Part 11

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.”