, to repent. Repent before our God turns His face from you forever. I call upon both you sinners to fall on your faces and cry out to the God of Israel, imploring Him for forgiveness.” Then the prophet’s stern eyes turned again toward the Tetrarch. “Herod, cast this foul woman from you! Have you not stolen her away from the bed of your brother? You cannot have her, O Tetrarch! Does not God’s holy law forbid a man from taking to bed the wife of his living brother in the flesh? Adulterer! Repent! And you, evil woman, you adulteress”—John’s eyes were fiery now with a wild zeal as he faced Herodias, whose flushed cheeks and lips drawn into thin lines revealed her fury—“neither shall you have him! Get you back to the bed you have deserted, if the husband you have abandoned has the grace to forgive and receive you! O Tetrarch”—John lifted his gaunt arms toward the heavens—“cast her from you before your grievous sinning brings ruin down upon the land. Send her back to your brother, and humbly beseech the forgiveness of our God! Repent, O Tetrarch, repent! Repent!”

Still Herod Antipas stood staring, unmoving, rooted.

“By all the great and little gods, Antipas”—Herodias, infuriated, whirled upon the Tetrarch, grabbed his arm and shook him—“will you stand there like a statue and permit that fanatic to insult and intimidate you and your wife before this crowd?” Scornfully she measured him, and her lips curled with disgust. “Are you indeed the Tetrarch of Galilee, or are you a frightened mouse?” She stood back, taunting him with her shrill laugh.

Her challenging words and her mirthless laughter broke the spell the prophet had cast. “No, I am not afraid of him,” Antipas replied slowly, as though he were arguing with himself. “Nor can I any longer permit this abuse to go unpunished. He has not only vilified your Tetrarch and his wife”—Antipas was now addressing the crowd rather than Herodias—“but he has challenged my honor and authority. His words are a call to insurrection. I can no longer permit the preaching of rebellion.” He turned to confront Longinus. “Centurion, arrest this man. Have him taken at once to the Fortress Machaerus and there placed in its dungeon. Order him held until I pronounce judgment.”

Without even a glance toward the now silent but calm and seemingly untroubled prophet of the Wilderness, Herod turned and started along the gentle rise toward the horses.

19

As they approached the southern shore line of the Sea of Galilee, Longinus sent riders ahead to notify Chuza of the impending arrival of the Tetrarch and his party at Tiberias. So the steward, with household servants to handle the baggage, was waiting at the palace gate when the caravan entered the grounds.

But Chuza, though he greeted them warmly and with profuse smiles, was obviously troubled, and Antipas quickly drew the man aside to question him. “Sire, you will not find the Tetrarchess here to welcome you,” the steward explained, his tone apologetic and his expression patently pained. “She has departed from Tiberias. I suggested that she might wish to delay her leaving, Sire, until your return, but she insisted on going at once.”

She had received a message, she told Chuza, that her father, King Aretas of Arabia Petraea, was desperately ill and that he had summoned her to his bedside. Although the steward had seen no messengers, he had not been disposed to question the Tetrarchess. She had prepared for the journey very quickly. The Centurion Cornelius had provided her with a detachment of soldiers to escort her to her father’s capital in the country southeast of the Dead Sea, beyond the Fortress Machaerus; she had taken with her, in addition, her best raiment and many of her choicest personal possessions.

“Then you think that she is not planning to come back to me? Is that what you’re suggesting, Chuza?”

“Sire, I am suggesting nothing. I am relating only what I saw and heard. I have no opinion as to what plans the Tetrarchess....”

“The Princess Herodias is Tetrarchess now, Chuza,” Antipas interrupted.

“Indeed, Sire”—Chuza bowed to the Tetrarch and then to Herodias—“the former Tetrarchess....”

“But when did she depart, Chuza?” Antipas interrupted again.

“A week ago, Sire. The escorting soldiers have not yet returned.”

“Had she heard that I was returning from Rome with a new Tetrarchess?”

“She said nothing to me about it, Sire, but I am confident that she knew of the Tetrarch’s marriage. Passengers coming ashore at Ptolemaïs from the vessel on which you and the Tetrarchess sailed out from Rome brought to Tiberias word of the new Tetrarchess. I myself heard it, and surely the report must have come also to her ears here at the palace.”

“Very well, Chuza; think no more of it.” By now they had entered the lofty, marble-columned great atrium. A faint smile crossed his heavy face. “Do you know, I believe she must have suspected all along?” He turned to Herodias. “By all the gods, my dear, she has made our course all the easier.”

Longinus declined the invitation of the Tetrarch and Herodias to take a chamber in the palace during his stay at Tiberias. He had promised Cornelius that he would be his guest when next he came to Galilee. Tempting though the Tetrarch’s invitation had been, Longinus reasoned that it might be wise to assume that the watched might also be the watching.

Besides, Claudia had been assigned an apartment which, the centurion had observed, looked out upon a broad terrace facing the Sea of Galilee. A door from Claudia’s bedroom conveniently opened onto the terrace. Longinus smiled as he reviewed the details of the arrangement.

The sentry at the palace gate, he also knew, would be a Roman soldier.

20

Cornelius shook his head solemnly. “Herod will regret it. Arresting the prophet was unwise, Longinus.”

“But the fellow is an insurrectionist, Cornelius; certainly it can’t be denied that he’s been inciting rebellion against the Tetrarch’s rule. You should have heard what he called Antipas and Herodias.” A wry smile twisted the corners of his mouth. “Of course, just between you and me, I think he was right. But that doesn’t absolve him from agitating against the Tetrarch, and in this province, of course, the Tetrarch represents Rome.”

“But I don’t think that the prophet’s a revolutionary,” Cornelius insisted. “He lambasted the Tetrarch that day we came on him at Bethabara, too, but he wasn’t challenging Herod’s authority as Tetrarch; he was denouncing his wickedness as a man and calling upon him as a man to repent just as others were repenting. There’s a difference, Longinus, even though it’s hard for us Romans to understand that. We bundle our religion—if we have any, which few of us do, I suspect—and our imperial government into one packet. But the Jews keep their religion and their government, or rather our enforced government over them, separate. And their religion is predominant. In ordering John imprisoned, therefore, Herod is allowing the government to invade the Jews’ religious precincts, just as Pilate did when he had the army’s ensigns flown from the ramparts of Antonia. He’s likely to find himself in the same sort of situation that Pilate faced. It will do him no good; John at Machaerus will likely have more power over the people than he would have had if Herod had left him unmolested.” He glanced quizzically toward his friend. “Don’t you think so?”

“I’ve never thought of it. Nor do I care, by the gods, what becomes of that Wilderness fellow, or....” He paused and glanced about.

“There’s no one to hear us.”

Nor was there. From the early evening meal, eaten in the stuffiness of the garrison’s mess hall at a table with the other officers, Cornelius had brought his guest to the flat roof. Up here they would escape the heat and the heavy odors of food and wine and sweating soldiers and at the same time catch any vagrant breeze that might be stirring from the sea. Nor would there be any ears to overhear.

