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
[Illustration: decorative glyph]
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?”