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.
“Yes, I know it.” Cornelius smiled.
“But, sir, it was only an hour ago that....”
“A man over at Capernaum told me then,” he said and strode toward the house as the servant, mouth open, stared after him.
As he stepped inside from the courtyard, his wife, who had heard him ride in from the roadway, rushed to him and flung her aims about his waist. “Oh, Cornelius, Lucian has been restored! Not only has his fever gone, but so has the paralysis. He can use his arms and hands, and he can walk as though nothing had ever been wrong with his legs!”
She stood back from him, her eyes wet with the sudden surging of her emotion. “Isn’t it wonderful, Cornelius! And it happened so quickly, too; he was low, Cornelius, desperately sick, much sicker than when you left, I’m sure, and the fever was consuming him. I had turned aside from his bed a moment to wet a cloth to spread on his forehead; then, as I wrung it out and turned back to him, suddenly he sat up. I caught him under his arms and discovered that he was no longer feverish; in a moment he was talking and using his hands, and then quickly he stood up and walked toward the table where I had set the pitcher of cool water. ‘I’m so thirsty,’ he said, grinning at me, ‘and hungry, too.’”
“Yes, I knew about it. It happened about an hour ago. Where is Lucian now?”
“He went out to the stables. He wanted to see his horse; he hadn’t....” Abruptly she broke off and stared at her husband, incredulous. “Cornelius, how did you know when it happened? Did one of the servants tell...?”
“Yes, when I rode in a moment ago. But I knew when it happened.”
“But how, Cornelius?” Her amazement was evident.
“Have you forgotten that I went in search of the carpenter of Nazareth? Well, an hour ago I came upon him beyond the western gate of Capernaum. I implored him to heal Lucian, and he did. He told me so. And I knew he had; I had not the slightest doubt. Nor am I in the least surprised to find him well.” His serious expression relaxed into a warm smile. “Did you feed the young imp?”
“Yes. And he was famished. Literally, Cornelius, the boy ate like a horse.”
“Well, he hadn’t had anything in days; he was bound to be empty.”
“But, Cornelius, this carpenter from Nazareth....” She paused, her forehead furrowed in perplexity.
“Yes,” he said, not waiting for her to finish her question, “and, by all the gods, I’d like to see Longinus try to explain this one away!”