“I was going to say that I cared little what happened to him or Antipas ... or, by great Jove, even Pontius Pilate.”

“Both Herod and Pilate have blundered. And I’m sure Sejanus will be hearing about it; that is, if he hasn’t heard of it already.”

Longinus nodded, then casually changed the subject. “By the way,” he commented, “that reminds me; what ever became of that carpenter you said the desert preacher hailed as the Jews’ Messiah? Has he begun yet the task of wrecking the Roman Empire with his hammer and chisels?”

“It’s just possible that he has, though not with any hammer and chisel.” His smile was enigmatic. “Certainly the Empire, if I understand him, isn’t built on any plan that he approves.”

“By all the gods, Cornelius!” Longinus, who had been sprawled in his chair with his feet propped on the low rampart, sat up with a start. “What do you mean?”

Cornelius held up his hand. “Now wait,” he said calmly. “There’s nothing to be alarmed about. You won’t need to report to Sejanus about the carpenter. But since I saw you last he has gained a great following, even among some of the more influential people. You remember that beautiful woman Herod took with him to Jerusalem, the one called Mary of Magdala?”

“Who could forget her?”

“I agree. Well, she’s a disciple of the carpenter now, and a different woman, they say; she’s forsworn the Tetrarch’s bedchamber.”

“Maybe”—Longinus grinned—“that’s because Herodias has moved in.”

“Could be; I don’t know. But the report is that she’s given up all her amatory pursuits in order to follow him. All up and down the seaside, in fact, the people are swarming to hear him and beseech his help.”

“But insurrection, Cornelius....”

“Oh, it isn’t that, Longinus. The Galilean isn’t concerned with the government, as I understand his teachings, though I’ve seen little of him myself; I get my information from some of the Jews in the synagogue at Capernaum”—he smiled—“who secretly, I suspect, are followers of the man, though many others among the Jews are hostile. I think he wants to change people as individuals, not their governments; he wants to help them. I’m sure he’s never given any thought to fomenting rebellion against Rome.”

Longinus relaxed and sat back. “Then he’s just another of these religious fanatics, isn’t he? Well, I’m relieved to hear that, though Palestine seems to have more than its share of these charlatans.”

“Charlatan? I wouldn’t say that. Let me tell you a story, and then you can deduce what you wish. It happened only a few weeks ago. When you see Chuza, Herod’s steward....”

“I saw him today.”

“When you see him again, ask him to tell you what happened to his son. Everybody in this part of the country has heard about it; the news swept through Galilee like flames across a parched grassland.”

“Well, by the gods, Cornelius, what did happen?”

“Chuza’s young son had come down with a fever. In this low country along the lakeside, you know, fevers are pretty common, but they’re not often dangerous. So Chuza and Joanna—she’s his wife—weren’t alarmed at first. But when days passed and the boy didn’t improve—in fact, his condition grew worse—they became concerned. One physician after another was called in, and they exhausted all the treatments they knew how to give. But the child was failing fast, and Chuza and Joanna were frantic; it looked as though their son wouldn’t live much longer. The fever was consuming him. What could they do? Where could they get help?

“It happened that on the last day, when it appeared that the boy was about to die, a Jewish fisherman who had occasionally been supplying the palace came to Chuza. He and his brother and two other brothers with whom he frequently fished had made a heavy catch, and this Simon had come to inquire if Chuza would buy a mess for the Tetrarch’s household.

“But a servant came to the door and told him his master could not discuss business; the steward’s son, he explained, was dying.

“‘In that case, I must see him,’ the fisherman said to the servant. ‘I can tell him how his son’s life may be saved.’

“But the servant told him that the physicians had despaired of saving the child and that the parents were momentarily awaiting his death. He ordered Simon to leave.

“The fisherman, a headstrong fellow, insisted, however, on being shown into the chamberlain’s presence, and the argument grew so loud that Chuza heard and came out to discover what was taking place. The fisherman Simon then told the Tetrarch’s steward of the Galilean carpenter’s amazing ability to effect miraculous cures, and he suggested that a servant be sent on horseback to find this young man, whom Simon referred to as ‘the Master.’ ‘And when the servant finds him,’ he said ‘have him bring the Master here, and he will heal your son.’

“Of course Chuza protested,” Cornelius continued, “that skilled physicians had been unable to cure the child. ‘Only try the Master,’ Simon then implored him. ‘Only have faith in him and ask him to heal your son, and he will heal him.’

“And suddenly the thought came to Chuza that surely he had nothing to lose by seeking out the Galilean mystic. The child was already on the verge of death; certainly this Jesus ben Joseph, whatever he might do, wouldn’t further endanger the boy’s life. So he asked Simon where his master might be found and whether he would come at once to his son’s bedside.

“The Galilean was visiting friends at Cana, a village a few miles west of the little sea. And Simon assured Chuza that he would come.

“So Chuza decided to seek the carpenter’s aid. But he sent no servant for him. Instead, he had three horses saddled, one for Simon, one for himself, and one for this Jesus ben Joseph.

“‘As we rode westward toward Cana,’ Chuza told me, ‘I felt a growing hope that the strange Galilean might really be able to restore my son to health, and I was possessed by an overpowering urge to find the man. Soon Simon and I were racing along the dusty road. When we reached Cana and found the house, we discovered this Jesus seated with his friends at the noonday meal.’”

Cornelius got up from his chair, sat down again on the rampart, and looked out toward a small fleet of fishing boats coming in to shore with the day’s catch.

“By the gods,” Longinus asked, “what happened then? Go on; it’s a good story.”

“When he looked into the understanding eyes of the young man from Nazareth, Chuza told me, a strange warmth, not physical warmth from the hard riding but a sense of eased tension, of peace, perhaps, something he said he couldn’t describe to me and didn’t entirely understand himself, took possession of him. He knew then, he was utterly certain, he said, that the young man smiling at him had the power to heal his son, if he could but get him to Tiberias in time!”

Once more Cornelius paused in his recital to study a fishing boat unloading a heavy catch. Then he resumed the narrative.

“Chuza said he didn’t remember what he said to the man, except that he blurted out his plea for help and begged the stranger to return with him to the boy’s bedside. He and his wife loved their son so much, he pleaded, and the little fellow was dying. If only the carpenter would intervene to save him, he knew the child’s life would be spared.

“Then,” Cornelius went on, “the Nazareth carpenter said a strange thing. He turned his intent, kindly gaze from Chuza to glance at those at the table with him. ‘Always you must have signs and wonders,’ he said. ‘Can’t you believe without actually seeing these things done before your eyes?’

“Chuza didn’t understand the man’s words, but he didn’t try to find out what they meant. His son was dying, his need was desperate. Once more he begged the carpenter for his help. ‘O, sir, my boy is dying,’ he pleaded; ‘he won’t last out the day unless you go to him. Won’t you leave with us now, sir, and restore him?’”

