“Welcome back, sir,” the Decurion in charge of the gate guard offered, holding the horse for Marcus to dismount.
The close of the portal reduced the volume of the chant but could not block it out. The cry of “Let them go! Let them go!” continued ringing in Marcus’s ears as he entered the palace.
The new governor was under siege.
Pontius Pilate strode up and down the length of his stone-floored office, crisscrossing the inlaid-mosaic pattern of glass cubes and precious stones. He stepped on the image of ripe clusters of purple grapes hanging from thick golden vines adorned with emerald-hued leaves as if attempting to crush the fruit underfoot.
Pilate was dressed in fresh clothes and toga.
Marcus remained unwashed from the battle.
“They just keep coming!” Pilate fretted aloud. “Hundreds more every hour. Thousands! Will they storm the palace?”
Marcus did not answer the governor’s anxious query. Instead he said, “They want their men. That’s all they want.”
“They are rebels!” Pilate’s attempt to inject firmness of tone was spoiled in Marcus’s ear by the fact that it was a half octave higher than Pilate’s normal voice.
“They are simple folk,” Marcus corrected. “Simple folk who happened to be in the street when the Zealots struck.”
Thumping one fist into the palm of the other hand, Pilate pronounced, “We’ll crucify them in the morning as rebels. All of them. An example.”
Patiently, striving to keep the weariness he felt from overflowing into expressing frustration at Pilate’s stupidity, Marcus clarified, “Then the mob will come over these walls. You will be dead or deposed by tomorrow evening.”
“They are worse than the Cherusci,” Pilate lamented. “Because these Jews look civilized!”
Remaining as matter-of-fact as he was able, Marcus suggested, “You were warned. About the standards. You played into their hands.”
Spinning on his heel so that his sandal squeaked on an amethyst grape, Pilate shouted, “What was I to do? Insult Caesar? Hide his images as if we were frightened to enter Jerusalem? This city belongs to Rome, and Tiberius is Rome. This is his property, isn’t it?”
Marcus opted not to reply to the string of rhetorical questions.
Pilate continued expressing his exasperation. “How can such a people be governed? Every other province accepts the gods of Rome and the emperor along with their own customs. Why not these Jews?”
Marcus saw in this question an opportunity to prevent further bloodshed. “Turn the prisoners over to High Priest Caiaphas. It is a religious matter. Demand a ransom, a bond of peace, from the high priest. A religious tax. Caiaphas will pay it, the prisoners will be released, the mob will go home, and the matter will be settled. Let Herod and the high priest offend their own people, while you collect revenue for Rome . . . and maintain the peace, as Caesar requires.”
“Tiberius set me up to fail,” Pilate lamented. “He knew this would happen.”
Marcus frowned as he disagreed. “He hopes you’ll show yourself wise.”
“Tiberius laughs openly and calls me a fool!”
Marcus could stand no more of this miserable self-pity. The words slipped out before he could restrain them. “Today you proved him right.”
Whirling again, Pilate snatched a sword from off his desk and advanced on Marcus. “Maybe you arranged our welcome. Maybe you caused this!”
Glaring into each other’s eyes from two paces apart, neither man turned at the sound of a side door to the chamber being opened.
Claudia’s voice was thick with disgust. “Don’t be a fool!” she said to her husband. “If Marcus wanted you dead, he wouldn’t need a mob to throw stones. Or my father to send an assassin.”
Not taking his gaze from Pilate’s, Marcus watched indecision replace anger. Pilate’s will crumbled. Turning away from both Marcus and his wife, he tossed the short sword toward the desk. It landed on the edge, then clattered to the floor. The point struck a spark from a vine leaf and made the chamber echo with a hollow metallic ring.
“We were friends once,” Pilate stated.
Marcus ignored that comment. Instead he said, “For the sake of Claudia . . . and the child, prove Tiberius wrong.”
“You think I’m a fool. Both of you!”
“You are wise enough to know that if Claudia is harmed because of your arrogance, Tiberius will have your head sent back to Rome in a jar of olive oil. And I will be the one to cut it off and send it to him!” Marcus’s words had the quality of cold iron.
Pilate bent toward the sword as if he would seize it and threaten Marcus again. His fingers touched the hilt just as Philo limped into the office from behind his mother. Eyes wide at the confrontation, he asked, “Mama?”
“Yes, my darling?” Claudia embraced her son, who buried his face in her neck.
“Josephus rode away on his donkey. Will he come back?”
“I hope so, Philo.” Claudia glowered at her husband. “I do hope so. We have very few friends in this land.” Her words were spoken to her son but directed at Pilate. “Very few indeed. We must not alienate that handful only because they speak unpleasant truths.”
At the far northwestern corner of the Temple Mount was a platform from which the plaza in front of the Antonia could be seen. Several stories below where High Priest Caiaphas stood was a throng of manacled prisoners. Coming out from within the fortress, they halted, blinking in the daylight.
Facing them was a score of Temple guards in their green tunics and conical helmets. Caiaphas watched as a Roman officer waved an order and legionary jailers started unchaining the captives.
Turning to his guard captain, Joachim, Caiaphas said sourly, “This new Roman governor has shifted blame for the riot onto my shoulders.”