Cornelius paused again. Longinus, his forehead creased in heavy concentration, seemed absorbed in the doings of several fishermen down at the water’s edge as they struggled with a heavy net. But he turned quickly to confront his friend. “Pluto blast you, Cornelius! Why do you keep stopping? Did the carpenter return with him or didn’t he?”

“No, he didn’t. He laid his hand on Chuza’s shoulder. ‘Return to your son,’ he said. ‘The fever has left him. He has been restored.’”

“And I suppose when Chuza and the fisherman got back, they found that the boy’s fever had actually broken?”

“Yes, he was fully recovered. And when Chuza asked Joanna what time it was when the fever broke, she said it was the seventh hour, which was exactly when the carpenter had told Chuza that the boy had been restored.” Cornelius smiled and stood up. “That’s the story, Centurion ... Chuza’s story, not mine. What do you make of it?”

“A good story, and ably told by you. I’d call it an entertaining account of a remarkable coincidence.”

“Only a coincidence?”

“What else could it be? Surely you don’t believe that this carpenter fellow, without even going to the sick boy, drove out the fever? You know that fever victims either get well or die and that once the fever reaches a certain point, it goes one way or the other; it’s either death or a very rapid recovery, and the odds are about the same.” He shrugged his shoulders. “After hearing Chuza’s story the carpenter probably calculated it was time for the fever to break, and he simply gambled on the outcome.” Then he was suddenly serious, his eyes questioning. “Cornelius, don’t tell me you believe the carpenter actually cured the boy?”

“I don’t know, Longinus. But I’ll say this: I don’t disbelieve it. And I do know that the boy is alive and well today.” Cornelius stood up and stretched. “After all, to Chuza and Joanna that’s the important thing. When you see Chuza, you might ask him what he thinks of the Galilean.”

“If that carpenter did cure the boy in the manner you described, Cornelius, then he’s bound to be a god. And would a carpenter be a god, and a Galilean carpenter, at that? To me the whole idea is preposterous. But I’m just a Roman soldier; I haven’t been exposed, like you, to these eastern workers of magic.”

“This Jesus is no magician. In fact, he seems reluctant to perform these—what did he call them—‘signs and wonders.’ But the sick and the crippled continually besiege him to heal them, and his sympathies for the unfortunate appear to be boundless.” Cornelius sat down again on the parapet. “Tell me, do you remember that day we were sailing down the Tiber, standing at the ‘Palmyra’s’ rail talking about the various gods, and you said that you could never comprehend a spirit god, something that was nothing, you said, a being without a body?”

“Yes, and I still feel that way.”

“But what about a god that does have a body, a god-man? If a god should have a physical body and be in every physical respect like a man, would that make sense to you? Could you comprehend such a god?”

“By Jove, Cornelius, you’ve been out here with these Jews for much too long. You’ve been listening to too much prattle about their Yahweh. A god without a body, a body that houses a god. Bah! I put no credence in any of these notions. As for that carpenter, I’d say he’s another Wilderness preacher, not as fanatical perhaps, not as desert-parched and smelling of dried sweat as John, but certainly no god—whatever a god is, if there is such a thing, which I most seriously doubt. A carpenter from Nazareth, that hillside cluster of huts! Cornelius, I’ve been to Nazareth, as I’m sure you have. I ask you, would a god choose Nazareth to come from?” He stood up. “Nevertheless, the story you told was entertaining. Maybe to some it would be convincing. To me, though....” He shook his head slowly. Then suddenly a wide grin lighted his grim countenance. “How is it that you and I inevitably get around sooner or later to a discussion of the gods? And where do we invariably end? Nowhere. Talk, that’s all. And talk is all it can ever be, isn’t it? It’s all too nebulous, intangible....”

“But, Longinus, if this all-powerful, all-wise, all-good god that old Pheidias envisioned, this supreme one god, in order to communicate with his earthly creatures”—Cornelius held up his hand to stop Longinus, who had been about to interrupt—“should decide to take the form of a man, an ordinary man....”

“By all the small and great gods,” Longinus did interrupt, “do you think then that he would choose to be a carpenter from Nazareth?”

Cornelius stared at the fishing boats, now pulled up on the beach; the lengthening shadows had already begun to obscure them. “I wonder,” he said.

21

Herod Antipas was in a bad mood; he said little and appeared preoccupied during the meal. When they had finished he announced that he planned to spend the remainder of the evening conferring with his ministers. “I’ve been out of the country for a long time,” he explained casually. “I suspect there will be many trying problems awaiting consideration.”

When the Tetrarch withdrew from the lofty dining chamber, Herodias had servants place couches at the eastern edge of the terrace beside the bordering balustrade of faintly rose-hued marble, and with Neaera and Tullia hovering discreetly near them, the new Tetrarchess and her guest lay back comfortably to relax after the heavy meal. Out here it was cooler than it had been in the great chamber, for the white marble palace of Herod Antipas had been built on an upflung spit of land that pushed out like a flattened giant thumb into the Sea of Galilee, and whenever there was a breeze from off the water it swept unobstructed across the spacious terrace.

This terrace had been built seaward from an immense glass-covered peristylium, paved with tiny marble blocks in colors that had been laid to form an intricate but pleasing mosaic pattern and alive with fountains, flowers, and luxuriant tropical plants. Predominantly Roman in architecture, decoration, and furnishings, the palace reminded Claudia of the Procurator’s Palace at Caesarea. “Except that it’s more pretentious,” she told Herodias.

“Yes, it is,” Herodias agreed. “Antipas was determined for once to outdo his father. He had always lived in the shadow of old Herod, and I think he resented it. But even so, he has never had the ambition or the courage that his father had.”

“But surely, Herodias, you don’t see any virtue in your grandfather. Didn’t he have your grandmother and your father killed?”

“Yes, and my father’s brother Alexander. No, he was a monster, particularly in his last years when I think he must have been demented. But he was an able man, and he had courage. He never would have permitted that desert fellow to stand there and insult him and his wife, for example, even if the man had had all the Jews in Galilee at his side. Nor would he have yielded, as your Pilate did, to those Jews at Caesarea. He would have had them run through with swords and would have roared with laughter at their agonized dying. But perhaps I offend you.”

“No, you don’t offend me, my dear. Nor do I defend Pilate. But you must remember, he has Sejanus to deal with and also my beloved stepfather. Neither of those pillars of the Empire would have sanctioned the massacre of thousands of Jews. Pilate does have a difficult role to play.”

Herodias smiled and pointed a ringed forefinger. “And are you going to help him play it, my dear Claudia, or will you...?” She paused and allowed her question to hang in mid-air.

“Or will I conspire with Longinus to lead Pilate into making further wrong moves, thereby getting him recalled and perhaps banished and permitting me to divorce him and marry Longinus?” Laughing, Claudia sat up and swung her feet to the floor. “You are so subtle, my dear, so very subtle.” Now she shook an accusing finger at her hostess. “But tell me, what will you do when Aretas’ daughter returns to Tiberias and demands her place as Tetrarchess?”

“She won’t return; Antipas is sending her a bill of divorcement. Surely you must know that I would see to that. In fact, I think she left with her mind made up that she was finished as Tetrarchess. My only thought—and that isn’t concern—is what old Aretas will do about it.”

Behind them now the lamps had been lighted in the palace. A brilliant full moon slowly climbed the sky above the little sea; both women lay back luxuriously to watch the moon mount higher, and before long their talk had slowed into silence. Suddenly Herodias realized that she had become almost senseless. She sat up with a start.

“By the gods, Claudia, we’re almost asleep!”

“We’re tired from the journey,” Claudia said, rubbing her eyes.

“Yes. Maybe we should go to bed. Can I have Neaera bring you something? Some wine and wafers, fruit, or a glass of hot milk?”

“No, not a thing. I’m still stuffed from the wonderful dinner. I only want to get to bed and to sleep. I am really quite tired.”

“You must be indeed.” Her smile, Claudia saw plainly in the brightness of the full moon, was positively devilish. It was impossible to mistake its meaning.

“Oh, that,” she laughed, then added, “but surely you heard him tell the Tetrarch he would spend the night with Cornelius?”

“Yes, I heard him tell the Tetrarch.” She stood up. “Let’s go to bed.” They crossed the terrace and entered the palace. “I’ll see you to your chamber,” she said.

An inner room that opened into Claudia’s had been prepared for Tullia. Herodias glanced quickly around the apartment, then turned to go. At the door opening onto the corridor she paused. “I hope you will be comfortable and sleep well.” Her eyes brightened. “You won’t be disturbed. And you’ll discover”—she swept her hand in an arc to embrace Claudia’s chamber—“that all your doors have bolts opening from the inside, including,” she added with a knowing smile, “the one to the terrace. Good night, Claudia. And, by all the gods”—her dark, wanton eyes had burst into dancing flames—“I envy you!”

22

Claudia sat up in bed, instantly and fully awake. She knew that she had been dreaming, a confused, wandering, disconnected, senseless sort of dream, though now with her awakening it had vanished completely, dissolved into nothing. But the gentle tapping that had been mixed with the dreaming, had not been a part of it; the tapping at the door to the terrace was real and repeated and insistent.

She kicked her feet free of the sheet and swung them to the floor. From the waist down, as she arose, she stood in the narrow band of silver-cold moonlight spearing through the tall window behind her to cut diagonally across the foot of the bed; quickly she stepped into the less revealing shadows at the doorway.

“Longinus?” she whispered, her face close to the panel.

“Yes.”

“One minute until I can draw the bolt.”

When he was inside and she was closing and bolting the door, he slipped his toga off and, stepping past the shaft of moonlight, dropped it on a chair against the wall near the head of the bed. As he turned around, she came toward him, her arms outstretched; crossing the bright beam, her white body stood plainly revealed through the sheerness of the black gown.

“Oh, Longinus”—she flung herself into his arms—“I thought you really had decided to stay with Cornelius.”

He lifted her to her toes and held her, almost crushingly, against him, and then he caught her chin and raising her face so that he could look into her eyes, bent down and kissed her red and warmly eager lips.

“Didn’t you know,” he asked when he released her after a long while, “that those words were for Antipas and not you? Didn’t you know that nothing could possibly keep me from you tonight?”

Gently, almost carrying her, he led her the two or three steps to the bed. They sat down beside each other, and he bent forward to unbuckle his sandals. When he sat up again, she twisted her feet around and lifted them to the bed, doubled up her knees, and lay with her head and right shoulder pressed hard against his side. “Are you tired from the journey and anxious to get to sleep?” she asked, turning her head to look into his face.

“Tired maybe, and warm from walking from the Antonia”—he pulled his tunic open at the throat and to his waist—“but sleepy, no.” He laughed, but not loudly, for the palace was as quiet as a sepulcher. “Do you think any man in my present situation could be sleepy?”

“Yes, by all the gods, I know one.” She sat up and swung her feet to the floor. “Pontius Pilate.”

“No, Claudia, he couldn’t be that cold-blooded.” He pulled her to him, and drew her warm body into the closing circle of his arms. She lifted her feet again to the bed and slid down into the brightness of the moonlight.

“But, I tell you he is, Longinus. All the man ever thinks of is guarding and extending the powers and authority of the Procuratorship and piling up Jewish shekels. To him my only attraction is being the Emperor’s stepdaughter.”

“Then he’s an even bigger fool than I thought.” Gently he pushed her chin down to pull her lips slightly apart and, bending over her, crushed his mouth upon them.

“Oh, Longinus,” she cried out, when finally, breathing heavily, he raised his head, “do take me away from him! Do, Longinus, oh, do, do! I cannot endure him! By all the gods, I simply cannot!”

“But where would we go?” He looked deeply into her troubled eyes, luminous even in the shadows. “How could we escape the Emperor and the Prefect, my dear girl? How could we?”

“We couldn’t, of course. If we attempted it, they would soon find us, and Tiberius would do to you what my grandfather did to my poor father. I know that, Longinus. But it’s so long from one time with you to another, from one night so quickly passed to the gods only know when again.” She slipped her hand beneath his tunic and caressingly ran her fingers across the damp, warm expanse of his chest. “It’s so hard waiting for these few stolen hours,” she murmured. “Must we be forever waiting, Longinus?”

“No, Claudia, no. Pluto burn him! One of these days he’ll go too far with the Emperor and Sejanus. But we’ve got to give him time to be caught in his own trap. Then when he’s ruined himself, the Emperor will permit you to divorce him. But in the meantime, we must steal all the hours we can”—his words were blurred as he buried his face in her lustrous, fragrant hair—“and not be too concerned with Pilate or our future.” They remained silent side by side for a while, then Longinus raised his head. Claudia lay stretched out full length upon the bed, and from the waist down now her scarcely concealed body came within the rapidly widening band of moonlight. “We mustn’t try to anticipate things,” he said quietly. “We must seize the opportunities as they come. Carpe diem, that’s all.” He bent lower to look into her eyes. “More to the point, let’s enjoy the night while we have it.”

He stood up quickly and in the shadows hastily stripped off his clothes.

23

As he drifted up slowly out of the depths of slumber he fancied he was hearing the early cockcrow from Castra Praetoria; surely he was sharing Claudia’s bed in her apartment in the Imperial Palace, for he could smell her perfume, he could feel the satiny texture of her hair spread fan-like across his chest.

The trumpet was insistent. He would have to open his eyes. He twisted up on his elbow and squinted toward the window; light sifting into the chamber revealed the crumpled sheer nightgown dropped across his clothes on the chair near the bed. Looking down, he studied Claudia’s sleeping face—rouge-smeared, half-open mouth, cheeks, forehead, and even her neck splotched with the smudged prints of his lips from her own lipstick.

He glanced around the room again; no, this time he was not in Rome, and the trumpet call came only from the post headquarters in Tiberias. This time there was no threat of immediate separation. Immensely relieved, he pulled up the sheet that had fallen away and snuggled back down beside her.

“Must you be going so soon?” she asked sleepily, for his movement had aroused her. “Must you always be leaving me?”