Joachim shook his head and murmured something about the corrupt and unscrupulous Romans. “Thirty pieces of silver . . . the price of a slave! . . . paid personally to Governor Pilate for each life spared. As if any of that rabble were worth a single denarius. Extortion!”
The captain of the Temple guard directed a file of his men to deposit obviously heavy sacks at the feet of the Roman officer. Then the Jewish guards took charge of the Jewish prisoners and marched them away from the Antonia.
The sounds of cheering and thanks being offered to the Almighty rose up from the streets of Jerusalem.
Ponderously shaking his head, Caiaphas likewise deplored the ransom demand. “A bond of peace, the Romans say. I say, even if they have to sell their own children to repay the Temple treasury, every man . . . every one of those prisoners . . . will pay back the price of bond plus fifty percent for my trouble.”
Claudia watched as her husband stalked back and forth across the stage in the palace’s audience chamber like a prowling lion. The room in which Pilate received diplomatic visits contained an elevated dais. On it sat his chair of state. When Pilate delivered a pronouncement or made an official proclamation, it was given while seated in that chair. Any ruling from that position was backed up by the might of Rome. From there Pilate spoke in the name of Tiberius Caesar.
Every second or third time he passed the chair, he patted its arms as if to reassure himself of its potency. On the wall behind the X-shaped furniture hung the offensive standards bearing the likeness of Tiberius himself. Claudia reasoned Pilate was pleased with himself, since he regarded the images with satisfaction. It was as if he had exactly planned the events all along.
The steward announced the arrival of Tetrarch Herod and High Priest Caiaphas at the same moment. Lifting his chin, the governor seated himself in the chair of state and Claudia took a chair
right behind his right shoulder.
Herod and Caiaphas may have come at the same time, but it was clear to Claudia from the way they stood apart from each other that they were not together.
Herod cleared his throat to speak, but Caiaphas was quicker. “You kept us waiting. We”—the inclusive word was offered unwillingly—“longed to welcome you.”
With a snap of his fingers, Caiaphas summoned a line of servants carrying gifts for the governor. On a table in the center of the room they placed bowls of the finest dates, figs, and pomegranates. Beside these were bolts of woven linen in colors of blue, white, and scarlet. In the midst was a seven-branched golden candelabra Claudia recognized as a menorah.
Pilate waved it all away. “My wife and son might have been killed, and now you offer trinkets. Is that how you welcome Caesar’s governor? High priest? Tetrarch?”
Clearing his throat again, Herod spoke. “Those people . . . ignorant cattle, my lord Pilate. A religious riot . . . not my domain.”
Herod’s disclaim of any responsibility confirmed what Claudia already suspected. Each man would try to shift the blame to the other.
Pilate addressed Caiaphas. “Religion. So it is your domain as high priest, eh, Caiaphas? Your herd stampedes and tramples their own calves in the street? Yet it has come to my attention that you dare to blame Rome?”
Caiaphas spread his broad palms in a gesture of denial. “What can be done with such ignorance and superstition? They flock to mystics in the wilderness. John the Baptizer . . .”
Herod visibly stiffened at the mention of the prophet’s name.
“John the Baptizer speaks,” Caiaphas continued, “and the common Jews believe he proclaims the words of the invisible God.” The high priest waved a bejeweled finger toward the chair in which Pilate sat.
Scowling, the governor challenged, “You are their high priest. Does your Jewish god demand his worshippers spill their own blood to dishonor Caesar?”
Caiaphas made a sweeping gesture that seemed to encompass all of Jerusalem. “We who rule the Temple built by Herod the Great honor Caesar and Rome. My priests offer our Jewish divinity a sacrifice for Tiberius Caesar every day. This,” Caiaphas added with a certain smugness, “we have done since long before Emperor Tiberius requested it.”
Herod rumbled unhappily, “Good religion is one-third superstition and one-third business. The rest is politics.”
“And which third do you practice?” Pilate demanded.
Caiaphas clearly did not want Herod speaking for him, so he hastily offered, “We who rule the Jewish Temple are men of reason. We practice good business. That requires that we use superstition and politics to best advantage in order to control the people.”
“Which makes you politicians,” Herod observed with a curl of his lip.
Caiaphas refused to be baited. “A delicate balance,” he agreed.
“Console them, control them . . . and pick their pockets, eh?” Pilate said to Caiaphas.
The high priest did not reply. Claudia frowned.
Pilate next addressed Herod. “Caesar appointed you tetrarch out of respect for your father. He was called ‘the Great,’ but he earned that title.”
Herod lamented, “John the Baptizer stirs up the people against me.”
“A lone voice, crying in the wilderness? One man? What would your father have done? What would Herod the Great have done?”
Claudia shivered. She felt she had just overheard a conspiracy of murder.
Chapter 18
Herod the Great had built twelve courtyards within the compound of his Jerusalem palace. Most were filled with fountains and designed for strolling amid shrubbery and fruit trees. The private apartments used by Pilate and his family overlooked several of these, but now Claudia was seated on a balcony above a square marked off with white stones. At one end were targets for archery and javelin practice. The nearer quarter was a flat pavement designed for fencing.