“That’s the cockcrow at Castra Praetoria, and I have early duty,” he said. “Maybe this morning I’ll be summoned before the Prefect.”

“You aren’t deceiving me. The Prefect is in Rome, and we are in Tiberias,” she replied. “And you have no morning duty at the post’s quarters.” Smiling, she added, “I’m not that sleepy, Centurion.” She slid forward and sat up, then just as quickly slipped back beneath the protecting sheet. “I forgot,” she said, grinning. “But I’m so glad that you don’t have to leave now.”

“But I’ll have to be going soon,” he declared. “I’d like to get away before the palace is too much astir.”

“But why, Longinus? Must you sneak away as though you were a thieving intruder? Don’t you know that Herodias was expecting you? She even admitted that she was envious of me; I’m sure she was anticipating a far less interesting evening with Antipas.” She paused, and her eyes widened. “Surely you aren’t afraid of his knowing ... about us?”

“You know I’m not afraid of the Tetrarch’s knowing”—his tone was gently scolding—“or, by the gods, of Pontius Pilate’s.”

“Then could it be Cornelius?” Now she was teasing. “But doesn’t he know? Surely....”

“Of course,” he interrupted. “He knew last night I was coming here. He gave me the password for the sentry at the palace gate.”

“But did he know you were going to be spending the night ... with me?”

“I didn’t tell him that. But I’m sure that anybody with the intelligence of a centurion would arrive at such a conclusion.” He was grinning. “Wouldn’t you think so?”

“Yes. But maybe he doesn’t approve, now that he’s become so interested in the Jews’ religion. And judging by that desert fanatic’s tirade against Herodias and Antipas, even the most innocent adultery is frowned upon by these Jewish religionists.”

“Whatever he may think about it, Cornelius knows very well that what you and I do is none of his business, and I’m sure he won’t try to make it his affair.”

“Then I’m the one.” Her smeared lips were pushed out in a feigned pout. “You’re bored with me. I know, you’re just trying to get rid....”

“Silly girl.” He pulled her close, for she had coquettishly twisted away. “Did I say I was leaving right now?”

24

Two soldiers from his own century at Caesarea who had ridden into Tiberias during the night were awaiting Longinus when he returned to the garrison headquarters. They had been sent by Sergius Paulus with a message from the Prefect Sejanus. A note from the Prefect had been attached to the carefully sealed message, emphasizing the importance of the communication and ordering Sergius Paulus, should Longinus not be in Caesarea on its arrival, to have it dispatched to him wherever he might be and as speedily as possible.

The message from Sejanus had arrived on an Alexandrian grain ship that had sailed into the harbor at Caesarea several days after Herod Antipas and his new wife, with their party and their guest, the Procurator’s wife, had departed for Jerusalem on their way to Tiberias. The cohort commander had dispatched the two horsemen at once in the hope that they might overtake the centurion before Herod’s party had started on the journey up the Jordan Valley toward the Galilean capital. But the caravan had been two days on the way before the horseman rode into Jerusalem; from there they had started almost immediately for Tiberias.

Quickly and with considerable apprehension Longinus broke the seals. Why was the message so urgent? What could have happened? He knew that Sejanus was not replying to the report he himself had dispatched to the Prefect by the hand of the “Actium’s” captain; that vessel had probably not even reached Rome yet.

Longinus hurriedly scanned the message; then, relieved, he read it again more slowly. The Prefect was summoning him to return to Rome to report in detail on the situation in Judaea and Galilee. But first he was to go immediately to Senator Piso’s glassworks in Phoenicia. There he would receive a package which he would then convey to Rome.

The package would be highly valuable, the Prefect warned; it would contain a large sum of money, revenue from sales of glassware, and he was to exercise every precaution in seeing to it that he got it to Rome intact. Impress as many soldiers as he thought necessary to serve as guards while the package was being transported from the glass plant to the ship that would bring it to Rome, the Prefect ordered; take no risk of being waylaid by robbers or some band of zealots. He suggested that to minimize this danger, the centurion should go aboard ship at Tyre, the seaport nearest the plant.

Longinus explained to the two soldiers who had brought him the message that he was being ordered to Rome by the Prefect Sejanus and instructed them to bear to Sergius Paulus a message he would write. In this note he informed the cohort commander of the assignment Sejanus had given him to come to Rome, although he made no mention of the money he would be delivering. He added that the Prefect had given him no details of the new assignment; he would write later from Rome. When he finished writing the communication, Longinus dismissed the two to return with it to Caesarea.

Cornelius had been aware of the arrival of the two men sent by Sergius Paulus; Longinus told him what the Prefect’s instructions had been.

“Cornelius, I want you to pick a small detachment from your century to go with me to Phoenicia for the package and then on over to Tyre,” he said. “If by any chance I should let that money be stolen....” He shrugged and drew his fingers across his throat. “I suspect a large portion of it, if not all, is destined to find its way into the Prefect’s private coffers.”

Cornelius agreed to accompany him. His men would leave early on the morrow and meet the two centurions at the home of Cornelius at Capernaum where they would spend the evening. From there the party would start northwestward for the senator’s glassworks in Phoenicia.

“And now,” said Cornelius when they had made the arrangements, “you’ll be wanting to return to the palace; after today it may be a long time before you see Claudia again.”

Only last night he and Claudia had talked of how they might remain in Tiberias for perhaps two weeks; he had even considered taking her with him on a hurried visit to the glassworks, which he had not inspected for the last several months. And they would manage to spend every evening together, to be with each other every night through.

“Oh, Longinus, let me go with you to Rome! Take me, please,” she pleaded an hour later as they sat on the terrace outside her bedchamber. “Do you dare, Longinus? Or, should I say, do we dare?”

“No,” he said, “though by all the gods, I wish we did.” He shook his head slowly. “No, Claudia, we mustn’t attempt it. You might be able to hide from the Prefect and the Emperor. But not for long. Pilate would report your disappearance—he would have to for his own protection—and immediately Sejanus would suspect me. He might even think you and I were plotting to upset the rule of Tiberius, which would mean, of course, the overthrow of the Prefect. You would be discovered within a matter of days. And then in all probability it would be the imperial headsman for me, and for you ... well, for you it would probably be a fate much like your mother’s, Pandateria or some other far-off place. And for the friends who tried to hide you, death, too. You see, Sejanus and the Emperor married you off to Pilate to get you far away from Rome. They intend for you to remain away. Until”—he shrugged—“there’s a violent change in Rome, you must not return.”

They sat quietly and looked out at the fishing boats plying the sea.

“I won’t remain long in Rome, I think,” he said after a while. “If the gods are good, Claudia, it will be only a few months until....”

“If the gods are good!” she interrupted, harshly. “There are no good gods, Longinus. There are no gods!” She scowled and looked away. “If there are, how can they be so perverse?”

“I don’t dispute it. Call it what you like, gods, fate, chance, luck....”

“Ill luck, perversity of fate. Bona Dea, Longinus, if there are gods, they are evil, and the most evil of all is old Sejanus, may Pluto transfix him with his white-hot fork! Why must he forever be doing us ill?”

“Perhaps, who knows, he may be serving us well in calling me to Rome. It may lead to the Emperor’s banishing Pilate or, if not that, his removal from the Procuratorship.”

“May the gods grant it!” she said fervently.

“But now, my dear”—he smiled—“there are no gods.”

They sat for a long time on the sunlit terrace and talked, though they knew their future was a difficult one to predict. They walked down to the beach and strolled along the sands; once they paused to sit for a while on the rotting hull of a half-buried fishing boat. Before the sun dropped westward behind the palace they climbed the steps and crossed the esplanade; in the peristylium he said good-by to the Tetrarch and Herodias. Claudia walked with him back to the terrace, where he quickly bade her farewell.

“I’ll see you before many months in Caesarea,” he said and gently pinched her cheek. He bent down for a last kiss. “Pray the gods for the winds to bring me quickly ... and with good news. Pray the silly little no-gods.”

“I would, if I thought it would bring you back any sooner,” she said. “I’d even say a prayer—and offer a lamb—to the Jew’s grim Yahweh. But I have more faith in the charity of the winds themselves.”

An hour later he and Cornelius set out for Capernaum. The squad from the Tiberias century that would escort them to the glassworks and then to the harbor at Tyre had been selected and equipped for the journey; the soldiers would join the centurions the next morning at the home of Cornelius.

As they were nearing the house, Cornelius turned to question his friend. “Longinus, do you remember Lucian?”

“Lucian? Your son?”

“Well, you could probably call him our son, although he’s actually my slave. He was given me by his father, just before he died, when Lucian was only three or four years old. He’s the grandson of old Pheidias, the tutor I was telling you about some time ago.”

“Yes, I do remember the boy. But he is more like a son than a slave, isn’t he?”

“He is. We’re devoted to the boy. We couldn’t love him more, I’m sure, nor could he love us more, if he were really our own flesh and blood.”

“But why are you asking me about him?”

“Well, some time ago I promised Lucian that the next time I went on a journey I’d take him along. I wonder if you would object to his going with us up into Phoenicia?”

“Of course not. Why don’t you take him?”

“Then I shall. We’ll get an early start in the morning. We ought to be ready to begin the journey when the detachment arrives from Tiberias.”

But the next morning Lucian was ill. Perhaps, Cornelius thought, it came from the great excitement of the anticipated journey. With his palm the centurion felt the boy’s forehead, cheeks, under his chin. They were feverish.

Phoenicia

25

The old man, smoke-blackened and naked except for a frayed and soiled loincloth, tottered forward and collapsed at their feet.

“He almost fell into the fire chamber,” explained one of the two young slaves who had dragged him from the furnace shed.

A beetle-browed, scowling overseer with a long leather whip came running from an adjacent section of the sheds. “Get back to your work!” he shouted, as he slashed viciously at the slaves. The two fled inside; the burly fellow strode across to the old man on the ground.

“Water! O Zeus, mercy. Water! Water!” the old slave gasped.

The overseer raised his whip. “Stand up, you, or by the gods, I’ll cut you in strips!” he hissed. “Get back to the furnace!” He stood poised to strike the inert man.

“Hold!” Cornelius commanded. “Strike him once, and by the great Jove, you’ll have me to deal with!” Suddenly furious, his eyes blazing, the centurion stepped forward to confront the overseer.

“Who, by the gods, are you?” the fellow demanded insolently. “By whose authority do you interfere with the operation of this plant?”

“By the great gods, my own, if the centurion”—he glanced coldly toward Longinus—“is little enough interested to stop you.”

“Don’t touch him!” Longinus pointed. “And get back to your duties.”

“And who”—the fellow was glowering, his heavy jaw thrust out—“are you, by the gods, to be giving me orders?”

Aroused by the angry words outside the fire chamber, a man rushed from the near-by furnace-shed office. “Porcius, you insolent, blundering fool, put down that whip!” he bellowed. “Don’t you know the centurion”—he gestured toward Longinus—“is the son of Senator Piso, who owns this plant? And the other one is his friend. Now you get back to your work!”

“But first let him get this poor old slave some water.”

“Yes, Centurion.” He turned fiercely to the overseer. “You heard the centurion. Go! And bring a cloth, too, to bathe his face.”

“O Zeus, mercy. Water.” The old man’s plea was hardly a whisper. “Mercy, O....”

Longinus pointed. “Water will do him no good now, Cornelius.”

The wizened, gaunt slave’s eyes, wide-open, were setting in an agonized, frightened stare; his head was stretched back, and Cornelius, looking into his blackened and bony face, saw that it was pitted and scarred from innumerable small burns; the eyebrows and eyelashes were completely gone, singed away in the intolerable heat of the glass furnaces.

The overseer returned with the water and a smudged cloth.

“No need now,” the plant superintendent said. “He’s dead.”

The overseer nodded. “Shall we....?” He paused. “The usual way?”

“Not for the moment. Put him over there under the shed. Later, when....”

“When we have left, eh?” Cornelius was pointedly sarcastic. “What is the usual way?”

The superintendent hesitated.

“I’ll tell him, Lucius,” Longinus spoke out unconcernedly. “Usually, Cornelius, they are thrown into the furnaces they have been tending, provided, of course, that the heat is so intense that such disposition of the cadaver will not endanger the mixture in the glassmaking. Oftentimes they end up over there, in the deserted area behind that sand dune, with the vultures picking their ill-padded bones. But every now and then, when they do drag one over there, particularly if the breeze is from the land, they shovel a bit of sand over him.” He shrugged and thrust out his hands solemnly. “Of course, doing it that way provides a more pleasant atmosphere for working.”

Cornelius appeared not to have heard his friend’s poor attempt at humor. He stared at the dead slave on the ground and slowly shook his head. “He was calling upon Zeus, a Greek. He might have been another Pheidias.” He shook his head ruefully. “Slaves both, but what a difference in their lots.”

“And what is the difference?” Longinus demanded. “They’re both dead. Your old tutor was put away honorably in a tomb, no doubt. But when this fellow’s carcass has become a handful of ashes or is completely dissolved into the sand and water and sea winds, won’t they both be gone to nothingness, ended without a trace?”

“They’re both dead, yes. But gone to nothingness, I can’t say. It might be that their spirits, their souls....”

“Oh, come now, Cornelius.” Longinus turned to the plant superintendent, “My friend has been too long in Palestine,” he commented wryly. “He has come to believe what those Jews believe, that the death of a man is not his end. In other words”—he pointed to the stiffened slave now being borne to the shed—“that that fellow’s soul, whatever a soul is—if there is such a thing, which I find it impossible to believe—is floating around somewhere in a world filled with other disembodied beings.”

“If you will excuse me, sir,” the manager said, evading comment, “I have some work....”

“Go ahead, Lucius. We will be leaving early tomorrow for Tyre. Everything, you say, is ready?”

“Everything, the reports, the revenue, everything, sir.”