Pilate wore a quilted, padded suit, padded gloves, and a gladiator’s helmet with curved cheek pieces protecting nose and mouth. He was practicing swordsmanship with his trainer. Heracles was a member of the Praetorian company assigned as Pilate’s bodyguard. Like his namesake, Heracles was immensely strong, but not quick of either foot or wit. Still, Claudia knew, the man was smart enough to let Pilate win most of the time.
Claudia watched as Pilate feinted to his right. Heracles countered the move with a lunge toward that side. With his opponent off balance and out of position, Pilate swung his blunt practice sword in a backhanded arc. The blow struck Heracles in his sword hand, making the trainer drop his weapon.
Pilate’s face showed smug satisfaction.
The strike, though causing no real damage, stung. Heracles stood holding one wrist in the other, but still he asked, “Will you have another bout, sir?”
Shaking off the protective gloves, Pilate wiped sweat from his face and peered up at the position of the sun. “No, not today. You are dismissed.”
Heracles saluted Claudia on the balcony and departed down a long tunnel leading to the bodyguard barracks. Pilate helped himself to a chalice of wine from a pitcher that stood on a nearby table. He lifted the cup toward Claudia before drinking.
“When we were boys,” he called to her, “my father took Marcus and me to watch the gladiators. Then we would play at being swordsmen.”
“Philo begs to see the legionaries drill at the Antonia. I think it would comfort him to know he is well protected while you are away in Caesarea.”
Pilate lifted his eyebrows. “If it pleases you.”
“There is little enough for entertainment here,” she observed. “I wonder what my friends in Rome are doing.”
A movement in the access tunnel must have caught Pilate’s attention. He turned to peer that direction, though Claudia could not see who or what it was.
“Speaking of him, the Primus Pilus is coming,” he explained. “The centurion will be advising us on military matters . . . and spying on us for your father too, no doubt.”
Marcus emerged from the tunnel. He must have seen Claudia on the veranda, but he did not even look at her, much less greet her. After acknowledging Pilate, he said, “You asked to see me?”
“You almost missed the fun. I was dueling with Heracles, and Claudia is . . . homesick.”
Stepping swiftly to a cabinet that held a selection of weapons, Pilate chose two swords and tossed one to Marcus.
It was a challenge. “Shall we have a bout?” Pilate asked. “I was just telling Claudia about our childhood. She might find a demonstration enjoyable.”
Marcus examined the short sword’s point and edge and looked at Pilate’s to see that they matched.
Claudia’s breath caught in her throat when she realized they were not practice weapons, but real unguarded blades.
Whipping off his cloak, Marcus was revealed as clad in a tunic without armor. Since he had accepted the challenge, Marcus no longer ignored Claudia. “How is the boy?” he asked her.
“Frightened,” she returned. “Since the incident when we arrived, he has nightmares. He weeps because he must sleep alone.”
Pilate asserted, “We can’t give in to such foolishness. We must toughen him up.”
Advancing to two sword-lengths from Pilate, Marcus took a position ready to begin the contest. “Life will make the boy hard soon enough,” he clarified.
Pilate scowled. “He is a weakling physically. He must be made strong in other ways. What use is a lame son? He cannot even walk.”
Without further comment or word of warning, Pilate lashed out with his sword and the contest was o
n. Marcus gave back a pace under Pilate’s furious onslaught, but he did not appear concerned.
“If I were his father,” Marcus said, countering a blow with a parry, then aiming a thrust at Pilate’s face that made him jerk his head aside, “I would buy him a pony and teach him to ride.”
“If you were his father,” Pilate grunted, “you could do as you please with him.” He swung a two-handed, chopping blow and the swords clanged together, driving Marcus’s guard down.
Flipping the tip of his weapon back up, Pilate’s point scored a hit on Marcus’s left arm. The scratch filled with blood.
Stepping back a pace, Pilate admired his accomplishment. “Are you out of practice?” He lunged forward again, aiming a thrust at Marcus’s midsection that the centurion batted aside.
Claudia saw the moment Marcus realized this was not a game. The centurion’s face hardened as he knew he was fighting for his life. How could this end? Claudia was consumed with fear for Marcus. He could not kill Pilate, or even wound the governor, or he would face crucifixion.
Stamping his foot like Pavor charging an enemy, Marcus drove forward, sword flashing in the sunlight. Pilate gave ground—one pace, another, and then a third. In a moment the two sword grips clanged together. Pilate and Marcus were face-to-face.
Disengaging, Marcus backed up a step so the combat could resume.
Immediately, Pilate went on the attack, attempting the same move he had used to defeat Heracles. Driving hard to Marcus’s right, Pilate expected the centurion to be off balance for the conclusive, backhanded swipe.
Instead Marcus countered the move with a faster sweep of his own weapon. Pilate, overextended, lost his grip on the sword, which went flying out of his hand.
Both men stared into each other’s eyes. Both were panting heavily. There was a long beat, during which Claudia held her breath. Then Marcus raised his sword in salute and allowed the point to drop toward the ground.
Claudia gave a sigh of relief.