Earlier Longinus had shown Cornelius through the various departments of the glassmaking plant, and Cornelius had marveled at the skill of the glassblowers, slaves whose lot was incomparably more fortunate, he saw, than that of those who fired the roaring furnaces. When he had remarked about this to Longinus, his host had observed casually that the blowers were valuable property, while the laborers in the furnace chambers were easily replaced when after a few weeks or months they literally burned themselves out. The two had just completed their tour when the old Greek was dragged out to die before them.

From the plant they strolled toward the beach some two hundred paces below it. “I can’t get that slave out of my mind,” Cornelius said, as they sat in the bow of a small boat that had been pulled up on the sands. “By all the gods, I thought those on the docks of the Emporium were having a hard time, but these slaves that fire your glass furnaces”—he grimaced—“Jupiter pity them. Certainly nobody else does.”

“But if we are to have beautiful glass in the mansions of Rome, or at the Tetrarch’s Palace, or the Procurator’s at Caesarea, or in countless other great places of the wealthy and the privileged, if revenue from the glass factories is to continue flowing into the coffers of the Empire and the Prefect, then, Cornelius, the furnaces must be stoked and the molten glass must be blown. So”—he shrugged—“slaves will die and be replaced. But remember, Cornelius, they are slaves, and slaves are easy to come by; fresh ones are always being sent out here by Sejanus. And we only put those of least value into the furnace chambers.”

“So, Longinus, the value of a slave is to be measured in direct proportion to the value of the merchandise—in your case, glassware—he is able to produce? And when tomorrow you leave for Rome with the profits made from your glassware, you will be carrying the lives of many slaves in your package, won’t you? And when at the markets of Rome and Antioch and Alexandria you sell those beautiful goblets with their slender, rose-tinted stems, you will know that you are selling glass colored with the lifeblood of men such as that old Greek, that slave who perhaps by now has been consumed in the very furnace that exacted his life? Isn’t that true?”

“Cornelius, you’re a good soldier, but you’re in the wrong profession.” Longinus leaned forward and cracked his bronzed knuckles. “You should be writing poetry or lecturing classes in philosophy, or even”—he paused, and a grin spread across his face—“be acting as a priest in the Temple at Jerusalem.” Suddenly the smile was gone. “Of course a slave is valuable in proportion to what he can produce or the service he can provide. Aren’t we all valuable in that same proportion? We live awhile, work, love, hate, die. What do we leave? Only what we have produced. Everything else is gone, including us. So, in the end, we and the dead slave are the same ... nothing. But you don’t agree, do you?”

“I don’t want to agree, Longinus. What you say makes sense. But something within me says just as emphatically that you are wrong. Yet I can’t prove it.” Cornelius dug his sandaled heels into the sand at the bottom of the long abandoned boat. “I keep thinking of the old Greek up there. I don’t know what life gave him, of course, before some invading Roman soldiers destroyed his home—if he had a home—certainly his way of life, and dragged him to Rome, where he simply had the bad luck to fall into the hands of the Prefect. But there’s no mystery about what life has offered him since his enslavement. And this man may have been another Pheidias, Centurion, a man more intelligent, more cultured, a better man, my friend, than nine out of ten of the equestrians in Rome. Obviously, then, life has been unfair to him. And you say he is finished, done for, nothing. You say there will never be any chance of his getting a better throw of the dice.”

“Exactly. And throw of the dice is right, too. He shook them in the cup and rolled them, and they rolled wrong; we rolled ours, and they stopped with the right numbers up. That’s all there is to it. Fate, chance, luck, call it what you will. It’s a few years or many, a good life or one of pain ... and then nothing. Isn’t it just that simple, Cornelius? How else could it possibly be? Isn’t any other idea simply superstition?” Longinus leaned over and picked up a small shell. “Look at this,” he said. “What happened to the mollusk who lived here? Did he live out his span of life happily, or was he eaten in his prime? And is his unshelled spirit now swimming about in some sea heaven?” He tossed the shell into the surf. “That old slave up there, I maintain, is just as dead and gone—or will be when his corpse is disposed of—as the mollusk who once inhabited that shell. And both of them are gone for good.”

“Then you put men and mollusks in the same category?”

“Yes, as far as having immortal spirits is concerned. But you don’t, Centurion; you hold with your Pharisee friends—it’s the Pharisees who believe in immortality, isn’t it—that man is a different sort of animal in that he survives in a spirit world....”

“I’d like to; I want to. It’s a damnably unfair world if he doesn’t.”

“And it’s just as unfair if he does. Look.” Longinus leaned forward again. “You say that this all-powerful, all-wise, all-good god, this Yahweh, will see to it that in the next world, the spirit world, that old slave up there will get justice. But I insist that such a god does not exist; if he did, as I argued that day we were sailing down the Tiber, you remember, he wouldn’t permit such unfairness and injustice in this present life. Isn’t that a logical contention, Cornelius? How can a good god, I ask you again, decree, or permit, so much evil?”

“I don’t know,” Cornelius replied. “I’m no nearer an answer to your question now than I was that other day. But I am confident that if this god exists—and I believe he does, Longinus; in fact I’m even stronger now in that belief than I was then—he does not decree evil, he simply permits evil men sometimes to rule in the affairs of this earthly, physical life. It may be that he doesn’t want to restrict man’s freedom. Do you see? That wouldn’t mean he approves of the evil acts of men.”

Longinus slowly shook his head. “No, Cornelius, I don’t see. Your argument seems completely fatuous to me. I cannot comprehend an all-powerful, good god who would permit men to do one another evil. I am convinced that the fact that the world is filled with men who are unjust and cruel and evil indisputably proves that no such god exists.”

“And I would answer that it is strong evidence but not indisputable proof.” For a long moment Cornelius stared out in the direction of a merchant ship sailing southward toward towering Mount Carmel. “You see, Longinus,” he said, turning to face his companion, “we have so little information on which to base an opinion. If there is such a god—if there is, remember—how can we even comprehend his nature, what he is like, unless?...” He paused and looked back to the sea.

“Unless?”

“Unless someone reveals him to us, interprets him to men, shows his works and thoughts....”

“The Jewish Messiah, eh? The carpenter who is about to overthrow Rome?”

“I don’t think he’s ever indicated that he was seeking to overthrow Rome. I think that idea has come down from the old Jewish prophets, who foresaw a great political and military savior of their land. Several times I’ve been in the crowds listening to him talking, and so far as I could tell, he was only trying to explain to the people the nature of this god whom he refers to as his father. He was attempting to interpret this Yahweh to them sometimes even to the extent of utilizing some of this father god’s power. That’s apparently what he did when he restored Chuza’s son.”

“You mean he was clever enough to figure out when nature would do the restoring. But we won’t go into that again.” Longinus twisted around in the boat and stood up. “No, my friend, I insist that your reasoning is not sound, that you have been overcome by this eastern mysticism which seems to fill the very air out here.” He clapped his hand on Cornelius’ shoulder; his friend had risen with him. “Centurion, come with me to Rome; I suspect that you need to be indoctrinated again in the ways of modern thought.”

“I wish I could go with you.” Cornelius stepped from the boat and kicked the sand from his sandals. “But sometimes I wonder just what sort of thinking could properly be termed modern.”

They walked back to the inn to await the loading of the ship on which Longinus would sail for the capital. No further mention was made of the Roman gods, the Greek gods, Yahweh, or the Galilean carpenter. And early in the forenoon the next day the vessel spread its sails for Rome. Two hours later Cornelius and his men started on their return to Tiberias.

26

One of the household servants was waiting for Cornelius when he returned to the garrison’s quarters at Tiberias.

“Centurion, Lucian is desperately ill,” he reported. “In the last few days he has developed a palsy. Your wife bade me tell you that she fears him near death. You must come back with me, sir; she’s greatly frightened and in much distress about the boy.”

“But the physicians? Haven’t they been able to help him?”

The man shook his head. “She has had them all with him, sir, all she could find in this region, and they have done what they could; but the paralysis has spread, and his fever does not abate. All their efforts have been useless. She prays that you hurry, sir.”

As fast as their horses could take them the two raced toward Capernaum. When Cornelius entered the house, his wife rushed to him and fell into his arms. “Oh, I thought you would never get here,” she cried. “Lucian is near death, I know; I don’t see how he can live much longer. And the physicians have despaired of saving him.”

“But there must be something we can do,” he said, as he turned toward the sick boy’s chamber. “Are there no other physicians we could call?”

“None,” she said. “And the paralysis seems to be growing worse. He is deathly ill, Cornelius. Oh, by all the gods, if there were something....”

“‘By all the gods.’ The carpenter! Didn’t he restore Chuza’s son? And though Lucian is a slave, isn’t he just as much a son to us? Wouldn’t the carpenter just as willingly restore a slave boy, even of a Roman soldier?” He had said the words aloud, but they had been addressed more to himself than to his wife.

He turned smiling, to face her. “Do you remember how that young carpenter of Nazareth healed the son of Herod’s chamberlain? Don’t you think...?”

“But he’s a Jew, Cornelius, and we are Romans.”

“No matter.” He turned to the servant who had gone to Tiberias in search of him. “Get me a fresh horse, and quickly!” he ordered. “I’m going out to find that carpenter!”

A few minutes later he stopped to inquire of a shopkeeper if the man had seen the young Nazarene rabbi. “Has he been around today?” Cornelius asked. “Can you tell me how to find him?”

“He passed here this morning,” the shopkeeper answered, “with Simon and the Zebedees and some of those others who are usually with him. They went out the gate in the western wall, and judging by the poor trade I’ve had all day, the whole city’s gone out after them. I hear the carpenter’s been speaking to them from the side of that little mountain over there.” With his head he motioned toward the west. “In all likelihood you’ll find him there, soldier.” Suddenly his face fell; his hands shook as he grasped his scraggly beard. “Now wait a minute,” he sputtered, “this fellow, this Nazarene, he hasn’t run afoul of you Romans, has he?”

“No. No, indeed. It’s on a personal mission that I seek him.” Cornelius smiled reassuringly. “I’m his friend.”

The shopkeeper looked relieved. “Then if you station yourself at the western gate, you’ll surely see him as he returns to the city. Or you might ride out toward the mountain, soldier.”

Cornelius rode on through the gate. He was halfway to the little eminence in the plain west of the city when he began to meet the throng returning. Soon he spotted the rabbi walking in the company of the Capernaum fishermen. Boldly he rode up to them and dismounted.

The men with Jesus formed a circle about him.

“I am unarmed, and I intend no one harm,” Cornelius said, holding out his hands. “I am seeking the rabbi of Nazareth.”

Jesus stepped forward and held up his staff in salute. His brown eyes were warmly bright. Cornelius, closer to him than he had ever been before, saw sparkling in the beads of perspiration rolling down his bronzed smooth forehead the long rays of the setting sun. He saw them, too, in the beads clinging to the thick mat of reddish-brown hair on the carpenter’s chest, for in the sultry stillness of the dying day, Jesus had thrown open his robe half way to his rope-belted waist.

“What would you have of me, my brother?” he asked the centurion.

“Sir, I pray you to restore my little servant boy whom I greatly love; I fear he is near death of a palsy. If, sir, you would but say the word....” He paused, suddenly hesitant.

The rabbi reached out and with strong brown fingers grasped the centurion’s arm. “I will go with you and restore the boy,” he said gently. “Show me to your house.”

“But, sir, I am a Roman soldier”—a feeling of embarrassment, deep humility, strange to the centurion, possessed him as he looked into the face of the young rabbi—“and unworthy that you should enter my house. But if you would only command that my little servant boy be healed, while we stand here, sir, then I know that he would be restored to health.” He smiled, weakly, he thought. “You see, sir, I understand authority, for I am a centurion and when I give a command, it is obeyed.”

For an instant the rabbi said nothing, but his warm eyes lighted with a rapture plain to see. He turned to his friends. “Nowhere in Israel have I seen such faith. I tell you that many will come from the east and the west and with our fathers Abraham and Isaac and Jacob sit down in the Kingdom of Heaven. But many of the chosen likewise will be cast out, and there will be great wailing and mourning, for their faith shall not be as the faith of this Roman.”

Then he turned again to confront the centurion, and Cornelius saw that his face was radiant. “You may go on your way, my brother,” he said. “As you have believed that it might be done, so has it been accomplished. Return in peace to the little boy.”

“Oh, sir....” But the centurion’s eyes were blinded with tears, and he bowed his head, and no words would come. Then he felt a warm hand on his shoulder and strong fingers once more gently squeezing his arm, then the fingers released it. When after a moment he looked up, Cornelius saw that the Nazarene and his friends had resumed walking toward the city gate. In that same instant Jesus turned and looked over his shoulder, his face still alight with a glowing happiness, and raised his hand high in a parting salute. Then he quickly turned eastward again, and the little group disappeared around the bend.

Cornelius stood unmoving, his left hand still clutching the bridle rein, and then he mounted and rode toward the western gate. A few paces ahead he went around the bend and shortly passed the rabbi and his friends, who had overtaken several men who evidently had been out with them at the mountainside; Jesus smiled and once more lifted his hand in friendly greeting.

The centurion, reaching the gate, rode through it and toward the center of the city, where he turned left and followed a cavernous road to the gate in the southern wall. He was in no hurry as his horse picked its way along the cobblestones and out upon the coast road southward. His fright, his sudden hysteria had gone; it had vanished completely as he had looked into the eyes of the young rabbi. Cornelius knew that Lucian would be well; not the shadow of a doubt darkened his thoughts.

When he reached home and turned into his courtyard, a servant came running to take his horse. “Lucian, sir, is well again!” the man declared, almost breathless with the excitement of being the first to give his master the thrilling news.

Hear Me, Pilate!

HEARME,PILATE!

Rome

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Palestine

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Phoenicia

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HEAR
ME,
PILATE!